David Woodhead reflects on being gay and getting older.
TW: sexual abuse
There’s a natural pause in the discussion, so I tell my therapy group that the date I went on at the weekend with the man I’d met online had been fun but that we won’t meet again. I describe the warmth between us and his physical attractiveness, but my overriding take-away is that I was left cold by his desire to have a small number of intimate partners in parallel, who in turn would have lovers, frequent flyers, and friends with benefits elsewhere. My response was immediate and unequivocal.
After decades of activism, multiple sexual partners, and a long-held belief that gay sociability is well served by sex, I want to simplify my life. And I am interested in the possibility of a long-term, monogamous relationship. I elaborate the reasons: my mental health, my general sense of security, and a desire for fewer complications in my life. As the words tumble out, I feel a momentary shock and a sudden sense of self-betrayal.
A gay man in the group, with whom I have a strong connection despite the 20-year age gap, leans forward and, referring to non-monogamy, speaks without hesitation: “You should go for it. It could be freeing.”
I push back a little too hard, startled by my defensiveness. Some group members are not convinced. One accuses me, perhaps legitimately, of retreating to sexual conservatism. They challenge me on the grounds that in dismissing polyamory, I am rejecting the possibility of living differently. I struggle to make them understand that what I am resisting is the assumption that my queerness requires more of me than I am able or willing to give. That my refusal is not necessarily repression or collusion. That to be anything other than in a state of permanent personal revolution is not outside the realms of queerness.
But despite my protestations, I am still left with a chilling question. Am I queer enough to call myself queer?
I respond with the kind of mild anger that brings momentary clarity but little opportunity to think. I reiterate that, for me, there is something grounding in choosing one person. That uncertainty in sexual relationships is not something I crave. I value one rhythm and one thread. I speak of how I am still picking up the pieces from a life almost undone by sex, drug, and alcohol addiction. I speak of my fears for life shortened by undiagnosed HIV and the traumas of living through the ’80s and ’90s as a young gay man in the eye of the AIDS storm. I recall episodes of sexual assault and the brutal memories I buried for years; their sudden resurfacing threatened to overwhelm me. I reiterate that I have found comfort in the hard labour of group analytic psychotherapy and the challenges it brings. And I also acknowledge, after gentle encouragement, that this is the same therapy that I have vehemently and periodically criticised as heteronormative, homophobic, morally restrictive and – crucially – at odds with my queer self.
The contradictions are strong and abundant.
Making sense of the contradictions
The moment I’ve just described sits at the intersection of queer mental health and ageing. It speaks to the emotional labour of surviving systems that have not always recognised us. It reflects the complexity of therapeutic care for older queer people, whose histories include trauma, loss, and the slow work of rebuilding. In my research, I have seen how ageing queer lives are shaped by both resistance and repair. Sexual conservatism, in this context, is not a retreat. It is a form of discernment. It is a way of protecting relational depth, of resisting the demand to be legible, visible, and celebratory on imposed terms.
Non-monogamy and polyamory are not uncommon for gay men. And they are starting to talk about these aspects of their lives more openly. I, like many others, have friends and family happily living in open relationships or throuples, sharing their lives in unusual, yet intimate and fulfilling constellations. These relationships can be seen as embodied acts of anti-heteronormativity, creating space for sex, intimacy and love outside of patriarchal norms. They also express tropes of queer theory that I have followed, celebrated, and sought to enact over several decades.
And now, given where I am, I am left with an alternative thought. Sexual conservatism might offer a form of refusal, not prudishness, but a quiet resistance to systems that commodify desire and demand legibility (Foucault, 1978). My hesitation to listen to fellow analysands may signal a wish to remain ungraspable, to protect intimacy from being flattened into lifestyle. Such conservatism could be a tactical silence, a way of surviving erotic economies that sort and label. It may resemble a minoritarian line of flight which, as Deluze and Guattari (1989) suggest, disrupts dominant systems, enabling creative escape, transformation, and resistance through marginal, non-normative modes of becoming. This could be something akin to act of resistance, not be a retreat into heteronormative purity, but a refusal to be swept along by dominant scripts of queer visibility. The stance echoes the feminist killjoy (Ahmed, 2017), disrupting celebratory narratives of liberation, refusing smoothness, and unsettling the idea that more sex or openness equals more freedom. In this instance, sexual conservatism becomes a way of saying: my liberation does not look like yours.
Let me be honest: I am not entirely convinced by this position. But I am intrigued.
I wish to make it plain that I am not rubbishing polyamory, queer theory, or queer ethics. They fizz with possibility and are replete with transgressive opportunities. They were central to my activism and survival in the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 90s. I am simply trying to establish a framework through which I might recognise alternative possibilities for queer resistance, bringing together lived experience and research practice. Sexual conservatism might be, for queer people at least, in some circumstances, radical. But sitting in that place is seldom easy. It is shot through with bear traps and trip hazards. Navigating the terrain from such a standpoint can be painful and isolating.
Implications for my practice as a researcher
I am keen to critically understand how my own experiences influence theory building and research practice. These experiences are prompting new lines of inquiry. It may be possible to hold a position that is both radical and conservative, shaped by a journey fraught with complexity and driven by visibility and pride. Such a position can evoke simultaneous connection and disconnection. As I grow older and my relationship to mortality and purpose evolves, queer acts of refusal bring discomfort, shaped by strands of self-knowledge. My choices may still carry a radical-erotic charge, even as they invest in what appears most heteronormative.
Am I queer enough, and young enough, to be queer?
The line of inquiry opens questions about personal ethics and identities enmeshed with writing about my lived experience. The issue is not my sexual choices or my ageing bones. (I mean, frankly, who cares?). The point is how do we navigate the gap between how we live and how we theorise, how we enact our identities and the sensibilities we bring to research? To be a queer researcher is a political act that connects deeply with who we are. It is not merely another set of theories to try on in the season in which they are most feted.
As a queer researcher, my identity and my research practice are enmeshed. I hold theory and testimony in the same breath. I critique the structures that shape me. At yet at times, I might find comfort in their rituals. I speak out against norms that harm me. Yet sometimes I lean on their scaffolding to survive. My academic postulations might not always match my lived experiences. And it is wrong to expect them to do so. But the divergences can be anxiety-provoking.
In the spaces between different facets of our lives, queer researchers might carry tensions that do not easily resolve. Speaking from uncertainty can be difficult, yet necessary. We need room for ourselves and for others, spaces for queer lives and research practices that resist simplification. The uncomfortable gaps between lived experience and the theories we favour need not be seen as failures. They can be acts of disruption, capable of interrupting and challenging, helping to refine and reshape those theories, and perhaps even exposing their limits (Halberstam, 2011).
I am left with a big question: How might we harness our collective empathy to create spaces where we can safely explore personal challenges and the oftentimes uneasy symbiosis of research, theory, and queer life?
Partial conclusions
To theorise from the site of one’s own becoming is to risk exposure, contradiction, and partiality. Feminist scholars have long modelled this kind of epistemic vulnerability: Adrienne Rich’s politics of location (1986), bell hooks’ insistence on speaking from the margins (1989), Sara Ahmed’s orientation toward the killjoy (2017). Their work reminds us that engagement is not resolution, but movement, an ongoing reckoning with the friction between theory and experience.
Queer theory, too, in its many forms, invites us into that friction. It asks us to dwell in the gap between legibility and refusal, between archive and body. To ask, “Am I queer enough?” is not a failure of identity. Perhaps it is a gesture toward non-normativity, disidentification, and the refusal of closure. Engaging with it fully could help keep my work open and honest.
My final thoughts are these. Perhaps the bridge between ideas and lived experience is not a crossing but a site of dwelling, a place where theory and self can meet without needing to reconcile. Could we imagine being ‘enough’ not as a measure, but as a method, of staying with difficulty, of sitting in the pain, of writing from, and into, the wound (Gay, 2021), and finally, of making space for others i to do the same?
About the author
David Woodhead PhD is Associate Director of Research, Centre for Mental Health (www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk) and Visting Researcher and Honorary Fellow, Institute of Medical Humanities, Durham University.
References
Ahmed, S., 2017. Living a Feminist Life. Durham: Duke University Press.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Foucault, M., 1978. The History of Sexuality: Volume 1 – The Will to Knowledge. Translated from French by R. Hurley. London: Penguin Books.
Gay, R., 2021. Writing into the Wound: Understanding Trauma, Truth, and Language. New York: TED Books.
Halberstam, J., 2011. The Queer Act of Failure. Durham: Duke University Press
hooks, b., 1989. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston: South End Press.
Rich, A., 1986. ‘The Politics of Location’, in Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979–1985. London: Virago, pp. 210–231.
