Ageing with Pride🏳️🌈
How being outed led to belly dancing on the Nile.
Creating the world’s first Black and Asian lesbian calendar.
Remembering friends lost to the AIDS crisis and dealing with survivor’s guilt - but also appreciating the joys of life.
Interviews and photos for the Centre for Ageing Better.
Claud, 53
“Growing up in Bolton, there weren’t any images of people like me. That made being black and gay seem abnormal.
If a movie or pop star came out as gay, that would be the end of their career.
If you can’t see it, you can’t be it - so, my friend Paula and I set up a lesbian club night called Black Angel, a safe space for people of colour.
The night started off in venues in Manchester’s Gay Village in the late 1990s and Claud came up against racial prejudice. Some of the things that came out of the club owners’ mouths… I hope it’s changed now.
We moved the club night to venues outside of the Village. This was also better for the women who weren’t out. If someone saw you being dropped you off by a taxi in the Village, that was essentially you being outed.
We did a calendar one year, sponsored by the Terence Higgins Trust. The guy making it said it was the first LGBT+ people of colour calendar in the world. I think being seen is a political statement in itself. We were visible on behalf of those who couldn’t be.”
Mindy, 69
“I was outed in 1983 while I working as a deputy head teacher in Hull. I couldn’t continue to teach after that.
I moved to Manchester and started a new career in adult mental health - and I also took up belly dancing classes. Real belly dancing is improvised - you express what the music has you feeling in the moment. When you dance like that, what you're really doing is exposing your true self. You are letting people see you, see your passion, see your fear.
What started off as a night class, now takes me all over the world, from Lesbos to Colombia, from the Netherlands to the Nile.
The opportunities I’ve had – and am still having – are a knock-on effect of what happened. I made myself a promise that I would never tiptoe around anybody on the issue of my sexual identity, ever again.
If I hadn’t been outed I’d probably be a retired headmistress - I can feel the powder blue oozing over me!”
Lizzie, 63
“I grew up on a farm in Dorset. There wasn’t any information or positive LGBT+ role models. Looking back to my late teens, it was basically like a fog of confusion.
At one point I did try and find out if there were any places to meet other lesbians, but the nearest big town was Bournemouth. I thought ‘Oh god, that feels far too scary’ - the idea of getting a bus and going somewhere late at night.
The only thing I could come across was a book that was written in 1928 by a woman called Radclyffe Hall called ‘The Well of Loneliness’. It’s the most gloomy and negative portrait of lesbianism that you could think of. I thought ‘Oh dear! That’s not much help really’.
Coming to Manchester in 1980, it was easier to find things. There was a gay centre, it was in a really grotty part of town, but it existed.
There was also a chance of meeting other lesbians - hoorah!”
Linda, 67
“I remember my first marriage at 19 to my ex-husband. When it came time to sign the registry, I was thinking ‘what the heck am I doing?!’.
When I came out to my mum, she accepted me straight away. She said, ‘OK, I’ll just go and make the tea’.
I still imagine that when she went into the kitchen, she gripped the worktop with gritted teeth thinking, ‘Oh my God!’, but she came back in with the tea, like everything’s cool, no problem.
Outside of home, there wasn’t the same level of acceptance. If you went to a gay club in the 1970s or 1980s, you’d have to creep down a side street and knock on a door then wait for someone to open the hatch.
One night leaving a gay club, someone shouted at me, ‘You queer bastard’. I shouted back, ‘right on both accounts!’ then I ran like hell.
Another time on a night out in Nottingham, me and a group of friends were attacked in a pub. No-one stepped in, not even the bouncers. When we got outside, all bloody and buttons missing, we saw a police car - we averted our eyes and walked in the opposite direction. I think it was instilled in us, by society, that somehow we were the ones in the wrong. We certainly didn’t feel as if we had any rights.
Next summer, nearly 50 years after my first wedding, I’m going to be marrying my partner, Anne. This time we’re doing it our way.”
Pip
“I used to work as a female impersonator. We’d get ready in the loos, or if the venue didn’t have a decent bathroom, then we’d park outside, and I’d get ready in the car – which is very much a skill in itself! I adore the corset, absolute agony, but does wonders for the posture.
It was the late 80s and to get into many of the clubs you’d tap on a window and give the passcode to get in.
And oh, they were dingy, dingy places, but the atmosphere and music were fantastic, because you could be who you were.
There are two programmes lately that I’ve really enjoyed that remind me of back then, Pose and It’s a Sin – wow, that really hit home.
I could quite empathise with the main character in It’s a Sin, Ritchie Tozer. We were young, we felt immortal. But, we knew that eventually this game of Russian Roulette might catch up with us – it caught up with me.
Luckily by that time we started to get proper HIV treatment, and I’m still here. Treatment has improved, and my viral load is undetectable, which means the virus is untransmissible.
Sometimes I feel guilty that I am still alive and some of those wonderful, talented, sexy people aren’t with us anymore.
I will raise a glass to those good friends. To all of those who fought the battle, and to growing older disgracefully.”