Ageing Out: Being 'Too Old' in a Community Built on Not Fitting In
A note before you read: this piece touches on suicide, homophobia, slurs, the AIDS crisis, death, and the laws that criminalised us. Take care of yourself, and skip this text if you need to.
I listened to a great speech recently about the lack of visibility of “elder Queers” in the community. It was heartfelt and genuine. It got the crowd riled up; they clapped and cheered! There was a nod to those who are not with us today, those who lost the fight against the AIDS crisis, those who have had their lives stolen by their governments, and those who decided to leave the pain of this world behind through self-exiting.
Whilst listening to the speech, I noticed a few things. They kept talking about our elders, and we were asked to imagine people twice our age. For me, that would be people 76+, for my partner older. If any of us make it to that grand age, I would indeed love to meet them and hear everything about their life! But I am also aware that as you get to this age, you are less likely to be in good enough health to stand around for hours on end attending protest marches and speeches.
Whilst I was thinking to myself and remembering those who paved the way before me, I looked around. The majority of the crowd listening were only in their early 20s, and it dawned on me that the speaker addressing them was not encouraging them to think of the same elders I was; they were encouraging the crowd to think of people my age; they were talking about ME! How can I be an elder at my tender age of 38?!
Then I remembered the speaker saying “lack of visibility”, huh? My partner and I were right there standing amongst everyone! We talk to you all the time; how are we invisible to you all? Did they all have some preconceived notion that people my age shouldn’t look how I do with my dyed hair and piercings? What did they all think someone my age should look like exactly? Then I felt incredibly sad because no one should be considered an elder in their late 30s. Elder to me has always meant someone 60+ who was on the front line of progressive movements, paving the way for all of us to exist and find our own courage to fight for our rights. It was the people who survived and were graced with the privilege of ageing that many of the Queer community never get to do. Not someone my age who still gets side-eyed when buying alcohol in case I am underage.
So why are people under my age thinking we aren’t active in the community? The speaker gave some very valid suggestions, such as gatekeeping and excluding those who don’t know all the “correct terminology”, but I think there is much more going on. From my lived experiences, here are what might be causing someone over the age of 38 to supposedly vanish from the Queer community: “the ageing out”.
Why Queer People 'Age Out' of the Community
Cultural – people are raised differently around the world, and that brings different expectations, language use, and access to bodily autonomy. Yes, to be Queer is to break expectations, but we cannot assume that everyone within the Queer community is starting from the exact same starting point. That is unrealistic and ignorant of people’s lived experiences.
Laws – sometimes countries have laws in place making being LGBTQIA+ or education about LGBTQIA+ topics illegal. I experienced this throughout my childhood firsthand by growing up in the UK during Section 28. When there have been laws restricting who you can be and access to information, you are simply not going to have the same knowledge as someone who has lived under less restrictive laws. Like my previous point, these laws hold people back and mean we cannot come to the community at the same starting point; some of us still need and WANT more education whilst being allowed space within the Queer community.
Self-discovery – people who are 38+ were likely using the internet pre-Google if they were a nerd (like me) or did not even use the internet growing up. The level of information and access to it when it comes to LGBTQIA+ topics simply did not exist, so we were left trying to discover ourselves without the language or knowledge to back it up in comparison to a lot of Western and Central European youths today. That can delay an individual’s discovery journey and mean they are still behind on the correct terminology, meaning, options, and how the community is as a whole.
Anti-parenthood – Queer people can become parents, something that seems to be an unwelcome concept for many still. Maggie Nelson talks about this experience in the book “The Argonauts” in several places, and as a Sea Horse parent myself, I do experience the repulsion from other Queers when I tell them this fact. I have heard one too many times that “becoming a parent is selfish and conforming, it’s the antithesis to the Queer identity”. I don’t know folks; it seems pretty non-conforming to me to be a dad who gave birth?! What isn’t “Queer enough” for you about two women raising a child together?! Why can’t the bisexual cisgender couple also have a seat at the Queer table?
Technological changes – access to information and sharing knowledge has been easier since the invention of the internet, but that increased exponentially when Google and other search engines appeared on the internet scene. Suddenly you could share and access knowledge from around the world in just a few seconds; you didn’t have to rely on where you lived with its limited knowledge anymore. (Google was released in 1998, with internet users in Europe alone increasing by 611% from 2000 to 2023)
I am sure there are many more contributing factors, but I am not a sociologist and based my views on my lived experiences or things I have heard from others my age or older. With these factors in mind, I did reach out to the speaker of the speech I mentioned at the beginning of this piece a few weeks later. I wanted to thank them for their attempts to appeal to those younger than me to consider patience and kindness instead of expecting everyone to be gender and sexuality academics when they enter Queer spaces. I shared with her that I experience firsthand the difficulty with language and being able to share what I lived through without being instantly misjudged for “out-of-date thinking” that was formed by my delayed access to knowledge and traumas, which rightly or wrongly do form who I am as a person today.
She asked me, “ Is it important to you that new people you meet quickly and early on understand that it was difficult?” to which I answered “no”. But now the more I think about it and the more I experience the knee-jerk reaction from those younger than myself to my words and explanations of self, I think it might actually be needed! Informing the person listening, after all, would give them a chance to allow a greater amount of grace and understanding. I might mess up in my word choice; I might have an entirely different understanding of what the word means. My experience in the Queer community is going to look different when my peers were all told to “do, but don’t tell”. Only the bravest of the bravest of us could be “out, loud and proud”; meanwhile, others of us fell into isolation and never made it past the age of 21.
When 'LGBTQIA+' and 'Queer' Aren't the Same Thing
Before I give an example, I want to be clear this example isn't every younger Queer person I talk to; plenty extend real patience. But there's a specific exchange that keeps recurring, in slightly different words each time, and it goes something like this.
I still use the term LGBTQIA+ to refer to the community at large, and use Queer to refer to those who align more with non-conformity (in whatever form that might take, politics, the way they dress, their gender identity, etc). And the response is usually something along the lines of “I don’t trust people who use the term LGBTQIA+”. The assumption being made is that I am “avoiding” the word Queer, when I am actually trying to differentiate between the larger LGBTQIA+ community and the Queer community itself. In my lived experience, LGBTQIA+ spaces are, in actuality, LGB spaces and lean more centre to right in politics. There is a greater level of hetero/homo-normativity, and so Queer to me is more left in politics and often goes against performativity. I know that's not the only way to use the word, and I know it keeps shifting; that's rather the point of it.
That is then usually met with an “alright… but if you’re avoiding the word Queer, usually you’re not that politically invested in what it stands for. It’s a reclamation of a slur, and the worry is that a lot of the ‘I’m not like those other queers’ energy is at play. People happy to be a little different, but not willing to be associated with anything that reads as too radical.”
I then go on to explain I can understand that actually there will be some who completely align with the Queer identity, however still use LGBTQIA+ because, like me, they were taught that you never say that word. That word was bad and “not correct” to say. It was also used as a slur against many of us in school whilst being beaten up in the playground with teachers looking away, ignoring it, or shouting at us when we dared to hold our same-gender partner’s hand outside the nightclub, shortly followed by a glass bottle hurled at your head. The word carries a lot of trauma for many of us, and for me it wasn’t until about 8 years ago that I felt okay to say the word “Queer” in the positive rather than only LGBTQIA+.
“But distancing yourself from ‘queer’ in favour of a more neutral acronym can end up functioning as a way to keep one foot out of the more uncomfortable, confrontational parts of the movement!”
I am sorry, did you not just hear me say that many of us who struggled to use the word in the past do so because of violent confrontational moments in our lives? I am very thankful to be mentally recovered enough to feel able to use the word Queer now, and I reclaim that word absolutely! But to completely ignore the trauma others of my generation have experienced under that word is simply ignorant. It's this specific kind of exchange (not every younger person, but often enough to notice) that makes elders feel unwelcome. In that moment, there's no acknowledgement of what we've lived through. This response assumes we had the exact same lived experiences. It assumes other things too, like thinking elders had representation in the media (I think the only positive one I had was Dr Frank-N-Furter, and the character refers to themselves as a “sweet transvestite!” A word now considered very hurtful and damaging towards transgender people).
Both Sides Are Fighting to Be Understood
Language carries weight and causes real harm, but we can’t have real conversations about our lived experiences whilst people are busy telling us we do not belong simply for not being as knowledgeable as them. In these moments, we are essentially agreeing that there is a difference between the LGBTQIA+ community and the Queer community. We are agreeing that being able to reclaim the slur Queer is ultimately a good and powerful thing, but too often what comes across (even if it's not meant that way) is 'you are not one of us and the past traumas you and others went through don’t grant you any space to process these feelings or learn ‘. It doesn’t need to be that way. Maggie Nelson sums up what is happening during these conversations and what the conclusion should be in order to allow Queer people to age and remain part of the community:
“While we talked we said words like non-violence, assimilation, threats to survival, preserving the radical. But when I think about it now I hear only the background buzz of our trying to explain something to each other, to ourselves, about our lived experiences thus far on this peeled, endangered plant. As is so often the case, the intensity of our need to be understood distorted our positions, backed us further into the cage.”
– The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson
Both sides of the conversation in this situation are urging the other to understand them. But that need is so strong is distorts our positions and makes it appear like there is an “us vs. them” when we are actually both embracing our non-conformity. We place ourselves into cages, mental prisons, by ignoring lived experiences and how that impacts an individual’s understanding of words and the world.
Everyone has different lived experiences; I just ask that we allow for that. Let’s hear each other’s stories and embrace one another, not kick people out for still learning or the traumas they’ve been through.
Bibliography:
Internet Statistics (1991 to 2025) - Atom (accessed 28th August 2026)
