Introduction

The experiences and realities of older lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) adults remain largely unrecognized and unexamined in both theoretical and empirical bodies of social science literature (Brotman et al. 2015; Brown 2009; Eliason et al. 2010; Kimmel 2015; King 2014; Knauer 2011; Rose and Hospital 2015). However, several factors justify the need for attempts to conceptualize and more systematically study aging phenomena in sexual minorities and transgender populations. First, given the continued salience of medicalized aging (Fishman et al. 2008; Lupton 2003), as well as the growing visibility of non-heterosexual and non-cisgender identities among the elderly (Cahill 2007), it is possible to suggest that medical surveillance plays an increasingly influential role in limiting expressions of non-normative sexuality and gender identity in old age. Second, perhaps more importantly, in light of the recognized need for both the fields of queer theory and gerontology to address problems located at an ever more multifaceted intersection of identities and experiences, the development of theory that situates same-sex sexuality and gender non-conformity within the context of the life course may not only be pertinent, but also necessary (Brotman et al. 2015; Brown 2009; Kimmel 2015; Knauer 2011). This paper constitutes an attempt to conceptualize aging phenomena within communities self-identifying as “LGBTQ,” hereon referred to interchangeably as “queer/trans” for the purpose of convenience. In recognizing the stigma-laden history of the word “queer” in communities of older LGBTQ adults, I explicitly delineate use of this label throughout the paper as an umbrella term that may account for variability and fluidity in self-identification with LGBTQ categories among older sexual and gender minority adults (Brotman et al. 2015).

Foucault’s (2008) notion of governmentality, I will argue, can be used to conceptualize LGBTQ aging as a realm in which its subjects are rendered “hypervisible” to neoliberal systems of surveillance and control, which in turn serve to limit the expression of non-normative sexuality and gender identity in old age. The question of “how” such hypervisibility operates to regulate LGBTQ identities in later stages of the life course reflects the focal problem I wish to address in this paper. Although I will acknowledge that past attempts to theoretically situate the experiences of LGBTQ elders have primarily addressed the hegemonic silencing of older sexual minorities and transgender populations (Brown 2009), I will propose that such processes of erasure reflect mere features of a broader system of panopticism and regulation that constrains non-heterosexuality and gender variance in old age.

The paper is divided into three main sections. First, I discuss the contributions Brown (2009), as well as others (Eliason et al. 2010; King 2014; Knauer 2011), have made in theorizing queer/trans aging as a context characterized by rhetorical or hegemonic silence. Here, I argue that despite the strengths of this lens in addressing the hegemonic invisibility of LGBTQ elders within the social sciences, a more comprehensive framework is needed to explain mechanisms of surveillance and control to which LGBTQ adults are subject in later stages of the life course. Second, I offer a comprehensive overview of Foucault’s (2008) notion of governmentality, which I suggest provides insight into systems of surveillance and control within neoliberal regimes of power that operate on marginalized subjects such as LGBTQ elders. Third, I discuss literature on governmentality within both aging and queer theory, as well as the limited body of research on LGBTQ aging, to substantiate “hypervisibility” as a mechanism that subjects LGBTQ adults to systems of neoliberal surveillance and control. In so doing, I illustrate that whereas indeed sexuality and the life course are often omitted from the disciplines of gerontology and queer theory, respectively, as has already been argued (Brown 2009; Knauer 2011), empirical accounts of LGBTQ aging suggest that such silencing may be reflective of a broader regime of governance that functions to deploy hypervisibilized queerness and gender variance to monitor and limit expressions of non-normative sexuality and gender identity in old age. I conclude the paper with thoughts on possible implications and limitations of this model for theorizing LGBTQ aging.

Rhetorical Silence: LGBTQ Aging and Academic Hegemony

Although, as already noted, attempts to theorize the field of LGBTQ aging have been limited, a growing body of relevant conceptual literature has emerged in recent years. Of importance, given the relative dearth of both empirical and theoretical inquiry in the area of queer/trans aging, many have drawn on this expression of omission itself as a conceptual basis for understanding the systemic invisibility of older LGBTQ adults across a range of dominant social and political contexts (Brotman et al. 2015; Brown 2009; Eliason et al. 2010; Knauer 2011; King 2014; Rose and Hospital 2015). For instance, in Knauer’s (2011) comprehensive account of salient social and legal issues among older LGBTQ adults, this writer problematizes the paucity of an empirically informed knowledge base in the field of queer/trans aging, and frames this reality as a reflection of marginality among older sexual and gender minority adults. Similarly, although King (2014) does implicitly suggest that the emergence of a dynamic body of LGBTQ aging literature may have recently started addressing the systemic invisibility of queerness and gender variance in old age, he clarifies that much of the existing theoretical and empirical work in this area continues to be grounded and framed within the historical context of institutionalized silence underpinning the lives of queer older adults.

Despite the emergence of conceptual work in the field of LGBTQ aging, a significant proportion of which highlights aspects of hegemonic silence in this area, some shortcomings in this body of inquiry are notable. Perhaps most importantly, given the nascence of research on the experiences of older LGBTQ adults, much of this existing conceptual literature is understandably more concerned with using the limited empirical base on LGBTQ aging to generate concrete responses to policy and practice issues relevant to this population, rather than having the generation of theory as its primary focus. A review of some of the works discussed (King 2014; Knauer 2011) reveals this limitation in the existing literature. For instance, although Knauer (2011) does point to the absence of available data on LGBTQ aging to indicate the conceptual salience of invisibility and silence in the lives of queer/trans older adults, both she and others (Abatiell and Adams 2011) indicate that the desired end of this work is the generation of instrumental knowledge that may inform practice with older LGBTQ adults, and not the construction of theory per se. Similarly, although King (2014) is concerned with problematizing recently intelligible queer identities that may have been silenced among older adults in the near past, this writer primarily engages in this analysis to address immediate needs of aging LGB adults within the context of organizational research and policy. While the predominantly instrumental nature of this literature may be viewed neither as a strength nor a limitation, a dearth in exclusively conceptual work may hinder the identification and analysis of potentially unique and underexamined social processes that may be at play in the lives of older LGBTQ adults (Brown 2009). Such conceptual oversight, in turn, may inadvertently result in the generation of research and policy that reinforces problematic assumptions underpinning the invisibility of LGBTQ aging across an array of social and political contexts (Brown 2009). For instance, as King (2014) himself has noted, one risk of practicing research and policy within the field of queer aging, without first interrogating theoretical assumptions underpinning this work, includes the perpetuation and reinforcement of discourses that marginalize and silence the voices of queer older adults to begin with (including, in some contexts, the use of “LGB” classification systems to identify sexual minorities as excluded “others”).

Brown’s (2009) work represents perhaps one of the few predominantly conceptual pieces of work in the field of LGBTQ aging. Although her analysis is, similar to other scholars in this area, based primarily in a consideration of hegemonic (or “rhetorical”) silence, her position is more firmly grounded both in examining the paucity of theoretical work in the field of LGBTQ aging, as well as considering the potential conceptual implications of this invisibility, in developing a conceptual framework for situating the realities of queer/trans aging. The scholar astutely notes the relative absence of inquiry on sexual orientation and gender identity in the discipline of gerontology, and conversely, studies of the life course in the field of queer theory, and argues that these omissions may form a basis from which to theorize aging in LGBTQ communities. In particular, she argues that such analytical neglect reflects expressions of heterosexism and ageism that permeate gerontology and queer theory, respectively, and in turn insists that these hegemonic bodies of knowledge serve to subjugate the voices of non-heterosexual and transgender elders both within the realm of academic inquiry and across broader social contexts.

Brown’s (2009) conceptual framework, which is based primarily on a phenomenon of invisibility she describes as rhetorical silence, is compelling for a number of reasons. First, it is strongly grounded in a review of literature on aging and queer studies. Her lens, for instance, takes into account the work of gerontological theorists such as Fry (2002) who appear to overlook assumptions of reproductive experience and heterosexuality often embedded in conventional models of the life course, despite an evident willingness among such writers to consider the role of cultural, temporal, and structural factors that differentiate aging across categories of identity. Brown’s (2009) analysis also enables a critical appraisal of the work of prominent queer theorists such as Halberstam (2005), whose constructions of queer temporality are premised on notions of reduced longevity within the context of HIV/AIDS, and are therefore limited in considering the material and social dimensions of aging salient among LGBTQ elders living beyond young adulthood with HIV and other conditions.

More important than its foundation in literature associated with gerontology and queer theory, however, the implications of Brown’s (2009) work on theorizing LGBTQ aging more broadly are notable. The writer uses her framework to argue that disciplinary invisibilities function to subjugate the voices of aging sexual minorities and transgender adults beyond the realm of academic inquiry (e.g., within broader social contexts such as community, health and social service settings), primarily because systemic exclusions from dominant bodies of knowledge limit the availability of symbolic power needed by LGBTQ elders to resist the realities of marginality. This observation merits serious consideration, since knowledge that is legitimated by disciplinary entities—often considered academic—can indeed operate as dominant discourse across various levels of interaction located more ubiquitously beyond institutional settings (Foucault 2000), and invisibility of certain subjects within such systems of knowledge can therefore reflect the broader hegemonic marginalization of these subjects. In other words, by drawing attention to fields of legitimated knowledge from which the realities of LGBTQ aging are systemically excluded altogether, Brown’s (2009) framework offers insight into dominant bodies of discourse that reflect the socially pervasive marginality of LGBTQ elders beyond the domains of particular academic disciplines, including for instance within settings such as the broader social environment, as well as mainstream health care or social service systems.

Despite Brown’s (2009) seminal contribution in developing a framework for theorizing the later stages of the life course in sexual minorities and transgender communities, an important limitation is nonetheless apparent in a conceptualization of LGBTQ aging that is premised almost exclusively on the notion of rhetorical silence. Namely, this lens is largely unable to account for the realities of surveillance and control to which same-sex sexuality and gender variance are subject in old age, which are themes that appear to co-exist alongside issues of invisibility in empirical studies of aging among non-heterosexuals and transgender adults. For instance, although two syntheses (Addis et al. 2009; Fredriksen-Goldsen and Muraco 2010) of existing research in this area do outline apparent manifestations of hegemonic silencing in the social context of LGBTQ elders, including the systemic absence of appropriate sexual health services addressing the needs of this population, they also draw attention to a number of factors that perhaps conversely reflect a “hypervisibility” of non-normative sexuality and gender identity in old age that is often identified, isolated, and marginalized. In particular, these reviews emphasize the pervasive exposure of LGBTQ elders to intersecting ageist and homophobic/transphobic discrimination, arguably processes that necessitate a “visibility” of non-normative sexuality and gender variance in old age, as possible grounds for explaining isolation, health care inaccessibility, and sexually repressive residential care conditions in this group (Addis et al. 2009; Fredriksen-Goldsen and Muraco 2010). It is plausible to suggest, in light of these empirical examples, that although hegemonic silencing is a factor that likely influences the realities of older queer/trans adults, a framework based primarily on this phenomenon cannot account for institutional processes reflecting the visibilized identification of “deviant” sexuality and gender variance as targets of marginality that intersect with the social conditions of old age.

Foucault’s notion of governmentality may provide insight on LGBTQ aging as a site in which aging non-heterosexuality and gender identity are rendered “hypervisible” to discursive systems of surveillance and control, which in turn function to limit expressions of LGBTQ reality in late adulthood. Whereas I argue that rhetorical silence may, perhaps paradoxically, constitute one strategy of limitation within this process, consideration of hypervisibility may more comprehensively address the dynamics that form the basis of queer/trans marginality in old age. In the section that follows, I outline the notion of governmentality as a framework that is likely to inform this approach to conceptualizing LGBTQ issues in the context of the life course.

Governmentality within Neoliberal Regimes of Power

Foucault’s work has commonly been cited in theoretical and empirical literature across both LGBTQ studies (Brown and Knopp 2014; Hughes 2008) and within the field of aging (Bjornsdottir 2002; Pickard 2014; Pickard 2010). In both queer and gerontological literature, Foucauldian frameworks have often been used to draw attention to the salience of discourse as a source of power with potential to be both emancipatory and marginalizing (Brown and Knopp 2014; Pickard 2014). Given, specifically, the utility of Foucauldian frameworks in identifying and conceptualizing the role of discursive power in producing particular subject positions that are often subjugated by silence (Pickard 2014), it is not surprising that some have drawn on this lens to understand the hegemonic invisibility that is said to underpin the realities of queer/trans older adults (Brown 2009; Eliason et al. 2010). Indeed, Brown (2009), whose work has thus far been discussed at length in this paper, has used Foucault to conceptualize the relative invisibility of theory and empirical literature in the area of LGBTQ aging as a reflection of the marginalized subject positions that older sexual and gender minority adults are said to occupy.

Governmentality, as an analytical framework associated with the Foucauldian tradition (Foucault 2008; Gane 2012; Rose and Miller 2010; Walters 2012), has been used to generate theory on the surveillance and control of subjects and groups that are likely to be targets of subjugation based on their violation of normative standards associated with old age (Pickard 2014), as well as sexuality and gender identity (Brown and Knopp 2014; Sanger 2008). For instance, Pickard (2014) has used the notion of governmentality to conceptualize the disciplining of older adults whose inability to perform independence and autonomy renders them susceptible to medicalized surveillance and control. Similarly, Brown and Knopp (2014) rely on a framework informed by governmentality to analyze the historical intelligibility of “gay identity,” not only as an historical source of emancipatory organization and collective action among queer men, but also as a commonly used vehicle for monitoring and controlling gay men’s sexual practices by public health authorities. Accordingly, use of governmentality, as a conceptual lens, may serve to expand Foucauldian analyses such as Brown’s (2009) to include consideration of how older LGBTQ adults, aside from being subjects of hegemonic silence, may also be exposed to systems of discursive surveillance and control. In this section of the paper, I attempt to define governmentality more substantively before actually applying this framework to an analysis of LGBTQ aging.

Definitions of governmentality vary significantly within Foucauldian literature (Gane 2012; Rose and Miller 2010). Walters (2012) traces the origins of governmentality to the work of Foucault in the mid to late 1970s, which includes a series of lectures he delivered at the Collège de France during this era (Foucault 2008), and believes contemporary interpretations of this construct broadly fall into three categories. First, governmentality is used to refer to the array of techniques and rationalities that are used to shape the behavior or demeanor of others, or the comportment of oneself, across a range of contexts within and beyond the realm of state institutions. This more all-encompassing understanding of governmentality, often referred to as “the conduct of conducts,” (Walters 2012, p.11) is often what is used to describe multilevel and omnipresent exercises of power that aim to govern subjects within any individual or group setting. The second interpretation of governmentality, according to Walters (2012), often implies the genealogic study of the modern state, or the examination of the techniques and rationalities that specifically amalgamated during periods of industrialization to construct present day state power. Finally, the third use of governmentality pertains more specifically to disciplines, technologies of power, and systems of domination or resistance that align more closely with liberal traditions of governance, often said to have first emerged in the late eighteenth century (Walters 2012).

Informed by Walters’ (2012) classification of governmentalities, I use this Foucauldian construct in its broadest sense (“the conduct of conducts”), but situate it within a neoliberal regime of marketized governance. Specifically, although I refer to expressions of governmentality as processes that permeate social interactions at levels both smaller and greater than the scope of state or market-affiliated institutions, I place my analysis within a contemporary context in which the logic of the market increasingly determines the bases of normative comportment to be internalized by the state and by subjects of neoliberalism. Such an interpretation of governmentality has recently been substantiated by contemporary Foucauldian theorists such as Gane (2012). His position, which acknowledges the continued prevalence of panopticism, or mass surveillance, despite the diminishing influence of the welfare state, not only identifies the market as a system that produces the conditions for subjects and populations to self-govern, but also recognizes its role in fostering and supporting new governing techniques of surveillance and control within a changing political economy. Gane (2012) argues against models that overemphasize the prominence of self-governance as a replacement for panopticism in neoliberal regimes, and instead explains that the superficially diminishing panoptic functions of the state are instead increasingly to be found within the realm of the market.

It is important to note, despite the centrality of the market in Gane’s (2012) conceptualization of neoliberal governmentality, that the state and its institutions do play a notable role in this framework. In particular, under neoliberal regimes, state institutions strive to adhere to market principles of efficiency and fiscal accountability in justifying public services and programs on the basis of cost effectiveness. This system of normative state behavior, which is described as reflective of an “audit culture” (Gane 2012, p.360), in turn results in the creation of public institutions that channel mechanisms of marketized governmentality on subjects located within the context of various state practices. Gane (2012) exemplifies the concrete manifestation of these processes by examining the effects of marketized governmentality on public post-secondary institutions. He notes that neoliberal regimes of governance in these institutions often privilege educational and research programs, held by academic subjects such as students and researchers, that can be assessed on the basis of “accountability” in tangible deliverables and observable measures of “quality.” In other words, although the market largely determines the normative bases of state and subject behavior, within the context of surveillance and control activities that together comprise a neoliberal governmentality, the state at times functions as a conduit for channeling marketized governance.

Despite relatively limited attempts to conceptualize medicine and medical care as state entities that are likely shaped by the realities of neoliberal governmentality, some case study literature suggests how market principles increasingly operate both on public medical institutions and on subjects located within them. Purkis (2001), for instance, demonstrates the tendency for home nursing care services, and in turn its clients, to be increasingly shaped by the realities of market constraints. By situating an empirical exploration of a health unit’s nursing practices within a framework of neoliberal governmentality, she has drawn attention to increasing limitations in the range of available nursing services and narrower criteria used to assess the eligibility of clients for such services, as reflective of marketized measures of surveillance and control that have come to shape publicly subsidized health care and the realities of its subjects. Although, again, the marketized governmentality of state-administered medical and health practices, as well as subjects located within these contexts, remains to be comprehensively theorized, such empirical analyses do provide a compelling basis to suggest the operation of market principles on states and subjects in more current fields of governance.

In substantiating contemporary governmentality within its neoliberal context, I do not mean to overemphasize the role of state or regulatory market institutions (such as international trade organizations) in deploying surveillance and control techniques that form the foundation of normative comportment. Indeed, such an overvaluation of the state or market in constructing techniques of governmentality has been cautioned against not only by Foucault (2007) himself, but also by more contemporary Foucauldian scholars (Rose and Miller 2010; Walters 2012), as the governance of subjects can occur by means of any social practice that seeks to shape conduct (Rose and Miller 2010). Instead of resorting to a highly state- or market-centric analysis of governmentality, I wish to provide the political and economic contexts within which LGBTQ elders are governed, the essence of which I will more substantively outline in the next section of this paper. The recognition of such a changing political economy, as I will explain in the coming segment, will provide a compelling basis from which to conceptualize LGBTQ aging as a “hypervisibilized” site of surveillance and control in neoliberal regimes of power.

Prior to considering contemporary governmentality in conceptualizing the subjugation of LGBTQ elders, however, it is important to explore more comprehensively how techniques of governance may operate outside institutional contexts, particularly if I am recognizing that such processes are located both within and beyond the realm of state and state-like entities in the paradigm of neoliberalism. Rose’s (1996) observations on neoliberal spatialities of governance that exist beyond institutional contexts may be particularly relevant in acknowledging more ubiquitous sources of surveillance and control. This contemporary Foucauldian scholar notes that, along with the growing salience of the market and the diminishing role of the welfare state in administering and regulating “social” aspects of existence such as health, communities of identity or affiliation increasingly constitute fields in which technologies of governance operate on subjects both within and beyond institutional contexts. In particular, he notes that groups differentiated on the basis of “risk” often form communities of marginality, which in turn incorporate technologies of governance based largely on normative standards of conduct intended to regulate such risk. Although Rose (1996) does not, in this paper, specify LGBTQ groups or older adults as specific communities of marginality, these categories of identity can be conceived as such given systemic constructions of pathologization, on the basis of sexual/gender deviance and frailty respectively to which they have historically been subject (Addis et al. 2009; Pickard 2014). Acknowledgment of LGBTQ groups and older adults as communities of marginality will serve as a necessary theoretical basis from which to locate processes of neoliberal governmentality both within and beyond institutional contexts.

In this section, after first discussing the relevance of using Foucault in an analysis of LGBTQ aging, I outlined interpretations of governmentality that have been used historically to conceptualize a diverse range of social phenomena. Within this discussion, I explicitly stated my intent to draw on a framework of governmentality that identifies the “conduct of conducts” pervasively within an array of contexts that range from micro- to macro-levels of social interaction. I also located these processes within a neoliberal context in which the market largely constructs normative bases of comportment that operate both on state institutions and on subjects, and importantly, are at times channeled through state entities to shape the practices of subjects. Based on my acknowledgment that governmentality can operate beyond the realm of state and state-like entities, I finally discussed communities of marginality, including LGBTQ groups delineated on the basis of “risk,” as targets of surveillance and control existing beyond the confines of formal institutions.

One last theoretical issue to address, prior to beginning an analysis of LGBTQ aging using this lens of governmentality, includes the range of strategies that are often deployed to actually shape the conduct of subjects. Foucault (2000) specifies that “disciplines,” including bodies of discourse and formalized knowledge, as well as “technologies of power,” are often the primary processes that are at play in constructing subjects amenable to both domination and resistance. Although the notion of disciplines is conventionally understood as the multitude of discourses that may be legitimized and formalized through institutional processes, the term “technologies of power” does merit some clarification. Foucault (2000) identifies technologies of power as bodies of belief or apprehension that define relations of power, systems of communication that serve to reinforce or counter such relations, as well as the range of goals or objective capacities to which power relations and systems of communication are based on or aiming toward. In this paper, I argue that both realms of discourse and technologies of power may be at play in subjugating LGBTQ elders under the framework of governmentality already outlined. In the section that follows, I specifically outline how older LGBTQ adults become “hypervisibilized” subjects of surveillance and control within neoliberal regimes, presupposing the aforementioned definition of governmentality, by means of disciplines and various technologies of power.

LGBTQ Aging in the Context of Neoliberal Governance: A Site of Hypervisibility

Situating LGBTQ Hypervisibility Within Neoliberal Governmentality

If indeed panopticism continues to exist within neoliberal regimes of power, but is increasingly to be found within the realm of the market (Gane 2012), then it is likely that rationalities of the market primarily identify subjects who become targets of surveillance and control. Given the emergence of communities of identity as sites of neoliberal governance (Rose 1996), particularly those that market rationalities may differentiate on the basis of risk, it is also likely that the lives of subjects who are associated with such marginal groups systemically and distinctly become shaped by surveillance and control activities. These groups, in other words, are rendered “hypervisible” to neoliberal systems of panopticism and regulation that govern them both within and beyond institutional contexts.

The market rationalities that actually delineate LGBTQ elders as hypervisibilized members of a risk community may not be immediately apparent. However, examining works on governmentality, both within gerontology and queer studies, offers preliminary insight into the possible marketized basis on which the marginalization of older LGBTQ adults is predicated. First, one may consider existing literature on the neoliberal governance of aging, whose insights on the market-driven regulation of age-related dependence provides indirect evidence for the contemporary disciplining of frail adults who may lack access to conventional “kin-based” care. For instance, Bjornsdottir (2002) illustrates the growing recognition of the normative family, versus state-administered institutional support, as a source of elder care within increasingly “cost efficient” neoliberal state regimes, which in turn suggests that older adults lacking such support (but nonetheless requiring care) are likely to be monitored and disciplined. In other words, older LGBTQ adults, by virtue of often relying on either community-based or non-familial sources of care in the context of decline (Brotman et al. 2003; Finkenauer et al. 2012), may be rendered hypervisible as targets of discipline within welfare regimes that marginalize their access to networks of care not based in heterosexual or conventionally gendered relations of kin. Purkis (2001), who has found that older home nursing care clients become visible as targets of service exclusion when they lack family caregivers who can be “mentored” by professionals to directly administer support in the context of chronic illness, provides compelling empirical evidence for systemic service inaccessibility among LGBTQ elders with limited networks of kin-based care. Conversely, Pickard (2010; 2014), who has argued that elders deemed “frail” often become targets of surveillance and discipline by medical professions, particularly within neoliberal regimes of power that regulate chronic service reliance resulting from such frailty, suggests that LGBTQ elders who encounter periods of decline in the absence of family based care more readily become visible to medical systems that may then institutionalize them on the basis of pathologized dependence.

Aside from aging literature on neoliberal governmentality, works that explore queer/trans governance may provide additional insight on the market rationalities that operate to render older LGBTQ adults hypervisible to systems of surveillance and control. In particular, a piece by Brown and Knopp (2014), which explores the role of non-heterosexual identities as a source of governmentality during the era of “gay liberation,” provides preliminary insight on possible marketized bases for the governance of hypervisibilized LGBTQ elders. The authors observe that although “gay” identities were often used during this era as a source of resistance by communities of men historically vilified on the basis of their non-heterosexuality, state and community-based actors were able to deploy associations with gay identity to monitor and regulate sexual behavior considered promiscuous or problematic within populations of non-heterosexual men. In other words, the intelligibility of a risk community pervasively recognized as “non-heterosexual,” during this period, provided a basis for a concentrated network of actors to deliver programming that promised to address “problematic” behaviors within this population as efficiently (and therefore as cost-effectively) as possible. The work of these scholars delineates the possibility that older LGBTQ adults, when not accessing normative sources of family care, may be more efficiently intelligible or visible to neoliberal regimes as subjects who violate the marketized bases of normative comportment in old age, compared to non-LGBTQ elders also lacking kin-based care. Empirically, evidence for such a claim can be found in research that has found high levels of isolation and self-neglect in populations of older LGBTQ adults, in turn suggesting this group’s systemic position as intelligibly (or hypervisibly) marginal subjects in both formal and informal networks of care (Addis et al. 2009; Brotman et al. 2003; Finkenauer et al. 2012).

It is possible to argue that such a conceptualization of market rationalities underlying the hypervisibility of LGBTQ elders does not account for the full range of ageist, heterosexist, homophobic and transphobic systems of meaning that actually operate to subjugate members of this population under regimes of neoliberal governmentality. Indeed, given the aforementioned reality that discourses operate both within and beyond institutional contexts (and their associated rationalities) to produce subjects amenable to domination and resistance (Foucault 2007; Rose 1996), it may be naive to suggest that such market logic alone determines the basis of hypervisibilized surveillance and control. However, this framework situates the contemporary mechanisms of governmentality that shape the experiences of LGBTQ elders within the political and economic context of neoliberal power, which in turn provides insight into the influence of such rationalities in the everyday governance and self-governance of non-heterosexuality and gender variance among older adults. This conceptual position, while highlighting the tendency for frailty to be monitored and disciplined when not located within a context of normative family based care, simultaneously considers the particular intelligibility of LGBTQ groups as risk communities that are likely to be efficiently monitored and controlled in old age by virtue of their discursive (and arguably material) distance from normative sources of family support. In other words, this lens attends to the consequences of living with intersectional identities located in the context of LGBTQ aging, namely those based on old age and non-normative sexuality and gender identity, that together render older LGBTQ subjects hypervisible as communities of marginality to systems of marketized governmentality.

At this point, it is important to note that although, so far, queer/trans older adults have been defined as “hypervisible” on the basis of their distance from non-normative sources of care and support within neoliberal systems of governance, this assumption cannot be said to apply equivalently across identities and subject positions that span the LGBTQ spectrum. Indeed, as Cronin and King (2010) have noted, some sexual minority older adults, for instance those with experience in cultivating heterosexual relations of kinship, may have access to more normative forms of kin-based support in old age. These adults, though often found to experience stigma and hostility in systems of care, primarily as a result of their perceived or self-proclaimed identification with non-heterosexuality in old age (Cronin and King 2010; Brotman et al. 2015), may nonetheless identify with aspects of the nuclear family to varying extents. Rather than assuming an unequivocally universal inaccessibility to kin-based care among older LGBTQ adults, the current framework of hypervisibility locates varying expressions of distance from the nuclear family as being either perceived by others (e.g., service providers), or subjectively experienced by queer/trans older adults themselves, based on a vast array of characteristics and experiences that may or may not wholly preclude access to kin-based care. Such perceived or self-identified distance from normative care, though rarely homogeneous among older LGBTQ adults, nonetheless renders these subjects hypervisible to discursive surveillance and control. It is possible, for instance, for an older bisexual woman to have spent a proportion of her adult life within the parameters of a nuclear family that may provide her with access to familial care in old age, but then to become hypervisible to systems of care when a current same-sex partnership results in perceptions, by care providers, that she is likely to lack access to a kin-based network and therefore may be more “at risk” for dependence on formal systems of care.

In addition to drawing attention to distinctions in experiences of hypervisibility, based on the significant level of variability in expressions of sexual or gender identity that may exist within this largely heterogeneous group, it is also important to acknowledge differential hypervisibilities associated with intersecting identities of gender, race, class, ability, and other dimensions among highly multifaceted queer older adults. Although launching into an in-depth exploration of the intersectionality of hypervisibility is well beyond the scope of this paper, a brief review of works that address the intersectionality of LGBTQ aging may serve to substantiate this point and create an opportunity for future theoretical and empirical inquiry in this area. Cronin and King (2010), for instance, in discussing the salience of intersecting gendered and class-specific experiences as determinants of financial constraint among older lesbian women (and therefore, arguably, their potentially disproportionate exposure to publicly administered formal care in later adulthood), highlight the possibility that hypervisibility may function distinctively depending on the interlocking combination of subject positions individual queer/trans older adults may occupy. Brotman et al. (2015) similarly indicate that those with multiple bases of marginalization may be more likely to encounter hostility in health care and social service settings, in turn implying that susceptibility to hypervisibility may be more pronounced among certain older LGBTQ adults compared to others. Accounting for the differential experience and impact of hypervisibility, as will be mentioned near the end of the paper, may be paramount to future theorizing in this area.

Disciplines and Technologies of Power as Operative Mechanisms of Hypervisibility

In order to recognize, specifically, “how” hypervisibility operates on queer elders, it is possible to identify, within the limited body of existing empirical literature on LGBTQ aging, specific neoliberal disciplines and technologies of power (Foucault 2000) that render hypervisibilized older LGBTQ adults subject to systems of surveillance and control in old age. Geriatric medicine, which as a profession has been credited with most saliently regulating the dependence of “unproductive” adults in old age (Pickard 2014), necessitates consideration as a discipline that deploys the hypervisibility of frail LGBTQ elders to monitor and control these subjects’ expressions of sexuality and gender identity within neoliberal regimes. Although, by virtue of LGBTQ invisibility in theoretical and empirical bodies of geriatric science, direct analyses of this discipline may not be possible, it is feasible to examine the experiences of LGBTQ elders within discursive environments heavily influenced by geriatric medicine. In particular, given the tendency for discursive settings of “aged care,” including residential contexts, to be shaped most prominently by the field of geriatric medicine (Pickard 2014), consideration of LGBTQ elders’ experiences within these settings may provide preliminary insight into “how” this discipline deploys hypervisibility to monitor and regulate LGBTQ identities in old age.

One recent piece of inquiry on the perceptions of long-term care among older lesbian women and gay men has found that members of this population continue to either fear, or to actually experience, overt hostility related to their identities as non-heterosexuals in these settings, on the part of professional service providers and other older adults in residential care (Stein et al. 2010). Interestingly, this study has also found that older lesbian and gay adults, particularly those not already in residential care, fear experiencing greater homophobia with age-related decline, primarily as a consequence of having to access institutional care in the absence of informal support in the home. The findings of Stein et al. (2010) indirectly reflect the operative effects of geriatric medicine, as a discipline of marketized governmentality, on hypervisibilized gay and lesbian elders, specifically by drawing attention to professionally affiliated discursive environments that serve to limit non-heterosexuality by perpetuating hostility against visible queerness in the context of frailty. A systematic review of transgender aging (Finkenauer et al. 2012) suggests that fear of stigma, as well as overt experiences of transphobic hostility, may also be common in this population within discursive spatialities shaped by the discipline of geriatric medicine. Although these discursive contexts may not intentionally be designed to control queerness and gender variance in older adults, the marketized rationalities on which they are based preclude the legitimation of identities historically associated with communities of risk and sexual/gender deviance, particularly when these identities predispose dependent subjects to accessing formal (and therefore less privileged) systems of state care within neoliberal regimes of power.

The above analysis of geriatric medicine as a body of discipline provides insight into primarily top-down processes of governmentality that may shape the realities of older hypervisibilized LGBTQ adults. Consideration of technologies of power, in particular those involving the deployment of LGBTQ lexicon within various contexts, may provide insight into more ubiquitous and extra-institutional exercises of power that effect surveillance and control (including self-governance) on hypervisibilized queer/trans elders. Brown and Knopp (2014), already referenced in this paper, illustrate the tendency for the labeling of sexual identity to comprise both a source of emancipation for sexual minorities, as well as a mechanism for the governance of these groups by a range of state actors, community-based organizations, and non-heterosexuals themselves. Thus, it is plausible to suggest that LGBTQ identities, by virtue of rendering non-normative sexuality and gender identity intelligible across a range of social contexts, enable the governance of such phenomena by both older LGBTQ adults themselves, as well as other individuals and groups, within the realm of everyday social interactions. In light of the conditions of hypervisibility to which “frail” LGBTQ elders are subject within marketized governmentality, it is likely that the deployment of such lexicon in surveillance and control activities is particularly salient among those who are more likely to be deemed dependent on formal systems of care.

The function of LGBTQ identities as a technology of power is particularly evident in a recent study conducted by Hughes (2008), who examines the narratives of older lesbian and gay adults’ narratives in relation to health and aged care. Interestingly, Hughes (2008) observes that whereas lesbian and gay identities may at times be used in certain contexts by queer elders to assert realities often silenced by expressions of heterosexism, non-heterosexual older adults may at other times reject or hide associations with these labels on the basis of fearing being “outed” to service providers and experiencing stigma as a result. In other words, whereas the widespread availability of LGBTQ lexicon may occasionally reflect a potential source of emancipatory power for queer/trans older adults, it is possible for the ubiquitous intelligibility of non-heterosexuality and gender variance—via LGBTQ identity—to conversely function as a technology of power that older queer/trans adults deploy to self-govern their already hypervisibilized sexualities and gender identities within contemporary governmentality. The universal recognition of LGBTQ identities within advanced neoliberal regimes, paradoxically, may provide grounds for some queer/trans older adults, particularly those who are deemed “dependent” or “frail,” to hide their non-normative comportment within marketized systems of surveillance and control, which would otherwise likely discipline sexualities and gender identities associated with dependence on non-familial sources of care. Although Hughes (2008) omits the experiences of transgender elders from his study’s scope of analysis, the increasingly universal intelligibility of transgender identities, as a technology of power (Sanger 2008), provides a compelling basis for suggesting the applicability of this argument to the realities of hypervisibilized and potentially self-governing older trans-identified adults.

So far, in this section, I have outlined market rationalities that together provide a basis for rendering LGBTQ identities hypervisible to systems of neoliberal surveillance and control. I have also attempted to illustrate “how” such hypervisibility operates to monitor and regulate expressions of same-sex sexuality and gender variance in old age, particularly by drawing on the limited body of literature on LGBTQ aging to delineate potential disciplines and technologies of power that reflect surveillance and control functions operating on queer/trans elders within the paradigm of neoliberal governmentality. Prior to discussing implications of this analysis on the future theorizing of LGBTQ aging, I do wish to briefly address Brown’s (2009) original account of rhetorical silence within my framework on hypervisibilized surveillance and control. Although, earlier in the paper, I discussed Brown’s (2009) work on rhetorical silence at length, I did not explicitly explore possible ties between this analytical orientation and the conceptual notion of hypervisibility. Accordingly, I wish to revisit this seminal piece, particularly in order to clarify its possible position within a theoretical framework premised on hypervisibility, before actually launching into an examination of implications associated with this paper’s principal argument. Such reconciliation may permit the complementary use of theoretical analyses informed by both hegemonic silence, as well as hypervisibility, in interrogating the realities of LGBTQ aging, and in turn enable a richer exploration of how queer/trans older adults may both be subjects of hypervisibility, as well as discursive invisibility.

As already noted, despite the merits of Brown’s (2009) position on hegemonic silencing as an important feature of the realities associated with LGBTQ aging, the framework does not necessarily account for mechanisms that render older LGBTQ adults hypervisible to systems of surveillance and control within neoliberal regimes of power. Based on this critique, it may at first appear that a framework of rhetorical silence is incompatible with one that highlights hypervisibility as a foundation for conceptualizing LGBTQ aging. However, it is possible to suggest that systemic silencing primarily occurs as a consequence of disciplines and technologies of power that deploy LGBTQ hypervisibility in old age to control and limit expressions of non-heterosexuality and gender variance among older adults. In other words, it is plausible for the silencing of LGBTQ identities to constitute one regulative feature of a discursive system that exposes queer/trans marginality for the purpose of limiting it and, paradoxically, rendering it silent or invisible across a range of social contexts. Indeed, earlier in the paper, I discussed the ubiquity of LGBTQ lexicon as a technology of power that, regardless of its emancipatory potential, can be used by systems of surveillance and control to identify, isolate, and marginalize expressions of queer/trans reality in old age.

Revisiting Foucault’s (1990) well-known position on the deployment of sexuality—under apparently repressive discursive regimes—may serve to support my attempt at situating rhetorical silence within a framework of hypervisibility. In the first volume of The History of Sexuality, Foucault (1990) genealogically locates the construction of “sex,” during the beginning of the industrial era, as a knowable entity that is then used to regulate and control numerous dimensions of human sexuality. He observes that whereas many identify sexual repression to be a definitive theme of industrial and post-industrial societies, this phenomenon of sexual rigidity merely reflects the effect of discursive systems that, again perhaps paradoxically, render “sex” ubiquitously knowable as a social experience necessitating surveillance and control. In other words, the silencing of sex, according to Foucault, constitutes only one feature of a more comprehensive system of disciplines and technologies that together visibilize this construct for the purpose of monitoring and regulating it. Based on this theoretical premise, it is plausible to delineate rhetorical silence as one effect, or one feature, of broader visibilizing mechanisms that, in actuality, render LGBTQ aging knowable to systems of surveillance and control. Indeed, given the tendency for non-normative sexuality and gender identity to be discursively identified and then silenced in disciplinary neoliberal environments such as in residential care settings (Hughes 2008), a position that acknowledges rhetorical silence as a systemic effect of hypervisibility arguably requires consideration. Despite the seeming theoretical compatibility of a framework of hypervisibility with Brown’s (2009) seminal work, and therefore its potential for being used together with existing models for conceptualizing LGBTQ aging, however, there remain several shortcomings of the current lens that require refinement and further theorizing. I wish to conclude this paper with some of these concerns.

Hypervisibility: Addressing Implications and Limitations

There are several strengths associated with a theoretical model of LGBTQ aging premised on hypervisibility. Most importantly, it identifies neoliberal rationalities, as well as specific disciplines and technologies of power, that are likely to marginalize older LGBTQ adults both systemically and in the realm of everyday social interactions. This framework, if used within the growing body of theoretical and empirical work on LGBTQ aging, may not only lead to a more sophisticated understanding of the underlying discursive bases of subjugation that shape the realities of LGBTQ aging, but in so doing, may also generate insight into opportunities for destabilizing these regimes of power. Indeed, consistent with Foucault’s (2000) position on subjugation as a productive process, an understanding of sources and technologies of power serves the function of locating the discursive potential for resistance within systems of domination.

A reconsideration of the work presented earlier in this paper substantiates the potential for using the current framework of hypervisibility to better identify opportunities for destabilizing current regimes of power that most prominently reinforce the marginalized subject positions of queer/trans older adults. For instance, the work of Stein et al. (2010), which has uncovered the potential for older lesbian and gay adults to fear hostility within residential care settings, may be reconceptualized using a framework of hypervisibility, which would view such fear as a response to potentially harmful discursive environments located within the broader sociopolitical context of neoliberal governmentality. Such analysis, in turn, would likely sensitize knowledge translation and policy development activities associated with such research to the interrogation of both micro- and macro-level discursive processes responsible for cultivating fear in older LGBTQ subjects across social and disciplinary environments. Similarly, Hughes’ work (2008), which considered the role of LGB lexicon as a source of both emancipatory power and marginalizing effect among queer older adults, may be reframed by the lens of hypervisibility to invite an examination of the social and political conditions that influence the differential application of such lexicon. This critical process, in turn, may result in the pursuit of research and policy that addresses marketized systems of governance responsible for deploying LGBTQ language oppressively to subjugate older queer/trans adults, while simultaneously building on emancipatory uses of this vocabulary within queer/trans movements that are more likely to challenge such practices within neoliberal systems of governance.

Aside from the instrumental value of hypervisibility in highlighting and therefore challenging policies and practices that are likely to marginalize older LGBTQ adults, the promise of this conceptual framework to support these processes of resistance merely at a theoretical level merits consideration. Indeed, given my earlier observation on the need for work that is primarily geared at generating theory in the field of queer/trans aging, an appraisal of purely conceptual implications associated with developing and using a framework of hypervisibility, particularly those connected with the prospect of social change, warrants attention. In identifying such potential contributions, it is possible to suggest that this paper’s analytical orientation, while accounting for historical expressions of hegemonic invisibility that have often characterized the realities of LGBTQ aging, also recognizes the increasing intelligibility of queer/trans identities within dominant discursive contexts, both as grounds for emancipation, and as a basis for the ongoing surveillance and control of queer/trans older adults. Indeed, since several contemporary scholars (Brotman et al. 2015; King 2014; Rose and Hospital 2015) have juxtaposed the history of silence on LGBTQ old age together with the emerging recognition of queer/trans aging identities within dominant social and institutional contexts, a lens that acknowledges the likelihood of “hypervisibilized” surveillance and control is likely to be attentive to exercises of power that may transpire within increasingly “LGBTQ-cognizant” environments. In turn, if a framework of hypervisibility is indeed found to be conceptually sensitive to the changing sociopolitical climate of LGBTQ aging, it may be used to interrogate and problematize discourses that superficially render visible the realities of queer/trans aging, albeit at the expense of reinforcing assumptions that contribute to the surveillance and control of older LGBTQ adults. For instance, an analysis based on the lens of hypervisibility may, instead of simply locating the benefits of the use of queer and trans-identifying language within medical and other disciplinary environments, challenge the potential for the misuse of such discourse in invasively monitoring and then limiting expressions of same-sex sexuality and gender variance within these settings. Since LGBTQ intelligibility has, in the past, been used to this marginalizing effect (Brotman et al. 2015; Brown and Knopp 2014; Hughes 2008; King 2014), the promise of hypervisibility in conceptualizing and theoretically challenging the emergence of queer/trans visibility is of arguable importance.

Despite strengths of a framework informed by hypervisibility, several shortcomings of this lens are also notable. Since my position on the salience of hypervisibility, and its associated disciplines and technologies of power, is primarily informed by Foucault’s notion of governmentality (Foucault 2008; Walters 2012), a consideration of critiques often directed at the broad field known as “governmentality studies” may provide insight into limitations associated with this framework. Perhaps most importantly, studies of governmentality have been criticized on the basis of minimizing the potential for resistance specifically by subjects of governance (Kerr 1999; Savransky 2014). Savransky (2014), for instance, rightly observes that theory associated with notions of governmentality often obviates the potential for governable individuals or groups to construct unique subjectivities that may serve to destabilize or defy systems of domination. Although I have already discussed the promise of theoretical analyses informed by hypervisibility to generate insight into potential discursive mechanisms of resistance, it is crucial for any future conceptualization of this approach to recognize and conceptualize expressions of resistance already in use among LGBTQ elders. Some writers have discussed the possibility for LGBTQ lexicon to be used, within systems of governance, as vehicles for challenging transphobic and heterosexist discourse (Sanger 2008). Such analyses could be situated within a framework of hypervisibility by, for instance, locating queer/trans elders’ deployment of these terms to appropriate visibility as a source of emancipation within systems of surveillance and control. The work of other scholars, namely those who have referenced the emerging climate of increased queer/trans intelligibility as a source of opportunity for community development among older LGBTQ adults (Brotman et al. 2015), may be conceptualized similarly as denoting expressions of reappropriation and resistance to the marginalizing effects of hypervisibility. For instance, the growth of publicly visible LGBTQ networks among older adults, often used to generate promise for the development of resources such as queer/trans-responsive residential care facilities (Brotman et al. 2015), could be framed as a reflection of resistance to surveillance and control mechanisms often responsible for coopting visibility to subjugate queer/trans older adults within neoliberal regimes of power.

Another shortcoming of this lens includes its consideration of a finite set of rationalities that actually operate to hypervisibilize queer/trans elders. Although, as already argued in this paper, market rationalities are likely salient in constituting bases for the deployment of queer/trans hypervisibility within regimes of neoliberalism, it is also very conceivable for other (possibly unrelated) rationalities to underpin this process, particularly as the logic of governance techniques is likely to be found across a range of macro- and micro-level contexts of social interaction (Rose and Miller 2010). Consideration of alternative rationalities, still nonetheless contextualized within neoliberal regimes of power, is merited along with the need for locating expressions of resistance.

Similarly, given the aforementioned need for a framework of hypervisibility to account for differential relationships to sexual and gender identity among older LGBTQ adults, as well as the likelihood of queer/trans older adults to live with intersecting identities grounded in gender, race, class, ability, and other dimensions, the need for more careful consideration of alternate experiences of hypervisibility among older sexual and gender minority adults may be paramount in future attempts to develop and apply this conceptual lens. For instance, an in-depth analysis of interlocking experiences based on gender, race, and class, using a conceptual lens of hypervisibility, may reveal differential rationalities and vulnerabilities that are likely to be at play in rendering particular subjects susceptible to experiencing hypervisibility. Such analytical activity, in turn, may result in the generation of empirical or theoretical work that highlights and challenges a greater diversity of discursive disciplines and technologies of power, many of which are likely to impact particular subject positions within the LGBTQ spectrum differentially depending on interlocking configurations of identity (Brotman et al. 2015; Cronin and King 2010).

In this paper, I have argued that although LGBTQ aging may have been previously conceptualized as a site of rhetorical silence, the realities of queer/trans elders may be better placed in a framework that highlights these subjects’ hypervisibility to systems of surveillance and control. After outlining a framework of governmentality in which governance is located both ubiquitously, and within the context of neoliberal power, I delineated market rationalities that render older LGBTQ adults hypervisible, and relied on empirical evidence to specify “how” such hypervisibility effects surveillance and control on this population via disciplines and technologies of power. I ended this paper with thoughts on addressing limitations associated with this lens. An analysis of resistance, within a framework of hypervisibility, particularly necessitates attention, as the identification of such agency within this model may serve to inform further theory, research, and policy directed at destabilizing and challenging systems that may otherwise serve to dominate and subjugate queer/trans elders.