Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilNuméros27GénérationsOlder Men, Ageing and Power: Masc...

Générations

Older Men, Ageing and Power: Masculinities Theory and Alternative Spatialised Theoretical Perspectives

Hommes âgés, vieillissement et pouvoir : Théorie des masculinités et perspectives théoriques alternatives spatialisées
Jeff Hearn et Linn Sandberg
p. 147-163

Résumés

Dans cet article, nous discutons les implications de la situation sociale changeante pour les interrelations entre les hommes, le vieillissement et le pouvoir, avec une référence particulière aux hommes plus âgés. Nous évaluons ces changements et théorisations actuels et prospectifs dans leur contexte historique. Après avoir mis en évidence la nature et l’impact de ces changements historiques, nous examinons la contribution de la théorie récente des masculinité. Nous analysons ensuite certaines faiblesses de ce cadre et deux voies alternatives qui méritent une plus grande attention théorique et empirique, respectivement : les contradictions du vieillissement des hommes et des hommes plus âgés vues à travers des approches géographiques et transnationales ; et l’accent mis sur l’incarnation, vu à travers la phénoménologie, la théorie de la différence sexuelle et la théorie queer. Ainsi, nous interrogeons ici à la fois (différentes interprétations théoriques du) changement socio-historique et différentes traditions théoriques (qui reconstruisent ce changement social), toutes deux en relation avec les hommes âgés : chacun de ces centres d’intérêt, le social et le théorique, reconstruit nécessairement l’autre.

Haut de page

Texte intégral

Introduction

  • 1 Gardiner, J. K., “Theorizing Age and Gender: Bly’s Boys, Feminism and Maturity Masculinity”, Id. (e (...)
  • 2 Calasanti, T., “Ageism, Gravity and Gender: Experiences of Ageing Bodies”, Generations, 2005, 3, p. (...)

1Age, ageing and indeed the very notions of “old” and “older” are culturally constructed. Even between European societies there are varying understandings of “old” and “older”, whether by biological age, legal definition or cultural interpretation. In this respect, much depends on the kind of society we are talking about – in the past, present and future. In discussing the ageing of older men the point is not to give an arbitrary (lower) age limit to old(er) age. Instead, there are a whole series of different “olds”, beginning from, sometimes overlapping with, various “middle ages”. Thinking of ageing in a non-dichotomous, non-binary way has much to offer thinking on gender and gender relations. Though both age and gender are generally understood as grounded in biology, age is seen as less stable, less fixed than gender1. In contrast, gender is generally regarded dichotomously and relatively fixed. Connecting age and gender reveals some of the character of the respective oppressions linked to age and gender: ageism and sexism. Ageism is something faced by all, though its severity varies between individuals2. Older men’s seemingly dual positions in relation to ageism and sexism are of clear interest for understanding both ageism and sexism, and their interrelations.

  • 3 Confronting Demographic Change: A New Solidarity between the Generations, Green Paper, Commission o (...)

2Across Europe a number of key demographic changes are taking place, most significantly, a fall in fertility and the birth rate; increases in life expectancy; and the ageing of the “baby-boomer” generation. There is thus in Europe and many other societies a marked ageing of the population. A number of countries, especially some in Central and Eastern Europe, are already declining in population, and in some cases this is exacerbated by net emigration. The European Commission Green Paper3 reports the following estimates of future changes in population structure and increases in the numbers and proportions of older people.

People 65-79

People 80+

2005-2010

+3.4%

+17.1%

2010-2030

+37.4%

+57.1%

2005-2050

+44.1%

+180.5%

3This represents some likely major changes both in general population structure and specifically for older men. Various categories and groups of “old” and “older” are probably subject to greater relative social change, the older the age cohort concerned. The numbers of oldest old men, let us say in their eighties, are likely to increase proportionately more than the numbers of younger older men, in their fifties or sixties.

4In this article we discuss the implications of this changing social situation for the interrelations of men, ageing and power, with special reference to older men. We evaluate such current and prospective changes and theorisations in their historical context. Having outlined the nature and impact of these historical changes, we consider the contribution of recent masculinities theory. This is followed by outlining some weaknesses of this framework, and two alternative ways forward that deserve more theoretical and empirical attention, respectively: the contradictions of men’s ageing and older men seen through geographical and transnational approaches; and the focus on embodiment, seen through phenomenology, sexual difference theory and queer theory. Thus, we interrogate here both (different theoretical interpretations of) socio-historical change and different theoretical traditions (that reconstruct that social change), both in relation to older men: each of these foci, the social and the theoretical, necessarily reconstructs the other.

Gendering men, gendering ageing, gendering older men

5In recent years there has been a growth of Critical Studies on Men (CSM), examining how men and masculinities are gendered, and how those gendering processes intersect with other social relations. CSM has brought theorising of men and masculinities into sharper relief, making men and masculinities explicit objects of theory and critique, and producing studies that are transdisciplinary, relational, materialist, deconstructive, anti-essentialist. Building on both social psychological and social structural accounts, social constructionist perspectives highlighting complexities of men’s power have emerged.

  • 4 There is a complex relation between “ageing” and “older men”. On one hand, ageing occurs throughout (...)
  • 5 Hockey, J. and James, A., Social Identities across the Life Course, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2 (...)

6Gendering age and ageing means recognising both the gendering of women’s ageing and older women, as well as the gendering of men’s ageing and of older men4. Seen in these terms, much of the existing literature on age and ageing can be critiqued. There are many different psycho-social and sociological theories of ageing, such as: life stages, life crises; social activity, social exchange; disengagement; individuation; existential construction; political economy, economic power, human capital, redundancy within capitalism; media construction; textual deconstruction. In most of these, gender has often, even typically, not been made a central part of their theorising. Feminist theories have brought gender relations centre stage in studying age and ageing5. However, even when gender and gender relations are recognised, this is most usually then taken to refer to mainly or exclusively women’s ageing and older women. This has still often meant “bringing women into the (non-gendered) picture”.

  • 6 Thompson, E. H., “Images of Old Men’s Masculinity: Still a Man?”, Sex Roles, 2006, 55, p. 633-648; (...)

7Reinterpreting gender and gender relations in terms of both women and men does not mean there should be more emphasis on men and less on women. Amongst those approaches that have addressed gender relations, explicit study of men and masculinities has been uneven, often undeveloped. The lack of studies and invisibility of older men has been highlighted6. In most research on older men, there is little engagement with feminist theory and critical studies of men and masculinities; most literature has no critical, feminist or profeminist understanding of gender, men and masculinity. Recognising the gendering of both women and men is important not least because of relationality in gender relations; women’s gendered experiences and positionings are constructed in relation to, including in power relation to, men’s – and vice versa. Not only are different feminist theoretical perspectives useful for understanding men’s ageing and older men, looking at the lives of older men may also generate new thinking in feminist theories, where the absent presence of the male body has often been a prevailing problem.

  • 7 Hearn, J., “Ageism, Violence and Abuse: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives on the Links between (...)

8Rather similarly, age and ageing are often translated to mean old(er) age and/or young(er) age, rather than the so-called “middle years”, the relations of younger and older people, or the double-sidedness of ageism7. Debates, dominant constructions and media images of men and masculinities are dominated by younger men and men “of middle years”, as if men and masculinities “end” pre-old age. Media images of older men are generally play down frailty and disability of older men. Age, ageing, men, maleness and masculinities intersect in many different, complex ways.

9Population ageing is likely to bring relatively greater change in the ageing of men than women, with some closing in gender differences in life expectancy. Such demographics may have significant implications for how men, and women, are, how they relate to each other, and how they are constructed as gendered and as genders in the first place. Dominant ways of being men and dominant forms of masculinity may become less closely linked to youth, and how younger and middle years men are or are assumed to be. At the same time, the relative impact and social visibility of older men are likely to grow. There may also be greater separation of older men as an age-set from younger people, through longer life, geographical mobility, and changes in work and family. This could lead to more recognition of an age-set of the oldest old men, and differences, diversity and intersectionalities among older men. At the same time, blurring age categories of men – young, middle age, old men – may increase, alongside changes in older men’s consumerism and media representations, both celebrating and ridiculing older men. Being an older man may become more open for some degree of contestation.

Masculinities theory

10Men are just as gendered as women; older men are just as gendered as older women. Critiques of both overly static sex role theory and overly monolithic patriarchy theory opened the way for what can be called masculinities theory. Increasingly, different masculinities are interrogated in the plural, not the singular: hegemonic, complicit, subordinated, marginalised, ambivalent, resistant masculinities. “Masculinities” and “hegemonic masculinity” have been central themes structuring recent research debates.

  • 8 Connell, R. W., Which Way Is Up?, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1983.
  • 9 Ibid., p. 18.
  • 10 Ibid., p. 30.
  • 11 Carrigan, T., Connell, R.W. and Lee, J., “Towards a New Sociology of Masculinity”, Theory and Socie (...)
  • 12 Connell, R. W., Masculinities, Cambridge, Polity, 1995, p. 77.

11The first analysis of “hegemonic masculinity” was in the paper Men’s bodies8. This considered the social construction of the body in boys’ and men’s practices in the context of the patriarchal system of gender relations. In discussing “the physical sense of maleness”, the importance of sport as “the central experience of the school years for many boys”9 taking and occupying space, holding the body tense, skill, size, power, force, strength, and sexuality were emphasised. Connell stressed “the embedding of masculinity in the body is very much a social process, full of tensions and contradiction; that even physical masculinity is historical, rather than a biological fact… Constantly in process, constantly being constituted in actions and relations, constantly implicated in historical change”10. The notion of hegemonic masculinity was subsequently developed in the light of gay scholarship and activism; hegemonic masculinity was understood “as a particular variety of masculinity to which others – among them young and effeminate as well as homosexual men – are subordinated”11. Later, hegemonic masculinity was defined slightly differently as: “the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women”12. Though rather stable, hegemonic masculinity is contested and subject to struggle and change. The most powerful bearers of the cultural ideal are not necessarily the most powerful individuals. Individual power holders may be very different to those representing hegemonic masculinity as a cultural ideal, even if some correspondence between cultural ideals and institutional power is assumed. There are complex interplays of hegemonic, subordinated and marginalised masculinities, as when some black men or gay men adopt or accept aspects of hegemonic masculinity but remain marginalised.

12A key part of discussions on masculinities (and of some critiques thereof, for example, from poststructuralist perspectives) is the notion of multiple masculinities. This refers to how masculinities are formed and enacted, not as separately gendered, but in intersection with other social divisions/differences. Social divisions/differences are thus mutually constituted, in multilateral ways between several divisions/differences. Sexuality, ethnicity and class have been addressed more in analysing multiple masculinities, while age is discussed more in relation to young men, but less old age or disability. In this sense there are never any “pure” masculinities, just as there is never any pure gender. Gender power, gender dominance and gender hegemony are not separate and autonomous social processes or social phenomena, but are defined through and in relation to other social divisions. Many social divisions, including age, are both sources of gender power for some men at least and sources of relatively less or lack of power for others. The means by which men’s dominant power relations are maintained provide the social mechanisms for some men to be relatively less powerful, throughout their lives or parts thereof. Age is a poignant social dimension in producing contradictory power relations for men and masculinities; yet, it has not been a major focus of recent research on men.

Evaluating masculinities theory

  • 13 Clatterbaugh, K., “What Is Problematic about Masculinities?”, Men and Masculinities, 1998, 1, p. 24 (...)
  • 14 McMahon, A., “Male Readings of Feminist Theory: The Psychologization of Sexual Politics in the Masc (...)
  • 15 Halberstam, J., Female Masculinity, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1998; Macinnes, J., The End (...)

13In identifying forms of domination by men, of both women and other men, the concepts of masculinities, hegemonic masculinity and multiple masculinities have been notably successful. However, they also have shortcomings in analysing ageing and older men. There is a lively debate on limitations of the idea of masculinities, including different uses of the term13. One may ask: why is it necessary to hang onto the concept of masculinity, rather than speaking more precisely of men’s practices, men’s identities or discourses on or of men? The uses of the concept of masculinity/masculinities have been critiqued for ethnocentrism, historical specificity, false causality, possible psychologism and conceptual vagueness14. Masculinities frames have been subject to debates and critique in terms of context, embodiment, contradiction, intersectionality, and from various methodological positions, including historical, materialist, poststructuralist, postcolonial and queer15.

  • 16 Donaldson, M. “What Is Hegemonic Masculinity?”, Theory and Society, 1993, 5, p. 643–657.

14Several other unresolved issues remain. First, there are questions around what is to count as hegemonic masculinity. Is it a cultural ideal, everyday practices or institutional structures? Is it the stuff of heroes? Is it toughness, aggressiveness, violence? Or is it corporate respectability? Is it simply heterosexist homophobia? Is it the more general persistence of patriarchal gender arrangements? Is it the “maturity”, confidence or “establishment” of (some) older (classed, ethnicised, able-bodied) men? How exactly do the various dominant and dominating ways that men are – tough/aggressive/violent; respectable/corporate; controlling resources; age/maturity – connect with each other? These uncertainties are relevant in the social changes around older men, with, for example, possible decline in heroic positioning and violent practices. The concept of hegemonic masculinity may also carry contradictions. For Mike Donaldson16, in foregrounding hegemonic masculinity, economic class may remain neglected. This is important with the growing numbers of older men, and their differentiation by class.

  • 17 Wetherell, M. and Edley, N., “Negotiating Hegemonic Masculinity: Imaginary Positions and Psycho-Dis (...)
  • 18 Ibid., p. 343.

15Detailed empirical studies of masculinities bring further complications. Margaret Wetherell and Nigel Edley examined how younger men talk about themselves, identifying three specific “imaginary positions and psycho-discursive practices” in the negotiating of hegemonic masculinity and their identification with the masculine: heroic, “ordinary”, and rebellious positions. The first “could be read as an attempt to actually instantiate hegemonic masculinity… men align themselves strongly with conventional ideals”17. The second seeks distancing from certain conventional or ideal notions of the masculine; instead “ordinariness of the self, the self as normal, moderate or average”18 is emphasised. The third is characterised in terms of unconventionality, with an imaginary position flouting social expectations. With these self-positionings, ambiguity, subtlety, even contradiction, are present. All the positions, and no doubt others, can be relevant in analysing the complexities of older men’s “masculinities” (practices, identities, discourses), as will be apparent below.

  • 19 Connell, R. W. and Messerschmidt, J., “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept”, Gender and S (...)
  • 20 According to Stephen Whitehead, “the concept of hegemonic masculinity goes little way towards revea (...)

16Raewyn Connell and James Messerschmidt have reviewed some of the critiques of the hegemonic masculinity framework19. They argue that too simple a model of global gender dominance should be rejected, and suggest reformulations of hegemonic masculinity towards: geography of masculinities; social embodiment; dynamics of masculinities; more holistic understanding of gender hierarchy. These are all useful points, though they do not fully engage with some critiques, such as postcolonialism, phenomenology, sexual difference, queer theory20. Hegemonic masculinity is too weak a theoretical framework for taking on board the complexities of ageing. The complex picture with men being both given status through ageing and old age, but at the same time marginalised is difficult to conceptualise within the frame of hegemonic masculinity.

17For the remainder of this article, we take up the first two of the auto-critiques noted above, in terms of such broader theoretical challenges for rethinking men, ageing and power – first, the implications of a focus on the contradictions of men’s ageing seen in a context of geography and transnationalisation; and second, the implications of a focus on embodiment, drawing on phenomenology, sexual difference and queer theory. These are both general areas of critique and are especially important regarding men’s relations to ageing, older men, and the interrelations of men, ageing and power. While to some extent they could be understood as “more macro” and “more micro” in orientation, they are better seen of as overlapping and interconnected. The geographical/transnational is also personal and embodied, the embodied also structural.

Contradictions of men’s ageing and older men in gendered geographical/transnational contexts

  • 21 Hearn, J., “Imaging the Aging of Men…”, op. cit., p. 97-115.

18Considered within a broad historical and geographical context, the social category of older men is contradictory21. In many societies, and not only pre-industrial ones, age and ageing has been a “traditional” source of patriarchal power, and of (some) men’s power in relation to women, older women, younger men. This relation of men’s age and men’s gender power appears to be becoming more complex and problematic. In many contemporary societies, ageing can be seen as a source of some men’s lack of power, in relation to loss of power of the body, loss of and changing relations to work, and significant extension of the “age of weakness”.

  • 22 Id., “Theorizing Men and Men’s Theorizing: Men’s Discursive Practices in Theorizing Men”, Theory an (...)

19Men’s generational power in families and communities has been widely overtaken by major national and international institutions, most obviously the state and business institutions. These latter institutions in turn have their own patterns of domination by particular groupings or segments of men. Contemporary contradictions of men’s ageing partly stem from the interrelations of sexism and ageism. Put simply, older men benefit through sexism, while, at the same time, older men are disadvantaged by ageism. Thus, older men and older masculinities can be seen, or understood, as an “absent presence”22, both visible and invisible. Indeed, (some) older men may even become a contradictory, another Other – to younger men, and even women. On the other hand, age and ageing may not necessarily reduce men’s power. Age is a source of financial power, for some men, so that age also brings greater economic divergence. Men’s labour-power may be extended, with greater use of ICTs, and “cyborg-ageing”, with pacemakers, glasses, disability aids, and so on. In this, rethinking older men through the insights of social studies of science and technology (STS) would be one way forward. Again, contradictions may be relevant, with perhaps greater divergence between “wired” (or “wireless”) older men and those excluded by choice or lack of facility (in both senses).

20Having said that, this is only a starting point. Generational power is changed not only by nation-states and local business, but also by global, transnational forces. Increasingly, analysis of older men makes sense in the context of matters beyond the nation, within late modern relations of state, global markets, shifting employment and migration. In many ways, this is not new: international, imperialist and colonialist relations have long been integral to constructions of older men. For some, such as older men migrants or black and minority ethnic older men, disruption of associations of age and power is familiar.

  • 23 Ong, A., Flexible Citizenship: the Cultural Logics of Transnationalism, Durham, Duke University Pre (...)

21The basic building block of much social analysis, the nation-state, is becoming increasingly problematic, with growing power of MNC, transgovernmental, military and media organistions, dominated by men. The assets of many supranational corporations exceed some nation-states’ GNP. The nation is simultaneously fragmenting and re-forming; it is increasingly problematic to see nation-states as the automatic starting point of analysis, at this time of uncertainty and polarising inequalities. There is a growing wealth of gendered analyses of globalisation and transnationalisation23. Theorising globalisation is a fruitful avenue for deconstructing the notion of a simple centre of gender power, of whether of younger or older men; it highlights multiple, contradictory centres of power, and facilitates new centres of power and powerful categories of men, such as men with access to control of corporate power. The significance, forms, power and practices of older men in the (re)production of global domination remain neglected in terms of not only gender, but also class and race. We need to think about impacts of various forms of transnationalisation on older people, including “transnational older men”. To look at “(older) men of the world” in a global frame can also assist deconstruction of, and threat to, both dominant and most critical understandings of men more generally.

  • 24 Hearn, J., “Deconstructing the Dominant: Making the One(s) the Other(s)”, Organization, 1996, 4, p. (...)
  • 25 In a recent commentary Richard Blewitt, the CEO of HelpAge International, UK, “the global network o (...)

22Gendered globalisation is not a distant phenomenon but happens and is experienced locally; global processes are felt through mediations by individuals locally. The local/global construction of older men appears in several ways24. First, global processes have political economic effects, such as the restructuring of work through global policies of transnational corporations and governments. These exert all kinds of powers, controls and influences over not only individuals but also nation-states and their policies in relation to older men25. The individual autonomous older man has been superseded not only by the (patriarchal) nation, but by (patriarchal) transnational global organisations beyond the nation-state. Globalising conditions are making themselves felt in national politics with policy transfers from the West and the North to the South, and provision of more similar welfare, state and trans-state interventions.

23Second, there are geographical effects. While national boundaries can be extremely rigid for some people, globalisation involves movement and migration of people, and greater cross-cultural family and social relations for older men. Across Europe, EU expansion and post-Soviet transitions have facilitated population movement. Older men meanwhile live in particular places (sometimes more than one); the global is made local through the concentration of effects of global forces in particular localities. Places have significance as localities of “origin”, family, work, migration, friendship, leisure, tourism, sexuality, affection, even through e-communication. While greater cultural contacts have positive implications for some, transnational ageing brings major legal complications. This may involve disputes between different legal traditions, such as on pensions, with parallel development of transnational legal processes.

24Third, globalisation processes provide social contexts for personal experience. Re-formations of older men’s identities occur through personal relations within globalising contexts. Increased availability of visual and textual images of older men from advertising, film, ICTs and international travel produce more contradictory global influences and artifacts, for use in becoming a particular “type of older man”. This is not just an analytical issue but an emotional, lived, fictive one.

25The implications of such changes for older men are considerable. Centres of dominance may be reinforced, relocated, fragmented, deconstructed. Men’s structural power within globalisation processes may increasingly be enacted by and upon older men, who are themselves contradictory, fractured, with structures of desire mediated through global information, media and cyberspace. Late modern gendered globalisation has made the interconnections between the real and the fictional more intense. Moreover, social space operates not only at geographical, transnational levels, but also on bodily experience.

Embodiment through feminist phenomenology, sexual difference and queer theory

  • 26 Whitehead, S., Men and Masculinities…, op. cit.
  • 27 Calasanti, T., op. cit.; Öberg, P., “Den åldrande kroppen: samhälleliga bilder och äldres egna erfa (...)
  • 28 Connell, R. W. and Messerschmidt, J., op. cit.
  • 29 Young, I., Throwing like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory, Blooming (...)

26Studying men’s ageing and older men also raises neglected questions around embodiment. Bodily experience and embodiment should not be seen as a micro perspective contrasted to the macro perspectives of transnationalisation presented above. The spatiality and motility of bodies simultaneously concerns the shaping of subjectivities and the shaping of social structures. This section presents another perspective on older men, drawing on feminist phenomenology, sexual difference and queer theory. Feminist phenomenology and sexual difference theories are little referred to in studies of men and masculinities26. However, the way bodies and spatiality to mention some things are theorised in feminist phenomenology and sexual difference can be fruitfully applied to studies of older men. Bodies are central for the experience of ageing27. As Messerschmidt and Connell note in their review on hegemonic masculinity28, bodies must be addressed more thoroughly in future studies of men and masculinities. Looking at older men necessarily entails looking at the body. In this section we consider two aspects of men’s ageing in relation to feminist phenomenology, sexual difference and queer theory: first, moving around, taking up space and activity of older men from a feminist phenomenological perspective primarily from Young29; second, bodies in relation to boundaries, fluidity and sexuality, drawing especially on the work of Elizabeth Grosz.

Feminist phenomenology and the spatiality and activity of bodies

  • 30 Grosz, E., Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism, Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 19 (...)
  • 31 Young, I., op. cit.
  • 32 Whitehead, S., Men and Masculinities…, op. cit.

27Having discussed spatial issues around ageing men in relation to transnationalisation, it is evident that space and movement are significant aspects of gender relations and relations of masculinities. Spatiality, particularly in relation to the body, holds a significant place in phenomenology. Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued that the body is the condition to our access and conception of space30. Feminist phenomenologists have developed Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological theories, underlining that the living body is ultimately gendered and experiences as men and women are essentially about bodies existing in relation to other bodies, and how one can assert one’s body in space. Iris Marion Young discusses how for women being looked and acted upon influences their embodied experience and affects their possibilities to take up space31. While she mainly discusses the embodiment of women, Stephen Whitehead has applied her feminist phenomenology to men and discusses how men, on the contrary, are often expected to assert physicality in space32. Taking up space and having an active body are accordingly important features of masculinity and how men come to being. Following a phenomenological perspective, asserting the self in space is the expression or style that forms masculinity: being active is often a crucial style of masculinity.

  • 33 Calasanti T., “Ageism, Gravity and Gender…”, op. cit.
  • 34 The dichotomy of activity/passivity as linked to masculinity/femininity is indeed pervasive permeat (...)
  • 35 Calasanti, T. and King, N., “Firming the Floppy Penis: Class and Gender Relations in the Lives of O (...)
  • 36 Loc. cit.; Laliberté Rudman, D., “Shaping the Active Autonomous and Responsible Modern Retiree: An (...)
  • 37 Sandberg, L., “Ancient Monuments, Mature Men and those Popping Amphetamine: Researching the Lives o (...)

28Looking at gendered embodied being in terms of older men, however, requires rethinking the notions of space and motility in space. Not least are the intersections of disabilities and age in men determining how bodies are/can be used in space. In considering older men’s bodies and how men occupy space, it can be noted that activity is central to how one perceives the body in old age. Toni Calasanti argues that bodies in old age are experienced in relation to appearance and activity33. While appearance is generally seen as more important to women throughout the life course, including old age, and activity is largely connoted with masculinity, both appearance and activity are of relevance to both men and women34. Prevailing discourses of “successful ageing” that have emerged in neo-liberal contexts stress activity in old age which to older men has often meant that they should “play hard”, engaging in consuming travel and sport35. Successful ageing and emphasis on activity may, however, be critiqued as enforcing a mid-life ageist norm36. To age successfully in discourses of successful ageing, one should in fact not age at all. Still norms of activity prevail, and it seems that ageist and sexist notions equating masculinity with activity are intertwined and set norms in older men’s lives37.

  • 38 Katz, S., “Busy Bodies: Activity, Aging and the Management of Everyday Life”, Journal of Aging Stud (...)
  • 39 Young, I., op. cit., p. 153. Social constructivist disability studies have discussed how people are (...)
  • 40 For Young, women’s use of their bodies has nothing to do with a mysterious essence of femininity; n (...)

29So, what faces older men is a strong imperative, both from ageist norms and gendered ideals on how to become intelligible as a man, to remain active. However, the “busy” and active body endorsed in these discourses is somewhat at odds with how bodies of older men are connoted as frail and in decline38. Young argues that women are “looked upon and acted upon”, rather than throwing their bodies in motion, believing in their capacities, taking up space. “Women in sexist society are physically handicapped”, according to Young, and likewise ageist and ableist society influences how older and possibly disabled people can use their bodies in space39. Women may be more prone to think of their bodies as fragile, more frightened of getting hurt, and, according to Young, may experience their movement as less under their control than men. Older people have generally been constructed as frail and in decline, and the experience of corporeal vulnerability and lack of control Young ascribes women is also shared by many older people. Fear of falling, as one way of losing the control over one’s body in a spatial and motile sense, is shared by many older people. The falling does not only represent a movement in discrete space but involves a movement in social space, as well as losing control of one’s life. For an older person, falling often means going to hospital, maybe even leaving home for care in a residential home. Linking old age to Young’s phenomenological approach means that just as gender has relevance for lived bodies, how they are used in space, and their subsequent transcendence, so does age40.

  • 41 Gerschick, T. and Miller, A., “Coming to Terms: Masculinity and Physical Disability”, Sabo, D. and (...)

30In rejecting an instrumentalist view of the body, Merleau-Ponty locates subjectivity in the mind, the body becomes the main location for subjectivity. How older men can use their bodies in space, given both real and imagined confinements in ableist and ageist discourse hence shapes the subjectivities of older men. This is naturally also true for older women, but the concern here is the seeming discrepancy between how bodies are supposed to perform as masculine and how the body is supposed to perform in old age. The bodily horizon of masculinity entails an assertion of one’s physicality in space whereas the bodily horizon of being older is one of a perceived frail and declining body unable to take up space. Older men’s subjectivities can hence be regarded as sometimes significantly altered given the intersections of gender, age, and ability. As stressed in studies of men and masculinities however, the multiplicity of masculinities and variability of men must not be overlooked in discussing older men and men’s ageing. The discussion on how the body can or cannot be used is much dependent on the centrality of the body in different men’s lives. Class is one factor in this, where working class men are in some respects more dependent on their bodies for their masculinity construction. Dependency on such masculinity which involves activity and strength influences how men deal with dependency on others. Also, men who have been disabled from younger ages have possibly been required to negotiate notions of masculinity building on strength, mobility, activity and physicality, so experiencing (bodily) ageing differently41. Feminist phenomenological approaches where the body is not an object but rather the entire perspective and an intersectional axis are useful to understand older men’s lives and embodiment.

“Leaky” male bodies, “sexual difference” and sexuality

  • 42 Grosz, E., op. cit.
  • 43 Kristeva, J., Powers of Horror: Essays on Abjection, New York, Columbia University Press, 1982. The (...)
  • 44 Grosz, E., op. cit., p. 193.
  • 45 Moore and Durkin discuss men’s leaking of semen as a matter of control, where spilt semen in crime (...)

31Now turning more specifically to “sexual difference”, we discuss issues of boundaries and fluidity of bodies. An interesting aspect that will be discussed is the “leaky” bodies of older men and how they can be understood from “sexual difference”. The central claim of Grosz and other “sexual difference” theorists is that the difference of male and female bodies is an “irreducible specificity” that has to be taken into account when understanding masculinity and femininity42. Given the phenomenological roots of sexual difference, the body is never a passive object on which inscriptions simply take place. Rather the body as material is an active co-constructor; Grosz compares it to the process of etching where the specificity of the material is crucially important. The sexual differences of men and women are non-deterministic, that is they hold no inherent meaning determining female subordination/male domination. Social inequalities are, however, projected onto male and female bodies. Men’s and women’s different bodily fluids hold a significant role in Grosz’s discussion of how women are subordinated and made other. Drawing on Kristeva’s discussion of abjection43, Grosz argues that the sexes are endangering to each other through the encounter of sexual fluids. Fluids are, for Kristeva, the abject, representing the unwanted. They “attest to the permeability of the body its necessary dependence on the outside”44. Seeping and leakage of fluids by women through menstruation and leucorrhoea put them in the position of the uncontrollable. The female body’s inability to control its fluids can be seen as a form of threat to social order. In contrast, men’s seminal fluids generally, if with some notable exceptions, such as in masturbation, HIV/AIDS and sexual crime, hold a positive connotation to reproduction; they are read in the light of what they do: fertilise45.

  • 46 Gullette, M. M., “Midlife Discourses in Twentieth-Century United States: An Essay on the Sexuality, (...)

32There are several links between Grosz’s discussion of how women’s bodies render them abject and how older people’s bodies become abject. Notably, older bodies are connoted with decay and decline which require people to constantly police their bodies for signs of ageing and try to resist the ageing process46. This “endemic fear of ageing”, as Margaret Morganroth Gullette labels it, could be linked to fear of the abject, decay and death. For Kristeva, abjection in the form of bodily waste is at its extreme the horror of the corpse. The ageing body as a sign of decay and mortality can be understood in the realms of “sexual difference” as degraded by its abject status.

  • 47 A recent study shows that a quarter of Swedish adult men suffer from some form of urine incontinenc (...)

33Lack of control as connoted with both the female and the old body is another interesting parallel, not least in relation to bodily fluids. The inability to control bodily fluids could certainly be seen as a problem specific of old age with both urine and faeces incontinence increasing the further one goes into deep old age. Though urinal incontinence is often connoted as female and more common among women, it is in fact very common among (older) men47. This inability, incontinence, further renders the ageing body in a degraded position. The abject status of the old body, its inability to hold bodily fluids and its connection to decay and death is at odds with the controlled and presumed “impermeable” male body which is set as the norm and legitimates male domination, according to Grosz.

  • 48 Grosz, E., op. cit., p. 204.
  • 49 Twigg, J., Bathing: The Body and Community Care, London, Routledge, 2002.

34Leakiness of older men’s bodies is not only a matter of leaking bodily fluids, as in urine incontinence; it also connects with “boundarylessness” of ageing male bodies. Paralleling discussion of the female body as permeable and leaking in “sexual difference” is its representation as soft, mushy, lacking boundaries. In this respect breasts are particularly seen as significant body parts, as soft, mushy and of uncontrollable shape, and linked by Young to Irigarayian fluidity48. Young states that it is not that men’s bodies could not be as abject as women’s, but it is the projection of the abject body onto women tying them to subordination that is important. Lack of firmness of the old body and how it loses shape and clear boundaries connect with societal ideas on women’s soft bodies and lack of power. The threat that the ambiguity of women’s bodies poses requires constant need for control by men. Ambiguity and lack of clear boundaries in the old body may pose similar threats to the youthful body, and the constant (re)workings of the body to hold its shape and resist it going soft and shapeless through ageing. The male gaze, and its regulatory and controlling function of women’s bodies, could also be discussed in relation to older people, with the “gaze of youth” inducing shame and embarrassment in older people, leading to self-regulating attempts to resist signs of age49.

  • 50 Grosz, E., op. cit., p. 20.
  • 51 Braidotti, R., Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, (...)

35But what about men’s ageing bodies? Men’s ageing bodies are in many respects at the utmost margins and in a liminal state. Men’s ageing implies a rise in oestrogen levels which may lead to breast development, while impotence also increases with old age. Some kind of “feminisation” of the male body may be seen in old age: in the sense that its softness and lack of boundaries may link to women more generally. What then are intersections of “sexual difference” and “age difference” doing to men’s bodies? Grosz proposes that “developing alternative accounts of the body may create upheavals in the existing knowledges” and “relations of power” between the sexes50. Rethinking the old man’s body as fluid and ambiguous may open up theorising men’s corporality and new knowledges on bodies and gender. Leakages and lack of boundaries in the old male body may have potential for creating feminist figurations of a different male subjectivity, similar to the nomadic feminine subject51. Sexual difference facilitates seeing male embodiment in a different light: social structures and power cannot be separated from embodiment; symbolic interpretation of men’s and women’s bodies and fluids cannot be separated from how older men perceive themselves.

  • 52 Waldby, C., “Destruction: Boundary Erotics and the Refigurations of the Heterosexual Male Body”, Gr (...)
  • 53 Thomas, C., “Reenfleshing the Bright Boys, or How Male Bodies Matter to Feminist Theory”, Gardiner, (...)
  • 54 Potts, A. et. al.., “Sex for Life? Men’s Counter Stories on Erectile Dysfunction, Male Sexuality an (...)
  • 55 Grosz, E., op. cit., p. 201.

36Sexual difference theory not only shows the significance of bodies and bodily fluids for men’s ageing and older men. Grosz and others also highlight how the sexualities of sexually differentiated bodies are constructed. Sexualities of older men may suggest different and challenging views of male, particularly heterosexual, sexualities. Sexual difference theorists emphasise the male body as characterised by impermeability and maintenance of a hard, firm and sealed body52. Grosz argues that the sexual and cultural practices men are taking up produce a certain kind of body. The focus on the erection, penetration, male orgasm and “male phallic sexuality” produces this hard impermeable non-receptive body. Gay and queer scholars have noted how gay male sexuality may challenge, through penetrative sexual acts, the impermeability of male sexuality53, but older men’s sexualities may also disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions on male sexual morphology. Though it is not entirely so that men change their sexual behaviour and preferences with age, bodily changes, such as impotence, may induce changes. Annie Potts and colleagues discuss counter narratives of older heterosexual men with erectile dysfunctions54. Some men’s narratives resist Viagra-discourses on the significance of the hard penis and penetration in old age, instead emphasising intimacy and discovery of new erogenous body zones; in these, penetration is primarily discussed in terms of how to satisfy one’s partner, and pursuit of orgasm is perceived as belonging to young age. This counters Waldby’s proposition that men cannot be touched and allow intimacy fully, and may even propose some “radical rethinking of male sexual morphology”55.

  • 56 Calasanti, T. and King, N., op. cit.
  • 57 There are more studies of older gay men than studies critically examining heterosexuality and older (...)

37The sexualities of older men are very much characterised by duality: on one hand, active sexuality is regarded as a healthy sign and a form of resistance to ageing; on the other, there is the negative stereotype of the “dirty old man”, conveying a message of older men’s sexuality as unwanted and something that should be kept at bay56. Though “sexual difference” theory may be useful to understand how the embodied aspects of sexualities and the changing bodies of older men impact upon sexual morphologies, a discussion on (hetero)normativity, on how some older men remain desirable while others do not, is required to understand the differently situated power positions of older men. In particular, discussion of the role of heterosexuality in older men’s lives is needed57. With the growth of queer theory, examining the place of age in heteronormativity and the failure of some older men to fulfil the requirements of an intelligible and desirable sexuality is a viable focus for more detailed research.

Concluding remarks

38Men are not only men, and older men are not only older men! Men and older men are always something else too – by class, (dis)ability, ethnicity, sexuality, and indeed age, along with other social divisions/differences. Exploring these questions is important not only for analysis, but also for policy and practice. In this article we have sought to show some aspects of a wide range of different approaches – geography, age, embodiment, sexuality and disability – available for understanding the lives of older men. Both the main two approaches to men’s ageing and older men that we have focused on – transnationalisation and embodiment – are still neglected and are likely to become of growing theoretical and substantive societal interest in the future. Moreover, we see such spatialised perspectives at the wide-ranging geographical level and at the more immediate embodied level as interconnected not separate. In such ways, there is much room for exploring the complexity of older men’s experiences and relations to power, and in so doing, problematising, at least in part, dominant constructions of men and masculinities, imbued as they are by younger men and men of middle years. Socio-historical change and theoretical traditions, in this context in relation to older men, reconstruct each other.

Haut de page

Notes

1 Gardiner, J. K., “Theorizing Age and Gender: Bly’s Boys, Feminism and Maturity Masculinity”, Id. (ed.), Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory, New York, Columbia University Press, 2002, p. 90-118.

2 Calasanti, T., “Ageism, Gravity and Gender: Experiences of Ageing Bodies”, Generations, 2005, 3, p. 8-12.

3 Confronting Demographic Change: A New Solidarity between the Generations, Green Paper, Commission of the European Communities, Brussels, COM(2005) 94 final, 2005.

4 There is a complex relation between “ageing” and “older men”. On one hand, ageing occurs throughout the life course, and is thus not specific to older people; on the other, ageing suggests processual change rather than fixed age categories. Thus, here our focus is on the relation of ageing processes and older men.

5 Hockey, J. and James, A., Social Identities across the Life Course, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003; Arber, S., Davidson, K. and Ginn, J. (ed.) Gender and Ageing: Changing Roles and Relationships, Maidenhead, Open University Press, 2004.

6 Thompson, E. H., “Images of Old Men’s Masculinity: Still a Man?”, Sex Roles, 2006, 55, p. 633-648; Hearn, J., “Imaging the Aging of Men”, Featherstone, M. and Wernick, A., Images of Aging: Cultural Representations of Later Life, London, Routledge, 1995, p. 97-115; Fleming, A. A., “Older Men in Contemporary Discourses on Ageing: Absent Bodies and Invisible Lives”, Nursing Inquiry, 1999, 6, p. 3-8; Fennell, G. and Davidson, K., “The Invisible Man? Older Men in Modern Society”, Ageing International, 2003, 4, p. 315-325; Calasanti, T., “Feminist Gerontology and Old Men”, Journal of Gerontology: Series B. Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 2004, 59, p. S305-S314.

7 Hearn, J., “Ageism, Violence and Abuse: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives on the Links between Child abuse and Elder Abuse”, Children, Child Abuse and Child Protection: Placing Children Centrally, London, John Wiley, 1999, p. 81-96; Spector-Mersel, G., “Never-Aging Stories: Western Hegemonic Masculinity”, Journal of Gender Studies, 2006, 1, p. 67-82.

8 Connell, R. W., Which Way Is Up?, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1983.

9 Ibid., p. 18.

10 Ibid., p. 30.

11 Carrigan, T., Connell, R.W. and Lee, J., “Towards a New Sociology of Masculinity”, Theory and Society, 1985, 5, p. 586.

12 Connell, R. W., Masculinities, Cambridge, Polity, 1995, p. 77.

13 Clatterbaugh, K., “What Is Problematic about Masculinities?”, Men and Masculinities, 1998, 1, p. 24-45; Whitehead, S., Men and Masculinities, Cambridge, Polity, 2002.

14 McMahon, A., “Male Readings of Feminist Theory: The Psychologization of Sexual Politics in the Masculinity Literature”, Theory and Society, 1993, 5, p. 675-696; Hearn, J., ““Is masculinity dead?” A Critical Account of the Concepts of Masculinity and Masculinities”, Mac An Ghaill, M., Understanding Masculinities: Social Relations and Cultural Arenas, Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1996, p. 202-217.

15 Halberstam, J., Female Masculinity, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1998; Macinnes, J., The End of Masculinity, Buckingham, Open University Press, 1998; Whitehead, S., op. cit.; Hearn, J., “From Hegemonic Masculinity to the Hegemony of Men”, Feminist Theory, 2004, 5, p. 49-72; Howson, R., Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity, Routledge, London, 2005.

16 Donaldson, M. “What Is Hegemonic Masculinity?”, Theory and Society, 1993, 5, p. 643–657.

17 Wetherell, M. and Edley, N., “Negotiating Hegemonic Masculinity: Imaginary Positions and Psycho-Discursive Practices”, Feminism & Psychology, 1999, 9, p. 343 (emphasis in original).

18 Ibid., p. 343.

19 Connell, R. W. and Messerschmidt, J., “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept”, Gender and Society, 2005, 6, p. 829-859.

20 According to Stephen Whitehead, “the concept of hegemonic masculinity goes little way towards revealing the complex patterns of inculcation and resistance which constitute everyday social interaction. (…) it is unable to explain the variant meanings attached to the concept of masculinity at this particular moment in the social history of Euro/American/Australasian countries“ (Whitehead, S., “Hegemonic Masculinity Revisited”, Gender, Work and Organization, 1999, 1, p. 58). Another problematic area concerns how masculinities can divert attention from the social category of men.

21 Hearn, J., “Imaging the Aging of Men…”, op. cit., p. 97-115.

22 Id., “Theorizing Men and Men’s Theorizing: Men’s Discursive Practices in Theorizing Men”, Theory and Society, 1998, 6, p. 781-816.

23 Ong, A., Flexible Citizenship: the Cultural Logics of Transnationalism, Durham, Duke University Press, 1999; Westwood, S. and Phizacklea, A., Trans-Nationalism and the Politics of Belonging, London, Routledge, 2000; Hearn, J. and Parkin, W., Gender, Sexuality and Violence in Organizations: The Unspoken Forces of Organization Violations, London, Sage, 2001.

24 Hearn, J., “Deconstructing the Dominant: Making the One(s) the Other(s)”, Organization, 1996, 4, p. 611-626.

25 In a recent commentary Richard Blewitt, the CEO of HelpAge International, UK, “the global network of not-for-profit organisations with a mission to improve the lives of disadvantaged older people”, wrote that: “By 2050, one in every five people worldwide will be over the age of 60. Over three-quarters of these people will live in developing countries. Currently, an estimated 100 million older people live on less than a $1 dollar and some 80% of world’s population are not covered by social protection in old age. Older people are among the poorest and most marginalised group in many countries” (Blewitt, R., “Remember the Vital Role of Older People”, The Guardian, October 1, 2007, p. 35).

26 Whitehead, S., Men and Masculinities…, op. cit.

27 Calasanti, T., op. cit.; Öberg, P., “Den åldrande kroppen: samhälleliga bilder och äldres egna erfarenheter”, Grassman-Jeppsson, E. and Hydén, M., Kropp, livslopp och åldrande: Några samhällsvetenskapliga perspektiv, Lund, Studentlitteratur, 2005.

28 Connell, R. W. and Messerschmidt, J., op. cit.

29 Young, I., Throwing like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1990.

30 Grosz, E., Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism, Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1994, p. 91. Embodied being in the world is essential to phenomenology and “the living body” is a central notion. The “living body” is not only an object inscribed by societal discourse but how people come to experience the world, “a nonthematized horizon of all activity” (Heinämaa S., “The Body As Instrument and Expression”, Card, C., The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 70). Rejecting an instrumentalist view of the body, Merleau-Ponty sees the body as an expression, as a style (Merleau-Ponty, M., The Phenomenology of Perception, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962).

31 Young, I., op. cit.

32 Whitehead, S., Men and Masculinities…, op. cit.

33 Calasanti T., “Ageism, Gravity and Gender…”, op. cit.

34 The dichotomy of activity/passivity as linked to masculinity/femininity is indeed pervasive permeating not only cultural concepts but also biology where the egg is characterised as passive and lazy and the sperm as active and generative (Fausto-Sterling, A. “How To Build a Man”, Berger, M., Wallis, B. and Watson, S., Constructing Masculinity, New York, Routledge, 1995).

35 Calasanti, T. and King, N., “Firming the Floppy Penis: Class and Gender Relations in the Lives of Old Men”, Men and Masculinities, 2005, 1, p. 10.

36 Loc. cit.; Laliberté Rudman, D., “Shaping the Active Autonomous and Responsible Modern Retiree: An Analysis of Discursive Technologies and their Links with Neo-Liberal Political Rationality”, Ageing and Society, 2006, 26, p. 181-201.

37 Sandberg, L., “Ancient Monuments, Mature Men and those Popping Amphetamine: Researching the Lives of Older Men”, NORMA: Nordic Journal for Masculinity Studies, 2007, 2, p. 85-108.

38 Katz, S., “Busy Bodies: Activity, Aging and the Management of Everyday Life”, Journal of Aging Studies, 2000, 2, p. 135-152.

39 Young, I., op. cit., p. 153. Social constructivist disability studies have discussed how people are not in themselves disabled but rather society disables people. In this perspective, age and disabilities are no more “real” than the disabling consequences of gender. There is, however, a lively discussion in disability studies on how to analyse the relationship between disabilities and impairments (Corker, M. and French, S., Disability Discourse, Buckingham, Open University Press, 1999).

40 For Young, women’s use of their bodies has nothing to do with a mysterious essence of femininity; nor do we propose that how older people use their bodies carefully is linked to any essential mode of older bodies.

41 Gerschick, T. and Miller, A., “Coming to Terms: Masculinity and Physical Disability”, Sabo, D. and Gordon, D., Men’s Health and Illness: Gender, Power and the Body, Thousand Oaks, Sage, 1995.

42 Grosz, E., op. cit.

43 Kristeva, J., Powers of Horror: Essays on Abjection, New York, Columbia University Press, 1982. The notion of abjection is used to explain how the clean and proper body is made possible. The abject is the non-wanted, what the body falls away from; it constitutes pollution or dirt. The abject is not in itself dirt and impurity; rather it is a thing in the wrong place, a transgression of boundaries, thus posing threat to the system, and which Douglas clearly links to sex (Douglas, M., Purity and Danger, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966).

44 Grosz, E., op. cit., p. 193.

45 Moore and Durkin discuss men’s leaking of semen as a matter of control, where spilt semen in crime scene investigation renders men morally suspect and perceived as unable to control their sexualities (Moore, L.J. and Durkin, H., “The Leaky Male Body: Forensics and the Construction of the Sexual Suspect”, Rosenfeld, D. and Faircloth, C., Medicalized Masculinities, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2006).

46 Gullette, M. M., “Midlife Discourses in Twentieth-Century United States: An Essay on the Sexuality, Ideology, and Politics of “Middleageism”, Shweder, R. A. (ed.), Welcome to middle age! (and other cultural fictions), Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998; cited in Schwaiger, L., “To Be Forever Young? Towards Reframing Corporeal Subjectivity in Maturity”, International Journal of Ageing and Later Life, 2006, 1, p. 11-41.

47 A recent study shows that a quarter of Swedish adult men suffer from some form of urine incontinence (Engström, G., Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms in Swedish Male Population: Prevalence, Distress and Quality of Life, Uppsala, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2006); its greater frequency among older men might suggest regarding it as a male problem.

48 Grosz, E., op. cit., p. 204.

49 Twigg, J., Bathing: The Body and Community Care, London, Routledge, 2002.

50 Grosz, E., op. cit., p. 20.

51 Braidotti, R., Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, New York, Columbia University Press, 1994.

52 Waldby, C., “Destruction: Boundary Erotics and the Refigurations of the Heterosexual Male Body”, Grosz, E. and Probyn, E., Sexy Bodies: The Strange Carnalities of Feminism, New York, Routledge, 1995, p. 266-277.

53 Thomas, C., “Reenfleshing the Bright Boys, or How Male Bodies Matter to Feminist Theory”, Gardiner, J. K., op. cit., p. 60-89.

54 Potts, A. et. al.., “Sex for Life? Men’s Counter Stories on Erectile Dysfunction, Male Sexuality and Ageing”, Sociology of Health and Illness, 2006, 3, p. 306-329.

55 Grosz, E., op. cit., p. 201.

56 Calasanti, T. and King, N., op. cit.

57 There are more studies of older gay men than studies critically examining heterosexuality and older men (Chapple, M., Kippax, S. and Smith, G., ““Semi-Straight Sort of Sex”: Class and Gay Community Attachment Explored within a Framework of Older Homosexually Active Men”, Journal of homosexuality, 1998, 2, p. 65-83; Jones, J. and Pugh, S., “Ageing Gay Men: Lessons from the Sociology of Embodiment”, Men and Masculinities, 2005, 3, p. 248-260).

Haut de page

Pour citer cet article

Référence papier

Jeff Hearn et Linn Sandberg, « Older Men, Ageing and Power: Masculinities Theory and Alternative Spatialised Theoretical Perspectives »Sextant, 27 | 2009, 147-163.

Référence électronique

Jeff Hearn et Linn Sandberg, « Older Men, Ageing and Power: Masculinities Theory and Alternative Spatialised Theoretical Perspectives »Sextant [En ligne], 27 | 2009, mis en ligne le 10 novembre 2009, consulté le 17 mars 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/sextant/3598 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/sextant.3598

Haut de page

Auteurs

Jeff Hearn

Jeff Hearn est professeur à l’Université de Linköping (Suède), à la Hanken School of Economics d’Helsinki (Finland) et à l’Université d’Huddersfield (Grande-Bretagne). Il est l’auteur des ouvrages suivants : The Gender of Oppression (1987) ; « Sex » at « Work » (1987,1995) ; The Violences of Men (1998) ; Gender, Sexuality and Violence in Organizations (2001) ; Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities (2005) ; et European Perspectives on Men and Masculinities (2006). Son dernier livre, co-édité avec Viv Burr, s’intitule Sex, Violence and the Body : The Erotics of Wounding (2008). 

Linn Sandberg

Linn Sandberg est doctorante au département de Gender Studies de l’Université de Linköping (Suède). Ses recherches sont consacrées au corps et à la sexualité, envisagés dans une perspective genrée et féministe. Sa thèse porte sur les hommes âgés et la masculinité. Elle a notamment publié : « Ancient Monuments, Mature Men and those Popping Amphetamine : Researching the Lives of Older Men », Norma : Nordic Journal for Masculinity Studies (2007) ; et « The Old, the Ugly and the Queer : Thinking Old Age in Relation to Queer Theory », GJSS : Graduate Journal of Social Science (2008).

Haut de page

Droits d’auteur

CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

Haut de page
Rechercher dans OpenEdition Search

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search