Stirring up the airwaves

An American adventure can quite change things. How do you like this outlook?

Gazing out to sea in Provincetown, Massachusetts:



Or this one?



That's right! You can now hear me in conversation with Merry Gangemi each week on Woman-Stirred Radio, offering commentaries on all things queer-shaped - mostly lesbian-shaped, I have to say - and mostly with a British spin. I'll also often be considering how our British and American cultures spin in and out of influencing each other.

Listen in each Thursday. Stream the whole show live 9pm-11pm in the UK (4pm-6pm Eastern US Time) from WGDR. There are always fantastic guests and great musical choices.

Actually, listen in next on 4th October. We're taking a break this week, but we'll be back!

Travels of a Queer Poet

Yes - that's me! I'm here, I'm queer, and I'm travelling to the States to read poetry and meet two of my Woman-Stirred friends in person for the very first time. I'm sure you've heard me talk about them before! So that really means I'm not here at all. In fact I'm over there - being queer, and friendly, and a poet. Or at least I will be very soon. If you see what I mean.

Here's what's going on. If you're in the Vermont vicinity, please come along and support us. I'm the one with the English accent.


BLACK SHEEP BOOKS presents:

Three Queer Poets:
Readings by Julie R. Enszer, Merry Gangemi, and Nicki Hastie

Tuesday, August 14 at 7:00 p.m.
at 4 Langdon Street, Montpelier, VT

Julie R. Enszer, a Maryland-based writer and lesbian activist, is published in "Iris: A Journal about Women," "Room of One's Own," "Long Shot," the "Jewish Women's Literary Annual," and the "Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly." Her book, "Homesteading: Essays on Life, Death, Sex, and Liberation," is forthcoming in winter 2008. For more on Julie, see http://www.JulieREnszer.com.

Merry Gangemi lives in Woodbury, VT, and is the host of Woman-Stirred Radio, a weekly queer cultural journal on WGDR 91.1 fm. Her work is published in the "Paterson Literary Review," "Journal of NJ Poets," "Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly," the "Harrington Lesbian Literary Review," "Vermont Woman," and the "Hardwick Gazette." She produces the annual Tea & Poetry series, a Vermont literary festival now in its sixth year. For more on Merry, see http://www.merrygangemi.org.

Nicki Hastie lives in Nottingham, England. She is a founding member of the Woman-Stirred blog. Her work is published in "Chroma," "Diva," "Trouble & Strife," and also in critical anthologies relating to women's health, coming out stories, lesbian fiction, and representations of lesbians in popular culture. For more on Nicki, see http://www.nickihastie.demon.co.uk.

* * *

Black Sheep Books, a community space and bookstore in Montpelier, Vermont, offers affordable radical and scholarly books, and hosts educational events on cultural and political topics. As an all-volunteer project, we are operated by a five-member collective hand in hand with a group of dedicated volunteers. Our principle focus is to provide access to anti-authoritarian Left ideas in a way that promotes intellectual debate and challenges today’s hegemonic culture. Together with horizontalist social movements and political projects, bookstores, infoshops, and publishers, Black Sheep Books works toward an egalitarian, ecological, and nonhierarchical society.

Black Sheep Books
4 Langdon Street, Montpelier, Vermont
www.blacksheepbooks.org / 802-225-8906
Hours: Tues-Sat 11-6, Sun 11-5, Mon closed



And then, on Saturday 18 August, what better than Tea and Poetry?

You really won't want to miss us in the gardens of Perennial Pleasures for this Vermont literary festival, now in its sixth year thanks to the organisational skills and poetic-mindedness of Merry Gangemi. Voluntary donations benefit the AFSC VT office youth outreach and education program.

Readings are at 1pm and 3pm on both Saturday and Sunday. Julie, Merry, and I will be reading on Saturday at 3pm. Don't forget to bring a lawn chair!

Ellen is not alone

I'd already come out a decade before, and none of us ever thought Ellen was alone in discovering her sexuality, but sometimes you've got to run with the times and make things so much more obvious. So I bought the t-shirt in 1997, the year when Ellen came out, declaring just that: "Ellen is not alone", and I wore it to work as a statement. Not that I was coming out too, because like I said, I was already out. But not everyone chooses to recognise these things, even when it's obvious. And yes - we deserve recognition!

So, it's kind of cool that I should now resemble Ellen in this quiz.

What famous lesbian do you most closely resemble? My Result: Ellen Degeneres   You're quick-witted, smart, savvy and you have a killer sense of humor. You are an active member of the Lesbian community and the only closet you're in is the one with all your clothes.
Melissa Ethridge
Katherine Moennig
Rosie O'Donnell
Tammy Lynn Michaels
K D Lang
Portia Di Rossi
Jackie Warner
What famous lesbian do you most closely resemble? Make a Quiz

Coming out. Closet. Clothes. Did you notice how I managed to reference them all in my opening paragraph? Not just a clothes horse, me. Oh no! As for that killer sense of humour ... well ... I rest my case.

Gay's The Word Needs Your Support!

The last surviving lesbian and gay bookshop in the UK is under threat.

I love Gay's The Word Bookshop. Every time I go to London I try to make the effort to get there - and to buy books. We need bookshops. You can browse online, but you can't hold the books in your hand. It's difficult to come across the surprising find, the older titles, online: the history of our struggles and our celebrations.

Please do what you can to support Gay's The Word. You can sponsor a shelf and help safeguard the bookshop's future.

Read about the authors supporting the bookshop in Times Online and Guardian Online.

Bookshops are a vital part of community-building. Our words are our future!

Let's Talk Toenails

Am I missing something? What's wrong with clipping your toenails in the living room? What room would you rather we did it in?

Ok, it was a straight woman writing about The L Word who made the comment about straight men clipping their toenails in the living room being a cliché and a cheap shot at men. But then, the lesbians got in on the act, and someone claimed: "i have never witnessed a woman (regardless of orientation) or a gay man do it" (clip their toenails in the living room, that is).

What world are we living in that women or men (regardless of orientation) are denied living room space to clip their toenails in?

I shave my head on the landing. I clip my toenails, and my fingernails, in the living room. My hair clippers are kept in the cupboard on the landing. My nail clippers are stored in a box in the living room. It makes perfect sense for me and my partner to clip nails in the living room. We collect our nail clippings in a rubbish bin and dispose of them. We don't distribute them all over the carpet and leave them there. We are two adult lesbians living in our own home. We can do what the f**k we like in our own living room!

Since when did toenail clippings become an indicator of gender and/or sexuality?

I guess it's a little sad that I got riled enough to blog about this, given that I seem to have been away from the blog for a month. Plus, I haven't even seen beyond Season 2 of The L Word. Maybe my problem is I feel I'm missing out!

We used to look at a woman's fingernails and make pointed comments. Do we have to check her toenail habits now, too?

A Night of Lesbian Entertainment

What might that look like? I can think of a few things. But if I have to start somewhere, then An L of a Night at Nottingham Playhouse paints a satisying image. That's where I spent an enjoyable evening last night, along with my partner and 708 other lesbians! Can you imagine that many lesbians in one room?

Quite what we were all doing there is worth analysis. As host of the evening, Belinda O'Hooley, quipped: "Why would any lesbian want to go out now that The L Word is available on DVD?"

Oh, but it seems that if we are offered our own particular brand of L-entertainment then we will turn out in our hundreds! The event was sold out weeks in advance. L-entertainment. Lentertainment. I like that. I'm sure others have used that word before, but I'll pretend it's a new L Word made up by me just now. I'm not religious, so the peculiarities of Lent tend to go over my head, but I'm pretty sure none of us would choose to give up our lesbians. Not me.

Greymatter opened the evening. They really are very special as a live act, and I enjoy The Indigo Girls influences. Plenty of other influences, too. Em and George as lead vocalists know how to connect with an audience. They have an easy charisma, and it's clear there's a great rapport between them. I'm hoping Greymatter will take up an invitation to be interviewed on Woman-Stirred Radio. Greymatter also played their pre-show publicity well, encouraging their fans to wear the newly-available Greymatter t-shirts. Here's a band that's going places.

Next up was Clare Summerskill with her original songs and comedy dissecting the quirkiness and tribulations of lesbian relationships in a way this audience could definitely relate to. Get us together in a large enough group and we're good at laughing at ourselves. I enjoyed the jokes about wondering what to wear and Clare's comment about it being so much easier if only there was a lesbian clothes shop on every high street. The punchline: "Oh, there is one! We've got Millets."

The interval came, and it's not easy being among that many women when you need to join the toilet queue. Actually, it was entirely civilised and fairly fast-moving - does the average dyke spend less time in a toilet cubicle than other women? It depends what we're doing in there, I suppose. But you do have to wonder if someone can't invent a new system for toileting that takes us more quickly through the relevant stages while still allowing for the highest standards of hygiene and privacy.

Back on stage with Al Start, whom I have to admit I hadn't heard sing before and had mostly overlooked when she was featured in Diva Magazine. She has an engaging image and laid-back stage presence, and my partner Andrea commented to me that she has a look of Matthew Perry from his early Friends days. She does as well. I'd call this cute. Al Start writes tender, rocky songs about her 1970s childhood and personal experiences, and she calls her guitar Mabel. I'm a sucker for women who develop friendships with instruments and objects.

Sue Perkins had top billing. I bet she had her suit, including waistcoat, tailored especially for her. I'm busy looking for a new waistcoat at the moment. Sue Perkins was presented with a comedy gift in the person of Mary, the British Sign Language signer. Sue was never in any danger of being upstaged - she's a consummate professional and performer, making best use of the moment, including audience participation (and lack of it) - but Mary was a total star. Signing some very choice language created hilarious moments, including "verruca" (an audience contribution), "bollocks", "ladynuts" and "special needs mule", which caused confusion when Mary heard this as "special needs meal"! Sue Perkins in live stand-up must be seen.

It was a real shame when one audience member almost spoilt the tone of the whole night, right at the end of Sue's slot, by questioning how often comedians update their material and why it would be worth paying to see a comedian in stand-up regularly. Trust an audience of lesbians to make it a controversial night. As Sue had commented earlier after a joke about the Pope (she's allowed to, she was brought up Catholic), the only murmurs of protest she's ever received doing this routine were from this lesbian audience. Can you believe it? Unfortunately, I can. But you can also rely on an auditorium of lesbians to back up a star performer against a voice of dissent when they believe that voice is wrong. Sue Perkins showed her balls alright, and she got a standing ovation. I hope she doesn't go away cursing the Nottingham audience.

Go and see Sue Perkins in stand-up. There was some wonderful material on Ruth Kelly. Listen to her radio shows. Belinda O'Hooley, very funnily, couldn't remember what those shows are when doing her introduction, but you can see them at Sue's wikipedia entry.

A Night of Lesbian Entertainment should involve supporting our out lesbian performers, if and when we can afford to. I know ticket prices for live performance will always be an issue that excludes some women. We need music, humour, voices and affirmation to enrich our lives. We deserve that.

Why is it we have so few recognised names to invite onto the bill for future L of a Night events? Today, I found this reference to the fact that Sue Perkins' "earnings plummeted 65 per cent in the year after she came out as a lesbian". Makes you think, doesn't it?

Keeping On Coming Out

My response to Julie R. Enszer's Washington Blade column.
Please read Julie's article and join the debate:

Julie R. Enszer won’t be celebrating National Coming Out Day this year. She says the focus on individual action, encouraging each person to come out and tell their story, has resulted in a whole generation of narcissistic queer people and doesn’t further the human rights cause. Julie believes that equality can only be achieved through an awareness of social responsibility and collective action.

I agree with this last part, and that an individual’s contribution to furthering LGBT rights needs to go beyond telling a friend, a family member or a total stranger. But I don’t believe you can ever promote communal responsibility by denying the impact that coming out has for individuals and for our LGBT communities.

Julie recognises how coming out continues to be significant for people newly coming out, but she thinks that “we have exhausted the potential and promise of coming out” beyond this. I can’t support this view. It is the act of coming out which gives the individual their initial access to community and access to the vital resources which are necessary to begin taking political steps forward.

Do we ever really exhaust coming out possibilities, as Julie suggests? Coming out is a process and something we have to do throughout our entire lives with each new person we meet. I’m aware that homophobia and heterosexism lead me to acts of self-censorship (however small) on a regular basis. Most of us don’t have the luxury of being always out. However out I feel in general, I don’t necessarily feel able to talk openly in conversation with everyone I meet. There will be brief encounters when it just doesn’t seem appropriate. There are other times I value self-protection.

Having to make the decision about whether to come out in each new situation reminds me that equality is far from being won. It has often been my individual vulnerability which has spurred me to communal action. Being reminded that coming out can still be a daily hurdle is why I give money to Stonewall, the UK organisation campaigning for equality and justice for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals; it’s why I have volunteered with LGBT organisations; it’s why I participate in high profile Pride marches (I can’t yet bring myself to call them parades); it’s why I write about my lesbian life at every opportunity.

I have highlighted the issue of coming out, and my own personal story, in much of my writing. Does this make me narcissistic, inward-looking? By making my story public I like to feel I’m engaged in building community and encouraging dialogue. When I was a teenager, scared and isolated, I searched for stories that spoke to me as a young lesbian and, unfortunately, I found too few of them. I may have begun my coming out twenty years ago, and my teenage experiences could now be considered historical by some, but I know that people continue to relate to and find value in this story.

There may be aspects of narcissism in queer culture, but I don’t think we should be blaming the cultural emphasis on coming out for this. Coming out isn’t enough to change the world, as those of us already doing it know; but it is a starting place for many who do wish to contribute to a larger vision. When our personal stories are gathered together they build queer culture. They are small parts of the rich queer culture that Julie herself has celebrated in another recent essay, Queer Culture: Our History and Our Legacy, where she states: “We need all forms of collecting, documenting and cataloguing our culture”.

Context is everything, and coming out continues to be powerful and significant in my life. However, I will choose the days I come out, and when it feels appropriate. I don’t need a National Coming Out Day to assist me. But I understand that other people do. So I’m not ready to get over coming out. And isn’t the point of this day that it is a day of collective action; a day we can confront our communal truth that homophobia and heterosexism are societal problems? A day that may encourage others to take their first step into community and begin a commitment to communal well-being?

I may not agree with Julie's whole stance, but I certainly agree we need opportunities to reconsider our actions and define our positions. For this reason I thank Julie for her commitment to encouraging debate, just as I admire her preparedness to be controversial.

Lesbians on TV: fewer ponytails please!

The May edition of Diva dropped through my letterbox last week, its front cover advertising a subject close to my heart: Lesbians on TV. Even the obligatory picture is there of (Brookside characters) Beth Jordache and Margaret Clemence kissing. Diva's round-up of key lesbian TV moments over the last 40 years tells us that "Theses have been written on the significance of that kiss between Beth and Margaret." Indeed they have. I believe I contributed a thesis of my own.

Are we really still so obsessed with that kiss from 1994? It seems so. My take on that kiss continues to be a popular draw to my website, and yes, I reproduce the picture there too. I'm sure most ignore the words and come in search of immediate visual pleasures. But sometimes it is also important to stand back and to analyse the TV storylines and representations.

Last month, the BBC was criticised by Stonewall for its mainly negative or virtually non-existent representation of lesbians and gay men. Read the report, Tuned Out: the BBC's portrayal of lesbian and gay people. While there have been a few sneers at Stonewall for its fairly simplistic methodology - monitoring 168 hours of peak time TV on BBC One and BBC Two - the issues being challenged here are significant in highlighting wider attitudes and assumptions about lesbian and gay identities, both on- and off-screen. During the 168 hours monitored, lesbians were referred to in positive and non-stereotyped ways for just one minute and 10 seconds.

Of course, Diva reminds us that BBC One and Two are not the only channels - and being lesbians we're very good at understanding that. My favourite portrayals in recent months were accessed on DVD, but had their original airing on TV: Sugar Rush (Channel 4) and The L Word (Living TV). The dykey viewing options must be improving for I didn't even watch Sugar Rush first time round and it hadn't crossed my mind that I might wish to invest in a satellite TV package in order to keep up with the latest season of The L Word - well, not until I watched all 4 DVDs of the first season in a weekend's sitting. I'm now desperately looking forward to the DVD of Season 2, but managing to keep myself in check by having purchased a copy of Reading the L Word: Outing Contemporary Television. It's cheaper than a subscription to Sky!

Above all, the measure of how much my relationship with lesbians on TV has changed since 1994 is this: nothing could encourage me to watch Eastenders, not even the chance of viewing another lesbian soap snog.

Like Stonewall, who found little evidence of a broad portrayal of lesbian and gay lives, my disillusionment with lesbians on TV has much to do with my bugbear that lesbian portrayals on TV almost inevitably involve ponytails. That there are lesbians with long hair in this world has not passed me by. But quite frankly, a lot of it on TV is unnecessary and gets in the way of my viewing pleasure. Once in a while it would be good to receive the affirmation that short-haired lesbians do exist - and that short-haired lesbians can be considered attractive.

So I will be conducting my own media watch: monitoring the construction of compulsory femininity in lesbian portrayals on TV. The BBC may be pleased to learn this isn't restricted to them. Please join in.

Word of the day

I discovered a possible new word today, inadvertently created within someone's out-of-office auto-reply email. In fact I had an amusing half hour reading out-of-office replies following a bulk e-mailing at work. It's fascinating how much detail some people are willing to give to explain why they can't read or reply to a message immediately.

The new word is Mondnesday - as in, "I am away until Mondnesday 30 January". You what? It's possible to get into all kinds of scrapes when re-hashing a previous auto-reply message in Outlook's Out of Office Assistant. The Assistant provides no assistance at all sometimes. You type; we'll all laugh.

I immediately came up with a definition:

Mondnesday n. [early 21C] Any day you're not actually sure what day it is. Any day will do. A mindless day; my mind's gone numb type of day.

The challenge now is to get this into the Oxford English Dictionary. Do you think it will catch on? Given the challenges laid down by Balderdash and Piffle currently, there's got to be a chance - and perhaps this entry in Out on a dike will prove to be the first written evidence in years to come.

I've thought of a few more.

Tuthuday n. [early 21C] A painful day, when stress is often experienced in the jaw area. A deadline is approaching and there are 'too few' days remaining.

Friturday n. [early 21C] A waste. Sometimes experienced as boredom. You wait all week for the weekend and when it arrives you just don't know what to do or how to spend those 'non-school' nights.

Sunfriday n. [early 21C] A holiday. Everyone deserves at least one week topping up their tan in the sun (sensibly, of course).

While you're thinking about words, surely someone can help Balderdash and Piffle prove that gay was used in the queer/homosexual sense before 1935 [current OED entry]. In the first programme of the series Victoria Coren tried hard to get the OED panel to listen to the earlier evidence in a Gertrude Stein short story and a Noel Coward song. Unfortunately they turned her down on both counts.

What do you reckon?

They were regular in being gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, they learned many little things that are things in being gay, they were gay every day, they were regular, they were gay, they were gay the same length of time every day, they were gay, they were quite regularly gay.
"Miss Furr and Miss Skeene", Geography and Plays (1922)

This story about two lesbians, written in 1911, and published in Vanity Fair magazine in July 1923, is considered to be the ultimate origin of the use of the term "gay" for "homosexual" (though it was not used in this sense in the story).

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein

The future's pink

Does everyone who writes for The Guardian or Observer need to be called Polly? Today, in The Guardian, Polly Curtis turned her attention to the pink pound.

Lesbians earn £6,000 more than the national average for women, take two more holidays a year and spend £400 a month on credit cards, according to the survey of 1,118 readers of Diva and Gay Times by the marketing consultancy Out Now.

So - just how representative are the self-selecting people who agree to complete marketing surveys of this type? Let's think now. Two more holidays a year than the national average for women? Where does that leave me and my one holiday a year? Ok, so last year I had three nights in Blackpool and three nights in Brighton. That could be considered two holidays, but it still leaves the average woman with no holidays whatsoever. £400 on credit cards? I don't think so! I'm a Maestro girl who spends within her means. And what I earn is between me and my employer.

Yesterday I may have sounded obsessed with the millions spent on hair removal - but you can't blame me for that. Polly (Vernon) got there first; I was simply responding. Now we're to marvel at the multi-millions spent by gay men and lesbians on frivolous kinds of entertainment. Outrageous!

Gay men spent more on holidays, DVDs and clothing last year than lesbians, but lesbians outspent gay men on mobile telephone bills and buying pet food.

What does that tell us? Lesbians are practical and gay men are pleasure-seeking? Lesbians try harder at long-distance relationships and make up for it by pampering their cats and dogs, who (quite frankly) don't care if their lesbians wear clothes or not. Is this helping the stereotypes any?

And then we get to the crutch of the matter.

It's not really the money that Polly (Curtis) wants to draw attention to. It's femininity! The big issue here is the femininity of lesbians. But of course - silly me - that must cost them millions!

Diva magazine doesn't help, running it's own 'Fashion survey'. Jane Czyzselska, Diva's editor, is quoted as saying:

The stereotypical idea of lesbians - particularly from people with prejudices - is that we are not feminine and that's almost considered a crime. It's therefore interesting to note how many women describe themselves as feminine.

Apparently 33% who answered the survey describe themselves this way. And that's my point, really. 33% who answered the survey. It's a fashion survey, right. With questions about knickers and bras, accessories and cosmetics. Who is more likely to fill in this survey? Those who wear bras (95%) and high heels (25% own at least one pair) and make-up (75%). That's 75% of those who answered the survey, Diva. Not, as the magazine states, "three out of four readers". Did I answer the survey? No. Did three out of four readers answer the survey. I doubt it. I doubt very much if Diva are prepared to say how many responses they got. At least the marketing survey by Out Now gives us numbers.

So why is a lesbian magazine so keen to shout about the femininity of lesbians?

The point of these new surveys seems to be to demonstrate to companies that lesbians have signifcant disposable income and are prepared to dispose of it in large lumps if only advertisers would wake up and recognise the potential of lesbians as consumers.

My point is this. Why are lesbians being sold as attractive to advertisers only if they can be shown off as feminine? Even if only one-third feminine. Whose stereotypes are being bolstered here? By all means show lesbians buying make-up, wearing skirts and high heels (which is as TV drama prefers it), but even the most feminine of lesbians takes her high heels and make-up off from time to time. I want to see the adverts that play to the strengths of the other 66%.

Is it something of a backlash; is it at all significant that Diva's fashion survey appeared in the December 2005 issue with the hairy-armpitted model and main cover headline of 'Beauty and the Butch'?

Money makes the world go round. Or is that femininity?

Can you smell something?

Someone ended up at my website today after doing a keyword search for "lesbian and sniffing". I couldn't recall writing much of interest about having a bad cold, because I'm sure that's the only kind of sniffing being referred to. Poor little lesbian, stuck at home with only a runny nose for company, turns to the web to seek out other sinus-blocked dykes for afternoon sniffs and sympathy. Or something like that.

"Lesbian and sniffing". Hmmm - it's not the best personal ad I've ever seen.

So I had to go and remind myself what my website has to do with sniffing. Fortunately, I found this pretty innocuous passage:

Specimens of lesbian writing are sometimes still disguised specimens. I play detective, then, sniffing out the codes which may eventually spell from apparently nothing L-E-S-B-I-A-N: it's the businesss of creating language from silence.

That's alright, then. It's only me playing bloodhound - sniffing out the lesbian on the page. If she's there I'll find her.

All this has got me thinking, though. Do lesbians sniff more than other women? Is there a specifically lesbian style of sniffing? Is all this sniffing an elaborate performance to attract a mate, waiting for the gallant dyke to pull out that display handkerchief from her top pocket and save the day? ...

Ok, so maybe I've ventured too far into fantasy fashions. Exactly which handkerchief and whose top pocket am I referring to? I'm not really sure, but there's probably velvet sewn up in there somewhere. At least there's not a monocle in sight. For that we'd need a whole new chapter, right? "Lesbian and squinting"!!

No sex talk, please, we're British!

From sand sculpture to burying heads in sand. Supposedly hidden facts about sex and sexuality have been in the news this week.

Newly released documents at the National Archives in Kew, London reveal that books about lesbianism put government censors all in a quandary in the 1930s. To censor or not to censor? It was understood by then that banning books simply served to get them better known - The Well of Loneliness being a case in point. But to think that women would only realise 'such practices' as masturbation and lesbianism existed through reading books, and only then start to adopt them, shows a real misunderstanding of female sexuality. It also does a disservice to the female imagination, I reckon.

See also, the results of a UK sexual behaviour survey conducted in 1949. Why should we expect sexual desires to have been much different in the 1930s and 1940s?

Out on a Brighton dike

Today I'm sorting out my best clothes ready to venture into that other British gay coastal resort beginning with B. The one that isn't Blackpool. That would be Brighton, then. The number one (it has to be said) British gay coastal resort beginning with B.

This is the last chance for a summer holiday this year so I'm packing my long shorts and my short longs. I have both, lucky me. I also have long longs, just in case the sun is cloud-logged. The only item I don't possess are short shorts. A few years ago I used to play tennis in short shorts, but as I don't play tennis any more I can safely do away with anything so unflattering. Give me shorts on the baggy side with multiple pockets and I'm ready for adventure. Long shorts measure in at knee length or just above the knee. Short longs are three-quarter length trousers reaching to the calves. That's as precise as I'm willing to be.

The Brighton-Nottingham link has turned up in other ways today. I love being able to form connections in memory and language. There's usually a book involved in this somewhere. The written word is a helpful prompt to memory, of course. There's even more joy when that book is on my shelves. My Woman-Stirred collaborator, Mary, has been talking to me about lesbian literary Paris in the first half of the twentieth century, including the lesbian gaze of American journalist, Janet Flanner. So of course I can't resist the wordplay leap from Flanner to flâneur, also strongly linked with Paris and a significant figure in the 1920s Paris salon culture represented by such writers as Djuna Barnes.

For writing on the lesbian flâneur, you can't do better than turn to Sally Munt. That would be Professor Sally Munt, author of Heroic Desire: Lesbian Identity and Cultural Space, amongst other things. This is the book I remembered to look out and which rests in my lap as I type. Our paths never crossed, but I get the feeling Sally didn't enjoy life as much in Nottingham, so it's good news for her that she found her way back to Brighton and the University of Sussex. In the move from Brighton to Nottingham in 1993 she wrote in her essay, "The Lesbian Flâneur", "in terms of my lesbian identity, I'm in another country [in Nottingham]".

Nottingham has been getting a lot of undeserved bad press recently, so I hardly dare add further fuel to the suggestion that there are many English cities preferable to Nottingham. For a holiday, especially if you like the sea, maybe. Let me just state now that I'm a very happy Nottingham resident and Nottingham has its own culture to be proud of. Still, Munt has some interesting observations worth quoting and (written over 10 ten years ago) these have absolutely nothing to do with the current furore over English city league tables.

Brighton looks to Europe for its model of Bohemia, for it is just warm enough to provide a pavement culture to sit out and watch the girls go by. ... Promenading on a Sunday afternoon on the pier, loitering in The Lanes, or taking a long coffee on the seafront, ostensibly reading The Observer, the gaze is gay. Brighton introduced me to the dyke stare, it gave me permission to stare. It made me feel I was worth staring at, and I learned to dress for the occasion. Brighton constructed my lesbian identity, one that was given to me by the glance of others, exchanged by the looks I gave them, passing - or not passing - in the street.

It's colder in Nottingham. There's nothing like being contained in its two large shopping malls on a Saturday morning to make one feel queer. Inside again, this pseudo-public space is sexualized as privately heterosexual. Displays of intimacy over the purchase of family-sized commodities are exchanges of gazes calculated to exclude. When the gaze turns, its intent is hostile: visual and verbal harassment make me avert my eyes. I don't loiter, ever, the surveillance is turned upon myself, as the panopticon imposes self-vigilance. One night last week, I asked two straight women to walk me from the cinema to my car. The humiliation comes in acknowledging that my butch drag is not leather enough to hide my fear.

Sally Munt, The Lesbian Flâneur in Heroic Desire: Lesbian Identity and Cultural Space (London: Cassell, 1998), pp.31-32.

It's really not that unsafe in Nottingham, I assure you. We just can't claim to be a gay city with a capital B. I guess this explains why I'm taking care over my wardrobe for Brighton. Not only is the weather (hopefully) warmer, I also have to be ready to acknowledge my position in the dyke stare. To be seen and known. To watch and recognise.

Hmmm, it seems my Brighton wardrobe is pretty much identical to my Nottingham wardrobe, with perhaps a little added emphasis on the shorts. Munt's point exactly, wouldn't you say? Going out on a dike is all about receiving appreciation for the effort. It's worth those hours at the ironing board when the population is stacked in your favour. It's not that the gaze in Nottingham is hostile; perhaps it just isn't always sure what it's looking at.

There's a further plus to getting away to a different city with an acknowledged gay scene - and that's the anonymity of the lesbian gaze. It's a small world - but if you're lucky - not that small. After all, the four hour drive from Nottingham to Brighton, this takes me to another country - right?

Symbol of Unity

I wonder about the many different things I may have written if I had posted more regularly in recent weeks. This week I have seemed a bit withdrawn, dislocated. I've seemed that way to myself; no one else has commented. But I know I sat in a pub garden with colleagues from work on Wednesday lunchtime and found it very difficult to contribute to the conversation, almost watched myself sitting there.

Very likely it's because I'd just returned from a few days away in Blackpool. Possibly I'd had too much sun. Sun at the British seaside? Yes, very strong sun and lots of it. I could have done with my cap that I forgot to pack or with putting on more of the scalp moisturiser for cropped hair that I use. Still, I bought a new cap in the end, so that's one souvenir from the short holiday. Surprisingly, it doesn't say 'kiss me quick, shag me slowly' or anything else of that ilk. Unsurprisingly, I had to leave the seafront shops to find something suitable. Three nights in Blackpool actually felt like a reasonable break, longer somehow, but possibly I could have done with more days away from the usual routine.

The general atmosphere is also more subdued - and yet resolute - following the bombings in London on 7th July. Just over a week on and we know so much more about those events now, but are not much closer to the why. So many families coming to terms with tragic truth, including the families of the four individuals who chose to end lives this way. I woke, preparing to go to Blackpool that morning, to news of 'power surges' on the London Underground, then news of more explosions filtered through. Many people feel connections with London, that's clear from the 'London United' tribute in Trafalgar Square on Thursday evening and the two minute silence earlier that day. I have never lived in London but I'm a regular visitor. The area around King's cross and Russell Square, and the Piccadilly line, feel particularly familiar.

Copyright/Picture Credit www.PrideLondon.org

I was in London on Saturday 2nd July for London Pride. I've taken part in the Pride march every year since 1988. London was swarming with visitors that day, especially around Hyde Park,and not only for the Pride parade. Thousands were there for the Live8 Making Poverty History concert. In different ways, these were symbols of London being united, too. It was because there would be so many more people travelling across London that Andrea and I arrived earlier than usual at the assembly point - this time on Park Lane, just outside Hyde Park. So we walked up and down, past the floats we might not otherwise have seen. Then we heard a woman asking for volunteers to help carry the large rainbow flag at the head of the parade. I've had many different experiences of and at Pride, but never done this before. It felt really special, like being part of something very powerful. There is always great spirit on the march and from the thousands who support from the street sides these days. Carrying the flag gave me a deeper connection.

I expect I would have written about this experience differently immediately after Pride. The rainbow flag feels even more potent now. It is a symbol that has come to represent all that is lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender across the world. It is also a symbol celebrating diversity, hope and unity that surely most people would wish to embrace.

The official Pride London magazine explains the six colours of the rainbow flag as:

Red - Life / n. a person's state of existence as a living individual

Orange - Healing / n. & adj. to become sound, alleviate pain or regain balance once more

Yellow - Sun / n. & v. providing light or warmth

Green - Nature / n. a person's innate or essential qualities and the
physical power causing the phenomena of the material world

Blue - Art / n. a human creative skill or its application

Violet - Harmony / n. an agreement or concord be it materially or
spiritually

Right now, the world could do with a definite injection of healing and harmony. So in a week when visible expressions of unity have become so significant, it now feels even more of a sad act that one London borough council has banned rainbow flags, describing them as 'clutter', when other symbols representing commercialism, consumerism and greed are allowed to fly free. Read more here.

Shouldn't we all be flying rainbow flags?

Somewhere in the rainbow

The Pride season has started. On Sunday I went over to Birmingham for an hour to squeeze myself through the crowded streets. I amused the people selling the 'end homophobia' wrist bands by picking over the rainbow ones. A rainbow colour version is now available to complement the pink.

"They're all the same," they tell me.

But I see otherwise. The letters don't begin in the same place; there is always diversity within the rainbow.

"It depends what part of the rainbow you want to start in," I say.

I know I have a definite leaning towards reds, oranges and yellows. I choose a band with the letter 'e' stamped firmly within orange, the message leading into yellow and finishing just before the blend to green. This is the message I want to be seen, preferred colours uppermost on my wrist.

***

One day last week, at work, I returned to my computer from lunch, shook my mouse as usual to bring the monitor out of sleep mode, and found an instant messenger window on my screen.

You are gay

I stare, only for a few seconds, before clicking the message window closed. A lot of thoughts run through my head in these short seconds. I make a moaning sound aloud - not more of these messages! Every now and then a student (it's always presumed to be a student) abuses this service and distributes a message to the whole network, either to prove they can or because they really do believe they are having a one-to-one conversation. It's a blatant contravention of the university computer user policy which everyone must sign up to. The game, perhaps, is in the sender hoping they are anonymous enough not to be identified by the IT system managers. Catch me if you can!

I know this isn't a message just for me, but could it be? I wasn't in the office to witness the collective pop-up on all our screens, the one that makes us all react in some way as we're distracted from our other demanding windows. My moan goes unnoticed. What did my colleagues feel/think when those words arrived on their screens, if they received them at all? I can't ask, for wouldn't that make me seem paranoid? They already laugh (affectionately) when I treat machines as animate objects (and what's wrong in believing the printer, especially, performs more efficiently when I offer soothing tones rather than shouting at it, even if shouting makes me feel better?) There is no one using my computer, and my computer alone, to point a finger at me. With all the thousands of computers switched on at this moment around the university network, the sender was bound to hit lucky.

But this message does feel like a pointing finger. Is that finger accusatory? Jibing? Or is that finger affirming? I know it can be affirming. "Yes, I'm gay and proud to be. Thank you for noticing." It is this contradiction, the uncertain motivation behind this message which makes me uneasy.

Why would someone choose to send this message? It doesn't feel affirming. Suddenly I feel isolated in my office, knowing my heterosexual colleagues are unlikely to be carrying on such an internal debate. I know about the pointing fingers, 'lesbo' shouted from cars, whispers passed down a line, 'there's the lesbian', the crowd mentality of jeering, pornographic pictures of women being thrown my way. My world hasn't been like that for a long time. But elsewhere it goes on, and it's never too far away. The times I've heard 'You're a lesbian' as accusatory far outweigh the affirming. The first time I kissed another woman passionately was in a public street, late at night, there weren't too many around to see. "Lesbians!" someone shouted. "Yes, yes, yes, this is me!" I wanted to shout back. I've always remembered, more than our kiss, the fear in the other woman's eyes, the way she said, "We can't do this."

The message bothers me so much because it's not the first time uncomfortable references to someone's sexuality have appeared on my computer screen. When there was a string of them I know the whole network received, messages which were, that time, clearly touching on very personal lives - "Look at that guy over there", "[Name of person] is gay, he's in the library" - I reported the offence. I was assured the matter was being dealt with; the sender would likely lose their computer access rights.

So, I don't need to report this; IT Support Services will already be well aware. The university will reiterate its policy and make it clear that this is an abuse of the computer systems. But is that the whole of the offence? I know what concerns me more. Why should one of our students feel it is necessary to send this message at all? What is being done to challenge this message's inherent homophobia? What message does each of its recipients take away?

On this day ...

On Saturday 30 April 1988, I joined the demonstration in London protesting against Clause 28. Clause 28 was passed into law as Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 on 24 May, with support of then Local Government minister, Michael Howard. How many connections there are for one week, almost half a lifetime on! Don't forget that's what the man stands for when it comes to voting this May 5th.

I remember this because it is again a May Day bank holiday weekend and in 1988 I took part in my first May Day (Labour Day) celebration, just after that march on London. I was young, naive even, but I'd been politicised, and I stood up at that May Day celebration in De Montfort Hall, Leicester, when they asked for someone to speak out for equality and against the Clause. I didn't know about the international holiday in honour of workers until 1988. Now, in 2005, the association between the May Day bank holiday and Labour Day is almost forgotten.

It's worth remembering this act of solidarity as May Day approaches:

1988 - On April 30th some 30,000 demonstrators marched in London to protest the passage of Section 28. This is still the largest lesbian and gay rally in UK history. [Reference]

It's also worth remembering that it took until 2003 for Section 28 to be repealed.

In that same week in April 1988, I was instigating my personal protest and plan to escape from university halls of residence, due to homophobic harrassment from other students. I already knew the climate of Clause 28 was doing me no favours.

At the London rally I bought my "Never Going Underground" t-shirt. I had also been at the North West Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Equality demonstration in Manchester earlier that year.

On this day we should also remember:

1999 - On 30 April, a bomb exploded in the Admiral Duncan, a gay pub in Old Compton Street, Soho, the third in a series of bombs targeted at minorities by a lone extremist. Three people died and several injured. [Reference]

Dykeopoly

I know the sun is shining and I should be out there enjoying the spring weekend, but instead I'm looking back to the depths of winter and my activities in the Christmas break, when a certain activity present kept me busy.

Following the format of the popular board game, Monopoly, you can now Make Your Own Opoly "using your PC and any simple colour printer". Buy the kit (or get someone to buy it for you) and away you go.

I can recommend it. Not only do you benefit from all the educational and creative elements of customising your own board game (alone or with friends); you then get to play it as often as you like (better with friends).

And so, gradually, in a little under 24 hours from design concept to finished output, Dykeopoly was born. The game box proudly pronounces:

Dykeopoly

Doing it the lesbian way

Live the life, now play the game

The all-important 'Go' square is replaced by The Closet: Start Here.

With my PC and my (more-than-simple, thank you) colour printer I design a pink triangle with a pound sign emblazoned in its centre. £100 and £500 notes co-ordinate beautifully as the entire note prints in delicate shades of pink and mauve. Higher denominations express their superiority and refuse to tone in with this careful styling - £1000 (green), £5000 (orange). But they are Pink Pounds nonetheless.

Rules of Make Your Own Opoly differ slightly from the traditional game. Instead of 'Community Chest' and 'Chance' cards there is 'Good News' and 'Bad News'.

I quickly translate this into:

• Dykey Desires
• Dykey Disasters

(Come on, you know we all have them.)

Dykey Desires #1

Martina wins Wimbledon! Each player collects £200.

Dykey Disasters #3

You go to a party and all your ex-lovers are there. Go to Bad Hangover and miss a turn.

Bad Hangover is my take on the Jail square. However much certain TV shows may be loved (and I make sure these feature later), there are too many portrayals of lesbians in prison. Dykeopoly may specialise in stereotypes but there are still more bad hangovers in my world than dykes in jail.

I replace the 'Free Parking' resting space with Browsing the Bookshelves. Silver Moon may not offer quite the same atmosphere as it used to, but I'm not going to give up browsing.

The Property cards are possibly the most revealing aspect of Dykeopoly, especially how I've chosen to group them.

1. Tent at Greenham Common £400; Lesbian Avengers Chapter £500
2. Butch/Femme £900; Lipstick Lesbians £1000; Drag Kings £1200
3. Local Lesbian & GayLine £1400; Local Women's Centre £1500; Local Gay Bar £1700
4. Dykes on Bikes £1800; Lesbians with Cats £1900; Lesbians with Kids £2000
5. Utilities: Manual Trades for Women £2000; Bus Driving for Women £2000
6. The Candy Bar £2100; Diva Magazine £2300; Silver Moon Bookshop £2500
7. 'The' Lesbian Kiss (from Brookside) £2600; Ellen Comes Out £2700; Prisoner Cell Block H and Bad Girls £2800
8. 1950s Lesbian Pulp Fiction £2900; 1920s Lesbian Literary Salon £3100; 1970s Lesbian Feminism £3200
9. Sappho's Beach, Lesbos £3600; The Castro, San Francisco £4000

You may well ask how it's possible to place a value on 1970s Lesbian Feminism or the Local Women's Centre. Do I place too much emphasis on popular culture? And how could I dare to place San Francisco above Lesbos in that prized 'Mayfair' position?

Well, what icons of lesbian culture would you choose?

This blog

I've chosen a title with many resonances. I like the way it reflects how I am putting myself out there/here, on show, through this blog. I enjoy the irony that dressing up can also be dressing down.

Out on a dike phr. [mid 19-C] (US) going out in one's best clothes. [DIKED DOWN]

You see me here 'in my best clothes', as I choose to present myself.

The phrase also plays with origins of words, with slang and with language that has been reclaimed. It is a play on words that reflects my desire for connection with others who will be attracted to the significance of words like 'out' and 'dike': my experience as a lesbian - although this blog is about much more than that.

dyke/dike n. [1930s+] a lesbian. [ety. unknown. ? f. dyked down, dressed up; certainly some lesbians have always dressed as men ... (?) ]

At least that's how my Dictionary of Slang presents it. The second question mark is mine.

So, I'm out as a dyke, occasionally out with a dyke. What I do when I'm out on a dike only becomes your business once I write about it here.