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The Lives of Older Lesbians pp 41–71Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Hidden in Plain Sight: Home, Family and Relationships

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Abstract

In this chapter, Traies brings together statistical data from a large-scale survey of some four hundred older lesbians with personal testimonies from life history interviews and autobiographies, to describe the varied domestic arrangements and personal relationships of the older lesbians she studied. Using an intersectional approach, this chapter illustrates the diversity of the older lesbian ‘community’. There are many similarities as well as differences between older lesbians and their heterosexual counterparts. These similarities call into question the very identity category ‘older lesbian’ and raise a recurrent theme of this book: the tension between the ways in which older lesbians are just like other older people and the ways in which their sexual orientation might make them collectively ‘different’.

We have, a lot of us, led what would be looked at as quite respectable lives, parallel with everybody else in the population. We’ve been president of the WI, we’ve been in the Church, we’ve probably run the local Brownie pack; we’ve just lived ordinary, women’s lives. And are, therefore, quite invisible. But we are there

(Betty, born 1936).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Broadcast as part of Channel 4’s Out on Tuesday series, this rare media representation of a group of old lesbians was fondly remembered by many of the interviewees. Although it has not been preserved by Channel 4 or in the British Film Institute’s mediatheque collection, it still exists in many a grainy VHS recording in the homes of older lesbians.

  2. 2.

    Unfortunately, I omitted to include a question about autoeroticism in the questionnaire. The subject of female masturbation is yet another cultural taboo, which, combined with asexual stereotypes of old women, means that we know little about this aspect of older women’s sexual lives.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Jane Traies

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  1. Jane Traies
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Traies, J. (2016). Hidden in Plain Sight: Home, Family and Relationships. In: The Lives of Older Lesbians. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55643-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55643-1_2

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

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