(I should remark at the outset, that the canceling is being directed downwards, by the powerful, as is so frequently the case, whatever their horrified screams actually claim...)
'We should have the right not to like men': the French writer at centre of literary storm When Pauline Harmange, a French writer and aspiring novelist, published a ( Read more... )

Okay, this story seems to have got a lot of coverage and a storm of Twitter outrage: Seaside town's high-tech anti-sex toilets will spray users with water.
And honestly, I've had enough embarrassing moments with those hair-trigger motion-operated automatic flush systems...
(Carry on at your Convenience was the 22nd in the series of Carry On films ( Read more... )

Spotted on Twitter: someone alleging - can this even be true? I see various iterations of the idea that "if you wouldn't discuss your taste in pornography with your grandma/your boss/a stranger then what you're into is wrong." This is some bullshit.

Come ON. People judge other people about tastes much less high-risk than what they wank to and they ( Read more... )

At last laws relating to access to abortion and same-sex marriage applicable to other parts of UK may now also apply to Northern Ireland.
***
Even if I've been thinking that some things just come around regularly, like the discovery that O, women have been writing science fiction for A Very Long Time, and in considerable numbers, which I feel I ( Read more... )

(No, really, I'm not at all paranoid that I'm having problems over looking at records relating to censorship, perish the thort.)
Yesterday I trotted off to the BL, and looked at 2 files I'd ordered that did not address the thing I was looking for, and managed to identify from the not entirely helpful finding aid to the collection (a large part of ( Read more... )

(Do people read the Pollyanna books or watch the movie any more? is she still a byeword for finding some sweet sugary good in the most adverse circumstance? enquiring mind wishes to know.)
But anyway: I was thinking, following a discussion to do with an event that went somewhat pearshaped and its repercussions, that sometimes the things that did ( Read more... )

I got to see the particular texts I wanted to see, and one of them was actually the originally typescript with ms corrections and emendations of the Play That Was Banned By The Censor in 1907 unless the author agreed to remove all references to something that was, in fact, fairly key a) to the overall action and b) to the symbolism.
Also the ( Read more... )

While the reports make it seem that no-one knew before how much of a positive response there was to Radclyffe Hall's pioneering novel of 'female inversion' (which has been covered quite extensively in previous studies of her): ‘It has made me want to live’: public support for lesbian novelist Radclyffe Hall over banned book revealed , it is ( Read more... )

Journos writing about libraries from a position of, apparently, knowing nothing about the subject.
Only at Oxford could musty tomes about phallic worship be regarded as a genuine target for onanistic students.
Firstly, we sincerely hope that environmental standards at the Bodleian are such that the tomes are not musty: I would imagine that ( Read more... )

I am an immense fan of the works of Naomi Mitchison (1897-1999). Although I wouldn't say that ff relationships form a central theme of any of her numerous works, for somebody who was born when she was and writing over the period she did, she had a very relaxed attitude towards same-sex relationships in general. She had, at the very least, romantic ( Read more... )