Val: Full Interview

TRANSCRIPT

Val
Interviewed by Deirdre Quill
11th June 2015

V: Hi my name’s Val and it’s the 11th June 2015 and I’m being interviewed as a lesbian mother for the Queer Stories project.
I’d like to identify as a lesbian and a lesbian mother.

I have a daughter aged 30 – can’t believe it – she was born in 1984 and she was born in Leeds. I’m still in Leeds and she’s still in Leeds. And she was working for a children’s nursery and in fact is still working at a children’s nursery today but yesterday she went for an interview for another job. She wants to have a career change and she got told today that she’s got the job so she’s really pleased and excited.

I always wanted to have a child and in years gone by I … when I was – well when I thought I was heterosexual – I had this fairytale idea that, you know, you meet a guy and you have a child and you‘ve got a family and that‘s the way it was done. Well it didn’t quite work out like that, as it doesn’t do for anyone, and I suppose it was more my early thirties I came out to myself and to a few others as a lesbian. It was – I wasn’t in a relationship – it was at the time when there was a lot happening in the Women’s Movement and I was very involved in the Women’s Movement in different capacities, whether it be women’s groups, women’s health groups, National Abortion Campaign, Women Against Violence, etc. etc.

I also read quite a lot to do with feminism like Spare Rib, Wires, that were out at the time. And, getting to early thirties it’s a time when you’re told that your biological clock with regard to having a kid is, not coming to an end, but slowing down and so I started to think about how I might have a child, not really knowing what, how, who. It was then that I read about an insemination group that was in London, a women’s group that had started to do self-insemination and so, as a start, I wrote – because emails were not on the agenda then – and got no reply. So I then thought ‘what next?’

I then contacted BPAS (British Pregnancy Advisory Service) because the only other way I knew was to do it through them because they did then offer for a fee – I can’t remember how much it was but, you know, it was a few hundred pounds – and you could be inseminated there. I had considered at one point, perhaps, you know, asking a friend – a male friend – and we’d just sleep together for the night, but to cut a long story short, that really wasn’t what I wanted to do. So I went down the BPAS route to start with and had a chat. In the meanwhile I didn’t really want to do it that way, because (a) it was quite costly and (b) it was quite clinical, and, as I say, I just didn’t want to. But I then met someone who was willing to do it privately, now when I mean privately I don’t mean for a fee. It was a woman who wasn’t a lesbian but she was very involved in the women’s movement and it so happened that there was somebody that she knew – well this all came at a later date – but she did want to help and eventually there was somebody that she knew who was willing to be a donor.

And so at that time she knew someone who was willing to donate the sperm and we made a private arrangement and it so happens that she was also doing this for another woman who I then later met and we are in fact still friends, 30-odd years later. And the process, well, seems quite hilarious now, it was, at the time, it was – well, it was novel, in that I used to meet this woman at a central location, sometimes in a lift, and there’d be just the two of us and she would pass on to me a phial with sperm in and I then had arranged with a friend of mine to go up to her house and I would then lie on the bed, insert it with a syringe – that again had been gotten from somewhere – and lie there for 20 to 30 minutes with my legs up in the air, and it was thought that that was the best way to conceive.

Fortunately for me I conceived the third time that I tried, whereas for the friend who had in fact started before me, it took her several years. I mean she did eventually, but it’s different for every woman and it’s not until you start actually trying that you find out. At the time I didn’t know – well I knew of this other woman who was trying and I knew of one other woman who in fact was pregnant. So to my knowledge she was the first woman that I knew in Leeds who had got pregnant via A.I. [artificial insemination] and there may well have been others but I didn’t know of them, so in some ways it was quite isolating; it was quite difficult. I had to find out all the information myself, which I did bit by bit and because I was – and still am – quite an independent soul, I just went ahead with it because it was something that was really important to me. I wanted a child and I didn’t see any reason why not.

Because it’s so long ago, I can’t remember the exact sequence of things, but I know that it was either when I was pregnant or after I’d had my daughter, that I met with other women who were also trying to conceive via artificial insemination, or they were pregnant and that became a lesbian mothers’ group. I can’t remember when it started and how many women were there, but we did meet from time to time with our kids; we did go on the odd social, the odd outing to the seaside, and that was quite supportive. It felt like I wasn’t the only one; there were other people, other women doing the same and we could help and support one another. The only other thing that I think was around at the time – I thought it was at the time I got pregnant, but in fact, having looked at this booklet I discovered it was 1986 that it was published; and Lisa… a woman called Lisa Saffron wrote a book called Getting Pregnant Our Own Way, A Guide To Alternative Insemination, which again it felt like something other women were doing; it was a way that other women, particularly lesbians, could find out for themselves how to do it.

Reproduction was a big issue at the time because women didn’t really have any rights over their own reproduction and there were lots of campaigns going on at the time. It was – I think the pill was… I think was around then but it was still very much in its early stages; and it was very medicalised and very much in… well, it was very male dominated, whether it be partners or/and the medical service and really women didn’t have a voice. And also it was very difficult to get hold of information. There wasn’t anything like the internet what we’ve got now; there was the odd magazine like I mentioned earlier: Spare Rib or Wires but very little else and there were very few places apart from alternative bookshops. We had one in Leeds called The Corner Bookshop and they had magazines as well as books and from what I remember, I don’t think there was anywhere else, or you could get it on subscription, but you need to know about these publications to begin with. And again there were a variety of campaigning groups and I suppose that was the other avenue via other women, or the organisation, or both, that you might hear about where you could find out or read more about the subjects that we’re talking about. But even then, even when it comes to Spare Rib or Wires there was probably not a lot about artificial insemination. There might have been, like I said again earlier, an article about this London group. Because I can’t remember exactly but I think it’s likely that it was maybe a letter in there, or something, because there was nowhere else to turn to.

The biggie, or, one of the biggies, and there were several, was how to tell my parents when I was pregnant. I decided to wait the… I think it was two or three months because again it was the whole thing of possibly having a miscarriage and thinking well I’d rather not go through it all and then find I actually lose the child. But hopefully everything would go alright which it did.
My parents were actually OK once they got used to the idea. It was mainly, for them, their worries and concerns about being on my own because I hadn’t come out to them as a lesbian at the time. I did later but that’s not part of this interview, so they didn’t really quiz or question me but they were quite worried, you know, how would I manage on my own? But after we got through that they were very supportive and felt fine and when they wanted to tell family and their friends, they decided that they would tell them and to this day I have no idea how they told them how I actually got pregnant because I thought for them, you know for their generation, it might be easier if they said that I’d been in a relationship and you know it was over and I was pregnant because I was just thinking of them and thinking it didn’t matter to me but they chose to actually not do that which was quite good for then. My brothers, I have two brothers, they were fine.

My friends were mostly OK, but I had then and I still mainly have now, most of my women friends are heterosexual – I have some lesbian friends – but mainly heterosexual and some of them at the time weren’t shocked or aghast but, they – the only way I could put it – they quizzed me: was I sure about this? And how would I manage? And x, y and z. I told them and I was, not angry, but I was a bit irritated by it because actually doing it the way I was doing, I had thought it through at great length, much more than probably most women would so why were they quizzing me about, you know, would I be able to manage and all the rest of it.

As far as my employment was concerned, fortunately at that time I was working in a co-op, a workers co-op, and there was only three of us and – three women – and they were great, they were supportive, very helpful; I took time off and when my daughter was born I used to take her into work; we had a shop, it was a sort of craft-type endeavour and so there was no problems there.

When it came to my daughter’s nursery and school, nursery was OK and school, on the whole, was OK, but there was one incident that I remember vividly. And I think she was in either – I can’t remember what year – but she was quite young, probably about eight or nine and they had to do a family tree at school. And because I had always told my daughter that there was someone who was a donor, that she didn’t have a father, and she accepted it and was fine because to me she wasn’t her father, he had nothing to do with her; he provided her sperm and that was great but he wasn’t her father, but biologically, I suppose in society lots of other people see it that way and when she went back into school with her family tree and showed it – I don’t think she put ‘donor’ but I think she put something like, you know, ‘no father’ and the teacher announced to, not only her, but others in the class ‘everybody has a father somewhere’. And my daughter came back from school saying this and as far I was concerned that was not the case. So I made an appointment to see the teacher and I told her how my daughter had been conceived and that as far as I was concerned he was not her father and that I thought... I recommended to her that she doesn’t actually throw out that flippant line ’everybody has a father’ and I hope that she learnt something from that.

As far as my daughter having any sort of bad times at school because I was a lesbian mother, I don’t think she did on the whole. There was one kid I think who taunted her a little but not… it didn’t become an enormous issue. Because I suppose although I was out to myself, and out to her, and out to a few friends, I wasn’t out to everyone and that is in a way is still the case now. It’s something that I share with who I want to share with and on the whole I don’t think my daughter’s had any particular discrimination.

Being Jewish, although I’m not a practising Jew, the idea of whether I was going to have a boy or a girl, I didn’t really mind, but felt as though it might be easier having a girl because in the Jewish religion having a boy usually means – not always – that the boy is circumcised. Because I knew a little bit about circumcision – it’s thought that it’s healthier for boys and there’s less chance of infection etc., etc. I did wonder about maybe having a child if it was a boy circumcised medically rather than actually via a Rabbi which I did feel – and still do feel – is quite brutal under no anaesthetic, etc. But fortunately I had a girl so that didn’t arise, and I think probably, secretly to myself, I was particularly pleased it was a girl. I would have loved whatever child I had and so in the scheme of things it wouldn’t have mattered.

I think at the time also in the lesbian scene in particular, that it was also easier, particularly when children grew up a bit more, in that – having a girl – in that there were a number of lesbian separatists who didn’t want to be in the presence of boys after they reached a certain age. I can’t remember what that age was – again it was a long time ago – but on socials or outings or discos – that sort of thing – it was frowned upon by some, not all, by some, and so again it just made it a lot easier.

Prior to conception, so this is August 1983 – and this will perhaps illustrate very clearly some of the attitudes, or general attitudes around A.I. At the time there was a group of men who decided to try to get hold of sperm for women or lesbians who wanted to inseminate for themselves. So this group advertised – I think there was a men’s magazine – I can’t remember what it was called, but it might have been, in fact, I think, Lone Plains Drifter or something like that and they advertise for others; and unfortunately there was a guy who... he pretended to be a potential donor and in fact he was a journalist who got in touch with this organisation and offered sperm. Now I don’t know all the details of what went on but what I do know is that a week or two later there were several newspaper articles with very negative headings like Babes for Gays, Lesbians Bizarre Baby Bid Slammed and the Area Medical Officer at the time condemned the whole scheme. It was very, very upsetting at the time because it was also... I wasn’t mentioned but there was someone I knew that was mentioned and fortunately, again, she weathered the storm as well as I did. But it was horrendous and, as I say, that was before I conceived and that it just showed everyone how difficult the times were because it was something that was heralded as ‘wrong’ and you could get all sorts of hereditary diseases and women taking control of their bodies and their lives was just not on and the papers said it. I haven’t seen anything since but I haven’t been looking for it, but at the time it was very distressing.

The only other, I suppose, negativity that I feel I’ve experienced is that because of general society’s view of, I think, lesbians, being a woman and being a lesbian mother all rolled into one, I do feel that I have suffered to some degree from internalised oppression in the way that, I suppose, I am. I don’t suffer on a day to day basis but I’m a bit guarded about who I tell and what I tell about myself and it’s only really recently, and I’m in my 60s, that I’ve felt able to talk about my lesbian side a lot more with others that I haven’t in the past. It might just come into conversation, relevant conversation, whereas I just wouldn’t talk about it because I found it difficult to accept myself fully because of being seen as different, not the norm. In some ways I’ve never been the norm in who I am and how I live my life, but this was just lots more and also I think – there’s no blame attached – I think it’s much easier for lesbians and gays, LGBT people as a whole, maybe to come out to family, whereas when I did come out to my parents many, many years ago it was very difficult. And my mother was very upset because she knew that the discrimination that people face. My father just couldn’t accept it and walked out of the room. And neither of them ever talked about it ever again. And so it feels, and felt, that part of my identity was not able to be accepted. I’ve lived with it and it’s OK and I live a very fulfilled life but I do feel as though it has made a difference not being able to be fully who I am.

With regard to what was the norm in the 1980s, I said before that yes, I wasn’t the norm, but with regard to being a lesbian mother, it was the time of Thatcher; it was the time of traditional family values – and I know it’s around a bit now, but in the 1980s it was huge. We had Clause 28 which prohibited homosexuality being promoted in any shape or form in our institutions. We did have, and I’ve still got a copy of, I think, a badge that says ‘lesbians are not pretending’ because again homosexuals, lesbians, were seen – oh I think it was ‘lesbian mothers are not pretending’ – it was seen as it was pretend it was make-believe it wasn’t real which, again, if you’re anyone who is reading about, seeing all of that, even though I still went ahead and did what I did, it didn’t make me feel comfortable about it; it wasn’t easy and there weren’t any role models; there weren’t anyone to make you think ‘oh well so-and-so did it’ like there is now, or so-and-so… You look up on the internet, and you find out, not only in this country, but all over the world of others doing it so that’s why it was very much against the norm and it made life more difficult.

As far as I know my daughter is fine about me being a lesbian in that I told her, I suppose, in stages as she grew up about who I was and how she was conceived because it was what she might be able to understand or deal with at the time. I made a decision that I wanted if possible for the donor to provide her with some information about himself – just a brief description, a name, a photograph that she could have when she was 18. Others, other women that I knew at the time, decided to have completely anonymous and didn’t want that but I just thought when she was older, maybe she would want to contact him so I asked my intermediary, my broker, if that was possible because it was through her that he donated and he agreed to it.
So I had this letter in an envelope with sealing wax on it that was deposited at my bank in a safe deposit box that I never touched and again it wasn’t until my daughter was probably in her mid-teens, or something like that, that I told her that it existed and in fact I think it was when she was about 17, she wasn’t quite 18, that she started asking some questions about him and of course I knew nothing about him and I asked her if she wanted to know more about him and I would be willing to find out if I could retrieve this letter with a photo in etc, etc and she did say she wanted to know something about him and I think it was a bit of, almost curiosity, because he agreed and once she’d read the letter about him and seen the photo it almost satisfied her curiosity because I did ask her if she wanted to meet him because again he had agreed if she wanted to meet him that she could but she decided she didn’t want to and I said I’d go with her, and I don’t think we’ve talked about it since and she is now 30. So, I think I’m glad that I did it that way because if she wanted to she could have traced him but decided she didn’t want to.

I feel that it’s not easy being a single mother – I’m not in a partnership and I wasn’t then – but my friends have always been – they were then, and they are still are now, very supportive and very helpful, like my alternative family. There have been highs; there have been lows. I love her dearly; I have no regrets but it was very difficult and it’s something that maybe a bit easier these days; I don’t know.

Going back to the 1980s, thinking about some of the men around at the time, for example in relation to this men’s group that produced this magazine called Lone Planes Drifter there were several men’s groups, I suppose you call them men’s CR [consciousness raising] groups, in that there were men who wanted to try to make society more equal, try to be allies to women, try to help them with their agenda, i.e. lesbians’/women’s agenda rather than men’s agenda and so, because they knew there were a number of lesbians who wanted to have children and needed men to donate their sperm they felt as though by advertising for other men this was something that they could actually offer, something that they could do that would be helpful. It was very much a political context rather than any other context and these days it’s quite different. I don’t know a lot about this but I know there’s various websites and men advertising their sperm and all sorts of things, but that it’s not from the same point of view; it’s not the same agenda. It’s what men can get out of it rather than offering women something that they want; it’s very media orientated; this was very private; it was something that was done in small groups and it worked then. I don’t know whether there is or there isn’t that sort of thing nowadays.

A man’s CR group was a man’s consciousness raising group. At the time there were many women’s consciousness raising groups and it was… I’d imagine that for men it was similar but from a different perspective; it was a time where you would be able to tell your own story and hear others and you could safely explore what it was like to be a man and how you use your power and that’s mainly what a CR group is and does. There will be lots of other aspects as well but generally speaking that’s what it was for and would meet maybe on a weekly or a monthly basis and everything you discuss would be confidential, it would be, you know, within the group. I was in women’s CR groups at the time and that was for us to be able to be with other women to tell our stories to each other and maybe our difficulties and what we faced in a world, a society that was mainly..…
It feels particularly important for me to tell my story now – and its very convenient that there happens to be a Queer Stories Project – because I feel as though it helps me to actually feel more of who I am, to actually feel more confident about who I am – that’s all of me – and I think for anyone who has suffered in any way or gone against the norm or been different and it’s been less acceptable to society, I think it’s important to be able to tell your story because in the telling of your story it helps yourself as well as helping others to understand who you are and why you say what you do, why you feel how you do and for me, at this time in my life it seems particularly pertinent, and maybe I wouldn’t have been able to do it ten years ago; I don’t know it might have been good for me to do it but this project wasn’t around and so I think I want to share it with others so that it might be of some use.

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