Nazi Persecution of Gay Men and Lesbians

Thriving gay and lesbian communities had developed in Germany from 1900 to the early 1930s. This changed when the Nazis came into power in 1933.

The Nazis declared aim was the eradication of homosexuality. During 12 years in power they implemented a broad range of persecutory measures. An estimated 50,000 gay men were sentenced and imprisoned, some of whom faced the death penalty. Up to 15,000 gay men were deported to concentration camps and made to wear the pink triangle symbol which identified them as homosexual men. Many of these Pink Triangle detainees were subjected to starvation and hard labour, castration, medical experiments and collective murder actions.

Lesbianism was not illegal in Germany, so lesbians did not suffer the same level of persecution as gay men. However, there is historical evidence of police records being collected on lesbians and of lesbians being sent to concentration camps on the grounds of their sexual orientation. They were known as Green Triangle detainees. New research shows that in Austria lesbians were criminalised and liable for prosecution and persecution.

After the war, neither the Allies nor the German or Austrian States recognised gay men or lesbians as victims alongside other groups, so they were not considered eligible for compensation. Only in 2001 was the German and Swiss Bank compensation programme extended to include gay victims.

Nazi laws against homosexuality remained in place in Germany until 1967. Unsurprisingly, very few victims of wartime persecution came forward to fight for recognition. Those that did were often further victimised.

The Eldorado was a famed destination in Berlin for lesbian…

The Tay Bush Inn Raid

On Sept. 14, 1961 242 patrons, nearly all of them men, were packed into the Tay-Bush Inn at the Corner of Taylor and Bush in San Francisco. The photo shows the scene – a block of apartments occupies the block where the Inn was. Gary Kamiya tells SF Gate what happened on that night.

“The Tay-Bush was a one-room cafe that drew night owls who danced to its jukebox until dawn. Some walked up the hill from the theater district after the shows let out.

At 3:15 that September morning, three undercover police officers in the bar gave a prearranged signal, the jukebox went silent, a loudspeaker outside blared and uniformed cops barged in. They began herding the patrons onto the sidewalk and arresting them.

The headline on The Chronicle’s story the next day read, “Big Sex Raid – Cops Arrest 103.” The secondary headline said, “139 Get Away.” (Police later insisted only five or so had escaped.)

The story called the raid “the biggest action of its kind in the history of the department.” Many of the arrestees were students, it said. “Others called themselves clerks, laborers, hairdressers; one said he was a psychologist. Police said the men were dancing together and kissing.”

The raid “was reminiscent of the old speakeasy days of Prohibition,” The Chronicle wrote. “Three paddy wagons shuttled back and forth between the inn and the city prison – seven loads in all – and apartment house dwellers watched from their windows.”

Most of the patrons were booked as “visitors to a disorderly house.” The bar’s owner, 27-year-old Robert Johnson, was booked on four counts, including “lewd and indecent acts” and “keeping a disorderly house.”

Asked by a reporter if any “deviates” had been at his club that night, Johnson said, “Yes, of course. But we have a lot of show people and others – they like the New York atmosphere – you know, brick walls.” ”

Despite having the names of the arrested printed in the papers, charges against all but two of those arrested were dropped. The raid – years before Stonewall – raised a political consciousness in the gay community. The Mattachine Society seized on the incident to push for civil rights.

The Tay-Bush raid made the civil rights of gays and lesbians a legitimate subject for debate, and marked the beginning of the end of San Francisco’s crackdown on gay bars. The SFPD’s final attempt to repress gays took place on New Year’s Day 1965, when police raided an advocacy group’s masquerade ball at California Hall on Polk Street. Even John Shelley, the mayor, condemned the police action. San Francisco was now Gay.

The Eldorado

The Eldorado was a famed destination in Berlin for lesbians, homosexual men, transvestites of both sexes, and tourists during the 1920’s and 30’s. As soon as the Nazis came to power, gay bars and clubs like the Eldorado were closed down. The “El Dorado” was situated at 29, Lutherstraße. It had a lavish floor show. It was closed down in about 1932. Clubs with the same name have since re-opened.

Tony’s Smart Set notes:

“Berlin’s 400 or so bars were divided in tourist guidebooks according to a strict taxonomy of desire. Flush heterosexuals might choose the Kakadu, with Polynesian-style décor and caged parrots hanging over each table; when patrons wished to leave, they could tap their glasses and the bird would squawk loudly for the check. Gay men would descend on the Karls-Lounge, where the waiters and “Line Boys” all wore neat sailor’s outfits. Lesbians liked Mali and Ingel, where guests were obliged to dance with the randy owners, or the Café Olala, where some customers liked to dress in Salvation Army outfits. Male cross-dressers went to the Silhouette, female cross-dressers to the Mikado, and everyone the entire sexual spectrum over blurred at the Eldorado, where one dancer, when quizzed by a slumming grand dame as to gender, replied in a haughty voice: “I am whatever sex you wish me to be, Madame.” ”

The Gay Man in Margaret Thatcher’s Government

Nicholas Eden, 2nd Earl of Avon, was born on 3 October 1930 and died on 17 August 1985, from Aids. He was a British Conservative politician and was the younger son of former Prime Minister Anthony Eden and his first wife, Beatrice. He was educated at Eton. He succeeded in the earldom on the death of his father in 1977. His older brother was killed on active service in Burma.

Nicholas Eden served under Margaret Thatcher as a Lord-in-Waiting from 1980 to 1983, as Under-Secretary of State for Energy from 1983 to 1984 and as Under-Secretary of State for the Environment from 1984 until shortly before his death in 1985. Lord Avon was unmarried and his titles died with him. He was openly gay.

Harlem’s Hidden Gay History: The Rockland Palace Drag Balls

The Hamilton Lodge was a black gay social group that held extravagant drag balls in Harlem, New York, in the 1930s. Prohibition put an end to the Hamilton Lodge drag formals at the Rockland Palace on West 155th Street.

New York’s drag balls were given national exposure by the 1990 documentary “Paris is Burning.” Harlem’s gay scene was well known before Prohibition, and Hamilton Lodge was one of the foremost venues for the area’s thriving LGBT community. Artists who supported Harlem’s gay community during the 1930s included Tallulah Bankhead.

Inside the Rockland Palace, The Black Archives

“You had a large majority of drag queens and what we now call gender-queer pushing the boundaries,” says Hael Fisher, who is relaunching the Hamilton Lodge drag balls. “And you had a lot of white onlookers who came up from the West Village to be a part of this.”

The Rockland was torn down in the 1960s and the site became a car park.

The London Gay Teachers Group

The London Gay Teachers Group, known as Schools’ Out, was co founded by the late Paul Patrick, who came out in 1969, before he became a teacher, and some colleagues. The organisation became an effective campaigning organisation which published a series of ground breaking discussions and booklets, including “Aids Hysteria” in 1987 and “Schools Out” in 1989.

In 2004 Paul Patrick and Sue Sanders of Schools Out founded the UK Gay History Month.

Paul Patrick was born on July 23rd, 1950 and died on May 22, 2008.

The Hall-Carpenter Archives at the LSE hold some archive material for the London Gay Teachers Group.

Gay Centres

During the 1970s era of gay liberation, gay centres were established usually by squatting in unused or unwanted, dilapidated premises in various cities around the world. One such gay centre was The South London Gay Community Centre at 78 Railton Road, Brixton, London, an empty shop, which was established in the mid 1970s.

Gay centres afforded a safe space where, often for the first time, gay men and lesbians could meet and exchange ideas, and discuss politics. Not only campaigns were formed in them, but also gay groups and organisations, businesses, theatre companies, dance companies and the like. It was such a catalyst for ideas and activity that within months, the immediate area was home to two women’s centres, the Anarchist News Service, Squatters Groups, a Claimants’ Union for those on welfare benefits, the Brixton Advice Centre, Icebreakers, the Race Today Collective and a food cooperative.

The centre at Brixton is important in the UK’s gay history because it was the first one, and formed the template for those following. The squatters were evicted after two years.

A Brief History of Homophobia in Russia

Stalin didn’t think much of gay rights.

Dan Healy of the Moscow Times had given us a history of homophobia in Russia.

“Orthodox clerics condemned sex between men and youths. They also condemned men who shaved, used make-up, or wore gaudy clothing as devotees of the “sodomitical sin.””

Peter the Great outlawed sex between men in his Military Code of 1716, to be punished by flogging, and male rape, by penal servitude. In 1835, motivated by reports of vice in the Empire’s boarding schools, Tsar Nicholas I formally extended the ban on male same-sex relations to wider society in a new criminal code. Men who engaged in voluntary “sodomy” (muzhelozhstvo) were exiled to Siberia; sodomy with minors or the use of force netted exile with hard labor. This law remained in force until 1917. There was no law against lesbian relations.

Tsarist Russia avoided enforcing the law against upper-class homosexuals. There was no Russian equivalent to Oscar Wilde, Colonel Alfred Redl of Hungary, or Prince Eulenberg of Germany. Many supporters of the Romanov dynasty, and members of the tsar’s family, were flagrantly gay but when the government drafted a new criminal code — never to be adopted — in 1903, it continued to criminalize male homosexuality.

When revolution came in 1917, the Provisional Government wanted to enact the 1903 criminal code, but lost power to the Bolsheviks, who abrogated all tsarist law in November 1917. Until 1922 there was no written criminal law.

Police raids had been conducted on circles of “pederasts” in Moscow and Leningrad who were accused of spying; they had also “politically demoralized various social layers of young men, including young workers, and even attempted to penetrate the army and navy.”

Stalin forwarded Yagoda’s letter to Lazar Kaganovich, noting “these scoundrels must receive exemplary punishment” and directing that a law against “pederasty” be adopted. The new law was adopted for all the Soviet republics in March 1934, with a minimum sentence of three to five years for consenting male homosexuality.

Healy continues:

“Harry Whyte, a British Communist working for the English-language Moscow Daily News wrote to Stalin in May 1934, asking him to justify the new law. He boldly explained why it violated Marxist principles. He asked Stalin, “Can a homosexual be considered a person fit to become a member of the Communist Party?” Stalin scrawled across the letter, “An idiot and a degenerate. To the archives.”

The anti-homosexual law remained in place until 1993 in Russia. Without access to FSB and presidential archives we have only a rough idea of how many men were prosecuted under it; at minimum, tens of thousands suffered.

De-Stalinization under Nikita Khrushchev actually cemented the law in place. In 1958 the Interior Ministry issued a secret decree “on the strengthening of the struggle against sodomy,” telling police to enforce the law with renewed vigor. From this date about 1,000 men were imprisoned annually in the Soviet Union for their homosexuality. Soviet authorities worried that the millions of men released from the single-sex Gulag camps were a source of “sexual perversion” dangerous to Soviet society.

Discussions during the Perestroika years seemed to point toward reform, but the Interior Ministry fought vigorously against any relaxation. In April 1993, as part of a package to bring Russian legislation in line with Council of Europe standards, the Yeltsin administration decriminalized male homosexuality, but there was no amnesty for the hundreds of men still in prison under the law at that time.

In 2002, during a Duma debate about changes to sex-crime legislation, nationalist-conservative deputies called for the re-criminalization of voluntary sodomy and for the first time in a millennium of Russian legal history, the criminalization of lesbian acts. The Kremlin ignored these calls, but the status of Russia’s lesbians and gays remains an open question. Like Harry Whyte in 1934, we might well ask, “Can a homosexual be considered a person fit to be a citizen of the Russian Federation?””

Lambda

The lambda was selected as a symbol by the Gay Activists Alliance of New York in 1970, following the Stonewall Riots, and was declared the international symbol for gay and lesbian rights by the International Gay Rights Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1974. The lambda signifies unity under oppression.

The Scottish Minorities Group hosted the first ever International Gay Rights Conference in Edinburgh from 18 to 22 December 1974. It was co-organised by Ian Dunn and Derek Ogg. Ian Dunn had organised the first meeting of what was to become the Scottish Minorities Group in 1969. Derek Ogg later founded Scottish AIDS Monitor in the 1980s.

The conference tried to provide an international sharing of experience, so that delegates could find out the social, political and legal situation for men and women from other countriesm, and included sessions on the rights of young homosexuals and of gay women. The problem of lesbian invisibility was explicitly addressed by a delegate from Campaign Against Moral Persecution in New South Wales, Australia.

Nearly 400 people attended the conference, which led in 1978 to the establishment of the International Gay Association, later to become the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA).

The gay rights organization Lambda Legal and the American Lambda Literary Award derive their names from this symbol. Gay News offered a range of jewellery items featuring the Lambda symbol.

Leonard Matlovich

Leonard P. Matlovich was born on July 6, 1943 and died on June 22, 1988. He was a Vietnam War veteran, race relations instructor, and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. Matlovich made history by becoming the first gay service member of US forces to out himself to the military to fight their ban on gays. In the 1970s he and Harvey Milk were the best known gay men in America.

The gay community rallied behind his fight to stay in the USAF. His photograph appeared on the cover of the September 8, 1975, issue of Time magazine, making him a symbol for thousands of gay and lesbian servicemembers and gay people generally. Matlovich was the first openly gay person to appear on the cover of a U.S. newsmagazine.

In October 2006, Matlovich was honoured as a leader in the history of the LGBT community .

A Mormon and church elder, Matlovich found himself at odds with the church, and their opposition to homosexual behavior. He was twice excommunicated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for homosexual acts.

In 1986 Matlovich was diagnosed with HIV/Aids. Typical of the man, he was among the first patients to try a newly developed treatment, AZT.

His grave at the Congressional Cemetery does not prominently bear his name. The inscription reads: “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.” His grave is in the same row as that of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are a colourful and distinctive charity, protest, and street performance organization of Queer Nuns who fight sexual intolerance with drag and religious imagery. They also satirize gender and morality issues.

The movement started in 1979 when a group of gay men in San Francisco began wearing habits in visible situations to draw attention to social conflicts and problems in the Castro District. The original three men procured habits from a convent in Iowa pretending to be putting on a a performance of The Sound of Music!

They are an international organisation, and there are around 600 Nuns in Australia, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Scotland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Uruguay.

It was a time when religious participation in politics was growing, and Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell were crusading against the acceptance of the gay life style. The Castro District as a major gay neighborhood was targeted by several dozen church members who took to its streets to preach about the immorality of homosexuality.

The name of the group became familiar in 1980. The nuns held their first fundraiser, and a write-up in The San Francisco Chronicle by Herb Caen printed their organization name, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The benefit was for San Francisco’s Metropolitan Community Church Cuban Refugee Program.

The community was then hit with the AIDS crisis and the Nuns played a major part in organising awareness, and are thought to have produced the world’s very first Aids awareness literature.

Members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence who have died are referred by the Sisters as “Nuns of the Above”.

Gay News Trial

In June 1976 the British gay newspaper Gay News published a poem, The love that dares not speak its name, by James Kirkup. Someone sent a copy to television campaigner Mary Whitehouse. She applied for a private prosecution for blasphemy in November and the prosecution began in December 1976. Gay News Ltd and Denis Lemon (the editor) were charged. The offending publication was “a blasphemous libel concerning the Christian religion, namely an obscene poem and illustration vilifying Christ in his life and in his crucifixion”.

The Independent obituary for Mr Lemon notes:

He published Kirkup’s poem in 1976 because he thought ‘the message and intention of the poem was to celebrate the absolute universality of God’s love’, although he admitted it was ‘probably not a great work of literature’.

A fighting fund to defend the newspaper was set up. On 4 July 1977 proceedings opened at the Old Bailey. Margaret Drabble and Bernard Levin were allowed to appear as character witnesses on Lemon’s part. On 11 July Lemon and Gay News were found guilty. Gay News Ltd was fined £1,000. Denis Lemon was fined £500 and sentenced to nine months imprisonment, suspended. Costs of £7,763 were ordered.

Gay News and Lemon appealed. On 21 February 1979 the Law Lords upheld the verdict. On 7 May 1982 The European Court of Human Rights decided the case was inadmissible.

Denis Edward Lemon died from Aids related conditions in Exmouth on 21 July 1994.

The Lesbian and Gay Miners’ Support Group

The Lesbian and Gay Miners’ Support Group were set up during the 1984-85 miners’ strike and challenged prejudices held by many in the labour movement.

by February 1985 there were eleven lesbians’ and gay men’s miners’ support groups all over the country. By December 1984 the London group alone had collected over £11,000 through pub, club and street collections, benefits, parties and other events. The highlight event was undoubtedly the ‘Pits and Perverts’ gig at the Electric Ballroom where Bronski Beat headed the bill; it raised £5,650.

The London group was the first to be set up in July 1984, and started with 11 members. Six months later it had grown to 50 members.

The Lothian Lesbian & Gay Miners Support Group was set up in September 1984 with 12 members raising £40 a week for the White Craige strike centre in East Lothian.

Lesbians Against Pit Closures followed in November 1984, involving more than 20 women who collected £50 a week for the Rhodisia Women’s Action Group, Worksop. The gay community’s support for the miners received much coverage in the left-wing and trade union press. The lesbians’ and gay men’s ‘fringe meeting’ at the October 1984 Labour Party conference was attended by about 250 people.

The recognition of gay rights issues by the union and Labour movements and the contacts forged during the miner’s strike between them and the gay movement led to the formation of a network of gay groups for the members of trade unions which continues to thrive. It also led to gay and lesbian issues being included in training courses for union representatives in the workplace, and the adoption of gay rights policies by the Labour Party.

LGBT Denmark

LGBT Denmark is the Danish National Organisation for Gay Men, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Trans people and was founded in 1948, originally becoming known as “The Circle of 1948”. It was founded by Axel Axgil, who was Chair until 1952.

Male homosexuality was a crime in Denmark until 1933, under the 1683 law which stated: “Relations against nature is punishable by execution”. By a law of 1866, the death penalty was replaced by a sentence of prison labour. In 1933 sex between adult men aged over 18/21 was de-criminalised.

LGBT Danmark is a co-founder of the International Lesbian and Gay Association.

Axgil exchanged vows with partner in 1989 as Denmark became the first country to allow gay people to enter into civil unions.

Eigil Axgil died in 1995

Memorial for Gay Holocaust Victims in Tel Aviv

Israel announced that it is to erect a monument in the honour of gay victims of the Holocaust, the first of its kind in the country.

The memorial is to be completed in Meir Park, Tel Aviv later this year, and the first of its kind in Israel. Like other monuments around the world, it will feature a concrete pink triangle.

Eran Lev said:

“This will be the first and only memorial site in Israel to mention the victims of the Nazis who were persecuted for anything other than being Jewish. As a cosmopolitan city and an international gay centre, Tel Aviv will offer a memorial site that is universal in its essence. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not a monument, but a place — a place of quiet that will invite visitors to sit, contemplate, reflect and be in solitude. One of the first restrictions the Nazis imposed on the Jews was against going to public parks. We’re bringing that memory back into the public space.”

August 2013

The Irish Same Sex Marriage Referendum

The Republic of Ireland held a referendum on same-sex marriage on May 23, 2015.

Dublin crowds celebrated the referendum result on 24 May 2015

The electorate voted to amend the constitution to permit same sex marriage.

The final result was:

Yes – 1,201,607 (62.1%)
No – 734,300 – (37.9%)

The turnout was 60.5%.

COC Nederland

COC Nederland is a Dutch organization for LGBT+ men and women which was founded in 1946, and it is understood to be the longest established continuing gay organisation in the world. It was founded in Amsterdam on 7 December 1946 under its original name of “Shakespeareclub”, then in 1949 the organisation was renamed Cultuur en Ontspanningscentrum (Center for Culture and Leisure).

Its history goes back to before the second world war, however. The founders were a number of gay men who were active in producing a magazine called “Levensrecht” (Right To Live), which was founded a few months before the German invasion in 1940. The first edition of the magazine was published in March 1940 (pictured). The magazine re-appeared after the war and continued until 1947. when they could not get a permit for the paper to print it on. The magazine was written by Jaap van Leeuwen under the pseudonym Arent Santhorst and Niek Engelschman under the pseudonym Bob Angelo. The magazine was backed by Han Diekmann.

From its beginning in 1946 until 1962, the chairman was Niek Engelschman. In 1962 Benno Premsela took over and in 1964 the organisation “came out” by changing its name to “Nederlandse Vereniging voor Homofielen COC” (Dutch Association for Homophiles COC).

One of COC’s first objectives was to get article 248-bis in the Wetboek van Strafrecht (the main code for Dutch criminal law) revoked. This 1911 law made sexual contact with someone of the same sex between 16 and 21 years old punishable by up to one year imprisonment. For heterosexuals, the age of consent was 16. Article 248-bis was revoked in 1971.

COC is one of the few LGBT+ organisations that has a special consultative status with the United Nations.

Official website of COC: https://coc.nl

Exploring the History of LGBTI with 7 Examples

Last year, projects on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) themed seem to have taken place more than any year since the Sexual Crimes Act was passed in July 1967. Work continues in many organizations, including the British Museum, to ensure that these temporary projects leave a lasting legacy.

according to an article to arkeofili.com, The works in this article were exhibited in the British Museum’s 2017 project “Passion, love, identity: exploring LGBTI history”. In the article, however, some important objects in the museum collection were highlighted, describing what the British novelist E M Forster called “the great unrecorded history”

1- Vase depicting Sappho

Evidence of true female sexuality is difficult to find in ancient Greek and Roman objects, as they often reflect male perspectives. In ancient Greece, women were generally excluded from public life and politics, but they participated in indigenous and religious rituals. The poet Sappho (630-570 BC), who lived on the island of Lesbos, gave voice to women and female desire. Sappho was probably depicted in the figure sitting on this water bowl. In the 19th century, Sappho’s poems created a term for the inhabitants of Lesbos (Lesbos), a term for women who love women. Little is known for certain about Sappho’s life, but his poems have inspired many women who lived in later times.

2- a Mayan ruler

This image of a male Maya ruler was once considered female as she wore a net-shaped jade skirt worn by elite Mayan women. In fact, he is dressed like a young corn god whose gender can be both male and female. Confusion or misunderstanding can occur when gender is read across cultures. There are many instances where early European explorers, researchers, and collectors initially failed or perhaps unwilling to understand values that were different on their own.

3- Warren Cup

Decorated with scenes of two male lovers, this Roman wine mug could not be displayed publicly for much of the 20th century. Homosexuality was illegal in England and Wales until June 1967. But explicit sexual images were not unusual in the Roman world. Relationships between men were part of Greek and Roman culture, from slaves to emperors. The most famous of these was the relationship between Emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous. Today, such ancient images remind us that societies’ views on sexuality can be very different. The Warren Cup was bought by the British Museum in 1999 and has been on display ever since, except for short periods when it was on loan to other institutions.

4- Native American records

The “Indian records” were kept as historical records by tribes that lived in some of the North American plains. This is one of many surviving versions of a Sioux record showing events for the winters of 1785-6- 1901-02. The year 1891 includes an image representing the suicide of a winkte. Winkte literally means a Dakota word for wanting to be a woman. Among some Native American tribes, such individuals were considered to have special spiritual powers because they bridged gender differences. Among Dakota Sioux there were about ten registered individuals of this class of people of the same tribe who lived at any time. The arrival of Anglo-Americans led to the suppression of the wearing of opposite sex by these individuals. Today, this tradition has been revived among the younger generations of LGBTI Native Americans.

5- N’domo mask from Mali

In many African cultures, gender and gender-based roles are fixed through rituals. N’domo masks were used by the Bamana people of Mali. They were worn by men, but the masks could be male, female or androgynous. The number of horns on the masks was important: male masks had 3 or 6 horns, female masks had 4 or 8 horns, and bisexual masks had 2, 5 or 7 horns.

Gender and sexual diversity were often suppressed by colonial rulers in Africa, and this was sometimes forgotten, creating the impression that it never existed. Partly as a result of this colonial history and the introduction of Christianity, “homosexuality” has been made illegal in many African countries. Anti-racist and civil rights movements are generally parallel to LGBTI people around the world.

In 2012 Archbishop Tutu said: “I have no doubt that in the future, laws that criminalize many love and human devotion will look at how discrimination laws are treating us now – it will be clearly wrong.”

6- Llangollen Women

Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby fled Ireland in 1778. They set up houses in North Wales, defied the rules of the time and lived the life they preferred for 50 years. Eleanor’s diary gives us an insight into their lifestyle. He wrote on Thursday, September 22, 1785:

“I got up at seven. Dark morning, all the mountains are covered in fog. Heavy rain. There is a fire in the library. I am comfortable with pleasure. I had breakfast at half past eight. I wrote from 9 o’clock to 1 o’clock. My darling is drawing Pembroke Castle. I read him a book from 1 am to 3 pm. After dinner, I hurried around the gardens. It rained all day without stopping. I read it to Sally from 4 to 10. She was drawing, she. We talked with my lover sitting by the fire from 10 am to 11 pm. It’s a quiet and happy day. ”

This pair of chocolate cups belonged to Eleanor and Sarah. These women gained celebrity-like status, and the museum also has several prints depicting them in its collection.

7- Ganymedes statue

In Greek mythology, the god Zeus had a great desire for the beautiful young Ganymedes. He then took the form of an eagle to kidnap Ganymedes, the sakus of the gods. Today, there are many works depicting Ganymedes. The work in the photo is from the Ancient Roman period. Ancient Greece had a great impact on Ancient Rome, including the acceptance of sexual relations between men within certain limits. However, the adoption of Christianity made a significant change in such attitudes. During the medieval period, the term Ganymedes began to mean abuse. The Renaissance led to a renewed interest in classical mythology, including subjects that offered a legitimate way to portray sexual stories. Sculptures like this one were popular with wealthy European collectors in the 1700s and 1800s.

A Transvestite Encounter in Post-Roman Gaul

One day in the summer of the year 590, the experienced and wry divine Gregory — Metropolitan bishop of Tours in the barbarian kingdom of Frankish Neustria — sat to hear a sensational case. With his fellow bishops, Gregory was to judge upon a scandal during the year of the revolt of the nuns in Poitiers against their abbess. This was in reality part of the vicious feminine war festering within the Frankish royal house.

Royal women were not normally subject to the lynch law prevailing outside the walls of their protected establishments, and could not by custom be routinely killed by their male relatives. Women beware was the rule in the palaces and high-status religious houses. This is the era of Queen Fredegund, spymistress, controller of assassins and, murderess.

The extraordinary position of top-ranking Frankish women, and the savage energy of the times, bathes the calm testimony of the political churchman in the atmosphere of the Nibelunglied.

Rome has fallen and deranged warlords feast amid the ruins, drunk and dangerous. Nominally Christian, they are addicted to war, vendetta, and extortion on a massive scale.

Partially controlling these sacred monsters is a pack of the old Roman aristocracy dressed up as men of God, and protected by the magic powers of which they have convinced the magnates. All public services, apart from those controlled by the church, have perished with the Empire; the population at large is prey to every kind of violence and misfortune.

An obsessive faith in a better life hereafter, and raging superstitions are understandable reactions to this post-apocalyptic world, crisscrossed by plundering hordes.

Gregory is as credulous as his flock, sharp observer though he is. Miracles are as common as plagues, signs and wonder a daily occurrence. Without these visible evidences of divine mercy, life is unendurable. Worshipping God and pleasing him was paramount: a primary objective of the churchmen and theoretically of the ignorant barbarian sovereigns they served and manipulated.

The kings thought that promotion of Christianity brought them success in battle and at the council table; the bishops thought it the only guarantee of a very fragile existence. This makes what occurred in the cathedral of Poitiers that summer day so extraordinary. One rubs one’s eyes to read Gregory’s account.

After dealing with a siege situation at the Poitiers Nunnery, and putting down the revolt with a little bloodshed here and there, the bishops assemble. Gregory says:’Tunc resedentes sacerdotes……..”

Then were present the priests sitting down again on the tribunal of the church…..

“Adfuit Chrodieldis..”

Was present Clotild,

“Multa in abbatissa iactans convitia cum criminibus…”

Hurling many accusations of crime against the abbess…”

“Adserens,eam virum habere in monasterium…..”

Asserting she had a man in the nunnery….

“Qui indutus vestimenta muliebria pro femina haberetur…”

Who was dressed in female clothing so one would take him to be a woman….

“Cum esset vir manifestissime declaratus”

Though he was most manifestly clearly a man.

“Atque ipsi abbatissa famularetur assiduae..”

And that the abbess regularly had sex with him

This is clearly not in the normal run of canon law cases. A princess of the blood, ostensibly a religious, is appearing in person to accuse her superior, also a princess, of extreme sexual irregularity. With bells on. But then…….sensation! Clotild continues:

“Indicans eum digito,”En ipsum”

“There he is!” — pointing him out with her finger

Now whatever mental picture one has of people and events in the heroic age, I am sure that it does not include the moments following this dramatic pronouncement. If it were not for the fact that this is the testimony of an eyewitness, one would discount it as an invention.

From the dais Gregory beholds something rather out of the ordinary for 6th century Gaul:

“Qui cum in veste,ut diximus,muliebri,coram omnibus adstetisset..”

Whereupon a man in women’s clothing, as we have said, stood forward in the sight of everyone

“Dixit,se nihil opus posse virile agere, ideoque sibi hoc indumentum mutasse”.

Who said, that he was in no way able to operate as a man, and so transformed himself by dressing.

One wonders what the reaction was. The general impression given by Gregory’s account may be summed up in the only possible cliché – stunned silence. Succeeded by anticlimax:

“Abbatissam vero nonnisi tantum nomine nossit..”.

He stated that he knew nothing of the Abbess but her name…”

“Seque eam nunquam vidisse ..”

And he had never seen her..

“Neque cum eadem colloquium habuisse, professus est”.

Nor with the same had had any conversation,

If this was an intended coup de theatre by Clotild, she has obviously failed miserably, or her co-conspirator has been made an offer that he/she cannot refuse.

Our transgender person concludes:

“Praesertim cum hic amplius quam quadraginta ab urbe Pectava milibus degeret”

As well as this he lived more than forty miles from Poitiers

There is clearly something gravely wrong with all this. One thing is indisputable: there is at least one full-time MtoF transgender person living unmolested in the Barbarian West. One gets a whiff of country cottages and a decent kitchen garden, with a mustachioed husband in the background. Somewhere off the beaten track for armies; somewhere quiet.

And yet this person is known. Clotild knows her, she pointed him out, and Clotild is the daughter of the late great (if psychotic) king Charibert. Has Clotild had him/her transported, as if by evil fairies, those forty impossible miles to the cathedral of Poitiers?. And if so, why has her leading actress fluffed her lines? If Clotild’s royal antagonists are responsible for this apparition, how does any of Gregory’s carefully self-censored narrative work?

The saintly bishop of Tours had no desire to linger on the sordid details of this distressing case, and still less did he wish to enlarge upon what might lie behind the bizarre transvestite moment in the cathedral of Poitiers. Blandly he informs us that as a result of the transgender testimony, it was obviously out of the question to convict the pious abbess of criminal conversation. We should, therefore, all move on, and there’s nothing to see around here, folks.

Clotild, however, was not finished yet:

“Quae enim sanctitas in hac abbatissa versatur….”

For what holiness is poured out on this abbess..”

Quae viros eunuchus facit,et secum habitare imperiale ordini praecipit..”

Who has men made eunuchs, and has them around her after the manner of the imperial court.

More dirty washing from St Radegund’s Nunnery and for a while things look a bit dodgy for the noble abbess Leubovera.

“Imterrogata abbatissa,se de hac ratione nihil scire respondit…”

The abbess being questioned, she replied that she knew absolutely nothing about it..”

“Interea,cum haec nomen pueri eunuchi protulisset…”

Meanwhile, the name of the eunuch serving-boy was produced…

And then, a deus ,or rather medicus, ex machina appears:

“Adfuit Reovalis archiater…”

The leading doctor Reovalis presented himself..

Where did HE come from? The learned surgeon explains:

“Dicens,puer iste,parvolus cum esset et infirmaretur in femore..”

Saying, this boy being very young was having pains in the loins..”

Disperatus coepit habere, mater quoque eius sanctam Ragegundam adivit..”

Having been given up as hopeless, his mother also went to Saint Radegund herself.

“Ut ei aliquod studium iubiret inpendi..”

To see if she could have this case looked into somehow.

Saint Radegund knows just the man for the job:

At illa,me vocato,iussit,si possim,aliquid iuvarem..”

And she, having summoned me, commanded me, if I could, to do something to help.

Doctor Reovalis is not afraid to take drastic measures:

“Tunc ego,sicut quondam apud urbem Constantinopolitam medicos agere conspexeram..”

Then I, having once upon a time observed what the doctors did at Constantinople…

“Incisis testicolis..”

Cut off his bollocks

One imagines some uncomfortable shifting about on the tribunal. But all is well:

“Puerum sanum genetrici maestae restitui..”

I restored the boy to his mother improved in health…

“Nam nihil de hac causa abbatissa scire cognovi..”

And I know for a fact that the present abbess knew nothing about this thing.

So that’s alright then. Clotild has alleged the presence of a transvestite, and one is there present in the cathedral. She also claims that there are eunuchs about, and one is also found in the cathedral. But it is all perfectly alright, because there is a simple and innocent explanation for all this stuff. The tranny says he is impotent, and the castrated boy’s mum is happy, so what is the problem? Well, everything really.

This is Merovingian Gaul, not New York in the 1970’s. What is a full-time crossdresser doing in the Dark Ages? Are we supposed to believe that there is a castration expert just hanging about in 6th century Poitiers?

A genius to boot, as the learned doctor claims to have performed this tricky bit of work with no training, but simply as a result of having sat in on an operation way back in the day.

No doubt doctor Reovalis was a brilliant wound surgeon. Lord knows there was ample scope for his talents in the Frankish kingdoms. But it is quite evident that he has performed castrations before, and that he was trained to do so at the East Roman court.

These people stand before us for a few brief moments, caught in the light that a great historian unwittingly throws upon his times. The full court judgment quoted by Gregory makes absolutely no mention of transvestism or of castrated boys, or of any but the most anodyne accusations against the saintly abbess Leubovera. As a writer however, he could not resist the drama of the occasion, and we hear the very words of the protagonists.

The nasty business at St Radegund’s nunnery, which had involved gang warfare, numerous homicides, and an unfortunate outbreak of pregnancy among the unguarded nuns, was smoothed over. The Frankish sovereigns had for once united to draw a veil over this most unedifying spectacle, and the pious judges knew very well what the outcome was to be before the enquiry began.

Nobody important was punished for anything. Clotild and her unwilling accomplice princess Basina were giving a few days penance and told not to cause trouble again.

And the man who dressed as a woman, what happened to him/her? Did she perhaps have a quiet word with the gifted doctor?. Two of the unlikeliest figures of the age fade away, revealed by accident, and lost in time.

Written by: Michelle Quartermain

tglife.com – 2014

The Spirit & The Flesh: Sexual Diversity In American Indian Culture

American Historical Review 93 (February 1988):218-219

By skillfully integrating historical and anthropological literature with the results of his own unique cross-cultural fieldwork among contemporary berdaches, Williams provides an extraordinarily perceptive study of the berdache and the most comprehensive treatment of this controversial topic to date. One of the goals of this work is to “allow Indian people to speak for themselves” (p.7). The most effective use of quotations occurs in part 1, which explores the character of the berdache… Particularly valuable insights are conveyed by various traditionalists…. This is a provocative book that will undoubtedly rattle a number of cages. It will also prove to be an essential tool for scholars engaged in gender studies and an extremely useful source for ethnologists, historians and others interested in the human condition. There is a wealth of information in the book.

American Anthropologist 89 (December 1987): 978-979.

Walter Williams produced a detailed study of the sexual diversity among American Indians in six years, 1980-1986. “The Spirit and the Flesh” achieves an important place in anthropological literature regarding berdaches or transvestites and homosexual behavior among American Indians by means of finding and interviewing berdaches.

The recent general sexual revolution in the United States and the gay liberation movement contributed greatly to the production of Williams’s wide-ranging and fully documented book. It will surprise some, shock some, but almost everyone can learn something new from it.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion 57 (Autumn 1989): 607-615.

Walter Williams explores both the extensive literature and the berdache phenomena in considerable depth in a volume that is a decided contribution to the discussion and understanding of complex issues. It becomes essential reading for all of us who would engage in an ongoing study, as well as for those busy academicians who would hope for at least some knowledge of the subject. They will find Williams’ style eminently readable and at the same time well documented….

Williams would push us to move beyond a commonly cited definition to think of berdachism as representing a third, distinctive gender, a ‘mixing’ of the two biologically obvious genders…. Williams perfers ‘gender mixing’ as a more appropriate description of berdaches as an in-between gender…. Williams does a good job of surveying a great variety of ethnographic, anthropological and historical reports… Williams does put the ethnographic evidence into a new interpretive framework. This much alone insures that his work will be in the center of academic discussion about berdache traditions. It should be added that he has also done rather broad field work assessing the state of the issue in contemporary tribal situations….

The analysis of the shifts in contemporary Indian cultures, as we have noted, is one of Williams’ intended contributions…. He advances far beyond other interpreters, although there are certain problems. The strength of Williams’ interpretation of the contemporary context and also the problematic is in the reporting of his field work, namely his broad based conversations with a variety of modern berdaches / gay Indians from very differing tribal traditions. While his treatment is not and probably could not yet be thoroughly systemic, he attempts to move beyond treatment of berdaches as merely a historical phenomenon…. At the very least, evidence from Native America will emphasize that it is simply not the case that the despising of homosexual individuals is a human universal.

Ethnohistory 37 (Autumn 1990):449-451.

Already a classic, this prodigal, prizewinning ethnography about cross-cultural sexual variation remedies serious empirical deficiencies even as it contains important interpretive problems of its own. The many and overwhelming data it presents confirm not only the presence of sanctioned homosexuality but its diverse institutionalization in indigenous and contemporary Native American cultures. Focused largely on male homosexuality, this book draws on Williams’ fieldwork in North America, Central America, and Hawaii and on his exhaustive excavation of the ethnographic and historical literature….

Most of the evidence for the berdache’s social legitimacy is strikingly convincing… yet at times the book’s argument does not seem to register the contradictory evidence which, to its credit, it actually cites…. The narrative and theoretical voice is stronger in the second, historical section of the book, which uses a dialectical model of colonial domination to examine the transformation of the berdache tradition since European contact…. [It] illustrates very powerfully how domination, by contradictorily facing in as well as out, generates resistance: the recent gay liberation movement among whites, having drawn symbolic nurturance from the surviving berdache tradition, has in turn helped to energize that tradition as a symbol and catalyst of its own culture’s revitalization….

The last chapter surveys data that suggest a wide cross-cultural range of sexual diversity. The concluding paragraphs rightly chastise social constructionists like Foucault and Weeks for their ethnocentric ignorance of emics, which prevents them from fully comprehending variant models of sexuality and gender or imagining truly revolutionary ones. While the book’s own use of etics is a bit random (the first section’s grab-bag functionalism posits now reproductive survival, now social leveling, now biopsychological need, as the telos of social custom), its description and evocation of emic categories admirably begin the task for whose continuation it calls.

Journal of American History 77 (June 1990): 308.

For decades anthropologists and historians have mentioned or provided brief discussions of the role of the berdache within traditional native American cultures, but this volume by Walter L. Williams, a professor of ethnohistory in the Program for the Study of Women and Men in Society at the University of Southern California, provides the first in-depth, systematic examination of this institution and its relationship to both Native American and Euro-American cultures. Combining extensive research in travel accounts, personal narratives, and anthropological reports with his own field research, Williams argues that the institution was prevalent throughout most of the western tribes, and that berdaches played prominent social, economic, and spiritual roles within tribal societies….

This is a well-researched, well-written study. Williams admirably blends his fieldwork with more traditional historical research, and the volume will unquestionably remain the standard reference work on this subject for the forseeable future. Unfortunately, however, Williams’s arguments for the legitimacy of the berdaches and his condemnation of Euro-American attitudes toward gay and lesbian sexual behavior occasionally border upon advocacy. In addition, his chapter arguing for the prevalence of clandestine homosexual behavior among such socio-economic groups as pirates or cowboys detract from his primary thesis. These shortcomings aside, this volume should be welcomed by historians and anthropologists studying Native Americans. It should also be well received by historians of sexuality.

by Walter L. Williams. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986 and revised edition 1992.

transgender.org – 2011