The title of this recording is "Ruth Busch and Jan Wilson (2)". It was recorded in Wellington Town Hall, 101 Wakefield Street, Wellington on the 16th March 2011. This is an interview with Jan Wilson and Ruth Busch. The interviewer is Jim Whitman. Their names are spelt correctly, but may appear incorrectly spelt later in the document. The duration of the recording is 10 minutes. A list of correctly spelt content keywords and tags can be found at the end of this document. A brief description of the recording is: In this podcast Ruth Busch and Jan Wilson from New Zealand talk about attending the human rights conference. The content in the recording covers the 2010s decade. A brief summary of the recording is: In an insightful conversation held at Wellington Town Hall, interviewees Jan Wilson and Ruth Busch discuss the challenges and invisibility that LGBTI elders face within the aged care system in New Zealand. Interviewer Jim Whitman delves into the crucial topic of how elderly members of the LGBTI community are often neglected in policy and research on aging. Wilson and Busch emphasize that numerous reports on aging have failed to recognize LGBTI individuals, rendering them invisible and unsupported. The dialogue highlights personal accounts from collective members, recounting troubling experiences of LGBTI elders grappling with dementia and cancer without concrete support from the healthcare system. These narratives include instances of discrimination, such as being ostracized from a dementia unit or struggling to receive necessary residential care that recognizes and respects their identities and relationships. Both Wilson and Busch stress the vital need for the creation of safe and affordable lesbian-friendly services, as many within the community do not have extended families and thus heavily rely on their community for support. The fear of being driven back into the closet as a result of this invisibility is palpable, denoting a step backward for many who fought for their rights in the 1970s. The inadequacies of the healthcare system are underlined through the absence of questions pertaining to sexual orientation in the standard 260-question assessment for elders, highlighting a gaping hole in the sensitivity and training of caregivers. The danger of being mainstreamed into a one-size-fits-all approach to elder care is evident, as it does not consider the unique needs of LGBTI individuals, like the need for a supportive environment where one does not have to hide their sexual orientation. Wilson and Busch also discuss the idea of setting up an intentional community for lesbians, emphasizing the financial hurdles and lack of funding for a needs assessment, which is pivotal for obtaining further grants. The urgency of addressing these issues precludes waiting for a crisis moment in old age, and the interviewees advocate for proactive measures. Additionally, the conversation touches on the broader issue of ageism within the LGBTI community and the importance of creating a virtual community as an interim measure while working towards physical community spaces. A strong focus is placed on the necessity for resolution and action, exemplified by a resolution that the interviewees intend to present to a caucus with the goal of endorsing government action on issues facing aging sexual minorities. Ending on a resolute note, the interviewees aim to ensure that the concerns of aging LGBTI members, including those related to affordable housing and healthcare, are recognized and addressed, aligning with principles of inclusivity and human rights for all, regardless of age. The full transcription of the recording follows.  It includes timestamps every thirty seconds in the format [HH:MM:SS].  The transcription begins:  I thought it was really good what you said at the very beginning that lesbians don't figure in aged care, do they? Absolutely. There have been report after report and minority report on ageing in in New Zealand, and not one of them has mentioned the LGBTI community. It's like, um, we're totally invisible. And for several of our collective members, they've really had, uh, personal [00:00:30] experiences with, um, uh, lovers with dementia lovers who had cancer and caring. I mean, just virtual the hetero of, um, the dementia unit that one of our, um, collective members lover died in and her almost exclusion from that the unit and not even being contact when she died. And, um then our friend, uh, whose lover died of cancer. [00:01:00] And what she found was, even though they had a supportive community, it was just too hard. Um, that there needed to be residential care in which, uh, the whole community would supply care not just four or five people who might or might not be, especially towards the end of her life. So a lot of things have motivated people to join this community. And from some of us, you can hear from my accent. I'm from New York City. Originally, uh, for those of us who [00:01:30] aren't here with extended families, et cetera, and are here within our community, we really do need our community to provide safe, affordable, lesbian friendly, uh, services. Otherwise, we'll all go back into the closet for so many of us. When we came out in the seventies, we you know, we saw ourselves as in the forefront of demanding human rights, but partially because of the lack of, uh or the kind of what they call [00:02:00] plus the ageism within our own communities. Uh, this we become invisible again. And and alas, that means we may be driven back into the closet. Unless we take some initiatives. The only way to be in residential care for elderly people is not to be lesbian. You feel well? I mean, uh, you heard, uh, Sonia Carron, who is a, um a gerontologist for the [00:02:30] um Auckland District Health Board, saying that of 260 questions that are the typical assessment questions that are asked for people to determine what are their needs, et cetera. There's not one question about sexual orientation and and clearly no training for car? No, uh, you know, trading in sensitivity, sensitivity, lesbian friendly or LGBTI friendly. [00:03:00] Uh, and imagine how much worse if we were in church run organisations and perhaps no double beds, either. Double beds? Yes. We heard a story today from Australia about somebody being accused of watching lesbian porn was just watching queer as folk or something on on, you know, Channel one or something. And that whole kind of and the almost asexuality that seems to be a part of ageing. Well, I don't [00:03:30] want to go gently into that Good night. So you set up your own community. We've set up a collective to work towards setting up the community. Yes, and, um and luckily, the top twins have become our patrons, so that's quite nice. But, you know, um, lesbians tend to be quite a poor community. Um, and, uh, financially and, uh, just even getting the money together [00:04:00] for a needs assessment which would allow us to apply for further grants in a time of really financial cutback across social services, et cetera. So, at the very time we we're ready to roll, there's, uh there's not really much money or much desire either within or without our community. And yet we see things. We saw those, um, the two lesbians, Lindsay, uh, and, uh, Juliet Lee who were burnt [00:04:30] out just a couple of months ago in heads. Well, to every lesbian who worries about isolation. Uh, stigmatisation that story brought a chill to all of us. And I think we you know, the older you get, the harder it's gonna be to fight against us. So we need to do something now. We can't wait till I'm 85 to to start it. And and and, uh, all of these reports talk about the [00:05:00] staying within your community. Well, we have a community that's been totally invisible in those very reports, and we're totally analogous to like there's papa housing that exists, the Pacific island housing, and it should exist. But we also want to have LGBT or even lesbian only housing. I think the question is, if we could even get LGBT housing, but we have different needs. What happens and that [00:05:30] was discussed today is we get mainstreamed with some illusion that they're on. You know, by the time you get to 65 or something, your needs and everybody else's needs straight, you know, and and lesbian are exactly the same. And that's totally ridiculous. I mean, I know that my own self from, um, a very good friend of mine had breast cancer in Washington DC. And there was a lesbian support breast cancer support group that she could belong to. And before [00:06:00] she belonged to that, she belonged to, um, just a generic breast cancer support group. Well, in the generic group, she kept changing the pronoun so that she wouldn't be victimised by homophobia. After all, she's dealing with chemotherapy. She doesn't have to deal with, uh, the homophobia of some of the other, um, support group members. But more than that, um, the issue of whether to have a mastectomy or more than that prosthesis may and whether [00:06:30] your husband will find you attractive once you've had your mastectomy is not a burning issue in the lesbian community. It may be for some lesbians, but, uh, there are lots of other issues that are more significant, and we need to develop, you know, And so so when it's mainstreamed and everything is everybody's seen the same. Of course they're overlapping, Uh, concern, yes, but There are some that are specific. And, uh, you know, that is just a good example. Do you think making [00:07:00] sure that you're not without lesbian friends is one of the key issues? Well, one of the things we're trying to do is also to create a virtual community before we actually get all of the money to to create our 100 lesbian. You know, uh, membered, uh, community like community can be created in in a virtual way where we care for each other. And I think we've done a lot of that within the collective. And I think the lesbian community, and probably the [00:07:30] gay and transgender and intersex community is struggling with those issues, too. How do we face ageing? And And I know at least from caricaturing of the gay community, that ageism in the gay community is alive and well and as and as well And so you know it it makes it a problem if we become invisible once we reach 50 or 55. And that's why one of our members was saying we should all just claim and and relish being old now [00:08:00] and not to to play into that. Oh, I'm not that old or it's very difficult. If all of these problems are gnawing away at your comfort, Well, it it increases your illness index, doesn't it? And I'm sure all of that and it's a frightening thing thing to be completely physically dependent. You know, three years ago I had a minor stroke, and so luckily, [00:08:30] I'm fully recovered, etcetera. But suddenly you know, I travelled a lot. I did a lot of things. I was very brave and I. I felt really lacking in self confidence and things. I. I don't want to. We can just do it individually in ourselves. And we do need community. And you have this resolution. Yes, we have a resolution which we're going to firstly present to the caucus that on older [00:09:00] LGBTI members, uh, tomorrow and we hope to bring it to Ross Noonan so that she can cover it in the final plenary. We would like this conference to endorse the government's, you know, forced government commitment to looking at these issues. The whole conference is based on this yoga Carta principles, and what we find is we need to emphasise [00:09:30] that it's not just sexual minorities, but ageing sexual minorities that have to have the right to affordable housing The right to excellent, uh, health care and to some extent, the the ageism of our own community sometimes says, Oh, when we talk about sexual and minorities, we're talking about kids. For instance, we were when we initially put in our abstract to be at this conference, they gave us the other stream, Uh, and why were we other? Because, well, being [00:10:00] was seem to have to do with drugs, alcohol and HIV. Uh, how do we live with that? Well, actually, we all get old, you know, and well being the whole concept of LGBTI well being has to include this transitioning we're doing into a different stage stages of our lives. The full transcription of the recording ends. A list of keywords/tags describing the recording follow. These tags contain the correct spellings of names and places which may have been incorrectly spelt earlier in the document. The tags are seperated by a semi-colon: 2010s ; Aotearoa New Zealand ; Asia Pacific Outgames (2011) ; Auckland ; Australia ; Jan Wilson ; LGBT ; Lesbian Elders Village ; New York City ; Pacific ; People ; Ruth Busch ; The Closet ; Wellington ; aged care ; ageism ; alcohol ; board ; cancer ; chill ; church ; closet ; collective ; community ; conference ; confidence ; desire ; drugs ; elder issues ; elders ; exclusion ; face ; friends ; gay ; government ; health ; health care ; homophobia ; hope ; housing ; human rights ; intersex ; isolation ; lesbian ; lover ; march ; mastectomy ; minority ; other ; relationships ; residential care ; retirement ; self confidence ; sexism ; sexual orientation ; social ; social services ; stroke ; support ; time ; training ; transgender ; twins ; work. The original recording can be heard at this website https://www.pridenz.com/apog_ruth_busch_and_jan_wilson_2.html. The master recording is also archived at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, New Zealand.  For more details visit their website https://tiaki.natlib.govt.nz/#details=ecatalogue.1089482. Please note that this document may contain errors or omissions - you should always refer back to the original recording to confirm content.