Elderly lesbians are wonderful. Respect and protect them at all costs. They fought hard for our rights.

And they are STILL fighting so hard for their and our rights as women and lesbians, in spite of all the shit that gets rained down on them by society at large and the post-modern “q*** theory” squad in particular.

Due to many factors, it’s been very difficult for me to develop connections with lesbians my age. Older lesbians, especially those at Michfest, have been the ones who brought me into the wider community, gave me advice, provided models of healthy relationships with self and others. The ones who actually listened to me at all.

Sometimes, I come across a certain type of rhetoric about older lesbians. This rhetoric claims that our foremothers are now irrelevant. Yes, the same brave lesbians who were at the epicenter of the Second Wave, the ones who who marched in the street and created rape-crisis lines, who held womyn’s dances in the basements of the one church in town which would accept them, the dykes who fought for abortion rights and equal pay all while creating music and art and literature that the rest of the world laughed at!

When I see that they are written off as fearful, aging bigots in a few small women’s communities doomed to disappear (as the New York Times showed them) it makes me so angry and so sad.

The world they created allowed and allows me to exist. They aren’t dead, and as long as I live, their love, their creativity, their courage, and their power will still be present in me.

From Geeky Amazon Womon