Old age and male sexuality: ?to laugh, or to cry?

Sexuality in old age, with base in a critical overhaul of gerontologica literature, is analyzed, with emphasis on Brazilian studies. This analysis articulates with data of an ethnographic research carried out with old men in the Brazil. It concludes refering to mutual relations between conceptions of aging and sexuality, considering the importance of gender, generation and social insertion. Also it indicates relations between old age, sexuality and manifestations of virility; as well as between the antagonistic models of activity and disengagement, on the one hand, and sexuality in the old age, by another one. Its important note how these models are maintained in the analyzis of the sexual behavior in old age, and its confluence in that analysis is not independent of the cultural context.