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hello
not lesbian, but can't understand why anyone would think anything of it. hmmm. just wanted to say that
Hi, I'm not gay either but in contrast to your correspondent have known loads.
In any social gathering, in RL or virtual, one tends to gravitate towards folk that one feels one has things in common with.
You have a thread / part of forum for just that. I found a person who is also into adventure sports for example, from my earlier forum "face".
Maybe a lot of folk on the forum have never met a bird in her 50s who climbs mountains, sleeps in the open on mountain tops, camps when its minus 5 outside, scuba dives etc !
Well there are other sections for men with cancer, younger women etc, sometimes there can be other issues perhaps not affecting the wider community of BC people and that's why?
Like with younger women there can be fertility issues, or young children involved, different phase of life can bring different issues etc.
Men with breast cancer are a much smaller minority and will have their own unique experiences too.
Much the same perhaps for lesbian/gay commnunity?
Anyone who wants to gain an insight into what is different about lesbian woman and breast cancer may like to read the report, 'Coming Out About Breast Cancer' by Julie Fish, published in February 2010. A quick search on the internet will locate the pdf of the report. There is also the Breast Cancer Care briefing, 'Lesbian and bisexual women and breast cancer: A policy briefing', published in 2011. This is also available as a pdf online. Page 2 of the Canadian guidelines, 'Starting a Breast Cancer Support Group for Lesbian and Bisexual Women' also provides a list of specific issues and experiences lesbian and bisexual women may face. Likewise, this is availble as a pdf online.
HI all, and hello again Indigo Pearl, lovely to "meet" again. Yeh, if anyone interested its good to take a look at the docs Indigo Pearl mentions - when we did the presentation about them at BCC offices we also said there are many many similarities of course between les/bi experiences and het women's experiences, but also some important differences....
lovely to hear from all you adventurous and fun het lasses on our thread too, ta for your inputs.
I am back at work nowadays so not often on threads and not for long so off I go again...
bw nicola
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Never been called a hetty betty before
lol
Indigo Pearl, when I find my brain again and wake up in a week or two I'm really interested to read those articles. I've led a pretty sheltered life and haven't met many lesbian women (reckon I know many more gay men than lesbians) but don't feel that anyone should be discriminated against because they don't fit into the default value of the largest group by sexuality and it surprises me, and saddens me, every time I hear of it happening.
Perhaps a topic for discussion could be how to help educate the friendly but ignorant among us HBs? Reckon you'd have a veritable army "on your side".
ok, here i am coming out of the closet. I am the one who sent the private message. I did not post the question on the thread because i did not know how to ask without sounding biggoted.
choccie muffin has expressed exactly what I feel, except that rather than being saddened that this sort of predujice is happening in the BC field, I am absolutely amazed to find about it here. I just cannot believe, in this day and age, that staff with training on how to be deal with women with BC are not given guidance on the needs of all women, young, old, lesbians, single mothers etc.
mind you they are not very good with drummers.
I realy appreciate the confidentiallity of not mentioning who it was asking the question.
Hi - another hetty betty who feels the same as CM & AOL. I must admit that I had just assumed that, as we are all women, it was the same for all of us and that the lesbian threads were social.
Having read the first article recommended by IP I can see that this is not necessarily the case, but if it is any comfort, many of the experiences about treatment are true for all of us.
The article also touches on forums and groups. I am 51 and childless so do not join in the young women's threads or discussions about children and I don't do knitting patterns either! I have found so much love and support from everyone on this forum and would hate to think that anyone feels excluded.
For me the situation remains the same, we are all in this together and our forum helps us to support each other through the difficult times regardless of our sexuality or anything else for that matter!
I think this is a great opportunity to raise awareness and thank you for helping me to be better informed.
Love to you all
DaisyGirl xx
Some links to IndigoPearl's articles:
http://www.eren.org.uk/content/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Coming_out_about_breast_cancer1.pdf
http://www.stonewall.org.uk/documents/lesbian_and_bisexual_women_and_breast_cancer_1.pdf
http://www.sherbourne.on.ca/PDFs/MUV_TipSheet2.pdf
For the "friendly but ignorant" among us HBs, there is some very interesting viewpoints. Just read the first one so far (will do the others too), and the main things that came out for me were attitude (of staff, mainly a perceived feeling of discomfort) and relevance (of topics in support groups - knitting and husbands' feelings). Good stuff, IP, thank you.
Edit: have read the others, and it's eye-opening. Got to sleep now (Day2 FEC6) so will need to read them again when I get my brain back.
There is another very useful report, 'Coming Out About Lesbians and Cancer', which was published in Toronto in 2004. The report is concerned primarily with breast cancer and is based on research with 26 lesbian women conducted in 2003 in Ontario, Canada. The full report is available online, as is a summary (44 pages). To find the report, just search online using the title of the report.
Just reading Indigo Pearl's reports.
Report 1:
"I didn’t want to sit in that waiting room and talk about knitting patterns and what they were going to cook for their husband’s tea"
- that would horrify me, too.
"There is a very girly, frilly image isn’t there?"
- that REALLY gets on my wick.
I think that this report brings up a number of interesting issues, not only for LBG people, but for the whole perception of BC for certain members of the public or sections of the media.
Sorry, not trying to railroad out the particular problems faced by LBG community but some of the themes are common to all of us that are not the perceived BC community of grey-haired boring old women who watch Jeremy Kyle and count off their grandchildren.
In case all the above has come out wrongly when it is received, I do agree with the LBG section of the forum and I do understand that there is still discrimination for LBG people in all walks of life.
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Norberte, welcome back to the forums, I missed your humour (even though some of what you said I know wasn't said in jest).
Blimey Norberte, how horrible!
I didn't change my name when Steve and I got married and it is bad enough that they call him Mr DaisyGirl even though I always introduce him as Steve Pain in the Arse, how did you bite your tongue?
DaisyGirl xx
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Ninja wrote about " not the perceived BC community of grey-haired boring old women who watch Jeremy Kyle and count off their grandchildren.
"
Totallly agree with this sentiment: BC is now hitting a much wider target group, like how Aids/HIV was first seen in the young male homosexual community and for a long time the mainstream middle-ageing happilymarried (exh-ippie!) hetero's stood by and said "it's nothing to do with us, mate" well now we know better, and I feel the same is happening with BC: Thirty years ago no-one got it under 65-70 or so it seems, now the majority of sufferers and survivors I know are under 55 and many under 40. Suddenly childcare and getting back to work, getting on with living in the new normal, are in the spotlight when before it was just about how long will i live/how soon will i die? The "percieved BC community" needs to change update and diversify its image.
I suffered a "Ladies event" at church just recently and I cannot say how painful it was, how out of place i felt without a necklace, a husband/wife to leave behind, or a silkscarf. I ran away from all the cake-arrangers and flower-decorators before the main speaker even arrived.... We don't need the BC support system to be like that, it needs to be safe for everyone.
Im glad I read this I always wondered why there was a seperate board for the lesbian women & I thought the same BCC WHY ? Do they feel they are not to mix with the straight women ? I have many gay friends & this did tick me off would love an explaination.
Mekala x
Mekalar, take a look at the links on the last post on page 1, I think you'll get a bit of an understanding.
Just been reading through these posts (yes, I am a lesbian). A few thoughts
- At my first encounter with a Macmillan nurse at the hospital, she started filling in a questionnaire with me. I was with my sister (and still had my hair then), after a short while something felt wrong, I checked and the woman had assumed I was my sisters husband/partner and ticked 'male' in the gender section, - this is completely true!!!
- Almost without exception headwear websites for cancer patients advertise their wares as 'feminine' and 'pretty'. This really p*es me off and is excluding. Can't they at least manage 'unisex'?
- going to a Look Good Feel Beter day next Tuesday for a laugh more than anything, will be interesting to see how hettie orientated that is.
- Are there really so few lesbians/bi women on here???
Sue xx
i was a bit rude to the help line today. I rang up and they answered my questions and then they said they wanted to ensure that they were reaching everybody and would I answer some questions. so they asked about my age, location and ethnic background. I said--you have not asked about my sexuality. she said something about being aware of lesbian and bisexual womens needs and accomodating them. So I asked her why then they were not monitering how well they were doing at reaching people of different sexualities in their survay. ( i am hetrosexual, it just seems lopsided to me)
I wonder if they will change the survay
Cheers OAL !
There must be more, getup, but not many posters.
Hope all my lovely friends on here (of all orientations) are doing ok, take care everyone and have a good weekend.
Julie xx
Sadly the world still makes assumptions about all of us. We have to 'fit' somewhere. I've never fitted anywhere. I'm hetero, grammar school girl, pregnant and married off at 17, divorced at 24 with 3 young children, did my best to me a mother and grow up at the same time. I'm now 57, have just last November sailed across the Atlantic on a 56'boat with 4 men, and I wasn't just there to do the cooking! I've backpacked round S E Asia at 54, I learned to play the guitar at 45, formed a band and did some singing at 50. I have 8 grandchildren. I know about marine diesel engines and paint in oils. I make jam. Where the heck do I fit in? Not enough boxes for us all thank goodness.
sorry, completely off topic, but your mentioning boxes reminded my of the day I had to ring up to cancel my mothers readers digest subscription. it was obviouls a new customer service guy, who asked all the right questions and was gaining confidence by the minute, until he asked" and why are you cancelling her subscription" "because she's dead" "help" he said " I havnt got a box for that" poor lamb, he had to hand over to his supervisor.
by the way, i started to learn to play the drums when i was 50 and am also in a band that i found on the internet, oo-er perhaps not fitting in boxes is what gives you canceer.
Have been scrolling through the threads and have mixed feelings about some of the posts. I am surprised to find that lesbians are treated differently to heterosexuals.We're all women, we all have the same body parts, don't we? At the other end of the spectrum I take slight exception to the reference "about grey haired women watching Jeremy Kyle and discussing knitting patterns or grandchildren" or something along those lines! Isn't this putting people "into boxes" also? We don't all shin up mountains and sail the seven seas....well done to those who do...but don't knock the ones who settle for a life of homemaking. This doesn't make us stupid, I'm more than content with my life of knitting, sewing, painting, baking and gardening etc plus working nights and seeing my grandchildren on my days off. BTW I don't watch JK!!
Vee, I agree with the surprise, but read through the documents on the links posted earlier and you will see exactly what sort of different treatment our fellow women have to go through. I was also surprised, but it's been an education. And it's also rather sad. I suppose because I'm part of the majority that I just wasn't aware of the little things that affect the minority, that add up to a big thing.
(And the day I turn on the telly to deliberately watch Jeremy Kyle is the day I'll be looking to shove my head in a gas oven, I can't imagine anything worse!)
...and the issues are also very tricky for Transgender individuals, too, whose reactions to the loss of breasts (in terms of 'feeling like a woman') just might be very different. And who might feel very nervous about expressing those feelings amongst women who may feel very differently to them. Having others to talk to about it in a supportive sense might be very important.
Ann x
who's Jeramy Kyle??
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