A bluestocking hero

It will soon be time for Finding Ada Day 2012. it's on 16 October. Start researching your favourite women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, medicine) now.

Alex Brown, administrative student in the Knowledge Transfer Group at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland. He is also studying for the MSc Science Communication at the University of the West of England.

Meanwhile, a splendid chap called Alex Brown has blogged about how much he hates sexism in science. He is the new Bluestockings' hero. Oh yes. The blogpost also includes some rather fabulous pictures and videos of how to paint your fingernails in a sciencey way.

He makes the point that sexism in science is what is driving women away from it, diminishing the diversity (and therefore the creative potential due to different perspectives being applied) of science. His ire was aroused by a sexist comment posted on a photo of some fingernails painted with mathematical symbols in a science group on Facebook.

And I thought I would round up all my Finding Ada blogposts in one place.

• Wendy Hall
• Lisa Barone
• Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
• Hedy Lamarr
• Anita Borg

Alan Turing revisited

There's a fascinating blogpost about Alan Turing by Christopher Pressler, who is descended from another hero of Bluestockings, Charles Babbage - he who encouraged the Enchantress of Numbers, Ada Lovelace Byron.

Do peruse it, gentle readers.

It Gets Better

Recently the media has been paying more media attention to teen LGBT suicides.

In response to this, Dan Savage has started a YouTube channel, "It Gets Better".

Nine out of 10 gay teenagers experience bullying and harassment at school, and gay teens are four times likelier to attempt suicide. Many LGBT kids who do kill themselves live in rural areas, exurbs, and suburban areas, places with no gay organizations or services for queer kids. (...)

I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.

But gay adults aren't allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don't bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.

Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don't have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids.

So here's what you can do, GBVWS: Make a video. Tell them it gets better.

This deserves wide publicity, so please blog about it, tweet it, and post it on Facebook.

(via Geeky Sex and sexgenderbody)

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.

Skirts for men

It seems bizarre that people are still hung up about seeing a man in a skirt. Women have been wearing trousers since 1850 (earlier in the case of female miners), so why has it taken so long for men's fashion to be rationalised in the same way? There was a brief bout of skirt-wearing in the nineties, but it seems to have subsided.

Men can wear sarongs on the beach, kilts and priestly garb (and there are plenty of pictures of Jesus in a dress), but people are still intolerant of men wearing actual skirts. Why? It's only a piece of cloth. It must be because the Western definition of masculinity is still so circumscribed by convention that people can't imagine a man being a man unless he's hairy and/or betrousered. There's still a strong taboo against men crying, for instance.

Men who wear skirts: I salute you from the bottom of my heart. You are pioneers as much as the early feminists in their bloomers.

We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

~ Walt Whitman

Here's some sites about men in skirts:

• Why have I got a website about Men in Skirts?
  A website advocating the wearing of skirts by men. Western men seem to have a phobia about wearing a skirt, sarong, toga or similar garment.
• Skirts for men
  Votes for Women / Skirts for Men, the progress of liberation continues in the 21st Century.
• Men's skirts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Men's skirts are skirts worn by men. Outside of Western cultures, male clothing includes skirts and skirt-like garments.
• Men in Skirts - Victoria and Albert Museum
  A collection of images and representations of men in skirts since the 14th century.
• Utilikilts
  These non-tartan kilts are very popular in Seattle

New Doctor

The Bluestocking commends the tweediness and general chappishness of the new Doctor Who, but we are not too sure about the bow-tie. There are so many elegant and suitably retro choices of neckwear, that one would think that something rather more original than the slightly weedy looking bow-tie sported by Mr Smith could have been chosen. Of course the tweed jacket, being hard-wearing and reasonably impervious to stains, is an excellent choice for slumming it around the universe and mixing with all those grubby aliens. But I do feel he should have chosen brown shoes to go with the brown tweed. Surely Doctor Marten's practical footwear is available in brown? Indeed, I have just checked on Mr Google's patent search machine, and they have a marvellous colour called Peat - very appropriate to accompany tweed.

In a spirit of constructive criticism, may I refer our esteemed Broadcasting Corporation to the gentleman's guide to the tying of ties, from which they could have chosen a Windsor Knot, a Half-Winsor, a Pratt-Shelby or a Four-in-Hand.

Ladies (and gentlemen of a transgender persuasion) may be interested in this scarf-tying guide.

Nonconformist pioneers

First women ministers

Gertrude von Petzold was the first woman to be ordained as a Unitarian minister in England, in 1904. She also campaigned for women's suffrage.

Olympia Brown was the first woman Universalist minister, in 1863.

In the United States, the Congregationalists ordained Antoinette Brown as a minister in 1853, while the Universalists ordained Olympia Brown in 1863. In Australia, Martha Turner was appointed minister to the Melbourne Unitarian church in 1873, and, in Scotland, the Glasgow Universalists ordained Caroline Soule in 1880.
(from an article by Keith Gilley)

First gay ministers

1969 September—LaForet, CO—The Reverend James L. Stoll publicly declares himself to be homosexual at Student Religious Liberals (SRL) Conference.

1979 The Reverend Douglas Morgan Strong called to serve All Souls Church, Augusta, Maine, thus becoming the first out gay man in the UU ministry to be called to serve a congregation.

from History of UU involvement in & support of LGBT issues

Further reading

• Writing Unitarian and Universalist Women Back Into History
  
• List of UU and Unitarian women radicals, feminists, writers, ministers, abolitionists, etc
• Find Her - a massive list of UU women
• Ordination of women
• Homosexuality and Unitarian Universalism

bluestocking heroes

• Patrick Leigh Fermor - travel writer, wit, raconteur, war hero (SOE), swam the Hellespont at age 70
• Lawrence Durrell - travel writer
  
• WB Yeats - poet, intellectual, occultist
• Edward Carpenter - gay genius, poet, intellectual, occultist
• E M Forster - novelist
• Alan Turing - gay genius and IT pioneer
• Eddie Izzard - now there's a man who knows how to cross-dress
• Stephen Fry - bon viveur, wit, intellectual