About a month ago I wrote about my eye-opening night out with the older lesbians from the Ten Forty Matrix. I mentioned that we talked about a bunch of issues affecting senior dykes — from LGBT aged-care to coming out to your grandkids.
There’s plenty more I wanted to report on. Here are a few more highlights.
Early in the evening one of the ladies asked, “Do older women have sex?” I wasn’t sure why she asked me — shouldn’t she be spilling those beans? The eruption of chuckles made me realise the question was rhetorical and for their amusement. I’m still waiting for the dirty details.
One dyke said she was sick of hearing about blokes on the news and wanted more coverage of women. This turned into a conversation about the general lack of chicks on TV — but I did learn their favourite female personalities are Annabel Crabb, Penny Wong (Parliamentary Question Time anyone?) and, of course, the most excellent Hannah Gadsby.
One lady suggested there should be a lesbian report on the news each night, right before the weather. I asked if she meant a lesbian should do the sport, but nope, she wanted a few minutes coverage of lesbian issues broadcast right around the country. I imagined everything from Kerryn Phelps standing up for equal rights to a cute report on Ruby Rose’s dog. Goddamit — give us the full half-hour!
On a more serious note, the women spoke about how Rudd’s 2008 law reforms, which removed discrimination against same-sex couples, have affected them — and surprisingly it wasn’t all good. Gay couples now copped Centrelink investigations into their relationship status and lost pension income if they were found to be de factos.
While this is exactly what straight couples deal with, the problem was that there was no ‘grandfather’ clause phasing it in over a number of years, allowing gays near retirement age time to prepare for the new reality. Many of the ladies had been financially independent up until this point and had a hard time dealing with the changes.
Finally, the women felt that gay papers, including this one, don’t cover enough lesbian issues — let alone issues that affect older dykes. I promised I’d do what I could to make sure older voices were heard and encouraged them to get involved in the queer media.
Don’t know about you — but I reckon these older dykes are pretty newsworthy.
You have certainly stirred the pot, Monique, but I guess if you can accept the criticisms and are prepared to try your hand at making a difference there, as you said you would, then your faux pas will have helped us older LGBTIs start drawing attention to ourselves. We need to continue being activists otherwise how are you current lot going to be able to accept growing older? You don’t really have a choice anymore than we did. It starts immediately after birth. You are one hour old, one day old and so on until you are as old as I am now. Being one of those very, very old gay men in the LGBTI acronym, I think you have made us, as well as older lesbians, realise that we need to tell it “like it is” for ourselves as we did way back when!
Hi Monique,
Thank you for trying to make us more visible. I believe you are well intentioned. But can you please stop calling us ‘ladies’ (a noun)and assuming we are part of the ‘queer’ culture. Queer theory is a good read if you have the time and not something everyone GLBTI identifies with.
Helen
It looks like we’ve been discovered as newsworthy. But of course there’s two factors at play here, first, how we are presented by younger third parties, and second, it’s the eye of the beholder that counts for much of the interpretation. Perhaps a discussion forum by, for and about older lesbians would be useful.
“I’m still waiting for the dirty details.” Oh please Monique – grow up!
And how about a bit of intelligent analysis in response to the comment re “sick of hearing about blokes on the news”. Have you stopped to think about the manner and extent of male domination in our society – yes even advanced western societies like Australia treat women like 2nd class citizens? Ask yourself why there’s such a disproportion of female to male leaders in commerce, industry, politics, education, engineering, etc etc. Have you wondered why besides Gina Reinhardt how few women make the rich list? And have you asked yourself why on the domestic front the proportion of domestic violence victims are overwhelmingly female, how the feminisation of poverty is an acknowledged fact and that sick and frail old men are mostly looked after by their wife/female partner yet there’s far fewer old & frail women cared for by males. Please don’t try to explain these differences by biology or the simplistic notion that “it’s those women’s choice”.
As for gay papers not having much lesbian content – well if it turns out to be the puerile stuff you’ve dribbled out, we’re all better off without it.
Many older lesbians have been activists over the years, raising issues of gender inequality, speaking out about discrimination against lesbians (which differs from that experienced by het women and by gay men). Why don’t you take the challenge & become informed about the political & social conditions which shaped the experiences of older lesbians & stop seeing our lives through your own experiences & narrow spectrum?
No don’t think Annabel is gay! But lots of gay fans.
Wait, so Annabel Crabb is a lesbian? I never thought I could love her more than I currently do, but there you go.