Sex in space
AN ENLIGHTENED CONVERSATION WITH DR JANE FLEISHMAN
Understanding that older adults can and do enjoy sex, and why we need to get on board with that!
Our team talked to Dr Jane Fleishman (Dr Jane), an award-winning educator and researcher from the U.S. who focuses on sexuality in senior living communities. Dr Jane teaches older adults, and the professionals that work with them. She’s also written a great book – called The Stonewall Generation: LGBTQ Elders on Sex, Activism, and Aging.
Dr Jane’s mission is to promote sexual wellbeing among older adults, particularly those from marginalised populations – like the LGBTQI+ community – who have struggled with many other issues throughout their lives, as well as now dealing with ageism.
Through her work, Dr Jane says that she wants to people understand that sexuality is part of of ‘wellness’. Saying that if we can see it’s just a part of being healthy, we can get rid of some of the taboos that exist around sex, particularly when it comes to older people. As part of her work, she also teaches professional carers in long-term residential care communities.
“Old people love to have fun, right?” says Dr Jane. “That’s why old people like to have sex.”
In the conversation they discuss the importance of having sex for fun and pleasure when you are older and the need for wider conversations around how the sexual expression of older people can be better understood. And how – in the case of residential care – we need to quite literally create space for it to take place. Giving attention to the need for having the privacy to be intimate – alone or with others. She says some of the other issues for consideration are in training, privacy, risk, liability, and how much family members need to know, or even be involved at all.
As Dr Jane pointed out in her awesome TEDx Talk ‘Is It Okay For Grandma To Have Sex?’, avoiding these sorts of conversations denies elders this vital element of their dignity and pleasure – right at a time when they need every possible reason to live.
“So many old people have struggles with mental illness and mental health, especially since COVID,” she says. “We were trying to keep older adults safe, but they weren’t really healthy being socially isolated.”
Dr Jane says that it’s crucial to upend the myth of older people being asexual, uninterested in sex, or lacking desire.
Part of her work now is in advocating for policy development around sexual consent in aged care communities. It is breaking new ground. She is helping to create an assessment tool around the ability to give consent, which involves looking into verbal and non-verbal cues (for example, if the person no longer has the ability to form sentences).
She says she wants society to move on from being alarmed when two elders have sex in an aged care setting and is looking forward to opening up more conversations around this as policy is developed.
The wide-ranging discussion also covers solo sex (masturbation) for older adults, particularly after the loss of a partner; changing our sexual scripts as we age; the health benefits of sexual expression; and the importance of good lighting when planning sex when you are older (tip: keep them low!)
Dr Jane says talking about sex as something that can happen and be enjoyed right throughout our lives is incredibly important.
“I do find that people get excited when I talk about that because it gives them hope – it’s another sense of ‘Okay, my time is not all the way over, I can still have this incredible pleasure’.”
Way to go Dr Jane!
Find out more about Dr Jane Fleishman here.
Watch and listen to our conversation with Dr Jane below.
