80 More Gays Around the World: Part 10) Turning the Page

Last time on “80 More Gays”: 24) John Menlove Edwards (1910-1958) was a pioneering climber, as is 25) Alex Johnson (b.1989) who trained for the Olympics, which had first awarded gold medals in climbing (in the form of mountaineering) in 1924 to 26) George Mallory (1886-1924) and his team for attempting to climb Everest, still a popular challenge, achieved by 27) Silvia Vasquez-Lavado (b.1974), the first openly lesbian climber to complete the Seven Summits, which she did as a healing process for the sexual abuse she received as a child, as did author 28) Dorothy Allison (b.1949).

28) Dorothy Allison addressed her experiences of child abuse from her stepfather in much of her writing. Other social issues often associated with such abuse – poverty, working class background and unemployment – are also addressed. Her first full-length novel, “Bastard Out of Carolina”, published in 1992, is seen as being semi-autobiographical.

Dorothy’s rise from childhood poverty and abuse has been an inspiration to some women. She was the first member of her family to graduate from high school. She then went on to graduate from The New School in New York City with an MA in urban anthropology.

It was her involvement with a group of militant feminists while at college in the 1970s that Dorothy was encouraged to write. She had always made up stories as a form of escape but now her feminism began to influence what she wrote. On the activist side Dorothy was involved in the Barnard Conference on Sexuality, an event about which I wrote briefly in this article in relation to Gayle Rubin’s contribution to what became known as the Feminist Sex Wars (Gayle Rubin was number 14 in my previous 80 Gays series).

Dorothy Allison’s first published work, “The Women Who Hate Me: Poems by Dorothy Allison”, appeared in 1982. This was followed in 1988 with “Trash: Short Stories”. This was to be the first of Dorothy’s works to win a Lambda Literary Award. In fact, it won two – one for Best Lesbian Fiction, and one for Best Lesbian Small Press Book.

These were two of categories of the very first Lambda Literary Awards held in 1989 for new lgbt literature. The awards were born out of the growing amount of lgbt literature that had been published in the USA since the 1970s. This went in hand with the growth in the number of lgbt bookshops. One of these gave its name to the awards, the Lambda Rising bookstore in Washington DC, founded by 29) L. Page “Deacon” Maccubbin in 1974.

An activist since the early 1970s Deacon Maccubbin became a successful businessman with a small chain of his Lambda Rising bookstores in various cities. The name was influenced by the popularity of the Greek letter lambda as a symbol of gay activism at the time (before the pink triangle became widely used). By 1987 there was enough lgbt literature being published that Deacon used his knowledge of the industry to publish “Lambda Book Report”, a bi-monthly review. This led to him creating the Lambda Literary Awards in 1989.

In 2003 Deacon helped to save the first lgbt bookstore in the USA from closure. This was the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York. It had acquired something of a legendary status in the city’s gay community from the moment it opened. When Deacon purchased the bookshop it had already been passed from one owner to another for several years and was in danger of closing down for good. Deacon sold the bookshop in 2006 at a time when there was a downturn in lgbt bookshops nationwide, hampered by the growth of online selling and lgbt books being stocked in mainstream stores. The Oscar Wilde Bookshop finally closed in 2009.

The Oscar Wilde Bookshop was opened on 24th November 1967 as the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop. It was the brainchild of Craig Rodwell (1940-1993). In 1992 Craig was awarded a Lambda Literary Award for his services to the lgbt publishing. In 1973 the bookshop moved from its original location to Christopher Street, where Craig had an apartment and where the Stonewall Inn is located.

Craig Rodwell was one of the leading protestors at the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and he later persuaded a cross-nation organisation of gay rights groups to hold the first modern Pride march, the Christopher Street Liberation (or Gay Freedom) Day march, to mark the riots first anniversary. I haven’t included Craig Rodwell in the numbered sequence of “80 More Gays” because I want to include another activist from that time, and I intend to write more about him and the creation of Pride in June.

Other organisers of the first Christopher Street Liberation Day march, who met in Craig Rodwell apartment on Christopher Street itself, was 30) Ellen Broidy (b.1946). She worked in the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in its original location while she was studying at New York University a short distance away. Ellen was also an activist. She set up a Student Homophile League at college, and was a member of the Gay Liberation Front and the Lavender Menace.

Many lesbians joined gay rights and feminist groups in the 1960s and 1970s. Soon many of them realised that lesbian issues were either being ignored or opposed by those groups. One group in particular, the National Organisation for Women (NOW), was critical of any attempt to include lesbian issues. The NOW president went so far as to label lesbians as a “lavender menace”. This was to spark the creation of a new activist group which took its name from that insult. Ellen Broidy was one of the women of Lavender Menace who announced themselves in spectacular fashion at NOW’s second Congress to Unite Women on 1st May 1970.

Just as the first session of the congress was about to begin the lights in the auditorium went out. Thirty seconds later they came back on again, and standing across the front of the stage and in the aisles were 19 women wearing t-shirts which bore the words “Lavender Menace”. Ellen Broidy was one of them. So, too was Rita Mae Brown, who was featured in my original 80 Gays series (as number 57). Rather than being removed by security guards the women managed to turn the session into a discussion on lesbianism and heterosexism. They were helped in that the chair of that session was in on the act, as was the woman operating the lights.


One of the few remaining original t-shirts worn by members of the Lavender Menace when they protested at the Congress to Unite Women. This one belonged to Martha Shelley and was donated to the Lesbian Herstory Archives in 2014.

Not long after this Lavender Menace changed it’s named to Radicalesbians. The group fell victim to a common problem among many of the early lgbt activist groups – some members want to be more radical and political and others don’t. Splinter groups were often formed and eventually they all lost their support. The Radicalesbians disbanded in 1971.

NOW, however, has continued. Even in the 1970s lesbians who belonged to Lavender Menace and the Gay Liberation Front also belonged to NOW and were active in promoting lesbian involvement. One of the leading members of NOW who left the Radicalesbians to form other groups was 31) Barbara Love (b.1937).

Next time on “80 More Gays”: Things go swimmingly, particularly in Helsinki and Melbourne but not in Vietnam, as we go from lgbt activism to anti-war protest.

Stonewall 50: Reclaiming Our History

The 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots is being commemorated across the USA this weekend. Pride of place is going to the Stonewall Inn itself and New York Pride which this year has been appointed World Pride.

Even though the Stonewall Riots were a significant event in the history of the lgbt community in the USA it wasn’t the first and only event to make a difference, and here in the UK it made little difference at all, not directly. On both sides of the Atlantic there were gay rights groups already in existence. Stonewall sparked a movement that became the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), and it was the publicity and militant action of the GLF that inspired a worldwide movement. It is the GLF who kept the Stonewall Riots in the minds of campaigners and the public, to the virtual exclusion of the other riots and homophobic attacks that had occurred before and after 1969. Thanks to the efforts of the GLF the legacy of Stonewall has dominated lgbt rights since 1969.

The biggest legacy of the GLF was the Pride march, a version of the many other protest marches that have been around for centuries.

If I’ve learnt anything by researching history it’s not to believe everything people tell you. As a schoolboy in the years around 1969 I was taught the standard Victorian view of British history. I was taught that Kings Richard the Lionheart and Henry VIII were good kings. I was taught that Florence Nightingale was a pioneer in nursing. I was taught that the British Empire was the most beneficial empire the world had ever seen (not unlike Trump’s distorted view of his USA). None of it was strictly true.

The Stonewall Riots have become a sacred event with only one interpretation that is deemed acceptable. That is not how history should be written, however much we dislike the facts. It is a fact that one section of the lgbt community was NOT more responsible for the events of 28th June 1969 than any other, despite the insistence of some that they were so. The phrase “who threw the first brick” is often claimed to have originated from the events of Stonewall, yet the phrase had been in use in the UK since long before the Suffragette movements of a century ago. And Stonewall wasn’t the big news that sent a shockwave across the world or America. It gained little attention outside the east coast of America. It is only the actions of the GLF that promoted the riots over those that had occurred many times before across the nation.

Social media and the internet is a curse as much as a blessing when it comes to informing people of their heritage. In the 50 years since the Stonewall Riots a lot of misinformation and urban myths have built up around them, some based on misinterpretation of media reports or on the personal testimony of one person who was present that only gives one perspective. Even the word Riots is been challenged by people who were there. If the lgbt community expects some respect then it should not falsify its history to score points against homophobia. Can we even trust ourselves if we lie?

In the past couple of years historians have been looking afain at Stonewall and have been trying to sift through every scrap of information to come up with a more complete picture of the events and immediate impact of 28th June 1969 and the few nights that followed.

On this 50th anniversary I believe we must begin to put more emphasis on the facts, implications and legacy of the Stonewall Riots instead of concentrating on one aspect or person. We need to get to the root of the myths and weed out the ones that have no basis. There is always a place for urban myth in society – it illustrates the attitudes, fears and perspectives of different groups in any society at a given period. But society has to be aware what is urban myth and what isn’t. So, now is the time to start to establish a definitive narrative of the Stonewall Riots before it is swamped in those myths.

Several weeks ago, as I was fact-checking the final draft of this article, I came across a YouTube video produced by the New York Times which covered exactly the same points as I had written. It put across my point about being true to our heritage far more eloquently than I did. In the end I decided that the video was much more suited to today than my intended article, so the video is shown below.

One point to correct in the video is the fact that the first march to commemorate the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots were held in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles on 28th June 1970. This is not true. As I have proved in my article “Pride Cities” the first was held in Chicago the day before on 27th June. Chicago was also the first city to use the word “Pride” for their march – New York didn’t use it until 1971. This is an example of the way an urban myth can begin, with someone making a claim that isn’t backed up by fact which becomes accepted as such.

The Forgotten Victims of Franco

Eighty years ago this month the Spanish Civil War was nearing its end. On 27th February 1939 Britain and France recognised the government of Gen. Francisco Franco and his Nationalists as the legitimate government of Spain. The war went on for several more months until Franco declared the war had ended on 1st April.

Until Franco came to power Spain’s lgbt community had “enjoyed” a higher degree of freedom than most of Europe. Sodomy had been decriminalised in 1882 and the Second Republic (1931-1939) had been more liberal than the preceding monarchy. The power of the aristocracy and the Catholic Church had been reduced.

All that changed when Franco took over. The Catholic Church regained its political powers and things like abortion and divorce were made illegal. Although there was no new law re-criminalising homosexuality or sodomy the lgbt community saw an increase in opposition and victimisation.

In 1954 Franco reformed Spain’s 1933 Vagrancy Law to include homosexuality, thereby making it illegal once more. To the Nationalist government this was a step made to “correct and reform” homosexuals rather than punish them. But punish them they did with harassment, arrest and torture. In 1971 homosexuality was declared a mental illness rather than a crime with the introduction of the Law of Dangerousness and Social Rehabilitation. Gay men were sent to “correction camps” for “corrective treatment”, or physical and psychological abuse, as we would recognise it today.

Even after months of this forced “therapy” convicted homosexuals had little chance of finding employment afterwards as the police would inform employers of their employee’s record as a homosexual.

When homosexuality was legalised once more in Spain in 1979 (40 years ago this year) several years after Franco’s death, democracy, the monarchy and more liberalism were introduced. However, men and women who had been still convicted for their homosexuality were still being discriminated against. In 1976 the Spanish government issued pardons to all political prisoners under Franco, but not to homosexuals as it was still classed as a “mental Illness” that required “correction”.

It wasn’t until this century that the Spanish government decided to finally wipe out the convictions of all those who were convicted of homosexuality or underwent treatment. Homosexuality had been legalised two years earlier. Those who had been affected felt that there should be more than a pardon. More than anything, many of them called for financial reparation to cover the hardships they had endured because of their convictions.

In 2004 the Association of Ex-Social Prisoners of Spain was formed. Antoni Ruiz, its president and one of Franco’s victims, had been arrested and convicted of homosexuality in 1975. He was jailed, raped by other prisoners and subjected to psychological torture by the prison authorities. After years of campaigning the government agreed to give financial payments to Ruiz and all surviving victims of Franco’s homophobic laws. In 2009 Antoni Ruiz was the first to receive any of this compensation, receiving 4,000 euros.

Each case for compensation that goes before the Commission for Compensation of Former Social Prisoners is treated individually. As of January 2018 only 116 people had been successful in their case. I have no data for the thirteen months since then.

While the persecution of gay men and women by the Nazis has become deeply engraved into lgbt heritage the persecution in Franco’s Spain, which went on long after the Nazis were defeated, has gone largely unnoticed outside Spain. Unlike the Holocaust there are no memorials to Franco’s lgbt victims and many people today are surprised that Spain, a nation that has been in the forefront of lgbt rights in the 21st century, has had such a recent homophobic past.

Intersex Pioneer

Today we celebrate a birthday and celebrate a pioneer of intersex awareness. The birthday we celebrate is that of Herculine (Abel) Barbin, who was born on this day 1838 in the village of St. Jean d’Angély, a couple of miles off the French Pacific coast near La Rochelle. In 2004 the date of Herculine’s birthday was chosen as the Intersex Day of Remembrance, also known as Intersex Solidarity Day. With Intersex Awareness Day on October 26th, a period of intersex awareness covering the days in between is becoming more popular internationally.

Herculine Barbin was assigned female at birth and was raised as a girl. Later in life she wrote her autobiography in which she uses female pronouns for herself until she wrote about the time when he chose to self-identify as male. In respect to her memory that is what I will do.

Thanks to the generosity of local citizen’s Herculine’s widowed mother was allowed to place her in the local orphanage at the age of 7. She was treated well and was later placed in a convent school for a wider education.

Herculine was an excellent learner, except in things like needlework and embroidery. Books were here forte. After she had taken her first communion Herculine returned to her mother in La Rochelle. A noble family had befriended her mother and accepted her into their family home. Herculine also became like family. She became a kind of personal assistant to the ailing head of the family and often read newspapers, letters and books to him as he lay in bed. One of these books had a lasting effect on Herculine. It was Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”.

This classic of Roman literature has provided me with several articles over the past few years. “Metamorphoses”, as its name implies, is a collection of legends and myths that have change, often physical, as their theme. These include the stories of Hyacinth, Tiresias, Narcissus and Cypress.

At the age of 17 Herculine was persuaded to become a trainee teacher at a girl’s school. Unlike previously in the convent school Herculine was placed in a dormitory with other female trainees. This made her uneasy because she was now beginning to show signs of male puberty. Hair was growing on her upper lip. Although very self-conscious about this Herculine did her best to ignore glances.

Despite her fears over her appearance Herculine found a close companion called Thécla. They were inseparable and kissed often. Herculine fell in love. Several times the nuns running the school admonished them for showing too much affection, and heartache followed when Thécla told Herculine that their affair must end.

On gaining her teaching certificate Herculine was appointed to a girl’s school. She soon found a new love in Sara, the daughter of the hear mistress. They soon developed a passionate affair. Herculine, however, felt guilty that she should have such emotions for a woman. She confessed her guilt to her confessor, a priest who was generally unpleasant with everyone. Needless to say he wasn’t supportive of Herculine’s plight.

During the summer break Herculine had the chance to see another confessor. He was more compassionate, in his way. Bearing in mind the lack of knowledge, experience and awareness of intersex issues in the 1850s the confessor’s words are surprising. In her autobiography Herculine recorded his response: “… you are here and now entitled to call yourself a man in society. Certainly you are, but how will you obtain the legal right to do so? At the price of the greatest scandal, perhaps.” The scandal refers to Herculine still working a male teacher in a girl’s school. The confessor continued, “And so, the advice I am giving you is this: withdraw from the world and become a nun; but be very careful not to repeat the confession you have made to me, for a convent of women would not admit you”. This advice was not unexpected, coming from a priest, but it was much better than the treatment she got from the science world.

During the second year at the school Herculine began experiencing severe pains in her abdomen. A doctor was sent for and he examined her. He was astonished at Herculine’s intersex physicality and produced only more pain for her during the examination. His prescription was for her to leave the school at once.

A third confession of her physical and emotional pains before the local bishop led to him making her see another doctor. This doctor was worse than the previous one. A more thorough and invasive examination was conducted, all in the name of science, her doctor insisted. At the end of his examination he advised Herculine to self-identify as a man.

It was a heart-breaking decision for Herculine. She left the girl’s school and her beloved Sara. Now Herculine had adopted the male forename on Abel.

In 1860 Abel received an official document from the local magistrate confirming in law that he was a man. Needless to say the local people noticed the change in his outward appearance and demeanour. The press treated this with sensationalism, much to the distress of Abel and his mother.

Abel got an invitation to join the Paris railway company. He worked there for a while until a change of management forced his redundancy. With only enough money to cover a month of unemployment Abel began to sink into depression as the month-end approached and with no other employment in sight. Fortunately he found employment as a waiter’s assistant on a ship bound for America. This is where Abel’s autobiography ends.

In February 1868 Abel Barbin’s body was found in his 6th floor room on the Rue de l’Ecole de Médicine in Paris. He had apparently died of carbon dioxide poisoning from a charcoal stove. The verdict of suicide was given. And so ended the life of the first intersex person to chronicle his or her life.

The life of Herculine/Abel Barbin still resonates with many young intersex people today who was struggling to find acceptance and awareness of the issues that face them.

Around the World in Another 80 Gays : Part 22) Pride Takes to the Skies

Previously :  42) The Dance of The 41 (1901) gave its name to the derogatory term for a gay man in Mexico which was used by 43) Alberto B. Mendoza (b.1971) in the name of his lgbt organisation which annually honours 41 lgbt Hispanics, one of whom was 44 ) Dr. Alicia Gaspar de Alba (b.1958), a writer of a lesbian mystery novel, a genre pioneered by 45) Katherine V. Forrest (b.1939), a former editor of Naiad Press whose books were published in Czech by 46) Markéta Navratilova (1975).

46) Markéta Navratilova (no relation to the more famous Martina, as far as I know) founded LePress in 2007. It was the first lesbian publishing house to be established in the Czech Republic. Markéta had lived in the UK for a couple of years and was impressed by the amount of lesbian literature that was available in mainstream book stores.

Back home in the Czech Republic Markéta’s friends expressed an interest in reading lesbian fiction but none of the publications were available in Czech. This led Markéta to found LePress as a way of expanding the lesbian literature market into eastern Europe. Looking at the back catalogue of Naiad Press which had been sold to Bella Books Markéta selected two romantic novels which she published as the first Czech language lesbian novels in the Czech Republic. From such small beginnings LePress has grown to include other lgbt publications and genres, including children’s books like the famous “And Tango Makes Three”.

Markéta Navratilova is also an activist. She is a member of the organising committee of the 2019 International Gay and Lesbian Association Europe conference to be held in Prague, and of the organising committee of Prague Pride.

Another member of both committees, and the core team manager of the 2019 conference, is 47) Czeslaw Walek (b.1975). His involvement with Prague Pride came about through his career as a lawyer and human rights campaigner. Between 2009 and 2011 he was Deputy Minister of Human Rights and Minorities. In late 2010 Czeslaw was approached by a group of people who wanted to organise the first Prague Pride. They asked him to draw up a constitution for their committee. His position as a Deputy Minister meant that he had established contacts with the government and police and he attended the committee meetings to offer advice.

By January 2011 the committee was looking for a Chair. Czeslaw was persuaded to accept the position. “Let’s try for a month”, he is reported to have said. Seven years later, in July 2018, he’s still Chair of Prague Pride.

Czeslaw’s appointment as Deputy Minister came during an unstable period in Czech politics. Just two months into the job the Czech government collapsed, and two years later the Human Rights Minister resigned and Czeslaw was put in charge of the department.

One of the areas in which Czeslaw is particularly pleased to have made an impact was the increase in the rights and attitudes towards the Roma community. In 2003 he was appointed Director of the Office of the Governmental Council for the Roma Community. It was in collaboration with Roma groups and the Equal Opportunities Party that Czeslaw campaigned as the Green Party candidate in the 2013 Czech parliamentary election.

His appointments were, so far, non-elective, and during his time in office there was only one openly lgbt member of the Czech government, Gustav Slamečka, the non-elected Minister of Transport (2009-10). Czeslaw didn’t win his Prague seat in 2013 and so didn’t earn the honour of being the first openly elected member of the lower house of the Czech parliament.

However, there had already been an openly lgbt member of the upper house, the Senate. He was 48) Václav Fischer (b1954). He was elected as an independent, openly gay, Senator for Prague’s municipal district 1 in 1999 with a massive 71% of the vote. During his three-year term of office he worked on the European Integration Committee. He decided not to seek re-election at the end of the three years.

Part of the reason for his success in the election was due to him being a successful and popular businessman. In 1999 his airline company, Fischer Air, was (after Skoda and Budweiser) the most recognised corporate brand in the Czech Republic. The origin of the company went back to 1980 when Václav, then living in Germany, founded the Fischer Reisen travel agency.

Following the Velvet Revolution and the long-overdue collapse of the Communist Czech dictatorship Václav leapt into the growing tourism markets. This was the basis of his success. By 1995 his business had become so successful that he was able to sell the original German part of Fischer Reisen to Lufthansa, and with the money bought a fleet of planes and set up Fischer Air.

Despite this success Václav Fischer and his company were declared bankrupt in 2003. The Czech economy was not stable enough to sustain the demand of his services. In 2005 Václav returned to Germany and set up other travel/tourism ventures and currently runs Aircraftleasing Meier and Fischer.

Vaclac Fischer is one of very few lgbt businessmen to run an airline. Another, who also has links to Lufthansa, is 49) Sir Michael Bishop, Baron Glendonbrook (b.1942).

Next time : We fly down to Rio with Lufthansa.

Around the World in Another 80 Gays : Part 17) Kiwi Connections

Previously : The Canary Islands gave Spain the world’s first openly lgbt winners of national pageants – Miss Spain, 32) Patricia Rodriguez (b.1990), and Mr Spain, 33) Daniel Rodriguez (1993) – as well as Spain’s first lgbt regional president, 34) Jerónimo Saavedra (b.1936), and the first transgender member of a regional parliament, 35) Carla Antonelli (b.1959), but the first transgender member of a national parliament was 36) Georgina Beyer (b.1957).

36) Georgina Beyer entered politics in the 1990s, being elected to the local school board and then the Carterton District Council in 1993. In 1995 she campaigned as the world’s first openly transgender candidate to mayoral office, being elected Mayor of Carterton. Georgina’s rise to national politics is remarkable even for a non-transgendered politician. Within seven years of first being elected to a local council Georgina became a member of the New Zealand parliament, in a traditionally conservative seat.

In parliament Georgina Beyer did not shy away from espousing the rights of the lgbt community and sexual issues. In her maiden speech she made reference to New Zealand’s place in history by her being the first openly transgender elected member of any national parliament and urged politicians to follow this up by being a world leader in both gender and indigenous rights.

One area in which Georgina had an influence was in the understanding of prostitution. The New Zealand parliament had been investigating ways to decriminalise prostitution since the 1990s. The debates for the Prostitution Reform Bill 2003 were something in which Georgina was not afraid to speak about her own experience as a sex worker in the 1970s.

The defining traumatic incident which led Georgina to realise there was a real need for change was in 1974 when she was a sex worker and was gang-raped. Like many women in that era Georgina felt powerless to do anything about it. Society was very much of the opinion that “women like her should expect abuse as part of their career choice”, as it was often expressed. For Georgina that was an unacceptable attitude and she brought her views and experiences into the parliamentary debate. For many politicians their eyes were opened to reveal the life of a prostitute about which they had never known and their voting was shaped by it. The bill was passed and became law in June 2003, decriminalising prostitution, preventing exploitation and giving sex workers the same legal rights as every other employee.

The other central issue to Georgina’s parliamentary career was the rights of indigenous groups. She has Maori heritage through both parents, though as a child she was less interested in that aspect of her life than in her gender identity. Her parents in the 1950s were typical in New Zealand in that they played down their indigenous heritage in favour of their white European heritage.

This European attitude was encouraged by the Establishment, the politicians and bureaucrats who ran the country and were white, mostly of British ancestry. The old colonial model of society was still dominant in New Zealand and many aspects of indigenous and Maori culture were being forgotten, dismissed or ignored. This extended to the traditional Maori gender and sexual identities.

Most of the Pacific islands have gender identities that often seem complex to non-Pacific people. Gender communities like those of the Tongan leiti which I mentioned several weeks ago don’t use the definitions that the lgbt communities in the West often confine themselves to. As well as being transgender Georgina Beyer has identified herself as takatapui, a Maori word originally applied to the devoted partner of someone of the same gender, and in modern times to a member of the western-style lgbt community in general.

Pacific gender and sexual identities have survived the enforced European labels from the colonial period and have seen a resurgence in visibility and pride in recent years. This has led to much more scholarship into pre-colonial identity that deals with all aspects of the modern indigenous Maori culture.

One of the leading publications which covers a huge amount of research dealing with Maori culture and heritage is called AlterNative. It’s founding editor was one of Georgina Beyer’s former school teachers, 37) Dr. Clive Aspin.

Clive Aspin was a novice teacher at Papatoetoe High School in Auckland when the teenaged Georgina Beyer enrolled as a student. On leaving teaching in 1992 Clive moved into health care and specialises in the impact HIV/AIDS has had, and still has, on the Maori nation. At the same time he has been encouraging the community to regain its distinct heritage and culture.

As part of his work with HIV/AIDS in the Maori community Clive encourages those of traditional gender variance to take pride in their own heritage, hence his involvement with AlterNative. This publication covers a wide range of research topics from education to philosophy, and from health to entertainment. Clive has contributed articles to this and other academic journals on the history of Maori sexuality and gender.

The recognition of gender diversity in the Maori nation is revealed in one of the earliest, and still one of the most popular, love stories in Maori legend. The story finds its way into song, books and plays, and features the love between Himenoa and 38) Tutenekai.

Next time : We sing of love and war.