On the need for more research on ageing sexuality in the history of medicine

Specific cultural expectations about the normalcy of elderly sexual desire can have a great impact on how individuals experience themselves as sexual subjects in old age. It also clearly impacts how clinicians treat older adults, as the work of several sociologists demonstrates, with many doctors avoiding discussion of sexually-transmitted disease risk with older patients, erroneously believing it to be irrelevant to them. Some studies have suggested that sexually-transmitted diseases may be increasing among older adults. It therefore seems beneficial to generate greater cultural awareness of the capacity of older adults to be sexually active, and to de-stigmatise this so that it is not a source of shame or denial. On the other hand, several researchers have suggested that the increasing celebration of older adults’ sexual needs may itself be a product of commercial interest, benefiting companies marketing products for older people. While researchers have typically thought of this in relation to health-targeted products such as supplements and fitness programs, it is clear also that sexuality is one such ‘need’ that may be emphasised to older adults in the effort to generate feelings of lack that may drive them toward the purchase of sexual devices, services or purported pharmaceutical aids. Importantly, the very notion of age-related sexual decline appears to have emerged in twentieth-century science along with the emergence of hormonal and other pharmacological agents aimed at stimulating libido. In this context, a rigorous historical study revealing how our current concepts of sexual aging came about would be a helpful stimulus for older adults themselves, as well as clinicians, researchers, aged-care workers and the general reading public to toward a stronger sense of older adults’ potential needs but also of the pressures acting upon these.