Anne Lister

The Real Gentlemen Jack

Molly Southward

BA History
mls19htv@bangor.ac.uk

The recent and critically acclaimed BBC series Gentlemen Jack has sparked an interest in the real woman behind the programme. Remarked to be the first ‘modern lesbian’, she had an incredible life that only became public knowledge many decades after her death. 

Anne Lister was born on the 3rd of April 1791 in Halifax, Yorkshire. She was the second child and eldest daughter of Jeremy Lister, a former soldier, and Rebecca Battle. The two were wealthy north of England landowners. She had five other siblings, four of them brothers, but only Anne and her younger sister, Marian, survived.

In 1793, the family moved to Skelfler House in Market Weighton. Anne began her education at home with the vicar of Market Weighton, the Reverend George Skelding. Later, in 1804, she was sent to boarding school in King’s Manor, York. She was expelled following a relationship with another female student, Eliza Raine, who later suffered from mental health issues. Raine was placed in an asylum following the discovery of Anne’s relationships with several other students. Following her issues with school, and the time she spent there as a child, Anne moved in permanently with her Aunt and Uncle at Shibden Hall in 1815. When her Uncle James died in 1826, Anne started to manage and renovate the estate. In 1836, when her Aunt and Father died, she took compete control of the estate.

Due to her inheritance, she became the owner of agricultural tenancies, town properties and a quarrying business which she went on to expand. She was known as being a firm, driven but fair landowner, who made major improvements to the estate. This is partially due to the fact she had been involved with the running of Shibden Hall from a young age. She was known by local people as ‘Gentlemen Jack’ and would often be seen wearing dark coloured men’s clothes. This led to her getting heckled and stopped in the street as well as being the target of abusive letters from local people.

Historians have argued that the prejudice she received from the people around her fuelled her desire to escape from the constraints of home in order to live her life as freely as possible. Because of this, she spent a lot of her adult life away from Yorkshire, travelling whilst using her income from the Hall to fund herself. Much to her family and business partners’ annoyance, she often only returned home when she ran out of funds or was forced to attend to urgent business.

She made her first trip to continental Europe in 1819, a two-month trip to France. In 1824, she returned to Paris and stayed until the following year. In 1826, she was back in Paris and began a tour of northern Italy and Switzerland, returning in 1828. In 1829, with Paris as her base, she visited Belgium and Germany before heading south to the Pyrenees and Spain. She also made the first ascent of Mount Perdu in the Pyrenees in 1830, before summiting Mount Vignemale in France in 1838. Her last trip began in 1839. It took her through France, Denmark, Sweden and Russia where she arrived in St Petersburg before travelling to Moscow. Travelling so extensively, taking part in such hard, traditionally ‘masculine’ physical activities, and all of this without a male chaperone, was unheard of for women of her class at this time.

There were two main loves of Anne’s life. The first was Mariana Belcombe, who she met aged 23. She was referred to as ‘M’ in Anne’s journals. However, Anne suffered from heartbreak following Mariana’s marriage to an older man in 1815 so that she could gain financial stability. Their relationship was ended and the heartbreak was said to have impacted Anne for the rest of her life. It is seen as one of the main reasons for her extensive travelling, using it as an attempt to escape from the memories.

 Her most retold and well-known relationship was with the heiress Ann Walker. The two women had been casual acquaintances throughout the 1820s, but they were first properly introduced when they became neighbours in 1832. Miss Walker had moved in with her Aunt and Uncle to recover from being of ‘unsound of mind’. Historians believe she may have been suffering with anxiety and depression. They began an intense and whirlwind romance in the following months.

The two were married on March 30^th, 1834 in Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York. The marriage took place under the cover of night using church blessings and the lighting of candles to consolidate their love and commitment to one another. This has been viewed as the first lesbian marriage in Britain. They later visited France and Switzerland for their honeymoon. The couple then moved in together at Shibden Hall and combined their landowning interests.

They both lived and travelled together until Anne Lister died aged 49 on September 22^nd, 1840 in Georgia. She had contracted a fever while travelling with Ann. Her body was embalmed and brought to the parish church in Halifax to be buried by her lover on the 29th of April 1841. It remains there to this day. Her partner gained Anne’s estate from her will, and died in 1854 from ‘congestion of the brain’.

The reason historians know so much about Anne Lister’s life is that, starting in 1806, she wrote a partially encoded 26 volume-long diary. Linking to her love of education and literature, the code was made from a blend of algebra, ancient Greek mathematical symbols, punctuation and the Western zodiac. It has been dubbed ‘Anne’s Crypthand’. Anne believed that her code was unbreakable and no key was ever left for posterity. However, in the 1890s, the code was cracked by John Lister, the new owner of Shibden Hall, and his friend Arthur Burrell. They discovered that the code was used to cover up her sexual encounters. Sections with Xs and Qs were used to denote different sexual acts. The diary also included her notes on her seduction techniques, a skill on which she prided herself.  

In order to preserve the diaries, avert scandal and prevent their destruction, the diaries were hidden behind wall panelling in the Hall until John Lister’s death in 1933. When the ownership of the Hall was passed to Calderdale Council, the site became a museum. The journals were found and Anne Lister’s incredible and trailblazing life was brought back into public knowledge.

Gods of the Past

Jacob Charnley

BA Philosophy and Religion
hiu8e5@bangor.ac.uk

LGBT+ themes can be found in mythologies from many cultures around the world. These include stories centered around homosexual, bisexual and pansexual relationships, gender variance, transformation and identity. While many of the myths concerning these themes can be principally found in Greek and Roman mythology, they can also be unearthed in other European mythologies, as well as in Asian, African, Oceanic and the American ones. I will be exploring the myths concerning these themes in the context of the geographical area from which the cultures that developed them originated. I will be focusing mainly on myths where the themes of sexuality and gender are explicit over others which could be considered more interpretive or subjective. I will also be predominantly focusing on European mythologies, as they represent the biggest proportion of known myths containing evident LGBT+ themes.

Greek and Roman

Many of LGBT+ myths can be found in Greek and Roman mythology. For simplicity, this article refers to these gods by their Greek names. Homosexuality is a theme in many Greek myths; however, this is mostly between male Gods. It can be inferred from this that bisexuality was common in the Greek and Roman gods, particularly the males.

Apollo, god of the sun, knowledge and poetry to name a few traits, is associated with the greatest amount of homosexual relationships of any of the Greek and Roman gods. This would be appropriate for the patron of homosexual love. Perhaps the two most notable of his partners were Adonis, Aphrodite’s mortal lover (when he wasn’t Persephone’s), and Hyacinth, a Spartan prince. Other notable gods and figures with homosexual partners include Achilles, Dionysus, Heracles (Hercules to the Romans), Hermes, Poseidon and Zeus.

While Eros, god of lust, sex and eroticism, didn’t have any homosexual relationships himself, he was considered the patron of pederasty (a relationship between an adult male and an adolescent boy). Aphrodite as well is attributed patronage of lesbianism by the Greek poet Sappho (c. 630 – c. 570 BCE), while not having any recorded homosexual relationships herself.

Gender transformation is not uncommon in Greek myths. In some stories it is viewed as a reward, while in others as a punishment. An example of both can be found in stories relating to Artemis, goddess of hunting, and Leto, goddess of motherhood and mother of Apollo and Artemis. In the case of Artemis, she decided to transform the hunter Sypretes of Crete into a woman, after she caught him staring at her while she was bathing. Leto meanwhile sees the plight of a young woman named Leucippus, whose father Lamprus told her mother, Galatea, that he would refuse to acknowledge their child unless she had a son. Galatea gave birth to a daughter and decided to give her a male name and raise her as a boy, without her husband’s knowledge. As Leucippus grew older, it was becoming harder to maintain her disguise. Galatea prayed to Leto to bestow the same transformational magic Artemis used on Sypretes on her daughter. Leto took pity on her and granted Leucippus manhood.

Androgynous and intersex themes can also be attributed to the Greek myths. Hermaphroditus (from which the term ‘hermaphrodite’ originates), is the god of hermaphrodites and intersex people. Referred to as the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, he is usually depicted with a mainly feminine body, including both breasts and male genitals. Hermaphroditus’s story is also one of transformation, as he was originally born male, but when the nymph Salmacis was overcome with lust for him and raped him, she pleaded to the gods for them to never be parted. Her wish was granted, and Hermaphroditus in his new form asked that the pool in which the transformation took place bestow the same for anyone who entered.

Dionysus was attributed the patronage of hermaphrodites and intersex people by Roberto C. Ferrari in the Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture (2002). While Dionysus himself was not a hermaphrodite or intersex, Ferrari attributes this patronage to him due to his birth from both his mother Semele and father Zeus, his effeminate nature and his choice of wearing women’s robes. 

Apollo and his twin sister Artemis are depicted as having characteristics of the opposite sex. Apollo is described as ‘eternally’ beardless and effeminate, while Artemis is considered more masculine. Apollo and Artemis can be seen in ancient Greek art engaging in roles more commonly performed by the opposite sex e.g. on the Lucanian Red-Figure Volute Krater, a mixing vessel which can be found in the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Norse and Germanic

Norse mythology contains a handful of notable stories with themes relating to homosexuality, transformation and gender roles. However, it should be noted that the tone of some of these stories are mocking, particularly to homosexual males considered less ‘manly’.

This is conveyed in the Gudmundar Saga – according to David F. Greenberg in his book, The Construction of Homosexuality (1988) - where a disloyal priest and his mistress are punished by having a group of men rape them both. Another example is that of Sinfjötli, half-brother of the legendary hero Sigurd, boasting that the einherjar (warriors who had died honourably in battle, receiving an afterlife in either Odin’s or Freyja’s halls) all fought each other for the love of Gudmundr, a king of the mythological realm of Jötunheimr, the realm of giants.  On another occasion it was claimed that Gudmundr would give birth to nine wolf cubs, of which he was the father. To be the ‘receiving’ partner in a homosexual relationship was stigmatised, but not the more ‘manly’ and dominant role, which was coveted my many of these characters.  Odin, All-Father and chief deity of the Norse gods, would have also faced stigma for his pursuit of magic, which was in the sagas considered an effeminate practice.

It is important to also reference that Freyr, god of fertility, is attributed with having a group of homosexual and effeminate male worshippers in Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum. Loki, the god of tricks and mischief, is said to have transformed himself into a mare and mated with the stallion Svadilfari, giving birth to his foal, Odin’s eight-legged horse Sleipnir.

Gender non-conforming behaviour can be found in the poem Thrymskvida, where the giant Thrymr steals Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, demanding Freyja, goddess of love and beauty, to marry him as payment for its return. Rather than send Freyja to him, Thor and Loki travel to Jötunheimr, with Thor disguised as the ‘bride to be’ and Loki as his bridesmaid. Thrym hands Mjolnir to Thor as part of the ceremony, which Thor utilises to defeat all the giants present.

Celtic

Celtic mythology is sparse in its reference to LGBT+ themes. This is most likely due to the record of many myths being lost post-Christianisation rather than none existing in the first place.

One notable story can be found in the Mabinogion. Two of the sons of the King of Gwynedd, Math fab Mathonwy, Gwydion, the magician, and Gilfaethwy, a demi-god, devise a plan to rape Math’s servant, Goewin. Goewin was important to Math as she was a virgin, and it is claimed that Math had to rest his feet in the lap of a virgin, or, unless he was at war, he would die.  Gwydion offers to travel to the kingdom of Dyfed, to the south, to acquire otherworldly pigs. He offers Pryderi, King of Dyfed, horses and dogs in return for some of his pigs. However, he had conjured these animals, and when Pryderi discovers he has been deceived, he declares war on Gwynedd, and Math leaves to fight in defence of Gwynedd.  While he is away, Gwydion and Gilfaethwy rape his servant Goewin. When Math returns to rest his feet in her lap, he realises she is no longer a virgin. He discovers Gwydion and Gilfaethwy are responsible for the recent events and curses them to turn into a deer, a boar and a wolf, each form for a year at a time, with Gwydion remaining male, but Gilfaethwy becoming female. They are then forced to mate every year, producing a son each year, after which their curses are lifted.

Conclusion

To conclude, there is so much more to be said on the portrayal of LGBT+ characteristics in European mythology alone. Two things stand out more than anything else.  Firstly, how far back in history these discussions about sexuality and gender, positive or negative, reach.  Secondly, how these stories have lived on and resonated, not only with the people and artists that shared and believed in them, but hopefully with you as well.

It is a comforting thought to think that the struggles we face today around these issues are far from new and neither are they isolated to particular cultures.  Perhaps that reflecting on what has come before will make our journeys to who we are meant to be more assuring. These stories reveal, at least in part, that religious belief (or lack thereof), sexuality and gender identity are far more than just compatible, they are interconnected in ways that show us humanity is not all that different now to what it was in the distant past.

A Brief History of the LGBT Community in Wales

A Brief History of the LGBT Community in Wales

Anonymous

A lot of us know either what it’s like to be apart of the LGBT community or know someone who does, yet the history of it is only known in relation to English Law. Something that needs to be looked at is the LGBT people who have never been fully recognised by modern society as being LGBT.

In Wales there have been numerous influential people that came from the LGBT community who haven’t been fully recognised including people such as Peggy Evans, also known as Margaret uch Evans of Penllyn who lived the 1770s. Most of the information known about her was recorded by Thomas Pennant, a writer at the time who was doing a tour of Wales. While he never met Peggy, he described her in his work solely from the descriptions given to him by other people. The descriptions used in his book are “Near the end of the lake lives a celebrated personage… This is Margaret uch Evans of Penllyn, the last specimen of strength and the spirit of the ancient British fair.”

She was said to be an “extraordinary female” who “was the greatest hunter, shooter, and fisher, of her time”. At the age of 70, she was apparently the best wrestler in the country, as well as a blacksmith, shoe-maker, boat-builder and maker of harps. Aged around 90, Peggy also kept a dozen dogs. When she was alive, she lived near Capel Cerig on the edge of Llanberis Lake.

There are rumours surviving to this day which suggest that Edward II, also known as Edward of Caernarfon, was a homosexual and that he had a relationship with his court favourite Piers Gaveston. Upon the murder of Gaveston by aristocracy who wanted him out of the kings life, Edward is said to have begun a relationship that destroyed his life, with a man called Hugh Despenser. Despenser was surrounded by controversy as he was involved in executing someone in Cardiff, seizing lands, and wielding absolute power. He was a man who guarded access to the king and unpopular amongst the many. When Edward chose Hugh over his wife Isabella of France, when she wouldn’t return from France, it led to his then inevitable downfall.

His downfall was an attempted coup that would have put his son Edward III on the throne with his mother as regent. However, the pair fled to Caerphilly castle and then Neath Abbey when they failed to raise a welsh army as the welsh also hated Hugh. They were eventually captured near Tonyrefail on November 16th, 1326 and Hugh was later tried and found guilty of crimes including the prevention of a relationship between the King and Queen. Edward was declared dead in 1327 with controversy surrounding the how.

One of the first recorded cases of gender dysphoria is Henry, the Dancing Marquess of Anglesey. He is believed to have, using terms from the time, a man meant to be born a woman because of his love of jewels and acting. In Henry’s version of Aladdin, it is said he wore an outfit that cost £10,000 where he performed a “butterfly dance” gaining him the nickname The Dancing Marquess. A writer in the New Zealand paper Otago Witness wrote: “I am driven to the conclusion from much that I have seen that there are men who ought to have been born women, and women who ought to have been born men.”

This is why he is important in history as a figure of gender identity. Not much is known about Henry’s sexual orientation, apart from the opinions on others about despite the fact that he had married his cousin Lillian Florence Maud Chetwynd, as they annulled the marriage not long after. Iwan Block wrote in his 1964 book, The Sexual Extremities of the World, that “the Marquis of Anglesey... also seems to have had homosexual tendencies, or at least to have been effeminate to a high degree”.

Gwen John is one of Wales’ most famous artists, supposedly most well known for her relationship with French sculptor Auguste Rodin. It is believed that she realised her sexual orientation was bisexual during her time at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, an art school which admitted women as well as men. Her brother Augustus also attended the school at the same time and named one of the women as Elinor. She later had an affair with Auguste Rodin, which lasted around 14 years.

Dr John Randall, who did a brief stint at Cefn-Coed psychiatric hospital in Swansea and Sully Hospital in the Vale of Glamorgan, was the first to revolutionise the how doctors decided who would receive gender reassignment surgery in the UK the 1960s. He said that all patients wanting to undergo the surgery had to be observed by him for at least a year and have lived as their new gender for 6 months to a year. Patients also had to be free from any mental disorders, reasonably intelligent, single, and able to pass in public in the gender they chose.

Anyone who didn’t accept the rules would be declared a transvestite and not suitable for surgery. Despite becoming the go-to doctor for gender reassignment surgery in the UK, he believed that you could not be assigned the wrong gender at birth and viewed transgender people as homosexuals. His views on homosexuals were more out of the norm then most people’s views at the time because instead of believing they should be locked up he believed they should be offered psychiatric help.

In 1982 he died of a heart attack suddenly aged 63. Despite his flaws and thoughts on transsexual people, he was a pioneer in an era where LGBT people were vilified, helping many transgender people with his clinic in London.

These are just five of the forty or so LGBT people/pioneers in LGBT fields who have a connection to Wales that have either been nearly left to the passage of time to be forgotten or had the connection almost buried in order to preserve the image that English law wanted to present. The fact that Pride Cymru was only officially set up in 1999 shows how little Wales is thought about in the making of UK laws in Parliament as the first Pride held in the UK was in London on 1 July 1972, 25 years previously. Now, more and more people are attending the Pride parades in Cardiff each year since they were started in 1999.

The Mystery of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd

The Mystery of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd 

Dylan Hussey

MA Welsh History

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd is typically seen as the most powerful of all the medieval Welsh princes. He has been the topic of a number of academic studies, including J. Beverley Smith’s book Llywelyn ap Gruffudd: Prince of Wales. The image portrayed of him is that of a renowned warrior in his earlier years, and a great state builder during the creation of the Principality of Wales. Yet, there remains a number of questions about this somewhat elusive prince.

One of the most baffling, but simultaneously the least discussed, appears to be the fact that Lwelyn failed to marry until very late in his career. Smith notes this as ‘one of the most puzzling questions’ that comes up when looking at the life of the prince.  Not only this, but Llywelyn also did not have any illegitimate children (at least as far as we know) – which, for a Welsh prince, was quite a rarity, if not unheard of. He appears not to have had difficulty in fathering children, as the birth of his daughter in 1282 demonstrates, but this raises more questions than it answers. Contemporary sources are, for the most part, rather limited, at least in comparison to other places in Europe at the same time. As such, there is very little that can be said for certain about why Llywelyn made this decision, which so obviously jeopardised his achievements and his principality. However, speculation may lead to some insight not just as to one of the great mysteries of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’s life, but also as to the way that historians perceive and subsequently treat the idea of homosexuality, particularly in the medieval era.

The idea of a medieval ruler being gay, or even bisexual, at first glance often sounds far-fetched, even to an open-minded historian. In many cases, the biggest argument against such a suggestion may be that there simply is not enough proof – which is indeed a valid concern, but a lack of overt evidence does not necessarily mean that everyone at this time, including rulers, were heterosexual. However, especially for nobility, marriage was often a political endeavour rather than a romantic one. Llywelyn, having lived through the turmoil of the succession crisis after his grandfather’s death, would have been acutely aware of the dangers that a troubled succession could bring. This swung both ways – too many heirs, such as the case with Owain Gwynedd, for example, would almost certainly lead to contested succession and bloodshed among those grappling for their father’s power. On the other end of the spectrum, having no male heir at all could lead to the endangerment and even disappearance of an entire political entity or dynasty.

Llywelyn would have experienced these harsh truths throughout his life, and yet he appeared to have been in no real rush to marry or to father children at all; his focus seemingly being on his military and political endeavours. His own letters are littered with reminders of the fact that the prince’s hard-won principality was likely to fall into the hands of the king were he to ‘die[s] without heirs of his body’.  And yet, his decision to marry Eleanor de Montfort only came truly into effect sometime after the discovery of a failed plot in 1274 by the prince’s own brother, Dafydd, and Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn of Powys to murder Llywelyn and install Dafydd as prince in his place. Historians acknowledge that this event likely brought into perspective the fragility of Llywelyn’s power without an ‘heir of his body’, but this does not explain why it took him until well past middle age to marry in the first place.

Was Llywelyn ap Gruffudd gay, or even bisexual, and did this contribute to his apparent apathy around finding a wife until the issue of succession became more crucial? Was this why he put off committing to marriage until the final few years of his life? It cannot be proven or said confidently, but it is one theory amongst a relatively small group of others. Despite this, the key may be determining whether such a lack of evidence stems from the impossibility of such a thing, the difficulties surrounding evidence for medieval Wales in general, or the secrecy that would likely surround that fact were it to be true. Indeed, running themes of secrecy and elusiveness are to be found when attempting to analyse any aspect of Llywelyn’s personal life and inner world. The fact that the mere suggestion that Llywelyn could have been gay or bisexual is unlikely to be taken seriously, however, is perhaps more of a reflection of the subtle bias that remains amongst academics against seriously exploring sexuality in the pre-modern age.

Speculation and assumption is always a dangerous game in any field, not just history, but in this case it can provide an interesting take on the way that historians could disregard the role that sexuality may have played in the lives of people in the medieval period.

Bibliography

Pryce, H. (ed.) with Insley, C., The Acts of Welsh Rulers, 1120-1283 (Cardiff, 2005), no. 407

Smith, J. B., Llywelyn ap Gruffudd: Prince of Wales (Cardiff, 2014, new edn.)

Homosexuality and Britain’s Stuart Monarchs, 1603-1714

Dr Tony Claydon

Professor of Early Modern History

t.claydon@bangor.ac.uk

Three Stuart rulers have been suspected of having had homosexual relationships, both at the time they were ruling, and in subsequent comment and scholarship. The case for James VI and I (king of Scotland from 1587, and king of England 1603-1625) seems the most convincing. Strong evidence (in the form of personal letters, and comment by courtiers on the king’s behaviour in public), appears to suggest sexual relations between the king and two of his courtiers. First, there was Robert Carr, the royal favourite from 1607 until his scandal-driven fall from grace in 1615; and George Villiers, the duke of Buckingham, who displaced Carr in James’s affections almost immediately. It is true that platonic male friendships in the early modern period could exhibit closer physical contact than we are used to today, and that the rhetoric used to describe such friendships has shifted in the intervening four hundred years. It is therefore right to be cautious before assuming that expressions of love and desire, or descriptions by others of intimate bodily connection, automatically prove what we would call homosexual activity. However, some of the sources are very difficult to interpret any other way, and the historian Michael Young has ridiculed the determination of some scholars to deny homosexuality in the face of the facts as we have them reported. 

The case of William III (reigned 1689-1702) is more problematic. He was certainly widely accused of homosexuality. He had come to the throne in the ‘Glorious’ revolution of 1688-9, which had displaced the previous king, James II, and the ejected monarch’s supporters, the Jacobites, levelled charges against William that he was sleeping with his two favourites. First there was William Bentinck, his long-standing friend from the Netherlands; and then Arnold Joost van Keppel, the handsome courtier who became close to the king from the mid 1690s. But, one might think, Jacobites would say this. The accusation of homosexuality was part of a wider polemical campaign, denouncing William for a litany of crimes, including tyranny, usurpation, treason against the nation’s interests, and bloodlust in pursuing his war with France. It is true that Bentinck warned William that his closeness to Keppel in the last years of his reign was being noticed and was giving the king a reputation for unnatural sexual behaviour. But, again, one might think he would say this. Bentinck was, by this time, the displaced favourite. He was disappointed and jealous having been ousted from a position of influence and as the monarch’s best friend and confidant. William’s chief of propaganda, Bishop Gilbert Burnet, idolised the king, but he did say in later memoires that William was blemished by a secret vice ‘of one sort’. This is suggestive, but Burnet never expanded what he meant, and may just have fallen for court gossip. Most of the rest of the evidence is circumstantial: there may have been no smoke without fire, or perhaps there was so much smoke that the lack of clear fire is telling.

The case of Queen Anne (reigned 1702-1714) is similar to William’s. She exchanged passionate letters with her childhood friend Sarah Churchill, who became duchess of Marlborough, and later with the courtier Abigail Masham. But these were less explicitly physical in their references than the correspondence between James and his likely lovers; and as was noted above, the language of ordinary affection in the early modern world can seem more erotic to twenty-first century eyes than its original authors intended. Popular pamphlets alluded to lesbian practices at court. But by the early eighteenth century the print industry had mastered the art of libellous character assassination, and - as the 2018 film The Favourite made clear (it was far more accurate in depicting general political atmospheres, than portraying unimpeachable historical detail, especially about royal sexual activities) - this was an age of deep and hostile faction, where one side would say almost anything about another. Churchill and Masham were from the opposed Whig and Tory parties, and so may have been caught in the vicious partisan crossfire of the era. Also, as with Bentinck, Churchill may have fanned rumours about her successor to the queen’s favour out of chagrin at her loss of place. As with William, there may well have been homosexual relations in the modern sense, but the direct evidence for such activity is questionable. 

What are the deeper historical lessons of this brief survey of Stuart homosexuality? At a first and most human level, in so far as physical sex occurred between monarchs and someone of the same gender in the Stuart age - or even if some of the relationships stopped at deep non-physical love - it is a reminder of variety and ambiguity of human emotion, even at court. It can be difficult to categorise people’s sexualities into neat slots, especially with patchy source records; the ways we talk about love and sex have shifted radically since the early modern era, and it is worth noting that all the monarchs we have covered, and all the favourites, contracted heterosexual marriages, whatever their private proclivities. Many of those marriages worked at the political level, and some were personally successful too. William III was utterly distraught when his wife Queen Mary II died; Sarah and John Churchill were a formidable team; Robert Carr appears to have been prepared to murder to be with the woman of his choice (this was the scandal that ended his career). Second, the common accusation of homosexuality levelled at monarchs reminds us of the highly personal nature of rule in the Stuart era. This period has been presented as being marked by the rise of parliament, the press, and the power of the people exercised through a vigorous public sphere. This is true to an extent, but the efforts put into establishing the monarch’s personal affections, and advertising any perceived defects in them, remind us that this was a world in which politics still mostly happened at court, political action centred on a still very influential monarch, and the individual personalities of courtiers still very much mattered. The ruler’s personal reputation for virtue was essential for their rule, and attacks on it were serious. People needed to know who the monarch was close to, the basis of that relationship, and how to undermine the standing and respect given to rivals or enemies. Finally, though, the trajectory of discussion of royal sexuality may indeed point to a period where a wider public was becoming more important. James VI and I’s sexuality was mainly discussed in a narrow and elite circle, which played factional games of access, exclusion, and libel to gain influence. By Anne’s time, however, discussion was in a widely read press, and was a tool of mass political parties with supporters in every community in the land.

Bisexual Erasure…

Even From Those Within The LGBTQ+ Community

Lydia Carter

MA Sociology

Most of you probably know what I am talking about when I say: ‘Bisexual Erasure? Definitely a Thing’. For those who don’t know- which is fine, everything is a learning curve- ‘Bisexual Erasure’ refers to a pretty common tendency of those both outside of and within the LGBTQ+ community to ignore, remove, or re-explain blatant evidence of bisexuality. This evidence might exist in history, academia, literature, or news media. Oscar Wilde? Bi as heck, guys. The most extreme extent of this erasure is the belief that bisexual people simply do not exist, which is almost definitely an excuse that I am going to use for my next assignment. ‘Why is my submission late? Well, I don’t exist!’.

The most recent example of bisexual erasure that I have seen, happened only recently when the activist and celebrity Jameela Jamil came out as queer on Twitter. Although there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this, India Willoughby, transgender newsreader, broadcaster, journalist and reality television personality, did not agree. She promptly accused Jameela Jamil of what can only be regarded as queerbaiting, accusing her of attempting to draw in an audience for a Reality TV Show that Jamil was due to judge on. The show will focus on bringing the ballroom culture of the 80’s and 90’s that still exists today to mainstream culture. Pushing aside the fact that Jameela Jamil has acknowledged her sexuality on the internet before, because this shouldn’t matter, one part of Willoughby’s Tweet stood out: ‘She’s got a boyfriend’.

Why does that matter? I’m a bisexual woman and have never had a girlfriend. Does this mean I ever doubt my sexuality? Of course not! I know bisexual people who have only ever dated those of the opposite sex. Does this make them heterosexual? No. I know bisexual people who have only ever dated those of the same sex. Does this make them homosexual? Can you guess? No, it doesn’t.  

It is bad enough that so much of history, and so many parts of the world today, have made it nearly impossible for people to live freely within their sexuality or gender. History is littered with voices that were kept quiet because of something as simple as their sexuality. I have always viewed the LGBTQ+ community as a place of freedom, of love, and of pride. To this day, I will say that the safest I have ever felt is when I visit London for Pride. There is no hate, no judgement, and certainly no one telling others how to express themselves.

To have somebody attack a woman who has been forced to state her sexuality publicly, in response to those who were angered by her appearing on a ballroom-based television show, is bad enough. But to then have that person, who purposely attempts to erase Miss Jamil’s sexuality based on their own prejudiced opinion, identifying as a member of a community that should spread love and not hate, is simply not on. 

One can choose to pick a label and identify as that, with bisexuality, pansexuality, sexually fluid, queer or purely ‘not doing labels’:  these are all different ways to identify and indicate that you are not exclusively attracted to either men or women. I could elaborate on the fact that many people refuse to acknowledge the differences between bisexuality and pansexuality, but I’ll leave that for now. Jameela Jamil has identified as queer, and it is our job to support her in that fact. We should celebrate that we live in an age where ‘coming out’ is far easier than it used to be- while acknowledging that it is not this way for everyone- especially for a non-white woman. 

Gay, straight, transgender, non-binary, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, queer – be whatever you want to be, and allow others to be those things, too. The world has enough problems without spreading hate when there should only be messages of encouragement and love.

Drug F***ed

Chemsex in the LGBT Community in Wales

Tadgh Crozier  

BA Health/Social Care and Criminology/Criminal Justice
 tdc18qbb@bangor.ac.uk 

On average, one person dies every 12 days from the use of GHB (gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid). Chemsex is the use of three drugs to facilitate sexual activity between gay men: GHB, Crystal Meth (Methamphetamine) and M-cat (Mephedrone), and it is facilitated within the gay community across the United Kingdom. Not only are people dying from the use of the drugs involved in Chemsex, but this process has also been attributed to the increase in rates of infection of HIV and sexually transmitted infections in gay men.

Drugs and sex have been intertwined in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community throughout modern history, and this is especially true within the community of gay men. Studies have highlighted that the community is at three times greater risk of substance abuse than those who identify as heterosexual. A substantial proportion of this drug use is associated with sexual activity. So why is Chemsex / sexualised drug use a much more significant problem in the LGBT community than in the heterosexual community? Also, what is being done about it? Although there are many reasons given for the increased use and risks, this article will focus on two of the main reasons.

1. Internalised Homophobia

Growing up a gay man in a straight man’s world takes its toll and being told that the sex you are having is wrong will have an impact. The messages that are created by a 'hetero-normative' society can lead to a range of internalised feelings such as hurt, guilt and inadequacy, to name but a few.

 

Messages in the media, such as those emblazoned in the headlines in Figures 2 and 3, teach the LGBT community that they are different from the rest of society. This may result in gay men feeling disconnected from both the rest of society and each other. These negative messages are perpetuated across society, creating little cohesion and acceptability of difference. Messages such as: ‘It’s not Adam and Steve, it's Adam and Eve’ have also been used as an argument to justify that homosexuality is abnormal, which can result in gay men feeling excluded from society.

The use of Chemsex within the Gay community has been seen as a way of connecting with other gay men in times where there were very few places to meet in a safe environment. It also allows a level of intimacy while taking back control of the sex that gay men have been told for so long that they shouldn’t have. If Chemsex is used safely then why shouldn’t its use continue? Isn’t this a form of empowerment to an already disenfranchised community?

Systems and institutions have perpetuated an inferiority message throughout the years, for example in healthcare settings, regarding donating blood. Gay and bisexual men who practise safe sex with other men have to wait three months before giving blood, while heterosexual men do not. These messages bring feelings of shame and trauma, which are then internalised and manifest in damaging ways, such as in higher rates of suicide and a higher risk of substance misuse, including through Chemsex.

2. The lack of specific or LGBT-competent services 

Evidence has shown that there is a need for more LGBT-competent and specialist services so that this community can access support to address their substance misuse issues, including via Chemsex. There is a fear of having to disclose sexuality and being judged because of it, which then becomes a barrier to accessing support.

However, this is only part of the issue. Since the introduction of the 2010 Equality Act and the 2013 Marriage Bill, societal attitudes towards homosexuality have begun to change, but there is still a need to challenge inequality. LGBT people accessing health care services continue to report that due to lack of knowledge about their specific needs, and the assumption of heterosexuality, they are still experiencing dissatisfaction in healthcare, especially compared to the heterosexual community.

Is chemsex / sexualised drug use a public health issue in Wales?

The rise in sexually transmitted infections and late-diagnosed HIV has prompted Public Health Wales to look into the impact of sexualised drug use, including Chemsex, in men who have sex with men (MSM). However, the current drugs strategy for Wales has no mention of gay men and, therefore, a clear pathway for service users is yet to be set. Wales appears to be stumbling in its handling of the Chemsex issue.

 

It is difficult to know how many people are engaging in Chemsex, and without this data it is challenging to commission appropriate services.  However, at present, no services are providing specific Chemsex support in Wales. The nearest Chemsex services are in London or Manchester, which are the only two LGBT-specific services in the United Kingdom. This means that people in Wales needing support may not be able to access it.

Closing thoughts

Having to continually prove the right to exist can take its toll on the LGBT community, and this is evident with continual reports that LGBT people are at a higher risk of suffering from mental health issues.

At a time when gay liberation and freedom was taking place, another reason for ‘acceptable’ homophobia came along in the 1980s: HIV and AIDS.  This was initially called the GRID: gay related immune deficiency. This period in time seemed to give a green light for society to blame and stigmatise an already weakened community. The only way to support LGBT people to lower the risk of poor mental health, and save lives, is for individuals and institutions in society to be more accepting of differences. 

Has Chemsex and other sexualised drug use been an accumulation of years of homophobia? Is the minute support for people using Chemsex in Wales evidence of a lack of insight, or a sign that institutionalised homophobia continues well into the 21st century?

Fig: 1. https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/vdxny9/an-illustrated-a-to-z-of-chemsex-903

Fig: 2. https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/02/16/daily-mail-columnist-richard-littlejohn-attacks-gay-parents-pass-the-sick-bag/

Fig: 3. https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/11/30/world-aids-day-1980s-headlines-tabloids/

Fig: 4.http://www.wales.nhs.uk/sitesplus/documents/888/Quarterly%20Report_Apr2019_v0a.pdf

LGBTQ+ in Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Communities

Tersa Crew and 'Guinevere’

Senior Lecturer in Social Policy and Social Sciences Student

t.f.crew@bangor.ac.uk

Introduction

It is well documented that Gypsy, Roma, Traveller (GRT) communities face inequalities in health, housing, employment and education, as well as the worst racism and prejudice of any minority group (See Cemlyn et. al, 2009; Brown and Scullion, 2010; Heaslip, 2015; McFadden, 2016,18; Condon, 2019 for further details). This focus on inequalities, while much needed, means there is scant research on intersections of the GRT identity, for instance with sexuality.   

While there is little empirical research or statistics to evidence the experiences of LGBTQ+ people within GRT communities, anecdotal data tells us that homophobia is a hidden issue.  Many will hide their sexual identity due to fear of rejection by family and their community, and because of their religious beliefs (The Traveller Movement, 2017: 2-5). 

The following narrative from ‘Guinevere’ adds an important addition in understanding some of the discrimination that LGBTQ+ Gypsy Travellers can face within their own community.

‘Guinevere’s’ Story

‘It’s your punishment, if you had married a man God would have let him live but a woman marrying a woman is a sin and now you’ve been punished, be wise Guinevere, you’ve been given a chance to turn away from temptation and marry a man, or you’ll end up burning in hell with her.’

Two days after my wife died, I sought solace in the church. I went to a Nawken-born priest, who had known me my entire life, from my Baptism to my Confirmation. As I cried in the house of God, he spoke those words to me. It was that day that I turned my back on the Catholic faith and the community I was born into. 

It is a common misconception that all Gypsies are the same, or that we only fall into two categories, Romani and Irish Traveller. However, the actual number of different groups of Gypsy Travellers is currently unknown.  If I was to venture a rough guess, I’d say it consists of between 100-200 different groups. All of these groups have their own distinct histories, practices and beliefs. As such its important to understand not every Gypsy Traveller group find the practices of people in the LGBTQ+ community to be wrong. Unfortunately, within the UK, Traveller communities that are largely pro-LGBTQ+ are uncommon. 

In recent years Gypsies have become something of a fascination among the gorger community, with television shows like My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding in the UK and US giving viewers a snapshot into their lives and cultures.  American Romani Gypsy Ana, whose wedding to her female partner was featured in Episode 8 Season 2 of the US series, stated in an interview for the show that ‘In our culture, that (being gay) just doesn’t happen. It would be like a black guy in the Ku Klux Klan.’ The show’s production team chose to show an interesting contrast through the two weddings in this episode, with the second marriage being one between two first cousins.  This highlighted the fact that it was more acceptable to commit a type of incest then be a lesbian in Gypsy culture.  While many of the struggles faced by Ana and her fiancée were not necessarily unique to the gypsy community - such as wondering if her immediate family were going to be in attendance for the ceremony - the show highlights the harsh realities LGBTQ+ Romani gypsies often confront.

Being gay and out in the Romani community is an isolating reality: not everyone is as lucky as I have been.  My family all but left the community in support of my choices, but this, unfortunately, is a rare occurrence. A fellow gay Romani, Mikey Walsh, author of the Gypsy Boy: The bestselling memoir of a Romany childhood and Gypsy Boy on the Run was not only forced out of the community for being gay, but for many years after releasing his first book had to go into hiding from people his own father had sent to ‘deal with him.’ In theory, within the UK a father wanting to kill his own son for being gay would be considered an extreme case, however, in our community entire families can end up being rejected because of one person being homosexual. More often than not, the only choice if you want to live openly is to leave the community behind and build a life as a gorger.  Though slowly attitudes are changing, there is still a long way to go before our community is ready to accept us for being anything but ‘dirty’.

Bibliography

Brown, P., & Scullion, L. (2010). “Doing research” with Gypsy–Travellers in England: Reflections on experience and practice doing. Community Development Journal, 45,
169–185.

Cemlyn, S., Greenfields, S., Burnett, S., Matthews, Z., and Whitwell,., (2009). Inequalities experienced by Gypsy and Traveller communities: A review.  Equality and Human Rights Commission. 

Condon, L., Bedford, H., Ireland, L., Kerr, S., Mytton, J., Richardson, Z., & Jackson, C. (2019). Engaging Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller Communities in Research: Maximizing Opportunities and Overcoming Challenges. Qualitative Health Research, 29(9), 1324–1333.

Heaslip, V., 2015. Experiences of vulnerability from a Gypsy/Travelling perspective: A
phenomenological study. (PhD). Bournemouth University. 

McFadden, A., Atkin, K., Bell, K., Innes, N., Jackson, C., Jones, C., MacGillivray, S., and Siebelt, L. (2016). Community engagement to enhance trust between Gypsy/Travellers, and maternity, early years’ and child dental health services: protocol for a multi-method exploratory study. International Journal for Equity in Health,15, 183 

McFadden, A., Siebelt, L,. Gavine, A., Atkin, K., Bell, B., Innes, N., Jones, H., Jackson 2, Haggi, H., MacGillivray, S. (2018). Gypsy, Roma and Traveller access to and engagement with health services: a systematic review.  European Journal of Public Health. 28(1):74-81.

The Traveller Movement (2017). LGBT Gypsies and Travellers: Our Stories.  [Online, available from: https://travellermovement.org.uk/advocacy-support/lgbt 

Queering the Tudor Hunt

Audrey Thorstad

Lectuer in Early Modern History

a.thorstad@bangor.ac.uk

The popularity of queer theory in the historical discipline has steadily increased over the last few years, but it is not a new approach to the past. Thirty-five years ago, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick published Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York, 1985) and it is widely recognised as one of the foundational works for queer theory, particularly thinking about male sexuality. In the monograph, much of her argument is structured around an asymmetrical erotic triangle wherein men who desire each other (sexually or otherwise) transmit that desire through a woman, thus creating a triangulation. This trope, Sedgwick argues, was commonplace in literature from the pre-modern to our own contemporary. According to Sedgwick,

‘…in any erotic rivalry, the bond that links two rivals is as intense and potent as the bond that links either of the rivals to the beloved: that the bonds of ‘rivalry’ and ‘love’ differently as they are experiences, are equally powerful and in many senses equivalent…and within the male-centered novelistic tradition of European high culture, the triangles…are most often those in which two males are rivals for a female’.[1]

 For Sedgwick, the beloved – almost always a woman – then becomes the object, or conduit, of relationships between two rival men. The rivalry creates a common cause: to win the heart of the beloved, but their rivalry relationship is just as strongly desired as the desire for the object of their infatuation. For Sedgwick, then, homosocial desire – encompassing platonic friendships, affection, sex, and more – is a given amongst men within the triangle. As a result, the homosocial is drawn back into the orbit of ‘desire’, of potential eroticism, and creates not a binary of sexuality and gender, but an unbrokenness of a continuum between homosocial and homosexual, and thus broadens our understanding of sexuality.

To illustrate the erotic triangle and the homosocial desire that it creates, I want to look at hunting during the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547). On 24 June 1509, Henry VIII had a joint coronation with his wife of two weeks, Catherine of Aragon. Edward Hall (c. 1496-c. 1547) provides a detailed account of the ceremonies in his contemporary chronicle, including a rather interesting hunting scene that was performed in front of the new queen and her ladies:

‘like a parke, paled with pales of white and grene, wherein wer certain Fallowe Dere, and in the same parke curious Trees made by crafte, with Busshes, Fernes, and other thynges in likewise wrought, goodly to beholde. The whiche Parke or diuyse, being brought before the Quene had certain gates thereof opened, the Dere ranne out thereof into the Palaice’.[2]

The pageant-like [3] issuing a challenge to all comers. This challenge was answered by eight servants of Diana.[4] A deal was struck between the two groups of men: whoever vanquished the other group of knights in their ‘dedes of armes’ kept the deer that were killed and the greyhounds that helped kill them. After the challenge was accepted Queen Catherine called for her husband, Henry VIII, to oversee the competition and to ensure the rules were fair.

performance continues with eight mounted knights calling themselves the scholars of Pallas

This scene was very much for entertainment, it was a make-shift park with trees ‘made by craft’ and it was all set up within the palace. It did, however, have real deer, real greyhounds, and real men, and we should not forget that several deer were killed for the narrative. For our purposes, this episode as described by Hall, can be approached through Sedgwick’s asymmetrical erotic triangle with the two groups of rival knights as the rival opponents chasing the beloved: the deer. Although women are mentioned in the narrative – it is performed in front of Queen Catherine and her ladies – it is not their favour that the knights desire. The deer, at least in this episode, is more important, and I would argue that the violence and bloodshed that came along with the killing of their prize is the activity that helped link the two rival groups together. Moreover, with the deer as the conduit for male homosocial desire it meant that the ingredients for heterosexual desire were not all accounted for: the woman was of course missing. The ladies’ favour as the ultimate prize was usurped by that of the slaughtered animals. With the arrival of Henry VIII to oversee the hunting scene, we get an added element. Not only do the groups of knights want to win the prize of the deer and greyhounds, but they now want to impress their king, who is young, physically fit, and an avid hunter. The goal, then, is to impress other men rather than women. Their ambition to impress the king and win the challenge are the ingredients for creating a situation in which ‘homosocial desire’ can be fostered. The prize is simply an object to be won. The importance of the exchange comes in the form of emotional closeness to the other men in the triangle. Rivalry, competition, teamwork, and physical exertion can all create emotional closeness, and all were needed in the hunt. In this sense, it might be argued that homosocial desire can be obtained outside the parameters of the heterosexual pursuit of the lover/beloved scenario with the woman – the beloved – easily replaced with another object to be won.

What does the exploration of such case studies tell us about the Tudor period? First and foremost, it demonstrates that a queer reading of the pre-modern past is possible and allows us to see the Tudor court in a new and exciting way. Hunting was one of the most important pastimes that an elite, able-bodied, white, educated man in the sixteenth century could perform, and he needed to perform it well in front of his peers and superiors, usually other men. By applying queer theory to the hunt, we get the sense that it enabled those of the hegemony to perform homosocial desire for one another without stepping outside the boundaries of the expected warrior masculine identity. Being able to perform these pastimes allowed men to become part of the hegemonic power structure at the Tudor court, thus giving them access to high-ranking officials and, more importantly, the king. Secondly, the hunting scene from Hall’s Chronicle demonstrates the role – or lack thereof sometimes – that women played in male homosocial desire. The woman, the ‘beloved’ in the triangle, could quite easily be replaced by an animal. Indeed, in Middle English romance literature the hunt of a deer is often paralleled with the chase of courtly love, both of which liken the ‘prize’ (whether that is the deer or the woman) as an object to be won usually by the pursuer physically exerting themselves in order to prove they are worthy. Thirdly, I do not want to deny the fact that women did hunt and they certainly could be in a hunting party at this time. In these situations, the role of women changes slightly, particularly if they are partaking in the hunt rather than simply spectating. In any case, female homosocial desire and its construction were outside the scope of this short piece; however, I am sure it would prove to be a fruitful endeavour. Finally, to reiterate the fact that ‘homosocial desire’ does not automatically mean sexual desire.  What this concept does is gives us a broader continuum of sexuality, moving us away from binaries and enables more freedom to understand emotions, bonds, desires, and relationships in the past.

In the thirtieth anniversary edition of Between Men, Wayne Koestenbaum writes in the foreword:

‘Sedgwick demonstrates that a good reason for a critic to be clever and to identify buried erotic metaphors in canonical poetry is to figure forth a society in which people are encouraged to take an empathetic and benign attitude toward sodomitical behaviours…she wants to help us dream up a culture that gives ample acreage for unaccustomed pleasure, without shame’.[5]

As purveyors of the past, surely we can grant this to the historical figures that we explore. 

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[1] Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick published Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York, 1985), p. 21.

[2] Edward Hall, The union of the two noble and illustre famelies of Lancastre and Yorke […] (London, 1548), p. vi.

[3] Pallas is the epithet given to the Greek goddess Athena who is associated with wisdom and warfare.

[4] Diana is the Roman goddess of the hunt, wild animals, and fertility.

[5] Wayne Koestenbaum, ‘Forward’, in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick published Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, 30^th anniversary edition (New York, 2016), p. xv.

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A Little Gay History of Bangor

Daryl Leeworthy

Research Fellow at Swansea University

Dr Leeworthy delivered a version of this paper in a research seminar to mark LGBTQ+ History month at Bangor University on February 5th, 2020.

Open the pages of Broadsheet, a newsletter published by the Leeds branch of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in the early 1970s, and you’ll find mention of the long-forgotten Bangor GLF. Gay liberation arrived in Bangor in the aftermath of the National Union of Students coming out in favour of lesbian and gay rights at their Easter conference in 1973. In those days, if you wanted a pint in an LGBT-friendly environment and studied at Bangor, you had to travel to Llandudno. Known to some as the Brighton of Wales, there were a couple of the hotel bars which were known as being safe – most notably the Rembrandt Bar at the Washington Hotel. The convenor of Bangor GLF was Simon del Nevo (or perhaps del Novo, the sources were never consistent) who was the central figure involved in establishing the LGBT civil rights movement at the university almost fifty years ago.

But 1973 was not the first step that Bangor took on the road to achieving civil rights for LGBT people, either locally or across Wales and Britain as a whole. Instead, we must look to a young lecturer in English Literature who was working at Bangor in the 1950s and early 1960s: A. E. Dyson. A graduate of Cambridge University, where he got to know the poet Thom Gunn, whose 1992 collection The Man with Night Sweats vividly described the HIV/AIDS crisis, Dyson took it upon himself to co-ordinate a letter in the spring of 1958 calling for decriminalisation of male homosexuality. Signed by figures including former Labour prime minister Clement Attlee and published in The Times, Dyson’s letter marked the beginning of almost a decade of campaigning which resulted in the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which partially decriminalised homosexual relationships between men.

Remarkably, Dyson had written to would-be supporters using (as Bangor was then known)  University College of North Wales headed notepaper, which not only identified Dyson’s place of work but also exposed him to potential blackmail if his correspondents turned out to be hostile to his request rather than sympathetic. In the event, not only were Attlee and others, sympathetic, they agreed to support Dyson in establishing the Homosexual Law Reform Society – the first of the post-war LGBT civil rights organisations. In other words, the long march towards equality, in Wales, at least, began not in Cardiff or Swansea, as might be expected, but in the English Literature Department in Bangor. That deserves a blue plaque. Or, even better, a rainbow one!

The story did not end either in 1958 or 1973. By the 1980s, Bangor was beginning to develop a modest gay scene of its own. Pubs like the King’s Arms and the Union Hotel were recognised as gay friendly, and student lesbian and gay groups met there or at Ty Gwydr (the Green House). The Green House was home, too, to the local advice lines and telephone counselling services such as the Lesbian Line. Eventually, in 1983, Bangor had its first gay bar – at the student union. It was the brainchild of the LGBT society’s then secretary, Simon Moss, a biology student. No more travelling to Chester or Liverpool, as did students in the 1970s.

There remains much more of this history to uncover, of course, and many stories of those involved in developing the LGBT groups and facilities in Bangor in the 1980s and 1990s need to be captured for the future: either written down or recorded. But even a short sketch of the contours of Bangor’s more recent LGBT history shows, I think, just how rich this often-hidden aspect of the past happens to be. The essays in this special issue of 1884 confirm it.