There are some brilliant case studies available about older LGBT people, where someone’s individual story powerfully makes the case for why sexuality and gender identity continue to matter in later life, for example here. But until now, there’s been a bit of a shortage of case studies about bisexual older people (and there is still a shortage for trans older people). There are one or two but usually only focusing on the person’s same-sex relationships, not on what it means to have had relationships with more than one gender.
So about three years ago we – Rebecca Jones, Kathryn Almack and Rachael Scicluna – decided to do something about this. We set out to interview people aged over 50 who either identified as bisexual, or had bisexual pasts but didn’t now describe themselves as bisexual. We only had little bits of money to enable various parts of the study, so it took us two years to gather 12 interviews but we’re really pleased to now be able to present the case studies within a short report.
This research shares the limitations of much other research on LGBT issues, in that we mainly managed to recruit participants from within organised LGBT communities, and via personal networks. This means that our sample is disproportionately white, middle class and highly educated relative to the general population. We recognize that this is a significant limitation of this work, but nevertheless hope that these case studies will be useful to practitioners seeking to meet the needs of this sorely under-researched population
The report and the case studies are copyright, but with a creative commons BY license which means that anyone can reuse and rework them, as long as you acknowledge the original source. We would love to hear any feedback.
You can download the Looking Both Ways Report online version here.
