Herstory Revisited

 “LGBTQ+” stands for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer/questioning” and the “plus” refers to many other gender and sexual identities. For a long time however, the acronym was “GLBT”, and the change to “LGBT” is significant. In the early gay rights movement, gay men dominated the discourse – perhaps for obvious reasons given that men had more political voice and greater access to public spheres. However, this meant that, while generally being a much safer and more inclusive community, the movement also had undercurrents of the same patriarchal and sexist thinking which plagues all other communities. Most early gay right campaigns ignored women and those of other genders. There was a lack of spaces curated for lesbians compared to those created for gay men, and lesbians often experienced harassment if they tried to enter these spaces. Even as gay men began to slowly gain some (albeit limited and problematic) recognition in the media and public life, lesbians (and of course tran...

Dr Sara Josephine Baker (1873-1945) This LGBTQ+ History Month’s theme is #UnderTheScope celebrating LGBTQ+ in medicine, so in honour of that, lets learn about the lesbian woman who not was not only “instrumental” in identifying Typhoid Mary as the source of the 1907 typhoid outbreak which infected almost 3000 people in New York, but who also broke many other barriers to make the world a healthier and safer place, Dr Sara Josephine Baker, aka Dr Joe. Dr Baker was already remarkable in the very fact that she was a woman doctor. In 1900, only 6% of doctors were women. In 1894, Baker had enrolled from a medical school founded by Elizabeth Blackwell who just a generation earlier had become the first American woman to earn a medical degree. When Baker graduated in 1898, female doctors were still prohibited from working in hospitals, so she instead found work as a medical inspector in NYC. She was horrified to learn that over 1500 babies died each week of preventable diseases and thus took on...

Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022)   👑❤️ This is not my usual kind of herstory post. It is not a biography - although hopefully I'll get to write one about the historic reign of the queen someday. All yesterday, I had a lot of conflicting feels about the queens passing, and I know that a lot of people I’ve spoken to feel the same. I spent most of yesterday asking myself "how can a republican mourn the passing of the queen"? This ramble is my attempt to answer that question. I realise this is a very touchy subject and something that everyone will have strong opinions on one way or another, and please note that i totally understand both sides of the coin so please don't hate me.  On one hand, as the BBC said itself, she was the “face of the British empire” - an empire which I’ve dedicated my career (or at least a PhD and a book) to celebrating the end and highlighting the evils of. From the media coverage, you can see the nostalgia for that empire that she was the last...

Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) was an English poet and author, best known for her ground-breaking work in lesbian literature. In adulthood, Hall often went by the name John, rather than Marguerite. Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall was born in Bournemouth in1880 to Radclyffe ("Rat") Radclyffe-Hall (1846-1898) and Mary Jane Sager (née Diehl). Hall's father was a wealthy philanderer, educated at Eton and Oxford but seldom working, since he inherited a large amount of money from his father, an eminent physician who was head of the British Medical Association. Her mother was an American widow from Philadelphia, who struggled with her mental health. In 1882, Radclyffe abandoned his wife and daughter, although he did leave a sizable inheritance to provide for her in his absence. Her mother soon remarried, but Marguerite did not get on with her stepfather and the couple had an unhappy marriage. Marguerite had always had a difficult relation...

Local history time! Happy birthday to Lila Clunas (1876 – 1968) who was a Scottish suffragette and Labour party councillor, remembered as one of Dundee’s leading suffragettes. Maggie Eliza Clunas was born in Glasgow on 10 August 1876. She trained to be a teacher in Edinburgh and then moved to Dundee to take up a post at a primary school. In 1906, she joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), and then the Women's Freedom League (WFL), serving as the secretary of the Dundee branch between 1908 –1912. Her sisters Elsie and Jessie Clunas were also members of the WFL, with Elsie serving as treasurer until 1913. Her political activities included deputations, heckling and writing in the press. In 1908 she was expelled from an election meeting for Winston Churchill. In 1909, she was a member of a 9-woman delegation to the House of Commons. During a WSPU deputation at the end of June, she was arrested while presenting a petition to Prime Minister Asquith, although it h...

Evelina Haverfield (née Scarlett; 1867 – 1920) was a British suffragette and aid worker. Evelina's birth is recorded as 'Honourable Evilena Scarlett' (with her first name spelled thus) born on 9 August 1867 at Inverlochy Castle, Kingussie in Scotland She was the third child of 5 of William Frederick Scarlett, 3rd Baron Abinger and his wife, Helen Magruder, the daughter of a United States Navy Commodore. Her childhood was divided between London and the Inverlochy estate. In 1880 she went to school in Düsseldorf, Germany. On 10 February 1887, at the age of 19, she married a Royal Artillery officer, Major Henry Wykeham Brooke Tunstall Haverfield RA (1846-1895), in Kensington, London. Evelina's husband was 20 years her senior. The marriage was a happy one producing two sons, John and Brook, but her husband tragically died 8 years later. Haverfield embraced a lifestyle that was still irregular for women. She was often seen riding her bicyle, Pegasus, at a time when the...

Muthulakshmi Reddy (1886 – 1968) was an Indian medical practitioner and social reformer. [A large part of her achievements related to her work with a community known as Devadasis, young girls who were dedicated to a temple and groomed into prostitution Muthulakshmi was born to S. Narayanaswami Iyer, the Principal of Maharaja's College, and Chandrammal, a Devadasi. Her father’s ostracism for marrying a devadasi made her acutely aware of the plight of devadasis and inspired much of her future work with the community. However, I want to do a separate post about devadasis soon, so I’m going to exclude much of that aspect of her work from this post, but I’ll link to the devadasi post once I’ve written it.] Narayanaswami Iyer broke the tradition and sent Muthulakshmi to school, and her teachers were so impressed by her intelligence and passion that they taught her subjects beyond her father-approved curriculum. When she hit puberty, she was expected to leave school, but she continued...

  #OTD 1838, Shahjahan Begum was born!   Shahjahan Begum GCSI CI (1838 –  1901) was the Begum of Bhopal (the ruler of the Islamic principality of Bhopal in central India) for two periods: 1844–60 (her mother acting as regent), and secondly during 1868–1901. She was a popular ruler, and is today remembered as an effective leader, stateswoman, architect and writer.    Born in Islamnagar, near Bhopal, Shahjahan was the only surviving child of Sikandar Begum of Bhopal, and her husband Jahangir Mohammed Khan. She was recognised as ruler of Bhopal in 1844 at the age of six; her mother wielded power as regent during her minority. However, in 1860, her mother Sikandar Begum was recognised by the British as ruler of Bhopal in her own right, and Shahjahan was set aside. Shahjahan succeeded her mother as Begum of Bhopal upon the death of the latter in 1868. Thus, she already had a powerful queen to look up to and emulate as she assumed control of her kingdom for real....