Hey there, girls and gays, I hope you’ve got your face paints, feather boas and skimpy outfits ready for any Pride event you’re heading to… In the meantime, here’s some recommendations for queer content and queer history that you could engage with this month, I’ve split them into books, podcasts and TV and film so you can pick and choose depending on what you want, regardless of what you fancy, I hope that you’ll learn, be entertained, or be inspired (and hopefully all three).
Books/articles and lots of written stuff
Kirsty Loehr is a writer and English teacher (and a lesbian), and this is her first historical book, it’s a thoroughly entertaining short account of the history of women who love other women, a brilliant introduction and rebuttal of any suggestion that queer women didn’t exist before the twentieth-century (yes, I have been told that). Loehr has written this book to be engaging to a vast variety of audiences, and whilst as a queer historian (true in every sense) not much of what she wrote was news to me, she has done a fantastic job of accounting for all of them, and I must say, the chapter ‘Feminism and Football’ made even me, the world’s biggest hater of football, like football. Loehr also featured on a recent episode of the History Hit Podcast Betwixt the Sheets, (a bit later on in this article), and made a pretty good case for the use of the word ‘lesbian’.
Rictor Norton is a queer historian and has accumulated his work onto a website, this was a go to resource when studying for much of my under- and post-graduate degrees, as Norton explains queer history in an accessible and engaging manner, you should definitely browse the site but here’s a couple of my favourite articles:
Edited by Helena Whitbread, Lister’s diaries have been decoded and published in several volumes. If you don’t know, (I don’t know how you wouldn’t), Anne Lister was a raging lesbian, her marriage to Anne Walker is regarded to be the first lesbian marriage in Britain, and she wrote explicit accounts of her many relationships with women in code in her diaries. The history behind the diaries themselves is astounding, so definitely check it out. As well as providing insight and proof that lesbians did exist in history, the diaries are also a fascinating insight into her business practises and the upper classes of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
For IWD and Women's History Month, we posted an article about the person who inspires generations of queer people, her life and her tragedies and her successes. Marsha P. Johnson was a powerful and complicated person, read about her for Pride Month.
Podcasts
Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal and Society
Now I will point out some more specific episodes of Betwixt that you should check out, but I want to advocate for this podcast overall. Kate Lister, the author of The Curious History of Sex, and general icon, presents this often rather risqué podcast for History Hit (you’ll find me advocating for History Hit’s podcasts a lot), a lot of the episodes are either queer, or queer adjacent, and the whole thing is just delightfully sexy, and very very gay.
A History of Queer Women – an episode featuring Kirsty Loehr, really entertaining and basically a whistle stop tour of a bunch of sapphics through history
Molly Houses – Kate chats to Rictor Norton (check out his website above) about queer men in eighteenth-century London, a really enjoyable episode that highlights how queer subcultures have always found a way to exist.
Pirates – Did you know there was a lesbian couple on board a pirate ship? They’re only part of this episode but it’s still worth checking out.
Drag Queens – Need I say more?
Female Pirates – See above, but this one’s just about the ladies 😉
The First Queer Activist – I feel like this is self-explanatory
Not Just the Tudors
Another History Hit Podcast, this time hosted by the incomparable Suzannah Lipsomb (what did I say?) this one looks more specifically at early modern Europe, but don’t be fooled into thinking that there weren’t queers sprawling around (King James and George Villiers, anyone?). There are fewer episodes as the series looks at the period generally, so there’s a lot of episodes about politics and art and all the other good things, but let’s looks at the gay episodes shall we?
Female Sodomy – sounds contradictory, which it is. This episode talks about queer women executed in a charged period of lesbo-phobia, as I like to call it, in the Southern Netherlands.
Was Queenship the same around the World? – this episode chats about female power but also notably King Christina of Sweden, a woman who eventually abdicated her throne because she refused to get married to a bloke.
The Woman Who was crowned King – This episode looks a little more in depth at the aforementioned King Christina and her years long close friendship with her ‘bedfellow’.
The Queer Shakespeare: John Lyly – It’s queer.
TV/Film
This iconic film is based on the true story of the partnership and the friendships that emerged between the mining community in a small village in South Wales and a bunch of gays as they supported each other in protests against Margaret Thatcher, the police and the conservative press. There are of course fictional elements of this film, but it also does a great job of encapsulating the joy and fear of this period, with a sobering undercurrent of the Aids crisis throughout the film.
This TV show doesn’t need much explanation, at least it shouldn’t. Featuring a group of friends living in London in the 80s, the show is written by Russell T Davies and based on his and his friends’ experiences throughout the Aids crisis in Britain. I’ll be honest, it’s a struggle to get through part of this show, but whilst the sad points are devastating, they are so important to the history of queer people, and the happy moments, such as the themes of found family that are integral to the plot, make for a beautiful watch.
Now here’s a controversial opinion, I, a queer historian, am not a huge fan of history’s favourite lesbian. Anne Lister has an undeniably unlikable quality, and if you’ve studied her, you might share my opinion (give me a week or so and I’ll explain myself I promise). But, anyone can admit that Suranne Jones as the infamous Gentleman Jack is a pretty big moment for lesbian history, and the representation of queer love in the show is brilliantly messy and lightly pathetic, just as it often is in real life. Also, much of the show is taken verbatim from her decoded diaries, so for historical authenticity, it’s up there.
This list isn’t exhaustive by any means, there’s a lot more out there, if you’ve read, listened or watched something cool, share it below!
Happy protesting, and check back soon to read about some pretty cool queer women in eighteenth-century Wales.