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I thought it was really good what you said at the very beginning that lesbians don't figure in aged care, do they? Absolutely. There have been report after report and minority report on ageing in in New Zealand, and not one of them has mentioned the LGBTI community. It's like, um, we're totally invisible. And for several of our collective members, they've really had, uh, personal [00:00:30] experiences with, um, uh, lovers with dementia lovers who had cancer and caring. I mean, just virtual the hetero of, um, the dementia unit that one of our, um, collective members lover died in and her almost exclusion from that the unit and not even being contact when she died. And, um then our friend, uh, whose lover died of cancer. [00:01:00] And what she found was, even though they had a supportive community, it was just too hard. Um, that there needed to be residential care in which, uh, the whole community would supply care not just four or five people who might or might not be, especially towards the end of her life. So a lot of things have motivated people to join this community. And from some of us, you can hear from my accent. I'm from New York City. Originally, uh, for those of us who [00:01:30] aren't here with extended families, et cetera, and are here within our community, we really do need our community to provide safe, affordable, lesbian friendly, uh, services. Otherwise, we'll all go back into the closet for so many of us. When we came out in the seventies, we you know, we saw ourselves as in the forefront of demanding human rights, but partially because of the lack of, uh or the kind of what they call [00:02:00] plus the ageism within our own communities. Uh, this we become invisible again. And and alas, that means we may be driven back into the closet. Unless we take some initiatives. The only way to be in residential care for elderly people is not to be lesbian. You feel well? I mean, uh, you heard, uh, Sonia Carron, who is a, um a gerontologist for the [00:02:30] um Auckland District Health Board, saying that of 260 questions that are the typical assessment questions that are asked for people to determine what are their needs, et cetera. There's not one question about sexual orientation and and clearly no training for car? No, uh, you know, trading in sensitivity, sensitivity, lesbian friendly or LGBTI friendly. [00:03:00] Uh, and imagine how much worse if we were in church run organisations and perhaps no double beds, either. Double beds? Yes. We heard a story today from Australia about somebody being accused of watching lesbian porn was just watching queer as folk or something on on, you know, Channel one or something. And that whole kind of and the almost asexuality that seems to be a part of ageing. Well, I don't [00:03:30] want to go gently into that Good night. So you set up your own community. We've set up a collective to work towards setting up the community. Yes, and, um and luckily, the top twins have become our patrons, so that's quite nice. But, you know, um, lesbians tend to be quite a poor community. Um, and, uh, financially and, uh, just even getting the money together [00:04:00] for a needs assessment which would allow us to apply for further grants in a time of really financial cutback across social services, et cetera. So, at the very time we we're ready to roll, there's, uh there's not really much money or much desire either within or without our community. And yet we see things. We saw those, um, the two lesbians, Lindsay, uh, and, uh, Juliet Lee who were burnt [00:04:30] out just a couple of months ago in heads. Well, to every lesbian who worries about isolation. Uh, stigmatisation that story brought a chill to all of us. And I think we you know, the older you get, the harder it's gonna be to fight against us. So we need to do something now. We can't wait till I'm 85 to to start it. And and and, uh, all of these reports talk about the [00:05:00] staying within your community. Well, we have a community that's been totally invisible in those very reports, and we're totally analogous to like there's papa housing that exists, the Pacific island housing, and it should exist. But we also want to have LGBT or even lesbian only housing. I think the question is, if we could even get LGBT housing, but we have different needs. What happens and that [00:05:30] was discussed today is we get mainstreamed with some illusion that they're on. You know, by the time you get to 65 or something, your needs and everybody else's needs straight, you know, and and lesbian are exactly the same. And that's totally ridiculous. I mean, I know that my own self from, um, a very good friend of mine had breast cancer in Washington DC. And there was a lesbian support breast cancer support group that she could belong to. And before [00:06:00] she belonged to that, she belonged to, um, just a generic breast cancer support group. Well, in the generic group, she kept changing the pronoun so that she wouldn't be victimised by homophobia. After all, she's dealing with chemotherapy. She doesn't have to deal with, uh, the homophobia of some of the other, um, support group members. But more than that, um, the issue of whether to have a mastectomy or more than that prosthesis may and whether [00:06:30] your husband will find you attractive once you've had your mastectomy is not a burning issue in the lesbian community. It may be for some lesbians, but, uh, there are lots of other issues that are more significant, and we need to develop, you know, And so so when it's mainstreamed and everything is everybody's seen the same. Of course they're overlapping, Uh, concern, yes, but There are some that are specific. And, uh, you know, that is just a good example. Do you think making [00:07:00] sure that you're not without lesbian friends is one of the key issues? Well, one of the things we're trying to do is also to create a virtual community before we actually get all of the money to to create our 100 lesbian. You know, uh, membered, uh, community like community can be created in in a virtual way where we care for each other. And I think we've done a lot of that within the collective. And I think the lesbian community, and probably the [00:07:30] gay and transgender and intersex community is struggling with those issues, too. How do we face ageing? And And I know at least from caricaturing of the gay community, that ageism in the gay community is alive and well and as and as well And so you know it it makes it a problem if we become invisible once we reach 50 or 55. And that's why one of our members was saying we should all just claim and and relish being old now [00:08:00] and not to to play into that. Oh, I'm not that old or it's very difficult. If all of these problems are gnawing away at your comfort, Well, it it increases your illness index, doesn't it? And I'm sure all of that and it's a frightening thing thing to be completely physically dependent. You know, three years ago I had a minor stroke, and so luckily, [00:08:30] I'm fully recovered, etcetera. But suddenly you know, I travelled a lot. I did a lot of things. I was very brave and I. I felt really lacking in self confidence and things. I. I don't want to. We can just do it individually in ourselves. And we do need community. And you have this resolution. Yes, we have a resolution which we're going to firstly present to the caucus that on older [00:09:00] LGBTI members, uh, tomorrow and we hope to bring it to Ross Noonan so that she can cover it in the final plenary. We would like this conference to endorse the government's, you know, forced government commitment to looking at these issues. The whole conference is based on this yoga Carta principles, and what we find is we need to emphasise [00:09:30] that it's not just sexual minorities, but ageing sexual minorities that have to have the right to affordable housing The right to excellent, uh, health care and to some extent, the the ageism of our own community sometimes says, Oh, when we talk about sexual and minorities, we're talking about kids. For instance, we were when we initially put in our abstract to be at this conference, they gave us the other stream, Uh, and why were we other? Because, well, being [00:10:00] was seem to have to do with drugs, alcohol and HIV. Uh, how do we live with that? Well, actually, we all get old, you know, and well being the whole concept of LGBTI well being has to include this transitioning we're doing into a different stage stages of our lives.
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