“I felt utterly useless. I was his caregiver and suddenly it wasn’t needed anymore” Aging queer men, loss and biographical disruption
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| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Requested lectures |
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| Description | How do queer people experience ageing? Do they think about the time when they might need care, perhaps in institutional settings? How do they navigate loss, grief, and mourning? Do they feel supported, or do they worry that their grief might go unacknowledged? These are some of the central questions driving a key part of my dissertation research, which sits at the intersection of the sociology of death, dying, and bereavement, and queer and death studies. Beyond my dissertation, I am a part of a broader research project, Institutions of Ageing Men, which analyzes ageing as a gendered, embodied, and relational practice, through the lens of intersecting power and care dynamics. Within this project, my most recent work focuses on queer men who have acted as informal primary caregivers - either to partners or family members - and who have subsequently experienced the death of the person they cared for. I draw on Michael Bury’s concept of biographical disruption and Ken Doka’s theory of disenfranchised grief to interpret these experiences. Many participants described feeling invisible or stigmatized in their caregiving roles and after their losses. For them, caregiving and bereavement brought not only emotional upheaval but also profound shifts in self-identity, highlighting the need to queer our understandings of both ageing and grief. |