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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 A Short History of Queer Women, by Kirsty Loehr 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’. Gay History and Literature, Essays by Rictor Norton 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: Lesbian Marriages in 18th-century England Satire on Queen Anne and Her 'She-Favourite' Anne Lister’s Diaries 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. Marsha P. Johnson 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 Pride 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. It’s a Sin 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. Gentleman Jack 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.

Is historical fiction good or bad for women’s history? (Disclaimer: This article will include several spoilers for Doctor Who series 2 episode 4, and for the series generally, the episode came out seventeen years ago so I take no blame for spoiling it but I’d suggest watching this episode before you read on so you know what I’m going on about.) Historical episodes of Doctor Who tend to have a decent grounding in fact, screenwriters typically justify decisions of the Doctor to not kill Hitler for example, by stating that the history he was a part of, and therefore his death is a fixed point in time, changing it would create a paradox. So, typically when they tell us about history, they are overall correct, sometimes with a sci-fi take. A resounding opinion among most Doctor Who fans is that the series two episode ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ is one of the best. It has some of the best lines, who can forget Rose berating a drunk Doctor with “Oh look what the cat dragged in. The oncoming storm.” The plot is brilliantly ridiculous: David Tennant slightly falls in love with the future Madame de Pompadour whilst Rose and Mickey discover that the ship is being fixed with human parts and that unbeknown to them, the clockwork mechanics want the brain of Madame de Pompadour because the ship is named after her. I remember watching this episode when it first came out, I was six, and this was before the history bug had fully grasped my attention (The Four Georges at the end of the first episode of Horrible Histories is to thank for that), but the fact that this was a historical episode that mostly focussed on a woman stuck with me, what I knew about history at that point was male centric and largely concerned war. As I got older and understood more about my place in the world, my identity as a woman and a historian, I questioned the popular (and lazy) idea that only people with obvious authority had power, meaning men. Throughout my undergraduate studies I became fascinated by the idea of the Royal Mistress, her political and social importance. Even now, we effectively have a Royal Mistress as our Queen Consort, so this isn’t a position that should be forgotten. In recent years and months, I’ve conducted a lot of my own research into the concept of the Maitresse en Titre, the chief of official mistress of the king of France, and the evolution of this role in the English court under Charles II too. I always come back to this episode, and the explanation of Madame de Pompadour’s life that the Doctor helpfully gives for an audience who might not have a comprehensive understanding of eighteenth-century France. On a side note, I was slightly disappointed that we didn’t get any real reference to her in the BBC series Marie Antoinette that recently came out, she was dead and replaced by du Barry by then but some acknowledgement that the Petit Trianon was built for her, or that she helped create the alliance with Austria that saw Marie Antoinette become queen would have been nice. Despite my fascination with Madame de Pompadour, and this episode, I hadn’t researched her in much depth until now. Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, or ‘Reinette’, lived from the 29th December 1721 to the 15th April 1764, she encapsulated what it was to be a mistress of the king of France, and the success of her personal influence is arguably unlike any before, and certainly after her. Interestingly, she wasn’t nobility of her own right, and her parentage was debated, making her a slightly controversial choice for Louis XV. It is partially this non-aristocratic background which garnered her criticism from her contemporaries and celebration from historians. Let’s start with her name, surely that can’t be too wrong, right? Well, the Doctor first meets Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, the future Madame de Pompadour through her fireplace in 1727, she’s meant to be six years old. She tells him that her name is Reinette, and it’s not until we meet her again as she leaves Paris, presumably to her marriage at nineteen that the Doctor works out exactly who she is. He helpfully exclaims “Reinette Poisson? Later Madame d’Etoiles! Later still Mistress of Louis XV! Uncrowned Queen of France! Actress, artist, musician, dancer, courtesan, fantastic gardener!” This is all factually correct, except for when we meet Reinette in 1727, she did not yet have this nickname, nor would she have been in Paris. At 5, in 1726, her legal guardian, Charles Le Normant de Tournehem (her mother’s lover and possibly her real father) sent her to be educated at the Ursuline Convent in Poissy, she didn’t return home until 1730, aged 9 with poor health. It was whilst she was ill that her mother took her to a fortune teller who told them that Jeanne-Antoinette would one day rule over the heart of the king. ‘Reinette’ literally means ‘little queen’ in French, and it became her nickname from then on, a good three years after she introduces herself by this name. It really wouldn’t have been hard to make the year 1730. Still, for narrative sense, maintaining one name is easier, we’ll give them a pass on that. In her teenage years she received an extensive private education, instilling in her many of the qualities that the Doctor points out: she was an accomplished actress, musician, dancer, and crucially a courtesan (basically a high-class prostitute) and a politician. There’s a significant part of her history missed; at nineteen, Reinette married the nephew of her guardian, (her cousin if Tournehem was her father), Charles Guillaume Le Normant d’Etoiles. On their marriage Tournehem disinherited the rest of his nieces and nephews, naming d’Etoiles (and consequently his guard/daughter) his entire estate. Within her marriage Reinette was seemingly content, they had two children, one who died in infancy and a second who died at 9-years-old. She is said to have stipulated that she would leave her husband only for the king, which she did in 1745. Doctor Who effectively summarises the influence of the Royal Mistress at the French Court better than a lot of other examples, in a simple scene where Reinette discusses the illness of the current mistress of the king, and her aspirations. Her friend, Katherine, says “Madame de Chatearoux is ill and close to death… The king will therefore be requiring a new mistress.” Reinette replies “He is the king and I love him with all of my heart, and I look forward to meeting with him.” “Every Woman in Paris knows your ambitions.” “Every woman in Paris shares them.” Now it might be slightly hyperbolic that ‘every woman in Paris’ had ambitions on being the mistress of the king, certainly not every woman would have had the position, education or ability, nor likely the self-belief to pursue this, but the sentiment is true. Maitresse-en-titre ‘chief’ mistress was a particularly sought after position for French upper-class women. The queen of France was always foreign, the Royal marriage typically a diplomatic relations matter; Mary Tudor had smoothed over English relations, Marie Antoinette would secure allyship with Austria, Catherine and Marie de Medici brought money, Marie Leszczyńska had been chosen because the country needed a quick heir. The mistress on the other hand, was always French, and was typically better at having the ear of the king than his wife. In many ways, the position of mistress was a domestic matter, and therefore, who she was, was also important to the court. Louis XV’s initial adultery had been encouraged on the basis that the mistresses he took were apolitical, as his councillors wanted to avoid Marie Leszczyńska having any sort of political standing. However, by the time he got to Reinette in 1745, this apolitical proponent appears to have gone out the window. Reinette met the king, officially, at the so-called Yew Tree Ball to celebrate the marriage of the Dauphin in February 1745 as the episode shows, but this was unlikely to have been their real first meeting. Since her marriage, Reinette would have had free reign to visit Parisian Salons, making a name for herself among the societal elite and likely being spoken about at Court, in 1744 she intentionally drove in front of the king’s path as he led a hunt near her estate in Senart, twice! Even if they didn’t speak, the moment made enough of an impression that the Madame de Chatareaux explicitly warned Reinette away from the king. Louis XV, for his own part, gifted her venison and invited her to the aforementioned ball several months later. At the ball, Reinette dressed as Diana the Huntress, to remind the king of their meeting, a bold choice which the episode doesn’t show particularly clearly. The Doctor explains, to the typically clueless Rose, that she is Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, and she is “one of the most accomplished women who ever lived… she’s got plans on being his [the king’s] mistress” and that actually, she and the queen of France “got on very well.” So, is this accurate? Well, yes and no; she certainly was accomplished, if she was one of the most accomplished is probably a matter of opinion, but her patronage and participation in art, and crucially her activity in French politics was unlike the actions of even the queen at this time. She did become the king’s mistress, quickly being elevated to Maitresse-en-titre, by March 1745, Reinette had rooms directly above the king’s in Versailles, in May her and her husband officially separated, in June she was gifted the title and estates of the marquisate de Pompadour, and in September she was presented at court by the Princess of Conti. She cleverly pledged loyalty to the queen, allowing a friendly relationship to develop. I hasten to add that their relationship wasn’t rosy, the queen had simply resigned herself to her husband’s infidelity. Reinette benefitted because she wasn’t the most abrasive of his mistresses, and paid due reverence to the queen, it’s really understandable that Marie tried to protest her becoming a lady-in-waiting although unsuccessfully, would you want your partner’s partner among your closest companions? Reinette is a fascinating mistress because she only appears to have fulfilled the sexual role of her position for a few years, all sexual relationships with the king ended in 1750 due to poor health partially caused by 3 miscarriages in five years. Despite this, she remained court favourite until her death, she is regarded to have made herself invaluable for her patronage and political guidance. She was also open about her love for the king, disregarding any concern about the king’s sexual relationships with women at the Parc-aux-Cerfs that "It is his heart I want! All these little girls with no education will not take it from me. I would not be so calm if I saw some pretty woman of the court or the capital trying to conquer it." Pompadour’s comment seems a fitting sequel to the queen’s alleged comment about her that “if there must be a mistress, better her than any other.” Her artistic patronage is typically the easiest element to consider, she is the figure typically credited with popularising Paris as the arbiter of taste and culture in Europe, encouraged the development of the Rococo and as shown in the plans for Le Petit Trianon, its development into neo-classicism. (She unfortunately died 4 years before it was finished). Throughout her life she patronised Jean-Marc Nattier, Francois Boucher, Francois-Hubert Drouais, Jacques Guay; she also learnt engraving, becoming an amateur print-maker, and championed porcelain and the decorative arts. Her personal portfolio, including several of her engraving prints was rediscovered in 2016 and shows a woman who was not only an admirer of art but was personally accomplished in the field. “Uncrowned Queen of France” is again perhaps an overstatement, and it doesn’t appear to have been used much at the time, in stark contrast to descriptions of Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland and mistress of Charles II a century earlier. But the Doctor doesn’t use it here to disparage as Samuel Pepys did regarding Cleveland, so what accuracy does it have? Elise Goodman, a historian of Pompadour, has stated that by the mid-1750s, Reinette was effectively fulfilling a role of Prime Minister to the king, she was responsible for a host of political activities, including appointing advancements, favours and dismissals and was an active contributor to domestic and foreign policies. For example, it was her influence in 1755 which saw the development of the Diplomatic Revolution, which would ally France with Austria and eventually lead to the marriage of the future Louis XVI to archduchess Marie Antoinette. She was also the subject of criticism for actions and political steps which arguably led to Britain overtaking France as the leading colonial power. Many libels came in the form of ‘poissonades’, pamphlets which criticised and shared rumours. But they appear to have had little effect on her predominance at court, she was not replaced as Maitresse-en-titre until four years after her death, there were mistresses, but not someone to begin to fill Pompadour’s place until Madame du Barry made her entrance, but she’s a discussion for another day. The episode does well to reflect her seniority at court and the importance she held on Louis XV, the last time the Doctor tries to visit her she is taken away from Versailles in her coffin, it is pouring with rain as it was in real life (knowing this was filmed in Wales I wonder if they planned this scene or if it was a happy coincidence). The downpour was something that her critics described as befitting her ending, as if a sort of pathetic fallacy. In this final scene in eighteenth-century France, the king hands over a letter, and when the Doctor refuses to share its contents, he says “Of course. Quite right” demonstrating simply and quietly his accurately displayed reverence Louis XV had for his penultimate Maitresse-en-titre. The episode doesn’t exactly intend to go into depth about Madame de Pompadour’s successes, but it does gloss over the intricacies of a lot of her achievements, the main characteristic of Doctor Who’s Madame de Pompadour is that she is brave, empowered, and single-minded. This appears fair, if one-dimensional. With any depiction of women’s history, I always question how well it has been written, excusing accuracy or inaccuracy, does it deal with the themes well? Perhaps because the concept of this episode is to provide sneak peeks at her life, there are a lot of details ultimately left out of the narrative, her children, and her miscarriages, for example, fail to be mentioned. These deaths, and health problems would have had a profound effect on her life, and likely her mental well-being, that there is no mention of them, even when she is visited by Rose in what would have been a year after her daughter’s death at the age of nine, she is instead entirely practical, and it does come across as uncaring, which feels like an oversight. Moffat’s inspiration, among other facets like ‘The Turk’ (an eighteenth-century invention which was apparently a machine able to play a real-life human opponent at chess), appears to have been The Moberly-Jourdain incident. I won’t go into detail about this here but it’s worth having a read about when you can. The episode obviously caters towards entertainment before it does education, and in terms of time-travel and science fiction, it does a decent job of creating a not believable but surprisingly empathetic heroine. Even more remarkably, somehow making Louis XV out to be a somewhat decent person and not a serial philanderer who created a political climate so tempestuous it ended up with his grandson getting his head chopped off. If we consider the entertainment on the side of the Hist-Fic, it is generally good, the use of Welsh country-houses to recreate Versailles does an alright job of setting the scene, although unconvincing at demonstrating the extent of her artistic prevalence in this period. In my opinion, the clockwork monsters are an impressive way of calling to both the historical period and the entertainment intended, specifically their slightly terrifying masks are even if not intentional, a nice reference to the fact that Reinette first officially met Louis XV at a masked ball. I’m always wary in historical fiction of exactly how ‘feminist’ writers have made their historical women, as a feminist and a woman’s historian, that might be a slightly strange thing to read. But I’m of the opinion that women in history do not necessarily need post-humous empowerment, often, the most feminist thing to do with a woman’s history is to tell it exactly how it happened, with full transparency for her actions and flaws and struggles. Often that is not particularly empowering. Reinette is, as most Moffat-written women are, slightly intimidating to the men around her, in a way that if we were discussing another woman in eighteenth-century France, I might say is incorrect, but for Reinette, intimidating is right, she was a self-constrained woman, she knew her place in her world and she clearly knew how to engage with the constrictions of the society she lived in. Moffat’s Reinette is undoubtably a bit anachronistic, you’d be hard-pressed to find any woman in hist-fic who isn’t, but she is a fair representation of this woman for the twenty-first century. This series asks “Is historical fiction good for women’s history?”, for this case, I’m going to say yes. She isn’t entirely accurate, and the sensitivity of her story falters in oversight of her life not pertaining to a fictional relationship with the titular Time Lord, but in a 45-minute Doctor Who episode it’s understandable that a mother grieving would be cut for clockwork monsters. It’s fantastical and ridiculous, but crucially, it doesn’t pretend not to be. The Girl in the Fireplace has stuck with viewers, and so I am inclined to argue that yes, she deserves a lot more attention and care, but how many people know Madame de Pompadour’s name because David Tennant shouted that he snogged her in 2006? Me, for certain. To watch the episode or read more about Madame de Pompadour, see here: Doctor Who, Series 2, Episode 4: ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’, BBC, https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074fmn/doctor-who-series-2-4-the-girl-in-the-fireplace?seriesId=b007vvcq ‘The real Madame de Pompadour’, The National Gallery, < https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/learn-about-art/paintings-in-depth/the-real-madame-de-pompadour > Stamberg, Susan, ‘More than a Mistress: Madame De Pompadour was a minister of the arts’, National Portrait Gallery, (10/05/2016), < https://www.npr.org/2016/05/10/477369874/more-than-a-mistress-madame-de-pompadour-was-a-minister-of-the-arts> A recent episode of the History Hit Podcast Not just the Tudors with Suzannah Lipscomb discussed Louis XIV and his mistresses, it gives a really good insight into the phenomenon of the French Royal mistress, go and have a listen!

Historical fiction, or hist-fic, as I like to call it, is one of the most consistent and successful genres of literature and film. From the historical fiction novel to the TV period drama, societal fascination with the past is overwhelming and often gears towards the sensationalised, sexy, romantic, and the insane. I personally, love this type of media, and will unashamedly admit to having watched Downton Abbey six times, start to finish, and if a book about a long dead queen pops up on the shelves at Waterstones you know it is already on my TBR list. However, whenever I am watching and reading these delightful pieces of entertainment, I will usually end up researching the true stories, working out how accurate they are, and often, finding myself disappointed if they’ve glamourised, sexualised, or anachronistically empowered someone. Maybe it makes for a better story, but when reading the truth, I often think that historical fiction makes our public or popular understanding of these histories and these women worse. On the one hand, I enjoy and appreciate stories about historical women, and it is important to continue to do this, on the other hand, many of these stories write a twenty-first century woman into the past. Take most depictions of Anne Boleyn for example, these sexualise and empower a woman who was actually quite pious, and then she had her head chopped off by her husband, her story is tragic, not idyllic. When I asked this question over on Instagram there were a few mixed responses: some pointed out that gratuitous sex and violence often creates a warped idea of the real events and people, especially regarding the over-sexualised costumes given to many historical women; others decided that it was absolutely bad, and only a source of entertainment; some argued that representation is representation, regardless of inaccuracy; but many argued that it really depends on the exact source, it can be good, and it can be damaging, with a general consensus that if it’s by Phillippa Gregory then probably the latter. I conducted a quick Google search to see if there was any sort of definitive answer, there was a resounding gap, criticism yes, of inaccuracies, but no real engagement with how these forms of media affect or influence popular understanding of history, despite their dominance in media. Even if they aren’t history, they often act as such. So, why not fill that gap? This series will look at examples of historical fiction, and consider, are they good or bad? Now, this isn’t to denounce any of it, fiction is fiction, but I think it is important to establish where the history ends, and the fiction begins. To do so, it is useful to have some parameters, boundaries to discuss. These will be: (1) accuracy, yes it is fiction, but if they account for a real person, the accuracy of the narrative, or perhaps simply plausibility, is important; (2) sensitivity, hist-fic often deals with controversial, or sensitive elements, does it deal with these well and period appropriately, or does it fall guilty of things like the gratuitous sex and violence we mentioned earlier; (3) entertainment, because this is the point, but how well does it entertain a modern audience, and can it simultaneously maintain accuracy and sensitivity; (4) feminism, let me be controversial, women’s history does not need to make historical women empowered. Sometimes, the most feminist thing a historian, or an author, can do is to tell the complete unadulterated truth, of a women’s victimisation, or her faults. Each article, or review of hist-fic within this series will consider these four factors and ask, do they make it good? Maybe that’s an arbitrary question, and you’re welcome to disagree, but it is important to engage with women’s history at every level, even a fantastical one. Coming soon: Madame de Pompadour and The Doctor Queen Charlotte and her children A woman at war: Cecily Neville Why Bridgerton is good for Georgian and Regency history Edith Pretty’s glamorisation

This project aims to highlight women’s histories, that much is probably clear from the term “herstory”. However, “herstory” should also be understood as a critical term, one which suggests that history doesn’t do much for gender equality. The HERstory Project focuses on the question, “hey, where’s ‘she’ though?” because whilst history does tell us an awful lot about men, women tend to be pushed to the side. Even those histories which are about women somehow actually end up being about men, don’t they? When we talk about Henry VIII’s wives we acknowledge them because of the man they married, rather than for being the women that they were: a successful wartime leader, religious patrons, foreign women who made England their home, an abused child, and the first woman published in English under her own name. Truth is, those six women have very little in common other than all being the wife of one man, and the only reason our collective historical consciousness actually cares about them is because of his actions. My point is if you read histories of women they will often tell you about the important and the wealthy, the martyred and the evil, but I want to explore, very plainly, women. The exciting and the mundane. What did they do? Where did they go? What did they achieve? History needs to approach women in the same way that it does men. Now if you just wanted the answer to “what the hell is this about?” you can stop reading here, the first article will be out soon and so will the first of the Into the SPOTLIGHT feature. However, if you want a lovely long discussion of women’s and gender history as researched and understood by me over the past four years of my academic life, as well as a more in-depth explanation of the purpose of this project, then read on… (A short disclaimer: I am not the first historian, nor the first person to broach the subject of women’s histories and attempt to push their experiences into the spotlight of historical or public attention. At the bottom of this article, you will find a list of useful resources which you can and should check out for more information about this topic. This list isn’t exhaustive but they are the pieces and individuals who have informed and encouraged this project thus far.) Why is a focus on women in history necessary? Women’s place in history is often contentious, those whose names we know we often know for bad reasons and those who we don’t know are assumed to have been nothing worth remembering. But that’s not really fair. If women make up approximately 50% of the global population we cannot all have been bad or insignificant. I could list for several pages women who deserve to be remembered, celebrated and studied, but that’s the point of this project, not this article. This article intends to explain a few important points and theories to help you understand this project and the following questions. Why are these histories important to study thematically? What can we learn not just from a successful individual but from the experiences of women generally? What does the ignorance of women's histories teach us about the history of them? It will be useful to break this large topic into smaller bite-sized chunks, this should also serve as a resource, if you need to clarify why something is significant, refer back here first. What is women’s history? Women’s history is the study of women, what they did, who they were and what they achieved throughout history. It is about women in history. Simple. it’s not quite the same as gender history, but there is some overlap which will feature in this project - read on for that. Why is there women’s history but not men’s history? Because just history tends to be men’s history, so there has never been a need for a specific focus on male experiences, women on the other hand often don't seem to exist even when and where they were fundamental to an event. This is an everyday example of the effects of a patriarchal society (and as we will touch on in this project, Western colonialism). It’s complicated but you can think of it like this, in genealogy upon marriage, the wife has typically taken the husband’s name and is thereon known as Mrs-husband’s-name. (This is not the case in all societies but similar trends of the eradication of women’s identities have occurred in most, often due to colonialism). In legal documents, women would cease to exist. History has kind of done the same thing, it has assumed that if there is a woman there is nothing she could do or be other than the wife of x, daughter of x etc. There are exceptions to this, but they are quite rare and until fairly recently, historians didn’t really know how to talk about these histories. Since the second wave of feminism historians have acknowledged these women on a more balanced scale but there’s a lot we still don’t know and there’s quite a lot of latent misogyny in earlier women's histories which has carried through into how we write and think about women, and into the histories available to us. Tell me, have you seen any historians claim that Thomas Cromwell or James VI & I were incapable or dangerous because of their fatherhood or promiscuity? You mentioned gender history isn’t the same as women’s history, what is it then? Gender history has been described as a sort of outgrowth of women's history, whilst the latter looks specifically at women and their experiences, gender history considers the perspective of gender and tries to understand events and occurrences according to this disparity. To simplify this, gender history might provide a comparison of how an event affected men and then how it affected women, as according to gender disparities in societies and cultures they will have had differing effects and thus reactions. This perspective needs to be understood in order to correctly gauge the impact of an event. Gender and women's history are not then the same thing, but they are connected and you will see gender history used throughout work on this project. Okay so, is the history we know about women wrong? Not necessarily, but it might be slightly twisted. Historians (this one included) have a tendency to create villains or heroes of their subjects, let’s consider Anne Boleyn as an example. Historians either love or hate Anne and they write her accordingly. Some place emphasis on the belief that she never wanted the position she got and was the victim of a sociopathic king, yet, she still managed to do good as the king’s wife. Or they focus on the caricature of the scheming bitch, the bad she did in meddling in politics, disrupting the king’s marriage, effectively killing Katherine of Aragon and supposedly wearing yellow to the funeral (on the same day as Anne likely was suffering an 8-month miscarriage). She’s either a villain or heroic victim, feminist or pariah. But Anne Boleyn, like all women, is more complex than that, when in the position that she was faced with (the subject of distrust and disdain) it is likely that she did try to be a good queen, to influence the king to supporting the factions which supported her (she had managed to do so before they were married after all) and she was probably a good mother. But she was also not educated in politics, thus, long-standing beliefs that she meddled in court politics intentionally but dangerously are probably at least partially true. It is impossible to fit any person into a single archetype, historical figures included. If you created a character with as little nuance as some historians have suggested for Anne Boleyn your creative writing tutor would probably tell you that she was too unrealistic. If we think about Anne for a little bit longer, what we know about her is actually extremely slim, so maybe she was as George Bernard has suggested, a mindless feature of Tudor Court Politics, nothing compared to Thomas Cromwell’s majesty, or perhaps she was as Hayley Nolan argues, a victim of the sociopathic Henry VIII. Maybe she was even a feminist ahead of her time, a lot of historical women could be considered this if their efforts to stay alive and achieve some educational variety are considered. But the bottom line is, Anne Boleyn is a key example of how women are both vilified and heroised by historical study. In a way that their male counterparts are not, Cromwell, for example, is the feature of several nuanced histories debating the good and bad of his political efforts, attempting to understand his morality and his actions. Women are rarely given the same complexity, even Elizabeth I is treated like a sort of confused subhuman heroine in both scholarly and popular culture. The point of this rant is to demonstrate that history, especially women’s history rarely gives women the sort of celebration, criticism and attention for their actions in the same way that men are, there is a lack of complexity. Women’s and gender historians have made huge efforts over the past couple of decades in an attempt to address this failure, to redress the balance. We’re still working for that. The HERstory Project intends to contribute by providing a space for resources and discussion about women’s, gender, and sexuality histories, spotlighting individuals whose contributions, lives and experiences have been overlooked. I’m confused, you’re called The HERstory Project but you’re going to look at all types of history? Yes, the focus will be women and gender history, but history is a multidisciplinary area of study. Women have been involved in culture, religion, art, science, politics and war, so we will look at a huge variety of histories and spotlight women who deserve your attention (that’s everyone we can get to). We will also look at anyone who has been overlooked because they were transgressive in their gender or sexuality identities and discuss how queer histories can be understood when individuals might not have had the freedom nor vocabulary to have communicated their identities as we do now - is it fair to call Anne Lister a lesbian when we don’t know if she would have used this identity herself? There are several individuals who are quite elusive and it will be interesting to consider these people too. These individuals just happen to be mostly women… So, are there any women you won’t talk about? I doubt it, we will try not to give you the same discussions of the women who saturate historical study and historical fiction (excusing the use of Anne Boleyn above) but sometimes these women are worth discussing - why are they so popular and is the information we have accurate? How can we get involved? A significant point of this project is to create a space for women's, queer and under-represented histories, we need researchers, writers and editors, no qualifications required, to get involved. If you love history, and want to help us build a meaningful community for these histories, please get in touch! You can fill out the Join Us form at the bottom of the website, or email us at herstoryproj@gmail.com That’s all from me for now, thank you for reading. You can follow The HERstory Project on Insta and Twitter, search for @herstoryproj on both. See you soon! Abby Bibliography/Useful resources: On the value and definitions of women’s and gender as themes for study: Butler, Judith, 'Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomelogy and Feminist Theory', Theatre Journal, Vol.40, No.4 (1988), pp.519-531, < https://doi.org/10.2307/3207893 , [30/12/2022] Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, (New York: Routledge, 1990) Meyerowitz, Joanne, 'A History of "Gender"', The American Historical Review, Vol.113, No.5, (2008), pp.1346-1356, < https://www.jstor.org/stable/30223445 >, [30/12/2022] Scott, Joan W., ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’, The American Historical Review, Vol.91, No.5, (1986), pp.1053-1075, < https://www.jstor.org/stable/1864376>, [26/12/2022] Scott, Joan W., Gender and the Politics of History, (New York: Colombia University Press, 1999) On Women's history generally: Amussen, Susan Dwyer, An Ordered Society, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988) Davies, Natalie Zemon, ‘Women in Politics‘ in A History of Women in the West, eds. Davis, Natalie Zemon, and Farge, Arlette (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1993), pp.167-185 Davis, Natalie Zemon, ‘Women on top’, in Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight essays, ed. Davis, Natalie Zemon, (Stanford: Stanford university press, 1975), pp. 124-51 Davis, Natalie Zemon, and Farge, Arlette, ‘Women as Historical actors’ in A History of women in the West, eds. Davis, Natalie Zemon, and Farge, Arlette, (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1993), pp.1-7 Eales, Jacqueline, Women in Early Modern England, 1500-1700, (London: UCL, 1998) Fletcher, Anthony, Gender and Subordination in England, 1500-1800, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995) Fraser, Antonia, The Weaker Vessel, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984) Greer, Germaine, Medoff, Jeslyn, Sansone, Melinda and Hastings, Susan (Eds.) Kissing the Rod, (London: Virago Press, 1988) Hufton, Olwen, The Prospect before her, (London: Harper Collins, 1997) Jay, Nancy, ‘Sacrifice as Remedy for having been born a woman’, in Castelli, E.A. (eds) Women, Gender, Religion: A Reader, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp.174-195, Laurence, Anne, Women in England, 1500-1780, (Great Britain: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1994) Melman, Billie, 'Gender, History and Memory: The Invention of Women's Past in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries', History and Memory, Vol.5, No.1, (1993), < : https://www.jstor.org/stable/25618641>, [30/12/2022] Nguyen, Athena, ‘Patriarchy, Power, and Female Masculinity’, Journal of Homosexuality, Vol.55, no.4, pp. 665-683, [22/11/2020] Paechter, Carrie, ‘Masculine femininities/feminine masculinities: power, identities and gender’, Gender and Education, Volume 18, No. 3, (May 2006), pp. 253-263, [23/11/2020] Sommerville, Margaret R, Sex and Subjection, (London: Arnold, Hodder Headline, 1995) Wiesner, Merry E., Women and gender in early modern Europe, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) Wiesner-Hanks, Merry, ‘Women’s Authority in the state and household in Early Modern Europe’, in Women who Ruled, ed. by Annette Dixon (London: Merrell Publishers LTD, in association with The University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2002), pp. 27-39 On Anne Boleyn, Tudor Politics and the other wives of Henry VIII: Beer, Barrett L., ‘Jane [née Jane Seymour], (1508-1537)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004/2008) < https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/14647 >, [27/12/2022] Bernard, G.W., Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010) Davies, C.S.L., ‘Katherine [Catalina, Catherine, Katherine of Aragon], (1485-1536), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004/2011), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4891, [27/12/2022] Ives, E. W., ‘Anne Boleyn, (c.1500-1536), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004), < https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/557 >, [27/12/2022] Ives, Eric, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn: The Most Happy, (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 1986) James, Susan E., ‘Katherine [Kateryn, Catherine] [née Katherine Parr]’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004/2012), < https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4893>, [27/12/2022] Leithead, Howard, ‘Cromwell, Thomas, earl of Essex, (b. In or before 1485, d.1540), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004/2009), , [27/12/2022] Wernicke, Retha M., ‘Katherine [Catherine] [née Katherine Howard], (1518x1524-1542)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004/2008), , [27/12/2022] On James VI & I: Wormald, Jenny, ‘James VI and I (1566-1625)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004/2014), < https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/14592 >, [27/12/2022]

Someone you may not have any awareness of in this list of women and equality throughout history is British councillor Mavis Best. Best led a group of black women activists from Lewisham who successfully petitioned for the recall of 'Sus' Law, the colloquial term for section 4 of the 1824 Vagrancy Act, which allowed arrest based solely on suspicion of a crime. Police used this periodically to stop, search, arrest, detain and assault young black men. Whilst also a single mother Best’s leadership of the Scrap Sus campaign was singularly successful, and her personal involvement in protest unprecedented. She has received little awareness for her efforts however and remains largely in obscurity. Best moved from Jamaica to the UK in her early 20s in 1961, joining her brothers and sister in Peckham. Best was immediately aware of the restrictions placed against her, finding difficulties in employment opportunities, housing, policing and general hostility from the wider population. She would later tell an interviewer in a radio appearance that “We didn’t have the language to speak about racism in those days. That comes later. But we knew they didn’t like us.” This awareness allowed for further enlightenment to ongoing Black Rights movements across the country, in the 1970s she studied community development at Goldsmiths College, where she met Basil Manning, who pushed for her involvement in the growing ‘Scrap Sus’ campaign, burgeoning in Lewisham. Best would go on to lead the fight for the repeal of this act whilst also raising her three children as a single mother. 'Sus' Law is a colloquial term for section 4 of the 1824 Vagrancy Act. This entitled the police to stop and search, and arrest anyone in a public space if there was suspicion that they intended to commit an offence. Although it was slightly more complex to bring such cases to trial, there was still a good chance that the arresting force could provide proof of suspicion. Within a fundamentally racist society, this law was typically and increasingly used against young black men in Metropolitan areas. Often young men and boys were simply looking into a shop window or walking down a street. The treatment they would then receive was something more reminiscent of 1930s Germany. They were detained for days, with no notice given to families, physically assaulted in police vans and stations, and later wrongly accused of criminal activities such as theft or conspiracy, only 10% of 'Sus' convictions had supplementary evidence to police testimony. It was the subject of protest among other causes in the 1980 and 1981 Race Riots around England before Best became involved and it is telling of the institutionalised racism in the British Police force that when questioned on the law in 1980, then Met commissioner Sir David McNee argued that there was such a high proportion of black people incarcerated thanks to the law because they were “over-represented in offences of robbery and other violent theft.” Best’s leadership of the “Scrap Sus” Campaign was arguably fundamental to its quick repeal once protests had begun, quickly enlisting co-campaigner Paul Boateng, Best is described to have been almost obsessive in the organisation of the campaign, immediately taking to leadership and organising protests in days and being so involved in them that she was often dragged away by the very police she was protesting; they produced leaflets, and flyers to hand out at public events, personally marshalled families and communities to attend hearings, drumming up support and witnesses for any and all cases she could, pushing the effort with her group that the only way to win was to directly challenge the authority, call them what they were, liars. Boateng described how she was singularly committed to the campaign, calling him “at all times of the day and night and on the weekends, and say: ‘X, Y or Z is happening. You need to get down here. And I did.” Perhaps the most notable action of Best and her ‘Scrap Sus’ Protestors was their direct challenge of arrests. Best herself would refuse to leave stations until arrested men were released into her care, explaining later that this step was necessary for her and the communities affected because “by then their parents were so debilitated by the whole thing that they couldn’t do anything.” 1981 is described as one of the worst years for British Race Relations: National Front Protests had closed and opened 1980 and 1981 on a sour note, this was followed in January with the New Cross House which Fire saw thirteen young black people die. Could the fire have been started thanks to an arson attack as part of the aforementioned fascist protests? The suspicion was ironically never addressed. Mass protests in the following months were met with indignant racism and violence and in April the violence arguably reached a climax with ‘Operation Swamp 81’ in Brixton. Operation Swamp, named for Thatcher’s statement that Britain was “swamped” with other cultures saw 1000 people stopped and 150 arrested, actions which saw an uprising in the following days and continual uneasiness and readiness to protest in the following months throughout all of London. Protesting lasted three years, with both Conservative and Labour Governments ignoring the community’s complaints and efforts until 1981 when a Home Affairs committee was eventually formed to address the issue. The law was repealed in August but most agreed it was too late to repair the damage that had already been done throughout the year. Mavis Best is not a single success story, she continued to fight for Black rights throughout her career over the following three decades, working for Camden Social Services, and working with several grassroots community projects in the 80s and 90s. Throughout it all, Best would lead the movements, speaking up when others couldn’t or were too afraid to. For example, Best pushed for support for young people from their local churches, worked with the Anti-Racist Alliance in the early 90s, and continued to campaign specifically for black individuals mistreated by the law, such as Stephen Lawrence and was part of a panel to review the implementation of the Macpherson Report, which had concluded that there was ‘institutionalised racism’ in the UK police forces. Additionally, she helped start and support two efforts to provide aid to African and African-Caribbean people: the Saturday Achievement Project and the Simba Family Project. Almost 20 years after her involvement with “Scrap Sus”, in 1998, Best was elected Labour Councillor in Greenwich, her long time colleague, Paul Boateng, this year had become a minister at the Home Office, and it was Boateng who appointed Best to the committee which oversaw community development trusts. In 2002 she established the Greenwich African Caribbean Organisation. Throughout the 00s her activism continued, setting up a commemoration for the black and enslaved people of Greenwich centred around a grace of an unknown Black Person, who saw that a ceremonial juneberry tree was planted at Charlton House to commemorate the black people of the borough, the house had been partially built on the proceeds of slavery. Furthermore, her activism wasn’t solely restricted to London; on a holiday to Jamaica, she became so enraptured with a local campaign concerning employment that she stayed to assist them for several months. Unfortunately, acknowledging the problem does not entirely solve it and institutionalised racism is arguably as prevalent in today’s society as it was in the 1970s, it’s just got to be more creative in its discrimination. Still, Best’s contribution, and that of the women she led and inspired throughout her activism and political career shouldn’t have faded into obscurity as it has, it was her leadership and fearlessness which helped bring about the end of a brutal and devastating technicality of the law, and it is with her continued legacy that we can work to address ongoing racism in our society. Source Rose, Steve, ‘“She was not a woman to back down@: the fearless Black campaigner who helped to scrap the UK’s ‘sus’ law’, The Guardian, (02/12/2022), < https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/nov/29/she-was-not-a-woman-to-back-down-the-fearless-black-campaigner-who-helped-to-scrap-the-sus-law>, [03/03/2023] ‘Best, Mavis’, Hackney Museum, < https://museum-collection.hackney.gov.uk/names/AUTH4748>, [03/03/2023] Maggs, Joseph, ‘Fighting Sus: then and now’ Race Relations, (04/04/2019), < https://irr.org.uk/article/fighting-sus-then-and-now/>, [03/03/2023]

Isabella of France 1295-1358 The Hundred-Year War started because of a woman. In 1295 or 1296 Queen Joan I of Navarre (a medieval Basque kingdom in Northern Spain) gave birth to a child called Isabel. The daughter of an autonomous queen and the king of France, Phillip IV, Isabella was by all accounts, destined to be a queen, but typically she would be refrained from being so in her own right. Her father arranged marriages between Isabel’s aunt, Marguerite, and the current king of England, Edward I, and his infant daughter and child prince Edward, ensuring French influence in England for at least two kings’ reigns. The marriage between Isabel (then anglicised to Isabella) and Edward II took place in 1308, the king was 24, and his queen 12, perhaps understandably, he showed little interest in his child-bride, but plenty in formerly exiled favourite Piers Gaveston. Several historians have debated the exact nature of the relationship between Piers and the king, if it was homosexual, there is little to disprove it, but also, there is little to prove it. Homosexuality was not exactly unheard of, but it wasn’t shouted about either, crucially, when Piers was brought out of exile, a chronicler wrote that ‘He [Edward II] had home his greatest love.’ We may not know the exact nature of their relationship, but much like Anne of Denmark in the seventeenth century, Isabella found herself often ousted in favour of the male favourite: Piers had received a portion of Isabella’s dowry, he was put in charge of the new queen’s coronation, at the event itself he was seated next to the king, rather than her, his coat of arms, rather than Isabella’s was also displayed. If it wasn’t a homosexual relationship, it certainly was a queer one. Piers Gaveston was exiled, then returned within eighteen months, with him and the king fleeing north from the barons who had enforced the exile with a pregnant seventeen-year-old Isabella in tow. She was safe when they left her to escape on a ship, and by the summer, Piers was murdered. In the months that Piers had not been at court, Isabella had fallen pregnant, so you’d hope, for the teenage queen’s sake, that without him, things would settle down. Alas, not. In came a man named Hugh le Despenser, described as hating the queen even more than his predecessor, by 1321 she was practically imprisoned, and by 1324, all of her lands had been given to the new royal favourite. Until now, Isabella looks pretty weak, and abused, so you may be wondering, how on earth could she have started a war, and why on earth is this article titled ‘The She-Wolf of France’? Well, let's firstly give Isabella some grace for being a child in her marriage, sent to a country she did not know, living in practical poverty despite being the queen of England and having a child at 16 or 17, followed by four more children. There is somewhat of a turning point in Isabella’s life when she is allowed marginal freedom and autonomy in 1325. Her husband pushed Isabella to return to France on his behalf, to negotiate with her brother, now king of France, for Gascony, a duchy which had been brought to the English crown by Eleanor of Aquitaine (a duchy which the king of England continued to hold). The French king had declared Gascony forfeit for Edward’s failing to pay homage, and to put it simply, Edward wanted it back. Isabella convinced her husband to allow their son, prince Edward to travel with her, a move which rendered the negotiations successful as he was able to pay homage in place of his father. However, her intention in taking her son may have had a more rebellious intent, as once in France, Edward II demanded the prince be returned to England as if suddenly realising that this prince was his heir. In France Isabella and the soon-to-be Edward III was joined by Roger Mortimer, an English exile, the king’s half-brother, Edmund of Woodstock, and several Englishmen who were disheartened with the king and his favourite. Isabella found financial support in Hainaut, began a romantic and sexual relationship with Mortimer, and arranged a marriage between her son and Phillipa of Hainaut. Here she also (and this is crucial for later) gave up any claim she had to the French throne. Isabella’s rebel army returned to England in 1326, landing in Suffolk. Her husband was quickly captured and Edward III, then fourteen was crowned, with his mother as regent. Isabella ruled on behalf of from 1327 to 1330 and remained an advisor to her son. As for the now previous king, he wound up dead in 1327, legends say at Isabella’s own hand by a red hot poker, or strangulation, his lover(s), were hacked apart and/or dragged, hanged, drawn, and quartered. ‘She-Wolf’ is making sense now. In 1328, Isabella’s brother died, and the French throne faltered, he had produced no heir, and after a decision to keep the line distinctly French, the crown to the Valois line for the first time. Now you might be thinking, okay well that is fine, remember Isabella gave up any right to the throne in 1326? Well, Edward III and his mother disagreed, they thought that the French throne should stay Capetian, and as Isabella couldn’t rule anyway (Salic Law prevented her even if her actions in 1326 are disregarded), her son was already a king, and was a grandson and nephew of kings of France, he was also Capetian through his mother and a descendant of several French nobility who had far greater exposure to the French throne than the new Valois king. The French consistently rejected Edward’s efforts, for one, whilst the English loved her, the French hated Isabella, considering her ‘depraved’ and not wanting her near the throne. These tensions were heightened because in 1331 Edward III had arrested his mother and her lover Mortimer, trying, and executing him. Isabella was placed under house arrest, and then became a nun, so claiming the throne through his mother was perhaps not the greatest standpoint for Edward’s efforts when he declared himself king of France in 1337. Sources: ‘The Wild Life of English Queen Isabella, She-Wolf of France aka the Rebel Queen Who Killed the King of England’, Ancient Origins, (30/12/2018), < https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/isabella-france-0011247 >, [30/03/2023] Weir, Alison, Isabella, (London: Vintage Publishing, 2012)

Mary Frith, AKA “Moll Cut-Purse” 1584-1659 Mary Frith, better known as “Moll Cutpurse” is one of those historical figures that often feels too elusive to properly pin down. Her crimes are fairly well-documented thanks in part to the Newgate Calendar chapbooks which appeared at the close of the eighteenth century, and a likely hyperbolic biography published in 1662, three years after her death, as well as, most usefully, a string of arrest records. Yet the woman herself is still somewhat of a mysterious figure. Perhaps the most important part about the legacy of Mary Frith in the history of women and women’s equality, isn’t where she got her nickname “Cut-purse”, but the fact that she turned her transgression of femininity into a performance. Was she transgender, a lesbian, a cross-dresser or just a woman trying to survive within a dangerous patriarchal society? Called a “roaring girl” by pamphleteers (early modern press), Mary Frith was a well-known thief on the streets of London, known for her years on the streets but also for her characteristic cross-dressing. Frith was born sometime in 1584, into a respectable working-class family, her father was a shoemaker. Several parts of her life remain unclear, enlightened only by a sensational biography published in 1662, three years after her death. Although some scholars have suggested that Frith herself may have participated in the authoring or research of this book, its legitimacy as an accurate narrative is mostly disbelieved. One thing we do know is that she had been troublesome ever since her youth and that efforts to reform her behaviour, for example, her uncle attempted to send her to New England, proved unsuccessful, she actually jumped overboard off the ship and swam back to shore. Understanding Frith from her childhood is perhaps too hopeful, we can gather from legitimate primary sources (legal and arresting reports) that Frith was on the streets from a young age, not because she explicitly needed to be, as with many other lower-class people in Elizabethan England, because she wanted to. This, and descriptions of her general attitude and demeanour indicate why Frith was long thought to be transgressive in her nature. She was not interested in the complexities of learning how to be a woman, she was ‘loud and boisterous’, had an inherent ‘abhorrence’ to children and crucially, is often described as ‘masculine’. In her criminal career, she often took to cross-dressing, the source of much of the controversy concerning her, this choice might have simply made her life easier, yet by the point of her early twenties she had turned her daily life into a performative event, itself a lucrative venture, and it is for cross-dressing, or rather, ‘public immorality” that she is arrested for on Christmas Day in 1611 and publicly humiliated for in January 1612 in front of a crowd of keen fans of “Moll Cutpurse”. But are these descriptions fair, do they accurately display a woman who might have actually been a transgender man or do they present a woman who was simply unhappy with the lot she was given? That’s a complex question that in reality, we can’t ever hope to answer. Yet, she almost exclusively dressed as a man throughout her adulthood, she engaged in masculine activities, and several arrest reports write with disgust about her swearing, drinking and smoking. But, there is no proof of anything which would further a transgender or even lesbian conclusion, bar perhaps an aversion to prostitution. So, what exactly makes this woman, firstly so popular, and secondly commit an act which arguably puts her life and her freedom at risk more than her actions of petty theft? Let’s consider the why first, as stated above, Frith would have had no real reason to sink into this life of crime in Southwark throughout her childhood. She and her family were lower class, yes, but that didn’t lower her chances of respectable employment. Many daughters throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were actually trained in their father’s profession, Frith would have likely had this opportunity herself, especially as there is no mention of brothers. Furthermore, lower-class women did in fact have a clear route for the development of careers in service. Teenage girls would regularly begin service as kitchen maids, or housemaids in the service of nobility, many others would be married by their early twenties, their husbands making enough in their own professions to allow the women to be housewives, as frith’s mother appears to be. Yet whilst still a teenager, Frith was arrested at least twice for petty theft, in 1600 and in 1602, indicating that she had no interest in traditional life. This simple fact makes her transgressive of seventeenth-century gender roles, but does it make her transgressive today? Not really, right? The options for women might have been secure but they weren’t exactly freedom, perhaps that freedom of choice was what Frith was searching for. But that doesn’t really explain the cross-dressing. If we think about crimes that women committed on the streets, I bet the first thing that comes to your mind is something like Nancy in Oliver Twist, she might be a thief but she is primarily a prostitute, inarguably a dangerous position, even if you weren’t in actuality soliciting you might still be attacked, assaulted or raped, or on the other hand, arrested for soliciting. So, the choice to parade in men’s clothing might have initially been a sort of protective and practical measure. Similarly, it would have initially given her a sense of anonymity, allowing her to thieve without recognition. This anonymity was a common thread among other women, who would dress as men to move through society with more ease, for some, this choice was unquestionably gendered, see those who dressed as or even lived as men to work, marry, or even serve in the military, Frith’s actions don’t appear to be driven by a rejection of gender, rather of gender roles, which were not singularly tied. Being a woman in early modern England was often a case of ornamentalism rather than practicality, Frith’s rejection of marriage, of children and of her prescribed gender role does not appear to be anything but a rejection of an arbitrary performance. This is argued based on a number of facts, firstly, her character remained female in her performance, secondly, she did live entirely as a woman in the later years of her life, thirdly, her home was inextricably feminine (although this doesn’t necessitate gender it does support an argument that her rejection of gender norms was performative only), finally, Mary Beard has described it most succinctly, there was “no template for what a powerful woman looks like, except for that she looks rather like a man”. Even Queen Elizabeth I avoided several restrictions and expectations of her gender throughout her reign. So, it is reasonable to assume that whilst Mary Frith actively transgressed her prescribed gender role, she was not necessarily driven by a sexual or gendered disparity. Finally, let's consider the impact of Mary Frith’s transvestitism. We know that Frith rejected the arbitrary and stifling restraints of her gender from her childhood on and her efforts to turn this cross-dressing into performance throughout her adult life was not only lucrative but also, unsurprisingly, divisive, we also know that her fans, for want of a better term were rather disappointed with the woman herself, most leaving out of boredom when she was stood in repentance at St Paul’s Cross in 1612, but did she impact other women in transgression or crime? Arguably yes, so much so that the authorities were specifically looking out for women dressed as men whilst ‘important’ men (read those who are institutionally misogynist) published transcripts and denouncements of these women. Frith wasn’t the first, and she wasn’t the last but she was certainly extremely influential. The true extent of Mary Frith’s transgressions of her prescribed gender will never be fully clear to us, but what we can conclude is that she was stifled within a patriarchal society, unhappy with the life she was supposed to have and decided, through criminality and drama, to create her own. A transgressor if ever that was one. Sources Kyte, Holly, Roaring Girls, (London: Harper Collins, 2019) 'Mary Frith, or Moll Cutpurse, the Roaring Girl', East End Women's Museum, (20/11/2016), < https://eastendwomensmuseum.org/blog/mary-frith >, [03/03/2023] 'DANGEROUS WOMEN: THE CROSS-DRESSING CAVALIER MARY FRITH', Historic Royal Palaces Blog, (28/02/2020), < https://blog.hrp.org.uk/curators/dangerous-women-the-cross-dressing-cavalier-mary-frith/>, [03/03/2023]

Militant suffragette might not be a term you’d immediately associate with a disabled teacher, but militant suffragette is an accurate description for the largely overlooked Rosa May Billinghurst, or as she was to the people who knew her, May. Billinghurst was born in Lewisham in London in 1875, at a time when women’s rights movements were growing globally. In New Zealand, all women over 21 were enfranchised in 1891, and in South Australia women received the same, as well as the right to stand for parliament in 1895. In the USA, campaigners were fighting for enfranchisement alongside black citizens, across the pond, in the UK, working-class movements for enfranchisement had been ongoing since the 1830s, women, still unable to vote even if they were landowners, were uniting to form organisations to push for the equal right to vote. Political support was unsteady, in 1869, John Stuart Mill published an essay in support of enfranchising women, after winning election on a platform which had advocated for votes for women. Also in the 1860s, Mill presented a petition to Parliament which would allow women the vote, an act drafted by early women’s rights group The Kensington Society and signed by the likes of Florence Nightingale and Mary Somerville. However, by the time of Billinghurst’s birth and childhood, women were no closer to achieving the vote than they had been 20 years prior. The Women’s Suffrage Committee was formed in Manchester in 1867, with meetings attended by a young Emmeline Pankhurst. In 1897 the committee joined with the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. But the women’s suffrage movement took off as Rosa May Billinghurst would have been able to engage with the movement herself, with Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel breaking off from the central suffrage movement to create the organisation which earned its members the name suffragette, The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). To return to our protagonist: Billinghurst had suffered polio as a child, becoming paralyzed from the waist down. Her disability does not appear to have been much of a hindrance to her activism, but rather a simple fact of her existence. As a teen she became actively engaged with the Women’s Liberal Association, seemingly joining the WSPU in 1907, marking a move from any peaceful engagement to the militant actions recognisable of the movement. Billinghurst’s exact actions in protests and activism are annoyingly, often unclear. We do know that she was a very active participant involved in marches and protests following elections. Billinghurst also founded the Greenwich branch of the WSPU in 1910, acting as its first secretary and naturally taking part in its demonstrations. Regarding accessibility, she was slated to be in a wheelchair-like device, effectively a tricycle and became well known among the press as the “cripple suffragette”. Such was the militant activism that on the Greenwich branch’s first march she was arrested after being thrown out of her chair by police (although she was allegedly happy with the publicity). Police also targeted her by stranding her in her chair in an alleyway with flat tyres, even stealing the valves. Billinghurst would go on to use her tricycle/wheelchair in further protests, hiding rocks, pamphlets and ribbons under her skirts and blankets. Her disability also worked in her favour when she was arrested and sent to Holloway prison (the first time) for breaking a window. She had been sentenced to hard labour, but her disability confused guards so much that they didn’t actually assign her any work to do! However, she was not safe from the curse of all militant suffragettes. In 1913, sent to Holloway, this time for damaging letters in a postbox, Billinghurst went on hunger strike and was consequently force-fed via nasal tube for two weeks, this ripped her nostril and broke her tooth, leading to her being released after only two weeks. In case you needed another example of the deplorable British police force in the early twentieth century, during protests to petition the king in May 1914 Billinghurst had like her peers, chained herself and her wheelchair to the gates of Buckingham Palace, the reaction of the police was to tip her out of her chair, leaving her stranded. The Representation of the People Act was published in 1918 by a Government who had had to acknowledge the value of women throughout the Great War. Perhaps the passing of the Act was also a form of gratitude for the militant actions of the WSPU and suffragettes like Billinghurst putting their political freedom aside during the war. The act only enfranchised women to vote in national elections when aged 30 and over, so it wasn’t exactly successful, but it was a start. Billinghurst retired from activism at the passing of the bill and died in July 1953. Sources: ‘Remembering the Suffragettes: Rosa May Billinghurst (1875-1953)’, LSE Blog, (2022), < https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/2022/03/23/rosa-may-billinghurst-31-may-1875-29-july-1953/>, [26/02/2023] ‘Who were the Suffragettes?’, Museum of London, < https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/museum-london/explore/who-were-suffragettes#:~:text=The%20Suffragettes%20were%20part%20of,in%20parliamentary%20and%20general%20elections.>, [26/02/2023] (Youtube video) Kellgren-Fozard, Jessica, ‘“The Crippled Suffragette”//Rosa May Billighurst’, in Historical Profiles, Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, (2021), [26/02/2023] Hanlon, Sheila, ‘Rosa May Billinghurst: Suffragette on Three Wheels’, Sheila Hanlon, , [26/02/2023] “Billinghurst Letters” and “Alice Ker Letters,” The Women’s Library, Autograph Collection, Vol XXIX, 9/29, 1912-1913 Abrams, Fran Freedom’s Cause: Lives of the Suffragettes, (London: Profile Books, 2003) Dove, Iris, Yours in the Cause: Suffragettes in Lewisham, Greenwhich and Woolwhich, (1988)

Always “Susan” and “Mrs Stanton” in their letters, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are fundamental in the conversation of women’s rights, both in the USA and the rest of the Western World. Individually, they were influential, but their partnership is widely regarded to be a turning point in the women’s rights movement. This profile considers briefly these women individually before discussing their partnership, and the impact it had. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the daughter of a wealthy landowner was remarkably privileged in her upbringing, receiving an extensive education, including tutoring in Greek and advanced mathematics and learning law from her attorney/justice father. Stanton’s memoir gives insight into just how extensive the family’s wealth and precedence in New York was, she recollects three black male servants during her childhood, one of whom has been confirmed to be a slave. Stanton appears to have been fairly aware of the problem of her gender from an early age, writing that her father exclaimed that he wished she were a boy upon the death of her last surviving brother. However, she was not greatly affected during her early schooling, later, she inevitably encountered institutionalised gender differences when she was unable to attend university, as women were prohibited. The school she eventually was able to attend, the Troy Female Seminary, Stanton would go on to criticise for an over-reliance on the preaching of religion. Her beliefs for the rights of women were established fairly early, and are seen throughout her marriage; her vows omitted the word obey and pregnancies seem organised via some sort of birth control method, although the couple still produced seven, something which meant that the often restless Stanton was kept at home whilst her husband, a lawyer and abolitionist, travelled without her. It is on her honeymoon to England in 1840 that we can most clearly see the seeds of Stanton’s ‘feminism’. Here the couple attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London (I know, classic honeymoon antics…). Stanton wrote that she was appalled by the male delegates, who voted to prevent women from participating, even if they had been voted to be delegates of their respective abolitionist societies. In fact, these male delegates required the men to sit in a separate section, hidden by curtains (excusing William Lloyd Garrison, who disagreed with the ruling, and instead sat with the women). Stanton was the primary author of the 1848 Seneca Fall’s Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, modelled on the U.S. Declaration of Independence. This list of grievances included the wrongful denial of women’s right to vote, something which several co-organisers, including Lucretia Mott and Stanton’s husband, were concerned would ruin the meeting. However, approximately 300 men and women attended the convention, and Stanton’s Declaration, although controversial became the leading factor in spreading the women’s rights movement from 1848 onwards. Following this convention, Stanton would speak at the Rochester Women’s Rights Convention in New York two weeks later, an event organised by women who had attended the Seneca Falls convention. Also, in Stanton also participated in the 1850 National Women’s Rights Convention in the form of a letter “Should women hold office”. It was then tradition to open the convention with a letter from Stanton, who herself did not attend the convention until 1860. Susan B. Anthony, born into a Quaker family who shared a desire for social reform was almost predestined to become the face of the women’s rights movement. Susan’s early life followed tolerant teachings of her father’s religion (her mother was a baptist), and her parents specifically encouraged all of their children to be self-supporting, teaching them business and giving responsibilities at an early age. For one term, she attended the Quaker boarding school in Philadelphia, which her biographers have described as an unhappy period thanks to a strictness and humiliating atmosphere. This education ended according to the financial downturn of her family with the ‘Panic of 1837’. The family consequently sold most of their belongings at auction and Susan began teaching to provide another income. Unlike Stanton, Susan B. Anthony was not yet a fully established reformer by the time of their friendship. Introduced by a mutual friend, Amelia Bloomer (for whom “Bloomers” were actually named) Stanton and Anthoney are claimed to have immediately hit it off and as well as working together on reform, the pair became almost inseparable friends. In fact, Stanton’s biographers conclude that Stanton had spent more time with Anthony than with any other adult, including her husband, and their children actually came to think of Anthony as another mother. This was largely due to her consistent presence in the Stanton’s homes over the years, often caring for them to allow her friend to work in peace. In every home that the Stanton’s moved to after their move to New York City in 1861, a room was always set aside for Anthony. The pair’s success as coworkers is attributed, by biographers and the women themselves to their oppositional and thus complementary skills, Stanton would describe her and Anthony as complementary, where Anthony was an organiser and critic, Stanton was “rapid” and an intellectual writer. Throughout their close friendship, Anthony would regularly defer to Stanton, refusing to take office in any organisation which would place her above her friend. Throughout their partnership, Stanton and Anthony’s activism was unlike any others. Individual efforts for abolition, temperance and women’s rights within marriage took the forefront in the 1850s. Both women supported reform concerning women’s rights if their husbands were alcoholics (she had little opportunity for legal recourse even if he was abusive and left the family destitute, he could still win sole custody of any children upon separation). Together Stanton and Anthony formed the Women’s State Temperance Society in 1852. Stanton as President and Anthony ‘behind the scenes’. In support of alcoholism reform, Stanton publically criticised the reliance on religion in women’s marital lives, something which arguably led to her and Anthony’s ousting from the organisation a year later. Their move from temperance led to a focus on Women’s rights, and more specifically than that, Stanton and Anthony turned their attention to the recently passed Married Women’s Property Act, as a basis for further reform for women’s equality. This act intended to reform women’s rights upon their marriage. Existing matrimonial law meant that a woman effectively ceased to exist upon marriage, becoming an extension of her husband, a law set by English Common Law. The Act reformed this, meaning that women were able to retain identity, but still not properties. The pair petitioned the Judiciary Committee and the legislature was passed in 1860. Also throughout the 1850s both supported dress reform, citing practicality, although they, like many other women abandoned efforts to modernise dress to not draw attention from the movement itself. In 1860 Stanton again supported a women’s right to divorce, and further antagonised traditionalists with a pamphlet from the imagined perspective of a female slave, ‘The Slaves Appeal’. Anthony similarly engaged in anti-slavery activity throughout this period and both women were threatened by violence on their lecture tours. For the pair, anti-slavery and women’s rights came hand in hand, both seeing the legal status of women, especially those in marriage to have a similar grounding in male ownership. It is unsurprising that the two women were at the forefront of reviving the women’s rights movement as the Civil War ended. In December 1861 they submitted the first women’s suffrage petition directed to Congress during the drafting of the Fourteenth Amendment, challenging the use of the specification ‘male’. In reaction to Congress refusing to permit women a space, Anthony announced her candidacy to run for Congress in October 1866. Largely unsuccessful, Anthony’s efforts did bring national attention to their efforts for women’s suffrage. In the same decade, the pair produced, edited and published a newspaper for women, The Revolution, from 1868-1870 and in 1869 formed the National Women’s Suffrage Association, then on travelling together to promote women’s rights. The pair weren't exactly popular with everyone though; this cartoon, produced in 1896 mocks Stanton and Anthony for being as important as George Washington, ironically, these women have been called the foremothers of Women’s equality. The decades of these women’s fight for women’s equality battled at times with society’s focus on the abolitionist movement, which many considered more important than women’s rights. For example, Stanton’s husband was an abolitionist but not a suffragist, whilst Horace Greeley as US Representative for founder and editor of the New York Tribune pleaded that women, “Remember that this is the Negro hour and your first duty is to go through the state and plead his claims.” This is despite many of the suffragists working for both purposes. They were told to wait until after the civil war and the enfranchisement of black people before pursuing women’s suffrage. However, several of these women, including Anthony and Stanton were unwilling to forget their own efforts, they saw an opportunity in this time of change, specifically in the wording of the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave the due process and equal protection under the law to “persons” without qualifications such as gender. When women attempted to vote under this rule, their votes were simply put into another box and not counted, or, as in Susan B. Anthony’s case in Rochester in November 1872, they were arrested. Acting on the basis of Anthony’s lawyer, she and her sisters successfully cast votes, they were arrested two weeks later. Trying to find a loophole by refusing bail in order to challenge the proceeding in court (under ‘federal habeas corpus’ which allows prisoners to challenge to cause of their arrest). Following this event, in December 1872, Stanton and Anthony wrote their New Departure Memorials to Congress, and although both were invited to read their memorials to the Senate Judiciary Committee (the group of senators who effectively judge the legality of pending legislation before it goes to Congress), it was rejected but again brought the issues to the forefront of politics. The next two decades of the women’s rights movement in the U.S. are complicated, divisions arose in the movement largely in part to the proposed Fifteenth Amendment, whilst Stanton and Anthony led a group (the NWSA) which pushed for total enfranchisement of all women (and people) regardless of race as well as a wide range of women’s issues, including divorce reform and equal pay. The alternative side, (the AWSA) did support the Amendment but argued that the enfranchisement of women was more beneficial than that of black men and that the movement should focus on women first. Failure of the Amendment to provide either meant that the two organisations merged in 1890, becoming the National American Women Suffrage Association, of which Stanton was initially president, then Anthony from 1892. The pair's lasting legacy is the drafting of the act which would eventually become the Nineteenth Amendment, which enfranchised women. The act was colloquially known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment and was passed in 1920, fourteen years after the death of Susan B. Anthony and eighteen after the death of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Their professional partnership gives insight into the reliance of women in the domestic sphere, just as Stanton fought for women’s liberty she was also homebound with seven children. Unmarried and childless, Anthony provided both intellectual aid and practical support to her friend and mentor. Perhaps without Anthony’s’ support, and without Stanton’s guidance, neither woman would have been able to have achieved half of their efforts for the rights of women. Sources Michals, Debra, ‘Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)’, National Women’s History Museum, (2017), < https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/elizabeth-cady-stanton>, [25/02/2023] Hayward, Nancy, ‘Susan B. Anthony, (1820-1906)’, National Women’s History Museum, (2018), < https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/susan-b-anthony>, [25/02/2023] ‘Susan B. Anthony’, HISTORY, (09/03/2010 - 29/08/2022), < https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/susan-b-anthony>, [25/02/2023] June-Friesen, Katy, ‘Old Friends Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Made History Together’, National Endowment for the Humanities, Vol.35, No.4, < https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/julyaugust/feature/old-friends-elizabeth-cady-stanton-and-susan-b-anthony-made-histo>, [25/02/2023]

‘My life has been built around sex and liberation’. Marsha P. Johnson is undoubtedly one of the most recognisable figures of LGBTQ+ history. Synonymous with the gay liberation movement of 1960s New York City. Assigned male at birth, Johnson is perhaps best known for being the black transgender woman who threw the first rock at the Stonewall Riots. Although Johnson herself has corrected that, she was not the person who started the fight, that doesn’t stop her from being at the centre of the liberation movement, and perhaps she remains significant simply as a figurehead of a pivotal movement in LGBTQ history. This Into the Spotlight article will discuss Johnson’s own history, and whether is it problematic to assume she was trans? Johnson was born on August 24, 1945, in Elizabeth, New Jersey to African-American, Methodist working-class parents, as one of seven children. She attended the Mount Teman African Methodist Episcopal Church throughout her childhood, she would remain a practising Christian throughout the rest of her life, later describing herself as ‘married’ to Jesus at sixteen. She had dressed in dresses throughout her childhood, adopting something of an androgynous identity, as we might call it today. This ended when she, after years of bullying, was sexually assaulted by a 13-year-old boy. Her mother, rather confusingly, told her that being gay was to be ‘lower than a dog’, whilst also telling her to go and find a rich boyfriend. Her life altered when she moved to Greenwich Village, New York at 17, returning to wearing women’s clothing and choosing the name Marsha P. Johnson (the P meant Pay it no mind and is an interesting call back to Susan B. Anthony and her sister’s decision to include initials in their names). New York was still heavily against gay people, often criminalising otherwise innocent activities in efforts of persecution, yet, within ‘The Village’, and the now infamous Stonewall Inn, this period may have been a point of liberation for Johnson. She immediately began working as a drag queen, saying in 1992 that she was ‘no one, nobody… until I became a drag queen.’ Day to day she favoured colourful outfits, thrift stores and flower crowns, an exaltation of feminine identity. She also, as many young people do, found her people in her move, becoming ‘like a mother’ to a transgender girl named Sylvia Rivera, and making friends kind enough to let the homeless Johnson sleep on their sofas. Poor and gay, she was forced to turn to sex work to supplement her income, where she was often abused by clients. She would later describe her life as ‘built around sex and liberation’. The most famous moment of her life, shortly before her 24th birthday, on the 28th of June 1969, saw the Stonewall Inn raided by police. It is often perpetuated that Johnson began the riots as police began arresting the gay men in the bar, but she herself has corrected this, clarifying that when she and Rivera arrived it was already 2 am, the place was on fire, ‘The riots had already started.’ Whether Johnson was being completely honest or not, in the weeks and months following, she was one of the leading figures of the following explosive gay rights movement. A year later, the first Gay Pride Parade took place, as a protest led by a group of gay rights groups: the Gay Liberation Front, (radical) and the Gay Activist Alliance (moderate). Johnson and Rivera instigated STAR, Street Action Transvestite Action Revolutionaries frustrated by the general exclusion of transgender and people of colour. Johnson and Rivera’s organisation is clearly keenly inspired by their own histories, exemplified by the opening of STAR House, STAR was “an organization dedicated to sheltering young transgender individuals who were shunned by their families.” Throughout the 70s, Johnson began to receive more visibility; notably, she performed with the drag group ‘Hot Peaches’, and modelled for Andy Warhol. Her motivation in all was clear, that gay people across America would have their rights, and she would not rest until every gay person did: “as long as gay people don’t have their rights all across America…there is no reason for celebration.” Throughout the 70s and 80s Johnson’s activism was interspersed with mental health breakdowns and subsequent stays in psychiatric facilities, arrests and sex work. In 1990 she was diagnosed with H.I.V., characteristically speaking publicly about this in June 1992. Tragically, less than a fortnight after this interview, she was found in the Hudson River. 1992 was at that point, the worst year on record for anti-LGBTQ+ violence, and rulings of suicide were abhorrent to her friends. Police would reclassify the case as undetermined, but refused to investigate further, nor did the media both covering her death. Despite this, hundreds turned up to her funeral. It took twenty years for the New York Police Department to reopen the case. Johnson and Rivera’s legacies were not forgotten, in 2019 they became the subject of a monument titled ‘She Built NYC’, and in 2020, New York State named a park in Brooklyn after her, she remains synonymous with the LGBTQ+ movement, regardless of whether she threw the first brick or not. To turn to the question of her identity, Johnson described herself as gay, and a transvestite, she used she/he pronouns. The word ‘transgender’ was not as widespread as it is now, she is never known to have used the word herself, but it wasn’t unheard of. There is an argument that applying modern terminologies, in this case, a transgender identity, onto someone who would not have understood it, or in this case, perhaps knew that this was not her identity is damaging to that person’s historical memory. Furthermore, we do know that she identified as a drag queen, a transvestite, and gay, and attaching those experiences to one of a transgender person is trivialising all of the above identities. Perhaps given more time, Johnson may have recognised this in herself, or perhaps with her she/he pronouns a gender-fluid identity would have suited her. Unfortunately, we’ll never quite know, but that doesn’t reduce her impact on LGBTQ+ history, and I for one think that regardless of her exact gender identification, she deserves recognition during Women’s History Month. Binion, Billy, ‘Marsha P. Johnson Probably Didn't Start Stonewall, and Might Not Have Been Trans. Does It Matter?’, reason, (30/06/2020), < https://reason.com/2020/06/30/marsha-p-johnson-didnt-start-stonewall-pride-might-not-have-been-trans/ >, [29/03/2023] Rothberg, Emma, ‘Marsha P. Johnson’ National Women’s History Museum. (2022), < www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/marsha-p-johnson >, [29/03/2023] ‘Life Story: Marsha P. Johnson’, NY Historical Society, < https://wams.nyhistory.org/growth-and-turmoil/growing-tensions/marsha-p-johnson/>, [29/03/2023]

‘Unbought and Unbossed’ are the two words Chisholm described herself within the publication of her autobiography, the title her life’s motto. This sums Chisholm up entirely, demonstrating unique outspokenness for women and for minorities throughout a period of U.S. and global history which in every moment rejected Chisholm’s place in the world. The difficulties of her race and her gender (something she stated was a ‘double handicap’) do not appear to have shaken Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm too much however; she was the first African American woman in Congress in 1968 and the first African American to seek nomination for U.S president from either of the two major political parties in 1972. This profile gives an account of Chisholm’s life, looking into what brought “Fighting Shirley” into the Congress floor, and also what kept her there. Born in November 1924 to immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York, Chisholm and her younger sisters were sent into the care of their maternal grandmother in Barbados at the age of five, her parents too busy working full time to care for their young children. She returned to New York in 1934 at the age of fifteen. Her time in Barbados gave her a pronounced accent which she retained throughout her life and as for the influence of her grandmother, Chisholm would say in adulthood that her grandmother gave her ‘strength, dignity, and love. I learned from an early age that I was somebody. I didn’t need the black revolution to tell me that.’ Chisholm also credited much of her success and intelligence to this upbringing, citing it as ‘strict, traditional’. Whilst in Barbados, Chisholm was exposed to a number of anti-colonial independence movements, whilst her father supported political activist Marcus Garvey in New York. On her return to New York, she attended an integrated school in Brooklyn from 1939, doing well enough academically to be named vice-president of the Junior Arista honour society. She was then offered scholarships at Vassar and Oberin Colleges, though she eventually chose to stay in Brooklyn, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts with a major in sociology and a minor in Spanish. During her time at the college Chisholm directed her energy into the Harriet Tubman Society, where she promoted the inclusion of black soldiers in the U.S. military, African-American history modules at the college and more women in the student body Government. Following graduation, Chisholm worked as a teacher’s aide a th e Mt. Calvary Child Care Center in Harlem from 1946-1953. At the same time, she was attending classes at night to earn an MA in childhood education from Teachers College of Columbia University in 1951. After leaving her job in Harlem, Chisholm became the director of the Friend in Need Nursery in Brooklyn, and from 1954 to 1959 the director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center, in lower Manhattan. Most notable is of course, her career in politics, starting from 1953 Chisholm engaged primarily in black focussed politics, starting with the BSPL which had originally sought to elect the first black judge in Brooklyn and later to support civil rights, protest racial discrimination and improve financial services in Brooklyn. She would eventually clash with the group’s founder Wesley Holder over her effort to give female members more input. In the next few years, she would work for the Brooklyn Democratic Clubs and the League of Women Voters, the Political League, and the Brooklyn branch of the National Association of College Women, then, in 1960, the Unity Democracy Club, a racially and gender-integrated organisation, here working with Thomas R. Jones who she would later replace as the Democratic Primary in the New York State Assembly in 1964 despite initial opposition according to her race and her gender. Thus, Chisholm was a member of the NY State Assembly from 1965-1968, using her time to extend domestic workers, sponsoring the introduction of a SEEK programme in New York (Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge), and arguing against the state’s English literacy test as if someone “functions better in his native language … [it does not mean they are] illiterate”. In 1968 Chisholm moved from state politics to national, running for the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 12th congressional district which thanks to some redrawing of congressional districts was dominated by black voters. Winning with her slogan “Unbought and unbossed”. Chisholm became the first black woman elected to congress, sitting as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for seven terms, during which time she consistently promoted racial and gender equality, support for the working classes and poor population, lobbied against the Vietnam War and introduced 50 acts/legislation. Furthermore, she was unwilling to let her success in politics be anomalous, in 1971 Chishom co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus which continues to recruit, train and elect progressive, pro-choice women in American politics. Chisholm for president Chisholm announced her candidacy for president in January 1972, calling for a ‘bloodless revolution’ a the upcoming Democratic nomination convention. She became the first African American to run for a major party’s nomination for the presidency and the first woman to run for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination, although crucially she refused to run as a ‘black candidate’ or a ‘female candidate’. “I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate for the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman and equally proud of that. I am the candidate of the people and my presence before you symbolises a new era in American political history.” Chisholm’s effort was, perhaps unsurprisingly, unsuccessful, hugely underfunded and mostly considered to be a symbolic rather than genuine candidate, she stated later that in her political career, she encountered more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Unlike some other women we’ve discussed so far this month, she did however have the full support of her husband, who at the start of her candidacy served as her bodyguard. Her support was based upon those who were ethnically diverse and were largely women, and whilst generally popular politically, she struggled to gain the popular vote. Throughout the campaign, Chisholm had struck up an unusual friendship with her political rival George Wallace. This friendship would later serve her political work well, helping her to push through legislation to give domestic workers the minimum wage. Post presidential campaign From 1977 to 1981 Chisholm served as Secretary of the Democratic Caucus, then worked to help inner-city residents, invest in education, health care and other social services, worked to reduce discrimination against women and Native American land rights and for the better. She would oppose the Vietnam War, the U.S. draft and weapon developments, and support the Equal Rights Amendment, although specified that women should not receive specific health and safety laws as this would simply ‘continue’ traditional discrimination of women. She would focus on the “double discrimination” faced by black women, which some historians have argued had an impact on the development of the feminist movement in the 1970s. However, many others considered her too ineffectual in cases of liberal, black and feminism issues, for example, Chisholm would not support Bella Apzug’s campaigns for U.S. senator and New York mayor in 1976 and 1977 respectively; nor Elizabeth Holtzman’s congressional challenge; nor did she support Percy Sutton’s mayoral effort, also in 1977. The press began to call her apparent ignorance of black and women's issues the ‘Chisholm problem’, and critics focussed on the ‘unbossed’ part of her slogan, arguing in disparaging articles that bossed was exactly what she was. There are several reasons Chisholm may have decided to leave congress in 1979, her second husband had been in an accident, and the “Reagan Revolution” pushed liberal politics into a fairly unlikeable place. She retired officially in 1982, leaving congress entirely in 1983 and settling back into a career in education. She didn’t exactly leave politics behind though, establishing the National Black Women’s Political Caucus in 1984 with C. Delores Tucker (The organisation would later become the National Congress of Black Women), she would continue to campaign for politicians and also helped set up the group: African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom in 1990. Bill Clinton would go on to name her Ambassador for Jamaica, in 1993, though she was ultimately too unwell to undertake her role. Chisholm died on the 1st of January 2005, the inscription on her legend reads “Unbossed and Unbought”. Sources Hill, Debra, ‘Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005)’, National Women’s History Museum, (2015), , [26/02/2023] ‘Shirley Chisholm (November 30, 1924-January 1, 2005)’, African American Heritage, < https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/individuals/shirley-chisholm >, [26/02/2023] ‘Shirley Chisholm for President’, Smithsonian, < https://nmaahc.si.edu/shirley-chisholm-president>, [26/02/2023] ‘Shirley Chisholm’, History.com, (18/12/2009/13/04/2022), < https://www.history.com/topics/us-government-and-politics/shirley-chisholm>, [26/02/2023]