Memories tagged with "London"
Boy children
In 1980, Belinda moved to Birmingham because she had started a relationship with a woman from Birmingham but was living in a radical feminist household where she found herself “more and more alienated in that setting because I was involved with a wom...
Dress codes in the late 1970s
In the mid to late 1970s, Gill and Betty note that there was more mixing between lesbian and heterosexual feminists but that there was a dress code which helped identify their sexual identity: G: “I used to notice the way in which the straight women...
Lesbians' attitudes to children
Betty: “In Birmingham I don’t think boy children was an issue, like in London. I remember noticing when I moved up from London to Birmingham that in London there were things like the Women’s Arts Alliance which wouldn’t even allow newborn boys in bec...
LGB Co-ordinator for Unison
Steve was an activist in the Trade Union movement in NALGO and UNISON, including being the national LGB co-ordinator for a number of years, then he changed job and location, and was back to square one – the Trade Union movement couldn’t cope with him...
London easier to come out than Chicago
“I’m Betty, I grew up in Chicago in the United States, I was the eldest of three children. Gill and I have six children between us. I came on holiday came to England in 1969 aged 19 and stayed, and came to Birmingham in 1974. I was exploring issues o...
Making the tea for GLF in 1971
“I was involved with Gay Liberation Front in London, back in the early days when the lesbians were expected to make the tea. Everything in those early days seemed to be in pink with yellow writing and therefore totally unreadable.”...
Meeting women at the Gateways, London
B: “I spent several years trying to decide if I was lesbian or bisexual. I had been involved with women in short term relationships dating somebody for a couple of months and I had lived with one woman for 8 - 9 months. The main place I met women wa...
Migrating to London
Steve was brought up in St Albans and moved to Birmingham when he was 19. "There was a sense that to be gay, and fit into a visible functional community, it was London or London. If you grew up gay in the West Midlands in the 80s or 90s one of the t...
To fit in in the 80s it was London or London...
Steve talks about moving to Birmingham from St Albans in 1985. He contrasts the Lesbian and Gay Community Centre Aston, with the London Lesbian and Gay Centre in Farringdon. “I used to go there all the time in my late teens and early twenties, just t...
Women’s music scene
Belinda was also involved in the alternative women's music scene, establishing a reputation as a lesbian feminist musician. Before she came to Birmingham “I had a brief moment of fame in London with two other women, each performing their own material...