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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research, this presentation examines how masculinity among older gay men in Tokyo shapes difficulties in asking for help despite growing needs related to aging and care.

Paper long abstract

This presentation investigates how particular configurations of masculinity inhibit the ability of older gay men to raise their voices to ask for help in times of need. Existing scholarship on older sexual minorities in Japan has primarily emphasized their structural vulnerability, social marginalization, and minority status within a heteronormative and super-aging society. While this work is essential for understanding precarity and exclusion, it often portrays older gay men mainly as passive subjects of social forces, leaving under-examined how they themselves talk about, reproduce, negotiate, and sometimes resist dominant masculine norms in their everyday lives.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Tokyo, this presentation centers the voices and narratives of older gay men. I examine how ideals associated with hegemonic masculinity—such as emotional self-reliance, endurance, economic independence, and the avoidance of visible vulnerability—continue to shape their self-understandings, even though these men are positioned outside heterosexual masculinity. Rather than existing external to gay male cultures, these norms are often internalized, reworked, and policed within them.

The analysis demonstrates how such masculine ideals contribute to difficulties in seeking help related to health, mental well-being, aging, and social isolation. Many interlocutors frame asking for help as a personal failure or moral weakness, expressing a strong preference for “managing on one’s own” even when support is available. This reluctance is further complicated by the culturally embedded notion of meiwaku wo kaketakunai (not wanting to cause trouble for others), which reinforces self-restraint and silence. Generational experiences of stigma, secrecy, and survival—formed during periods of limited visibility and institutional support for sexual minorities—also shape these attitudes toward help-seeking.

By foregrounding masculinity as an analytical lens, this presentation complicates narratives that depict older gay men solely as vulnerable minorities. Instead, it highlights how vulnerability is actively produced and sustained through gendered moral frameworks that define appropriate ways of being a man. I argue that addressing the needs of aging sexual minorities in Japan requires not only policy interventions and community-based resources, but also critical engagement with the masculine values that constrain help-seeking practices.