Study Finds Gay and Bisexual Men Over 70 Have Active Sex Lives

A study localized in the U.K. has found that gay and bisexual men over 70 have active sex lives well into their golden years.

Started as an mpox study, researchers from the University of East Anglia (UEA), in collaboration with King’s College London and University College London surveyed around 5,000 people with the goal of making the mathematical analysis of STI transmissions more accurate. Due to mpox affecting queer men of color the most, the study did not take queer women or trans individuals into as much consideration as queer men within their poll groups. The study found that of the 77 gay and bisexual men who participated in the survey, 17% of them reported one or more partners within the last three weeks prior to the survey, while 2% of the straight participants reported the same.

The social stigma around aging dictates that after you reach a certain age, your sex life dies, but that does not have to be the case, as seen in this study. In the past, groups over a certain age wouldn’t even be considered as an option for surveys such as these. The mathematics used for the analysis of transmissions for STIs has likely suffered from this, but more importantly, it shows a flaw within our general public’s thinking. Why is it only okay for young people to have sex within our society?

“Before this study, many models about sexually transmitted diseases assumed that everyone over a certain age, say 40 or 65, stopped being sexually active, or at least stopped having multiple partners, or there might be an assumption that young people have the most sex,” lead researcher Julli Brainard says of the study’s findings. “But the answer is more nuanced, and it partly depends on people’s sexuality. Even at age 65-plus, the respondents recruited via social media still tended to have more sexual contact than the general population sample at the same age.”