Abstract
News media are an important source of information about dementia, and can influence public attitudes towards persons living with this disease. The purpose of this research was to explore public understanding of sexuality and dementia by investigating how this issue was represented in English language online news media sources (e.g. articles, editorials) from North America and the UK published between 2014 and 2015. These publications were analyzed discursively by drawing on critical disability, sexuality and dementia scholarship to identify and interrogate dominant discourses within which sexuality and dementia are described and understood. The analysis demonstrates that representations are predominantly negative, consisting of descriptions of sexual violence or harassment committed by or against persons living with dementia. Examples included reports of spouses of persons with dementia charged with sexual assault, reports of sexual assaults committed by residents with dementia living in long-term care, and reports of men with dementia exhibiting “inappropriate sexual behaviors” in public. These representations very rarely featured the voices or perspectives of persons living with dementia, and reflect stereotypical and essentialist ideologies about the nature of dementia, gender norms, and socio-cultural anxieties about older and disabled sexualities. These findings demonstrate that media representations construct the sexuality of persons with dementia as revolting and dangerous, or the abject. In doing so, they contribute to the ongoing stigmatization of persons with dementia and the suppression of their sexual rights. There is thus a critical need for advancing alternative representations that challenge stigmatization of the sexual lives of persons with dementia.