INTER

SECTION

HEALTH IN DIFFERENCE 5 CONFERENCE, MELBOURNE, 20-22 JANUARY 2005

STUFF AGEISM! IT’S TIME TO GET ACTIVE

A joint presentation at the Health In Difference 5 Conference,

Melbourne, 20-22 January 2005, (Concurrent Session: “Activism & Ageism”)

by Mannie De Saxe and Kendall Lovett

Recorded voice/music introduction: Tom Lehrer, “When you are old and gray.”

Since I still appreciate you, Let’s find love while we may.

Because I know I’ll hate you When you are old and grey.

So say you love me here and now, I’ll make the most of that.

Say you love and trust me, For I know you’ll disgust me

When you’re old and getting fat.

An awful debility, A lessened utility,

A loss of mobility Is a strong possibility.

In all probability I’ll lose my virility

And you your fertility And desirability,

And this liability Of total sterility

Will lead to hostility And a sense of agility

While we still have facility, For we’ll soon reach senility

And lose the ability.

Your teeth will start to go, dear, Your waist will start to spread.

In twenty years or so, dear, I’ll wish that you were dead.

I’ll never love you then at all The way I do today.

So please remember, When I leave in December,

I told you so in May.

KL: That was satirist, Tom Lehrer, recorded 45 years ago and this is a quote from an essay by Canadian writer, lesbian Jane Rule, which appeared in The Body Politic back in December 1982. “In a culture that still sees any sexual activity not linked with procreation as perverse –whether between children, people of the same sex or old people-- we need to rediscover erotic tenderness for old age, in its lusts and pains, its beauty and fragility.”

Has much changed in the hetero world since? or for that matter in the understanding and acceptance of ageing by the lesbian, gay and transgender communities?

MDS: Coming out as a gay man in 1988, aged 61 –an age considered very much at that time (and in 2005) in the gay community, as advanced geriatric! Almost terminal!!! And meeting Ken Lovett in the Gay Solidarity Group in Sydney, becoming his partner in 1993 and here we are after 12 years together, both still alive at 78 and 82, with hopefully at least another good and healthy 12 years–we should be so lucky!! I was married for 31 years with a wife and 3 children. All three were adults when my wife and I divorced. I’m now a grandfather with 3 granddaughters.

KL: I was actually 50 when I demonstrated for the very first time in the street as an openly gay man. It happened on a Sunday morning in November 1972 in front of St Clements Anglican Church in Mosman, NSW. It was at a gay lib protest against the sacking of the church secretary for being open about his homosexuality. He had appeared with his lover and two lesbians on the ABC television programme, ChequerBoard. My philosophy is simply if you want things to change, do it yourself! I see no need to alter my philosophy just because I’m an ancient old gay libber.

MDS: At our age we should be lying horizontally, prostrate, preferably in nursing homes, out of sight, out of mind, not being active or activist, silent on all issues –political or otherwise. Instead, thanks to the support and encouragement we receive from our fairy godmothers—Jo Harrison of the University of South Australia in Adelaide; Rosemary Bristow of the Hunter AIDS Council of NSW in Newcastle; and Christine Bird of the CrossRoads Community Centre in Sydney-- we are kept going with great wit, humour, and understanding from all three of them regardless of our eccentricities.

KL: In 1970, we were still considered less than human and fit only for jail, the medico or the psychiatrist. It has taken us over 30 years to get to where we are at the present time but still far from equal with the hetero mob.

What did we do in the seventies and eighties, which made a difference for us? We challenged society, the lawmakers and the enforcers openly to rethink their prejudiced ideas about us. And it’s what we have to continue doing openly, especially those of us who are already into or rapidly approaching what the media call “the ageing crisis.”

MDS: We believe there’s a mindset in our communities that by 55 you have to put away the banners and accept the inevitable –retirement and a motorised wheelchair at 65 or so, sex just a memory, your looks gone, and increased health problems restrict your enjoyment. It’s all downhill from there. In an article, The Most Mortal Sin of All –Growing Old, in The Age on Monday, 10^th January 2005, Swinburne lecturer, Trish Bolton, made a telling observation. She wrote: “There is an underlying truth that most of us prefer not to face –few in our society really care about old people.”

KL: We had a letter from a Sydney gay friend a few weeks ago who has recently had to assist a fragile aged relative find an acceptable nursing home in another state. He made the point that the communication skills of doctors and nurses are often deliberately poor in order to maintain their power over confused and anxious patients and their families. Of course, he said, they have the upper hand and become defensive when someone tries to be assertive.

MDS: One of the action groups we remain involved in is InterSection. It started in Sydney in 1996 following the publishing of a Sutherland Shire report on how discrimination in its community services affected sexual minorities. The Shire had provided a small grant to Christine Bird of CrossRoads Community Centre to conduct the study and produce the Tolerance Report. It was a damning report and proved that lesbians, gays and transgender people continued to be treated abominably.Christine felt that the study although tiny was only the tip of the iceberg when applied throughout local government agencies. She wrote to local and state health departments as well as lesbian, gay, transgender, and HIV/AIDS organisations inviting representatives to a meeting to discuss the situation. The outcome was the group InterSection. The most significant achievement of InterSection has been the changes that the NSW Department of Local Government made in 1998 to its mandatory and non-mandatory requirements for certain minority groups. In its Social/ Community Planning and Reporting: Guidelines & Manual: under Optional Target Groups it stated “Councils may also consider including information in the plan about other specific groups relevant to their community. These groups could include low-income earners, gay/lesbian and transgender people, families, new residents and people who are unemployed.

KL: When we came to live in Melbourne at the beginning of 2001, we decided to bring InterSection with us. That same year our new local Darebin Council was inviting comment from residents on its Draft Strategy, the result of a Review of its Aged and Disability Services. We made a submission stressing the need for Darebin to recognise that it had a population of ageing and disabled lesbians and gay men. There was no mention of them being visible in any of the focus groups in the review study. Yet we knew that there was an HIV/AIDS health clinic in Northcote which is within Darebin Council. We received a personal response from the Service Planning Officer. She assured us they were aware of the gay, lesbian and transgender (GLT) resident’s needs. However, when the Final Strategy was released there was no mention of there being any GLT aged, or their needs being met, in Darebin.

MDS: Undeterred we approached our local councillor and after months of to-ing and fro-ing, we were advised that he would present our request at the next Council Meeting for a research project to discover the extent of the GLT population in the Council area. We attended the meeting, which decided that when funds were available, sometime in the future, Darebin should consider conducting a possible survey to determine the extent of the area’s GLT residents. We aren’t holding our breath but intend to keep on keeping on! After all, as Jo Harrison says: “Everything around us is assumed to be hetero normative.” Which reminds us of an interview Mary Kostakidis did on ABC Classic FM with a well-known writer, broadcast during a morning programme recently, who told her that an admired ageing female teacher in his schooldays was a disappointed woman because she had never married.

Around the same time as the Darebin affair, we attended a seminar and forum in Melbourne on ageing issues run by the Council On The Ageing (COTA). The audience was invited to ask questions of the panel. So we asked about any specific aged care services for lesbians and gay men. We were told that as far as they knew there were none. We learned as well that gay and lesbian ageing was not included in COTA’s policy agenda. Despite further attempts to introduce the issue with both COTA and National Seniors we have received no positive feedback. We are not finished with either of them!

KL: So, back to 1970, we need to get out and do it for ourselves –educate our own and the unwilling hets in the way we are best at … to agitate politically, shake up, disturb the status quo, excite, discuss and keep the matter before the public.

Because both of us, as gay men, are in the 75-plus age group, we consider that we are in a position to be able to show and tell that activism does not cease because the bones have begun to creak, age lines are showing, the waist is expanding and the hair is white. Of course not everyone is able to follow our lead, like …

MDS: + Produce a newsletter;

+ regularly update a website of our own;

+ carry a Lesbian and Gay Solidarity banner in demos we support;

+ harangue our local government councillor on lesbian and gay issues;

+ ask questions of our State and Federal politicians by email, letters and submissions, and at forums on lesbian and gay ageing issues;

+ as members of our local public library, we request particularly new lesbian and gay titles most of which they don’t have so they order them for us. Then anyone can access them;

+ harass the State and National seniors organisations for policy changes to recognise lesbians, gays and transgender people as well as sexual minorities in the Aboriginal and ethnic communities;

KL: Each year Mannie and I also suggest to our local Council that its programme for Seniors Festival Week include an event acceptable to older lesbians and gay men and, if not, to highlight the Rainbow Tea Dance, an event for older lesbians and older gay men. It has become part of the Official Victorian Seniors Programme nowadays;

+ we have a special interest too in keeping the responsible authorities aware of the essential upkeep required for the Fairfield AIDS Memorial Garden in Melbourne and the Sydney Park SPAIDS Memorial Groves and AIDS Reflection Area in Sydney;

+and we continue to be involved as volunteers in the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives (ALGA). Incidentally, the Archives have an Exhibition currently at the Melbourne Town Hall. It’s entitled Queer Melbourne in the 1950s. It’s in the City Gallery in Swanston Street. Well worth a visit next week.

MDS: The gay, lesbian and transgender media are reluctant to talk about ageing although we have been interviewed on both Joy Radio and Bent Television. The body beautiful is what gets people reading, listening, watching. Ken and I are still alive and well and living on our own. We manage our daily lives as well as younger people –without a car and without assistance from organisations, except of course that we are age pensioners. When one of us is no longer there to help the other in times of emergency, the remaining one may have difficulties. No infrastructure exists for GLT geriatrics and a hostile, straight, homophobic (read religious right) world is out there waiting to force us back into our closets. While there is breath in our bodies, we will resist to the last!We will continue to work with Councils to ensure GLT support from them and their service providers AND our service providers! A group ignored in the discussions so far, is the group of People Living With HIV/AIDS.

Until the change of treatments became available in the second half of the 1990s, people living with HIV/AIDS did not expect to reach old age. Fortunately, this has now proved to be possible for many and we need to include in our provisions of services for ageing GLTs the possible different needs of this group.

We hope this will open up the discussion in our media and the gay, lesbian and transgender social and politically active groups and organisations not just in Melbourne and Sydney but also in regional centres as well as Mature Age Gays in Sydney,Vintage Men in Melbourne together with Matrix Guild Victoria.

Conclusion: repeat recorded voice/music: Tom Lehrer, “When you are old and gray.”

Please note: The night before this joint presentation an accident occurred which prevented one of the co-authors from attending and taking part. At short notice, his part (KL) in the paper was read by Keith Stodden, a member of the Australian Lesbian & Gay Archives (Inc).