Thompson used the newspapers in the archive to show how the press treated the twilight men, a popular term for gay men and lesbians from the 1920s and "Cake Shop Ladies"(sadly this delightful term for lesbians, who are apparently the sort of women who would be found in cake shops, only appeared in a single newspaper article).
 

LAGNA's holdings come mainly from the 1950s onwards but Thompson began with two articles from 1915 - 1916 about two "masquerades". The problem with these articles is what the newspapers did not say so it is impossible to judge from the scant details given in the articles whereabouts these two people fell on the transgender spectrum so forgive my broad terminology. The first story was out a man dressed as a woman who carried a shoe over his arm along with crucifixes, rosaries and other "bizarre ornaments" and the second involves a woman who dressed as a man to escape her ex-husband and then went on to marry unfortunately we have no way of knowing whether this was a lesbian relationship, or if the "wife" and and her family were fooled into believing that the "husband" was really a man. We moved to 1938 for the, again uninformative, story of Mr. Wilson a fishmonger in Devon who inherited a large some of money from a Mr.Smith but would not say why Mr. Smith was so generous and the newspaper chose to focus on its surprise that Wilson continued to work as a fishmonger instead of enjoying his newly acquired wealth.

We moved on to the tabloids of the 1950s and '60s with particular reference to the Sunday Pictorial which it seems was as keen to fight battles about class as it was about sex. In June 1952 this newspaper began a three week series on "The Problem of Homosexuality": All the popular papers at this time published articles treating homosexuality as a disease or a problem. In 1954 the Lord Montague case gave the tabloids a field day moralizing about the corruption of working class men by upper class men, but the case had the merit of persuading the government to set up the Wolfenden inquiry which reported in 1957. Unfortunately Wolfenden didn't end the media queer bashing, for example a 1960s article on "How to spot a homo" which was billed as a thinking persons guide despite being published in a newspaper that no thinking person would read. There was also the cases of the spy John Vassall and the Cambridge spies Philby, Burgess and McLean which allowed the press to fulminate on the nexus of class, treachery and homosexuality. The was not much media coverage of lesbians at this time but the Daily Record  obliged with a 1963 article called "The Lesbian" which informed its readers that lesbians were women who "keep dogs or keep a cake shop". A story of current interest is the 1954 story Violet Jones and Joan Lee, the former in male guise, who actually got married in church, sadly, they were rumbled and fined £25 for making a false statement to obtain a marriage licence. It would be nice to finish this item by saying how much things have improved since Wolfenden in 1957 and the Sexual Offences Act 1967 but the infamous Jan Moir article about the death of Stephen Gately last year gives no cause for any such optimism.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to pop out to a cake shop...

12th February Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, WC1
The Vinyl Closet

This presentation about gay American music was presented by the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association and performed by Ted Brown and Brett Lock. Who played records of a of few the songs and performed the remainder. Although focussed on popular music the set began with a discussion of the phrase "friend of Dorothy" and thus to the film The Wizard of Oz. As I have never seen this film I was surprised to learn just how gay the film, and more particularly, the character of the Lion is. The character is overtly camp, the stereotypical "sissy", ( a very popular figure in Hollywood films of the period. I recommend the book "Screened Out" by Richard Barrios for an in depth look at the sissy in American films). the Lion's song "The Nerve" puts its cards firmly on the table with the lines "Life is sad, believe me Missy,/when you're born to be a sissy" and Ted Brown's performance of the song made Julian Clary look butch. Before leaving Judy we had a brief discussion of Easter Parade in which she sings to Fred Astaire, who is wearing a top hat with a very fetching, pink ribbon and large bow, "Never saw you look quite so pretty...".Later on she dresses as a man for the duet "We're a couple of swells".
 

The rest of the evening was devoted to Ted Brown's particular interest, the blues singer of the early part of the last century which started with Betty Jackson singing "B.D.Woman's Blues - B.D. Stands for Bull Dyke. The song unambiguously gay from its first line "Comin' a time, B,D. Woman, they'n't gon' need no men". Brown told us that the blues songs of this period were able to overtly gay because only black people listened to them, white singers could never have gotten away with this sort of material and the blues singers became much more restricted when blues became mainstream in the 1950's when white singers started to sing black music (we were shown the title song from the film Jailhouse Rock in which the combination of the lyrics and the dancing which is so explicit that it is astonishing that it got past the censer.

The other songs performed included the semi-instrumental "Garbage Man" which had a few innocuous words and a very sexually explicit dance which Ted and Brett demonstrated with more vigour than panache, doubtless as it was danced at the time The five blues songs in the set (I have not mentioned the other songs as they add nothing to the discussion) can be found on the CD "Sissy Man Blues" and,  I'm told, you can find a lot more information about this topic by doing a Google search for "sissy man blues".

17th February Internet
www.thesource.co.uk

I think this is the first time that a radio programme has appeared in the LGBT History Month calendar so it is worth mentioning for that reason alone. The Source fm is a community radio station in Cornwall which has a LGBT programme between 6 - 7.30 pm on Wednesdays. This and the LGBT Citizen programme 9 - 10 pm on Mondays on BBC Radio Manchester (http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/manchester/hi/tv_and_radio) are the only LGBT radio shows I know of and the latter is the only LGBT programme on the entire BBC. Both shows, which are available on the internet, were devoted to LGBT History Month this particular week and they both showed the same strengths and weaknesses that appear in their normal weekly programmes. Radio Manchester's programme is presented by a young hair-head queen who seems to know nothing about anything and he is supported by a young man in his own image, they have now been joined by a lesbian singer (it might be kinder not to name her) who is only slightly brighter than the two men. The Cornish show is presented by two youngish men who are much better informed than their Manchester counterparts but the whole operation is as you might expect from a community station less professional. The music on both shows could appeal to the same audience, but the Cornish presenters showcase much more recent performers who were completely new to me whereas the Manchester team play for the gay classics - Dusty, Shirley Bassey, Marc Almond - you know the sort of thing. I liked both shows but if I had to choose one it would be The Source fm partly because the empty headed Manchester presenters' ignorance tends to annoy me, and partly because the Cornish presenters introduce me to new music whereas the Manchester presenters concentrate on songs that I have in my own record collection.

20th February, Hampstead Town Hall, London NW3
Counterweight!

 The two films shown at this presentation turned out to have greater interest than I had expected as the first film, Treading On Eggshells, an anti-homophobic bullying film for use in schools, is apparently the only current film to deal with transphobic bullying. This short film is well made, but it is only its concentration on transgender issues that makes it stand out.. The film is going to be distributed to all secondary schools, 6th forms and youth groups in Camden and I am sure it will be very effective. The film will also be for sale to schools and youth groups nationwide and there is a trailer for the film on Youtube.

The second film was a rare treat indeed, the 1919 German film Different From The Others which starred Conrad Veidt (you probably remember him as Major Strasser in Casablanca) as a gay composer. It also featured its co-writer the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld as himself and was a plea for acceptance of gay people. The German title of the film makes it clear that the film is about  paragraph 175 of the German penal code, the law which banned male homosexuality. The film was probably the first gay German film and led to the production of about 150 films about a wide range of sexual topics until the Nazis banned all of them when they came to power in the 1930s. All copies of this film were destroyed by German censors in 1920 but a partial copy was found in a Russian archive in the 1960s which enabled the film to be restored. Unfortunately the film has not been released in this country but there are a few copies of a region 1 DVD available from amazon.co.uk.

22nd February Drill Hall, WC1
Drawn Out and Painted Pink

I was really looking forward to this exhibition of the cartoon strips of Kate Charlesworth, of whom I have been a fan for many years and David Shenton whose work was less familiar to me. Both cartoonists have been regularly published in all the gay newspapers and magazines so you are bound to have seen their work somewhere. The exhibition was disappointing as it mainly consisted of cartoon strips plastered on the gallery walls. It was fun to read the cartoons but the project would have been much more satisfying as a book. However the catalogue of the exhibition is excellent it contains only representative samples of the cartoons, but they were coupled with very good biographical essays: good value at £2 but a book with all the cartoons would have been better.

5th March Peckham Library, SE15
The Other Side of the Rainbow

This small but perfectly formed exhibition of photographs with potted biographies of local LGBT people was designed to show that there are LGBT people in all walks of life, which may not be startling news to us but its public locations (unusually, this peripatetic exhibition appeared at four different places during February and early March) meant that it was seen by people to whom pictures of a gay mayor and his partner, or a gay senior police officer will give pause for thought. The photographs by Rehan Jamil covered all four letters of "LGBT" and and also included most of the ethnic groups as well - a remarkable achievement for just ten photographs.

15th March The Conference Centre, St. Pancras Hospital, NW1
Loudest Whispers
 

I was slightly nonplussed when I saw the first few paintings in this exhibition of the work of thirty-two artists as I foolishly went in expecting the exhibits to have obvious LGBT themes. Of course there is no reason why the paintings, sculptures and jewellery on display should be anything of the kind although there were a few artists who chose LGBT subject matter such as Dorian Aroyo's paintings of Justin Fashanu, Bishop Gene Robertson, Simien Solomon, Oscar Wilde and Martina Navratilova overprinted with lines from Pope John-Paul II's letter on the pastoral care of homosexuals (this was the delightful missive which described us as "intrinsically disordered"), and Margaret Pepper's over-explained still life "The Flower Rejected" which depicts a vase of flowers with a discarded flower "crying" on the table - the title was augmented with a card next to the picture with a four-line description which even without the title, was a statement of the breathtakingly obvious.
 

I only enjoyed the paintings as the sculptures were too abstract for my taste and the jewellery should have been in inverted commas as well as in a glass case as it was was clearly designed to be displayed, not worn. My favourite pictures were two very striking paintings of a boat by Claire Marcham; "Vanity", a picture of a woman in a white evening dress holding a fan of peacock's feathers to her tail bone, by Thierry Alexandre and Margaret Dawns; charming picture of Camden Lock showing a narrow boat on the canal.
 

After a long month devoted to LGBT issues the wide range of subjects in "Loudest Whispers" made a welcome palate cleanser. Overall my month was informative, nostalgic (and no, I didn't see the 1919 film in the cinema) and recharged my campaigning batteries. I hope that this account stimulates you to go to a few of the events in next year's LGBT History Month - and if you did attend some of this years events I would love to read about them in this newsletter.