Older Lesbians

This is the transcript of a speech given by Lynn Alderson during one of the Building Lesbian community sessions – Building Lesbian Community in Brighton, October 2025.

I wanted to take a few minutes just to talk about the importance of lesbian community to us in later life. And, as we’ve heard already, there are networks and friendship groups created by lesbians that endure and that are a very real support and asset to any lesbians living within them. Many of those networks stretch back to the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s, or at least have their roots there in the sisterhood we tried to make real. What we know from young lesbians today is that they are finding it very difficult to even find other lesbians, let alone create the communities they need and would like to have. And that is part of the reason why these sessions are themed on lesbian community and activism and what we can learn from them.

We need these communities throughout our lives; as a minority that has had to struggle, we have both the need to support one another in an often hostile environment, and the strength that working together grows in us. So, some thoughts on old lesbians!

We don’t stop being lesbians because we get old.

We may or may not be in a relationship. We may or may not be having sex. We may or may not live with another woman, or a group of friends, or in a community. We may live happily alone. We may or may not have children, or family. We may have our chosen family, our lesbian friends, or have stayed close to our contemporaries, going way back with those we knew and fought the good fight with when we were young. We may still be fighting.

Our lives may not contain many or any men. This is not a problem. Relationships and friendships with women are central, fundamental to our lives and are not second best. We may have chosen not to get married, to a man or a woman, this is not because we or our relationships failed.

For many of us our autonomy and independence are highly prized and hard won. We took on all comers to assert our rights, and we lived differently from the women who had come before us. The rights to legal and financial independence and access to education that feminists achieved meant that we had many more choices about how we lived, who we loved, whether we had children, the work we did. Choices and possibilities that many women still do not have today.

But as we become old, we are subject to the same ageism as other women, of course, and the default ‘assumed heterosexual’. I am not going to go into that ageism in any detail, suffice it to say, it’s worse than I ever dreamed it would be. The combination of sexism and ageism too seem to enhance each the other. And there is little or no positive representation of old women in our culture, or consideration of our social needs, let alone lesbians – it’s almost as if we have disappeared. Again.

What I want to say is that my generation has had to challenge stereotypes and assumptions throughout our lives and to make anew ways of living our lives as women, and that that continues to be absolutely necessary. There are just as many myths, assumptions and negative stereotypes about old women as there were about us as young lesbians. If anything, they are even worse and old woman, old lesbian is a favourite target of misogynists everywhere. This is increasingly the case amongst the gender ideologists and incels who somehow manage to threaten and dismiss us at the same time, as both ‘of no value’ and as powerful opponents. And because we are focusing on lesbian community today, I wanted to say how important being part of that community continues to be to us.

Since the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s, the women’s group has been an essential component of many of our lives. It’s been a tool, a way of working, a political cell, a place where we shared expertise and experience, where we could be honest and tell the truth about our lives and support one another. I have been in consciousness-raising groups, writing and publishing groups, health-oriented groups learning about our bodies, political action and theory groups, walking groups, housing groups, even Strictly Come Dancing groups and many others. My life, like many other feminists has been lived collectively, whatever our other choices about how we lived were. Some were women’s groups, some lesbian groups and many a mix. And I think we can tell from what we’ve heard today that lesbians have been especially good at creating community and working together, be it for fun, or from our passions, or from necessity.

When you finally become old, rather than ageing, older, or senior, or whatever softer word we often use ‒ and I’m deliberately using old ‒ the life you are leading enters many other dimensions which you haven’t encountered before, let alone as a lesbian feminist.

Issues of caring and disability (though not new to all by any means); the imminence of death and all the issues surrounding that; the way one sees the life one has lived; the nature of friendship and family; the fear of illness – all these things confront you in much more immediate and urgent ways. And perhaps some of these things are a little more difficult for lesbian feminists who have relied so much on our strength, our independence, our autonomy. When you can no longer run or defend yourself, and you become more dependent on others to do things for you, it cuts to the roots of how we see and value ourselves. Many of us are not part of the communities and families we were born into, or the heterosexual communities within which we live. And it’s not been made easy for us to set up housing co-ops or projects; there have been a number of attempts that have foundered in bureaucracy and a lack of official support.

Just as we came together as young women fighting for liberation, we now need to come together to face the last stages of our lives. The isolation and loneliness that many old people face, the way our voices are no longer heard or valued, the loss of family and friends who knew who you were and are still, and who have been witnesses or companions to our lives – we are just as affected as others by loss and grief and dread.

Fourteen years ago, a group of us older lesbians came together. All of us had been involved in 1970s feminism and we wanted to use the same consciousness-raising, collective thinking techniques and ways of working together to help us through the last stage of our lives. We as a group are a little smaller, but still together and have a commitment to seeing each other through to the end. And I want to tell you that it works. Just as it did for us thinking through collectively, all the problems we were confronted with as young women and lesbians, it works for us as old women. In fact, in some ways its deeper. We have so much experience now to draw on. In our group we are not all the same either in the ways we live, our opinions or our skills and personalities, but we are able to trust and to take risks in exploring both the things that frighten us and the things that bring us joy. And that’s important. We use consciousness-raising to face the hard stuff, talking as honestly as we can about everything from the loss of our dearest partners and friends, to the loss of the mental and physical abilities we once had. But we also take time to do things we love, to share good food with each other, to recognise the things that nourish and sustain us, to have some fun and to laugh, to appreciate the beauty of the natural world, and to treasure the love that we have for women and the richness that that has brought to our lives.

Community to me then, as an older lesbian, is absolutely essential. It is profound support; it is continued learning and growing; it is the keeper of my history and our histories; it is both the way I understand and live my life; it is the most important way I maintain a sense of worth and individuality – and a source of joy. 

Whatever your age. Be in a women’s group. Be in many. That sisterhood and solidarity, that way of learning and giving one another support, and the courage to go on challenging and changing ‒ this is the most important legacy we are able to leave. Our lesbian communities, however small and beleaguered cannot exist without that coming together as women who centre and understand other women, and who care for and continue to love one another.