Heteronormativity revisited: Escape fantasies of two older heterosexual women in a Belgian nursing home.

Abstract

Unpartnered heterosexual women constitute a significant demographic within nursing home populations, yet their sexuality remains largely understudied. Although recent healthcare policies and research focus on improving residents' sexual wellbeing, they often reflect heteronormative assumptions, for instance by prioritizing life-long sex for heterosexual monogamous couples. While the heteronormativity of nursing home spaces has been highlighted in critical gerontological approaches that draw on LGBTQ+ lived experiences, its structuring of heterosexual women's lived experiences remains under-researched. This paper explores this gap through the stories of two heterosexual women living in dementia or psychiatric care units in a Belgian nursing home, both with a history of sex work. Embedded in a wider study using in-depth interviews, talking group sessions, and participant observation, it examines their experiences, desires, and imagination of sex and how these are entangled within the nursing home space. It reveals notions of later life sex and desire that extend beyond frameworks focused on activity or performance, to include imagination as a meaningful dimension. Moreover, the women's imageries of alternative relationships, spaces, and strategies for evading the discomforts of institutional life emerge as disruptors of heteronormative assumptions. Through this analysis, we expand understandings of women's heterosexuality in later life beyond heteronormativity and beyond binaries of desexualization and successful ageing. We underscore the value of intersectional and Critical New Materialist lenses that center on embodiment and practices within (imagined) space, rather than focusing primarily on heterosexual identity. These perspectives illuminate textured lived experiences that contribute to diversified understandings of sexual wellbeing in later life.