I need big gay ideas! :D

[triedunture]

So guys, remember how I'm volunteering with SAGE to help collect histories of gay elders?

Well, we had a meeting today. And decisions needed to be made. And a leader had to emerge. And, erm, I had a laptop.

SO I TOTALLY RAILROADED THE PROJECT. Imma make a gay book, yo! :D

So here's the thing. We're going to interview the elders ourselves, and we'd like to do it in a historical context (by we I mean me). So instead of asking "when did you come out" blah blah blah, we ask everyone about very specific historical moments and try to get a sense of what their whole lives were like. The gay stuff, the other stuff, all the stuff!

Questions I've come up with so far:

Where were you when Stonewall happened?
Do you remember the first time you used a computer?
What were you doing when MLK was assassinated?
Why and when did you move to New York City?

You get the picture. I guess what I'm curious to know is:

Do y'all have any burning questions you'd like to ask a gay person who's been around for a long time? If you could sit down with an 85-year-old lesbian or gay man, what would you want to talk about?

It's okay if you're straight, gay, whatever. I'm just trying to get some ideas for a jumping off point. And the internet's better than one!

Comments

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

Questions that I think would be fun to ask an older person:

Who was your first best friend?
What toys did you play with when you were young?*
When you were in grade school, what did you imagine your future would be like?
What was some of the slang your peers used when you were a teenager?
What was the best thing about how you grew up? What was the worst?

*My great-aunt played with dolls they made out of clay from the banks of a nearby creek. She didn't get her first store-bought toy until she was ten.

[triedunture.livejournal.com]

Ohhhh, I like the slang one. That's important. A ton of these are really good ideas, thanks!

[euclase.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I'd definitely want to know what they liked to READ when they were younger. Or now, even.

Or what music they listened to growing up, as teenagers, etc.

:)

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Oo, agreed!

Also what they liked to watch/listen to: what movies, what TV shows, what radio shows, who were their "familiar faces" at the time...

[euclase.livejournal.com]

Lol! Aliens on Europa are currently doing the same for us. "Oh wow, ask the humans what sort of bheghgshghe they like to shskjhwjshwj."

XD

[ladynina1.livejournal.com]

In the 'alternate lifestyle' vein..who did they trust enough to talk about their feelings with? Was it lonely for them? This brings up alot of old memories for me...one of my best guy friends came out to me first (before his family) because (his words) his family would always love him but if I walked away it would hurt more because I chose to be there with him...and now he and his partner have just celebrated their 25th anniversary together!!! they moved to sidney aus. 20 years ago to get away from intolerance here in the states..so I would be interested to know how folks older than we are dealt with the social climate back then.
Thanks for asking us to offer suggestions!

[starlingthefool.livejournal.com]

How did they meet prospective partners? What did they do for fun? Were they involved in the Gay Lib movement?
I could probably think of more if I hadn't just inhaled a huge bowl of pho. Oy vey.

[willdew.livejournal.com]

I am going to be TOTALLY EMBARRASSING here and admit that this just makes me think of all the "Bertie and Jeeves are old" slash that's been written (including your first fic, which was more kind of adorable and gen, really.) I mean. If the person's 82 and it's 2008, then they would have been about 20 during the 40's, and damn. I'd want to ask them if they have any stories about prohibition from when they were young (if it ended in '33 maybe they'd have been too small, but if the person's a couple years older than 82, then they might have some memories of drinking illegally as a pre-teen or something....) I'd want to know if they were part of the risque theatre/art scene or whether they went to any gay bars ("fairy clubs") secretly run by the mafia. 9_9 TOTALLY POLITICALLY INCORRECT. Hoo boy.

Unless they are artsy and flamboyantly into showtunes, opera and Foucault, maaaybe my line of questioning would be far too loaded and full of stereotypical assumptions.

I guess the questions other people have suggested I agree with. When they came to NY and why are good things to ask because a lot of immigrant families moved around seeking work. My grandmother's family moved from Idaho back to B.C. and within B.C. between a number of small towns depending on where my great-grandfather was hired to work as a foreman at some mine or other. The depression mindset really is something else, too. The kind of elderly people who rinse out plastic zip-lock bags and hang them on the fridge to dry so they can re-use them are probably going to look at young queers today and shake their heads at the materialism of it. But the middle-aged people who were young during the sixties will probably understand and be more confused about new-agey queerness vs. the older styles of presentation where passing was part of survival and messing with gender roles was a form of resistance instead of grounds for accusation re: mimicry of heterosexist gender roles... wait. Maybe that came up in the '70's. Theory is confusing.

*edited to fix conflation of class and age issues in academia, man I ramble--way too disconnected from reality at the moment*

[mellifluous-ink.livejournal.com]

I want to know if they ever read any Havelock Ellis, if his writings gave them comfort.

I want to know where they were and how they reacted when Homosexuality was taken out of the directory of psychological diseases.

I want to know what school was like for them, how scared they were as adolescents or young adults, if they were scared.

What was the world war like, for any that might have been in the service at that time? Did they find other gay people there? If not, where?

Were you a part of the hidden gay community? What was that like? What slang was used?

How did you feel about the various celebrities that were discovered to be bi or gay after they died (Cole Porter, for example)? Did that hearten you? Surprise you?

For the men: Did you ever read Sherlock Holmes stories and notice the potential relationship? What about Wodehouse's Jeeves stories, of the Psmith stories? Was there a piece of fiction that affected you deeply, in the sense of being a gay person, at a key point in your life? Any book that helped give you comfort?

Oscar Wilde? Thoughts? When did you hear about him? Did people pointedly not talk about him, because of the trials? Did learning about the trials make you want to learn more about him?

If there are any trans elders:

Do you know about the castrati? If you do, when did you learn about them? Did you feel a kinship with them at all? What about other non-traditional genders, like eunuchs? What about the Native American two-spirit people?

For all:

Are there movies or shows that surprised and delighted you with the attention they gave to gay or trans people? Are the movies or shows that frustrated you for the same reason?

How do you feel about the GLBTQ community getting a lot more interested in grey areas, such as androgyny/genderqueer? Do you think this helps or hampers things?

[georgeodowd.livejournal.com]

Seconding the Wodehouse/Holmes questions!

[georgeodowd.livejournal.com]

Since I so totally don't have any sort of fetish-y thing at all (oh no), I would want to know all about their adolescence, particularly as it manifested itself at school.

When did they first notice they might be a little different?
Was the realisation based on a developing affection for another person, or was there another stimulus (wanting to dress differently, gender identity issues...)?
Were they particularly good at 'passing' or were they an outcast or always risking someone's suspicion?
Did they have any allies (e.g. a teacher who knew or a close friend or a sympathetic parent)?
Oftentimes repressed emotions have to find some other outlet (like, er, reading way too much into particular stories and then living vicariously through them) - did they have any interesting quirks as a result of not being able to fully express themselves?

Gosh, I could keep going, but you get the theme.

THIS IS SO EXCITING! (I want an autographed copy when it's done.)

[triedunture.livejournal.com]

Oh, who knows if it'll ever be a real book. Right now we're thinking of def. making it an eBook, but who knows if we'll ever raise the money to get it printed? And depending on how much good material we get, it might end up being a book series instead of just one book.

GOSH there are just so many ways this could go, but it all depends on the skills of the interviewer and the passion of the elder for telling their story. I'm so excited. I'm so scared!

[willdew.livejournal.com]

I think it's an absolutely awesome idea and that if you look there's bound to be funding out there for something like that.

p.s.

[willdew.livejournal.com]

Gah, I'm all excited just wanting to hear about this. Uhm. I was thinking there have to be queer/LGBT societies or foundations/publishers out there who would jump all over the idea of this book. Granted, economic slump.

It could feasibly count as a Master's thesis and you could get a university press to print it, but I have a feeling this is supposed to be more publicly accessible and less jargon-y. (I'm kind of glad that melliflous_ink wanted to hear about the same things as me because I don't feel like as big of a nerd now, though.)

You're also in an arts nexus of the world and could feasibly throw a Big Gay Fundraiser once the book's written.

But totally do it! And let us know how it goes! OMG.