From a disaster via a catastrophe to a triumph!

Twenty five of us turned up at the Chorlton Street Bus Station anticipating the planned coach trip to Speedwell Cavern and Chapel-en-le-Frith. Unfortunately, Vinny our coach driver, had contacted us to advise that he had just been diagnosed with Covid and had to self-isolate. As he works for himself, there wasn’t the possibility of a replacement driver.

Plan B was proposed that we visit Sudley House in Mossley Hill, Liverpool instead and a number of people decided to make the trip. Whilst some went home, the rest walked to Oxford Road Train Station. With a Senior Railcard and Concessionary Travel Pass the cost was £7.30 for the day return. We just made the train at 10.46am and arrived at Mossley Hill Station about an hour later. A short (uphill) walk led us to Sudley House Lodge and then down the drive to Sudley House. 

Liverpool developed rapidly in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. It was one of the most prosperous towns in Britain, and one of the greatest ports in the world. George Holt (1825 – 1896) purchased Sudley House in 1883 with money made from shipping. In the 19^th century, Mossley Hill was probably the most exclusive residential area of the city. Holt does not appear to have flaunted his wealth. Sudley House is not flashly or excessive and the art collection is equally restrained.

The paintings show the docks and the River Mersey, busy streets and grand public buildings – all in all – a sense of a place in constant change. More photos can be seen here.

Free Queer Writing Workshop – Friday, 2 September at 2.00pm – Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley Street, Manchester M2 3JL

As part of the development of a new musical, A Permanent State of Emergency at Hope Mill Theatre, we are hosting an intergenerational Queer writing workshop for ages 18-30 and 50+.

The workshop will include informal conversations and story sharing, as well as the writing and sharing of monologues based on someone of a different generation’s story. The theme will be the rapidly changing world we find ourselves in.

The aim of the workshop is to find differences, similarities and allow space for understanding.

We will use this research in the development of the play as well as sharing the process of creative writing with participants.

The workshop will be delivered by the playwright Joshua Val Martin. To book your place, please email: natashap_28@hotmail.com

A Permanent State of Emergency – Wednesday, 21 September at 7.00pm – Hope Mill Theatre, 113 Pollard Street, Manchester M4 7JA

A political-cabaret cum European-saga. Jess is in her twenties. She still lives with her Dad and her Step-Mum, Cath. Cath bagged Jess a part-time job working in the Leicester visitor information centre: Jess should consider herself lucky.

But instead with no prospect or purpose in labour, love or life, Jess embarks on a one-way trip through Europe in the search of meaning. Cath follows on Jess’s heels, determined to make her grateful. This is a story of being the young and infantilised on a continent that feels like it’s in a permanent state of emergency.

Singapore decriminalises gay sex … but it’s not all good news

Authorities in Singapore have announced the territory is lifting its British colonial-era law against same-sex sexual activity. The move follows years of legal challenges from campaigners. LGBT advocates across Asia and the wider world have welcomed the move.

However, when announcing the move on national TV, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the city-state would also act to ensure marriage between one man and one woman only is protected by the law. This would make it harder for same-sex marriage to become a reality.

Despite that setback, the repeal of 377A has been celebrated by many. In changing the law, Singapore is following in the wake of India, Thailand and Taiwan. Until now, authorities voiced support for keeping 377a on the books, saying it reflected Singapore’s traditional values. However, they promised not to enforce it.

Loong suggested yesterday that society had shifted. “This is the right thing to do, and something that most Singaporeans will accept.” He said ditching 377A brings the country’s laws in line with “current social mores, and I hope, provide some relief to gay Singaporeans.”

Local activists react to Singapore law change

Local gay activist Johnson Ong said, “We finally did it, and we’re ecstatic that this discriminatory, antiquated law is finally going to be off the books. There’s a sense that maybe it took a little too long, but it had to happen, you know. Today we are very, very happy.”

Ong was critical of moves to enshrine opposite-sex marriage in the law. He said, “Even after acknowledging that 377A has through the decades caused considerable hardship, emotional damage and harmed the lives and families of those affected by the law, they continue to beat us down, instead of lifting us up and helping us heal.”

Roy Tan, another local activist, said in a statement, “I am elated and relieved for Singapore’s LGBT community.”

Tan said although not being enforced, 377A impacted LGBT representation in the media and other areas of daily life.

“The retention of Section 377A causes a trickle-down effect which influences many of the rules and guidelines governing the lives of LGBT individuals in Singapore,” said Tan.

“I look forward to a future where we can hold our heads up high as equals in the eyes of the law instead of living as marginalised, second-class citizens in our own country.”

Hopes for marriage one day

Instagram influencers and activists Andee Chua and Hugo Liu (originally from Taiwan) are based in Singapore. They took to social media to celebrate the announcement.

“Last night was super emotional for us. And we woke up today feeling legit – we feel seen, heard, and most importantly, LEGAL,” they said.

“While long overdue, this is an important milestone for the LGBTQ+ community in Singapore, and we should be celebrating this win. Honestly, we did not imagine that it could happen within our lifetime. There are still a lot of emotions to process.”

Vietnam no longer considers LGBT people sick

The Vietnamese Health Ministry announced it no longer considers LGBTQ people to be sick.

A directive the ministry issued on 3 August directs health care providers “not to consider homosexual, bisexual and transgender (people) an illness.”

The directive also notes homosexuality cannot be “cured.”

“The Vietnamese Health Ministry’s recognition that sexual orientation and gender identity are not illnesses will bring relief to LGBT people and their families across Vietnam,” said Kyle Knight, senior LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “LGBT people in Vietnam deserve access to health information and services without discrimination, and the Health Ministry’s new directive is a major step in the right direction.” Human Rights Watch notes Vietnam over the last decade “has made some progress on LGBT rights.”

BBC Radio 4: Pick of the Week – Mr Lucas’s Diaries – Saturday 8.00pm on Radio 4

There will be an on-air content warning before this is broadcast. Completely understandable, as some of the readings from the diaries of Mr Lucas contain pretty explicit references to gay sex, but equally fitting in that his life was a peculiar mix of conformity and secrecy.

Mark Gatiss reads extracts from almost 60 notebooks of spidery handwriting, diligently kept with added newspaper cuttings and photographs, that were composed by George Leo John Lucas, who died in 2014 aged 88.

The diaries catalogue his life as a gay man in Britain, working as a respectable civil servant and secretly paying for sex. Gatiss refers to them as “The fragments of a life … it’s like a gay Tutankhamun.”

The diaries were bequeathed to the journalist Hugo Greenhalgh, who joins Gatiss to discuss what they tell us about a society slowly coming to terms with homosexuality.

The extracts are sometimes shocking (the verbal abuse from Lucas’s parents is particularly cruel), sometimes raw, but, for the main part, incredibly poetic. The final reading, comparing the legalisation of gay sex to an orchard, is profoundly beautiful – and very sad.

The Greatest Auction

Channel 4 are working on a brand-new TV series with the working title of “The Greatest Auction”.

People will be invited to bring extraordinary objects into their specially created auction house to sell to buyers specially selected for their enthusiasm and passion for these items.  From art to artefacts, medieval to modern – with the weird and wonderful in between – The Greatest Auction will feature an infinite variety of truly amazing objects as they come under the hammer, and their value is decided in the auction room.

They are very keen to feature items from British LGBTQ+ History – a banner from the first UK Pride, an original pits and perverts t-shirt, a sign from a famous venue or it could be anything interesting and with a story that they can tell.

Download the details:

What are you doing for Pride next week?

Manchester Pride is just around the corner and there is a huge line up of events for everyone! This year Manchester Pride are thrilled to be delivering events in partnership with amazing LGBTQ+ charities including The LGBT Foundation, The Proud Trust, akt, George House Trust and Proud2B Parents!

The artist lineup this year is one of the most diverse in Manchester Pride’s history, featuring an incredible array of intersectional LGBTQ+ talent, 56% of whom are people of colour, 42% are trans and non-binary, 53% are women and over half are Manchester-based!

Join us on Thursday, 25 August at 7.30pm as we kick things off with the Human Rights Forum presents Pride is a Protest, in partnership with the LGBT Foundation! This is at the Alan Turing Stage, Sackville Gardens, unticketed and free to attend.

The full festival line-up (including the Parade, Gay Village Party, Superbia, Youth Pride, Family Pride and more) can be found here.

As always, the weekend ends by remembering LGBTQ+ people who have lost their lives to HIV with the Candlelit Vigil, this year proudly in partnership with George House Trust. This is on Monday, 29 August at 9.00pm at the Alan Turing Stage, Sackville Gardens, unticketed and free to attend.

What are you doing after Pride?

Wednesday, 31 August, 2.00pm – 4.00pm

LGBT+ Short Films – Mini Cini, Ducie Street Warehouse, 51 Ducie Street, Manchester, M1 2TP

We have a fantastic programme of short LGBT+ films:

Stonewall Forever, The Beauty President, Back In The Closet – Lifesolation, Manchester Pride Parade: The Movie and Albert’s Story.

This event is free but food and drink can be purchased in Ducie Street Warehouse. There are a limited number of seats.

Please contact us here if interested requesting number of tickets and name(s) applicable.

Together as One Exhibition

The exhibition ‘Together As One – A Celebration Of Manchester’s LGBTQIA+ Community’ at the Refuge, Oxford Street, Manchester M60 7HA runs until 30 September 2022.

The exhibition features a collection of photographs by Peter J Walsh and Jon Shard capturing two iconic moments in Manchester’s vibrant history – the Clause 28 Demonstration and Flesh at the Haçienda.

Didsbury Pride returns on 3 September – For more details see Facebook: @didsburypride

Proud Exhibition

Proud Exhibition, an audio trail celebrating Manchester’s LGBTQIA+ community continues until 4 September.

You’ll be able to follow a trail across Manchester’s shopping streets and hear 20 incredible true stories on the theme of PROUD. Twenty brave and bold storytellers share their stories to send a message of hope and solidarity.

A full map of where you can find the stories can be found on VisitManchester.com/Proud.

The first Chorlton Pride is on 17 September – For more details see Facebook: @ChorltonPride

OutStageUs Performances Return to The Lowry

OutStageUs is Hive North’s annual showcase of new works by the Manchester LGBTQ+ community. Featuring short plays, films and performance art. It runs from Tuesday 27 to Thursday 29 September.

Now in its fifth year, OutStageUs will showcase ten electrifying brand-new short plays and spoken word pieces by some of the UK’s most exciting LGBTQ+ writers.

OutStageUs is a fearlessly bold celebratory night of theatre addressing and exploring issues of sexuality and gender identity. Created by LGBTQ+ artists, the new work will break down barriers and give an authentic voice to a community still fighting for equality.

Prepare to be entertained, excited, invigorated and inspired as we celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and its rich history of defiance and activism. This collection of funny, moving, and inspiring new writing will give our community strength, optimism, and a voice.

This Years Scripts:

Guy Lines by Robert Holtom

Guy Lines is an exploration of the huge changes in the perception of male sexuality over the 16+ years since Robert was at school, he came of age in a time when you were either straight (good) or gay (bad), and bisexuality was constantly dismissed. Guy Lines honours the pain of this legacy while celebrating the changes it has created.

Strawberry Jam by Ribh Ireland

Strawberry Jam, at its heart, is simply a conversation. Two people talking about love. Even though we may not always have the language to describe love, out of the great big emotional line-up we can pick it out a mile off. So, what happens when this label is taken away? What happens then? And what happens when you have to explain it to someone who hasn’t got the foggiest idea what it is?

Birthday Waltz by Paul Fairweather

Inspired by a Birthday Waltz for Paul’s 60th birthday at La Vie en Rose, the Queer Tango Festival in Paris, this piece looks at over four decades of LGBTQ+ activism and celebrates and remembers campaigns, pickets, clubbing, and friendships. Written during lockdown this is Paul’s first ever stage script.

Fabulous Family by Nick Maynard

For too long all LGBTQ+ theatre has only been about coming out or dying. We are so much more than that. We need our stories write large. We need our lives documenting. That’s what stops us from being invisible. That’s what stops us from being victims … When we learn that we can be heroes!

If Being Gay Was A Choice by Nejmi Usta

Some people are convinced that being gay is a choice, inspiring Nejmi to write Gay Choice. The piece was created using real life experience of falling in love, feeling part of a community and a family that is not related by blood, and some of the prejudice that members of the LGBTQ+ community face.

Taking Stock by Lydia Brickland

As a writer Lydia likes to explore difficult and challenging topics through humour and playfulness. Although James is going through the ringer at work he does it with comedy, he’s got the gift of the gab and he is sure as hell going to use that gab.

Boxers and Soxers by James McDermott

Quentin Crisp said ‘before two men have sex, they have to have a board meeting’ to discuss who does what and what goes where. This quote inspired the drama of Boxers and Soxers, a short play following two young men at different points in their sexuality journey as they negotiate sleeping together for the first time in real time.

Spark by Caitlin Magnall-Kearns

Caitlin’s inspiration was conversations with a lot of her queer friends about “categories” and the boxes people put themselves and others in. It’s a love story, and one that questions the need for these self-imposed restrictions. Plus-size male bodies are rarely seen as objects of desire in the media, and Caitlin is really proud this intimate piece will finally be seen by a live audience.

A Transgender Clown and a Frack-Happy Tory by Bobbie Warner

Stories about trans people are rarely written for or by trans people, and therefore focus on suffering and victimisation. Bobbie wanted to explore the heaviness of navigating life as transgender through a more joyful, optimistic lens, and by showing two flawed human beings whose personal lives are made political through no choice of their own.

Fanny’s Your Aunt by Bob Leaver

‘Fanny’s Your Aunt’ – an absurd comedy, murder mystery – carries on the ‘Carry On’ tradition but takes it in a direction that even Frankie Howard could never have imagined!

They by Alice Hancock

Alice came out as non-binary last year, and sometimes found it a struggle to be accepted by the people around them. That frustration, and continued invalidation by people who don’t mean to be hurtful, provided the inspiration for the character of Ash. The daily ‘she’s and ‘her’s have taken them to this point where they’re wondering if other people will ever see them the way they see themself, and that can hurt.

Tickets are £10 / £12 plus transaction fee from The Lowry, Salford Quays.

Slattery’s Patisserie

Slattery’s in Whitefield, Manchester was once a small cake shop, but has now expanded into a patisserie that employs 66 staff including 14 cake makers.

We had to book a month in advance for two tables in the 140 seat Masons Dining Room upstairs on the first floor. The Dining Room specialises in daytime treats including jacket potatoes, salads, sandwiches, afternoon teas and more importantly the sweeter things in life – delicious desserts, particularly chocolate treats!

Slattery’s has a tempting array of cakes and pastries, including a jaw-dropping selection of hand-made birthday and wedding cakes. They almost make you want to get married just so you can have a cake!

Chocoholics should look away now as you can also buy a huge selection of chocolate that is also made on site. Slattery’s uses 40 tonnes of chocolate per year.

The clientele comprises of yummy mummys and ladies who lunch, but we were welcomed and treated to some fantastic food. Let’s just hope my waistline doesn’t mirror Slattery’s expansion.

Photos can be seen here.

Proud Exhibition

Heard Storytelling are delighted to announce Proud Exhibition, an audio trail celebrating Manchester’s LGBTQIA+ community which will be launching on Saturday, 20 August. It continues until 4 September.

You’ll be able to follow a trail across Manchester’s shopping streets and hear 20 incredible true stories on the theme of PROUD. Twenty brave and bold storytellers share their stories to send a message of hope and solidarity.

The exhibition is free to access and beautiful large-scale portraits of the storytellers, forming a trail of ‘Living Portraits’ through the city centre, will accompany all of the spoken stories.

A full map of where you can find the stories will be live from Saturday, 20 August on VisitManchester.com/Proud.

A huge thank you to Cityco Event Space for commissioning this exhibition to proudly support Manchester Pride in a creative, empathetic and authentic way.

LGBT Archives Community Event

Date & Time of Event: 25 August, 2022 – 11.00am to 1.00pm at Manchester Central Library, St Peter’s Square, Manchester, M2 5PD

Drop in to Manchester Central Library this Pride week, to discover some of the rich history of Manchester’s LGBT+ Community, with items specially selected from the LGBT Foundation Archive at Archives+.

Pride is a Protest and there are many parts that make that Protest happen. If you’re inspired by the items in the archive and wish to get involved in community organising yourself, there will be a chance to chat to Community Organising Coordinator Nico and hear about ways you can get involved and how to take part. The event will be joined by the Archive+ Team with a creative corner for you to have a go at crafting a message to take away with you.

Pope Francis meets with transgender people at Vatican

The Vatican’s newspaper L’Osservatore Romano reported that during the weekly papal audience in St Peter’s Basilica on 10 August, Pope Francis met with a group of transgender people who are staying in a church on the outskirts of Rome.

The Blessed Immaculate Virgin Church in Rome’s suburbs opened its doors to trans people during the coronavirus pandemic.

L’Osservatore Romano noted that the pope previously met with some of the trans residents. “No one should encounter injustice or be thrown away, everyone has dignity of being a child of God,” the paper quoted Sister Genevieve Jeanningros as saying.

Francis has earned praise from some members of the LGBTQ and intersex community for his outreach.

When asked in 2013 about a purportedly gay priest, he replied, “Who am I to judge?” He has met individually and in groups with trans people over the course of his pontificate. But he has not changed church teaching that holds that same-sex sexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.” In 2021, he allowed publication of a Vatican document asserting that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex unions since “God cannot bless sin.”

Tom Daley: Illegal To Be Me

In the programme “Illegal To Be Me” shown on BBC, Tom Daley visits the most homophobic countries in the Commonwealth.

Since Tom Daley came out in a YouTube video nine years ago, he has become an outspoken advocate of LGBT+ rights. The diver and national treasure was a good choice, then, to present an examination of homophobia in Commonwealth countries, filmed in the months leading up to the Games in Birmingham.

As thousands of athletes prepare to compete on the global stage at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, Olympic gold medallist and double world champion diver Tom Daley wants to shine a light on an issue that he cares passionately about. Some competitors live in fear of horrific brutality inside the countries they represent. With punishments including whipping, life imprisonment and even death, it is illegal to be gay in over half of the 56 member states of the Commonwealth. 

His journey takes him to some of the Commonwealth’s most homophobic countries to ask what the sporting world can do to help. The film culminates with Tom taking a very public stand at this year’s opening ceremony, in a powerful statement against homophobia. 

Travelling from Pakistan, where homosexuality carries a maximum penalty of death by stoning, to Jamaica, where the punishment is ten years’ imprisonment with hard labour, Tom talks to top male and female sportspeople facing persecution. He also discovers the colonial legacy that first criminalised homosexuality and the toxic influence of slavery on attitudes towards LGBT+ people.

The programme is available on BBC iPlayer here for the next eleven months.

Edinburgh Fringe Festival: Silkworm

The play Silkworm is at the Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

A Nigerian couple seeking asylum on the grounds of sexual persecution are put to the test as the government’s probing questions seep into the cracks of their relationship.

Imagine coming under such ferocious interrogation about your private life that the questions start to wheedle their way into your relationship. Such is the case for Abidemi and Omolade in this two-hander about a Nigerian couple seeking asylum in the UK on the grounds of sexual persecution.

As playwright Vlad Butucea tells it, the string of Home Office interviews seeks to establish their relationship in ways that go well beyond their simple attraction to each other. Seeming more prurient than purposeful, they ask for intimate details of their gender identity, sexual history and, especially weirdly, how religion fits in with all of this.

And the effect is only to add to the pressure on Ewa Dina as the extrovert Abidemi, who likes nothing more than to live it up in a nearby gay club, and Antonia Layiwola as the cautious and pragmatic Omolade, who would rather get on with the quiet life of an artist. The club itself becomes a source of contention after Omolade is refused entry for not seeming to meet the gender requirements. “They ask more questions than the bloody Home Office,” she says, a woman forever forced to conform to the expectations of others.

Back in their temporary accommodation on the 17th floor of a Glasgow tower block, they internalise the Home Office’s questions. Why did they end up together? How well do they know each other? The probing of some anonymous official turns into doubt and uncertainty, pulling them apart. “What does a woman like you see in a woman like me?” asks Abidemi.

Directed for Pearlfisher by Mojisola Elufowoju on a drab and literal set by Jen McGinley, the play contrasts the official account the women must give of themselves – schooled by an immigration expert called Ugo – with the messier although no less deserving lives they actually live. Every so often in the supposedly spontaneous videos they film as evidence of their loving relationship, the facade slips to reveal something of the cruel world they are desperately trying to flee.

The play is a witty, intimate and intense study of two vulnerable, strong women as they seek the words to navigate their way through a savage hostile system.

Why It’s Never Too Late To Be a Lesbian

More and more, women are coming out in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond. Census-data analysis from the US found that 36 per cent of women in their 40s with same-sex partners previously had been married to men. That number grew to more than half for lesbians in their 50s, and 75 per cent for those 60 and older.

Late-blooming lesbians – women who discover or declare same-sex feelings in their 30s and beyond – have attracted increasing attention over the last few years, partly due to the clutch of glamorous, high-profile women who have come out after heterosexual relationships. Cynthia Nixon, for instance, who plays Miranda in Sex and the City, was in a heterosexual relationship for 15 years, and had two children, before falling for her partner, Christine Marinoni, in 2004. In 2009, it was reported that the singer Alison Goldfrapp, who is in her mid-40s, had started a relationship with film editor Lisa Gunning. The actor Portia de Rossi was married to a man before coming out and falling in love with the comedian and talk show host, Ellen DeGeneres, whom she married in 2008. And then there’s the retail adviser and television star, Mary Portas, who was married to a man for 13 years, and had two children, before getting together with Melanie Rickey, the fashion-editor-at-large of Grazia magazine.

The subject has now begun attracting academic attention. Christan Moran, who is a researcher at Southern Connecticut University, decided to look at the lives of women who had experienced a same-sex attraction when they were over 30 and married to a man.

She wanted to explore the notion, she writes, that “a heterosexual woman might make a full transition to a singular lesbian identity … in other words, they might actually change their sexual orientation.” As Moran notes in her study, this possibility is often ignored; when a person comes out in later life, the accepted wisdom tends to be that they must always have been gay or bisexual, but just hid or repressed their feelings. Increasingly researchers are questioning this, and investigating whether sexuality is more fluid and shifting than is often suspected.

Sarah Spelling, a former teacher, says she can well understand how “you can slide or slip or move into another identity”. She met her first serious partner, a man, when she was at university. They were together for 12 years.

Spelling is a keen feminist and sportsperson, and met lesbian friends through both of these interests. “I didn’t associate myself with their [sexuality] – I didn’t see myself as a lesbian, but very clearly as a heterosexual in a longstanding relationship.” When a friend on her hockey team made it clear she fancied her, “and thought I would fancy her too, I was like ‘No! That’s not me!’ That just wasn’t on my compass.”

Then, aged 34, having split up with her long-term partner, and in another relationship with a man, she found herself falling in love with her housemate – a woman. After “lots of talking together, over a year or so,” they formed a relationship. “It was a meeting of minds,” says Spelling, “a meeting of interests. She’s a keen walker. So am I. She runs. So do I. We had lots in common, and eventually I realised I didn’t have that with men.” While having sex with a man had never felt uncomfortable or wrong, it wasn’t as pleasurable as having sex with a woman, she says. From the start of the relationship, she felt completely at ease, although she didn’t immediately define herself as a lesbian. “I didn’t define myself as heterosexual either – I quite clearly wasn’t that. And I wouldn’t define myself as bisexual.” After a while she fully embraced a lesbian identity. “We’ve been together for 23 years,” she says, “so it’s pretty clear that that was a defining change.”

Dr Lisa Diamond, associate professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, has been following a group of 79 women for 15 years, tracking the shifts in their sexual identity. The women she chose at the start of the study had all experienced some same-sex attraction – although in some cases only fleetingly – and every two years or so she has recorded how they describe themselves: straight, lesbian, bisexual, or another category of their own choosing. In every two-year wave, 20-30% of the sample have changed their identity label, and over the course of the study, about 70% have changed how they described themselves at their initial interview. What’s interesting, says Diamond, is that transitions in sexual identity aren’t “confined to adolescence. People appear equally likely to undergo these sorts of transitions in middle adulthood and late adulthood.” And while, in some cases, women arrive at a lesbian identity they’ve been repressing, “that doesn’t account for all of the variables … In my study, what I often found was that women who may have always thought that other women were beautiful and attractive would, at some point later in life, actually fall in love with a woman, and that experience vaulted those attractions from something minor to something hugely significant. It wasn’t that they’d been repressing their true selves before; it was that without the context of an actual relationship, the little glimmers of occasional fantasies or feelings just weren’t that significant.”

Diamond has a hunch that the possibility of moving across sexual boundaries increases as people age. “What we know about adult development,” she says, “suggests that people become more expansive in a number of ways as they get older … I think a lot of women, late in life, when they’re no longer worried about raising the kids, and when they’re looking back on their marriage and how satisfying it is, find an opportunity to take a second look at what they want and feel like.” This doesn’t mean that women are choosing whether to be gay or straight, she clarifies. (Diamond’s work has sometimes been distorted by rightwing factions in the US, who have suggested it shows homosexuality is optional.) “Every one of the women I studied who underwent a transition experienced it as being out of her control. It was not a conscious choice … I think the culture tends to lump together change and choice, as if they’re the same phenomenon, but they’re not. Puberty involves a heck of a lot of change, but you don’t choose it. There are life-course transitions that are beyond our control.”

This was certainly true for Laura Manning, a lawyer from London, who is now in her late 40s. She had always had a vague inkling she might have feelings for women, but met a man at university, “a really gentle man, Jeff, and I fell in love with him, and for a long time that was enough to balance my feelings”. She married him in her late 20s, had two children in her early 30s, “and once I’d got that maternal part of my life out of the way, I suddenly started thinking about me again. I started to feel more and more uncomfortable about the image that I was presenting, because I felt like it wasn’t true.” In her late 30s, she began going out clubbing, “coming back on the bus at four in the morning, and then getting up and going to work. I was still living with Jeff, and I just started shutting down our relationship. He knew I was pushing him away.”

The marriage ended, and Manning moved out. She has since had two long-term relationships with women, and says she’s much happier since she came out, but suspects that her biological urge to have children, and her genuine feelings for Jeff, made her marriage inevitable on some level. “The thought of sex with a man repels me now, but at the time, when I was in my marriage, I didn’t feel that, and I didn’t feel I was repressing anything. The intensity of feeling in my relationship with Jeff overcame and blanketed my desires for women.”

Sexual fluidity occurs in both men and women, but it has been suggested that women are potentially more open and malleable in this regard. Richard Lippa, professor of psychology at California State University, Fullerton, has carried out a variety of studies that have led him to the conclusion that, “while most men tend to have what I call a preferred sex and a non-preferred sex … with women there are more shades of grey, and so I tend to talk about them having a more preferred sex, and a less preferred sex. I have definitely heard some women say, ‘It was the person I fell in love with, it wasn’t the person’s gender,’ and I think that that is much more of a female experience than a male experience.

“I’ve never had a straight man say to me, at age 45, I just met this really neat guy and I fell in love with him and I don’t like men in general, but God, this guy’s so great that I’m going to be in a relationship with him for the next 15 years.” In Diamond’s study, around a quarter of the women have reported that gender is largely irrelevant in their choice of sexual partners. “Deep down,” said one woman, “it’s just a matter of who I meet and fall in love with, and it’s not their body, it’s something behind the eyes.”

When Tina Humphrys, 70, first fell in love with a woman, she didn’t define herself as a lesbian, “I just thought: ‘It’s her.'” Humphrys was in her mid-30s, had two children, and was coming out of a horrible second marriage. “I hated my life,” she says. “The four bedrooms, the children – well, I didn’t hate them, they just bored me to tears. I used to lie on the couch and my eyes would fill with tears as they had their naps.”

She had found women attractive in the past, “but I think women do, don’t they? You look and you think – that dress looks fabulous, or isn’t she looking slim, or doesn’t she look pretty. But you don’t necessarily put sexual feelings on it.” Then she went to university as a mature student, joined a women’s group, and started to fall for one of the other members. “It was a bit of a shock to find that I was attracted sexually to this woman, but then it was also a decision to leave men. It was a decision to leave a particularly oppressive and restrictive way of living and try to live differently.” She moved into a “commune-type place”, and had non-monogamous relationships with women for a while, before settling down with her current partner of more than 30 years.

The psychotherapist and writer, Susie Orbach, spent more than 30 years with the writer Joseph Schwartz, and had two children with him, before the partnership ended, and she subsequently formed a happy, ongoing relationship with the novelist Jeanette Winterson. Orbach says that the initial love connection between mother and daughter makes lesbian feelings in later life unsurprising. “If you think about it,” she says, “whose arms are you first in, whose smells do you first absorb, where’s that body-to-body imprint? I mean, we’re still not really father-raised, are we, so it’s a very big journey for women to get to heterosexuality … What happens is that you layer heterosexuality on top of that bond. You don’t suddenly switch away from it. You don’t give up that very intimate attachment to a woman.”

Of course, the notion that your sexuality might shift entirely isn’t welcomed by everyone; as Diamond says, “Even though there’s more cultural acceptance than there was 20 years ago, same-sex sexuality is still very stigmatised, and the notion that you might not know everything there is to know about something that’s so personal and intimate can terrify individuals. It’s really hard for people to accept.” That’s why the writing and research in this area is so important.

“While some people find change threatening,” Diamond says, “others find it exciting and liberating, and I definitely think that for women in middle adulthood and late life, they might be the most likely to find sexual shifts empowering. We’re an anti-ageing society. We like people to be young, nubile and attractive. And I think the notion that your sexuality can undergo these really exciting, expansive possibilities at a stage when most people assume that women are no longer sexually interesting and are just shutting down, is potentially a really liberating notion for women. Your sexual future might actually be pretty dynamic and exciting – and whatever went on in your past might not be the best predictor at all of what your future has in store.”

Job’s a Good ‘Un

Macclesfield is a market town in Cheshire, sixteen miles south of Manchester. It was once the world’s biggest producer of finished silk, and our visit today was to the Silk Museum and Paradise Mill.

We travelled to the town and made our way to The Society Rooms pub, the former home of the Macclesfield Useful Knowledge Society, established in the early 19th century.

After refreshments we walked just round the corner to the Silk Museum and Paradise Mill on Park Lane.

There were 71 silk mills operating in 1832 employing 10,000 people, and although a crash occurred in 1851 and many mill workers emigrated to the USA, the silk industry remained active in the town but no longer dominated.

Paradise Mill reopened in 1984 as a working mill museum, demonstrating the art of silk throwing and Jacquard weaving.

Our guide was very knowledgeable and enthusiastically demonstrated the various equipment and machinery involved in silk weaving. Her presentation was great and basically job’s a good ‘un. She explained how silk was extracted from silk worms and twisted on looms to turn into silk threads – a material as tough as steel. Most of the workers were women but children were also exploited.

The booming textile industries generated wealth and social change. In Macclesfield two fiercely independent Victorian women, Marianne Brocklehurst and Mary Booth are responsible for the Ancient Egyptian collection in the Silk Museum. They were life long companions and avid travellers. Together they explored Egypt, buying important objects and artefacts, specialising on Ancient Eqyptian women.

More photos can be seen here.

Gay Uncles Day

“Guncles” aka gay uncles and their beloved nieces and nephews are inspired to express their love for one another on 14 August in honour of the unofficial holiday dubbed “National Gay Uncles Day”.

Virtually every family has that relative, often an uncle, who spent his life as a ‘confirmed bachelor’. By promoting this day of celebration is to normalise the role of the gay uncle, cousin, brother … whatever, in the family and in society.

Don’t forget to tell your gay uncle that you love him if you haven’t already.

This ‘40s gospel singer with loud, soaring vocals kept quiet about one thing

This singer’s high-flying gospel vocals enthralled the public, but it wasn’t until his passing decades later that fans would learn what he’d long kept private.

Willmer Broadnax and his brother William from Houston sang together in different gospel groups throughout the ’30s and ’40s. The pair came to be known as “Little Axe” and “Big Axe” for their respective sizes.

What Willmer lacked in stature, he more than exceeded on stage; according to music critic Ray Foster, “his voice is sweet, but almost vicious, dripping with emotion.”

After the brothers decided to split ways creatively, Willmer kept his “Little Axe” persona in performing. He came to head Little Axe and the Golden Echoes, one of the top gospel touring acts of the 1940s.

It wasn’t until his passing in the early ’90s that the general public was made aware that Willmer was assigned female at birth, a fact that the Broadnax brothers had kept under wraps throughout their entire careers.

As close to his chest as Willmer played it, his legacy as a show-stopping trans man running the gospel group touring circuit lives on to this day.

Listen to Little Axe and the Golden Echoes’ swinging tune, “You Are My Sunshine”: