Places of (in)visibility. LGB aging and the (im)possibilities of coming out to others.

Middle and older age are usually ignored in the studies of the processes of coming out. This paper analyses the opportunities, and also the barriers which aging brings to the possibility of articulating one's own sexual identity in relation to others. It presents the life-course perspective as a suitable analytical tool for the study of the impact of historical context and the changing social locations within the life-biography. Analysis presented in this paper is based on 19 in-depth interviews with LGB people aged fifty and older living in the Czech Republic. The paper focuses on the way they relate to the idea of coming out and how they reflect on their previous biography with respect to the possibilities to articulate their sexuality in various phases of their life. It analyses how aging creates possibilities as well as barriers to articulate sexual identity with respect to family and closed ones and points out the need to critically reflect the narratives of coming out as a linear process of leaving "the closet". Older age was by the participants depicted as an important context that disrupted some of the barriers preventing coming out to others. However, the vision of late old age linked with specific age-related contexts (such as life in residential care facilities) was associated with impossibility to express sexual identity.