Differentiating the Middle-aged Gay Self in Less Public ‘Homospaces’

Research into gay sociality pivots around interaction on the more visible, commercial bar ‘scene’/‘gay villages’ (Binnie and Skeggs (2004)). This paper examines interview narratives co-produced with 27 midlife gay men (aged 39 - 61) in Manchester concerning relations in lesser explored ‘homospaces’: the sexualised spaces of the ‘virtual gay scene’ and gay saunas; and gay social/support groups. Here middle-aged men differentiate themselves from younger gay men through various forms of claims-making. First, informants differentiate themselves morally from the ‘superficial,’ depleted and dangerous ways of relating associated with younger gay men. This involved capitulation to ageist constraints within gay culture on expression of midlife identity/relating and expression of ageism towards younger gay men. Second, responses to gay ageism could involve ambivalent claims to differentiation, which also reinforce conservative discourse that restricts display of the midlife body for socio-sexual purposes. Third, differentiation could involve stories of adventure, suggestive of ‘ageing capital’, that constitute attempts to make sexualised space more habitable. These practices are indicative of an ‘ethics of casual sex’ (Seidman 1991) that contest the view of ‘recreational sex’ as decadent. The paper also complicates the binary view that gay groups are more inclusive whilst sexualised spaces of the ‘gay scene’ are the opposite. Gay groups could be policed in moral terms as non-sexual alternatives to the bar scene and the hierarchy of value/bodies (concerning age, class and ethnicity) associated with the latter could be reproduced within them.