Unlike all the bodies that have organised Pride festivals in London for the past 25 years, The Pride Trust was a genuine membership organisation. It was easy to join, and everyone who did got a vote on who ran it, and what each year's theme would be.
Oh, and what the event was called… Read more
For LGBT History Month in 2011, there was some actual bi-bi-bi content! At the Conway Hall in Central London, three of us gave talks: I can remember Sue George being another participant, but I can't currently remember the third person.
The photo on the front of the flyer / postcard advertising the event is a BiCon group photo..[1]I can't currently remember which year it's from, but it must be 1996 or later – I'm just under the '0' of '20th' with a beard.
.. and on the back, it turns out that the third speaker and I aren't named on the flyer.
Mine was on the bi community's involvement in London's Pride event and this and the following post is recreating and expanding that talk from the photos I scanned for it… Read more
Notes
| ↑1 | I can't currently remember which year it's from, but it must be 1996 or later – I'm just under the '0' of '20th' with a beard. |
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It looks like two lesbian and gay magazines have used the title Square Peg. The later one is American, founded by long-time lesbian activist Jeanne Córdova, and ran from 1992-94.
The original was British, started in 1983 and if it wasn't unique, I've never seen anything else like it. A later subtitle for it was '(the journal for contemporary perverts)' – a queer art and politics and art quarterly magazine. On heavy glossy paper. In a square format.
In one of the few mentions I can find of it, 1980s gay activist Colin Clews says "In effect, it was probably one of the first publications to segment the gay and lesbian market by any measure other than gender" – and that's probably why it was so good. The collective that ran it were mixed gender, at least after the first issues, and the content was far more gender balanced than any other lesbian or gay publication.
The book What is She Like: Lesbian Identities from the 1950s to the 1990s includes it in a list of lesbian publications[1]If you can think of another mixed gender magazine that someone with a very definite lesbian perspective would say that about without any hedging, do say. that disappeared in the 1980s. That last bit's not true – its last issue was in 1991 – but the comment that "It was alternative, upfront, sexual, mixed, arty, offering fiction and plenty of art work. At the time, Square Peg was decidedly innovative, and it led the way for journals with stronger design input, higher production quality and higher prices" is spot on.
The design aesthetic didn't always make it the easiest thing to read, but the actual content was all highly readable.
Anyway, somehow it became known as somewhere that – in comparison to the rest of the lesbian and gay media – Square Peg was bi friendly. Maybe that was because of the mixed gender collective, but it confused them… Read more
Notes
| ↑1 | If you can think of another mixed gender magazine that someone with a very definite lesbian perspective would say that about without any hedging, do say. |
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