4 minute read
Gscene Magazine - May 2020 | WWW.GSCENE.COM
LGBTQ+ AGEING
GROWING OLD GRATEFULLY
Jane Traies on the trials and tribulations of growing up lesbian in the second half of the 20th century, and the joy of seeing the changes that have made the queer world what it is today. By Jaq Bayles
Now 75, Jane has lived through many of the defining moments of queer history – most of which she never thought she’d see. So did she and her peers think about growing old when they were in the first flush of youth? “If we did it was only in a very general way, but I do clearly remember something I said to my girlfriend when we were in our 20s. We were very poor students, doing waitressing, and had friends who were better off. I said:
Of course that was when we didn’t know that it would be possible to have children and families.” When I call locally-based historian and author Jane Traies, she has just been discussing with an elderly neighbour how people who have had more years to get used to living alone seem to be dealing with lockdown better. There’s no escaping the grimness of the situation, but Jane is as vibrant as ever, juggling several projects, and, while coronavirus is the subject that tops and tails our chat, its mention is fleeting as we get to the issue at hand.
Born just at the end of the Second World War, Jane grew up in a corner shop – a newsagent and tobacconist – so how true to life was the recent popular BBC2 series Back in Time for the Corner Shop? She and her friends had watched with interest and, while proclaiming it “oversimplified”, Jane says it did show what huge changes have taken place. “But I hate that romanticism of a so-called simpler time. It’s crap. Austerity was no fun in the 1940s. A lot of people were traumatised – what we’d now call PTSD – there was rationing, everything was still in black and white. I get very angry about that white-apron, cupcake view of the time – it was not like that.” That being said: “We’re so lucky. My generation say of ourselves that we’re the fortunate ones. We were born with the Welfare State, free orange juice, can’t remember when there was not the NHS. We were the generation of the pill, the legal reforms of the 1970s and we’ve seen those amazing turnarounds in attitudes towards queer people.” And she’s very aware that generations who came before saw the exact opposite happening.
“For those women who lived together in the 1890s such a scenario was quite acceptable, but by the time the 1920/30s came it was all fingerpointing and innuendo. It must have been incredibly difficult.” Is there a time you’d like to revisit? “I was probably happiest in my 20s, but I wouldn’t want to get back to that homophobia. People like me are pinching ourselves. I could never have imagined it could be like this. In the 1970s that [equal rights] was the goal and aim of people who were campaigning and then at the turn of the century there was the campaign for civil partnerships then equal marriage and now we have those and I’m very glad. I think that living a life of deception is not good for anyone’s mental health – to lie all the time doesn’t do you any good.” As a very active and sharp-minded person, what reminds you that you’ve reached 75? “I’m still surprised by the sight of my aged body. I stick my feet out of bed in the morning and think ‘what old lady’s legs are these?’, because that’s not how I think about myself. I sometimes think ‘no one knows I have long black hair’, because I don’t anymore. It’s your body that tells you you’re old. But also there are now so many stories and memories you realise you must have lived quite a long time to have those.” During that journey Jane hit an unexpected milestone which meant she has “had a whole new life”. “My long-term partnership broke up when I was 60 and it took away all the ideas I’d previously had of what old age would be like. I had to reinvent myself, I moved to Brighton. “I’m so lucky – I’ve lovely friends, I’m completely ‘out’, I’ve lots to do and I’m really enjoying old age in a way I never thought I would. I could never imagine where and how I would be living.”
Jane Traies " ‘no one knows I have long black hair’
What are you looking forward to right now? “I’m looking forward to being able to come out of isolation and get together with my family again – my blood family and my queer family.”
And so it’s full circle to where our talk began and the unprecedented situation the world finds itself in. “However old you are there are things that can still surprise you.”
MORE INFO Jane Traies is the author of The Lives Of Older Lesbians: Sexuality, Identity And The Life Course, and Now You See Me: Lesbian Life
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T @JaneTraies
