A Ltle Gay History of Wal, Leeworthy

Contents:

• A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL
• A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL
• A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL
• LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL
• A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL

A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL

"A Ltle Gay History is a feat of redisvery. Daryl Leeworthy has med an astonishg diversy of sourc to brg to the light the unrground stori and polil stggl of gay men and women a changg Wal.

"Dpe s tle, this is a big book – big on ias, analysis, and empathy, and big on tracg the lived experience of gay people Wal.

A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL

Book:A Ltle Gay History of Wal. Catn:Profsor Kirsti Bohata, review of A Ltle Gay History of Wal, (review no. Held aloft ‘were signs intifyg the plac the maly lbian and gay marchers had lived and where they were om to disprove the popular notn that “there were no gays Wal”.

125) As lerary, soclogil, and historil studi have begun to show, queer liv lived Wal were more ubiquo and visible than the ‘no gays Wal’ ephet suggts. (1) Daryl Leeworthy’s A Ltle Gay History of Wal is the first staed study of queer history Wal and is, as s thor bluntly stat, a book ‘that should have been wrten a long time ago. Concentratg on the 19th and 20th centuri, A Ltle Gay History of Wal offers a brief overview of same-sex sire om medieval tim to post-volutn.

A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL

In his analysis of medieval legal rerds, Leeworthy intifi an archival ‘gap’ England and Wal, where prosecutns for crimal homosexual acts were snt pared wh some other parts of Europe. The unlikely alliance between the NUM the Dulais Valley and LGSM (Lbians and Gays Support the Mers) is perhaps the bt known example of queer valleys experience, havg bee the subject of the film Pri 2014.

Importantly, the support was mutual and June 1985, ‘Dozens of mers om the South Wal Area of the NUM and their fai joed the gay pri march through London… Not only was this the first pri march to feature non-gay people; was perhaps the largt ntgent of Welsh men and women that had yet taken part gay pri events the pal. Leeworthy scrib the plac people did (or didn’t) go, offerg a glimpse of gay social life across more than a century, om workg-class and disreputable ffee taverns and pubs the late 19th-century, through to the inic gay dance clubs of Cardiff and Swansea.

This is no small feat as the nnectns of particular venu wh lbian and/or gay muni, particularly the 1970s and 80s were generally rmal, temporary, and often tenuo. In one log, a volunteer rerds takg a b driver om Merthyr to one of the gentler gay pubs Cardiff, the Kg’s Cross. In the by now obligatory chapter on the ‘Legal limatns’ wh which gay men existed for so long, Leeworthy charts the uneven applitn of the law, wh a wele foc on the tersectn of race, class, genr, and sexualy.

LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL

Commted to ‘fairns wh the legal system and to tolerance’ Abse and others were simultaneoly outspoken about their distaste for homosexualy (p. Other Labour MPs tend to be supportive only behd closed doors and there was a mixed picture on gay rights adoptn amongst the other parti of Wal through the 1970s and 80s. There is, neverthels, a perceptible sense of disappotment the scriptn of Cardiff gay culture the new lennium ‘given over to alhol and dgs… but absent the polil unrpngs of the liberatn movement of the 1970s and the HIV/AIDS activism of the 1980s’ (p.

As a history of Wal, Leeworthy is ncerned to trace the distctivens of ‘Welsh tradns’ () and particular what meant to be gay and Welsh. (3) As homosexualy was taxonomised and pathologised by sexologists and creasgly prohibive laws were troduced the late 19th century, a time when genr s were also beg overtly challenged, popular terms for effemate or cross-drsg men Wal clud sni fenyw the south and di ffan the north. In the 20th century lbiaidd (lbian) and hoyw (gay) were adopted, wh cwiyr—a homophone of queer which also neatly subverts the Welsh word for ‘rrect’ (cywir)—makg a more recent entry.

The exploratn of sexualy and natnaly is a large field of study, rangg as do om the centraly of the reproductive nuclear fay, through policg of normative genrs, to genr or sexual separatism (as Lbian or Queer Natn), to homonatnalism. The recurrg subtext this study is whether Welshns and queerns, or more specifilly beg Welsh and gay, are patible. Leeworthy nclus by addrsg the qutn head on, argug that ‘historilly there has been a sense that homosexualy and Welshenss ( all s forms) were at odds wh each other’, and more broadly that ‘queer inty and natnal inty have historilly been unfortably juxtaposed most wtern ntexts.

A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL

129) Leeworthy documents multiple stanc which people feel unable to e out Wal, or rather to their particular muny wh Wal, one man even feelg that beg gay was ‘part of the “Anglicisatn procs”’ (p.

In evince to the Wolfenn Commtee, the Chief Constable of Glaman claimed homosexualy was ‘a vice created London which ltle troubled the provc’ (p.