"Queering the Genesis Story", penguins, the Blitz - and other LGBTQ+ History Month events

Northern Ireland War Memorial Museum's latest show suggests "queer life" blossomed "amid the blackouts and the Blitz"

One of my big journalistic curiosities is how much woke content is being funded by the taxpayer. Since devoting more time to this area - now freelance and writing news - I have been amazed by the amount of LGBTQ+ material everywhere.

My problem isn’t LGBTQ+ material, per se. It’s that the content largely seems to me ahistorical or false (for instance, the National Maritime Museum (NMM) recently included Admiral Nelson in its Queer History Night); in breach of secular principles (it goes past explaining the basics of sexuality, to suggesting to children that dead female sailors from the 19th century were actually “transmasc” (also the NMM), endorsing the idea that “masculine” or “feminine” behaviours can mean you’re in the wrong body); and is quite obsessive, as if nothing can be acceptable anymore unless someone has found a way to make it “queer” - even if its the most tenuous link on earth or disinformation.

Another issue is that every cultural institution has decided “queer” is now the word every member of the LGBTQ+ population is comfortable with. I know from previous articles I’m written that that’s not the case. The actor James Dreyfus says it best here:

“the word ‘queer’ has not been reclaimed by a huge number of same-sex attracted people. It’s predominantly used by heterosexual people to appease edgy and Q+ extremist activists. Most gay people I know loathe the word as it was the last thing they heard before getting a kicking.”

Caveats over. Without further ado, a summary of some of the strangest events:

“Queer cruising thrived during the Blitz”

Event: Male queer life in Belfast during WWII at The Northern Ireland War Memorial Museum

• Explores the “busy cruising scene that thrived amid the blackouts and the Blitz to the American GIs that excited the city's queer men.” [Cruising means walking or driving around certain areas in pursuit of a sexual partner].

• Hosted by Dr Tom Hulme, a historian currently working on a book titled Belfastmen: an Intimate Queer History of Ireland, who will “uncover and reconstruct this murky male queer world”.

• “He also runs an Arts and Humanities Research Council project titled ‘Queer Northern Ireland: Sexuality Before Liberation’.”

“Penguins are LGBTQ+ icons”

Event: Penguin Pride at The National Maritime Museum

• The event (which took place yesterday) allowed participants to “Learn about penguin pride and make your own pocket penguin to take home!”

• Also implies there was some sort of Brokeback-Mountain-style cover up of penguins in 1910-13:

Event: LGTBQ+Bridging Binaries Guided Tour at The Museum of Zoology

• “Animals don’t do sexual identity; they just do sex”, say guides in this tour of “gender and sex in the animal world”.

• “From same-sex sexual behaviour in giraffes and penguins to the scientists working in the field of zoology. How do the labels and categories we give animals affect the way we interact with the natural world?”

In general, penguins come up a lot:

“Pregnant men have always been around":

Event: Uncovering histories of trans family at UCL

• Hosted by Kit Heyam (they/he), “Writer, researcher, heritage practitioner and “trans awareness trainer”.

• “They are currently working to uncover hidden histories of gender in the Royal Armouries, Leeds”.

• Claims that “while ‘pregnancy’ and ‘womanhood’ feel synonymous in Western culture today, they haven’t always been so.”

Some bumf here (I have no idea what most of it means):

“The politicised erasure of trans history is a central feature of our contemporary anti-trans climate - but nowhere more so than in the realm of the family. Every year sees a new 'first pregnant man'; every form of trans family is too often approached with awe and stupefaction rather than care and recognition. Claiming that something is unprecedented is a cast-iron excuse for dealing with it badly, or not at all: how can medical staff and journalists really be asked to treat trans people with respect when this is all just so new? And feeling as if they're the first to do something can prevent trans families from building networks of solidarity: can the unprecedented family ever truly thrive?

Building on my work in Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender, which argued that narrow contemporary ideas of what makes someone 'really trans' frequently obstruct our capacity to recognise trans history, I unpick the factors that construct trans family as uniquely unthinkable in contemporary Western thought, discussing the association between trans identity and individualism, and the perception that trans people are incompatible with normative biology. Focusing on ideas of pregnancy - as well as reflecting on my own recent experience - I show that while ‘pregnancy’ and ‘womanhood’ feel synonymous in Western culture today, they haven’t always been so. Tracing debates as far back as ancient Greece, I uncover the way scientists and philosophers have always thought critically and creatively about the relationship between pregnancy and gender – until the twentieth century, when social anxieties about destabilising the gender binary caused scientists to reassert it in the face of mounting evidence that it didn’t really work. The idea of a ‘pregnant man’ might be presented as a logical impossibility today, but that way of thinking is far more recent than we might expect.

This event has been organised by qUCL, part of the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies.”

“The Genesis Narrative is queer”

Event: LGBTQ+HM: Can You Adam and Eve It? Queering Heterosexuality, the Centre for Religion in Society at York St John University

• Hosted by Dr Chris Greenough, an expert in “queer theologies/queer biblical studies, sociology of religion, religious identities, sexualities, sexual violence, feminist, gender and queer theories and ethics.”

• Greenough has “research interests in the role of the Bible and religion in relation to rape culture and gender-based violence.”

Interestingly, the Victoria and Albert Museum is also offering "A Queer History of Art" course later this year (Thursday 30th May-Thursday 4th July 2024), which has a lesson on “Queering the Genesis Story”.

“Plants are queer”

Event: Queer Nature Walk at Loughborough University

• “We'll be looking at plants with queer associations, both scientifically and culturally; for example, yew trees changing sex, violets association with Sappho. We'll also be talking more generally about queer botany, e.g. use of language - seed producing flowers rather than female flowers.”

You can also find some more coverage here - my piece for The Telegraph: