Tough or tender sex? Italian GPs and older men’s discourses on sexual ageing

The commercial launch of Viagra and other sexuopharmaceuticals, together with the spreading rhetoric of active/healthy ageing, are two components of the contemporary cultural scenario, impacting upon the way people, men in particular, perceive and experience age-related sexual changes. In this article I focus on an ongoing Italian multi-method qualitative research project on sexual ageing in the Viagra era: I first summarize Italian GPs’ approaches to their male patients’ sexual ageing, pointing to their tendency to combine the natural and the normal by re-interpreting older men’s sexual health in terms of a gendered age-appropriate respectable sexuality. I then focus on older men’s narratives of sexual ageing, analysing how they define and cope with age-related changes in their sexual lifestyle. As a result, older men position themselves differently within the available sexual scripts, by neutralizing the traditional representation of sexual retirement; aligning with respectable and mature masculinities; and questioning a naturalized view of the male sex machine through a more progressive notion of a redefined intimacy.