Cartographies of Homosexual Aging: A Study of "Successful Age Markers" in the Gerontological Literature

From 1969 emerged the first theoretical essays on homosexuality and old age. In the first wave of "LGBT gerontology" (1969-1975), scientific discourses tended to approach a pathological perspective, associating cognitive deficits, depression and isolation, as well as stigmas and discriminations in the erotic market related to the decrease of virility and loss of youth; in the second wave, from 1975, researchers from different places sought to break with the paradoxes between youth/old age and safeguarding a "successful" notion of aging. The markers of "successful" aging, thus, crystallized in the expressions of family support, heterosexual marriage, monogamy, reproduction, financial independence, autonomy etc. This research aims to describe analytically and historically the "successful" aging markers from LGBT gerontology, resulting from the literature in Brazil, United States and England, from 1969 to 2017. As specific objectives: (a) to map and analyze these markers constrastively, (b) situate academic production geographically, tracing the places from which the literature emerges, and thus the markers, and (c) articulate the reflection on the scientific production to the problem of the proliferation of segmented models in commercial media, liberation movements and homosexual visibility, as well as the achievements of rights and social recognition in the last decades. In methodological terms, this is a qualitative research, which is based on a systematic review of literature. Finally, we will offer a partial balance on the markers of "successful" aging, the changes and the continuities during the last forty-eight years, articulating a critical reflection on the triad "success"-homossexuality-old age.