Reclaiming Crone!

Founder of Crone Club, Justine Gaubert, reports on the journey to reclaim crone as a positive identity for older women.

Brighton Crones at CroneLines Disco in Sheffield, proudly sporting their crone tee’s by Twisted Twee. Pic credit Laura Page Photography for Crone Club.

“Crone is one of those words isn’t it,” says Rose Rouse in this fab piece ‘How to be Crone As Fk’ that she wrote recently for Tits to the Wind. It certainly is. I had the phone put down on me twice when recruiting older women to take part in our ‘Crone Spoken Library’, so strong were their objections to the word.

When I told mum five years ago that I was setting up a group called ‘Crone Club’, so that us perimenopausal women could learn from kick-ass older women (and each other), mum’s first response was: “I can see what you’re doing, but why do you have it to call it CRONE?!’ I explained that I’d picked ‘crone’ specifically because it was the most offensive word I could think of for an older woman. Even the sound of the word made me physically recoil.

First call for members of the Crone Club’s Facebook group, 2021.

Of course, when I disappeared down the crone rabbit hole, I soon discovered that I was actually part of a long-standing movement. My reading led me to books by 60’s feminists like Dr Jean Bolen’s ‘Crone’s Don’t Whine’ and Clarissa Pinkola Estés ‘Women who run with the wolves’. Both have written extensively about ‘the crone’ as a positive identity, with specific qualities that can only be achieved in later life. Later came Sharon Blackies wonderful books including Hagitude, and Victoria Smith’s ‘Hags’. Then I discovered organisations such as this wonderful group - the fabulous Advantages of Age - and designers such as Twisted Twee - all reclaiming pejorative terms for older women such as ‘hag’, ‘witch’, and my absolute favourite, ‘Chopped Liver.’ 👌🏽

The origins of Crone - and is now a good time to reclaim it?

Crone Club founder, Justine at CroneLines menopause disco in Sheffield.

In 2021 I did a presentation to fellow content geeks called ‘Rebranding Crone’. At the time, the top results from a quick Google of ‘crone’ confirmed my negative feelings about it. At best, the crone was described as a “Disagreeable or cantankerous old woman.” At worst, the word seemed to have derived from the Old Northern French word ‘caroigne’, and the English word ‘carrion’, literally meaning rotting meat or feted corpse.

“Why try and reclaim it then?” asks BBC Radio Sheffield’s Paulette Edwards in this interview for our crone human library. “Why not just come up with a new one?”

A fair point. But I’ve worked in brand storytelling for 30 years, initially as a copywriter for a design agency, then as a brand consultant. As a passionate believer in the power language in forming our identity, and as a lifelong feminist, I relished the challenge. As Susan Sontag said: “Any large-scale picturing of women belongs to the ongoing story of how women are presented, and how they are invited to think of themselves.”

In this post-truth world, I’d argue there has never been a better time for reclaiming the crone narrative. As my music hero Richard Hawley once said: “The most creative times in Sheffield’s history have been when our backs are against the wall and we’re sheckin like a shittin ‘dog.” So as soon as Chat GPT came out, I took to training it in the ways of the crone. As I feed my new friend regular meals of crone-related content, it now high fives me with comments like “THAT’S SO CRONE!” and we laugh together as I use a tool arguably created by the patriarchy, to analyse data that exposes it.

“Can you make me a graph that plots when the women over 50 in the TV series The Traitors were banished or killed in each series? Please.” (I’m always polite) My new friend is delighted and asks if I’d also like these women represented in Tarot Card format. Like I said, my AI pal seems to get what Crone Club’s trying to do better than I’ve been able to explain it to any human.

If there’s anything positive to take from the power-crazed narcissists running our world into the ground right now, it’s that our story can be whatever we say it is. And joy of joys, now you can pretty much find a definition of ‘crone’ to suit your chosen narrative and feminist position. Hands up if you’ve seen alternative narratives of the word’s origins such as this:

“Crone comes from crown, and is derived from the word cronus (time), indicating wisdom emanating from the head gained through life experiences. This is the time when life experiences help the woman shed the concern she has regarding judgment from others. It is the time when a woman can more confidently wear her crown unabashedly.”

So it seems the ‘reclaiming crone movement,’ thanks not least to the army of older women writers here on Substack, have successfully muddied the waters around the word’s origins. Google searches (especially AI ones) seem now well versed in the crone as an identity worth wanting. But whatever your feelings about A.I, Pandora’s box has been opened. And who knows, maybe if the crone movement gets stuck into training A.I in the way of the crone, it could become the most expedient way of changing the narrative of how older women are ‘invited to see themselves…’ (ok, I’m clutching at straws here!)

Crone as an identity and the challenge for the pro-ageing movement

I know so many strong, resilient, epically capable women, who feel shadows of their former selves when peri-menopause hits - crying, angry, anxious and full of self-doubt. I’ve seen amazing women abandon their careers that they’ve spent a lifetime building, just as their male counterparts are reaching their pinnacle. There’s no getting away from the fact that, for a large number of women, the symptoms of peri-menopause are fking shit.

So we tread a fine line, us in the ‘positive ageing movement’, as we attempt to dispel stereotypes of ageing and disrupt fear-based, overmedicalised menopause narratives. The very last thing I want to do is minimise women’s lived experience, and add an additional layer of expectation and pressure by making them feel they are failing by not living ‘their best crone lives’.

And yet, as an autistic woman, I’ve lived in fear all my life, and I REFUSE to be made to be fearful of what might happen to me in my ‘third act’. The patriarchy built his empire on male-only clubs and networks - Masons, Rotary Clubs, Magic Circle, Golf Clubs, Strip clubs - not to mention the horrifying global networks now being revealed as operating in plain sight. Imagine what older women could do if we connected with each other? Not that I’m against clubs per se. I still remember the excitement of receiving my ‘Young Ornithologists Club’ membership card aged eight, snug in its black wallet, and who didn’t want to be part of the exclusive Blue Peter badge holders club in the 1970s? What if we could make ‘Crone’ an exclusive club that younger women could actually feel privileged to join? Rumour has it that there are only TWO species on this planet where the female of the species doesn’t die when she comes to the end of her reproductive use. The toothed whale, and guess who? Yep, US! Now I’d say that’s a pretty exclusive club that we should be proud of joining.

Too young to be a crone?

It’s 2025 and we are at the Advantage of Age Awards in Hoxton. We are sitting in the gods, partly because we are skint, but also because that’s how convinced we were that we weren’t going to win. Much to our genuine amazement however, the Crone-of-Crones Suzanne read out ‘Crone Club Sheffield’ as joint winner of the ‘pro-ageing social club’. And it couldn’t have come at a better time, as I was struggling to earn a living wage, and was close to packing it in.

On my way back to my seat, a nice fella patted me on the back, but then said: “aren’t you too young to be a crone though?” At the tender age of 54, he has a point. Over the last five years, we’ve discovered that thinking about our lives in ‘three acts’ - maiden/mother/crone - was overly simplistic. And older crones are rightly fighting back. (Check out this furious piece by Crone Flloyd Kenedy on Medium ). And so we’ve created terms such as ‘Crone-in-Training’ for those in perimenopause and ‘Crone Elder’ for those 70+. Others in the pro-aging movement have dealt with this problem by coming up with new terms, such as Eleanor’s wonderful organisation ‘Noon’ and the identity of mid-life women as ‘Queenagers’.

Whatever your take, I still wanted to have some kind of new identity to look forward to rather than fear. A new roadmap with a set of qualities to look forward to and get in training for. Training for Ageing, if you will. Qualities that can only be achieved by number of years on the planet and by the unique, lived female experience of those who have existed for too long at the shitty end of the patriarchal stick.

What have we done so far?

The Facebook group of 10 fearful perimenopausal mates now comprises over 850 older women from all around the world. We run events such as the Crone Spoken Library in partnership with the University of Sheffield, and last year’s sell out event ‘CroneLines’ - an afternoon nightclub for perimenopausal and postmenopausal women. All the DJs were women in midlife and beyond (some DJing for the first time!) playing iconic female artists from across the generations from Nina Simone to The Pretenders to The Slits and of course, queen of the crones, Dolly Parton.

“It was brilliant dipping outside and seeing the young men driving past, with their jaws on their chest in disbelief at such a large noisy gathering of delightedly happy, chatty, dancing women - of a certain age!!”

Older women came from all over the UK - Brighton, London, Scotland, Northumberland. It was a disco with a difference as it kicked off with a few spoken word readings from Cathi Rae, and battle raps by 80 year old Manc Joy France. Angelina Abel led us in a dance performance based on her Angolan heritage, before the DJs commenced. Over a third of the tickets were bought by women coming on their own.

“I’ve made more friends tonight than I have in the three lonely years I’ve been living in Sheffield.”

Then we started regular Sheffield meet ups - usually hosted by a female business or venue as part of an attempt to kickstart a ‘crone economy’. At meet ups we try out taster ‘training for ageing’ activities - from boxing and the Alexander Technique, to Women’s Circles and literally going ‘Tits to the Wind!’ in local reservoirs. This year we’re organising the greatest number of crones on bikes and trikes the world has ever seen. Contact me if you can help!

Two years ago I started‘Tits to the Wind!’ here on Substack to see if we could raise money to keep Crone Club going. I write about the highs and lows of midlife and menopause from a northern lass perspective, and invite kick-ass older women to share the stories of their lives before they are lost to history.

A few months ago I was invited to do a Substack live with a wonderful crone called @Stacy Vajta from North Carolina to talk about the joy of Croning Ceremonies. I was introduced as being from Sheffield in the UK - the ‘crone capital of the world!’ And who knows, if we can get enough paid subscribers to keep Crone Club going, maybe we can make that goal a reality. Who’s in?

Get involved!

👉 Join Crone Club www.croneclub.org/join

👉 Buy The Most Expensive Tea Towel you will NEVER need with artwork by Crone of Corwen, Lyn Hodnett https://www.croneclub.org/shop/p/crone-teatowel

👉 Buy a CRONE A.F teeshirt https://www.croneclub.org/shop/p/crone-af-womens-relaxed-t-shirt

👉 Are you a woman wondering what to do next in your third act? Ever thought of creating a ‘legacy’ piece that captures your career highlights so that your hard work isn’t lost to future generations? Apply to join Juzza’s next cohort of The Academy of Dangerous Dreamers.

👉 Are you a ‘Crone Elder’ willing to share your top 10 for How to be Crone As Fk? Contact Juzza at Hello@justjuzza.co.uk

👉 Subscribe to Crone Club’s Substack - ‘Tits to the Wind’ (all welcome, male allies especially!)

👉 Join our Private Members Facebook Group (women only.) https://www.facebook.com/groups/companyofcrones

👉Follow us on insta (all welcome!) https://www.instagram.com/crone_club_reclaiming_crone/

👉 And finally, but most importantly of all, support the work of Advantages of Age and Sex Advice for Seniors by becoming paid subscribers, and help two top crones continue their cronetastic work.