History

The Ascent of Woman, Episode 2

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The latest episode of Amanda Foreman’s Ascent of Woman series focused on Asia. It began with a celebration of the Trung Sisters, two Vietnamese women who rebelled against the conquering forces of Han China. The sisters were not just heroes of Vietnamese nationalism, they were heroes of feminism, because women were allowed to hold positions of power in traditional Vietnamese culture, but not in China.

It was, apparently, all the fault on Confucius, who was very fond of saying the women are inferior to men. Later Confucian scholars even manage to subvert the traditional symbolism of ying and yang, claiming that the masculine yang was more powerful than, and superior to, the feminine ying. Confucius does not come out of the program very well.

Fortunately for Chinese women there was always the option of Buddhism. Empress Wu, the notorious but highly capable Chinese ruler during the Tang period made extensive use of Buddhism in her struggle against the patriarchal Confucians.

The high point of the program was the point where Foreman visits Japan and gets to see what is believed to be the actual inkwell with which Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji, the first novel ever written, over 1000 years ago. Foreman was visibly moved by the experience. Quite right, I would have been too. Here it is.

Murasaki's inkwell

Harking back to yesterday’s discussion of translations, doubtless F R Leavis would have condemned Murasaki’s work for failing to convey a sense of Englishness. Well sod that. I particularly liked the Japanese author and nun that Foreman interviewed who claimed that Genji was a feminist work because in it the male hero, Genji, has relationships with many women and none of them are made happy as a result.

The final segment of the program focused on the practice of foot binding which was once commonplace in China and survived right into the 20th century. Unsurprisingly, this was the aspect of the program that the newspapers chose to focus on when reviewing it. Stories of mothers doing unspeakable things to their daughters for the sake of fashion appeal so much more to the tabloids than tales of women like Murasaki doing amazing things. Also it allows British readers to feel smugly superior to the barbaric foreigners. But, as Foreman said to me on Twitter, it got the series talked about, and if that meant a whole lot more people watching it that was a good thing.

I have no idea whether you can watch the series outside of the UK, but it is available on iPlayer and TunnelBear is your friend.

The Ascent of Woman

~ Cheryl

The BBC has started a new, four-part documentary series called The Ascent of Woman. The title is, of course, a reference to the legendary 1973 series on the history of science, The Ascent of Man, fronted by Dr Jacob Bronowski. This series, fronted by Dr. Amanda Foreman, is more of a cultural history, specifically about the role of women in society.

It is, fairly obviously, a feminist history. One of Foreman’s objectives is to highlight great women of history. She’s also trying to explain why women have been so badly thought of, particularly in Christian and Islamic society. I was pleased to see her finger Aristotle, who really does have a lot to answer for. An expert on ancient Greek culture that she talked to in the first program said that the position of women in Athenian society, that supposed bastion of democracy, was analogous to that in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

From our point of view, however, a particularly interesting point made by Foreman regards the origin of literature. There are lots of ways in which women have set firsts in the arts. Mary Shelley is widely regarded as having written the first science fiction novel. The honor of being the world’s first novel appears to belong to the Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th Century. It is also worth noting that the first written musical compositions were produced by Hildegard of Bingen. But who was the world’s first author?

Obviously we don’t know. People will have been telling stories around camp fires since before the dawn of civilization. However, we do know the name of the first person to sign their name to a literary work. She was Enheduanna, the daughter of Sargon the Great who ruled over the Sumerian Empire in the 23rd Century BCE. She was also High Priestess of the Moon, and the most important religious leader in the country. Enheduanna wrote a considerable amount of religious poetry, mostly in praise of the goddess Inanna (Ishtar).

So there we have it. Women writers, they have been at it for more than four millennia. Perhaps it is time for people to notice that we exist.

We’re All Sodomites

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Earlier today on Twitter I passed on a news article being shared by the Irish drag queen, Panti Bliss. It was a story about how the Catholic Church has made a ruling that transsexuals cannot be godparents because they “do not meet the moral requirement”. This has caused a lot of confusion in social media because people today equate being “moral” with being “good”. The Church, of course, does nothing of the sort. It equates being “moral” with “not committing sin”, and sadly what constitutes “sin” has not been updated in quite a while.

To some extent this is all Aristotle’s fault. He taught that the human seed is contained solely within the male semen. Women are simply the fertile soil in which men plant their seeds in order for them to grow. If you think about that for a minute, perhaps with your Evangelical Fundamentalist hat on, you’ll see one can conclude that if a man ejaculates without placing his semen inside a woman then he is effectively aborting that seed. You can see where things will go from there, can’t you?

In fact Clement of Alexandria went one step further. In his view, in order to have sex morally, one had to do so with the intention of creating legitimate offspring. So not only was it sinful to masturbate, to have oral sex, or and sort of gay relationship, it was also sinful to have sex with any woman other than your wife. Oh, and it was sinful to have sex with your wife if she was pregnant, because again a legitimate child could not result. He wasn’t very keen on sex, was our Clement.

These days we tend to think of “sodomy” as having gay sex, possibly only as having anal sex, but throughout most of Christian history the definition has been much wider than that. The 16th Century Spanish theologian and pioneering economist, Martín de Azpilcueta Navarro, defined sodomy thus: “as when a man sins with a man, a woman with a woman, or a man with a woman outside of the natural vessel”. The latter was the case even if the man and woman in question were married. He was quite liberal, though. The 15th Century Diccionario de los inquisidores describes sodomy as “incomparably more serious than having sex with your own mother”, presumably on the grounds that getting one’s mother pregnant was preferable to “wasting” one’s seed.

My guess is that almost everyone reading this will classify as a sodomite in one way or another. Sorry about that, folks. Though you may find it useful to remember that when Mr. Wrong fulminates against “filthy sodomites” he doesn’t just mean Hal Duncan, he means you as well. (Mr. Wrong prides himself in being a classical scholar, I’m sure he knows all this stuff.)

But to get back to transsexuals, the thing isn’t that we are not just having sex in unapproved ways; we have modified our bodies in such a way that we can’t have sex in the approved way. For the folks in the Vatican, that is sin right up the wazoo and back again. Which is why they see us as “immoral”.

Hollywood Rewrites History (again)

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Some of you will have heard that a film about the 1969 Stonewall riot, often cited as the beginning of the gay rights movement, is being made. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will have seen a barrage of tweets denouncing the film as a total work of fiction. I figured I should do a post explaining what really happened at Stonewall.

The problem with the film is that Hollywood, being Hollywood, has found it necessary to re-write the events at Stonewall so that they center around a white, cis-normative gay man. The reality was quite different. The New York police targeted the Stonewall Inn precisely because it was a known as hangout of trans people of color. As this article in Huffington Post makes clear, what followed was at least as much a race riot as it was a gay rights riot.

Here are some of the actual heroes of Stonewall: Marsha P Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Miss Major and Stormé DeLarverie.

Stonewall did involve some cis-normative white gays and lesbians, and that is doubtless why it is remembered as the first such protest, despite the fact that similar riots took place in Los Angeles and San Francisco years earlier. The Cooper’s Donuts riot (1959) and Compton’s Cafeteria riot (1966) both involved primarily trans women of color, and so are quietly erased by the white-dominated and cis-normative gay rights movement.

As for the beginning of the gay rights movement, that more properly belongs in Europe in the 1860s with men such as Karl-Maria Kertbeny and Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, both of whom spoke out against homophobic laws being put before the Prussian parliament. Kertbeny actually invented the term “homosexual”. Before him there wasn’t really any concept of a binary divide between “gay” and “straight” people. It was more a question of what one did, rather than who one was.

Thankfully Hollywood no longer has a monopoly on movies these days. There are films in production about the lives of Miss Major (who is still alive and I have had the honor to meet) and Marsha P Johnson (who, like so many trans women of color, died in unexplained circumstances). There is also a documentary about Marsha available on YouTube.

Miss Major has done an interview for Autostraddle about the Stonewall film. It is a lot of fun.

Meanwhile I eagerly look forward to the Hollywood film about the black civil rights movement which shows how Martin Luther King and Malcolm X owed everything to a brave white man…

Today On Ujima – Books, Social Media & Auschwitz

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

My first guest on today’s show was Amy Morse. Like me Amy is part of the organizing committee for this year’s Bristol Festival of Literature. She was on the show to talk about the crowdfunding effort that we have launched to help raise the money necessary for venue hire, printing publicity materials and other incidental costs of putting on the Festival. You can find that campaign (and a video of Amy) at the Fundsurfer website.

Along the way I talked about the SF&F events that we’ll be having. The BristolCon Fringe event will feature new novels from Jo Hall and Jonathan L Howard. And I’ll be chairing a comics event featuring Mike Carey, Paul Cornell and Cavan Scott.

Amy stayed with me for the second half hour to talk about social media and blogging. Amy is running some courses in Bristol next month, and I figured this was a good opportunity to talk about life online. A great deals of nonsense gets talked in the mainstream media about what goes on online, and while what happens to people like Briannu Wu is indeed terrible, the wailing and gnashing of teeth that follows any (usually thoroughly justified) denunciation of white feminism’s media darlings is quite ridiculous. People need to know how to stay safe online, and much of it revolved around “don’t be an idiot”.

Anyway, you can listen to the first hour of the show here.

Interesting though my conversation with Amy was, I hope she will forgive me for saying that the second hour was spectacular. My guest on the studio was Christina Zaba, a local journalist of Polish extraction. Christina has been heavily involved in Bristol’s Holocaust Memorial Day. As a result of this she has visited Auschwitz. This has led her to discover some family history, and also the stories of two remarkable men. Kazimierz Piechowski was a young man during the war. He escaped from Auschwitz disguised as an SS officer and is still alive (he’s 95). Witold Pilecki was an officer in the Polish resistance who volunteered to get himself arrested so that he could help organize the prisoners and perhaps stage a revolt. He too later escaped from the camp, but was executed by the Russians after the war.

Both Piechowski and Pilecki were also members of the Polish Boy Scouts. The Nazis regarded the Scouts as a paramilitary organization and singled them out for special persecution, which of course led them to becoming a key part of the Resistance. Christina also talked about the Girl Guides who helped smuggle messages, food and tools into the camps.

Christina is writing a book about the Polish Resistance and the part they played in the history of Auschwitz. I’ve already told her that I want her back on the show when it comes out. Gut-wrenching though it can be at times, we do need to keep talking about this history. Auschwitz was both a slave camp run by Nazi businessmen and a giant factory dedicated to murder on an industrial scale. This sort of thing should not be allowed to happen again.

You can listen to the second half of the show here.

Being on air also allowed me to give a mention to various Jamaica-related stories. Tomorrow (August 6th) is Jamaican Independence Day. The past week has seen Jamaica’s first ever Pride. And of course Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings, a novel based on an attempted assassination of Bob Marley, has found its way onto this year’s Booker Prize long list.

Today’s playlist was as follows:

  • I Want Your Love – Chic
  • Thriller – Michael Jackson
  • Computer Blue – Prince
  • Are Friends Electric – Tubeway Army
  • The War Song – Culture Club
  • Redemption Song – Bob Marley
  • No Borders – Jama

A Little Trans History

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Recently BBC4 showed a history documentary called “Spitfire Women”. It is all about the women pilots who flew for the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) during WWII. They were not allowed to fly combat missions, but equally men could not be spared to move planes about the country (specifically from factories to airfields). Women who could fly, including Amy Johnson, persuaded the government to let them help the war effort by getting this job done. Eventually they got to fly Hurricanes and Spitfires.

I was planning to watch this at some point because it sounded like an awesome piece of feminism. There’s no reason why women can’t fly fun aircraft. A Spitfire is even more fun than a pony. Also a bunch of 80-something women talking about being hell raiser pilots in WWII was guaranteed to be fun (and a perfect appetizer for episode 1 of Agent Carter). But then I got email from Juliet McKenna alerting me to the fact that one of these women was actually a man.

Jonathan Ferguson was born in Lurgan in Northern Ireland in 1915. He was assigned female at birth, and named “Irene Joy” by his parents. By the time he got into the ATA he was already open about his gender identity. Judging from the photos here, there were a few lesbians in the service as well as a few girls who enjoyed their sex symbol status. Jonathan apparently didn’t stand out too much, and the one woman who talked about him sounded very supportive.

Jonathan stayed in the RAF after the war, but must have eventually moved to a desk job because when he transitioned socially in 1958 he was described as a government scientist. I haven’t yet found much news about him online, but the story did make the Palm Beach Post, which wryly noted that Jonathan got a pay rise simply for announcing that he was a man, because men got paid more than women in the Civil Service.

When I get time I intend to follow the story up and see if I can find out more. According to the program, Jonathan has died. I’m wondering whether he got to meet Roberta Cowell, because she flew Spitfires in combat (and ended up a PoW). Not that it would be been much fun for him, if her treatment of Michael Dillon is anything to go by, but maybe their shared love of planes would have helped bridge the gap. If anyone out there knows anything about Ferguson, please get in touch.

Hello Mozambique

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Every so often my academic friends tweet about interesting books and papers. I got one this morning (thanks Olivette!). The book in question is Sexuality and Gender Politics in Mozambique: Rethinking Gender in Africa by Signe Arnfred, who I think is Danish. There is a review of the book at Feminist Review, and what caught my eye was this comment:

Arnfred argues that in the same way that race, a ‘social, political, economic relation of domination, is reinvented as a biological difference, thus naturalized, [w]hat happens to “gender” is very similar: a social relation of male domination/female subordination, brought along with the European colonial powers and supported by Christianity, is represented as a biological difference between men and women, with the “natural” implication, that women are subordinated in relation to men’ (pp. 185–186).

This is very similar to the argument I have made about the erasure of trans people from non-European cultures. Obviously with trans folk there may be some biology involved, but the simplistic and incorrect understanding of that science by Victorian-era Europeans is what caused the problem.

So, another book I need to read. I do wish that academic books were not so expensive.

Women’s Outlook Pride Special

~ Cheryl

Today I did a Pride Special on Women’s Outlook. We began with Roz Kaveney who did a great reading at Hydra Books last night. On the show I asked Roz a few questions about Tiny Pieces of Skull, got her to read some poetry, and asked her a few things about the Rhapsody of Blood series.

Next on the show was Sister Ann Tici Pation of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The Sisters are looking to set up a chapter in Bristol which will be a very fine and wonderful thing. I’m looking forward to seeing them, especially my good friend Brother Bimbo, at Pride on Saturday. If you are in Bristol and fancy getting involved, do pop along to the Volunteer Tavern on Friday from 1:00pm. They will apparently be there all evening, though I suspect that a certain amount of beer may have been consumed by late in the day.

You can listen to the first hour of the show here.

The second hour begins with my talking to Daryn Carter, the Director of Bristol Pride. There is one heck of a lot going on in Bristol this week. Sadly the FGW train strike makes it very difficult for me to do anything before Saturday. I just got out in time today. Not that I’m going to complain, because the RMT guys are striking to defend the existence of food and drink services on London trains. Apparently the management want to make them driver-only.

Anyway, there’s theatre tonight, comedy tomorrow, a big party thing possibly involving fishnet-wearing transylvanians on Friday night, a massive all-day party in the park on Saturday, and some trans-themed film programming at Watershed on Sunday. Phew!

Finally I was joined by Jeff Evans of Schools Out who is in charge of the National Festival of LGBT History. We talked a bit about Jeff’s own academic interests, and then looked at some of the exciting things that will be happening in Bristol next February.

Hour two had a couple of little technical glitches. One was because I listed the songs in the wrong sequence on the running order, so my apologies to Eric and Isaac for that. The other was because the studio wifi went down briefly, causing us to have no access to the ads when we needed to play them. Thankfully it came back up in time for us to play the missing ads in the next segment.

You can listen to the second hour here.

The playlist for the day was a combination of LGBT-themed music and artists who will be appearing on the main stage at Pride.

  • Diana Ross – I’m Coming Out
  • Sylvester – You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)
  • M People – Moving on Up
  • Ladytron – Sugar
  • Little Richard – Good Golly Miss Molly
  • Vinyl Closet – Garbage Man
  • Tracy Chapman – Baby Can I Hold You?
  • Noah Stewart – I Have A Dream

By the way, Roz tells me that the woman on whom Natasha in Tiny Pieces of Skull was based knew Sylvester very well. Small world.

History Month 2016 Reminder

~ Cheryl

LGBT History Month 2016 flier


Oh look, we have a flier!

And of course I’m posting it here to remind you that we are looking for people to do presentations throughout LGBT History Month next year. I will have some say in what gets put on in Bristol. I am particularly looking for proposals from people of color, bisexuals, trans people, and anyone who falls within LGBT+ but feels excluded by just LGBT. We want all of your histories to be represented.

And the link to find out more from the flier is: http://lgbthistorymonth.org.uk/national-festival/.

Today’s Women’s Outlook Show Links

~ Cheryl

Well I don’t know about you folks, but I thought that went pretty well.

Kevlin Henney can always be relied upon to do great things with flash fiction, and I was delighted to hear that this year Bristol will be the focus for National Flash Fiction Day. I’m really sorry I can’t go to all of the good stuff that Kevlin has planned, but I will be in Finland so I mustn’t complain. If you want to attend the flash workshop on the 22nd, details of BristolCon Fringe meetings are here. Details of all of the events in Bristol on the 27th are here.

Lucienne Boyce is excellent value on the history, and I was really please that her husband, Gerard, came along and read a bit of the John Clare poem. It sounds so modern in places, and the similarities between the 18th Century landlords fencing in common land, and our present-day politicians selling off the NHS, are quite alarming. You can learn more about Lucienne and her books at her website.

I also managed to get in a brief discussion of the work Nicola Griffith has done recently on women and literary awards.

And you can listen to the first hour of the show here.

Hour two begins with a little discussion of the Caitlyn Jenner story and then dives into the interview with Sarah Savage. Before the ads, Sarah talks about her time on My Transsexual Summer. After the break we move on to discuss Trans Pride and her new book, Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl? I really like the fact that Sarah & Fox have chosen to avoid writing about a trans kid and have instead tackled the issue of gender stereotyping of children. if we can stop people obsessing about gender stereotypes the lives of trans people will become immeasurably easier.

Details of tomorrow night’s event in London with Paris Lees, Peter Tatchell and Owen Jones (amongst others) can be found here.

The final segment was with Kalpna Woolf of 91 Ways, a wonderful project that uses food to promote links between Bristol’s many diverse cultures. I’m always happy to discuss food, especially when that involves looking at cuisines all around the world. I expect to be donating a food memory to the 91 Ways website at some point. It may well be something else from Melbourne.

The Mexican restaurant I talk about is Fuego.

You can listen to the second hour of the show here.

The music on today’s show was as follows:

  • The Story of Beauty – Destiny’s Child
  • Me and Mrs. Jones – Billy Paul
  • Kung Fu Fighting – Carl Douglas
  • The Boxer – Simon & Garfunkel
  • True Trans Soul Rebel – Against Me
  • Get Up, Stand Up – Bob Marley & The Wailers
  • Food for Thought – UB40
  • Living for the City – Stevie Wonder

I know that Against Me isn’t the sort of music that we normally play on Ujima, and to be honest (sorry Laura), they are not really my cup of tea. However, True Trans Soul Rebel is a brilliant pop song. Were it not for the fact that I am completely useless with guitar and cannot sing to save my life, I would love to perform that song. I have been humming it to myself all day.

Oh, and if you listen along you’ll hear mention of something called 50 Voices. I’m appearing in it. So is Kalpna. I’ll have more to say about that in due course.

Tomorrow on Ujima: Flash, Crime, Trans & Food

~ Cheryl

I have a very busy show lined up for Women’s Outlook tomorrow.

First up from Noon I will be joined by Kevlin Henney who will, of course, be talking about flash fiction. It is that time of year again. In particular Kevlin and I will be discussing a workshop that he’ll be running at the next BristolCon Fringe (which sadly I shall miss because I’ll be on my way to Finland for Archipelacon). And of course Kevlin will have a story or two to read.

Next up is Lucienne Boyce. We’ll be talking about her new historical novel, Bloodie Bones, the launch of which I reported on last month. The book is an historical crime novel set in Somerset during the time of the 18th Century Enclosures. There will be poaching, and bare knuckle boxing, and talk of agricultural workers’ rights.

Also on the show will be an interview that I recorded with Sarah Savage when she was in Bristol on Friday. We talked about her time on My Transsexual Summer, about the founding of Trans Pride, and about her new children’s book, Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl?, which challenges gender stereotyping.

And finally I will be talking to former BBC executive, Kalpna Woolf about her latest project, 91 Ways. This is part of the Bristol Green Capital initiative. It is based around the idea that there are 91 different languages spoken in Bristol. That’s one heck of a lot of different cuisines. The project aims to:

  • Inspire people to lead more sustainable lives using the power of food to encourage dialogue, shared learning, education and action
  • Help people make better decisions about their food and well-being to improve the health and sustainability of our city
  • Create a modern social history of Bristol through food and be instrumental in encouraging a sustainable way of living across the whole city
  • Help us all to have a better understanding of how Bristol’s communities live and their behaviour, food journeys and how they engage with our city

Yes, of course this is an excuse for me to talk about food. But it is a great project too.

As usual you can stream the show live from the Ujima website, and it will be available via the Listen Again system for several weeks after broadcast.

LGBT History Festival Comes to Bristol

~ Cheryl

This year the UK ran it’s first ever National Festival of LGBT History in Manchester. It was very successful, and there are plans afoot to hold one again in 2016. However, holding it in just one city limits the number of people who can attend. So in 2016 the Festival will be held over several weekends in several different cities. One of those cities will be Bristol. The Festival will be held at the M-Shed (the site of the very successful Revealing Stories exhibition) over the weekend of February 20/21. There will also be a film programme at the Watershed, and hopefully a theatre programme as well.

The Bristol weekend will be run by OutStories Bristol, and we hope that we’ll get a lot of interest in the event from all over the South West and South Wales. More details will follow in due course, but right now the important thing is that we need people to give presentations. Information as to how to apply to be a presenter are available here. The deadline for proposals is June 30th.

As you have probably guessed, a lot of this is my fault, and consequently I’ll be responsible for making a lot of it happen. I don’t have the final say on what presentations get accepted, but I do have some say. I’m very keen to see local history represented, and I want to see plenty of diversity. LGBT history isn’t just about cis white gay men. If you are interested in L, B or T history, or you are non-white, we’d love to hear from you.

By the way, you don’t have to be an academic historian to make a presentation. You could just be someone who has been part of LGBT history and have some memories you can relate. If you are an academic you may also be interested in the associated academic conference, which will take place in Manchester once again next year. The Call for Papers is here.

Launching Bloodie Bones

~ Cheryl

Yesterday evening I was in Foyles for the launch of the latest book by my historical novelist friend, Lucienne Boyce. This time she’s gone for a bit of genre-blending, because the book is a mystery, and has a tinge of fantasy to it as well.

Bloodie Bones is billed as a Dan Foster Mystery, Mr. Foster being a former pick-pocket who now works for the Bow Street Runners (an early London police force) and is an amateur pugilist (bare-knuckle boxer). The story is set in Somerset and is based around the events of the Enclosures, a time when the nobility were changing their lands from being open fields and woods to fenced private property. The net result of this was to force large number of agricultural workers off the land and into cities were they could be employed very cheaply by the new factories.

The title, of course, refers to the mythological figure, Raw Head and Bloody Bones, who featured in Jack Wolf’s novel.

The evening opened with Lucienne’s husband providing a powerful reading of “The Mores” by the working class poet, John Clare, who did fine work documenting this part of English history. There were also readings and questions, which inevitably resulted in yours truly putting her hand up because no one else wanted to be first.

The event was recorded by a lady called Suzie Grogan who works with a Somerset-based community radio station, 10 Radio. I’m not sure when the material will be aired, but I’ll be keeping in touch with Suzie to find out. They don’t appear to have a full Listen Again service like Ujima, but they do podcast some of the material. Suzie’s main interest as a broadcaster is books, so one or two of you reading this may hear from her soon.

Oxford, Briefly

~ Cheryl

Yesterday was a lot of fun.

The radio show went well after a slight technical hitch at the start. More on that tomorrow.

I got to Oxford on time, and Lev Grossman’s talk was very interesting. He’s a very nice chap too. More on that tomorrow as well.

Today I spent a bit of time in the Ashmolean. The Great British Drawings exhibition is nice, though it does serve to emphasize once again that Byrne-Jones wasn’t very good. I went mainly to see Rossetti’s Proserpine, which is indeed lovely, and to confirm my suspicion that there would be nothing from Simeon Solomon in it. There wasn’t. You would have thought that the British art establishment would have grown up by now, but clearly it hasn’t. Still, there was a Ronald Searle and a Gerald Scarfe, which cheered me up.

The Caricatures exhibit is interesting mainly for the evidence that slut-shaming of women has a very long history. The best thing in it is this gorgeous little cartoon of gout.

The Ed Paschke exhibition is very bright. I suspect that the cover of Roz Kaveney’s Tiny Pieces of Skull may have some Paschke influence.

The exhibition I really wanted to see was Gods in Colour, where they have taken a selection of Greek and Roman statues, and painted them up to look like they would have looked when they were new. It was great. I wish they had done more.

Oh, and I had lunch in a pub called the Eagle and Child, which was apparently the venue for some sort of fannish pub meet years ago. A bunch of wannabe fantasy writers known as The Inklings used to go there and discuss their work over a pint or several. I did not find Viriconium.

Trans History Goes To Exeter Pride

~ Cheryl

I’m delighted to announce that I am taking my trans history talk on the road again. Exeter Pride takes place on Saturday, May 16th. As part of it I will be giving my talk at Exeter Library between 15:30 and 17:00. Further details of the day’s programme are available here. I’m not sure which room in the Library I will be in yet, but presumably there will be signage on the day.

For those of you not familiar with the talk, it is titled “A Potted History of Gender Variance”, and it covers 2000 years of history and five continents. If you don’t mind a few spoilers, Katie Herring has a lovely write-up of the talk here.

I look forward to seeing some of you there, and if you know anyone in the Exeter area that you think might be interested please pass the wold on.

Sex On Sunday

~ Cheryl

I spent part of Sunday morning catching up on the final episode of Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch’s three-part BBC2 documentary series, Sex and the Church. It is a history of the increasingly fraught relationship between Christianity and sex. Part I is all about Jesus and the early church; Part II about the Medieval church and the Reformation, and Part III about how in the last few hundred years the church has lost control of sexuality in Western society.

As you might guess, the early programs were of more interest to me. Here are a few highlights of things most people probably don’t know (and which fly in the face of what modern Christian conservatives want us to believe have “always” been true).

Aristotle taught that the entire human seed was present in male semen. The female body was simply fertile ground in which this seed could be planted and grown.

On the back of this (and other, similar, more ancient beliefs), the early theologian, Clement of Alexandria taught that all sex that could not result in a legitimate child was sinful. Adultery, concubinage and sex with prostitutes were all sinful because any child resulting would not be legitimate, and sex with your wife was sinful if she was already pregnant as she clearly could not get pregnant again.

Saint Augustine, of course, was a raging misogynist loon who taught that all sex was sinful, even within marriage.

Marriage was an important civil contract in the Roman Empire (hence Clement obsessing over legitimacy), but for more than half of its history the Christian church wanted nothing to do with anything so salacious. Marriage did not become an official sacrament until the Council of Verona in 1184. Even then marriages had to take place in the church porch, because a couple who were planning to have sex were deemed too sinful to be allowed into a church until their lust had been safely contained by marriage.

The third program is relatively free of such gems, but it does have some interesting correspondences with Amanda Vickery’s series on the history of feminism. It also has some rare footage of Sir John Wolfenden being interviewed on the BBC about his new (in 1957) report on the decriminalization of male homosexuality. And there’s a great section on missionaries trying to explain to Africans why it was OK for Abraham and Solomon to be polygamous but not OK for them.

MacCulloch talks a lot about the role of women in the church, but doesn’t talk much about gender. He glosses over Origen’s supposed self-castration as merely an extreme form of celibacy, doesn’t mention the prevalence of eunuchs in the Byzantine church, and ignores the idea of celibacy as symbolic castration. On the other hand, what he does say is often a lot of fun. He has mastered an almost Kenneth Williams-like salacious pout that he uses to discuss particular naughtiness, and he clearly has no truck with the pomposity of conservative Christian moralists. Overall, the series is a lot of fun, and has some good (for a TV documentary) history too.

A Report On My Trans History Talk

~ Cheryl

Many thanks to Katie Herring for this lovely write-up of my “Potted History of Gender Variance” talk. It is always heartwarming when people enjoy something you have done.

Chupchikoni the trans-male penguin is probably my favorite character from the talk as well. However, I have a soft spot for the Quariwarmi, who were trans Inca priests, and I really want to know more about their trans god, Chuqui Chinchay, who was apparently known as The Rainbow Jaguar. I also want to know a lot more about Tuwais, the non-binary singer who founded Early Arabic Classical music.

Trans History Update 2: An Ancient Greek Trans Man

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

My other update comes courtesy of a Twitter used called Snek who posted an extract from a work by Lucian of Samaosata. Lucian was a Greek writer who lived in what is modern day Turkey under the Roman Empire (2nd Century CE). He is probably best known to my readers as the author of True History, a work that is often cited as the first ever science fiction novel. It is certainly true that the book tells of voyages to other planets. However, Lucian was a satirist, and the book has more in common with Gulliver’s Travels than with the world of Verne and Wells. It is doubtful that Lucian intended it to be taken as serious scientific speculation.

While this might be Lucian’s most famous work, it is by no means his only one. Another book that he wrote is The Mimes of the Courtesans. This is a set of fictional reminiscences by hetairai — Greek high class sex workers — which again is a work of satire. The original English translation of the work was made in 1905 by HW & FG Fowler, who are more famous today for their magnificent book, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, which is still widely considered to be the ultimate English style guide. However, the Fowlers omitted several sections from their version, deeming them unsuitable for a modern audience. Snek quoted from a 1928 translation by someone only known as “ALH”. This includes the three missing sections, one of which is titled “The Lesbians”.

This short section features a conversation between a hetaira called Leaina and a young man called Clonarion. The lad has heard tell of a relationship between Leaina and a “wealthy lady from Lesbos” called Megilla. Leaina is somewhat embarrassed by the whole affair, but explains that Megilla prefers to be known as Megillos and identifies as a man. The story is called “The Lesbians” because Megillos and his wife, Demonassa, come from Lesbos, though Lucian would undoubtedly have been aware of Sappho and would have set the story there accordingly. However, reading the story, it is very clear that Megillos is someone whom we would identify as a trans man. You can read the whole thing here.

Obviously this is a work of fiction, not an historical report of an actual trans man. But it seems unlikely to me that Lucian would have come up with such a story had he not at least been aware of butch lesbians, and quite likely of trans men.

Trans History Update 1: Assyrian Eunuchs

~ Cheryl ~ 9 Comments

I did a lot of research for my Trans History talk this year, but I’m already learning new things that I wish I had included. I’ll blog about some of the more spectacular ones here.

For this update I have to give thanks to my Out Stories colleague, Robert Howes, who spotted a Radio 4 documentary about eunuchs. Naturally I gave it a listen. Fairly inevitably, I was disappointed.

Before I get to that, however, I have learned something new about one of my favorite ancient civilizations, the Assyrian Empire. We know now that they had aqueducts long before the Romans came on the scene. The radio program, via Professor Karen Radner of UCL, revealed that a single dynasty controlled the empire for its entire thousand-year existence. In all of human history, only Denmark has managed a similar degree of political stability. (For the benefit of clueless conservatives, in Egypt and China dynasties came and went like confetti.) Doubtless this means that the Assyrian kings were particularly ruthless, but it is impressive all the same.

The other thing I learned about the Assyrians is that they were the first Western(ish) civilization (possibly the first in the world) to make significant use of eunuchs, which is why Prof. Radner was on the program.

The disappointing thing about the program is that it follows the fairly standard cis narrative that castration is a barbaric practice inflicted on unwilling boys and men by despotic rules and greedy parents. The idea that anyone might wish to be castrated is so alien to cis people that they always erase the possibility from their versions of history. The reading list provided for the program includes a book about hijras, but they were not mentioned during the broadcast because they don’t fit the narrative. Modern-day hijras undergo castration voluntarily, because they identify as either third-gender or female.

The program did include a few minutes mention of the Roman-era cult of Cybele, which used castrated, cross-dressing priests very similar to the hijras. However, the panel all professed to have no idea why such people existed, other than in connection with the myth of Attis, Cybele’s consort, who is said to have castrated himself.

All of the mention of Assyrian eunuchs involves their use as bureaucrats and warriors (traditions that were passed down through Islam to the Ottoman Empire). However, it is fairly certain that the cult of Cybele owes something to the worship of the Assyrian goddess, Ishtar, and before her Sumeria’s Inanna. It is possible that the ritual castration of Attis is a more mild version of the ritual death of Ishtar’s corn-god consort, Tammuz. So I suspect that worship of Ishtar might also have involved eunuch priests. If they were anything like Cybele’s Galli, they would have cross-dressed. And of they were anything like the hijras many of them would have identified as women.

Obviously I need to do a bit of digging here, because much of this is speculation, but if I can find evidence then I will have traced the written history of trans people back another 1500 years.

History Month: It’s A Wrap

~ Cheryl

Phew, that’s over!

The end of February was very busy (hence the lack of bloggage). Following up on the panel at Bristol University, I was at Bath University on Thursday to give a repeat of my Trans History talk. It didn’t get quite the audience it should have done because the local UKIP parliamentary candidate was on campus at the same time and some of the students felt honor-bound to go along and represent, a decision that I wholeheartedly support. However, we did have several people attending from outside of the university, which was very pleasing.

On Friday I headed back to Bristol to give a trans awareness talk at Southmead Hospital. This was a repeat of an event I did last year. I’m pleased to report that the audience was bigger this time, and included some counselors and an actual doctor. Here’s hoping that I have done some good.

That evening Out Stories Bristol put on a talk by a friend of ours from Bristol University, Dr. Josie McLellan. The subject of the presentation was gay life in East Berlin prior to the unification. You can read a version of it at Academia.edu. The story of the Homosexuelle Interessengemeinschaft Berlin (HIB) is fascinating, in particular the way in which it operated very openly, on the grounds that the Stasi would find out about them anyway so they might as well not bother hiding.

From my point of view, the most interesting part of the story was that played by a trans woman, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. She owned a large house with extensive grounds on the outskirts of Berlin. The HIB used to hold meetings and parties there, and Josie had film of them dancing (to Abba, naturally) at one. Von Mahlsdorf was something of an historian herself, running a museum at her property. Her collection included the bar from a Wiemar era gay club, which she re-assembled in her basement for the benefit of her gay friends.

The biography of von Mahlsdorf on Wikipedia suggests that she was even more remarkable. A teenager during WWII, she ended up killing her Nazi father in self-defense. I note also that her family has attempted to erase her trans identity since her death.

Yesterday I was in Bristol again for the final event of this year’s History Month. Of course that was all about launching Out Stories’ next project, so doubtless I’ll still have plenty to keep me busy. Also I have already started work on next year’s History Month events. You’ll hear more about that in due course.