Living in Marooned Island: Growing Old as Gay Men

Abstract

Growing old is related with all human beings, but for those whose sexualities do not follow the social normative structure of family, growing old is more related to loneliness. This article will refer to such people with a different sexual orientation, in this case, mainly gay men. It will deal with the qualitative queer methodologies used for this particular topic. Queer gerontology has hardly been dealt with anywhere in research in this country; talking about old gay men seems to many that it does not need any methodology to deal with. But when academics try to investigate, interpret and interject many subjects and various areas, it is seen that the ‘queering communications’, ‘queer conversations’ and ’queer(y)ing ethics’ in qualitative methodology are always considered as similar as any social sciences qualitative methodology, or specifically gender qualitative methodology. This article will try to critically analyse how normative gerontology is very different from queer gerontology. This article includes a sample of 50 gay men in five different categories based on age: 30–35, 35–40, 40–45, 45–50 and 50–55 years. The sample includes gay men from different social and cultural backgrounds, various professional fields and several regions and languages, focusing mainly on people, power and place. Beside these, it will also have two broad categories: one who stays single and one who stays with a partner. Being a gay man brings lots of packages along with life—discrimination, violence, rights and privileges as a citizen of India are some of them that this article will also deal with. This article will try to bring the queer methodological structure into focus with the area of growing old gay men in a society where the socio-legal conditions consider them as criminals. The socio-psychological aloofness begins at an early age, and as one grows older, it corrugates the lives of such gay men as lonely, abhorrent human beings in society.