Queerguru’s Janet Prolman reviews OLD LESBIANS a remarkable look back at ‘herstory”.

“Old Lesbians “is a little tidbit of a film from https://gooddocs.net/ .

Directed by Megan McDonough in 2023, it is a mere 29 minutes long but packs a great deal of herstory into each minute. The film documents the Old Lesbians Oral Herstory Project (OLOHP), which was started in Houston in 1998 by Arden Eversmeyer. After losing her partner of thirty years, she bought a small audio recorder and began collecting life stories of older lesbians, most of whom had lived their lives in secrecy before it was “safe” to come out.

The filmmakers use live interviews, reenactments, photos, collages, memorabilia, and random old footage (most likely from TV advertisements) of women “fulfilling the female role” as housewives. I say that about the “female role” because one of the interviewees tells us the following:

“Some of the things I was diagnosed with were sexual deviance, not grasping and fulfilling the female role, and for being angry.”

Yes, being angry.  I’m angry just realizing just how extremely one’s essential identity was pathologized during my lifetime.

More quotes:

“In these days, we were all hidden and we were never out. If somebody was in the closet, it was so deep you couldn’t find the door. It’s like feeling your way in the dark.”

It’s hard for me to fathom that, old lesbian that I am, my first same sex relationship was after the Stonewall rebellion, though only by a matter of weeks. Yet our affair was just like this. These two teenage girls didn’t get the memo. Nobody on earth knew about us, and we didn’t understand that this was to be our identity. We never said the “L” word and imagined that we’d meet the “right” sort of men in college. Yeah…no.

Another connection that is made more obvious by this film is that queer men sometimes owned homes together, aka “bachelor pads,” perhaps co- inhabited by a florist and a hairdresser. Meanwhile, women could not get a mortgage or even a credit card of their own.

Some of the women in the OLOHP collection lived long enough to attend events like locale Pride marches or the national march in Washington D.C., where they chanted:

“2-4-6-8.  How do you know you’re Grandma’s straight?”

Just as I would later attend the 3 national marches, and those in New York City, Brooklyn, Boston, Worcester, Durham N.C., and even the “outlaw” Dyke March in NYC. We’ve come a long way baby, but we can’t afford to lose our herstory/history.

This film is a good teaching tool in that regard and should be seen by young and old. Many of the featured women were not known to me, but quite a few “bigger” names appear in the credits. For example, all the music was done by Gaye Adegbalola of “Saffire: The Uppity Blues Women”. Other familiar names include Jewelle Gomez, Lillian Faderman, Ann Bannon, Mandy Carter, and Joanna Russ.

Check out “Old Lesbians” if it comes your way or rent it for your school or other group screening. For more information and a discussion guide, visit www.oldlesbiansfilm.com

Janet Prolman was born in Boston, Massachusetts, where her mother nicknamed her “my little queer.” She has also lived in North Carolina and New York. A lover of short stories, theater, music, and performance, she knows the lyrics to almost every song or advertising jingle she’s ever heard.   Now on Cape Cod, she enjoys kayaking and frequenting Provincetown.