Meant to flag this up before for anyone who's interested: Chuck Upchurch, A Masterclass: Queer History: When did the popular ‘GAY’ LGBT+/Human Rights Campaign really start?
How about the ‘Gay’ Reform Movement of the 1830’s!?
Pioneering research by US Historian Charles Upchurch, whose specialist area is the first half of the 19th century, has ( Read more... )

Dept of, terribly poor stuff: Bride Asks For Divorce The Day After Her Wedding Thanks To Childish Prank - what's boggling is that the likelihood of some kind of jolly wheeze on the groom's part was in the mix, and she told him NOT THAT, so he rules-lawyered, but if he was so likely to do X you said specifically NO why were you even marrying the guy ( Read more... )

It so perchanced that over the last week I was reading two books about poets - Frances Bingham's Valentine Ackland: A Transgressive Life and Alison Lurie's memoir of James Merrill and David Jackson, Familiar Spirits.
There were moments, reading about the ongoing draaaama of Ackland's life, that I was somewhat reminded of this passage in Cold ( Read more... )

Review of book on abortion in early modern Italy: When Abortion Was a Necessary Sin: The history of abortion in Catholic Italy as described by Christopoulos was largely familiar from what I already knew about Protestant England, Germany, and the United States. These western contexts, which share a larger history of medical practice and Christian ( Read more... )

On another paw, we have historically-attested evidence that people in The Past did it, though not quite for the same reasons...
'Soaking', which is allegedly something that young Mormons do so that they can have sex but not actual sex that they'd have to admit to? (Okay, am not entirely up in the spiritual practices of the LDS.)
Anyway, what it is ( Read more... )

I’m Bridget Christie, a comedian, but I don’t just see comedy. Last weekend I went to a spellbinding exhibition of British folk art called Ritual Britain, set perfectly in London’s atmospheric Crypt Gallery in the bowels of St Pancras New Church in London.
And one might feel a leeeetle boggled at all this rather pagan remnant stuff in the crypt of ( Read more... )

What I read
Courtney Milan, This Wicked Gift (finished), Proof by Seduction (2009), Trial by Desire (2010) and that pretty much wound down the binge.
Re-read of Stella Gibbons, A Pink Front Door (1959) - not one of her absolutely top ones, but pretty good. People circulating around a codslapworthy young married woman who is not only one of those ( Read more... )

Radical Object: Fergusson Vaginal Speculum: The speculum is associated with racialised and state-sponsored gynaecological violence through the work of Marion Sims and the Contagious Diseases Acts and through instances of compulsory inspections of incarcerated women in recent times. But, the duck billed version was also allied to liberatory ( Read more... )

Re the password shenanigans, it turned out that if you reset your password, the system will not let you change it - even if it suddenly decides it doesn't like your shiny new password - for five days. At no point in the attempt to change the password does it say, come back in 5 days time. However, after toing and froing and actually speaking on the ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Rebel Women - possibly (apart from the bloopers) a lot of it was that the author and I were interested in different things? so she was getting very excited about some aspects of these women's lives, and I was 'yeah, yeah, but what about - ?' and really, it was her book and her choice.
Angela Thirkell, Coronation Summer: A Novel ( Read more... )