Alienation,ambivalence,agency: Middle-aged gay men and ageism in Manchester’s gay village

Manchester’s gay culture

Manchester is the third largest city in the UK (located in the north west of England) and its metropolitan area has a population of 2.5 million (en.wikipedia, 2011). The village is the most visible and publicly accessible aspect of a culture that also comprises gay websites, voluntary social/support groups, spaces for recreational sex (saunas, cruising grounds and public toilets) and domestically staged forms of kinship, which were spoken of as increasingly important as men grew older. Although gay men tend to remain on the dating and bar scenes longer than heterosexuals, interviewees’ positions in relation to these cultural forms were mutable, being contingent upon changes in midlife that were connected with structural and discursive factors – employment status, ideas of self-development involving focus on career, investing in the home and developing relationships away from commercialised gay culture. Interviewees described the village as a structuring presence in their lives, though socialising in the village was often fitted around other occasions (before/following concerts, films or gay social/support group meeting) and, regardless of class, race and relationship status, men commonly differentiated themselves from the ‘superficial’ forms of interaction associated with this youth-coded space. Such descriptions constituted men’s account of a more mature self – another articulation of ageing capital and one that indicates a shift towards conventional rather than queer temporality.

The historicity of Manchester’s gay culture is visible in the landscape of the regenerated village area that saw the number of bars more than double between 1994 and 2000. But, historicity involved reckoning with a political climate during the 1980s that legitimated police harassment, Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, a calculated cautiousness by the government in the face of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and media hysteria towards variance beyond heterosexuality. Research participants grew up during a time when gay men were constructed as the representatives and deserving victims of the deadly experiment with permissivism (Watney, 1987) and when public hostility was commonly expressed in violence towards gay men often occurring just beyond the periphery of the village (Moran et al., 2004). Nine interviewees indicated that such a climate contributed significantly to their delayed ‘coming out’ in their early to mid-30s. However, the local HIV/AIDS monument serves as a reminder of change in the direction of tolerance. Since the late 1990s, the village has been popular with heterosexuals (Binnie and Skeggs, 2004) and is marketed by Manchester City Council as a tourist attraction (Hughes, 2006: 250).

Theoretical framework

This section provides a definition of midlife, elucidates the concept of ‘ageing capital’, which is central to my theoretical framework and situates my driving narrative in relation to key currents in the literature on gay male ageing. In the gay specific literature, midlife is commonly taken for granted (see Ellis, 2001) or collapsed into an amorphous ‘later life’, or ‘fifty plus’ (see Cronin and King, 2010; Heaphy et al., 2004), which obscures what is distinctive about gay middle age compared to gay old age. The few definitions of midlife available within social gerontology obliterate the distinctiveness of gay ageing/midlife. ‘Prime of life’ accounts, stress midlife as a time of freedom from the demands of childrearing (O’Rand, 1990: 140). ‘Crisis’ accounts portray midlife as reckoning with loss and the prospect of mortality but involving the possibility of reclaiming an inner ‘authentic Self’ distorted by socialisation processes (Biggs, 1993: 28–32). The rational actors presumed in these accounts are not just headed towards freedom from self-conflict but are also thoroughly heteronormative. I distinguish gay male midlife as a period with relatively porous boundaries between when interviewees started to confront the ‘loss’ of youth in their late 30s but before statutory retirement age when the term ‘pensioner’ constructs individuals as ‘closer to death’ (Gilleard and Higgs, 2000: 135) social and actual. This definition connects with the notion of lifecourse rather than fixed, life stages and allows for differences in when individuals apply the term ‘midlife’ to themselves.

The analytical framework underpinning this article acknowledges the constraints, ambivalences and choices in men’s accounts of ageing. Central to this framework is what I call ‘ageing capital’, which is a multivalent concept appearing in men’s accounts of growing older that variously index emotional strength, self-acceptance, age-appropriate bodily display/performance and awareness of the relations constitutive of gay culture (and wider society). It was implicated in accounts of an authentic midlife self, which mixes a productive essentialism with humanism. This was evident in informants’ idea of a more ‘natural’, less sculpted or elaborated body, indicating a holistic self where appearance is a faithful reflection of a more ‘real me’ or inner self consisting of values, knowledge and personality prioritised over individual projects of the body. In critical, empowering mode, an authentic midlife socio-sexual subjectivity was used to differentiate midlife selves from the fashionable self-presentation associated with younger gay men and men’s younger selves. Typically, an authentically presented midlife self involved ‘dressing for comfort’ (jeans, t-shirts and muted colours) and ‘no fuss’ grooming. Here ageing capital functions to re-aestheticise and legitimate the midlife or ageing body-self, which could also be accomplished in ways that mark its desirability and creativity. Such thinking suggests something valuable about the ageing process and that middle-aged gay men might be freer from the discursive pressures of gay/consumer cultures whilst contradicting stereotypes of them as obsessed with preserving youth and sexual marketability. In more constraining register, differentiation through age-appropriate sexual subjectivity could result in limitations on self-expression/relating as well as a reverse ageism that constructs younger gay men as insubstantial.

The thought and practice just intimated also indicate that ‘habitus’, deeply ingrained, embodied forms of knowledge acquired pre-reflectively through the longue duree of enculturation (Bourdieu, 1984), is constituted by ageing as well as class. As will be seen later, ageing capital can enmesh with differential combinations of economic (financial resources), social (networks) and cultural (knowledge of the workings of cultures and society) capitals that enable/constrain expression of midlife identity and relating in the (sub-)field(s) of the village with their distinct norms and ‘rules of the game’. Enmeshments of the various forms of capital and the (in)congruence between habitus and field were visible in accounts of the fit or disjuncture between self-presentation and the places men frequent.

The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a steady growth of empirical work, mainly American/Anglophone, of gay ageing/later life. This adaptive, policy oriented work was concerned with socio-economic (Boxer, 1997) and socio-psychological dimensions of exclusion facing gay and lesbian people beyond statutory retirement age and measures to secure continuing links with gay life (Quam and Whitford, 1992). Much early work was also concerned with ageing well in a culture thought to place excessive value on youth and where ageing is considered ‘accelerated’ (Bennett and Thompson, 1991: 66–67). Whilst some considered that being adjudged middle-aged or old before one’s time (compared with heterosexual peers) results in social isolation, others countered that the emotional and epistemic resources gained when ‘coming out’ would equip men with a ‘mastery over stigma’ of ageing (Brown et al., 1997). Berger (1982) portrays middle-aged gay men not as lonely old queens but as well-connected and defiant, having developed the emotional and cognitive resources to carry on cruising for sexual and social opportunities. My thinking runs contrary to this polarity of exclusion–mastery over stigma, which, again, obscures ambivalent experiences of ageing that involve negotiation with discourses of ageing/ageism. Again, this binary occludes the multidirectional power geometry, as described later, that structures gay male culture where midlife gay men express ageism especially towards younger men but also towards peer-aged gay men thought desperately clinging onto their youth. Differentiation from the two former is taken up later in this article because they were more frequently and sharply expressed. With regard to the latter, interviewees tended to differentiate themselves from old (gay) men in ways that invoked gerontophobia – they were associated with morbidity, mortality and presumed desexualised, no longer needing to bother with appearance. This intimates one expression of a ‘failure’ of ageing capital thus questioning informants’ stock notion of ageing/maturity as a linear path towards greater acceptance of others (and self). It also reinforces the marginalisation/invisibilisation of older gay people.

Moreover, scholarship since about 2000 continues to emphasize ‘accelerated ageing’ as the major division/form of exclusion within gay male culture (Cohler, 2004; Cruz, 2003; Hostetler, 2004). The loss of physical/sexual capital is thought to have serious consequences for a more connected experience of later life (Hostetler, 2004). But, isolation is not the only or main option available. Rosenfeld’s Californian study (2003) and Robinson’s Australian one (2008) usefully explore the social processes which result in more pluralised experiences of ageing. In both texts, ageing is mediated by subjects’ reactions to generationally differentiated accounts and practices around ‘coming out’ (or not). In the first case, experiences of ageing were dependent on how subjects reacted to gay liberation discourses emerging in the 1960s to enact either a ‘discreditable’ and stigmatised or an ‘accrediting’, consciously politicised identity (Rosenfeld, 2003: 10–12). In the second case, the ageing identities of middle-aged men who were pioneers in building a visible gay culture are contrasted with those available to older men forced to endure less tolerant times and with those available to younger men in more tolerant times. Both texts, however, reinstate a binary of positive or negative adaptation to age-related norms. In the same period, some British-based studies shifted the focus away from personal management of ageing identity onto the intersections between ageing, (homo-)sexuality and the influences of gender, class and race. In addition to illuminating the internally differentiated character of ageing identity, intersectional approaches can highlight multiform inequalities in relation to identity expression and cultural participation (Cronin and King, 2010: 880–886). Similarly, Heaphy points up the need to address ageing in the broader context of how these processes interact with asymmetries of gender, class and race. His mixed methods study involving gay people over 50 (2007, 2009) highlights the ‘uneven opportunities’ of older people to rework relationships within gay culture given interrelated inequalities in economic, social and cultural ‘resources’. The two latter resources refer to the networks that provide cultural support in the shape of communities of understanding (Plummer 1995: 134) that are able to develop political counter-narratives. I seek to develop this more nuanced project by specifying the various means through which middle-aged gay men mobilise (or not) these resources and with what effects.

Methods

Accounts of men’s relational practices were generated by means of in-depth interviews with 27 men aged 39–61 and 20 participant observation sessions in a selection of bars, clubs and streets making up the village. The interview sampling strategy was designed to accommodate key dimensions of variation and avoid a homogeneous sample of ‘conscience constituents’ – white, middle-class men. Project publicity was disseminated among personal networks, gay social/support groups and various bars. The sample consisted of 13 men (48%) aged 39–48 and 14 men (52%) aged 50–61. There were 17 respondents (63%) who described themselves as single while the remainder were partnered; 24 of the respondents (89%) described themselves as ‘white British’, with others self-defining as ‘mixed race’, ‘oriental’ and ‘Irish and European’. Following Bourdieu (1984): economic class was defined in terms of socio-economic criteria – mainly income-related data divided along the lines of employment or unemployment and level of skill required for present/principal occupation; and ‘cultural capital’ was defined as the embodied knowledge required to access certain forms of taste and fulfil certain occupations and cultural pursuits. Economically, the sample was evenly spread between middle- and working-class men but, culturally was more middle class (n = 22) given that most informants described accessing an ‘omnivorous’ range of tastes and activities. Nine of these 22 men, however, reported originating from working-class backgrounds.

Whilst interviews risk taking behaviour out of the everyday context in which it is produced (Lawler, 2002), they can be ‘recontextualised’ (Thomson and Holland, 2005: 212–216). To this end, photo-elicitation was used to encourage 10 informants who supplied photographs of themselves in their 20s and 30s to relocate their experiences of identity and relational change with age in personal, historical and social context. The 17 interviewees unwilling or unable to supply photographs were presented with images of gay men of different ages in various gay contexts taken from OutNorthwest magazine supplied by regional voluntary organisation, the Lesbian and Gay Foundation. In terms of the research results, photo-elicitation opened up consideration and eventuated in analysis of the heterogeneous character of stories of ageing selves through contrast/comparison with others, younger selves, events and relationships past and present (Kuhn, 2002: 13–14). Typically, photo-elicitation encouraged informants reflexively to acknowledge the distanced travelled. For instance, Rob (50) spoke of a sexual self that had been suppressed until his early 30s because of a strict religious upbringing. His account involved detailed description of the difficult journey towards ‘coming out’ and developing in midlife the emotional and political resources – forms of ageing capital – to allow himself to engage in anonymous, ‘recreational’ sex free from feelings of guilt. Photographs/images elicited stories that opened up contrasts with, ambivalence towards and points of identification with forms of self-display/relating associated with younger, peer-aged and older gay men. These stories often invoked how appearance or aesthetics are imbricated in ethics and encouraged theorisation of an authentic (‘age-appropriate’) midlife socio-sexual subjectivity. They also reinforced my incipient thinking that ageing capital might involve capitulation to, negotiation with and more questioning, resistant stances towards gay ageism.

If interviews elicited detailed, spoken narratives (Patton, 2002: 341) hard to tell/hear in bars, observations were used to generate accounts of embodied display and interaction in situ. Observation helped illuminate more agentic forms of bodily performance and, in particular, those which contest views of Manchester’s gay village as unrelentingly commodified space hidebound by a capitalist ideology that glorifies youth and excludes age (Whittle, 1994). The role adopted was covert – overtness in the village being largely unfeasible. The amount of sensory events occurring in the village as multiform cultural space (Brewer, 2000: 4) required an observation schedule with some minimal structure. The tripartite schedule developed consisted of space to record interactions flanked with one column for recording my feelings in relation to people/events and another column to note possible concepts/theories to explain interaction. In line with the research questions, the foci in observation were: dress and grooming; peer aged interaction; intergenerational interaction; interaction as lone presences, in pairs and smaller groups. Rough jottings and personal mnemonics were elaborated into detailed descriptions of occurrences away from the field. Participant observation was used to identify the salience of events and distinctiveness of cultural practices (Brewer, 2000: 41) such as forms of appearance identified by interviewees as an (in)authentic form of gay midlife self-presentation and modes of approach and interaction. Observation strategy also recognised temporal and spatial contingencies. To reflect the dynamic, differentiated character of interaction in the village, observations were conducted at varying times of the day or night and week. Of the 12 venues observed: five were selected because they were associated with midlife/older gay men; and another six because they attract a mixed-age clientele. The sole venue associated with younger gay men was a nightclub with a 1980s ‘retro night’.

Alienation

Divisions in the village could be expressed in men’s age-inflected mode of dress (habitus) and its fit with a particular kind of bar (sub-field). Dressing for comfort along with no-fuss grooming could be contrasted with the overtly sexualised, ‘designer label’ forms of self-presentation associated with younger gay men and were implicated in constructions of the latter as ‘superficial’ and insufficiently developed to withstand the fickle demands of the fashion industry/gay culture. Greater criticism was reserved for peer-aged/older gay men considered desperately hanging onto their youth who had failed or refused to develop the age-inflected resources required to face the challenges and opportunities associated with ageing. Further, self-presentation and men’s preference for certain bars influenced how they were read as different types of character with generational, moral and class overtones. Generally, taste for the decor of a venue and self-presentation harking back to formative experiences on the gay scene in the 1980s and 1990s are suggestive of a historically informed, age-inflected cultural politics of place and taste. Typically, bars associated with middle-aged gay men were represented as more down-to-earth, less pretentious and contrasted with the fashionable, youth-oriented bars frequented by ‘disco bunnies’, ‘trendy Wendys’ where men from working-class backgrounds could feel out of place. Informants tended to feel more at home in older men’s bars that were decorated to appeal as masculine-coded, sexually charged spaces with black interiors and minimal lighting. Such spaces were contrasted with the more youth-oriented bars with interiors of glass, light wood and chrome. The differences of decor and personal style associated with older men’s venues suggests an age- and class-inflected symbolism involving preferences for particular types of bodily display, erotics and forms of interaction. These more judgemental instances just described indicate limits to ageing capital, ageing as greater acceptance of self/other and in particular the power of gay ageism to constrain men’s abilities to mobilise such resources.

The age-related politics of place and self-presentation just outlined indicate that the village can be experienced as a site of ageist scrutiny, erasure as a socio-sexual subject and intergenerational conflict (Cruz, 2003). Those falling short of the requisite homonormative, age-related ‘look’ and resources required to achieve this, risked exclusion even among similar aged peers. This could occur in ways that point up the interactions between influences of age, class and race, suggesting that the village is spatialised along these intersecting lines. Defining himself as ‘mixed race’, Alec (46) spoke of how his age, lack of financial resources and ethnicity contributed to a tenuous, highly contingent toleration in youthful, ‘white European space’ where the semiotics of skinhead dress, (popular in middle-aged gay men’s venues), could for him signal belief in white supremacism. Again, this indicates structural and discursive limits on capacities to deploy compensatory, self-validating ageing capital.

Given the accounts described here, it is not surprising that informants expressed a sense of alienation where they might be physically ‘on’ the scene but not feel part ‘of’ it. Middle-aged habitus could be experienced as out of sync with a place where: ‘It’s all completely worked out bodies and youth … And who wants wisdom when you can get a nice firm pair of buttocks?’ (Sam 45). Occularcentric focus on the surface self was thought to violate middle-aged gay men’s normative sense of ‘authenticity’ (where the exterior should reflect the more ‘real’ interior self of personality and values). Midlife gay men’s subjectivity is reduced to fragmented body parts – ‘nice firm buttocks’ which are privileged over the whole person, including ‘wisdom’. In referring to the labour that goes into producing appearance – ‘worked out bodies’ – Sam registers the socially constructed character of age and youth itself but, his statement indicates a moral and epistemic differentiation from younger gay men who are thought to over-rely on the visual, which constrains them into seeing subjectivity only in objectified ways. This form of differentiation was narrated independently of differences of age, class and race and involves the use of age-related knowledge in an attempt to reclaim self-worth in a hierarchy that denies midlife gay men’s bodily value but simultaneously relies on stereotypes that express ageism towards younger gay men. But, scrutiny of the midlife/ageing body in the village was by no means confined to younger men. Ageism could be expressed both towards and by similar aged men. Sam spoke angrily of friends’ micro-surveillance of his body that involved intrusive questions about botox and whether he wore mascara. This is redolent of the policing of gender performance and signs of over-vigorous efforts and dishonesty in maintaining youthful appearance. The palpable anger with which Sam intoned his statement – using ‘rape’ as metaphor to describe the effects of his friends’ intrusions – indicated that this kind of ageist scrutiny could be experienced as even greater violation because perpetrated by peer-aged associates who are likely to have experienced ageism.

Contrariwise, subjects might experience erasure rather than scrutiny even in spaces associated with middle-aged men. During one observation session, a man of about 50 sat alone near the back wall of a venue, wearing very little save a leather jockstrap and boots. He sat legs akimbo and looked around the bar at men freely but attracted little if any attention. The subject’s state of (un)dress and demeanour indicated alertness for sexual opportunity with the kind of sex/sex partner he desires. Although nobody appeared to deride his appearance/sexual strategy, the civil inattention he experienced suggests the routine exclusion of those middle-aged men marked as less desirable in a sexual economy of surface appearance. Similarly, when midlife gay men ventured into ‘younger men’s’ spaces, they could find them spatialised along the lines of age. In a nightclub associated with younger men, the dance floor and podia were occupied by men in their 20s and 30s, stripped to the waist with muscled torsos. By contrast, the few middle-aged men who had ventured into the club were largely solitary, fully clothed and tended to occupy peripheral spaces protected from the glare of the club’s lighting. I observed one club-goer very carefully picking his way along the edge of the dance floor towards the toilet as if battling against a storm. The dry ice, dizzying lighting, fast, thumping music and the energy of dancing bodies might have amounted to sensory overload. The experience of the man just described suggests a habitus out of sync with the fast-paced, multisensory ambience of this youth-coded space.

Moreover, even on the club’s retro ‘1980s night’ and when in peer-aged company, middle-aged men tended to remain internally focused within their group:

A group of men in their forties dressed in ‘Fred Perry’ t-shirts and combat trousers. ‘Thriller’ was played and one of the ‘forty-somethings’ performed an eye-catching facsimile of the jerky dancing by the zombies in the 1980s Michael Jackson pop video. At one point, the comedian turned round to see one of his companions and screeched as if he had been confronted by the very ghost of the just-departed singer himself. This spontaneous act caused howls of laughter. The younger men standing nearby barely registered the antics of the group, focusing instead in the dance floor. The group of middle-aged men paid little attention outside of itself for much of the night. (Field notes Disco Inferno, early hours of Tuesday morning)

Judging by their interactions, and unlike the experience of men as solitary presences in this youthful space, there appeared fewer limits on how these age-appropriately well-presented, socially confident men expressed ageing capital, visible in humour and camaraderie in response to the generationally coded cultural experience of Thriller. But, the mutual inattention between the group and young men close-by suggests the operation of norms in relation to age that sanction civil indifference between men of different ages where nobody is derided but men are still divided. If younger men are habitually indifferent to middle-aged gay men, interview informants often imagined younger gay men as motivated by material gain or else trivialised them as ‘empty vessels’ (Chris 48) on account of putatively underdeveloped social skills and character. Such accounts, again, indicate that ageing capital is central to the construction/reinforcement of a gay ageism that can operate bi-directionally. Middle-aged gay men’s ways of differentiating themselves are complicit in this. The foregoing accounts, again, indicate breakdown of ageing capital and/or the discursive, contextual limits of gay ageism that prevent deployment of ageing capital and reinforce social distance between generations. It is, however, worth noting that the two non-white men in the sample (African-European and South East Asian) were more open to the idea of intimacy with older men and, because of their health complications, prioritised a mobile, autonomous self over concerns with bodily aesthetics. Six interviewees who came out in their 30s may also have developed their own distinct form of ‘ageing capital’ that enabled them to speak of feeling less affected by gay ageism and homonormative pressures to produce a more youthful appearance. These men were largely culturally middle class, long-term partnered and less frequent users of the village who had spent their early adulthood developing friendships independently of the (commercial) gay scene. The foregoing instances suggest respectively the differential effects of interacting influences of differences of race and health status and of age (‘at coming out’), class and relationship practices.

Ambivalences

Much behaviour in the village, recounted and observed, was mundane and not necessarily sexualised. These forms of social interaction can be linked with more ambivalent, contradictory experiences of the gay village that suggest the imbrication of pleasure and danger and tenuous acceptance of midlife/older men. Like a Faustian pact, the sensory delights of people-watching came at a cost. Much of any disappointment was articulated mainly by middle-class men with cultural capital resulting from higher education, experience of humanistic therapies or involvement in institutional forms of sexual politics. It focused on how norms operating in the village district restrict talk/interaction associated with a more ‘cultivated’ habitus. This classed ageing capital was narrated as discrepant even in the sub-fields of older men’s spaces. Informants reported pressure emanating from a field they considered as reflecting gay youth’s hegemonic taste for, if not obsession with, appearance and celebrity. When in the village, 13 informants expressed feeling obliged to suppress more serious, defining, intellectual qualities indicative of an ‘authentic’ middle-aged self. It is unfair to take this critique at face value because, by implication, it constructs young gay men as detached from serious concerns, apolitical and incapable of authenticity. Rather, the suppression of talk/interaction regarded as ‘heavy’, political, spiritual, ‘arty’ or intensely personal says more about the village as discursive space where certain forms of entitlement/habitus associated with middle-class forms of cultural capital valued elsewhere have limited currency.

Another example of an ambivalent response to age-related norms occurred during an observation session (mid-week, mid-evening) in a bar associated with middle-aged gay men. One South East Asian man was seen displaying well-defined biceps and torso, discernible through his well-chosen attire – tight-fitting, rugby style, t-shirt that accentuated his physique and suggested self-care and self-investment. For the duration of his stay (about half an hour), he sat alone with his back to the wall behind a group of men. Variously, he occupied himself with leafing through a magazine, leaflets and switched between a mobile phone and pocket diary. He snatched occasional glances at the group and around the bar and made frequent adjustments to the nap of his t-shirt. Later during this episode, he was almost holding himself; his right hand holding his left shoulder with one leg crossed over his knee and his left hand on left ankle and foot twitching. This subject’s surface appearance as a gym-toned, midlife body-self suggests requisite knowledge of the scene and self-presentation consistent with midlife gay habitus. He seemed to be inviting the socio-sexual gaze and making a claim to sexual subjectivity yet this was contradicted by the protective body language redolent of a ‘defended self’ (Hollway and Jefferson, 2000). This suggests the power of an age, looks, racially and sexually preoccupied ‘gay gaze’ in ‘white space’ to bring about discomforting self-regulation. There are then ways in which some midlife gay men might experience the commercial scene potentially as a site of visual pleasure but just as much as a potential locus of hostility that compromises the expression of more ‘authentic’ aspects of a gay midlife habitus, including a socio-sexual self.

The village scene as ambivalent space was particularly evident in mixed-age spaces that suggested certain choreographies of approach and touch between gay men of different ages. In most cases, this suggested less an empowering self-differentiation than differentiation by younger others whose embodiment is considered more in sync with the normativity of the village. One particular instance stood out involving a man in his mid-40s and two men in their early 20s. Although the younger men were dancing with the older man, touch was mostly one way: from older to younger. It was hesitant, occurring only on more neutral zones of the body (upper arm and shoulder). Indeed, the older man acted as if the younger men’s bodies had some kind of protective seal that should not be breached. Midlife gay men might have opportunities to socialise with younger gay men but there appear to be conditions placed upon this. Tacit rules, based on the assumption of the one-way attraction of age to youth, appear to set constraints on what forms of tactility are tolerated. Such age-inflected norms maintain a boundary between permissible shared social experience and the forbidden sexual. Again, they suggest the situated discursive limits imposed by gay ageism on expression of ageing capital.

Agency

In contrast to stories of capitulation and compromise, study participants articulated accounts suggesting the uses of ageing capital to challenge gay ageism. These accounts indicated forms of differentiation that do not rely on self-aggrandisement, care for rather than derogation of others and claims to ongoing socio-sexual subjectivity. Men who were culturally working class were no less capable of critique in relation to ageism and homophobia (see Tony’s account later), which suggests that ageing capital can ‘compensate for’ lack of formal education/credentialised cultural capital. Contrary to Binnie and Skeggs’s findings (2004), study participants’ spoken and embodied stories illuminated that the village is not necessarily alienated, commodified space. The age-friendlier spaces of the village at certain times can be loci of sensual pleasures whose norms enable mobilisation of ageing capital to blur age/ageing, challenge ageism and encourage individuals to forget age divisions. The gay gaze could operate in benign ways and the delights of people-watching were not necessarily linked to sexual interest or ageist scrutiny. Indicating change in modus operandi that is attributable to ageing capital, several more middle-class interviewees spoke of the pleasures in midlife of being the detached, amateur observer, which involved appreciation of mundane social choreography as much as of mesmerising dance moves and attractive men. Such performances indicate not oppression or alienation but ageing capital/habitus equipped to negotiate the varying norms operating in the village.

The gains of ageing capital as expressed through an unapologetic midlife self could help midlife gay men resist pressures to justify their ageing presence and proclaim authenticity. Vince (49) declared ‘I no longer have anything to prove’, socially or sexually, which could signify relative freedom from inhibitions concerning creative use of the body (when dancing) that informants reported experiencing when younger. Informants spoke of how ageing capital could be used to deploy/interpret the gaze in ways that transcended ageist scrutiny. Concerns about the fragmentation of bodies notwithstanding, Sam (45) was proud of his ‘nice bottom’ and wore shorts in summer to accentuate it if ‘going out to pull.’ Martin (52) spoke of the intrigue and pleasures involved in playful ‘cat and mouse’ cruising in clubland. These statements represent claims to continuing sexual subjectivity and challenge to the hegemonic idea of the gay scene as thoroughly ageist and dominated by the embodiment of youth (Whittle, 1994). They indicate that the doing of midlife gay male identity and ways of relating involve creative agency. Some accounts indicated resistance to ageism in the contestation of younger men’s power to define who counts as a legitimate presence in ‘youthful’ space:

And I’ve had younger men tell me on the dance floor … ‘What the hell are you doing here …? This place isn’t for old men.’ You have to remember that most of these young people … don’t expect to find … their parents or even grandparents at the same disco, do they? (Laughs). I think it alters their behaviour … ’cause they can’t get off their tits if they think their parents are watching them … A few years ago, I was in Disco Inferno and someone said to me, ‘I never expected to see my father in here …’ I felt like sayin’, ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ But, I controlled it and said something more positive … It got a message across … Anyone can go to fuckin’ Inferno and get off their tits … Nobody should be complaining … What makes them think it’s their domain …? Bullshit! We can all go to Inferno and get off our tits on the same dance floor. (Tony 59)

Tony’s defiant presence and his words and actions demonstrate how midlife gay men can use ageing capital to differentiate themselves with more positive effects. His challenge to younger men’s attempts to police a space they feel to be their own is significant for several reasons. First, it indicates awareness of an ageism that renders cross-generational sociation practically taboo – given the reference to parental relations whilst troubling the (reified) youth–age dichotomy. Tony’s very presence contests the notion that middle-aged gay men intrinsically represent an inhibiting influence upon their younger counterparts. Second, and although he did not specify the actual wording of his reply to his interlocutor, Tony’s reaction suggests how ageing capital can work to enable acceptance of embodied differences of age and to place responsibility on younger gay men to address their ageism whilst enabling both parties to retain their dignity. Further, ageing capital is evident in Tony’s political and moral plea for a more inclusive ‘gay scene’ where age difference is recognised as rather banal.

Further, claims to differentiation, including the viability of the midlife gay male body-self were also discernible in forms of display and interaction where subjects were recipients and providers of sexualised play, pleasure and mutual care and attention. In one observed instance, two men in their 40s appeared to be engaging in a kind of facial choreography that combined belonging with lust – as if anticipating the sex they would later have. Later in the evening, the slightly younger of the two, a little worse for drink, began to look lost, fretful and used his mobile phone as a tracking device to locate his companion in a bar that had suddenly become crowded. Within a few minutes the older man returned and seeing the anxiety on his friend’s face quipped, ‘God, you are pissed, aren’t you?’ which was delivered less as an admonition than recognition of his friend’s vulnerable state. The scenario just described combines friendship, erotic interest and deeper intimacy. These small but important acts contest the widespread view of the village as a site of calculating sexual opportunity and no place to find friendship, love and affection. They suggest the working of ageing capital as emotional resources and forms of support that enable middle-aged men to feel included in Manchester’s gay male culture and maintain a sense of self-worth.

The kinds of mutual value identified here are not exclusive to peer-aged men. Although much less commonplace, playful practices between men of different ages were visible in some mixed-age spaces associated with a working-class clientele:

Man about late fifties/early sixties bald, wiry with another man about early/mid twenties cardigan skinny jeans, little black pumps etc. They leapt onto the dance floor at the sound of, ‘Are You Strong Enough?’ Their Cher impersonations involved energetic, theatrical waving of arms and appropriate gurning as they mouthed the lyrics to each other. During Pink’s, ‘Cause I’m a Fighter’ their theatrics attracted an audience as they punched their fists in the air and towards each other mock aggressively. They began spontaneously to mirror each other’s movements, gestures and shook their ample showgirl breasts at each other. The floor cleared to allow the two men space to manoeuvre. At one point they were dancing side-by-side, moving backwards and forwards in-step, waving an index finger held out in front of them. The song’s histrionic refrain was, ‘One Night Only!’ The audience was transfixed; enthusiastic applause followed. (Field notes, Changes Bar, mixed-age space, Friday late night)

For the older party, ageing capital is expressed through the chutzpah of his situated bodily performance that disrupts normal expectations of a more restrained, ‘age-appropriate’ midlife behavioural self. This not only blurs the line between youth and age but also counter-discursively makes a claim to ongoing value of an ageing-body self. Although the protagonists could have differed in age by as much as 40 years, their mesmerising, dance moves and lip-synching that referenced gay disco ‘camp classics’ and musicals constitute a (temporary, situated) claim to similarity. The men’s shared interest suggests unity through embodied knowledge/storytelling (cultural capital available to younger and older), which could help overcome age barriers and ageism. The antics of the two men indicate a shared form of habitus/cultural capital that involves ability to code-switch between and parody behaviours understood as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, whilst pointing up the socially constructed character of gender, sexuality and age itself.

Conclusion

This article has addressed middle-aged gay men’s responses to age-related norms afoot in Manchester’s gay village. It has drawn on a Bourdieusian methodology that concerns the workings of habitus, inflected by ageing capital and interacting with influences of class, (as well as age, race and relationship status) and how these can operate for different men in different spaces (sub-fields) at different times. Such a framework has facilitated exploration of middle-aged gay men’s different experiences of the village scene and has enabled understanding of how relations in the village are contingent upon the ongoing dialectic between forces of constraint and the opportunities for choice that men create. En route I have confirmed, complicated and contested key ideas in extant work on gay ageing. Whilst gay ageism is divisive, exclusionary and oppressive, in opposition to accounts such as those of Cruz (2003), I have drawn attention to how men can use age-inflected resources to resist/transcend situated gay ageism – a story that gets occluded by the dominant narrative of loss, isolation and misery. But, I have complicated and added to extant scholarship by highlighting men’s ambivalent responses to gay ageing/ageism and their multidirectional characters. This kind of account was sharply expressed by men with more middle-class forms of cultural capital who declared themselves immune from influences of gay/consumer culture thought to dupe their younger counterparts (and some peer-aged men) into conformity. Further, I have specified how ageing capital is central to the production of an authentic (age-appropriate) socio-sexual subjectivity (a form of age-inflected habitus), which can work in restrictive, ambiguous and affirmative ways in relation to self-expression and relating as a midlife gay man. Such factors are absent from current work. Implicitly, I have also contested portrayals of (Manchester’s) gay commercialised and sexualised spaces as overwhelmingly commodified (Binnie and Skeggs, 2004) and irredeemably age-divided (Whittle, 1994).

Middle-aged gay men’s responses to age-related norms in the village are divisible into three forms that involve: capitulation to; negotiation with and contestation of gay ageism. First, there is a version of ‘the scene’ as age divided; a site of exclusion, erasure or a space in which midlife gay men’s embodied selves are reduced to the signs of bodily ageing. This could be felt regardless of differences between men. Here gay ageism restricts expression of ageing capital in the form of an ‘authentic’ midlife self, who men interact with and how they do so. Being overlooked or subjected to the ageist gaze generally encourages men to feel negatively differentiated and only a tenuous belonging in the village (field). Further, some claims to differentiation that attempt to recuperate value in a culture where the midlife/older body is denied legitimacy can result in expression of reverse ageism thus compounding gay ageism and generational divisions. Second, there was a more ambivalent account of the mixed dangers and pleasures of the village. These expressions of the self are tentatively optimistic but risk-aware. The ‘gay gaze’ can register as contradictory: desired as a sign of continuing socio-sexual viability; yet simultaneously felt as ageist constraint that compromises men’s sense of authenticity as older (and raced selves). The first two responses signal a breakdown in ageing capital and question the notion of ageing as a linear path to greater acceptance of self and other. Finally, there is an account of the more convivial dimensions of the gay village, which figures as sensorium where the gaze can be actively invited/deployed in ways that deprive it of its power to judge, wound or constrain. This kind of account indicates that ageing capital compensates for lack of middle-class cultural capital and can be used to transcend restrictions on display/interaction and challenge gay ageism, though working-class gay men might be more adept at expressing critique and cross-generational conviviality through (habitual) bodily performance. Such forms of self-expression and relating signify as self-reclamation (that do not rely on derogation of others) and claims to belonging through playful activities that can make the village more habitable.