Share

Share

Share on Facebook Share on Facebook Tweet Share on Twitter Share on WhatsApp Share on WhatsApp

SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER

By Paula Bistagnino

Photo: Gra Ramírez

A living space for lesbian old age. That's what "Butterfly Dreams" is all about, a project that doesn't yet have a physical location but is already functioning: "We are an intergenerational space to make visible the diverse realities of older lesbians in situations of economic, social, and emotional vulnerability," explains Alicia Caf, a 67-year-old retiree who started this collective project while seeking to resolve a personal anguish.

It was in March 2017: Alicia made a post in a closed Facebook group (Transfeminists Cooperating). It was both a personal request and a call to join and work "for the housing needs of older lesbians."

“The response was incredible. I received a ton of messages. So many that I felt I had to do something about the debate, the overwhelming empathy, that had arisen from the post, and I decided to create a separate group. I already had the idea of ​​the lesbian center in mind and had already discussed it with other colleagues, like Clodet García (a theater director and feminist activist),” she explains now, surrounded by two colleagues who are now part of Sueños de mariposas ): Julieta Lopinto and Lilian Unzaín.

[READ ALSO: Growing old together, living in a “lesbian nursing home”]

Julieta is 23 years old and was an activist with the Permanent Lesbian Assembly (ALP), the first group Alicia approached. “When I heard Alicia speak, I immediately felt addressed by what she was saying: violence against the elderly in general, and especially against those who are dissidents. And even though I'm much younger, I felt it was an important issue. But the truth is, there were other debates happening there, and no one was listening to her,” she says. Next to her, Lilian, 53, explains that she came because she heard about them and had been looking for a place to belong for a long time: “When I learned about them, I felt they were talking about something I was going through. When I heard them talk about loneliness, about growing old alone, I felt a connection: it's something that affects all of us older lesbians. There was no support network when we were growing up… Feminism? We didn't even use the word 'lesbian.' We were just 'homosexual women'… and 'tomboys.' No pride back then,” she says. And she recounts that in the 80s she had been active in the Argentine Homosexual Community (CHA), when the first women's committee was organized, but it had not lasted.

Lesbian exile

Europe, at best. Far from their hometowns and villages for most. Very few living in communities. “There was no possibility of living a free life as a lesbian. That didn't exist. We had to leave, no matter what,” says Alicia, who spent almost three decades in Switzerland, always undocumented, and even had to live on the streets. She returned in 2014: “It was very strange to come back, because I had to learn how to live somehow. I was away for a long time and I was alone. I left alone and I came back alone.”

That loneliness wasn't a choice. “It's a historical loneliness: most older lesbians came out in their 40s or 50s, after having lived repressed lives. And that means that most of them, because they always felt alone, seek an individual way out: to resolve their own issues, their own story, their own life, their own problems,” she explains. And she adds: “The generational aspect also plays a role here: lesbians my age didn't have even the most basic freedom. What's more, I had returned to Argentina once for a short time, but I went back to Europe. There I could experience things I couldn't here. There I discovered my lesbianism.”

Lilian didn't go into exile. But she also lived her lesbianism in solitude. “And we grow old alone: ​​we don't have children, maybe nieces and nephews. That's why we need a support network,” says the woman who lived wherever she could all these years: from squats to a pottery workshop she attended. Now she's building her own house in La Matera, San Francisco Solano. “What we have to achieve, even if we don't end up in a lesbian shelter, is to build networks: to get together, help each other, support each other. I don't know how it's done, but we have to reach those women alone in their homes, older women, who can't get around. There are many more of us than just those of us here. I think it's our responsibility,” she says.

The stories are endless and often filled with violence. Alicia says: “From women locked away by their families in nursing homes to be deprived of their inheritance, to being thrown out onto the street. Also, in psychiatric hospitals. We want to reach those women who, for being lesbians, were mistreated and marginalized by their families and by society.”

[READ ALSO: The struggle of a lesbian couple who managed to register their baby as the child of two mothers]

But that's not all, Julieta adds: “There's the whole more complex aspect of the material needs that old age faces. And that's what we want to address. But we also want to make visible and talk about the desires of dissident old age. Because there's this idea that old bodies aren't sexual. And that's not the case,” says the youngest member of the group, who participated in the aging workshop at the last National Women's Meeting in Trelew and read the document from Sueños de mariposas (Dreams of Butterflies).

Julieta explains how the project is progressing: “Until we raise enough for the intergenerational house, as a first step towards the lesbian center, we are doing what we can to raise awareness about the issue.” So now they have a regular schedule of film screenings and discussions, as well as other cultural activities, and every year they also throw a party: this December 27th will be the third.

They also support, discuss, and help to raise awareness of other debates and causes: “From Higui’s case to the situation of lesbian women in prisons, we are here to make visible the problems and violence we suffer. From the State, from society, every day, everywhere,” Alicia explains.

“Being lesbians is a political identity that challenges the heteronormative regime.”

Being a lesbian is not just a sexual orientation. Being a lesbian is a political identity. And that is reflected in the founding document of Sueños de mariposas (Butterfly Dreams ): “The historical discrimination suffered by sexual dissidents due to our anti-patriarchal sexual orientation, against religious and sexist heteronormativity. We consider being lesbians to be a political identity that challenges the heteronormative regime.”

[READ ALSO: The trial of Higui de Jesús, accused of self-defense, will be in April 2019]

The goal is a house. Or many houses. They envision them like this: “A safe and supportive space to break free from the helplessness caused by years of marginalization in our families, hospitals, and/or nursing homes. A place to maintain our emotional connections; a home that also includes cultural workshops, medical and legal consultations, occupational therapy, a library, and lectures on the history of the lesbian feminist movement; a refuge to prevent confinement in nursing homes that do not respect sexual diversity, where abuse, contempt, and mistreatment reign simply for being elderly and vulnerable.”

To that end, Alicia explains, they are creating group, horizontal, and sustainable strategies that will allow them to generate real and supportive solutions for older lesbians: “Because the reality of old age is aggravated by scarce economic resources and the lack of respect for our identities in health services, which condemns us to isolation, loneliness, or abandonment.”

And she concludes: “A house for lesbians who think, who transform, who challenge, who create, who learn and teach. Who love and desire. For us and for those who will come after us.”