Lois Cox, holding a copy of her new book That's What I Am. Photo: Sharon Brettkelly
In Lois Cox's book 'That's What I Am' 16 lesbians tell their stories of living in Wellington last century, before they could be unapologetically out.
When Lois Cox started interviewing older lesbian women about their lives during the 1990s in Wellington, the city's lesbian community was vibrant and flourishing.
"They could join a choir, go to the lesbian library, they could help with bringing out other people who'd rung the lesbian line, there were balls and dances and dinners. It was pretty exciting," says Cox.
But even in that decade of openness, finding older women willing to talk wasn't easy, she says.
"They'd had such a bad time and they had to cling together."
They had grown up in the repressive 1950s when a lesbian might not even know of the existence of the word 'lesbian', and even later in life, many were in denial or closeted about their sexuality.
"It was egalitarian and prosperous," says Cox of the '50s. "But there was only one thing that women could do ... and that was marriage and children.
"So these poor women were either fighting down their feelings that they really didn't want to be doing this ... or they hadn't realised yet because it was such a prudish decade really."
Cox was inspired to do the interviews after seeing a play called 'Mills and Bloody Boon'.
"It was about lesbians and gays somewhere in Sussex in England. I sat there and really enjoyed and then I thought, why haven't we got something like this."
The criteria for the subjects were that they had to have a connection with Wellington and be over 50 at the time of the interview. All 16 were Pākehā but they were from different backgrounds, from working class to academic.
Cox recorded more than 40 hours of the women for the oral history project, now lodged in the Alexander Turnbull Library.
This year, 25 years after she finished the project, she published a book: That's What I Am: Oral Histories of Older Lesbians.
A former public servant and prolific writer, she says the book is an important historical record of 20th century lesbian life, that would otherwise have been lost, and is easier to access than the recordings.
Rather than telling each story individually with a biography per chapter, the book captures the women's stories in decades.
For example, in the 1960s, elements of gay community emerged around flats and parties, and lesbian sportswomen drank at certain bars, but it wasn't until the 1970s that lesbian life began to be lived publicly and unapologetically.
Some remained private about their sexuality throughout their lives.
"At least one of them said during the interview, 'well, I knew a couple of women, they weren't very nice and I believe they were lesbian, but what we were doing was fine and we really liked it, so we clearly weren't lesbian'."
Their experience of coming out varied enormously, depending on the time. Cox found that the later in the 20th century, the more liberal the culture, and the easier it was.
Like some of the women, Cox married and had children before recognising herself as a lesbian around the time the Homosexual Law Reform Act was being debated, and her own teenage children were going on marches.
Despite their varied backgrounds they also shared some common memories and experiences.
Many were nostalgic for the free, slightly "feral" childhoods of the fifties, when their mothers would send them off to play for hours with the instruction: 'Be home in time for tea.'
Decades of staying in the closet about their sexuality was a common theme.
"One of the women met her first lover when she was 'talking on the lines' - they were toll operators and she was living in Wellington in a hostel for toll operators or people in the post office."
After talking to each other on the lines for some time, the two women finally met.
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