Irecently conducted a study involving 27 interviews with and 20 observations of middle-aged gay men (aged late 30s to pre-retirement) living in Manchester. The city has some developed lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual cultures and the study was designed to access and analyse men’s responses to ageing and ageism. One respondent told me:
Tony’s anxiety over age and possible loss of status on Manchester’s ‘gay scene’ can be linked to larger social, cultural and political questions, such as: why do younger and older gay men seem so divided? As a gay man, this question motivated my study of a relatively neglected sociological issue. So, how might researchers go about researching this social group?
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