1st Edition

Growing Older Perspectives on LGBT Aging

Edited By James T. Sears Copyright 2010
    252 Pages
    by Routledge

    220 Pages
    by Routledge

    LGBT older adults experience issues and challenges that are unique, including institutional heteronormativity, heterosexism in organizations, and homophobia among caregivers and social service providers. This book presents a diverse group of scholars, activists, social service providers, and researchers from around the globe examining current research, practices, and policies on aging among LGBT individuals. This revealing source lays out the significant challenges faced not only by this aging sexual minority population, but also for their social service providers—and those who train them.

    The chapters explore the Greater London area Polari Project, the adjustments made in the long-running HIV support group at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, and the Liberation Psychology workshops in Ireland for lesbian and transgendered persons. This volume can serve as an excellent teacher resource for engaging undergraduate and graduate students in various professions who will be working with older LGBT adults. This text is extensively referenced and includes tables to clearly present research.

    This book is a valuable source for program administrators and supervisors, human behavior researchers, psychologists and psychotherapists, social planners and policy specialists, community developers and organizers, case managers, direct service practitioners involved with LGBT communities, educators, and students.

    This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services.

    1. Introduction: Queering Later Life  James T. Sears  2. Older Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Adults: Tools for Age-Competent and Gay Affirmative Practice  Catherine Crisp, Sherrill Wayland and Theresa Gordon  3. Psychotherapy with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Older Adults  Steven David and Paul A. Cernin  4. Conducting Research Among Older Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Adults  Arnold H. Grossman  5. Conceptualizations of Family by Older Gay Men  Anna Muraco, Allen J. LeBlanc and Stephen T. Russell  6. Social Support as a Predictor of Psychological and Physical Well-Being and Lifestyle in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Adults Aged 50 and Over  Blase E. Masini and Hope A. Barrett  7. Aging with HIV: Historical and Intra-Community Differences in Experience of Aging with HIV  Wallace A. Robinson, Mary S. Petty, Cindy Patton and Helen Kang  8. Building Strength Through Challenging Homophobia: Liberation Workshops with Younger and Midlife Irish Lesbians  Geraldine Moane  9. Neither Silent nor Invisible: A Comparison of Two Participative Projects Involving Older Lesbians and Gay Men in the United Kingdom  Richard Ward, Lindsay River and Lee-Ann Fenge  10. Imagined Futures and Communities: Older Lesbian and Gay People’s Narratives on Health and Aged Care  Mark Hughes  11. Ageing Lesbians: Marginalising Discourses and Social Exclusion in the Aged Care Industry  Joy Phillips and Genée Marks

    Biography

    James T. Sears is Professor of Education at Penn State University and specializes in sexuality issues in curriculum studies and U.S. history. He edits the Journal of LGBT Youth and has been a Research Fellow at the Center for Feminist Studies at the University of Southern California, a Fulbright Senior Research Southeast Asia Scholar, a Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, and a consultant for the J. Paul Getty Center for Education and the Arts. His biography is included in the Dictionary of International Biography, Who’s Who in American Education, Contemporary Authors, and Who's Who in America.