The Lives of Older Lesbians: Sexuality, Identity & the Life Course PDF
Preview The Lives of Older Lesbians: Sexuality, Identity & the Life Course
THE LIVES OF OLDER LESBIANS Sexuality, Identity & the Life Course Jane Traies The Lives of Older Lesbians Jane T raies The Lives of Older Lesbians Sexuality, Identity & the Life Course Jane Traies Centre for Cultural Studies University of Sussex Brighton , United Kingdom ISBN 978-1-137-55642-4 ISBN 978-1-137-55643-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-55643-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016942737 © Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2016 Th e author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Th is work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and trans- mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Th e use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Th e publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover illustration: © Chariclo / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper Th is Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature Th e registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London Prefa ce Stories, as Ken Plummer (2013) reminds us, are ‘our road maps, our tour guides, our key clues to unravelling any culture’. Th e ability to tell stories is one of the things that make us human, and telling our own story is the way we claim kinship with other people. Stories are a way of creating community: it follows, then, that those whose stories are not told can never fully belong. Th is book began, nearly a decade ago now, with the impulse to pre- serve and honour the untold stories of some of my older friends, deeply closeted lesbians of the generation before mine whose secret lives and loves were going with them to the grave. My fi rst intention was sim- ply to produce a collection of oral histories—believing, with Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy (1997), that such work not only adds new facts to the historical record, but can also help us to explore subjectivity through individual memory. Quite soon, however, I came across the writings of that feisty old lesbian feminist, Barbara Macdonald. She grumbled warn- ingly that if well-meaning researchers confi ne their interest in old lesbians to making them the subjects of history, we run the risk of devaluing their experiences in the present and of colluding with the cultural invisibility of older women (Macdonald and Rich 1983). I was much impressed by this warning: I knew something about cultural invisibility. As a young woman I had looked in vain for role models, for representations of les- bians that went beyond mysogynist caricature or pornographic fantasy. v vi Preface In middle age I had found the available stereotypes even more limited: popular culture’s only representations of middle-aged lesbians were (and still are) predatory, menopausal neurotics. But even negative stereotypes are some acknowledgement of one’s existence: now I am old, there are no representations of me at all. Old women in popular culture are either ‘grannies’ or sad spinsters: they are not ever, it seems, lesbians. If I wanted to see my refl ection, I was going to have to make my own mirror. And, as one of my aims in writing this book was to redress the invisibility of older lesbians, it became important to fi nd a way of foregrounding their current lives and experiences, as well as preserving their hidden histories. O ver several years those early ideas evolved into a large-scale, mixed- methods academic research project, gathering not only life stories, but also a great deal of quantitative data from an unprecedentedly large sur- vey sample of some 400 lesbian-identifi ed women over 60. As a conse- quence, Th e Lives of Older Lesbians is about much more than oral history: it examines present lives and future possibilities, as well as the impact of the past. In doing so it is—necessarily and usefully—much concerned with facts and fi gures; but personal testimonies and tale-telling have remained central to the whole undertaking. Stories, as Plummer (2013) also notes, are powerful: they can raise challenges, provoke change and set new agendas. I should like to think that Th e Lives of Older Lesbians might contribute to doing exactly that. Ditchling, UK Jane Traies Acknowledgements R esearching and writing this book brought me into contact with scores of wonderfully diverse and interesting people, took me to places I might otherwise never have visited and—incidentally—gave me new ways of understanding my own story. For all this I have to thank, above all, the hundreds of older lesbians who contributed to the research. I am enor- mously grateful to all the women who participated in the focus groups, completed the questionnaire or shared their stories. From its beginning my research was guided and strengthened by my academic supervisors at the Universities of Birmingham and Sussex, Charlotte Ross, Sally Munt and Alison Phipps; and later by the generos- ity of a growing international network of academics now studying non- heterosexual ageing, among whom I am particularly grateful to Kathy Almack, Margaret Cruikshank, Doreen Fumia, Andrew King, Yvette Taylor, Richard Ward, Sue Westwood and Jill Wilkens. Th anks, too, to Daniel Burdsey of the University of Brighton (a fi ne sociologist whose work I would admire even if I weren’t his aunt) for his practical help and comradeship throughout the process. I owe as many debts of gratitude outside the academy. My thanks to Philippa Grand and Judith Allan at Palgrave Macmillan, for their help and patience in making this book a reality; to Val Bond and Betty Saunders, Rose Bunker, Tim Burdsey, Catherine Jackson, Janet Jones, Kate Watters and Barbara Young, who at various stages listened, argued, vii viii Acknowledgements read drafts and contributed ideas; and to all those, friends and family, whose enthusiasm and interest have kept me going through the inevitable diffi culties and discouragements of such a long project. Copyright Acknowledgements Some material now included in Chaps. 2 , 4 and 8 fi rst appeared as part of ‘“Women Like Th at”: Older Lesbians in the UK’ in Ward, R., Rivers, I. and Sutherland, M. (Eds.), Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Ageing: Biographical Approaches for Inclusive Care and Support (pp. 67–82), copy- right © Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2012, and is reproduced here by per- mission of Jessica Kingsley Publishers. An earlier version of Chap. 4 appeared as ‘Old lesbians in the UK: community and friendship’ in J ournal of Lesbian Studies 19(1) pp. 35–49, 2015, (Eds.), M. Cruikshank and S. Raphael, and is reprinted by permis- sion of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd., h ttp://www.tandfonline. com ) . Parts of Chaps. 3 and 4 are reprinted by permission of the Publishers from ‘Becoming visible: de-marginalising older lesbians in LGBT ageing discourse’, in A geing and Sexualities, Elizabeth Peel and Rosie Harding (Eds.), 2015. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 77–96. Copyright © 2015. A signifi cant proportion of Chap. 5 fi rst appeared in Traies, J. and Munt, S. R., ‘Health Narratives of Older British Lesbians’, in Q ueering Health: Critical Challenges To Normative Health and Healthcare , edited by Laetitia Zeeman, Kay Aranda and Alec Grant (2014) and is reproduced with the kind permission of PCCS Books, Monmouth. Contents 1 Introduction: Finding Older Lesbians 1 2 Hidden in Plain Sight: Home, Family and Relationships 41 3 In and Out of the Closet: Community and Friendship 73 4 Learning Diff erence: Childhood and Adolescence 99 5 Finding a Place: Spaces of Liberation 125 6 Gender and Politics: Butches, Femmes and Feminists 155 7 Telling Stories: ‘Suff ering, Surviving and Surpassing’ 175 8 Looking Ahead: Older Lesbians Talk About the Future 207 9 Conclusion: ‘Now You See Me…’ 229 Index 237 ix
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