Consent and sexual literacy for older people

Abstract

This chapter explores the concept of sexual consent, and its apparent neglect in the literature on the intersectional on ageing and sexual and intimate lives. It explores the way in which valid consent (informed, free from coercion, capacity) is influenced by the way in which older people are desexualised in contemporary society. Consent is a complex concept that raises issues of how informed a person is and what constitutes freedom from coercion or capacity. With older people, the generational cultural context adds to those complexities and reinforces their desexualisation. It then explores how promoting older people’s sexual literacy as a means of enabling them to have an ethical sexual life.