I spoke with LGBTQ+ people on ageing well. This is what they told me
- Written by: Jinwen Chen, PhD Graduate in Social Geography, Flinders University
What does it mean to live and age well?
My doctoral research sought to understand this from the perspective of LGBTQ+ people of diverse cultural backgrounds in Australia. I spoke with 14 people aged 50 and above about their hopes and fears of ageing.
Together, we discussed photographs they owned or have taken to represent their thoughts.
What they shared both extended and challenged existing perceptions of ageing well.
Confronting loneliness
Being alone, lonely and vulnerable is the opposite of ageing well.
Paulo told me:
I’m staging a dreadful idea of life, losing my partner, being there by myself, growing old and lonely and powerless.
Taken at the front porch of his and his partner’s home, Paulo’s black and white photograph captures the helplessness and loneliness of ageing alone without partner and loved ones.
This fear transcends gender, sexuality and culture, present in reports of elder abuse and socially isolated older people.
This fear is heightened by discrimination. Ninu* said
as a gender diverse person, I’m really worried about being treated respectfully as I age. Having my pronouns used, being mis-gendered.
Dion said:
It’d be wonderful to have an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander care provider who was LGBTIQ or open […] Because there’s nothing worse than [talking] about your partner and they say ‘oh, what’s her name?’ and I go ‘Steven’ [laughs].
The Royal Commission into Aged Care called for aged care policy and providers to be attentive to intersectional identities.
This means not seeing LGBTQIA+, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, and culturally and linguistically diverse older people as three distinct groups, but understanding people can identify as belonging to more than one of these identities.
A time of change
Ageing is a time for transformation and growth.
As mopoke* said:
a lot of the words that are now in common use […] words like genderfluid, genderqueer, nonbinary […] We didn’t have these words growing up. When I look back, I’ve always considered myself nonbinary, but I never had the word for it.
Many I spoke to built a more authentic identity in the second half of their lives.
Stephanie’s photograph and poem powerfully illustrate this:
the mother of all lost souls knits another web of threads that say again I am here I am me let’s dance and no I’ll not linger in the seventh circle of hell for the sins of those who wrote the book I’ll burn so hot you can warm the ice that set in your veins and together we’ll build a new world brick by brick
In the photograph, Stephanie looks intently and directly at the camera as if to bare her soul for everyone to see or to judge. The poem highlights her struggle when transitioning, having to rebuild everything but also emerging stronger and better.
Many participants embraced their queer identities in recent years, looking forward to growth in the years ahead.
Paulo described this prospect after finally moving to Australia to be with his partner:
it’s much healthier mentally and hopefully physically. I would say there’s a much more solid perspective of growth over here from what I’m envisaging so far than in Brazil.
Among the photographs Paulo sent is one of him in his cycling gear, enjoying a sunny day. A perfectly ordinary photograph, depicting a chance to finally lead a peaceful life away from homophobia and discrimination.
Finding family
Maintaining diverse kinship and support networks are crucial. Some participants had children and maintained close ties with their biological families. Some, like Daniel in this photograph, forged new ties through lifelong partnership:
After 25 years, we’re actually celebrating together. We don’t need […] the hassle of family Christmases with all that façade and that crap or anything like that. We really want to spend it the way we want to, and that’s with each other, where we want to. That’s just us going away for Christmas, just sharing our time with each other.
Others like Masaru*, who migrated alone to Australia, found non-biological, chosen networks of support crucial:
I don’t have any immediate family here, right? Just [my] partner and I. Only us. That is why we joined [a group] to expand our LGBTQ network […] They are like our chosen family.
Queer intergenerational and multicultural community, purposefully nurtured, keeps the people I spoke to hopeful about ageing.
Participants aspired to create community living or co-living where chosen and biological family could support them as they aged and needed increased support.
Ninu spoke of imagining:
an old folks’ home that was queer and was built […] so that you had your own space looking out but also had this veranda all around that connected.
Dion imagined “one big house” where his community could live together.
These co-living aspirations differ from current residential care, which moves people into places away from kin. They are not home care, where people are supported in their own homes. Instead, they relocate communities and kinship to support ageing in place.
Ageing well
So, what does ageing well mean? Seen through the lenses of LGBTQ+ people from diverse cultural backgrounds, it is more than eating, moving, thinking and connecting well.
It is about being able to create communities and homes with diverse kin, being treated respectfully and growing on your own terms.
As John succinctly shared, talking about his photograph of a sunset:
As a metaphor, we’re getting older, in the latter part of the cycle of our lives. If you think about it, a sunset is the latter part of the day going into night. But sunsets are magnificent, absolutely magnificent, and they shouldn’t be written off otherwise you miss scenes like this. It reminds me that okay, the best is still ahead. It’s not all over.
And it is about us as a society removing barriers and creating opportunities for this to happen, for older people, LGBTQ+, multicultural or otherwise.
*Some names have been changed.
Authors: Jinwen Chen, PhD Graduate in Social Geography, Flinders University
