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

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?