Just feeling a naked body close to you: Men,sexuality and intimacy in later life

Neither asexual oldies nor ‘sexy seniors’?

My discussion of intimacy is grounded in my empirical research and my ambition has been, in the words of Barbara Marshall (2010: 218), to ‘provide some narrative resources that can broaden our understanding of ageing and sexuality’ (see Sandberg, 2011). As I will discuss in this article, intimacy poses an alternative way of understanding later life sexuality, a way which also challenges the rather binary ways in which the sexualities of older people are commonly understood – as either asexual or ‘sexy seniors’ (Jones, 2003; Marshall, 2010).

Historically, sexuality among older people has generally been either neglected or ridiculed (Andersson, 2009). Medical and sexological understandings of a natural decline in libido with ageing have contributed to discourses of asexual old age. Recent years have, however, seen a cultural-scientific shift where sexuality is increasingly discussed as lifelong and part of a healthy ageing (Potts et al., 2006; Vares, 2009). Not least have the sexualities of older men emerged as a ‘hot topic’ with the marketing of Viagra and other sexuopharmaceuticals, promising men eternal sexual function (Marshall, 2008; Marshall and Katz, 2002). Today the image of the impotent and asexual old man seemingly co-exists with the image of ‘the sexy senior’ where a continuing sex-life is understood as part of positive ageing. In popular discourse, maintaining sexual activity is considered a way for men to retain youth and masculinity, and to postpone ageing (Calasanti and King, 2005; Marshall, 2008; Walz, 2002).

However, as Marshall has pointed out (sometimes with her colleague Stephen Katz), continued sexual activity for men is by and large equated with function and the possibility to have an erection (Marshall, 2008, 2010; Marshall and Katz, 2002, 2003). Whilst erectile changes were previously understood as signs of natural ageing, they have now been renamed and transformed into a pathology: erectile dysfunction (ED), a disease that may be cured with the aid of sexuopharmaceuticals (Marshall and Katz, 2002). As the curing of male impotence has become a billion dollar industry, the sexualities of ageing males are thus increasingly medicalized and commodified (Gross and Blundo, 2005).

The discursive impact of pharmaceutical companies also implies that being sexually active primarily equals being capable of having penile–vaginal penetration. Critical feminist researchers such as Meika Loe have argued that discussions on later life sexuality generally focus on men and male sexual function. Loe, who interviewed older women about their attitudes and experiences of Viagra, argues that Viagra contributes to a masculinization of later life sexuality, as a ‘cultural phenomenon that ends up reinforcing ideas about sexuality conflated with manhood and male desires’ (Loe, 2004: 322). Viagra can be understood as a gendered technology that functions to reconstruct male bodies along lines of normalcy and reinstates the erection as central to male bodies and sexualities (Mamo and Fishman, 2001). The emphasis on male sexual function in later life sexuality is problematic not only in how it tends to efface and downplay the roles and experiences of women in heterosexual relationships, but also in how it may put pressure on older men to perform sexually.

The emergent discourses of ‘the sexy senior’ or ‘sexuality as lifelong’ can be criticized for their masculinist biases, but they have also been discussed as potentially reinforcing ageism. In these discourses, to remain sexually active is a means to resist ageing and remain young, to conform to youthful standards of beauty instead of becoming ‘saggy’ and unattractive. Since old is still incompatible with being sexual, the ‘sexy senior’ is essentially a person who resists getting old (Calasanti and King, 2005; Gott, 2005).

It is striking how little qualitative knowledge exists on how older men and women experience sexuality while ageing. The voices of older people themselves are rarely heard and the existing bulk of knowledge is predominantly based on large-scale quantitative studies conducted by geriatric and medical specialists, leaving little room for older people’s own ways of making sense of sexuality. As Sharron Hinchcliff and Merryn Gott (2008: 67) have contended, both the discourse of ‘asexual old age’ and that of the ‘sexy senior’ ‘disempower older people by constructing sex in a strict oppositional way which limits alternative choices’.

A small but significant number of qualitative studies do, however, exist, studies that seek to recognize older men and women’s own meanings on sexuality and sexual activity (Gott, 2005; Gott and Hinchcliff, 2003a, 2003b; Hinchcliff and Gott, 2008; Hurd, 2006; Jones, 2002, 2003; Loe, 2004; Marshall, 2010; Potts et al., 2003, 2004, 2006; Sandberg, 2011; Vares et al., 2007; Wentzell and Salmerón, 2009). In these studies, later life sexualities emerge in far more complex and nuanced ways than in terms of either asexuality or ‘Viagraed’ ways of maintaining health and youth. The significant outcome of my research, that men recurrently emphasized the importance and meaning of intimacy in later life, resonate with other qualitative studies. In several studies, some older men and women de-emphasize the importance of intercourse, but rather stress cuddling, touch and other forms of closeness (Fergus et al., 2002; Gott and Hinchcliff, 2003a; Hinchcliff and Gott, 2008; Hurd, 2006; Kleinplatz et al., 2009; Potts et al., 2006).

For men who do not consider themselves older, erectile changes may be experienced as more problematic than for men who identify as older (Gott and Hinchcliff, 2003a). Yet, qualitative studies overall point to how men themselves understand declining erectile function as a natural part of ageing. ‘Pharmascripts’ formulated by pharmaceutical companies and biomedicine reductively define sexuality in terms of decline/anti-decline and term erectile changes as ‘dysfunction’ (Marshall, 2010: 218). In contrast, the men in my study, as well as those in other qualitative research, negotiate the significance of an erection for satisfying sexual experiences (Potts et al., 2006; Sandberg, 2011).

The study and its methodology

This article is based on empirical material derived from a qualitative study I conducted which aimed to study empirically sexual subjectivities of older men and to explore theoretically intersections of masculinity, sexuality and old age (Sandberg, 2011). The 22 participating men, born between 1922 and 1942, were all between 67 and 87 years of age at the time of the study. All the men were white and ethnically Swedish, and all identified as heterosexual. All were formally retired, but based on the primary professions the men had held previously both working-class and middle-class men were represented. Thirteen of the men were living together with a female partner, either as married or non-married. Six participants were single, being either widowers or divorced. Another three were so called ‘living apart together’, that is: they were in relationships but lived in separate households from their partners.

The men were self-selected and recruited in three major ways. First, this was by advertising in a Swedish weekly paper, Kvällstunden; ¹ Second, this involved putting up posters in health centres, day-care centres and social venues for seniors. I also presented my research to staff in such places, for them to spread the word to potential participants. Third, I presented my research to a senior citizens’ organization, with a request for men to participate in my study. In the advertisement in the paper I stated briefly that I was looking for older men above the age of 60 who were interested in being interviewed or writing a diary as a part of my social scientific research on older men’s bodies and sexuality. ² The same advertisement was put up in day-care centres and seniors’ social venues and distributed to staff. The advertising turned out to be most fruitful in terms of recruitment and I received 12 volunteers from this.

When discussing older persons, it is first of all necessary to note that what it means to be older or old differs between individuals. Old age intersects with other social categories and power asymmetries such as gender, class and ethnicity. Furthermore, age, including old age, is closely linked to generations (Gott and Hinchcliff, 2003b). The men who participated in my study belonged to several generations. Thus, changes in attitudes towards sexuality and gender throughout the 20th century impact on how different generations are likely to approach, understand and experience sex and sexuality. Despite some differences between generations in my study, the fact that the participants grew up and became young adults in times when there was a great increase in discourses on sexuality in Sweden is likely to have enabled them to reflect on and articulate their sexualities more openly than in preceding generations (see Lennerhed, 1994, 2002). Sweden was early to introduce sex education in schools; it became voluntary in 1942 in Swedish primary schools and compulsory in 1955. The generations that the men in my study belong to were consequently the first in Sweden that may have received sex education. From an international perspective Sweden is known as a relatively progressive country with liberal attitudes towards matters such as premarital sexual relations and sexuality among youth. Although discourses about ‘The Swedish sin’ emerging in the 1950s and 1960s were highly exaggerated and conjectural, the generational belonging and the Swedish cultural background of the participants are likely to have shaped the narratives on sexuality and intimacy discussed in this article (Bäckman, 2002; Lennerhed, 1994).

The methods I used in the study were qualitative in-depth interviews and an explorative method I call ‘body diaries’, which I developed in my research (see Sandberg, 2011). I chose to work with interviews and diaries to get at men’s own ways of making sense of and narrating sexuality and ageing. However, in this article I only engage with the interview material, which consist of interviews with 16 men, and thus only this method is discussed. ³ The interviews were fairly traditional semi-structured interviews lasting from one to two and a half hours. Each interview was opened with the question: ‘If you were to describe your body, what would you say?’ in order to relate the rest of the interview to the interviewee’s own conceptions of his body and to let the interviewee himself define and create meanings around his body and sexuality. The first 11 interviews took place during the winter of 2007/2008, followed by another five in spring 2009. In the final five interviews, I extended and elaborated my tentative questions on sexuality.

The overall theoretical and methodological framework of my study and this article is feminist and post-structuralist. The theoretical discussions draw particularly on the work of Sara Ahmed who follows the theoretical lineage of Judith Butler (1990, 1993). Along with Butler, Ahmed (2006) understands bodies to take shape from reiterations; bodies do not simply appear as gendered and straight but this is an effect of work over time. Ahmed in her work puts increasing focus on bodies and spatiality. In the reiterated performances through which sexuality and gender are constituted, bodies are directed towards some bodies rather than others and in this alignment emotions are not only affective but also effective (Ahmed, 2004). This has been central to my analysis of intimacy in this article.

Besides Ahmed, the word assemblage to describe my understanding of intimacy is inspired by the work of Gilles Deleuze (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). Deleuzian theorizing contributes to this article primarily by allowing me to see and analyse the shaping of gender, sexuality and subjectivities in unforeseen and different ways. Rather than focusing only on the regulatory discursive regimes developed in Foucauldian analysis the Deleuzian perspective allows us to think also of what could become (see Grosz, 1994a, 1999).

My analytical approach to the material discussed in this article is discursive, which here implies that I understand the subjectivities of the participants as being shaped by available discourses, particularly on gender, sexuality and age in this case (Staunæs, 2003). This perspective also informed my analysis. The method of analysis is best described as a thematic analysis with inspiration from post-structuralist approaches, in particular discourse analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Søndergaard, 2002; Winther-Jørgensen and Phillips, 2000). The initial and grounding method of analysis has been to look for patterns and common themes in the material, as well as contradictions and disruptions in these themes (Braun and Clarke, 2006: 86). In these processes intimacy emerged as a central theme, where different narratives shape different understandings of the meaning of intimacy. In the more fine-grained analytical work, an important part has involved what Dorte-Marie Søndergaard (2002) has termed ‘inclusive and exclusive discursive processes’. Søndergaard (2002: 190) asserts that ‘every category has its discursive boundaries and its core and it is the processes whereby these boundaries and this core are reassessed and challenged that make up the focus of this analytical approach’. More specifically, in this study this has involved analysing what is associated with and disassociated with intimacy, how one positions oneself vis-à-vis others, most notably younger people and one’s self as a younger man, and how intimacy is part of this positioning.

From the ‘fiery urges’ of youth to the freedom of intimacy

Edvard is a 69-year-old man, living in a small Swedish city and retired from his work as a salesman for a couple of years. He enjoys going out for social dancing and is an active member in the local senior’s club. When interviewed, Edvard, along with several other interviewees, underlined the importance of intimacy, which he juxtaposes to the more instrumental sexuality of earlier years, where sex was mostly about reproduction and sometimes filled with pressure and expectations.

In the interview I ask Edvard: ‘Are people attractive in the same way when 70 as earlier in life?’ On hearing this question, Edvard suddenly and enthusiastically asks if he can read me a small poem he had written recently. When I agree he recites his poem, which describes different phases of life, from the ‘fiery urges’ of adolescence, to settling down with house and kids, divorce, and finally old age. The end of the poem, on old age, goes something like this:

To be old and in love, to get a glance

of her red lips,

as we dance

to feel a nose

and our cheeks

so very close

To get the chance, to be free

to enjoy

our intimacy.

Edvard’s description of the intimacy of later life sexuality is seemingly very romanticized and, as I will discuss later, intimacy as a romanticized version of sexuality may be a way of shaping a respectable heterosexuality in later life. However, the emphasis Edvard puts on freedom and openness is interesting and could also be thought of in relation to the pressure on men to be sexually assertive. If men are often assumed always to want to engage in sex, and masculinity is closely associated with strong sexual desires (Plummer, 2005), it is possible to understand intimacy as taking some of the pressure off men to be always sexual. Intimacy may then be understood as a fluid middle ground, between the ‘sexy senior’ who is expected to continue to keep up with sex and ‘the asexual oldie’ for whom sex is no longer on the map. Linking intimacy in later life with freedom creates positive associations to later life sexuality, where the definitions of what counts as sex or sexuality is widened and redefined. Intimacy gives men the possibility to retain a sexual subjectivity, but also to widen what counts as ‘sex’.

Edvard’s experience, of later life sexuality as an orientation towards intimacy and thus towards a greater freedom, may be compared to those of Owe, 84 and Frank, 71, who both discuss how sexuality and sex with a partner earlier in life was something that had to be fitted into a limited amount of time between other duties and work. Frank, for example, says this about midlife sex: ‘Well, when you’re in your thirties you’re just sort of running on [doing things], so sex happens when it fits the schedule, sort of.’

In contrast to this, having sex when it ‘fits the schedule’, Owe, 84, describes how today sex is something that may take more time. Being sexual with his wife, he claims, means primarily engaging in mutual masturbation, holding each other, hugging and kissing. He argues that this is probably the case for most people his age by saying:

In my mind, they [people Owe’s age] are lying naked together caressing each other’s bodies and saying nice and tender words. They might fondle the genitals from time to time. That’s pretty much how I imagine it. I value those things just as much today as the regular intercourse in youth. Back then, it was the arousal, then doing the actual – and then it was over. And everyday life was back, you had your duties. Often you had something you had to do. Or you had to go to sleep. This [sexuality] is more elongated; it can stretch over an entire evening or an entire day.

Owe, Frank and Edvard all express how intimacy should be understood as something ‘more’, something wider than sexuality in terms of intercourse. Also, while intercourse is often experienced as teleological and goal-oriented, intimacy is not experienced that way. By orienting towards intimacy these men are thus distancing themselves from the narrow conceptualization of sexuality of their youth. In the narratives of the men, the horizon defined by intimacy becomes much wider than just strong urges and the goal of intercourse.

One may of course interpret the narratives in terms of a decline in libido in men as they age, that sex simply becomes less important. But when Owe describes lying in bed with his wife, how they caress and fondle each other, or how he still likes to see her naked after all these years, these are in many ways narratives filled with pleasure and desire. Likewise, in Edvard’s poem, the dance is filled with attraction and desire, although it might not be the desire to go to bed with the dance partner. Little if any discussion exists in social scientific sexualities studies on the meaning and experiences of sexual desire (and loss of sexual desire). An implication of the biomedical model’s dominance is that sexual desire is primarily understood in biological terms. Changes in sexual desire are thus often medicalized and understood in relation to hormonal levels or pathology (Hinchcliff et al., 2009). Yet, if sexual desire is understood as psycho-social, narratives of change may convey just as much about expectations on sexuality in different phases of the life course and how older men experience themselves as sexual subjects. If in younger years desire was ‘the arousal, to do the actual – and then it was over’ in later life it stretches out and is more open.

Yet, it is noteworthy that women are still very central in the narratives of the men quoted here. Her red lips in the dance and her naked body close to him may seemingly be understood as giving men a continued heterosexual direction. It is the alignment with women and women’s bodies that make men emerge as heterosexual, as having an orientation (Ahmed, 2006). This refers back to the work of Judith Butler (1993), where it is not the sexual acts between men and women per se that are significant to the shaping of heterosexuality but the alignment of male and female bodies in a wider sense. It may not be so much keeping up with sex, which is important in order for men to retain a heterosexual subjectivity, as the declaration of desire for women (see Sandberg, 2011).

In the foregoing discussions, turning to intimacy seems primarily to be the result of different circumstances in life, about a new phase in the course of life. But orientations to intimacy also resulted from the changes that the men’s ageing bodies underwent. These directions towards intimacy may sometimes hold the potentials to reshape one’s sexual self and even experiences of the male body.

The new bodies of intimacy

Several of the participants in my research state that they still experience sexuality as an important and pleasurable part of life, and that the desire for sex still exists. Yet they also, in different ways, point to how things become different as a result of physical ageing. One such difference is related to changes in erectile function. In literature on masculinity and sexuality it is frequently asserted that men’s experiences of manhood and masculinity are closely tied to the penis and the ability to have an erection and penetrate (Plummer, 2005; Tiefer, 2004). Experiences of impotence are hence commonly understood as a potential loss, and a threat to masculinity (see Fergus et al., 2002; Oliffe, 2005; Tiefer, 2004). Several of my interviewees express the onset of impotence as a great hardship, especially to begin with. Narrations of bodily changes and impotence are, however, accompanied by stories of increasing intimacy and how this has led them to become better, more considerate lovers.

Nore, 74 years old, underlines how he is probably not alone in experiencing the impact of bodily changes on sexual practices with a partner.

Nore: Well it changes – it’s probably like that for all older couples. It gets drier and the man has more difficulties in getting an erection. So it isn’t just like in the old days, and maybe that’s a good thing in some ways, ‘cause then there is a different technique sort of. It’s not just to – You have to touch each other in a different way. I add lubricant and if I can’t get an erection the whole thing is a way of getting [an erection]. It becomes part of the foreplay. So in a sense that’s good.

Jakob, 82, expresses his experience in similarly positive terms: ‘The desire is the same, and eh, being together doesn’t have to end with or lead to intercourse. A lot of warmth can be given just by bodily contact really.’ ‘Bodily contact’ and ‘warmth’ are here further expressions of intimacy, which is juxtaposed to intercourse. The orientation to intimacy could here be understood as a negotiation with what is understood as pleasurable and desirable sexual practice. When having an erection is difficult or even impossible, other ways of being intimate surface as more important. As Axel, 83, says: ‘I still like it, though I can’t do it with my willy’. The ‘it’ that Axel talks about would generally be taken to mean intercourse in everyday language. ⁴ But in this context, where Axel says he cannot do it with his penis, his ‘willy’, there is an apparent shift and re-signification of the meaning of ‘it’, so that it may now mean a lot of other things. When Axel describes how fondling each other and taking showers together may also be pleasurable ways of being with a partner, he broadens the meaning of sex from intercourse to a range of other practices as well.

Frank, 71, is one participant who reflects on how he has changed sexually throughout life.

Frank: As a sexual partner I am probably more considerate, I think I was in my fifties too, but in my thirties I was not considerate like that, let me see I don’t remember exactly. Between 50 and 70 I could probably say that I’ve become more tender.

The intimate and by implication more tender and considerate lover that emerges in these narratives should moreover be understood in relation to generations and to the cultural and national context of this study. Throughout the 20th century, discourses on gender equality have been pervasive in Sweden, and from the 1970s and onwards these discourses have become part of the political agenda of the Swedish state (Hearn et al., 2012). As a result, discourses on gender equality have also been central to the shaping of masculinity. Ideal masculinity is equated with being caring and gender equal, in contrast to some other masculinities that are construed as incompatible with Swedish ideals of gender equality (notably, ‘non-Swedish’ non-white men living in Sweden are often posited as ‘problematic’ in these discourses. Gottzén and Jonsson, 2012). To describe oneself as more considerate and tender could thus also be understood as an alignment with influential discourses on masculinity and gender equality. Generation also intermingles in this, as the men in my study belong to generations familiarized not only with discourses of gender equality in general but also with new discourses on female sexuality, where the desire and pleasure of women is emphasized to a greater extent than in earlier generations (Bäckman, 2002).

Going back to the question I posed at the beginning of this article: What is it that intimacy does in terms of shaping bodies and subjectivities? One may see some men’s orientations to intimacy as ways of shaping an intelligible and desirable sexuality in later life. Sexuality in the lives of older men then comes across as more free but also more considerate and unselfish. The turn to intimacy could thus be understood in terms of negotiation, adaptation or a decentred significance of erection and penetration, but also as a way of shaping a desirable masculine sexual self.

Yet, men’s turn to intimacy may not only be understood as part of shaping desirable masculine sexuality in later life. Another possible way of understanding what intimacy does in these narratives is to consider intimacy as taking shape in relation to the unstable materialities of the ageing body. In this theoretical perspective, the body ‘possesses a force and being that marks the very character of representation’ to use the words of Clare Colebrook (2000: 77). Intimacy may then produce unforeseen effects and could have the potential to reconfigure experiences of sexual subjectivities and bodies.

One such example, is the story of Nore, 77, and how his breasts started growing. As a result of a treatment for prostate cancer Nore started developing breasts, and this was something he experienced in relation to his sense of masculinity.

Nore: It was a very special experience, this hormone treatment. One part was how it changed the body: the breasts started growing. I thought it was really embarrassing (laughs). It was a real blow to my masculinity (laughs).

Rather than understanding intimacy merely as a strategic resource, a discourse to draw upon, one may discuss intimacy as a form of assemblage, following the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). The assemblage, combining both the organic and the inorganic, in this case emerges from the materialities of ageing bodies together with particular forms of sexual practices, including feelings of love, togetherness and so on. As an assemblage, intimacy could then produce bodies and sexual subjectivities in new and unforeseen ways. Margrit Shildrick (2009) draws on Deleuze and Guattari (1987) to discuss disabilities, arguing that rather than understanding the disabled body as faulty and lacking, a Deleuzian perspective emphasizes the disabled body’s capacities to produce desire, to enter into new connections. I would argue that the ageing male body, such as in the case of Nore, may similarly be conceptualized as productive and that intimacy may be seen as an example of this connectivity.

Intimacy may then be seen as productive in the sense of shaping a desirable masculine sexuality, which is more tender and considerate but also productive in more unforeseen ways where transformations of the body involve more fundamental reconfigurations of the male sexual body. There is a tension between this interpretation in which intimacy emerges as a potential site for the ‘radical rethinking’ of male sexual subjectivities and bodies, and the former interpretation where intimacy is just a reformulation of hegemonic discourses on masculinity and sexuality (Grosz, 1994b: 191). In the first interpretation a turn to intimacy then poses no fundamental challenge to masculinity or how to understand a male body. I am not proposing any one of the different readings of intimacy in this article to be more valid or true, but wish to bring forward how intimacy in older men’s narratives on later life sexuality does many things.

Next I present yet another way of analysing what narratives of intimacy do to the shaping of sexual subjectivities of older men, to constructions of masculinity, sexuality and old age. This far, I have primarily discussed intimacy as denoting sexual practices that go beyond a coital imperative. For the men intimacy was not primarily the practices per se, but just as much the relationship in a wider sense. Central to narratives on intimacy was, as I have remarked earlier, feelings of love and togetherness. Before concluding I thus discuss how the links between emotions and intimacy also shape bodies and sexualities.

Intimacy as an orientation to respectable heterosexuality

Rolf was 73 years old when he participated in my research and had lost his wife a little more than a year before. In his interviews, although Rolf voices how it is natural for men to be attracted to women, also at his age, he clearly expresses that he does not wish to get into a sexual relationship with a new partner. Rolf tells me it has been a long time since he had sexual intercourse. The last time he and his wife tried he remembers clearly: it was in a hot hotel room on a holiday trip in Europe. The circumstances were all right he says, but it did not work. Later he discovered that the medicine he was on might have impacted on his erectile function and sexual desire. Still he describes their life together in positive terms and stresses the many things he appreciated in their relationship.

Despite the lack of an active sex life, we’ve had a very good time together. Our shared and different interest, with hobbies (genealogy) and travels, have given our life together another dimension. Of course we kissed and hugged each other and you can really be ‘quiet’ with your company and still enjoy it.

I have argued that a turn to intimacy could be understood as a form of negotiation with masculinity and ideals and norms about male sexuality. Given how the men in my study, as in the example of Rolf, emphasize feelings of love and connectedness and the significance of the long-term relationship I would also argue that a turn to intimacy is about shaping a specific kind of respectable and desirable heterosexuality. What is important is not so much the ‘sex’-part of heterosexuality as the alignment with emotions such as love, affection and happiness (Ahmed, 2008). Where queer sexualities have been othered as perverse and hyper-sexual and threatening order and decency, heterosexuality becomes the good, respectable and natural counterpart as linked to the private and loving relationship.

Another interviewee who points to love and commitment rather than sex as important in a relationship and who clearly distances from sex without feelings is Yngve. Before I even had a chance to turn on my voice recorder Yngve, 87 years old, started to talk about how young people today jump into bed ‘real fast’ and that there is too much emphasis on sex today. He clearly positions himself as being of a different generation by talking about how TV shows nowadays are filled with sex and lots of nudity, ‘it’s sheer porn’, whereas his generation grew up with romance and romantic films. He narrates in detail the ‘three loves of his life’ and how he met them, and in this strong narrative on love, sexuality definitely takes second place. Yngve says that sexuality requires love, but not the other way around. That love and a good relationship is what matters also frames the ways in which he, like Rolf, makes sense of erectile changes in later life. Since sexuality and feelings of sexual desire are so closely bound up with feelings of love to Yngve, he does not grieve about either his potency or his past sexual desire.

What do these purported emotions of intimacy do, what do they produce in terms of boundaries of subjectivities and bodies of the older men in my research? Clearly, a claim to love and happiness within the couple marks a difference from how the body is shaped in relation to sex and sexuality. As Ahmed (2004) argues, emotions are connected to social hierarchies and the display of certain feelings stratifies bodies differently. When the men in this study, in different ways emphasize intimacy and the emotions bound up with it, they also somehow posit sex and feelings of sexual desire as shallow and unimportant. Several men talk about themselves as more sexually egoistic and urge-driven when younger. Intimacy, emphasized as more emotional and romantic, may thus be understood as more genuine and as such of higher value than having intercourse or other sexual activity. When some men in this study talk about sexuality in later life as more committed and sincere, they almost seem to speak of it in spiritual terms. Sexuality in later life is guided by disembodied love, whereas sexuality earlier in life emerges as shallow, rooted in the flesh and driven by carnal desires.

When the men evoke these kinds of binary terms, this not only functions to make sense of sexuality in later life as contrasted to sexuality when young(er), but also constitutes a form of hierarchization of young/sexual/shallow/uncontrolled versus older/sincere/loving/controlled. A turn to love and emotion may then be read in a context of ageism, where the position of the older man takes shape from an othering of younger persons, younger men in particular.

When the men in this study invoke intimacy as feelings of affection or love, this can be seen as a private matter. But referring to these feelings may also be part of wider construction of heterosexuality, and as such not private at all. To get at the meaning of intimacy in the interviews requires that we go beyond the private meanings held by the participants in this study. Intimacy, meaning love and deep feelings of affection and the sincerity of a relationship, can be discussed as a concept that travels and holds its meaning beyond the private sphere, a concept that is linked to and part of a wider cultural imaginary of heterosexuality. The queer theorists Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner make this clear: ‘A complex cluster of sexual practices gets confused, in heterosexual culture, with the love plot of intimacy and familialism that signifies belonging to society in a deep and normal way’ (Berlant and Warner, 1998: 554). Far from being a neutral, innocent concept, intimacy, as Berlant and Warner (1998) note, is an ideology and institution that adds onto and gives meaning and intelligibility to heterosexual culture. Rather than seeing the stress on intimacy as an understanding of sexuality developed in relation to old age, we may just as well see it as a partaking in the construction of heterosexual culture.

Going back to my background discussion on the emergence of discourses of sexuality as lifelong and part of a healthy and positive ageing, it may seem that these discourses are part of a positive development, a liberal and progressive trend (Jones, 2003). However, I believe it is important to remain somewhat critical to these discourses and ask: What counts as being sexually active and who may be sexually active in later life? I do not believe that this kind of discourse by definition grants all older people the possibility of emerging as sexual beings. Intimacy may play a crucial role by shaping some bodies and subjects as respectably intimate. The older heterosexual couple who engages in ‘good ethical sex’ and who displays enough intimacy, feelings of love and affection may be applauded (Calasanti and King, 2005). Others may not be able to fit the category of the successfully ageing sexy senior.

One may argue that the emphasis on emotive intimacy is a way for the older men in this study to distance themselves from the negative stereotype of the dirty old man. The dirty old man is a potentially queer figure who is sexual in the wrong time and place, and emphasizing intimacy may be a way to avoid being associated with this figure when talking about sexuality. Intimacy can be understood as something sexual, but it is also sufficiently non-sexual to prevent associations of dirty or inappropriate aspects of sexuality.

This is interesting since it in many ways reflects how women’s sexual agency is linked to and bound up with romantic love narratives (Holland et al., 1998). In an article on polyamory Klesse (2006) argues that love and intimacy may be understood as relational ideologies that have gained prominence also in queer cultures, such as among practitioners of polyamory. I argue that heterosexual older men may legitimize and make room for sexual subjectivity in similar terms by using intimacy as a relational ideology. Intimacy can thus be seen as a hallmark of good, healthy and positive heterosexuality.

Conclusions

In this article I have argued that intimacy does things. As something social it shapes, in this case, older men’s sexual subjectivities and bodies. Yet, there is no one uniform way in which intimacy does things for the participants. Intimacy may, for one thing, be understood as enabling anti-ageist narratives on later life sexuality, where what it means to be sexual emerges from and is adjusted to the possibilities of the ageing body. Intimacy may also be analysed as a non-binary concept, where male bodies can re-emerge as sexual in new ways and decentre a coital imperative for men. As such, the concept is of potential use to further feminist theorizing. On another note, intimacy may also be understood as part of a discourse of respectable heterosexuality, which in this particular case shapes older men’s ageing bodies as sexual in appropriate ways.

One of the significant changes that men in my study narrate was how sexuality earlier in life, during adolescence and midlife, was very much centred on having intercourse. In contrast, later life sexuality is experienced in terms of touch and sensuality – of intimacy in a wider sense – and this opened up certain freedoms. When it is no longer possible to have children and intercourse is no longer an option, intimacy surfaces as a fluid middle ground between the sexual and the non-sexual. Intimacy could be something sexual, it could involve fondling and lead to orgasms. But it may also involve holding someone’s hand or giving a compliment, things that are seldom understood as sex as such. This kind of ambiguity that intimacy holds may be especially important to men. If men are expected always to want to have sex and male sexuality is very much linked to the penis and the ability to perform during intercourse, a shift towards intimacy may in effect relieve some of the pressure on men. Thinking for example of Edvard’s poem on the pleasure and intimacy in the dance, intimacy still implies continued orientations to women. Yet intimacy also creates spaces in men’s relationships with women that are, if not asexual, more ambiguously sexual. Intimacy thus shapes the male body into a body that is less phallic and more sexually ambiguous and indiscernible.

For some of the men in my study, an orientation to intimacy is part of a narrative of becoming better and more considerate lovers. This kind of emphasis on a positive masculinity emerging from (new-found) intimacy could be a way of negotiating masculinity without altogether conceding the privileges associated with masculinity. Yet, intimacy is not only a strategic resource, but also a modality produced from the materialities of the ageing body. When erectile function starts to decline this also means a reconfiguration of sex, where alternative sexual practices emerge as more important and men come to understand themselves in new ways. For a few, the ageing body could involve an even more fundamental reconfiguration of masculinity and sexuality. One such example is Nore, who developed breasts and as a result found new pleasures and new ways of understanding his body as a sexual body.

When later life sexuality is narrated in terms of intimacy there is also a tendency to romanticize among the participating men. Their sexual relationships in later life are discussed in terms of love, of being more sincere and unselfish, and of long-term and committed relationships. These idealized images can, as I have suggested, be understood from a queer theoretical perspective as ways of shaping a desirable and respectable heterosexuality in intersections with age. Intimacy thus becomes an expression of a cosy and unthreatening form of sexuality, in stark contrast to the inappropriate and undesirable dirty old man’s sexuality.

In a study of popular discourses of older men, Calasanti and King (2005) argue that US advertising campaigns aimed at older men are increasingly emphasizing the need for ‘staying hard’, for maintaining sexual function and activity even when older. When men in my study speak about sexuality in later life it is not all about ‘staying hard’ but rather about getting intimate. My research suggests that getting intimate may make possible some alternative ways for older men to shape sexual subjectivities in later life. In this process men may then retain masculinity and a sexual subjectivity, yet sidestep requirements to be the sexually insatiable and incessantly functioning ‘hard’ man. On the other hand, the connotations of intimacy, as something cosy and romanticized, also suggest that intimacy is not an innocent concept. When older men describe themselves as intimate lovers, boundaries emerge between respectable heterosexuality and the dirty Other. This urges one to ask yet more questions on later life sexuality and older men’s sexualities, to inquire into the lives of those who ‘fail’ to become desirable sexual subjects, those who are too dirty, too inappropriate, not sexual enough or too sexual.