Introduction

The world population aging is a current phenomenon with exponential growth, which has been highly discussed in several fields of knowledge fields. Before anything, when the issue of population aging is approached, one can notice that it is a phenomenon of geographic transition, marked by the inversion of the age pyramid. This inversion is characterized by the decrease of the birthrate and the increase of longevity, as a result of achievements in the medical field, adequate urbanization of cities, diet improvements, improvement of personal and environmental hygiene, besides the advances in the health field, such as vaccines, use of antibiotics and chemotherapeutic medications, which made it possible to cure and prevent many diseases (^{Araújo & Carvalho, 2005}; ^{Mendes, Gusmão Faro, & Leite, 2005}; ^{Camarano, Kanso, & Mello, 2004}).

The ones who are considered elderly are comprised within the group of people who are 65 years old or older in developed countries, and 60 years old or older in countries under development (Law n. 10.741, 2003; ^{Neri, 2008}). According to the census of the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística ([IBGE - “Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics” ], 2000), in 2000, 8.56% of Brazilian population was within this age group range. In 2015, this range increased to 14.3%, according to the Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD - “National Research per Sample of Households”) (IBGE, 2015). It is estimated that, in 2030, the elderly population will represent 18.62% of the total Brazilian population. According to PNAD (2015), Brazilian Southern and Southeastern areas are the ones that have the higher proportion of elderly people, with 16% and 15.7%, respectively.

In line with the total elderly population, it is supposed that the proportion of LGBT elderly people will also increase in the next decades (A. C. F. ^{Araújo, 2016}; ^{Kimmel, 2015}). In Brazil, at the Demographic Census of 2010, for the first time, the quantity of homoaffective relations was identified and quantified. IBGE (2010) identified a total of 58 thousand homoaffective couples who live together in Brazil. According to ^{Bergamo (2016}, December 5), recently, the president of IBGE, Paulo Rabello de Castro, declared his interest in collecting the number of LGBT people in Brazil, which allows the collection of more knowledge on that part of the population, and makes it possible to provide more attention to that social category.

Nevertheless, the lack of knowledge about that population puts at risk the healthy aging of those people, whose specific necessities and experiences, are, most times, unknown (^{Fernández-Rouco, Sánchez, & González, 2012}; Orel, 2014).

Differently from what is usually widely spread, we understand that the old age is also full of positive aspects. Despite the losses concerning physical, sensorial and neurological skills, the old person may have some gains related to the capacities influenced by culture, inspiring the old person to develop within the domains of arts, leisure and the handling of existential issues, once the old person has taken a long path, rich in experiences (^{Neri, 2008}; ^{Novaes, 1995}).

Among the diverse aspects regarding life quality, it is understood that sexuality is a primordial aspect of human being, going beyond the sexual act itself; it comprises gender identities and roles, eroticism, pleasure, sexual orientation, intimacy and reproduction. Even though sexuality can be included in many dimensions - thoughts, attitudes, desires, behavior, values, among others - it is not expressed or experienced all the time. Since the 1960s, sexuality has been through an individualization process towards behavior and standards. This way, besides the biological and psychological views, sexuality is influenced by social, economic, political, cultural, ethical, religious and spiritual factors (L. F. ^{Araújo, 2016}; ^{Lima, Santiago, & Arrais, 2014}; Organização Mundial da Saúde [OMS], 2002; ^{Santos, Carlos, Araújo, & Negreiros, 2017}).

The current cohort of LGBT elderly people has lived a historic period, in which they could not share their sexuality, for being afraid to be rejected and persecuted, fearing to admit their sexual orientation to themselves, once they had internalized the negative stereotypes that the society imposed to the LGBT population (^{Fredriksen-Goldsen, Hoy-Ellis, Muraco, Goldsen & Kim, 2015}; Huyck, 1995, as mentioned in ^{Papalia, 2013}; ^{Marques & Sousa, 2016}). Therefore, many of the current LGBT old people took many years to “get out of the closet” (^{Scherrer & Fedor, 2015}).

In accordance with ^{Facchini and França (2009}), the term LGBT refers to lesbians, gays, bisexual, intersexual, and T represents the presence of travesties and transsexuals; in some places in Brazil, it also represents transgender people, i.e., those who do not identify with the behavior or role expected from their biological sex determined by their birth, such as crossdressers, drag queens, transformist artists and others.

Considering the scenario that the LGBT community face because of historical prejudice that brings a lot of types of violence motivated by negative stereotypes, discrimination and intolerance, as well as a social context characterized by the discrimination process that goes from the direct cruel termination manifestations of intolerance at work, inside the family, religion, medical assistance, communication means and in the population in general, it can be noticed that the elderly that are part of that social category also suffer from that stigma.

Despite the fact that the researches on the old age have been emerging among the themes investigated by social sciences, especially by Psychology, exploring and analyzing the aging process in the context of the elderly sexual orientation is still something uncommon. Considering that, in Brazil, there is a series of difficulties and challenges to deal with the theme, the struggle for visibility is a constant act in the life of those people. (^{Santos, Carlos, Araújo, & Negreiros, 2017}; ^{Wladirson & Chaves, 2012}).

However, as the elderly and the LGBT populations increase and have the recognition of their rights established socially, it is necessary to increase the knowledge on older LGBT people (Berger, 1982, as mentioned in ^{Marques & Sousa, 2016}; Berger & Kelly, 2002, as mentioned in Marques & Sousa, 2016; Minichiello, Plummer & Loxton, 2004, as mentioned in Marques & Sousa, 2016).

Under a dynamic view, the social representations are configured as a net of interactive concepts and images developed by individuals and groups, whose contents continuously evolve through time and space; this process is more and more intense, according to the complexity and the speed of the available communications (^{Carvalho & Arruda, 2008}; ^{Jodelet, 1989}; ^{Morera, Padilha, Silva, & Sapag, 2015}; ^{Moscovici, 1984}; ^{Sêga, 2000}). The concepts and images formed from social representations are ways to interpret the daily reality. Jodelet (1989; 2016) characterizes representation as a form of practical knowledge that connects a subject to an object, i.e., it establishes a link between a subject, individual or collective one, and the object that the representation substitutes.

The social representations allow the understanding of the world, from a practical aim, where a set of different pieces of knowledge and understanding, concepts, explanations about someone, some object or some fact. This way, social representations guide people’s attitudes towards the object of the representation. Studying the society’s perception about aging and LGBT aging allows the identification of the conceptions that people have on those events.

Within this context, we sought to identify and compare the social representations of LGBT aging of Brazilian elderly population, by means of the Theory of Social Representations.

Method

Results

The data analysis, in the software Iramuteq, constituted of 100 interviews, or initial context units (u.c.i.), resulted in 80 elementary context units (u.c.e.), which originated the dendogram (Figure 1).

Four classes of semantic approximation were taken; however, it was not possible to establish a profile of people belonging to each class. The first partition divided the Corpus into two sub-corpus, separating class 4 from the others. The second partition fragmented the larger sub-corpus, originating class 2. The last partition originated classes 1 and 3. It is worth to mention that all the interviews were carried out in Brazilian Portuguese, so the corpus was constituted of words in this language. However, the interviews and the words were translated into English language for this paper.

Class 1 is the smallest one, constituted of 16 u.c.e., representing 20% of the total of units. This class was named Negative stereotypes of old age. In this class, the idea that the LGBT old age is just like any other old age is predominant. Nevertheless, some negative aspects of old age are highlighted, such as the reduction of abilities, abandonment and necessity of more care due to the diseases. Besides that, in this class are still found negative feelings regarding LGBT old people, such as “pity for the homosexual”, once the old person who follows a sexual orientation different form the heterosexual one suffers with the stigma of old age and of sexual orientation,

Class 2 is composed by 22.5% of the u.c.e. total (18 units). Taking into consideration the descriptive variables, this class can be characterized as being constituted mostly by male old people (10 u.c.e.). In this class, there is the predominance of discourses in which the elderly affirm not knowing their opinion or not having knowledge about LGBT old people. For this reason, the class was named LGBT Invisibility.

The third class, constituted of 22 u.c.e (27.5% of total), has, as its main contents that the LGBT old age must be just like any other old age. It can be observed that the discourses of this class claim that the LGBT old person affirms their orientation when they are still young, and it is one of the aspects that determines a “good old age”. Differently from what was found in class 1, in this class there is a positive perspective of aging: peace, tranquility, stability and maturity. This class was named Successful old age.

Class 4 is the larger one (24 u.c.e. - 30% of the units). Named Biased attitudes towards LGBT old age, the fourth class expresses contents related to hostility before LGBT old age. The understanding regarding LGBT old age is of a stage marked by social prejudice and disdain, as being lonely, complicated and troubled.

Discussion

From the observation and interpretation of the data obtained in the research, it could be noticed that, in general, many stereotypes of LGBT aging and old age presented in previous studies are confirmed. Thus, the lexical contents that frame the dendogram within each identified class will be discussed.

Conclusion

The present study brought some information on the social representations of LGBT old age among old population in three Brazilian states: Piauí, Ceará and Pará. The data obtained allowed to compose representations systematized in four classes.

It could be verified that those representations are mostly related to the way that the elderly who participated of the research experiment their own old age. The elderly who see and live this life stage as something negative or do not see themselves as old have the idea that the LGBT old age is equally disturbed and challenging; this conception is stressed, mainly, due to the stereotypes towards LGBT people. The ones who experiment old age in a pleasurable and enjoyable way, also represent LGBT old age this way, even though they disregard the discrepancies and the particularities of those groups.

Moreover, the invisibility and the bias identified in the representations suggest the necessity to produce and disseminate knowledge on this group of people, who has shown to be unassisted and disregarded within the population interviewed.

Therefore, it is expected that this research may encourage other studies on this topic, as well as guide practices of gerontology with the elderly, aiming to dissolve negative stereotypes at this life stage.