Book Review: Long Time Passing: Lives of Older Lesbians edited by Marcy Adelman

By Al Preston

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            Lesbians have often been hidden from the narrative of queer history in America. Many of the early movements were run by white gay men and, while they welcomed lesbians, they rarely addressed the issues that lesbians faced as women who love women. The Daughters of Bilitis was the early movement made by and for lesbian women.

            However, lesbians often had a much harder time finding each other. Bars frequently focused on gay men or were strictly focused on the butch/femme dynamic of lesbians. Additionally, women tended to hide themselves in the ‘closet’. They married men while having affairs with women, they were very secretive about their love of women to protect themselves from the bigotry of the people around them.

            We are quite lucky to have the ability to find friends across the country. There are queer groups for everyone across the spectrum that can be found with just a few taps of your fingers. For lesbians of the past, it was never that simple. They had a hard time finding groups that catered to them and if they did find another lesbian, it was difficult to stay with the person they loved.

            As they grew older and being lesbian became more visible, they still couldn’t find lesbians of their own age. Lesbians who did find organizations later in life found themselves the oldest person in the room. Many of them ended up in relationships with women far younger than them because they really couldn’t find lesbians of their own age.

            Marcy Adelman’s Long Time Passing: Lives of Older Lesbians showcases the stories of lesbians from the ages of fifty to ninety in their struggles to be queer throughout their lives. Adelman comes to the conclusion that elder lesbians have hidden themselves so heavily in their lives that in their old age, when they had an ability to be publicly gay, they are still hiding themselves. Aging is much harder for lesbians because they often ended up alone and felt alienated by the queer community around them.

            This book was published in 1986. Adelman wanted to present stories she had gathered from elder lesbians. She had previously done research on aging differences between queer and straight folks that never saw publication. In remembering that study while writing her own will, she decided to reach out to a number of elder lesbians to hear what they had to say about their aging. She interviewed some and let others write their chapters themselves. For interviews, she allowed them to choose what was put into the book. Each chapter is written by the individual lesbians.      

            Adelman poses the idea that the level of homophobia elder lesbians faced as they aged had a direct effect on how they aged and with whom they aged. Her main argument that they also could not find each other even with the opportunities given to them in the 1980s also feels a little lacking when going through the actual stories that the book contains.

            While I do agree with Adelman that lesbians found that “the closet provided comfort within a hostile environment” (page 12), I find that her argument that the level of homophobia directed at the lesbians decided how happy they were when they became older a bit lacking. While the stories share unhappiness in old age and varying levels of homophobia in their early years, there’s a lot of information that has been left out which makes this argument a bit flimsy.

            Regardless, it’s a joy to read some of these women’s lives. There are some sad moments, and more than one story about losing partners to cancer, there is also a lot of wisdom in these pages. Women who are reflecting on their elders now that they are the same age as they were. Women who struggle still but persevere. Stories of hope and finding community and identity after a battle with cancer or painful divorces.

            In my eyes, the lesbians who wrote these chapters, weren’t telling us a story about the closet or even about loneliness. While some of these women did end up lonely, many of them still defied the expectations set for them by a bigoted society. Many had partners for upwards of forty years. Some had found community, others had found happiness in being alone. While Adelman may have seen the comforts of the closet as negative, preventing these women from finding lesbians of their own age, I see stories of struggle and strength that have and will continue to lead to progress.

Like all books that are edited by another person and even life stories written by the person who experienced them, biases can come into play with what the reader is shown. Not only did Adelman chose the order and the stories in the book, the lesbians chose how to present themselves and their lives. All histories, even those in textbooks, should be looked over with a level of criticism, but that does not reduce their value. Even with some level of curation going into this work, the personal stories from people who lived within a particular moment can not only show the vastness of human experience, but also show how similar we are.

            Although Adelman had a particular argument, she felt was supported by the stories chosen to go into this work, I found a different conclusion. Often with histories like this, collections of personal experience, new eyes can see a different story from the same sources. Which is a powerful element of history. Historians often find vastly different meanings from the same places and then craft careful arguments to support what they are seeing. Just as the lesbians in this book all had different lives that are connected with similar threads, so to do we the readers. We will see ourselves in some of these stories and not in others. Instead, we may see someone we know personally or adjacently.

            That is the power of these types of history. Queer historians have been using personal stories like this to tell deeper stories, to explain hard truths. Experiences we all have had can be seen in the lives of others, connecting us as a community. Documenting queerness, especially during times when there were not enough words to describe how one felt, can be difficult. Being queer has changed throughout the years, even in the life span of the lesbians in this book.

            Most of the ‘primary sources’ you’ll see discussed on the pages of this website are like this. The LGBT+ community is considered, to some extent, an invisible minority. There are physical attributes attached to racism or sexism. Being queer is internal, it’s a piece of ourselves that has no visible tell, especially in a society where heterosexual love is the default for everyone.

            Visible aspects of our identities come first, and some may never see what’s behind the image. The husbands and wives and forever partners at home. The reason these women, many of different races and ethnicities, were able to be in the closet, was because queerness is so easily hidden behind closed doors, even from other LGBT+ people. The infamous ‘gaydar’ comes from queers trying to find each other, taking in initial reactions of someone, little tests, little hints. A gut feeling that maybe this person is at least safe, and, if you’re luck, queer as well.

            In an age where all queerness was tucked away in closets, some lesbians and gays were very good at spotting someone just like them. They weren’t always lucky, a gaydar is not perfect or a particularly good way of spotting someone out of a crowd, but for a long time it was all they had.

            This book shows not only women who did, sadly, end up alone, but also women who lived full lives regardless of their love. Women who had families who still cared for them, women who found organizations to help them, women who were cared for by their communities more than the families they lost or never had. These stories show hope. They show such a rapid change over time that while these women have struggled and faced hardships, they are not entirely alone.

            They defied what homophobia laid out for them. They defied the bigotry they faced. The closet was a safety mechanism most assuredly, but they found a way to be themselves in whatever way they could and in their old age, they can do it more publicly. They have some safety; they have more community even if it is not very large. They show that perceptions and times are changing, even in 1986!

            While I don’t agree entirely with Adelman’s conclusions, I do love and appreciate a look into the lives of these women. If you want to read this book for free, it is available on the internet archive with a free account, which is linked below (small note; at the time of writing, this is the only digital version I was able to find and access). If you wish to purchase it, it’s (at the time of writing) only about four dollars on any book selling cite. I recommend reading it, there are some twists and turns in these women’s stories that took me by surprise. There are descriptions of domestic abuse, which is vague, homophobia, again vague, language that at the time was appropriate but today (2024) would be considered derogatory, pretty heavy descriptions about cancer diagnosis and treatment, and about military service during World War II which is not very fond of the United States military.

             If you do happen to read this book, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!