The Island of Lesvos

A short story by Jeanette Winterson, The Poetics of Sex, is available on the Random House website. It is an extended poetic exploration of lesbian sexuality, written as a response to the sort of questions straights ask, but going far beyond those questions into the land of Sapphic delight. Here's an excerpt...

Hang on me my darling like rubies round my neck. Slip onto my finger like a ring. Give me your rose for my buttonhole. Let me leaf through you before I read you out loud.

Picasso warms my freezing heart on the furnace of her belly. Her belly is stoked to blazing with love of me. I have learned to feed her every day, to feed her full of fuel that I gladly find. I have unlocked the storehouses of love. On the Mainland they teach you to save for a rainy day. The truth is that love needs no saving. It is fresh or not at all. We are fresh and plentiful. She is my harvest and I am hers. She seeds me and reaps me, we fall into one another's laps. Her seas are thick with fish for my rod. I have rodded her through and through.

It's a wonderful piece of writing, very lush and sensual; it reads more like a prose-poem than a short story, but it has a narrative element.

You Shan't Go To The Prom!

I've just seen a shocking story about how a school in Mississippi won't allow a lesbian student to attend the prom with her girlfriend, and they wouldn't let her wear a tuxedo either.

Here's the email that I sent to tmcneece@itawamba.k12.ms.us, twiygul@itawamba.k12.ms.us

Dear Superintendent McNeece and Principal Wiygul,

I am writing to point out that lesbian and gay students have a right to bring a same-sex date to the prom and wear clothing congruent with their gender identity under the First Amendment, and the US Supreme Court has ruled that a policy or public entity that is based on discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people violates the Fourteenth Amendment.

Simply cancelling the prom seems like a disproportionate response to a simple request to bring a same-sex partner. Please reinstate the prom and allow Constance McMillen to bring her partner as her date, and wear a tuxedo if she wishes.

I am deeply dismayed by your discriminatory practice, and feel that it should be a matter of regret to you that your school is now infamous around the world for this bigoted, disproportionate and unjust response to a lesbian student and her partner.

Yours sincerely

I would encourage Bluestocking readers to write to the school on similar lines. You can get more information from the ACLU's letter on Constance's behalf (PDF).

• ACLU: Mississippi High School Insists on "Straights-Only" Prom
• Facebook group in support of Constance McMillen
• Photos of lesbian couples at proms (Autostraddle)
• Pink News: US School cancels prom over lesbian student's date

Update: apparently the email addresses above are now closed (wonder why?)

The ACLU has produced an online resource for LGBT students who want to take their partners to the Prom.

Lesbian separatist ants

Mad Science reports that there is a female-only species of ant.

Technically these ants reproduce asexually, not through some kind of Nicola Griffith-style lesbian parthenogenesis. They are, however, one of the only known all-female animal species. Who is to say whether it wasn't some lesbian urge that caused them to diverge from other ant species and give up sperm altogether?

I am reminded of the ant society in T H White's The Once and Future King.
Males = Not-Done.

There were no words for happiness, for freedom, for liking, nor were there any words for their opposites — there were only two words for qualifications, Done and Not-Done — which applied to all questions of value... Their life was not questionable, it was dictated...

Alternative history

And talking of alternative history, check out this fabulous blog entitled Woolf and Wilde, which presents

vintage photographs of men together (and sometimes women together) circa 1880 to 1950, a longtime passion of mine.

I pair the photos with text to narrate what, in my imagination, the couples might be saying, doing, feeling. Text is drawn from poetry, fiction, letters, lyrics and my own writing. Assembling these Imagined Histories creates a gay ancestry of sorts that I have always longed to know — even if I have had to make it up myself. This is the lineage I wish had been passed down to me like so much treasure, like other cultures do to honor a common identity.

Not only is this a beautiful idea, but some of the pictures are wonderful, and the poetry is good as well (with selections from e e cummings and Walt Whitman, among others).

Here's my favourite so far - how luscious!

I wonder what the sitters of these photos were really thinking? Some of them certainly seem quite gay and lesbian - and who is to say that they weren't? There was a thriving lesbian and gay underground in the late nineteenth century, with toms and mollies and their own special clubs.

You can also follow Woolf & Wilde on Twitter, which was where I discovered them when they kindly followed me. It's rather like the telegraph craze of the 1890s, don't you think?

The real heroes of LGBT liberation

Over at Pink News, Peter Tatchell (a hero of mine) reminds us that Quentin Crisp had feet of clay. He did not support LGBT liberation in the 60s and 70s, and wanted to be "the only gay in the village"; he also made that stupid comment about AIDS. He had clearly internalised the homophobia of those around him.

On the other hand, a friend of a friend called him up when he was in New York, and Quentin Crisp invited him round for tea, and they spent about an hour chatting; I think my friend's friend found him charming.

Peter Tatchell continues:

The true icons and pioneers of the modern British gay community are heroes like Allan Horsfall and Antony Grey. They were the driving forces of the first gay rights organisations in Britain – the North West Homosexual Law Reform Committee set up in 1964 and the Homosexual Law Reform Society, established earlier in 1958. These two men, who are still alive and have never received the public recognition they deserve, have done far more for gay dignity and advancement than Quentin Crisp.

Crisp is a pale shadow of US gay rights trailblazers like Harry Hay, Frank Kameny, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon.

So yes, let's celebrate the real heroes and heroines of LGBT liberation:

• Harry Hay - founder of the Radical Faeries; came up with the theory of subject-SUBJECT consciousness
• Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, co-founders of the Daughters of Bilitis
• Allan Horsfall, co-founder of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality
• Antony Grey: In 1958, Grey started voluntary work for the Homosexual Law Reform Society (HLRS). He became the Society's Honorary Treasurer in 1960 and its Secretary by the end of 1962.
• Frank Kameny, astronomer and gay rights activist
• Edward Carpenter: poet, Pagan, vegetarian, pacifist and socialist; and apparently the catalyst for E M Forster to write Maurice.
• Dudley Cave, co-founder of the Lesbian and Gay Switchboard
• Radclyffe Hall, lesbian novelist (yes her theory of "inversion" was a bit off, but her novel was an inspiration to generations of lesbians)
• Peter Tatchell - human rights campaigner extraordinaire
• American LGBT rights activists
• British LGBT rights activists
• and many more who can be explored at the GLBTQ encyclopedia, the LGBT Religious Archives Network, and many another LGBT history website.

Congratulations!

How lovely. Susie Orbach and Jeanette Winterson are an item. And they're in love. Winterson wrote in her blog:

I am in love. Unexpected. Glorious. Happy. A great dancer and an amazing cook. How lucky am I? And yes, she is very smart and totally together. And she loves me too. Wow.

And when I say unexpected, I mean that I wasn’t looking, and certainly not in that direction. As ever, the important things happen by chance, unplanned, unseen.

Jeanette Winterson is one of my favourite authors - Oranges are not the only fruit was a very important book for me when I was discovering my own inclinations (I'm bisexual), and I love her other stuff as well.

I never got around to reading Fat is a feminist issue (I preferred Shelley Bovey's The Forbidden Body) but I notice that Orbach is doing the 2010 Price lecture at the "birthplace of feminism" Newington Green and Islington Unitarians, the church attended by Mary Wollstonecraft.

There is some speculation that the press will be all sleazy about this - that would be terribly sad in this day and age, but sadly it does happen; people still have misconceptions about LGBT people, and we have not yet reached the stage where your gender and/or sexual orientation is irrelevant. On the other hand, the Evening Standard has a rather positive article about this and Mary Queen of Shops' relationship.

Anyway, I hope that Mss Orbach and Winterson will be very happy together. We here at The Bluestocking would like to raise a virtual glass of champagne to toast their continuing happiness.

The Ladies of Llangollen

I just found out about these two lovely ladies, who were intellectuals and very close friends.

The Ladies of Llangollen were two upper-class Anglo-Irish women whose relationship scandalised and fascinated their contemporaries. The Ladies are interesting today as an example of historical romantic friendship (and some would argue lesbianism).

Lady Eleanor Butler (1739–1829) was considered an over-educated bookworm by her family, who occupied Kilkenny Castle. She spoke French and was educated in a convent in France. Her mother tried to make her join a convent because she was becoming a spinster.

The Honourable Sarah Ponsonby (1755–1832) lived with relatives in Woodstock, Ireland. She was a second cousin of Frederick Ponsonby, 3rd Earl of Bessborough, and thus a "second-cousin-once-removed" of his daughter the Lady Caroline Lamb.

Apparently they had a lapdog called Sappho. They lived at Plas Newydd, and their friends included Robert Southey, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron and Scott, but also the Duke of Wellington; industrialist Josiah Wedgwood; and aristocratic novelist Caroline Lamb.

Sandi Toksvig: Bluestocking Pin-up

Sandi is the epitome of Bluestocking greatness; in looks and style, in wit and raconterie on Radio 4, in academic prowess, in adventurous spirit; having yachted around Britain in 1995, written such fantastic books as 'Whistling For The Elephants', being openly a lesbian and a mother to three children...Three Rousing Womanly Cheers for Ms Toksvig!!