Ageism and sexuality

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Date
2018
Authors
Gewirtz-Meydan, Ateret
Hafford-Letchfield, Trish
Benyamini, Yael
Phelan, Amanda
Jackson, Jeanne
Ayalon, Liat
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Volume Title
Publisher
Springer International Publishing AG.
Published Version
10.1007/978-3-319-73820-8_10
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Abstract
Sexuality remains important throughout a person’s life, but sexual behavior does not receive the same levels of acceptance at all ages. Older people are challenged by ageist attitudes and perceptions that hinder their sexual expression. They are stereotyped as non-sexual beings who should not, cannot, and do not want to have sexual relationships. Expressing sexuality or engaging in sexual activity in later life is considered by many in society as immoral or perverted. False expectations for older people also stem from ideals of beauty, centralization of the biomedical perspective on sexuality of older adults, and the association of sex with reproduction. Unfortunately, older people internalize many ageist attitudes towards sexuality in later life and become less interested in sex and less sexually active. The following chapter explores attitudes towards sexuality in later life among the media, young people, older people themselves, and care providers. In order to enable older people to express their sexuality and sexual identity freely and fully, awareness of ageist perceptions must be raised and defeated.
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Keywords
Sexuality , Older people , Attitudes , Sexual expression
Citation
Gewirtz-Meydan, A., Hafford-Letchfield, T., Benyamini, Y., Phelan, A., Jackson, J. and Ayalon, L. (2018) 'Ageism and Sexuality', in Ayalon, L. & Tesch-Römer, C. (eds.) Contemporary Perspectives on Ageism. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 149-162. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-73820-8_10
Link to publisher’s version
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-73820-8_10
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/10468/6918
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Occupational Science & Occupational Therapy - Journal articles
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© 2018, the Author(s). This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this chapter or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.