The women who turned to Ireland’s lesbian lines, which were first established in the late 1970s, were not only from the big cities of Dublin, Cork or Galway. They were also from towns and villages across the breadth of Ireland who needed to hear voices of succour and assurance from helpline staff. These were single women whose needs and desires Irish society simply would not countenance, or countless other women in frustrated marriages, who were still at times looking after children they adored.
Every call to a lesbian line was diligently logged and recorded. Sometimes there was only silence. We hear of one woman who called from her hospital bed, having been beaten up by her husband for having made initial contact with the service. At other times, a woman would call back merely to say goodbye, when life became too unbearable. “These are the ones that stay,” we are told.
But for thousands of women the lesbian lines were a genuine lifeline. “You could turn a woman’s life around by saying there will be a future for you,” one of the staffers recalls.
In her feature documentary Lesbian Lines, selected for International Competition at Sheffield DocFest, director Cara Holmes’ further describes the context in which the helplines were operating. “I [grew] up in the hellscape of the 1980s. Sometimes you look back with rose-tinted glasses, but the reality was we were living in a very heavy Catholic-dominated society.” The film is produced by Evan Horan of Keeper Pictures, with support from broadcaster RTE, Screen Ireland and the New Dawn Fund.
One of the core contributors to Holmes’ highly moving, life-affirming film, which chronicles in detail this previously untold history, is Joni Crone, whose influence (and bravery) cannot be underestimated. Now she is a playwright and gay activist, but in 1980 she was a young woman of 26 who went onto The Late Late Show, then Ireland’s only chat show on the country’s only TV station, to talk about being a lesbian.
She didn’t look like a radical dyke, far from it. She looked more like one of The Nolans, a popular sister band from the period, but the effect was profound. While the host, Gay Byrne, accused her of a “flamboyant arrogance,” she simply underlined that “we exist.” Despite the inevitable societal backlash, the lesbian sub-culture was given a national voice, and could begin to rejoice in being out and proud. The lesbian lines duly went into overdrive. “We were consciousness-raising. We were building up a picture of who was out there…who needed help, and who needed support.”
All the time, the heavy, rotary telephone was the mechanism through which help was sought, comfort was given, lives were saved and meaning was found.
“I love the telephone, I love talking on the phone,” director Holmes tells BDE during our own pre-Sheffield phone call. “When you suggested a call, I was like, brilliant.”
From a helpline perspective, the old rotary device offered an essential degree of anonymity. “Just the beauty of that simple act of lifting up a phone, sitting there and not really knowing who might call…being wide open for whoever might call in,” Holmes reflects.
What’s more, back in the 1980s, very few people even had telephones at home. “A lot of the time, they would have been out in the phone boxes,” she stresses. “Even if they had a phone in their home, it wasn’t private enough to make the phone call. So they went to their local village phone box, and knew that they had five or 10 minutes before someone else started queuing outside and listening to what they were saying.”
“But even the phone box was a private space in a way. And I love that idea of just the power of the voice. It really was incredible.” On the other end there of the line there would always be an understanding, comforting voice…as indeed there still is. “A lot of the women who I spoke to absolutely know that it saved lives. But it’s important to say that these helplines still exist, and people are still wanting to reach out.”
In the film, which is part-dramatised, we meet Joni Crone and many lesbian line staff who were at the vanguard of the sexual revolution in Ireland. “I didn’t have the same experiences as them,” says the younger Holmes, who got to know these women back in 2019, and has been shaping her documentary ever since. “It feels like a very personal film for me. And I was absolutely determined to tell this story.”
Holmes was also well aware that some of these women are now in their 70s and that it was crucial to record this history now. “I was very conscious that these women are ageing,” she tells BDE. “In the filmmaking process itself, you go through development funding and production and all these different stages, and I was just so conscious that we have to hurry this up. We have to get this film made, because I don’t want to lose anyone on this journey.”
“They would hate to hear me say this, but these women are absolute heroes of mine in terms of what they’ve done for me and for future generations coming up,” Holmes underlines. “Just the bravery and the confidence and, as you say, the smiles. They’re smiling and they are fondly remembering these times. Obviously not all of the 80s were fun, but this bubbling movement that they found within each other, I just really buzzed off that and became very intoxicated by it. And I think what I find most is that it was an absolute privilege to listen to all of their stories.”
One of the contributors, Claire Hackett, notes how “there’s a great strength from having a history.” It is an assertion with which Holmes agrees fundamentally.
“Even from 2019 in my late 30s, early 40s, this is the first time I’m hearing about this stuff, and it’s actually kind of getting frustrating that this not in the school books,” Holmes further articulates her need to research and tell this history. “Why do we not know about these women who changed the course of history for so many of us?”
And while Ireland has seen considerable change over past decades in terms of the freedoms its people can enjoy (gay rights, divorce, abortion), there is still some way to go, Holmes argues. “It’s an interesting thing that I found when I was listening to some of the women back in the 80s, that some of the negatives and criticism coming after lesbians are the same things that transgender people have to deal with now. I feel there’s a kind of history repeating itself.”
“I really want to live in a society where everyone respects each other’s differences, but we’re not there yet at all,” Holmes signs off.
