Discourses of Bisexuality Among Older Women

Background and Purpose: Older bisexual women have distinctive identity-, social-, and health-related experiences as they age compared to lesbians, gay men, and heterosexual counterparts. Quantitative analyses have revealed significant disparities in physical and mental health and unique experiences over the life course among older bisexual women compared to other populations. However, in-depth qualitative analyses are needed to provide added nuance and complexity to our interpretations of those findings as well as a better understanding of how women negotiate and make meaning our of their bisexual identities. This study is framed by discursive concepts, drawing specifically on later work of Foucault, a critical feminist lens, and the life course perspective to offer an analysis of how older bisexual women construct and make meaning out of their bisexual identities within their specific historical and discursive context.

Methods: Study participants (N=12) were recruited to complete in-person interviews, between fall 2017 and spring 2018, including creation of a timeline of their lives and reflective questions focused on their bisexual identity. Participants ages ranged from 60-77 (Mean=65). Participants were born in a variety of U.S. regions and were raised in families with varying class backgrounds. Nine identified as White or Caucasian, two as Black or African American, and one as Asian American. A six-step Foucauldian Discourse Analysis was applied to analyze the specific linguistic tools and broader discourses that participants drew on when constructing their bisexual identities.

Results: Two divergent groups of women, the Early Emergers and Mature Migrators, were revealed based on the timing of their emergent attractions to other women and the ways in which they constructed bisexuality. Early Emergers constructed their bisexuality as innate and biological, drawing on a common coming out narrative in which attractions to women were delayed or denied due to the social context of their religious upbringing and heteronormative cultural influences. In contrast, Mature Migrators challenged a denial or typical coming out discourse by constructing their later life attractions to women as new, emergent changes to their sexuality rather than depicting sexuality as stable over the life course. While participants described feelings of ambivalence toward bisexuality as a label, they also constructed bisexuality as creating freedom and possibility in the full context of their lives.

Conclusions and Implications: Divergent life sequences and constructions of bisexuality indicate the need for more nuance and diversity in our understanding of how bisexual attractions, identities, and behaviors are understood in later life. Older bisexual women are in need of bisexual-specific spaces to process and validate their sexual identities and experiences. Practitioners who seek to better support this population would benefit from bisexual-specific cultural competency training and should allow clients space to tell their full life stories in order to acknowledge and validate the unique life patterns and needs of older bisexual women. Future research would benefit from more nuanced ways of operationalizing sexual identities and life patterns as well as from additional qualitative research to assist in interpretations of quantitative findings.