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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:
eren.org.uk/content/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Coming_out_about_breast_cancer1.pdf
stonewall.org.uk/documents/lesbian_and_bisexual_women_and_breast_cancer_1.pdf
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