Customer Reviews

Gay Men at Midlife: Age Before Beauty (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The diverse experiences of the fifteen men who share their stories in this book provide an intriguing and helpful look at what it means to be gay and in midlife. There are only a few books on this subject (Kooden's Golden Men and Isensee's Are You Ready), each of which provides its own unique contribution to this area. I would highly recommend this book as well as the other two.

While examining a very important topic - gay men in their middle years - I found the book very problematic. For one, the men are all middle-class professionals, and with the exception of a couple tokenistic men of color, are all glaringly white. Furthermore, with the exception of one hiv narrative, there are no other essays written by disabled men. Moreover, all the essays were boringly apolitical. Where are the voices of gay middle-aged men in the radical left, say, perhaps some veterans from ACT UP or Queer Nation? It's this lack of discussion of race, class, disability and politics that makes this book so shallow. On the cover is a picture of a white, middle-class professional in a shirt and tie representing aparrently all middle-aged gay men. What's wrong with this picture?