You're Dead to Me - LGBTQ History

Episode Date: September 20, 2019

From Molly Houses to secret diaries, discover the real-life stories that make up the history of the LGBT community. Greg Jenner is joined by comedian Suzie Ruffell and Dr Justin Bengry, historian and creator of the world’s first masters degree in Queer History. It’s history for people who don’t like history!Produced by Dan Morelle Scripted and researched by Emma NagouseA Muddy Knees Media production for BBC Radio 4

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, a history podcast for people who don't like history. Or at least people who forgot to learn any at school. My name's Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author. I'm the chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. I love comedy, I love history, and I love podcasts, so I'm

basically living the dream. Now, in each episode, I am joined by an expert historian who knows their St George from their George Michael, and a comedian with more gags than a BDSM convention. And today we are waving our pride flags high and voguing into the annals of history of LGBT people and identities. Today I'm joined by two fantastic guests. In History Corner, we're joined by Dr Justin Bengry from Goldsmiths University of London. He's the author of The Pink Pound, and he teaches the UK's first ever master's degree in queer history. Hi, Justin. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much for having me here today.

And in Comedy Corner, she's one of the funniest stand-ups in the country. She's also a very natty dresser, which, you know, does matter. She does the Like-Minded Friends podcast with Tom Allen, which is a lovely listen. You'll have seen her on Live at the Apollo and loads of panel shows. It is Portsmouth's finest. It's Susie Ruffell. Hello, Susie. Hi, Greg. Can I just start very quickly with you, Susie?

Yes. History. Is it a subject you enjoyed at school or are you immediately thinking, oh God? No, I really like history. I'm interested in history. I'm certainly interested in queer history. I don't know how much I know. I wouldn't say that I'm a natural scholar. I didn't do very well at school.

It didn't really suit me. But I'm immediately interested in everything Justin has to say and I might want to do his master's. Do you have to have a degree to do that? No, no. We've had a few people come in even without. So if you're extra special, super duper queer, we might let you in.

Ah, yes. This is amazing. We've never had a recruitment before. The gays aren't allowed to do that anyway. You've got to be very careful with that word. At school, actually, Susie, I mean, did you do LGBT stuff at all? Was it even mentioned?

Or was it just, you know, the important subjects like cursive handwriting and throwing a javelin? Well, yes, quite. I mean, I went to a Catholic school. So it was quite heavily. So, yeah, I just I was far too busy doing photosynthesis to do any of my. You were actually photosynthesizing yourself. Yes. Yes. You were outside. Yeah. And I haven't done that a lot as an adult. It hasn't come up that much. But no, so no, I didn't know anything.

Any of the sort of queer history I know about is through sort of me looking things up or watching films. But there's not that many gay films because they're often very sad. So what do you know? This is where I summarise what listeners might know about the subject. You probably know Oscar Wilde, the Victorian celebrity playwright who was imprisoned for homosexuality in 1895. You may have seen Gentleman Jack on the BBC,

which is the true story of Anne Lister, the 19th-century lesbian with the encrypted diary full of sexy, sexy times. And speaking of codes, we've got also Alan Turing, and there's that Benedict Cumberbatch movie, The Imitation Game, where he played the codebreaker. And obviously that is a story that ended very tragically with Turing being chemically castrated and then having, well, unfortunately, killing himself because of the trauma of that. But also more recently, we have RuPaul's Drag Race, which is a huge thing I know on Twitter. There's Broad City, which has brought me to the phrase Yas Queen, which I do like saying. But there's a sort of a bit of a gap, really. So what other stories from modern history can we also add in to supplement that? So let's

get on with it. Justin, you teach queer history. And forgive me, but when I was a kid growing up, queer was an insult. It was a slur. How has that word come about as an acceptable umbrella for talking about people from the LGBT communities? Well, queer itself has its own history that we've got to think about when we use the term and always recognizing that for a lot of people, it was a term of viciousness, of vitriol, of danger. And they still feel that very strongly when we use it. So we need to be mindful of that. But there's other histories of queer as well. And I've seen documents as far back as the 30s where people are using queer to identify, to self-identify. And then, of course, from the 80s and 90s, people started to actively reclaim queer and say, I'm going to take this back.

And that's much the way that historians use it. And the program at Goldsmiths is MA in Queer History, and I'm a lecturer in queer history. So we've really settled down on that. But are there still some people who find it a little bit shocking that you're using that word or is it largely now people are okay with it? It's really mixed. I definitely have people that are concerned about it and resist that and say that we shouldn't be using it. But for us as historians, it's also a really important term to recognise a whole range of diverse gender expression and sexualities in the past that defy terms today. And we don't have words for today.

And of course, there's all kinds of terms in the past that weren't reclaimed. I mean, we can think of words like sapphist and invert and molly and homosexualist I've seen as well. And now we talk about LGBT, but actually people have often extended that now to LGBTQIA+. So there are increasingly more people coming under the rainbow umbrella, I suppose. As a historian, is it really hard sometimes to find histories that match all of those different identities? I think it's actually sometimes easier to find those people in the past in some ways, because we're re-evaluating who we thought were just straightforwardly gay or straightforwardly lesbian in the past and

actually saying, oh, actually, this person might be gender non-binary, this person might be trans. Actually, it's time to revisit those histories and think about what we might be seeing that we didn't see before. Susie, how would you describe yourself when you meet someone new? Would you say you're a lesbian? Would you say you're a lesbian? Would you say I'm gay? Would you say... I'd say I'm gay. Yeah.

And I think that comes from... I really shied away from the word lesbian when I was a teenager. Well, firstly, I wasn't out until I was about 20, but I always found the word lesbian sounds... I've always thought it sounds quite clinical. Now, as I'm getting older, I'm sort of more used to it. But gay, I think there is sort of a joyous nature to the word gay.

And I like that I'm sort of like lumped in with the boys. I really feel a sense of sort of queer community, which I really like being a part of. Right. And when did gay and lesbian start to be used? They've got different histories. Lesbian goes back to the 19th century. Of course, lesbian derived from Lesbos, the island where Sappho. Where I've been on holiday, of course. Of course, of course.

Of course I have. So that's an ancient Greek island with an ancient Greek female poet called Sappho... Where I've been on holiday, of course. Of course, of course. Of course I have. So that's an ancient Greek island with an ancient Greek female poet called Sappho who writes love poetry about women. So lesbian is a 19th century word harking back really to ancient Greece. Absolutely, yeah. And then gay becomes popularized from the 60s and 70s and really comes over here with the gay liberation front after Stonewall, 1970, 71. And would have felt to many people very American at the time,

but has become more universalised and is customised, I suppose, in different ways around the world now. So we've only been using that since the 60s and 70s, gay? Really over here as a more popularised term, yeah. I've looked at materials that are earlier than that where I think gay is really kind of a code that a lot of people wouldn't have figured out in, say, the 50s in documents I've looked at. Right, sure. In the UK. the uk right yeah that's interesting what we're doing in this episode

is looking kind of past 250 years in uk and america so i want to move to london about 250 years ago suzy do you know what a molly house might have been was that a place where gay men would meet it is indeed i mean it sounds like a cbb it is absolutely. Yeah, I've been to a few. Justin, could you tell us a little bit about what, you know, London's most famous molly houses, what were they for? Who was in them? Oh, I would put it down as a queer space. This is important to queer history, definitely. In the 18th century up until the early 19th century, taverns, pubs, other places could be used as a Mali house, where men would come together, and it would be a space of socialising, a place of sex, a place of rituals that they would be

involved in that would be part of this Mali subculture. And we really only have this for London, for the most part. And would that have been in secret? Would it have been like, you know, a tap on the door to like, you know, like to let people in? Would it be like a coded thing? But no, it would have been secretive, of course, because sodomy was punishable by death. And a number of the men that were found in molly houses did go to trial and were executed. So certainly it was important to maintain secrecy

and not to be discovered by the authorities. How do you think people found out about it? I know that you weren't living there at the time, Justin, so I know that you're like, but how would someone, what, they would have come to London and just sort of seeked it out? Oh, how people would have discovered it in the first place. How would have people known that that place was a molly house? How would a gay person know to go there?

I guess this is a question that goes all through these histories, though. How do people know where to find others like themselves? There's no grinder in the Georgian era, is there? No. I mean, there's less and less gay pubs now. Like, you know, across the country at the moment. Is that because of apps, do you think? I guess part of it is because of apps.

I think part of it is because people come under that umbrella now of LGBTQ+, and people identify in all different ways, and people want to be in spaces where there's... They maybe don't want to be in, like, a lesbian-only bar. They want to be in a place, if they're bisexual or pan, they want to be someone with as... I don't't know people that are like them and sort of fluid like them so yeah it seems that i don't know maybe we're going back to a time when it's we're not going back to a time where it's going to be secretive but we have to seek them out a little

bit more i think one of the most famous molly houses was the charmingly named a mother claps molly house where presumably you've got the clap i don't know that's that's not a great name is it well there's this there's a lot of play with language with anything queer as well. So I think there's something. You think there's a joke in that? There might be something going on. A lot of the Mollies had really interesting names and took on personas. People like Princess Serafina.

People like, oh gosh, there's like French Nelly. There's all kinds of people that would take on nicknames and things. So it's almost like Drag Race. It's almost that you take a drag name and you dress up. Well, you would have a Molly name. Yeah. And these would be individuals that would present on nicknames and things. So it's almost like Drag Race. It's almost that you take a drag name and you dress up. Well, you would have a Molly name, yeah. And these would be individuals that would present effeminately. They would dress as women. They would go through marriages, marriage rituals at the Molly houses,

birthing rituals at the Molly houses. They'd give birth to a wooden spoon that would represent the baby. There was other rituals of throwing a glass of gin in each other's faces. I mean, it was a raucous time. Is that satirical? I mean, giving birth to a spoon, that feels like a's faces. I mean, it was a raucous time. Is that satirical? I mean, giving birth to a spoon, that feels like a piss take. Are they... I don't know. I think it's really interesting.

There could be that kind of parody of the rituals of heterosexuality to make it sound very academic. Like sending up society. There's often real fun to be poked at of what people perceive that you should be like and what the norm should be. And then I feel like that is certainly with drag and stuff stuff I've noticed that people like to sort of send things up or like to sort of take the mick of it. So that works if we think of the Mollies as sort of camp effeminate gay men.

But if we think of them as potentially something more like trans people, this could also have been about living an authentic self. It can be read in a couple of different ways that are quite profoundly different. And it's interesting you mentioned trans people. We get a really fascinating case study in the 18th century. It's an incredibly complicated one, and we would literally have to do an entire episode to even just begin to unpack it. But just very briefly, Justin, can you just tell us a little bit about the Chevalier d'Eon? Such a remarkable person. And we're so lucky in this case to have information from Dayen themselves, how they wanted to be understood, how they wanted to express themselves. So this is a person who lived the

first part of their life as a man, a French diplomat, spy, came to England and lived the second part of their life as a woman and wanted to be identified as a woman, wrote cards as Mademoiselle Dayen and was adamant that they be recognized as a woman, but cards as Mademoiselle d'Aon, and was adamant that they be recognized as a woman, but was still a really eccentric character. And there's an incredible print showing them fencing at Carlton House in front of an audience at the Prince Regent's House, which is absolutely astonishing to have this record from the 18th century. It's extraordinary, but also a celebrity, but someone who had been recognized as male and then was recognized as female, and was accepted for it?

I don't know I'd go that far. I mean, because there was a lot of questioning and titillation and concerns around what is this person? How do we understand this person? They were taking bets on the London Stock Exchange. Is this person a man or is this person a woman? And would they have been from, well, presumably because of being a spy, would they would have been sort of from money?

Because it sort of seems looking back in history, like you mentioned at the top, the sort of Anne Lister, you know, I've read a lot of the stuff that she wrote and, you know, watching Gentleman Jack now that's on TV, which is great. It sort of seems that if you're someone of wealth or someone that is, you know, in a higher class,

people would turn a blind eye a bit more about your sexuality or, you know, or indeed if you were sort of someone that was not binary. This is a really, really important point then and now that we don't have a lot of records of trans people or nonconforming people or even queer people in many instances in the past. And when we do have a case like Dayan, where they seem to be more tolerated, more accepted in society, we have to question, is that because, oh, this was a great time for trans people, which I don't think it was at all, or is this a person with incredible privilege that was able to benefit from the privilege they already had? Yeah, absolutely. It's really interesting. And that would sort of, I mean, I assume continue all the way through to like the 60s, 70s, you know, until relatively recently. Today, today. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, trans people, the community, people of colour, others, economically marginalised queer people. And indeed, in countries where it's yet to be

decriminalised. Absolutely. Absolutely. We've mentioned Anne Lister, actually, let's let's talk a little bit more about her because she's such an interesting person. Also, the drama on the BBC, Gentleman Jack, is really fantastic. It's also great to get a bit of the ladies in history because it does often feel like a lot of the history is male. Yeah. And also, she's one of the earliest modern lesbians. You know, we can say with quite a lot of confidence that here is a woman who, from the age of 15, knew that she fancied women and was pretty aggressive in pursuing women. You know, she's pretty open about it. She lived at Shibden Hall in Halifax, which you can go visit. Very nice.

And she was interested in science, anatomy, hill walking. She ran a coal mining business. Pretty impressive. She always wore black. She wore sort of masculine clothes. And she kept this diary. Now, Susie, you said you've read a bit of her writings. Yeah, I've read little bits of it. I can't say that I've read like, you know, gone cover to cover.

Well, there's four million words, so I wouldn't ask you to do that. But it's but yeah, I think that certainly as sort of a young gay woman, I sort of seeked out anything that felt like I had, I don't know, a level of history. I came out when I was sort of 20. I didn't really know any gay women. My first ever girlfriend was my first gay friend. You know, I've read everything that Sarah Walter's written. Always hugely disappointed that it's not based in truth. And I don't know, you feel a connection to someone

because you're like, oh, we gay people, we queer people have existed for a really long time. And it's nice to see, you know, I feel like I don't really feel myself reflected back in a lot of history. Maybe partly that's why I didn't have a massive interest in it growing up. But certainly when I was like, oh, these people like me existed before. Maybe these people that felt like an outsider. And she wrote these things down secretly.

So her diary was partially encrypted. So it's Greek and algebraic, isn't it, Justin? It's sort of a combination of her own cipher. Yeah, she's designed her own system for coding her experiences. And those experiences are sexual. She's full on in describing what she's getting up to. She's an astonishing woman for her time in a whole bunch of ways. Absolutely.

Susie, let's get, well, I was going to say let's get sexual. That's really inappropriate. I'm not going to say that. Also, I'm not going to do it with you, Greg. I don't know how much clearer I can be in this podcast. Damn it. I mean, I grew my hair and everything. It's the beard.

Let's see if you can decode Anne Lister's little ciphers. Okay. Little codes. Okay, I'm hugely dyslexic. I don't know if that's going to help. Don't worry. Or hinder. It might be helpful.

Have a go at it. I mean, you know if that's going to help or hinder. It might be helpful. Have a go at it. I mean, you know, we've only got three here. Sure. Okay, the first is, what do you think she meant by grubbling? G-R-U-B-B-L-I-N-G. Grubbling. I mean, the hand gesture that you just done for grubbling. I wasn't.

Does it mean sort of touching someone up? Grubbling? It's a sort of fondle kissy kind of, yeah. Yeah, fondle? Probably more than just a kissing. What do you think she meant by a little X?'s a sort of fondle kissy kind of, yeah. A fondle? Probably more than just a kissing. What do you think she meant by a little X? A little sort of algebraic X. Oh, I mean, is it a kiss?

Is that too obvious? It's a little bit too gentle, I think. You might want to go... Oh, is it sex? It's an orgasm. Oh, petite mort. Exactly, a petite mort, yeah. And similarly, what do you think she meant by a little cross sign or a plus sign?

A little plus? Yeah. Oh. I'm having a good thing. Tension in the room. It's a sexual tension if the listeners can't feel that, just so you know. Does it mean something referring to herself? It does.

Is it herself having an orgasm? Oh, well, that's very good. It's a proper wank. It's having a jolly old ferret downstairs. A gobble downstairs on your tod? Okay, yeah. Have you ever kept a diary, Susie? I mean, I'm not assuming you've ever kept a sex diary.

Yeah, this is very raunchy. No, I haven't. I never have, and I never quite understood what they were for. No, but I love the idea of it. I sort of love the idea of being sort of a woman that maybe lives in Berlin, that keeps a diary and has a dachshund, but it's not happened yet. It's something that might happen. You have a cat.

I have a cat. Life goals, life goals. Yeah, and I live in Sydenham. You live in Sydenham, and it's very similar. It's very similar. But obviously, Justin, diaries for historians are the gold standard of evidence, aren't they? I mean, they really give us the insight into not just what people are sort of up to, but what they're thinking. Oh, and how rarely do we actually get a sense of, in people's own words, about themselves,

rather than us grappling for trying to find out how we're going to understand them or what we're going to impose on them. But actually to have someone's own discussion of their own self understanding is astonishing. Yeah. So Anne Lister lived from 1791 to 1840. In terms of British law at the time, sodomy still illegal and punishable by death. Is that applied equally to women and men? Well, lesbian activity wasn't punishable in the UK. There's certain jurisdictions in Europe and other places around the world where same-sex acts between women could be punishable, but it wasn't punishable here. Interestingly, in the early 1920s,

the House of Lords tried to pass legislation criminalising gross indecency between women, but this never went any further. Because it's super hot. Is that the reason? No? Okay, sorry. You know what? That bit wasn't in Hansard. Sure, sorry, sorry. That was just me. The Brighton will remember, it's super hot.

Can I ask you a question? Is it because Queen Victoria did not believe in it? Is that true? I think there's a lot of mythology around that. Yeah, because that is the thing that people believe. Like, oh, Queen Victoria never believed in it, therefore it was never in law. But parliamentarians did have discussions where they worried,

and this happened in other contexts as well, where they worried they might suggest the possibility to women that they couldn't figure out what to do with each other on their own, but if men suggested this possibility, impressionable women might discover each other. So we can't put this in writing in case. Unless we create a bunch of lesbians. Two very clumsy women.

Suddenly they go, oh, I get it. I get it. Because Lord Husset said so. I mean, that'd be incredible if a lord had suggested lesbian sex and then thousands of women went, oh! That's way more interesting than knitting. Or doing my needlework.

The law then changes again in 1861. This is when the death penalty is removed. So that's progress. But then it gets sort of harsher again in 1885. And this is what's known as the Criminal Law Amendment Act. But it's known also as the Black Mailer's Charter. And it's the act that destroys Oscar Wilde. Can you just tell us a bit, Justin, about what's so damaging about this particular act? And why is it known as the Blackmailers' Charter? Well, this legal trajectory, it's really important that you mention that

there's this up and down. We can't think of the changes in the law as just increasingly progressive all the time. This it gets better narrative. So even though the last executions in Britain were in 1835, homosexuality was no longer a capital offense from 1861, as you said. But the Criminal Law Amendment Act criminalized everything else short of buggery. So any kind of sexual interaction between men was now labeled gross indecency. And the threshold for proof was so much lower, the threat of accusation was so much higher. And so it could be used against men, queer or not, as a threat looming over their heads. You could get two years with or without hard labor. So hard labor in the 1890s could be just shy of a death sentence. That could be really

a horrible thing to endure that really broke people, as we know it did with Oscar Wilde. It utterly destroyed his career, of course. The trials were reported widely internationally. Did he die in prison? Is that right? No, no. He survived prison and died in self-imposed exile in Paris. Right. Okay. And was he impoverished by the end? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. There's stories of him just being in this terrible room in Paris. I think he died in 1900. The famous last words were, either the curtains

go or I do. Yeah. Very witty. Very good. I'll be the first to say it. Off the world. Very good. We've heard already about 18th century mollyhouses and you made that great point, Susie, about the idea of how do you find other people. In the mid-1900s you kind of get a new language emerging. It's called Polari. Do you know what this is, Susie? Have the idea of how do you find other people. In the mid-1900s, you kind of get a new language emerging.

It's called Polari. Do you know what this is, Susie? Have you heard about this? I've heard of Polari, but I can't. I'd love to be able to speak it, but I can't. But it's coded language for gay men, right? Exactly, yeah. You just ding, ding, ding.

You nailed it. Okay, great. You're already doing well on the quiz, and we haven't even started the quiz. Oh, sorry. What is Polari? Do tell. Pray tell.

Yeah, no, it was this coded language that was made up of Romany, of Cockney rhyming slang, of backwards slang, of thieves can't, of theatre language. A bit of Italian as well. Yeah, a bit of Italian. This was all a sort of combination of words that would be known to a sort of subgroup of people that could then communicate safely to each other and express interests in other men. Are there any words that we would use in modern English, you know, conventional everyday English that come from Polari? We don't necessarily realise they've come from there. Yeah, we've got words like slap for makeup. We've got words like naff. We've got words like scarper to flee, cottaging you might have heard of. Yeah. So we might have heard of. So we've got a few of these as well. So slap, make up, that comes from there.

Is there a point at which it enters the mainstream slightly? Oh, can I ask? Yeah. Wasn't there someone on Radio 4 that used to speak a little bit of Polari?

Used to like slip Polari in just for people to... You're thinking of Round the Horn. Round the Horn, yes. Yeah, yeah. Kenneth Williams. Yeah, of course, Kenneth Williams. I'd forgotten the other actor.

But they'd like slip it in on the slide just so that the people were listening absolutely of course those that knew were listening to this thinking oh my god yeah yeah but then others were were just listening along thinking oh those funny funny men yeah i wonder what their wives are like i bet they're such a but they're such a hoot at home kenneth williams and and even Williams and people like Frankie Howard or something, John Inman, big BBC comedy stars who were camp, but were allowed to be on the radio, but allowed to be on the television. Was there a sense that they were people in the queer community

were like, well, clearly they're part of our gang, but everyone else was a bit just oblivious? Or is it just that they were tolerated because they were funny? All of the above. Right. I mean, I'm really, it's interesting to me talking to people now who describe saying, oh, no, of course we had this, we understood this and this,

and knew what was going on to some extent. And others that, not a clue, not a clue. One man I spoke to talked about Hinge and Bracket, a cross-dressing duo. And he said his mum never figured out that these weren't just two nice old ladies. That's brilliant. And do you think also it's because they were, you know, a lot of these men certainly sort of like the comedy types,

because a lot of them are very camp, it's like hugely desexualized. So therefore it becomes, does it feel less threatening? Do you think that's part of it? I think this being non-threatening is important to that as a canadian in britain i mean the whole issue of british camp is another whole layer that the rest of the world we're just shaking our head well yeah because it there's there's a real there's a sort of a theory around it they're like being camp's a bit of a protest right it's like saying i refuse to be what you think a man should behave like but there's also of course a a long tradition in theatre of cross-dressing,

I suppose you might call it. Exactly, the pantomime dame. But I mean, I'm thinking also of, I mean, in the 18th century, there are famous actresses like Eliza Vesteris and Peg Woffington, who are women who wear male clothes and play male characters. In sort of music hall. Yeah, and in the music hall, you get people like Vesta Tilly. Yes, yes. Do you know Vesta? Of course, she's my style icon. Really? And Barrington music hall. Yeah, and in the music hall you get people like Vesta Tilly. Yes, yes.

Do you know Vesta? Of course, she's my style icon. Really? From Burlington Bertie. Oh, fantastic. Do you want to tell us a bit about Vesta then? Well, I don't know

an awful lot about her other than that she lived in this time that where sort of, I don't know whether she was gay but she certainly looks it which, you know, I've sort of long been.

She wasn't gay, no. But she has that sort of vibe of someone that's, you know, she has, you know, she has sort of quite a masculine energy and she made a living singing and sending up what it is to be a man. And often they top the bill. She was huge. She was absolutely massive.

She toured America. She was huge. And she was working class from birth, but she married a Tory MP and became Lady de Vries. She lived in Monaco, I think. She was like really establishment. But she de Vries. She lived in Monaco, I think. She's like really establishment. But she wasn't queer. She was straight.

But her whole career from the age of like 10 or something was a kind of drag act of playing these beautifully designed male characters, often soldiers. Yeah. And the idea of them being very young. And chatting up girls. Sticking with women in drag. I mean, there are a couple of really interesting black lesbian singers in America in the sort of 30s, 40s, 50s. I'm thinking of Ma Rainey and also Gladys Bentley. Justin, do you know a little bit about them? I know you're not a specialist in American history, but can you just sort of give us a brief overview of them?

Well, these are really interesting characters that were well known. Ma Rainey is known as the mother of the blues. interesting characters that were well known. Ma Rainey is known as the mother of the blues. They were really significant, not marginal figures at all to African-American music and the blues in the States in the first half of the 20th century. And their lyrics were really suggesting of same-sex desires. Ma Rainey referenced not being interested in men and wanting to go out with the women and was really indicating same-sex desire. And these women, in some cases, would dress in a more butch way. They would present in masculine ways and be identified as such. And Gladys Bentley is a slightly sad story, quite a tragic story, but she goes through a sort of conversion therapy. And we're not quite sure to what extent she has opted into this or if she's been forced into this. And it's a sort of tragic story because she, in some regards, seems to be, when she writes that article, she seems happy to have gone through the conversion.

But at the same time, reading back, we see perhaps there's some trauma there or some conflicted feelings. Well, there's so many ways to read it. It really is a challenging read and possibly an upsetting read as well to think, is she sort of maintaining this facade of, yay, I'm cured and now you don't have to give me any trouble? Or has she found something that this gets her past that pain and gets her past what she'd been going through? And certainly we have to ask at what cost and at what loss. In the 1950s in America, there's also a thing called the lavender scare. You ever heard of this, Susie? No, I haven't.

Have you heard of this, Susie? No, I haven't. Have you heard of McCarthyism? Yes. The purge of communists and the threat of the communist menace. I mean, simultaneously, there's the Lavender Scare and the purge from the civil service in the states of lesbian and gay employees. Okay, so this is the 50s, right? Yeah, yeah.

Okay. So this is when they're... This is obviously about 20 years before Harvey Milk is it so this is before but is this when they're saying no teachers can be gay

well this is specifically about the American Civil Service and about government employees because of course the threat then in the Cold War

is this threat that gay people lesbian people might be more subject to blackmail and might be more likely to give up

state secrets might be more likely informants I'm really bitchy so that might be right you would be this type of person I can't keep a secret I just tell you I don't know if it's me or what but yeah so they really felt they felt significant danger and actually lost their jobs and thousands of people were sacked from their jobs because of either their sexuality or their suspected sexuality from 1946

1951 we have a big moment in trans history. We have two people going through surgery. We have Roberta Cowell, who is a former Spitfire pilot and racing driver, and she's a trans woman. And then we have a medical student called Michael Dillon. Are these surgeries legal and above board and everyone's okay with it? Actually, D Dylan was involved in Cowell's transition and was involved in Cowell's then illegal testes removal. So elements of this were illegal. Over time, we see a gender clinic being developed at the Charing Cross Hospital that became an important part of many people's lives. If homosexuality is already so much of an issue at this time, trans and transitioning is going to be

even more disruptive and even more threatening to a variety of people and put trans people at risk if they are to do so in public. And were they using the word trans at that point? I mean, if we're talking here 1940s, 50s, is that the term people are using? Or what? How would they describe themselves? I'm actually not sure of the exact terminology they would be using for themselves at this time. I mean, there's all kinds of, and then there's going to be what's going on in the tabloids, what's going to be going on in common usage. Around this time, too, a little bit later is the case of Christine Jurgensen,

an American soldier who goes to Denmark for gender-confirming surgeries. And this really sparks the tabloid interest in this, and the scandal and all the dialogue and the explosion of dialogue around sex change that pervades a lot of the mid-century. But in terms of terminology that people used in different contexts, there's probably a range. All the way back to earlier 20th century, in Germany, the term transvestite was coined, which was much more expansive than what we see now as being really more about cross-dressing. And there was also eonism, wasn't there? Named after the Chevalier

d'Or. Yeah, so there's a whole series of possibilities at different times. And in the 19th century, at the end of the 19th century, there are some sort of sexologists who start medicalizing these ideas. Havelock Ellis, I think, is one of the most interesting ones. Comes up with the idea of an invert. The idea of essentially a lesbian might be an inverted male. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. Have the soul, the brain, the essence of a man in a woman's body. So they were, I mean, there's a really interesting thing in sexology, how they're grappling with both gender, sex, bodies and desires all at the same time and trying to grapple with how these might work in one person's expression of desire and gender expression. bodies and desires all at the same time and trying to grapple with how these might work in one

person's expression of desire and gender expression. And would it be during this time that there would be conversion therapy happening? It does bring up the question, though, of what constitutes conversion therapy. So if someone is just being treated, there's more than just electroshock therapy and emetics. There's all kinds of ways that professionals or the state or the church might try to convert people. So it depends on what we're defining as conversion. I mean, conversion could be calling forth the power of God to fix you. That's going to be happening for a long time before this. But it can also be full on emetic therapies that we see in the mid, forcing people to vomit when they see images of same-sex acts, desirable

people of the same sex. So aversion therapy almost. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Talking of sexologists, I mean, one of the most famous ones in the 20th century is Alfred Kinsey. Have you heard of Kinsey? Well, I've heard of the Kinsey scale, which I assume... Ah, okay, yeah. Tell us more. Tell us, yeah. Well, I don't know how many it goes up

to, but I know that one side is like you couldn't be straighter. And the other side is, they're very gay. Yeah, zero to six. Okay. So zero exclusively heterosexual, six exclusively homosexual. And that everyone sort of exists on this line. I guess he came up with the idea that everyone exists on this scale.

Well, this is what's radical. This suggests that people can actually fit somewhere outside of those binary points at the end. And when was this? Sexual behavior in the human male is 1948. Wow. So, I mean, we're talking here about someone introducing the idea of bisexuality as well, really. The idea of being on a scale or a spectrum is also allowing science to sort of say, well, look, actually, it's not just straight or gay. It's actually there are people out there who,

you know, fancy a bit of everything. And that many, many people had acted on that fancying of a little bit of anything. Sure. Because he's doing research, isn't he? He's asking people. Exactly. Thousands upon thousands, tens of thousands of surveys of people about explicit questions about their sexual behaviors, desires, and interests. And they're reporting back of having had, to various degrees of success and completion, sexual interactions with members of the same sex. And with the study of men in 1948, that's especially disruptive, that men are sexually interacting with other men and they're not just all these queer guys. And would it have been hugely shocking? Oh, hugely shocking, massively shocking. Yeah, it was seen as really, really a threatening, dangerous book.

But there had been bisexual people throughout history. I mean, just, you know, even the past 200 years, the episode we're looking at, you've got Lord Byron. There's the Bloomsbury group, who are this sort of group of radical intellectuals in the 20s. People like Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, the economist John Maynard Keynes. Hollywood actresses, loads of them were in lesbian relationships or bi relationships like Greta Garbo. Malia Dietrich. Malia Dietrich. I mean, there's extensive evidence for, or maybe not extensive evidence, but there's definitely extensive suggestion for bi identities.

And yet bisexuality often gets sort of forgotten a little bit in the LGBT history sort of discussion, doesn't it? Absolutely. But I'd say less about bi identities in the same way there's less about gay identities and lesbian identities as we go further back. But certainly bisexual interactions and bisexual activity. And what we really, this goes back to what we're saying earlier, it really is time to go back and look at these gay histories and lesbian histories and ask how many of these people really, well, they're not fitting on that sexual binary. We've still imposed that on these people that we identify as part of our past. So you mentioned Oscar Wilde earlier, married,

having children, presumably very loving to his wife and children, obviously also engaged with men on the side. But does he fit into some form of bisexuality? Many, many people, I think, if we start to look at the queer past, are going to fit into a less rigid binary model of sexuality. And I think that's because I think that is partly because of history often being sort of from a straight person's perspective. So I think as soon as some straight people, as soon as, say, a man engaged in anything sexual or loving with another man, they just get, well, he's gay. Without it being like a bigger story or a bigger conversation. man, they just get, well, he's gay, without it being like a bigger story or a bigger conversation. And also, I think a real political need from early lesbian and gay historians and scholars to find people like themselves in the past and say, no, there are gay people.

There are, there are, yeah. Exactly. So you don't want to, the earliest work, you don't necessarily want to make it excessively complicated, like, well, there's sort of, maybe, kind of, sometimes. You want to say, this is our gay past, and these are our gay forebears. Because then you're saying, well, they're half straight, and then the straight people are like, want to say, this is our gay past and these are our gay forebears. Because then you're saying, well, they're half straight and then the straight people are like, oh, OK. No, no, they have to be ours.

They've got to be all gay. They've got to be all gay. In 1954, you get the Wolfenden Committee, which is formed to look into the illegality of homosexuality and also prostitution. And they sit for quite a long time and they come up with the conclusion that being gay should not be illegal.

And Parliament says, ha, ha, ha, no. And so it takes a while. I mean, is it 1967? Is that when in the UK we finally see the abolition of that criminality? Well, we see the partial decriminalization of some male homosexual acts in 1967. So this is where I put my historian's hat on and be like, well now. And I mean, some things remain criminalized to this day. So if we want to talk about full decriminalization, we don't have it. Certainly there are acts, any acts committed by men in a lavatory, for instance, is specifically still criminalized. And many, many, many thousands of men who were convicted and cautioned of homosexual offenses across the 20th century cannot have those criminal convictions erased. And of course, there's also the scandal of Section 28,

which younger listeners might not know so much about, but I think all of us in this room probably grew up with it on the news and hearing about it. Yeah, in 1988, Margaret Thatcher's government put forward an amendment to the Local Government Act that forbade local councils from funding activity that could be seen as promoting homosexuality or supporting it in any maintained school. And Susie, that brings us back to a tweet that I saw tweeted recently where you were responding to people saying that children shouldn't be told about LGBT people or histories.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on at the moment in the media because of the LGBT inclusion. And I mean, the problem is that people always bring it always bring back to sex people are saying children shouldn't learn about sex and it's like well no it's not about sex it's about it's about teachers saying by the way different types of people have different types of relationship and all of those people are valid and that's sort of the beginning and the end of it but unfortunately because of a couple of different religions and people being uh about hearing about gay people. And unfortunately, I think it comes down to the fact

that people are very worried that their children might be gay, which is a very sad state of affairs. But that's, yeah, that's been a big sort of topic, certainly in my stand-up for the last couple of weeks, about the fact that we're, like, it's very nice to sort of sit here and think in our sort of maybe london media bubble where we're like oh being gay is fine now and we've got rights and we can have children and we can get married what we've been able to for the last five years

but i think we've still got a long way to go if people are protesting outside of a school because they're worried that their six-year-olds are going to find out that a boy in their year has two mums yeah it's a really it's really worrying, I think. And for me, it feels scary that it feels like we might be stepping backwards into days like Section 28 where we're saying, you know, don't be proud about your sexuality or don't tell anyone. Keep it quiet. Don't ask, don't tell sort of thing. And Section 28 was only ended in 2003 in England and Wales,

slightly earlier in Scotland. So, you know, it's modern history, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. And had such a chilling effect that even though legal action wasn't taken against any council or any school, the real impact was people's actions. They were afraid to discuss these things and afraid to bring them up. So in that way, it could be successful, in inverted commas, despite no action being taken in the courts. And I just want to talk briefly about a more positive aspect that is celebrated in culture, which is sort of the drag culture, which is, you know, the influence of gay culture on pop music,

on film, on aesthetic. I mean, so in the 80s, Madonna vogued and everyone loved it. But that came from gay culture, came from ballroom scene in New York. Can you just tell us a little bit about that? Well, what's really important here, too, is not just that this is an influence coming out of gay culture, but it's also when we have so few stories about more marginalized people, people of color, trans people, it's really important to look at the ballroom scene in New York that came out of the 70s and 80s and the influence that queer people of color, trans people of color had on that African-Americans, Latino, Latina people.

People like Willie Ninja. Absolutely. And it's amazing to see that continuing to now, this appreciation for that. And we do need to recognize that that's more than just gay culture, but is a representation of the voices and experiences of so many other people that we don't hear enough of. And that's where Yas queen comes from that's the that's the derivation point isn't it it's the ballroom scene it's it's sort of a paris is burning paris is burning which is a fantastic documentary i don't know if you can find i don't know if it's on netflix or anything but it's you can find it online it's on netflix find it watch it's really interesting. The nuance window!

This is the area where we allow you, as the expert in the room, to just talk for a couple of minutes uninterrupted on your thing, the thing that you really think is super important that people should know about. So I'm going to get my little stopwatch up. That's the wrong app, that's a calculator, that's not very helpful. There it is. And if it's all right with you, Justin, I'm going to give you two minutes and just tell us what you want to tell us. I've been working for, gosh, 10, 15 years on homosexuality in the economy, the pink pound, and writing a prehistory of the pink pound. And it remains so relevant today. We have so many discussions about what about the

corporatization of pride? What about the impact of gentrification on LGBTQ spaces? And we see this relationship between homosexuality and capitalism being so urgent right now. But in fact, there's such a long, long history to it, which is something that I was surprised to discover in my own PhD research, because I came to England starting my research thinking there was no history to it. And it goes back to the late 19th century. And so I found cases of editors writing in magazines as early as the late 1890s saying, well, we've been accused. We've been accused of appealing to effeminate men that get their hair curled in Bond Street and get up to goodness knows what. But let me tell you, reader, had we have done that, the proprietor of this magazine would be a very wealthy man. So there's smoking guns 100 years ago, recognizing this. And I look at how homosexuality is sold in different contexts. Homophobia can be sold in different contexts. Progressive reform can be profitable. magazines, newspapers, all of these sources that historians have looked at for discourse and discussion, but which are in fact, I argue, consumer sources that show that capitalism has

been interested in queer people as long as there's been queer people, as long as there's been capitalism, but that they've also responded. And we've got instances of calling for boycotts in the 1960s against the tabloids. We've got instances of the gay liberation front refusing to go to certain pubs and certain venues that didn't support them. So we have not only the exploitation of a market and of economy, but also the voices of people resisting that as well. Two minutes on the dot. I've got lots of practice on this. Thank you so much. Susie, any thoughts on that?

I mean, it sounds super interesting. You hear a lot about the pink pound. And as soon as you've written it, I'm reading it. I mean, in terms of your own stage aesthetic, I mean, you're famously a well-dressed comedian. Well, I don't know about famously, but yeah, I like to be. I think you are. You've been on the telly.

I have a bit. Yeah, sure, sometimes. Don't sell yourself short. When did you develop your look? There's certainly a thing that happens to sort of gay people when you're sort of coming out. I have a bit, yeah, sure, sometimes. Don't sell yourself short. When did you develop your look? There's certainly a thing that happens to sort of gay people when you're sort of coming out, you sort of dress like, you might want to, you know, for me, for a lot of girls, it's cutting your hair and appearing a little bit more masculine.

And so I'd say that I've always had an awareness that I wanted to be sort of quite androgynous. And I feel that's really cool. And I think that it's quite important to me as sort of an out person in the media to some degree um that I I don't shy away from looking how I like to look and how I like to look it's quite gay it's a good look it works for you I think we've reached the point of the podcast where it's time for a little quiz okay great called the so what do you know now because you know we had the So What Do You Know Now you've heard some stuff

So what do you know now? Let me get my stopwatch out again Oh no, it's so stressful Very busy with the stopwatch You get 60 seconds I have full confidence in you, Susie Thank you, Greg And I'm going to fire some questions at you

Starting now Willy Ninja was known as the godfather of what? Oh, is that the soul person? No. More recently, Madonna made famous. Oh, the voguing. Voguing, yes. Slap is a Polari word for what?

Makeup. Makeup, yes. What was the Kinsey scale? It was a scale to decide sort of what spectrum you were on between being, like, zero being completely straight and six being completely gay? Yes, absolutely. Bang on. In what year was the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK?

Oh, 67. Partially, yes. Yes. Which black lesbian blues singer tried to get married in drag? Oh, it's going to be one of the brilliant few you talked about before. Did the name begin with B? The surname begins with B, yeah. Oh, I don't know. I'm sorry. Gladys Bentley.

In 1885, the Criminal Law Amendment Act was used against which Irish writer? Irish writer? Well, Oscar Wilde. Oscar Wilde, yes. Sorry, I confused you with the Irish, didn't I? Yeah, you did. Anne Lister refers to grubbling as what? Fondling. Yeah, fondling. In the 18th century, the meeting place for queer men in London was Mother Clap's what?

Molly House. Molly House. Very good. And what was the name of the aggressive movement to target gay people in the civil service in America in the 1950s? Oh, and it's not MacArthurism. That's what it was linked to, right? It's a plant. It's a nice colour. It's a plant that's a nice colour. Lavender. Lavender's good. Very good. And in which year was Section 28 repealed in England and Wales? Oh, like 2003? Very good. Nine out of ten. Very impressive. Does that mean I'm an important

gay? Am I in the IG? It's my dream. It's my dream. It's happened. You are. First step to getting in on the MA. Oh, yes! Absolutely. That definitely counts as a mission essay, maybe? I don't know. It's my dream. It's happened. First step to getting in on the MA. Oh, yes. Absolutely. I mean, that definitely counts as a mission essay, maybe. This was an interview. Oh, great. I'm excited. I can't wait to go to uni. Nine out of ten is very strong. Very strong. Up on the leaderboard. Well done.

All right. Well, we have reached the end of the podcast. It got quite sad in a few places, but hopefully we had a nice time as well. There are some big bits of queer history we didn't talk about. We didn't talk about the AIDS crisis which of course was an enormously important part of the culture but also of course just a devastating disease that killed so many people. Sadly that's going to be another podcast for another day.

I think we've more or less sort of you know ended our whistle-stop tour of LGBT history. Big thanks to my guests the fantastic Dr Justin Bengry from Goldsmiths University of London and the wonderful Susie Ruffell. It has been a pleasure having you both here. I hope you've enjoyed it.

I've had a gay time. Thank you so much. Have you been prepping that all along, Susie? No, I just thought of it now. I'm absolutely thrilled with it. It's very good. It's very, very classy. If you're sitting at home thinking,

oh, I want to know more about LGBT history, go do a Masters with Justin. Or just read a book. But go watch Paris is Burning. It's very good. Yes, do. And I'm afraid that that's enough for today. Join me next time for more funny

and hopefully less depressing history with another pair of top-notch guests. If you've enjoyed today's podcast, please do share it with your friends or leave a review online. And make sure to subscribe to You're Dead to Me so you never miss an episode. But for now, my darlings, I must bid you a fond farewell. Thank you for listening and goodbye. You're Dead to Me was a Muddy Knees Media production for BBC Radio 4.

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