Cottaging and Cruising in the Capital

(aka ‘Bogs, Bushes & Buggers’)
Wednesday 13 February 2013 at Bishopsgate Library, in association with LAGNA (the Lesbian & Gay Newsmedia Archive)

Was it the title, do you think, that made this event a sell out? Who knows, but it was very well attended.

Sadly, Dr Matt Houlbrook (http://www.magd.ox.ac.uk/whos-here/fellows-and-lecturers/fellows/houlbrookm) was unable to attend, so we didn’t hear what he had to say on the historical evidence for cottaging. But Peter, a LAGNA volunteer, entertained us with a few newspaper clippings showing how stressed suburbanites can become at the idea of goings on at the local gentlemen’s public toilet.

Then Mark Simpson, writer, journalist and rather handsome daddy of the metrosexual, talked to us briefly about his own experiences of cottaging (with a nostalgic smile on his lips) before going to his main theme - the misreporting by the press of men caught in the act. He referred to a particularly jumbled bit of reporting by pretty much all the UK newspapers in October 2007. ‘Firemen expose gay doggers’, was how The Sun headlined it.

Mark went on to show that almost all the purported facts were, in fact, not facts at all. Not that the Press Complaints Commission felt able to say so.

The first link is to Mark’s blogpost at the time, which tells you everything you need to know about the case. The next two links take you to a couple of the articles concerned, from The Daily Mail and The Sun (which Mark says was probably the least inaccurate of the lot, including the broadsheets!).
http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2007/10/06/dogging-firemen/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/columnists/article-485714/So-thats-mean-Blue-Watch.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article290872.ece

This link is to the Winter 2007 edition of Flagship, a magazine for LGBT members of the Fire Brigade Union. See page 2 - they’re quite clear that everyone within the fire brigade knew the reports were nonsense.
http://www.fbu.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Flagship_Winter_07.pdf

This was the second of a series of talks on queer topics, as part of the Bishopgate Institute’s Live and Let Louche in the Library season. The remaining two are:-

PERFORMING QUEER - Life and Art in Noughties London
Wednesday 13th March 2013, 7-9pm
The turn of the millennium saw a new type of queer expression take root in London clubland. Inspired by a range of figures from Leigh Bowery to Judith Butler, club kids became artists, performing, disrupting and dismantling traditional models of sexuality and gender. Ingo (Wotever) and Holestar (Hot Laser) will discuss their involvement in queer performance art over the last decade and its impact on LGBT life in London.

FROM LAVENDER LOUNGES TO CANDY BARS - British Lesbian Nightlife
Wednesday 24th April 2013, 7-9pm

Though lesbian sex was never illegal, it wasn't until the gay rights and women's liberation movements of the early 1970s that lesbians began to socialise openly. How did women meet each other in the days before identity politics brought them together, and how did the lesbian scene evolve 1980s and 1990s? Alternative historian and performer Rose Collis will explore the social activities of pre- and post-war lesbians in London, Brighton and beyond. Louise Carolin, Deputy Editor of Diva magazine, will reflect on lesbian nightlife in the 1980s-90s.
Both are at the Bishopsgate Institute Library (230 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 4QH). Doors open at 6.30pm, entry is free - but you are advised to book in advance

http://www.lagna.org.uk/news#story24

St Valentine's Day post

My Dear Boy is an anthology of love letters documenting the heartbreak and joy of love between men for almost 2,000 years. Correspondents include Emperor Marcus Arelius, Bo Juyi, Saint Anselm, Erasmus, Michelangelo, Mashida Toyonoshin, Thomas Gray, William Beckford, Walt Whitman, Tchaikovsky, Henry James, Countee Cullen, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. They range from kings and aristocrats, musicians and artists, military men and monks, to farm labourers and herring merchants, political activists and aesthetes, black poets and Japanese actors, drag queens and hustlers.



For more detail:
http://rictornorton.co.uk/dearboy.htm
Scroll down the page to a table with links to various extracts from the book.

Our thanks go to Rictor Norton for making this available online.

An Interview With Richard Berkowitz - from The Huffington Post

Richard Berkowitz (L) and Michael Callen (R) writing How to Have Sex in an Epidemic.

Richard Berkowitz (born 1955) is a gay American author and activist. An early advocate of safe sex as a response to the AIDS crisis among gay men in the 1980s, he co-wrote with Michael Callen one of the earliest 'sex-positive manifestos', How to Have Sex in an Epidemic in 1983.

The Huffington Post has published an interview with Berkowitz. (Sadly, Callen died of AIDS-related complications in 1993, aged 38. 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-adnum/richard-berkowitz-interview_b_2618794.html
NOTE: The article and How to Have Sex in an Epidemic both contain sexually explicit language. Read on at your own discretion.

You can read the full text of How to Have Sex in an Epidemic through scanned images of the original document here:
http://richardberkowitz.com/category/4-how-to-have-sex-in-an-epidemic/

More information here: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Berkowitz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Callen

Black LGBT Elders

This article looks at the experience of a number of older African-American or Black LGBT people in San Francisco in particular.

I suspect that their experience will have many similarities to that of their peers in the UK.

http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=68482
[Link checked and still working on 21/11/13.]

Happy Birthday, Lionel Blue

Rabbi Lionel Blue, the first British rabbi publicly to come out, is 83 today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Blue

His appearance on BBC Radio 4's Desert Islands Discs from 29 May 1988 is available online:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/02877d01

Some quotes:
My mother enjoyed old age, and because of her I've begun to enjoy parts of it too. So far I've had it good and am crumbling nicely.

I am pleased now that I have lived in a gay as well as a religious ghetto, though it hasn't been very comfortable. Taken together, their limitations cancel each other out and I have seen the world more kindly and more honestly.

I learnt pity, sympathy, and what it was like to be at the other end of the stick. Such lessons can't be learnt in lecture halls.

On the way to work good-hearted young girls sometimes offer me their seats, which I accept and bless them in return, a transaction satisfying to all concerned.

To my surprise, my 70s are nicer than my 60s and my 60s than my 50s, and I wouldn't wish my teens and 20s on my enemies.

Learning resources for LGBT History Month

This link takes you to an article on The Guardian's website with links to resources on its and other sites.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/teacher-blog/2013/feb/04/lgbt-history-month-teaching-resources

Thanks to @WipeHomophobia for retweeting @guardian's tweet.

Celebrating LGBT History Month

To help you start celebrating LGBT History Month 2013, I thought you might like to see this article from The Huffington Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/02/55-lgbt-movies-history-month_n_1932522.html

It gives a list of almost 70 LGBT connected films, from Beautiful Thing through The Rocky Horror Picture Show to The Wizard of Oz and all stops in between.

UPDATED 8 February 2013
The Huffington Post has posted a list of 16 Black LGBT films:-
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/black-lgbt-films_n_2584645.html

There's something for everyone. And if your favourite film isn't there, maybe you shold contact the good people at The Huffington Post and get them to add it.