Elderlez Dataloungers, tell me about being a lesbian in the ‘80s

WTF, Is YMF now operating his alters under different authorship?

I was working on my career as a computer programmer and hitting all the lesbian bars in Boston.

Many lesbians were trying to separate from gay men and resented the media attention AIDS was getting.

[quote]Many lesbians were trying to separate from gay men and resented the media attention AIDS was getting.

Yep. I don’t recall them doing anything to help gay men with AIDS, so I don’t know where these stories that they were martyrs come from.

[quote] Yep. I don’t recall them doing anything to help gay men with AIDS, so I don’t know where these stories that they were martyrs come from.

I only hear them on DL. And it's always coming from lesbians themselves (usually before a plea to do what they want) never gay men telling of their experience.

[Quote] never gay men telling of their experience.

Well, those gay men are dead, Shirley.

No, it doesn't come *from gay men who use this website*.

Unless you think those gay men weren't helping out other gay men and had no knowledge about what was happening.

INDIGO GIRLS

NO NUTLOAF

CLEANER VAGINA

Hanging out in gay bars and going to punk/post punk shows. Being involve in AIDS and LGB activist stuff.

The term LGB didn't even exist then.

And I don't believe anyone who uses that term now would've been involved with AIDS stuff.

I went to a a GLB group in college, 1990-‘91.

Yes, G for Gay used to be the first letter. L was never first in the eighties. Until lesbians kicked up. It began to switch in the '90s, I believe.

It began as Gay Rights, then became GLB, then GLBT, then LGBT...

Lesbians were not really in the ABCWhateverYouPrefer movement then. Most of them were still more interested in the more socially acceptable feminism (which was beginning to lose steam from its '70s peak reach) it was only after gay men began making inroads in the '90s and it seemed that things like marriage could be possible that lesbians began to join us.

The defining gay issue in the '80s was one that only affected men so that acted as a canyon.

That was when lesbian started to enter common parlance too. On The Golden Girls Blanche's 'Isn't Danny Thomas one?' joke was from season two, by season seven things were more developed and she and Dorothy were appearing on that Lesbian Lovers of Miami special.

R4 heterosexual women were the ones who helped the gays dying of AIDS. NOT Lesbians.

No, it was other gay men or nobody at all.

It was Shirley Bassey.

There was something even more widespread, more insidious than the onslaught of HIV/AIDS. It touched every lesbian, every couple from Newport Beach to Nantucket, femme or butch, young or old, black or white or Latina.

It was an epidemic.

It was....

LESBIAN BED DEATH

Lesbians are either white, Jewish, or extremely exotic (e.g. Djibouti but daughter of a diplomat). Not many Latina lesbians but a few.

Sounds like the Elderlez had tier own set of hissues than Eldergays

Lesbians were at the forefront of helping out during the AIDS crisis. I see you guys weren't born then.

R21 amen, sister.

Lesbianity flourished with no stigma of AIDS transmission.

R21 and R22 are lesbians.

Smart people of DL:

Know that this is a division thread. If you’ve been around here awhile, you know that these types of threads pop up relentlessly around voting time, to drive us away from each other.

Don’t buy it. Sisters love their brothers. We always have.

I remember the early 80s, and we didn’t know definitively how AIDS was transmitted. At that time, we didn’t know the difference between HIV and AIDS, either. Gay women had no more information than the CDC or our gay brothers. But we stepped up. We stepped right up and took care of our own.

Dental dams were the new frontier among women, I remember hanging a great poster which read “I Want To Dam You In Paris.” We, the gay women, simply didn’t know how this plague was contracted early on.

I wonder if people younger than me will read enough or talk enough or ask enough questions about those years. We, gay men and women, got close to each other, really close. I’m proud that we stuck together, and to this day, in my late 50’s age group, I still feel that deep connection between us.

Love you, gents.

Some Dataloungers weren't born until the 90's, or later, Gramps.

[quote]But we stepped up.

There it is again.

I want to hear from gay men who lived through then about who exactly was stepping up.

[quote]Know that this is a division thread. If you’ve been around here awhile, you know that these types of threads pop up relentlessly around voting time, to drive us away from each other.

I'm seeing a lot of them too and am expecting more as November draws closer.

But most of them have to do with transphobia which lesbians have allowed to infect the movement.

I'm not a lesbian, nor do I play one on telly. But I did want to put in something to this discussion. Aside from a very few nasty bitches, who always were and always will be horrible, the level of compassion and deep sadness I saw in my lesbian friends when their male loved ones and family members seroconverted and eventually (this was during the first and second waves of AIDS, when being HIV+ really meant certain early death), truly moved me.

It was a horrible time. Love and respect to Z-W at r31.

R29 seems to have difficulty absorbing our history. Most of the men you want to hear from died, r29. Every day another funeral. The 80s were heartbreaking. Just one death after another. Even today I still cry about it. Who would want to relive this? R30, you’re an ass. Quit making this about yourself. Jesus.

[quote]Most of the men you want to hear from died, [R29].

Well, given that this is a gay men's website (or is supposed to be) and we keep hearing about how old the average age is here there should be some gay men who lived through the '80s who can tell what they saw.

It was wonderful. I had a mullet hair cut, drove a pickup truck, and picked up any woman I wanted by bragging about my ability to give multiple orgasms, to gay or straight women. I must have given a thousand orgasms between 1986 and about 1999. Even caused a “straight” woman to leave her husband after a month with me.

[quote]I must have given a thousand orgasms between 1986 and about 1999.

That's impressive. A lot of gay men were terrified of sex following AIDS.

R35, very true and framed our approach at sex for life. I probably would be a different person if it wasn't for AIDS crisis - not to mention the discrimination and harassment/abuse of anyone who was gay.

I rarely had sex in the 80s and tad more in the 90s with it tapering off. Also, didn't really let anyone get that close to me as a need to protect myself (also fiercely independent).

We definitely went through hell and we are who we are today for it - better or worse....

As R25 stated, we always need to be unified as we have the privilege of being in a family that protects each other!

Lesbians did step up. As nurses. As health care providers.

Whether is was all part of some bigger pro-gay male agenda on the part of lesbians is irrelevant. They were there when we needed them. Period.

I worked in a major city hospital during those years, OP, and I distinctly remember that it was the lesbians who were first to raise a hand to help our dying. There was a lot of fear in the early days, for good reason. No one knew how the virus was transmitted at first. It took guts to be anywhere near us.

R25 is 💯. Bless you, sister

Gay man here, born in the 60s, coming into adulthood in the 80s.

Some lesbians stepped up for sure. One good friend worked at the first AIDS phone hotline, counseling people. She was a gold-star, and I was concerned about her knowledge of gay male sexuality/anatomy, but she was a trooper. Very committed. One of the first. (Note: gay men were hardly just sitting around waiting to die, though: it seemed like every other man I knew would be involved in GMHC or ACT-UP within a couple of years.)

Other lesbians I knew were far more hard-core separatists at the time: very active in Women Against Pornography (I had some personal issues with that, but whatever...). The first time I heard about animal-rights/animal testing activism was on account of these women, mid-80s. Environmental activists as well. Very into martial arts and self-defense, protesting every day violence against women when no straight women appeared involved at all.

They were all pretty decent to me but I do think a number of them truly despised men, gay or straight. (It's very easy to forget how institutionalized old-school sexism was when you never lived through it.)

It feels like a very different landscape now. AIDS, queer activism, and second- and third-wave feminism have changed the world. But not enough.

There were absolutely lesbians who blamed gay men for AIDS.

' R41, if you’re gonna troll, at least have some style. At least have some class.

You’re a bore, dear.

Radical feminism was definitely not sympathetic to the Plague.

Zzz...

So much revision and ignorance in this thread. Lesbians were very much involved in ACT-UP in many cities. MY friends used "LBG" and "GBL" , though not at first. I could go on, but why?

This site is so tiresome lately.

And in any case, I didn't say that's what we called it back then. It's the term I'm using now, see? Troll on though.