February is LGBT History Month

Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans History Month takes place every year in February. It celebrates the lives and achievements of the LGBT community. A programme of events has been compiled by OutStories Bristol, Bristol Lesbian & Gay Switchboard, CycleOut Bristol, M-Shed, Gay West and Hydra Books.

The events at Hydra Books are :

Changing images of trans people in speculative literature – Cheryl Morgan

Thursday 2 February – 7:00 pm

The availability of magic and advanced science have allowed writers of fantasy and science fiction literature to explore issues of gender in their work. Hugo Award winning critic, Cheryl Morgan, explores how the way in which trans characters have been portrayed in speculative literature has changed as real trans people have become better known to the general public. Cheryl Morgan is, to her knowledge, the only out trans person ever to have won science fiction’s highest honour, the Hugo Award. Born in Somerset, she has lived in Australia and California and now resides near Bath where she runs a small ebook publishing company and bookstore. She blogs regularly at www.cheryl-morgan.com

Celebration of Lesbian and Gay Literature – OutStories Bristol

Tuesday 7 February – 7:00 pm

From love poems to sci-fi and satire – come and join us in an evening of readings from literature with LGBT themes. Bring your favourite poem or excerpt and share it with the audience. Tell us what it means to you and where we can find more like it. Help us raise the profile of this new bookshop in the heart of Bristol’s Gay Village.

Cross-dressers and the establishment in Victorian England – Juliet Jacques

Thursday 9 February 7:00 pm

The emergence of public cross-dressing in the 19th century industrial city caused great anxiety to the Victorian legal establishment and England’s new police forces alike. In this talk, Guardian and New Statesman writer Juliet Jacques (longlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2011) explores how those who cross-dressed were criminalised, most famously in the scandalous trial of Ernest “Stella” Boulton and Frederick “Fanny” Park in 1871, and how contemporary transgender identities began to evolve in response.

Juliet Jacques is a journalist and author, best known for writing A Transgender Journey for The Guardian – the first time that the gender reassignment process has been serialised for a mainstream British publication. She has also written for the New Statesman and TimeOut, and was longlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2011.

Exhibition – Lesbian and Gay Switchboard

Sunday 26 February – 4:00 pm

Bristol’s Lesbian and Gay Switchboard has been running for 37 years. Come and see an exhibition to celebrate its history at the bookshop. This will be followed by a party at 7pm at the Old Market Tavern for volunteers, friends and supporters of the Bristol Lesbian and Gay Switchboard.

This year marks the 40th anniversary since the national builders strike in 1972. Five months after the strike had ended 24 pickets who had visited building sites in Shrewsbury were arrested and charged with over 242 offences between them. They included unlawful assembly, affray, intimidation, criminal damage and assault.

Six of the pickets were received custodial sentences. Des Warren, Eric (Ricky) Tomlinson and John McKinsie Jones were sentenced to three years, two years and nine months of imprisonment respectively.

Ever since the trial the convicted pickets had maintained that they were the vistims of a policically motivated trial. As Ricky Tomlinson put it from the dock:

“I have heard the judge say that this was not a political trial, and just an ordinary criminal case, and I refute that with every fibre of my being. “

This year the Official Shrewsbury 24 Campaign, on behalf of the five convicted pickets who are still alive and Des Warren’s son, are submitting  the case the Criminal Cases Review Committee in the hope that it will be referred to the Court of Appeal. To find out more go to the new Shrewsbury 24 Campaign website that contains the background to the strike and subsequent trials as well as a recently unearthed film on the Shrewsbury picket’s made in 1974 by Michael Rossen, the former  Children’s Laureate and Radio 4 presenter.

Steve Higginson will interpret the re-birth of misogyny by looking at the period of the Great Plague, 1345 onwards, and the great moralising discourse that swept across Europe post plaque. Located within this discourse of purity, women were viewed as both cause and effect of the plague, and were to be “enclosed” accordingly within the domestic sphere. The purity campaign against women was attributable to a re-reading of the Old Testament plus a resurgance of interest in Aristotlian ethics.

Steve hails from Liverpool and was a Union organiser in the Communication Workers Union. Now a post-graduate, Steve lectures at John Moores University. His recent projects include an examination of time, memory and movement in port cities (principally Liverpool) as co-author of Edgy Cities (2006). He has been a regular contributor of Bristol Radical Hisotry Group events.