A Visual Synopsis of Queer Aging

Take a look -- a visual synopsis of Queer Aging: The Gayby Boomers and a New Frontier for Gerontology.

Oder it now! Queer Aging is Out

 I'm holding now the advance copies of Queer Aging! It looks fantastic.
Get yours @ Amazon. I'd love to see your own review --even one line-- on Amazon.

Queer Aging: The Gayby Boomers and a New Frontier for Gerontology

Queer Aging, the book, is now available for pre-order at 30% discount -- check it our here: Queer Aging at Oxford Univ Press.

As the first generation of gay men enters its autumn years, these men's responses to the physical and emotional tolls of aging promise to be as revolutionary as their advances in AIDS and civil rights activism. Older gay men's approaches to friendship, caregiving, romantic and sexual relationships, illness, and bereavement is upending conventional wisdom regarding the aging process, LGBTQ communities, and the entire field of gerontology.

• An innovative new work that examines the aging of gay men through 11 first-person accounts
• Interviews with racially and economically diverse older gay men offer unprecedented breadth of account and perspective
• Includes theoretical and historical framework for engaging with subjects' first-person narratives
• Ideal text for undergraduate, masters, and doctoral level courses in sociology, American history, LGBTQ studies, gerontology, African American and Latino studies, and social work
• Valuable resource for health professionals who serve LGBTQ communities and communities and color and friends, family, and caregivers of older gay men
  

  Table of Contents

  Preface
   
  1: Introduction: Queering Gerontology
  2: Stan:"If I'm left, then I have to be the best little gay boy ever"
  3: Anthony: " It has to be something else to this"
  4: Marvin: "I learned very early that it's not just about being gay"
  5: Robert: "I'm a pusher and I don't like to hear the word 'no'"
  6: Ramiro: "My family is really my gay friends"
  7: Grand: "I am a humanitarian"
  8: Charlie:"...being older and being by yourself"
  9: Adam:"...age is just a number. I don't necessarily put much stock in it"
  10: Jesse:"I am a chameleon. I adapt to whatever you throw me into"
  11: Louis: "I'm always meeting the underdog people"
  12: Jimmy: "The party came to a crashing end"
  13: The Praxis of Queer Gerontology

 

Twists and Turns of Sexuality: A Gay Man's Tale at 90.

From NPR: 90-Year-Old Gay Man Recalls Long Struggle With His Sexuality

Hector Black - a 90 year old gay man-- shares the story of his sexuality with NPR. Listen here or read next the full transcript. My take-home message: sexuality is not straight, as in a straight trajectory, but circumstantial, contextual, puzzling, and, of course, contested.


ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
If Hector Black had written an autobiography, we would interview him about it. But he hasn't written one yet, and he's 90 years old. So we decided to talk to him about his life anyway.
HECTOR BLACK: I felt like I was nobody in the whole dang world - was a weirdo like me.
SHAPIRO: Did you even have a word for it?
BLACK: No, no word for it at all. I had nothing. I had no idea what it was. All I knew was that I was attracted to men.
SHAPIRO: 2015 was a revolutionary year for gay rights. Same-sex marriage is now legal in all 50 states. When Hector Black was born in 1925, the phrase gay rights didn't even exist.
BLACK: The word gay was never even mentioned, or even homosexual. It was whispered if it was used at all.
SHAPIRO: We should warn you that a more offensive term for gay people shows up later in this story. Hector represents thousands of men and women whose names we will never know, a generation of people who were forced to live in secret. Radio reporters have visited him before. He's been on StoryCorps, Radiolab, The Moth. But this is a story he's never told. He lives in a valley in rural Tennessee, where his family runs a plant nursery.
BLACK: This is a mulberry - delicious mulberry.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
I sat with him in the flagstone patio overlooking his garden, wind chimes joining in behind us, under a canopy of trees that he planted decades ago. The first time he realized there were other people like him in the world was at Harvard in the 1940s, where he studied social anthropology. That's also where Hector had his first sexual experience.
BLACK: I thought this is not me. This cannot be me. And I was just horrified. And then, you know, after a few months, I started thinking about it and then I realized that I'd wanted to experience this again. And - and so we became lovers.
SHAPIRO: Hector served in the Army in World War II but soon realized he couldn't kill another human being. He was interested in social justice, pacifism and communal living. That interest carried him to a commune in Paraguay, where there was zero tolerance for homosexuality. So like many gay men in the middle of the last century, Hector agreed to undergo treatment.
BLACK: It was the treatment that people felt was the right treatment in those days - you take estrogen. And so I took that until I started growing breasts. And then, of course, they said OK. So I quit, and then I seemed to be OK.
SHAPIRO: He moved back to the United States.
BLACK: And that was when I met Susie.
SHAPIRO: Susie Maendel. They fell in love, married and had children.
BLACK: I felt that I was cured. I don't think I'd have done it otherwise. It wouldn't have been right.
SHAPIRO: When did you realize you were not cured?
BLACK: I was at the nursery and dealing my plants and all that - there was a young fellow who was sort of giving me the eye, you could say.
SHAPIRO: He told his wife he had to go to a meeting. He met the young man instead. The next day...
BLACK: A friend of ours came and said where you at the meeting, Hector?
SHAPIRO: In front of Susie?
BLACK: Yeah. And so I was a wreck.
SHAPIRO: He told Susie the truth and promised never to do it again. It was now the 1960s, Hector wanted to be part of the civil rights movement, so he moved his family to Atlanta, the only white family in an all-black neighborhood.
BLACK: There were some things just amazing how being gay helped me to understand what it means to be different - although I could blend in - the African-Americans could never blend in - but I knew what it was like to be a despised minority.
SHAPIRO: But temptation persisted - Hector would come to his wife in tears - transgression, confession, repeat. Finally, he thought to himself...
BLACK: This is for the birds. I'm hurting Susie, and I'm wretched. And so I started leading a double life, which (laughter) believe it, I moved up here from Atlanta to get away from the temptations of the city.
SHAPIRO: He's laughing because he moved here to rural Tennessee in the 1970s without realizing that he was landing on the doorstep of a hidden gay commune. Even becoming friends with people from that community was not enough to nudge him fully out of the closet.
BLACK: I felt as though all the work I was doing would be thrown in the garbage if it turned out I was just a [expletive].
SHAPIRO: Hector finally came out 20 years ago, at age 70. There were few gay role models in public life even then. I asked Hector what made him end the double life? He told me it was his daughter. She came out first, to Hector and Susie.
BLACK: We both loved her just as much as ever - more even because I knew how much she had been through, how much she suffered because of who she was. And I just said this is it - that I can't - how can I love her and hate myself for what I am?
SHAPIRO: After nearly 40 years of marriage, Hector offered Susie a divorce, and Susie said no.
BLACK: She said I'd be free to find somebody. And she said she hoped she'd like him.
SHAPIRO: That was two decades ago. Susie died late this past summer. Her grave rests in a nearby clearing under a canopy of trees, overlooking the creek that runs through the land.
You know her well enough now to be able to answer this question. If she were sitting here this whole time listening to everything you said, and I turned to her right now and I say OK, Susie, what's Hector leaving out? What would her answer be?
BLACK: I think she'd probably say he's still fighting a battle that I fought and got over 20 years ago.
SHAPIRO: But what I hear you say is that you might have some regrets about some choices that you've made. But you do not regret the life that you lived, even though you only really came out at age 70.
BLACK: I don't really because I think a lot of that - it's a weird thing to say, but I really think that suffering can be - it certainly isn't always by any means - but it certainly can be a way of understanding other people, opening. You know, Mother Teresa said, Lord, break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in. I can't say that. You know, that's - but I really am grateful that my heart has been broken a good many times because it does help me to love.
SHAPIRO: We went back inside the house that Hector built. He leaned on my arm. That evening, about a dozen people came over. The community he has built in this valley - friends, relatives, neighbors - they all prepare dinner in the kitchen while Hector Black sat down and played the piano.
BLACK: (Playing piano).

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The New Gay Men Over 50

tommy+alan photography

 They look sexy, manly, hot as fuck, lean, muscular, confident, and worry-free. These are the men beautifully photographed in the “Men over 50 Project.” These men are pushing the limits of old age – 50 is the new 30! This is the model of the new older gay male – no longer lonely, depressed, and uninviting. Only a few can achieve such a standard, of course. The rest of us are left either struggling to accomplish the prototype or feeling guilty and failed for not realizing it.

tommy+alan photography

The project squarely places age on our bodies and physical outlook – as mainstream gay culture has done since AIDS. The body is where our sense of self resides; where virtuosity and futility live.

See the complete project -- including photos and the men's voices at Men over 50

Old Age Trumps Gay

My husband and I went to the movies on a Saturday night. We went to see Love is Strange, which is being sold as the Hollywood “old gay couple” movie of the summer.

We walk into the theater about fifteen minutes before the start of the show. In the tiny audience, we spot older male/female couples (whom we assume are heterosexual) and a lonely middle age man sitting apart –whom we label a gay man. “Hum, interesting,” we wonder. We sit with our popcorn and drinks on hand. More people walk in as the previews roll: one middle age or senior heterosexual couple after the other. We become curious, checking out every soul in the theater. “Are we the only gay couple?” My husband is freaking out. “Yes, honey, we have become irrelevant.”

Time passes and we get nervous. The movie will start soon and there only three gay people in the theater. My husband gets up: “Let’s make sure we are in the right theater.” I open my Fandango app in my iPhone to double check. This is not a mistake. The lights dim. Then we see two guys (pretty sure they are gay, but perhaps not a couple) walk in. We want to wave at them: “C’mon boys, sit here, this is the gay row!” Another two guys walk in soon after; that’s it.

In a strange cinematic-like twist, we were the minority (again, or still). The gay-themed movie was a product of heterosexual culture – for the pleasure of mainstream audiences. I remembered a similar, but lesser, effect with Brokeback Mountain (2005): heterosexual audiences filling up movie theaters. We, gay people, in Hollywood movies, are not threatening. We are likeable and even lovable – especially if we are the loving-couple-type or the vulnerable-asexual-senior-citizen-type. And Hollywood movies at times mirror reality.

This wasn’t the movie my husband and I came to watch, in more than one way. Maybe we were naïve. We left wondering what was “gay” about the movie.

New Housing Development for Chicago LGBT Seniors

The first affordable housing for LGBT seniors in Chicago is expected to open in 2014 -- just in two years! This is a photo of the latest design, courtesy of Curbed.

The development is located in Lakewiew, adjacent to the Center on Halsted and it follows the already existing Triangle Square in Hollywood and a new planned building in Philadelphia. The concept is to provide an LGBT-friendly environment for those with limited income and in combination with social services. More to come as the details are worked out.


For more information see the piece Housing the Invisible @ The Atlantic Cities.

Older Gay Men & the New Same-Sex Marriage Laws

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times. MANHATTAN, AUG. 2 Jacques Beaumont, left, admiring the grooms on the cake, with Richard Townsend, also in white.

I have not commented on the recent civil union law in Illinois and the same-sex marriage law in New York because I have mixed feelings about the institution of marriage. While same sex marriage might bring us closer to equality, it is not the only route. Paradoxically, marriage could take us, queer folk, back to where oppression started.

But I found the story of Jacques Beaumont, 86, and Richard Townsend, 77, poignant. They are pre-Baby Boomer generation. They met in 1972 in Manhattan and since then have been together as a couple. Now they are in poor health. As it happens with many older adults, regardless of their sexual orientation, their health deteriorated and they became secluded. They ended up in the hospital. They got married there. Both in their wheelchairs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/fashion/weddings/jacques-beaumont-and-richard-townsend-vows.html?pagewanted=all

Beginners & the Phoenix Suns

So your father comes out at the age of 75. He declares he is gay. What do you do? Mr. Mills, a filmmaker, decided to go public with a portrait of his father.

Beginners, the title of the movie, and his director, Mike Mills, are making the rounds in the Advocate and NPR this month, June PRIDE month. Beginners joins another recent coming out story – that of the Phoenix Suns’ president, Rick Welts, who is 58. Mr. Welts’ story was featured in the New York Times and in NPR in May 2011. These two stories tell us about the ritual of coming out in old age. Of course, age and old age are all relative, but we are used to see this ritual earlier in our lives, sometime between our teens and early 30’s. Now, as the Gayby Boomers reach older age, we are witnessing older folks re-inventing and re-constructing their sexuality. Yet, the stories of Paul (Mr. Mills' father) and Rick Welts are different. Mr. Mills’ father was married until his wife passed away. And, by Mr. Mills’ account, he was a pretty good father and husband. Mr. Mills, in the interview with NPR, notes that the marriage of his parents had some loneliness in it. The story, in the form of a film, is more about the son’s view of his father and their relationship than about Paul and his own sexuality.

Mr. Welts’ story is that of a gay man who kept his sexuality out of the public eye. There were always rumors within his industry that he was gay. His long time partner died of complications from HIV. He suffered this loss in silence. This story was captured by the media because it happened in professional sports, not because of Mr. Welts' age or tale of the closet. Professional sports are still pretty homophobic. Gay men and lesbian women are forced to live in the closet.

These are two worthy stories, even if a little too sugary and trivial, because they point at the changes in the way we live both old age and our sexuality.