Maureen Duffy, who has died aged 92, was a wide-ranging novelist, playwright, poet and biographer who gained recognition in the 1960s for her pioneering fiction about lesbian relationships; in the days when homosexuality was still illegal, she was one of Britain’s first openly gay women.
The way that reads – the way it reads, note – is that lesbie was illegal. Which, of course, it never was.
Appearing on the BBC’s Late Night Line-Up in June 1967 – a month before Harold Wilson’s government legalised homosexuality with the Sexual Offences Act
Maybe it’s just me but that just does run with the impression that she was defying the law.
Defying convention, no doubt, but the law, no. But then difficult to get the staff to write the newspapers these days, eh? At least, staff that know what they’re doing.
It is done on purpose. It is one of the great myths of our Modern Age.
I find it annoying not only because it is untrue, but it diminishes the gay population before 1967.
It is the sort of bollox that charlatans like Russel T Davies might come out with.
The usual revisionist bollocks: the past was horrible and racist and sexist and homophobic.
Who was that silly bint who claimed that Britain was hanging gays by the boatload long after we stopped, because she didn’t understand the documents?
Wasn’t it a Naomi if some sort?
You’re thinking of Naomi Wolf.
I prefer not to think of Naomi Wolf…
To be fair to the silly clot, she accepted correction with good grace and apologised. So not a true, dyed-in-the-wool leftie, then.
She may not be a “dyed-in-the-wool leftie”, but she’s definitely a tiresome femiloon and conspiracy theorist.
These are the people who will tell you that modern culture has a ‘nuanced’ view of the issue, that its ‘complicated’, that the past was full of barbarians – but its actually their views that a majorly simplified with no nuance.
Like transgenderism. To them you either are or you aren’t. They have no room for transvestites, tomboys, eonism, nothing. If you aren’t cis then you are trans. Ironic for the people who otherwise say they hate ‘the gender binary’;)
I seem to remembe (and it was a long time ago and I was paying little attention to the affairs of brown ‘atters) that things had relaxed in anticipation of the law and talking about male homosexuality wouldn’t have been a problem either so long as horses remained unfrightened.
Hence, presumably, the discussion being on something called the “Late Night Line-Up”, once the kiddies (and, probably, most of the bourgeois) are asleep.
(assuming we can trust the BBC to tell the truth about the time of day, of course)
Why did the obit writer feel like they had to pack so much into this opening sentence?
Did they think the subject boring and no one would read further? Did they think no one would know who Duffy was?
Subs?
“she was one of Britain’s first openly gay women”: tripe!
Hell, before I left school I had learnt of one local woman who was widely known to be of “not the marrying kind”. She was rather liked: a decent sort, a good sport, that sort of thing. Dressed half-mannishly, voice a little deep, no threat to anyone.
I don’t remember calling queers and homos ‘gay’ back then.
Probably didn’t know what ‘openly’ was, either.
Back in the GOD, they kept it to themselves.
“one of Britain’s first openly gay women”
Wasn’t there a pre-Victorian Yorkshire lass who was pretty openly lesbian?
Helped that she was a wealthy heiress of course. Think she was also a staunch Tory, which may be why we don’t hear much about her, and a practising Anglican (although I suppose she might have owned the right to appoint the vicar, which would have eased any problems with that).
Anne Lister, perhaps?
Curious about this – so, it was illegal for two men to engage in sex, but not two women?
the urban myth is that it was because no one could pluck up the courage to tell Queen Victoria what women did together, so that’s why it wasn’t made illegal.
Although it’s a nice story, I don’t believe that it was to avoid embarrassing Queen Victoria, because of how the law came about.
The Victorian laws against gay male sex acts weren’t a government proposal, but an amendment to another Bill (to raise the female age of consent from 13 to 16, and tighten the laws against female prostitution). The amendment was proposed by a backbench opposition MP, so he wouldn’t have had to explain it to Queen Victoria; that was a government minister’s job.
What’s more, the backbench MP in question (Henry Labouchere*) and Queen Victoria loathed each other. She disapproved of his morals (‘living in sin’ for years with a married actress), and he owned a newspaper, a muck-raking scandal sheet that delighted in embarrassing the ‘great and good’.
So Labouchere wouldn’t have held back for fear of embarrassing Victoria; quite the opposite.
There’s a theory that Labouchere intended it as a wrecking amendment to bring down the whole Bill (it was feared that raising the female age of consent would expose men to blackmail). I’m not sure how that was supposed to work, presumably he thought an alliance of MPs who liked little girls and MPs who liked boys would be enough to vote the Bill down. It doesn’t sound very convincing to me, and if that was the reason, obviously it failed, since the Bill was passed.
Indeed I prefer the theory that he deliberately brought in an amendment specifically against gay male sex acts to embarrass Victoria, possibly over rumours about her grandson’s sexuality (the one who was subsequently mixed up in the Cleveland Row male brothel scandal).
So no; nice theory, but it doesn’t fit the facts.
* Interesting fellow. Son of a wealthy Huguenot banking family. Expelled from Cambridge for cheating in exams, then joined a circus in Mexico. His relatives got him a job as British Ambassador to Argentina; he wrote back accepting it on condition he could do it from Baden Baden. Bought a theatre, largely so it would hire his girlfriend as leading actress.
Expelled from Cambridge for cheating in exams, then joined a circus in Mexico.
Well, who hasn’t?
Some of us hate cheating more than we hate exams
When 19th century homosexuality-related laws were being enacted, the lassies were exempted because Queen Victoria believed that lesbianism did not exist.
Lesbians are an invention of the CIA.
I thought everybody knew that.
No, that’s birds;)
Oh yeah.
I knew it was something where feathers were involved…
I think the reason male gay sex was illegal, but lesbianism wasn’t, goes back a lot further than the Victorians.
For centuries, the relevant law was the Buggery Act, from the time of Henry VIII*. But that wasn’t a specifically anti-gay law; it made any anal sex illegal, regardless of whether it was done to a man, woman or animal.
Fast forward to the late Victorians, and there’s a moral panic about gays, particularly mollys in makeup hanging around Piccadilly. They try to use the old Buggery Act against them, but struggle to get charges to stick because there’s no proof of any anal sex (even more difficult because bizarrely the prosecution had to prove ejaculation, not just penetration).
So the law was extended to cover “gross immorality” between men, which was broader and so easier to get a conviction for. Lesbians weren’t covered because it was seen as plugging loopholes in the Buggery Act, which didn’t apply to lesbians, rather than creating a broad anti-gay law.
* Interestingly making buggery illegal seems to have been a protestant obsession; it was passed under Henry VIII, repealed under Mary, and reimposed again under Elizabeth I. Presumably the Catholics had a better understanding that some things could be immoral without needing to be illegal.
plugging loopholes in the Buggery Act,
fnar fnar
Marjorie Foster.
llater,
llamas
Marion Carstairs.
llater,
llamas
It’s the usual “don’t ignore me, me, me, me, I was there as well!” thing.
My older. brother’s godfather was openly gay long before being homo was legal.
Those policemen who hung about public lavatories to catch the gayers were the perverts.
I gather gay men were popular as godfathers, because they were less likely to have their own children to leave their wealth to.
Gosh! Didn’t know my parents looked so far ahead. 40 years?
But yeah. Spinsters. Do they want to be surrogate mothers or do parents want them as an endless supply of Xmas presents and even babysitting?
Harry Daley.
llater,
llamas
Many writers who found Maureen Duffy’s politics anathema nevertheless saw her as a heroine when it came to her implacable campaigning for authors’ rights. In 1972 she founded the Writers’ Action Group with the novelist Brigid Brophy, her friend and sometime lover, with the aim of securing a Public Lending Right (PLR) scheme to ensure a small payment for authors every time their books are taken out by library users.
And how’s that working out for writers?
It’s like musicians complaining they don’t have millions of pounds to spend on cocaine. Surely if you have an irrepressible talent, one that burns so hot you must write / act / do standup or whatever because the muse won’t let you keep your light hidden under the Kate Bush LPs, the point is your readers / listeners / fans?
And if you reach an audience, entertain them enough, money will come to you if you ask for it. Probably. There’s always great authors whose stuff isn’t commercial, for whatever reason doesn’t catch the zeitgeist. But there’s also no gatekeepers anymore, you can self publish on Amazon for a pittance, and end up a best-selling author whose works are turned into big budget movies. Like Andy Weir, or that horrible Ready Player One nostalgiabait. RPO was an awful book, still made millions and got Spielberg onboard because it told a story people wanted to hear. 30 Shades of Grey was originally Twilight fanfic published on the internet. Huge demand now from streaming giants for “content” too. We used to have 3 or 4 TV channels, how many is it now? The TV and cinema gatekeepers also don’t matter in the age of YouTube and AI video tools. Artists have never had it so good.
But “the Arts” remain colonised by people with little talent, who want to play at being artists in the expectation that you’ll be forced to subsidise their bohemian lifestyle, even though they produce godawful impenetrable prose, unfunny “daily mail” jokes for BBC radio, ugly “art”, and their sole qualification appears to be their predictable leftist views and unwillingness to get a job.
I think it says a lot about the British art scene that its heroes include Banksy (typical pompous, privileged Joleon type whose works have all the subtlety, wit and range of a cartoon in the Socialist Worker) and Hirst (producer of biohazardous eyesores that I’m sure are only purchased for tax write-off purposes or something). Ofc, the Shibboleth is that you’re supposed to find the predictably ugly “daring” and “challenging “, the predictably tendentious political messaging (always things the establishment agrees with Banksy on, strangely) as “brave”, and so on. I’m a prole non-U Morlock-rube for not seeing artistic merit in a Piss Christ or the artist’s sculpture of a vulva, through the medium of bouncy castle.
The art installation of a banana taped to a wall was stolen a couple weeks ago.
The Louvre admitted that they had been replacing the banana and the gaffer tape for years.
So no big deal.
Those cans of “the artist’s shit” ? obviously the buyer couldn’t open it in case the ever so valuable contents went off. My guess is that they were tuna chunks relabelled.