What's Your Sign? by Gillian

I’m a sign of the times.

I am a woman with more freedom than any previous generation in the history of humankind.

I have freedom of expression, and self-determination of my life, which women of the past could scarcely dream of.

I vote, a privilege not extended to all women in the U.S. until 1920, with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, although in Colorado, women gained the right to vote in 1893.

I have complete control over my own property, a privilege not extended to American women until 1900.

I can even purchase my own property, a privilege I was astonished to find not extended to me in 1966. I had a good job and determined to buy a house; a very modest, two-bedroom frame house, the likes of which have mostly become “scrape-offs” in recent years. However, I found that although I could qualify with my income, I could not get a loan. This refusal certainly had nothing to do with my being a lesbian; it would take another 20 years for ME to figure that one out! It was because …. What would happen if I became pregnant? As an unmarried woman I had no one to pick up my debts when I had to quit work. (Hey, perhaps being a lesbian might actually have been an advantage!) Poor innocent little ol’ me. I had no idea that only one in a thousand women (0.1%) owned homes in 1960, but, WOW, by 1970 we zoomed all the way up to a shaky two in a thousand (0.2%). Currently, single women are around 20% of homebuyers while single men account for only 10%.

Just in my lifetime, how things have changed. I own my home, I own and drive my car, I manage my own money. I haven't worn a skirt since I retired; I am free to follow fashion or ignore it. I am free to follow social mores or ignore them.

I talk about religion and politics, very much verboten in my youth, and, still worse, about sex!

I have lived with my beautiful Betsy for over 25 years. Far from causing us to live in fear, this fact does not seem to faze anyone among our acquaintances, friends, and families. And now, in July 2013, neither does it, according to the Supreme Court, threaten all those straight marriages out there. Which, by the way, are failing at a rate exceeding 50%.

Like many older people, I get a bit curmudgeonly at times, bemoaning today’s world and muttering on about how things are not what they used to be.

How happy I should be that they are not!

I have lived, and am living, in the best possible time.

I am indeed, and delighted to be, a sign of the times.


© 6 July 1913 

About the Author  

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.