Comments for Lavender Menace

Comment on Du Maurier’s Rebecca and Queer Culture by Evie Locke

Evie Locke — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 18:08:19 +0000

I absolutely love this interpretation for Rebecca, and it seems like a very possible canonical interpretation too. I wonder how many other stories can be read through a queer lens

Comment on Humbuggery and Bumbuggery: The Greenfield Incident by Brian Dempsey

Brian Dempsey — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 10:07:44 +0000

The 1533, 1828 and 1861 Acts did _not_ apply in Scotland.

Comment on Humbuggery and Bumbuggery: The Greenfield Incident by Brian Dempsey

Brian Dempsey — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 09:58:05 +0000

It is an interesting coincidence (I suspect nothing more but who knows) that Greenfield’s difficulties came one year after the 1st ed of Baron David Hume’s Commentaries on the Laws of Scotland Respecting Crimes was published. Only penile-anal penetration between men came within the definition of buggery but of course in common parlance the definition would go beyond the strict legal definition and, depending on the evidence, Greenfield might have been prosecuted for common law indecency or attempted sodomy. That said, Hume could not bring himself to define the offence beyond “those shameful and unnatural lusts [which] justly expose the offender to be punished with death, as one whose very presence is a pollution to the society of his fellow-creatures.” In 1832 the offence still could not be defined with Alison referring to “the unnatural connection of a man with a man, … after the manner and in the place where that crime is usually committed” – perhaps the author, Alison, thought his audience of law students and practitioners would be well-aware of the manner in which sodomy was performed? There were two isolated prosecutions (1570 and 1630) with the first ‘modern’ investigation of a charge of sodomy would appear to be that into John Trott’s behaviour in 1817 in which the definition of the crime appears to be clear to prosecutors.

Comment on Du Maurier’s Rebecca and Queer Culture by Gerta M

Gerta M — Wed, 21 May 2025 14:15:14 +0000

All biographies are not equal. Many are by their very nature inaccurate.

https://www.dumaurier.org/mobile/menu_page.php?id=182

Comment on Humbuggery and Bumbuggery: The Greenfield Incident by Sarah Jane Sloane

Sarah Jane Sloane — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 21:03:28 +0000

I wondered that too! I wondered if it could be “rimming,” too. Or maybe Alexander Carlyle in his letter was just using a common metaphor (seems unlikely). There is so little known about gay and lesbian blife in Edinburgh in the 18th and 19th centuries it’s hard to know what were common metaphors or what were literal descriptions. Thanks for the conjecture.

Comment on Humbuggery and Bumbuggery: The Greenfield Incident by Sarah Jane Sloane

Sarah Jane Sloane — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 21:02:18 +0000

In reply to Phil Gaskell. I wondered that too! I wondered if it could be “rimming,” too. Or maybe Alexander Carlyle in his letter was just using a common metaphor (seems unlikely). There is so little known about gay and lesbian life in Edinburgh in the 18th and 19th centuries it’s hard to know what were common metaphors or what were literal descriptions. Thanks for the conjecture.

Comment on Humbuggery and Bumbuggery: The Greenfield Incident by Phil Gaskell

Phil Gaskell — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 22:55:12 +0000

I’d have thought that ‘eating turd’ is a thinly veiled reference to anal intercourse, a forbidden fruit as opposed to the delights of heterosexual sex. At the time even mentioning gay sex was excruciatingly painful for the pious and puritanical types from whose ranks so many ministers of religion were drawn.

Comment on At the World’s End by Julie Gunn

Julie Gunn — Thu, 02 May 2024 13:58:35 +0000

Hello – Margaret was my best friend throughout school and I was the matron of honour at her wedding and am godmother to her children. Her daughter found your article and sent it to me and I’m very touched by it. Tearful even.
Margaret and I were very close while she was writing the book, our children were born around the same time and we were often all together – I am still very close to my goddaughter Tansy her younger child, and we’ve often tried to track the book.

The book was to be first of a trilogy, and she was writing a massively researched book on the Goddess at the time of her death – which was of course a dreadful shock, still painful.

Thank you for bringing the book back into people’s minds – she was way ahead of her time, and also very brilliant.

It warmed my heart – and Tansy’s – to see your deep understanding of Meggie’s Journeys, and your focus on the importance of “the vision of the Otherworld and its realisation within ourselves”

I loved that you called her “a radical dreamer” – she was an outstanding thinker and it would be so great if she could be remembered more.

You said: “It’s to be hoped that more about her life and her other writing will emerge” and I join you in that hope – many of us remember her well, and her two children especially: they were 16 and 19 when their mother was taken from them – as you can imagine it was an appalling thing to experience for them both.

Her daughter Tansy D’Ambrosio is a superb writer and a poet, and her son Nico inherited her love of dance and is an award winning dancer – now teaching too.

Thank you thank for your article – if you can think of other ways to take this forward, or other people to contact in relation to it please let me know.

Julie

PS I’ve often wondered about the relation between Meggie’s Journeys and Outlander

Comment on Homophobia: A 20th Century Classic by Sailor Twift

Sailor Twift — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 02:26:56 +0000

There is pretty strong evidence that Nick Carraway, narrator of Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The Great Gastby, is gay. I’ll share one piece of support: almost 100% for sure he has a sexual encounter with Mr. McKee at the end of chapter 2. Etc. Surprising for an ambitious writer with huge ambitions in homophobic 1920s America. There’s more to Fitzgerald than someone who merits a place on a cancel list.

Comment on Iona McGregor – Scottish Lesbian Writer by Kate Fearnley

Kate Fearnley — Thu, 06 May 2021 15:10:49 +0000

Although I met and liked Iona the 80s, I didn’t know her well. Thank you for this article – it’s fascinating to find out more about her background.