Jane Traies: on secrets, books, and being whole

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Hello and welcome to season two of My Queer Museum, a podcast about the queer objects and the queer stories that you won't find in a traditional museum or archive. I'm Roni. And I'm David. And we had such an amazing time recording season one of this podcast and talking to some of Brighton's most interesting queer people that we decided we have to continue. But first, before we meet our next guest, we wanted to tell you about our new queer community generated digital museum, queerheritagesouth.co.uk. It's a new online space where we can share and discover queer heritage. So we'd encourage you to have a dig around in those drawers. Maybe it's a ticket stub for a great queer show you went to, picture of you at your first Pride, a badge from a protest march.

What we'd love you to do is photograph it and upload it to queerheritagesouth.co.uk. Yeah, let's make queer history. Welcome back to My Queer Museum. We have a very special, very loved guest with us today, Jane Traies. You might have seen her at one of our history clubs. Jane, would you like to introduce yourself? Thank you, Roni. Hi, I'm Jane. What can I say? Since I retired, I have found myself a whole new life getting involved with queer history, and particularly with the history of old women who, and young women, who identify as lesbian or bisexual or sapphic or whatever the current word is. And that's brought me all sorts of joy and all sorts of lovely new people. Amazing. So today, what we're going to ask you to do, Jane, is to share three objects, stories, items, things from your life that will form part of the collection of our Imaginary Queer Museum.

So without further ado, Jane, would you like to introduce what your first object story item is for My Queer Museum? It's been great fun and a bit of a challenge choosing these, but the first one came immediately to mind and wasn't, you know, had to be the start, really. It's a book. It's a novel. I'm holding it in my hand now, and it's very old and battered, and it's The Microcosm by Maureen Duffy. It was published in 1966, and I think I first read it in 1967. And it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book

It's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, and it's a book, So we didn't know them, and we didn't know anyone else like ourselves, and there was no gay press, there was no gay media, there was nothing, there was no gay dating sites, how you found other people like yourself was a mystery, and a challenge, and also it was very dangerous, so we were living a very positive little life, and then one day, my partner brought this book home, and she said, I can't remember where she got it, I don't know,

but she brought it, and she said, this is a book, look, it's about women like us, and it was a modern novel, recently published, and it was set in the present day, and it had a whole cast of gay women characters, and we read that book, and it was like a revelation. When I read it now, I picked it up a year or two back, and looked at it again, I find that I, I wouldn't say I knew it off by heart, but there are phrases and whole sentences in there that I know, because it just became such an important part of our life. Anyway, why it was significant was that my partner then, and wrote a letter to the author, and said, look, here we are, we're like these women in your book, we don't know where to go or what to do to find other people like ourselves.

And Maureen Duffy, bless her heart, wrote back, as I later discovered, she had written to many people who'd read her book and said, what do we do now? And said, well, there are several things you can do. If you live in London, you can go to Gateways Club. That actually came later in our lives. And if you don't live in London, you can sign up for this newsletter, which has recently been invented, called Arena 3. And Arena 3, as you know, is also a huge piece of lesbian history. It had been going for about two years when we sent for it. It came in a plain brown envelope. And not long ago, I went to look at those, those back numbers of Arena 3, and they're in the British Library. And they are just literally tight, cyclic style sheets, stapled together in one corner. And they just were a lifeline for people all around the country.

They also carried personal ads, which were basically, you know, I'm looking for other people like me. I live in this particular place. Where are you? And it was through that, ultimately through the book and through Maureen, and through signing up for Arena 3 that we met our first lesbian friends. Those who are still alive, those who are still alive, I still know it was that important. And started off my career life, really. So it's an absolute, it's my Bible, it's my key text, it's my thing on my shelf. It's always there. These stories just send shivers down my spine. I mean, just that sense of loneliness and solitude and fear that you must have felt in those years is something that I can't even imagine.

So I realise now, looking back, that I've spent a lot of my life being afraid, which is a shame. But that was then, you know, we survived. Yeah. So I know, Jane, from speaking to you previously, that you were a student at Oxford in that period, and that there was just no sense of, I mean, obviously, like looking back on it, there were, I suppose, there were people that would later in life maybe have come out, or there were kind of queer figures in that. But did it just feel that you were completely sort of, yeah, detached from that in some sense? It's really, it's really hysterical to think about it now. Because if I look back, I can see that, I mean, for God's sake, it was a women's college. Women had to go to separate colleges in those days. You know, and half the staff were queer. And I can name at least two other undergraduates that I knew who I now know were. And we spent a lot of time going, do you think she is?

Yes. But at the same time, we wouldn't have made a move because we were absolutely convinced, and it may be true, probably it's not, but if it were found out, two terrible things would happen. We believed we'd be sacked from college. And we also believed, of course, that our parents would be told. Because in those days, you were not a legal adult when you were 21. So any educational institution was in low-co-co-rentice. So, you know, you were really, you were really frightened. It was silly. But it was how it was. And it was the same when I went to work. Yeah. How did you meet your partner in that scenario, in that context? We were both students at the same college we met when we were 18.

Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey.

Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. Blimey. And then I've just got, you know, all the badges from History Month and I've got one that says, this is who I am, which I like. That's a trans one actually, but it says it for everybody. And I've got one that says, unlearned homophobia. Oh, that VLSCS, that was given me by some women on Vancouver Island that I went and met and talked to. And there's a lovely one.

I don't know where I got it, which is right on the top of my hat, which says, too queer for your binary. I like that. Amazing. I love this journey from, you know, your first object and the invisibility to just this feeling connected to your community worldwide. It's just, it is very, very joyful and very exciting and just such a different tone. And, you know, yes, that really makes us appreciate community. It's been a wonderful decade. It's been a wonderful 10 years. I think it came to an end with COVID and in the sense of all that traveling that I did. But I shall remember that phase of my life with great joy, really. And it's brought so many lovely people and lovely contacts and networking and so on.

Do you have any memory of your first Pride Jane that you engaged with? Yes. I always think it's quite important when people ask me about my life to stress that I was not one of the brave people. I wasn't an activist. I mean, I'm trying to make up for that a bit in my old age, but I was a school teacher working in the public sector. I wouldn't have, I know now pretty clearly that I wouldn't have got the promotions or the jobs that I had if I had come out. And I know that there are brave people who did it. I know a lot of them personally now and I hugely admire them. But I was not brave and I was not out and I was hidden. And that became a great strain as I got older and more politicized. It was a huge mental strain because I wanted to be out, largely for the sake of the children I taught.

I felt they needed those role models and I wasn't brave enough to be one. But when I was 50 years of age, I did go and march at London Pride. And it was very scary. By that time I was, I was the head teacher of a girls' school, so it was a bit of a mad thing to do. And I remember the excitement. I remember the excitement of being on the tube and the little girls sitting opposite me. And I just knew that we were all going to the same place with people on the platform at Earl's Court, you know, where we changed to go to Hyde Park Corner. And I just see around me, all my tribe, and we were all walking in the same direction. And I met up with my partner. I can't remember why she'd been in London.

And we met up and we walked together. And I can remember coming down Park Lane. Yeah, it was mega. It was one of the best days. And after that, of course, I always went to Pride because it's such a buzz. And a couple of years, a few years later, when I was in my last job, so yeah, a few years after that, I was marching. Again, we started from Hyde Park Corner in those days. This would be in the 90s, I suppose. I can't remember who we were marching with that time. It might have been Kenwick. Or just a bunch of friends. And a woman ran off the pavement. Can you know the pavements are lined, used to be lined with people? Yes. And we always used to say that, you know, a lot of them were tourists and they would go at you.

But some of them were your gay brothers and sisters who weren't quite brave enough to march, or just came along for the fun. And this woman ran off the pavement and threw her arms around me and said, Happy Pride and I'm so glad to see you here. I'm so excited. And she was a colleague from another school in the same local authority, also in a very senior position. And I remember that because, you know, your worlds collide, don't they? Sometimes. No, absolutely. So, yeah. Yeah. And then there's been Brighton Prides over the years as well. So. Amazing. Jane, I just want to touch back. You know, you said you were not one of the brave ones. You were not out and you were not an activist. And, you know, I just felt quite unfair to you, you saying that, because I'm also thinking you're working in education at a senior level during Section 28.

And that must have had a massive impact on your confidence in being an activist or coming out or, you know, living your life. I took it very personally. I was very angry. I thought, how dare you? How dare you? I've worked for you, government, you know, for 35 years or whatever it was, because it was getting towards the end. And now you're telling me that I, your servant, who have done, you know, I've done my best for you. I've done my best for these kids. I've done a good job. And now you're telling me that I am some undesirable object. Well, stuff you. And I, how I got through Section 28 was, I told myself that didn't really apply to me. I mean, I look back now and I suppose it did. I was head teacher of a maintained secondary school.

And of course it applied to me. But I told myself that I wasn't an education officer. It only applied to the local authority. I mean, actually, I was part of the local authority, wasn't I? But that was how I did it. And I said, so I just carried on, really. I didn't take any notice of it. And we went on doing our equalities work and we went on doing our sort of mainly anti-racism work in that place at that time. But, you know, I always included the sort of queer element. And I went on doing my assemblies about famous people and some of them were gay. And nobody seemed to notice or take any notice. I was more upset. Sorry, it was. Sorry, I was just gonna say it was, from my understanding of it, it was such an effective piece of legislation because it kind of influenced people.

But nobody, you know, nobody was ever tried or particularly penalized, were they? And it was a kind of very effective act of kind of subconscious conditioning, I guess, of educators. It certainly was. And I was very disappointed by how easily frightened people were. I retired before it was repealed because I retired in 2001 and it wasn't repealed in England until 2003. And I remember very near the end of my career interviewing for a teacher post. I can't remember. It might have been an English teacher. And I always asked the equalities questions because I didn't want people working in my school who weren't right minded about stuff. And I asked this question of one very promising candidate and I asked her what she, you know, what the standard was on it all.

And she said, oh, she had her answer ready. She said, oh, we've been told in our teacher training that we shouldn't ever mention anything like that. We should steer clear of it. And I was just outraged because I thought your teacher training college is not part of any local authority. It's part of the education, you know, the higher education system. It's a university. And dear God, if universities haven't, I'm saying that it's now in 2021, if universities haven't got free speech, who has? So I was, I was very disappointed and sad about that, made a big feature of it in my retirement speech. So, yeah, it was in the air rather than people didn't. I didn't think that much about it, you know, it as a single law, but it was in the air and it made life very difficult.

And of course, what it made most difficult, as we've heard lots of people younger than me talk about, is that it was so hard to help those pupils who you absolutely knew were going to be part of the queer community. I can definitely relate to that as somebody that was one of those, one of those boys at a single sex grammar school. And we had a few teachers that you could tell were kind of sympathetic, but some that almost kind of reveled in the, in, in that sort of accusatory. It felt a bit like a witch hunt. I always remember one of our PE teachers saying, I'm there, there are gay people in this room and I think I know who they are, but I'm not going to tell you to the class as a kind of threat.

Oh God, that's so vile. David, I'm so, so sorry you had to put up with that because I feel so ashamed on behalf of, of teachers when I hear a teacher that has behaved like that. Yeah, that was a weird, weird time. As you say, to make yourself visible as you could to those pupils. And they did find us, they did find us. Thankfully, our drama teacher was pretty great, I have to say. I mean, she, it was always going to be a conduit for LGBT students. I think the drama department, but. And I do think sometimes that the PE department, the PE department is a conflicted area, isn't it? Because it's full of, of closeted lesbians, but it's also full of horrible homophobic teachers like the one you describe.

And I've got a vivid, vivid memory when I worked in a mixed grammar school at one point. And I was the deputy head there. And I was sitting in my office one day. And there was a little boy in year eight. Well, he was as campus, he was the campus thing, bless his heart. And he knocked on my door one day. I didn't teach him. I didn't really know him. And he came in and I said, now what can I do for you? He said, Miss Traies, I have got to talk to somebody. He said, I just cannot bear it any longer. And I said, oh, Anthony, I'm sorry. What, you know, what's his brother? He said, rugby. He said, rugby, it's a nightmare. And we had a long conversation about how horrible PE teacher was forcing him to play rugby.

And I mean, he was, you know, he was not, he was not, not the boy that should have been playing rugby. Hard relate. I was definitely not built for rugby either. But yeah, well, I think it's such an amazing, like, sort of collection of memories, this hat and how it's kind of sent us off in all these tangential directions around your life and career. Because I think it's really important, obviously, like when you choose to be visible and what that kind of means in your life. And I think that does happen at all different stages for people. So I think it's a really important reflection on kind of where you've been and where you've arrived at now. So thank you so much for sharing your hat. We'll 3D print it so that you can keep the original.

Yeah, I'm thinking we would really love a photograph of it for our new digital archive. I will send you, I will send you the photographs. Thank you, Jane. Perfect. So we're, we can't believe it, but we're onto our last object, Jane. Would you like to reveal your last entry into the Queer Museum? Yes. Now, as you know, when you get old, you become gaily invisible. So I've had to work very hard at being out since I've been old. And my last, my last object, it's a very, very joyful one. And it represents where I am right now. And it's a Lego set. You know about Lego. Well, I love Lego because I'm quite good at having, making things. But because I've never had children, I've never had any Lego of my own.

I used to always play with other peoples and I sit happily at family parties, building little houses and things. And about, I think it's two or three years ago now, Lego actually issued a rainbow set. And when you make it up out of all the thousands of little pieces, it turns into a beautiful rainbow stage. And it has got nine, 10, 11 little people in the 11 colours of the full rainbow flag standing on the stage. And they represent all the stripes in the flag from black and brown through the rainbow to the blue, white and pink of the trans flag. And each one of them is different. I'm told, I think it's the purple one is the drag queen. So they've all got different little hairstyles to put on and so on.

And it stands on my bookcase. And I've only had it a little while. I think I had it during this year. And it represents something just so important for me because I told you when I moved down to Brighton that I moved to be particularly near to my sister and other members of my family. And one of my sister's sons lives also in Brighton. And I see quite a lot of him. And the other day he came round to supper and he had a bag and he said to me, Auntie Jane, I never give you presents, do I? But this is a real case of saw this and thought of you. And he got out of his bag the rainbow Lego. And I had, we sat down straight away, we both love Lego, and we poured it all out on my dining room table and we made it in about three quarters of an hour.

And now it stands on my bookcase. And, oh, I don't want to get emotional about this, but it says something about my life now, which has not really been true for most of my life. But it's true now, which is that every part of my life now can come together. And I am the same person with all the people I know. And for so long, my being in the closet cut me off from my family. And we're a very family family. We're a proper tribe. We love each other. And that barrier was one of, I think, the great pains of my life. So the idea that, well, when I came out to my sister, which is now many, many years ago, but it was still too later than it should have been. One of the things she said was, don't let's tell the children.

She wouldn't say that now. She's one of our greatest LGBT allies. But she needed to do a lot of processing. And as I say, she said, let's not tell the children. Well, one of those children that she thought we shouldn't tell is now the grown up man who gave me the Lego. And it just means a great deal to me that when I, for instance, a couple of weeks ago, when Jackie and I launched our latest novel, that the people, the audience at that book launch moved me very much because they included some of my oldest friends that I've known for 50 years and was in the closet with. And they included all the good, good old Dykes of Brighton and included members of my biological family. And that is just something that could never, never have happened when I was young, that I'm publishing a lesbian novel and my sister and my nephew are there.

So that's my rainbow Lego. And it's, it's a really, really joyful place to end this conversation. This is an amazing full circle. And I guess there is nothing more painful than having to edit ourselves constantly and having to think about our sexuality as something that we need to tweak or hide. I remember reading somewhere many years ago, somebody who said that their definition of good mental health was being able to be the same person all the time. And I, I, I, I held onto it in all those years that I couldn't be the same person everywhere. Um, but now I know that it's true. It is the thing that, it is the thing that makes you well. Absolutely. And I think it's that one of those things that a lot of LGBT people learn so young in such an unfortunate way, which is how to kind of divide yourself up.

And just your talking about that just made me, it made me feel really emotional because I just, I thought of like the exact conversation that I had when I came out to my mum, where she went, we won't tell your grandmother. She won't understand it. And my grandmother was the person that I would say loved me probably the most fiercely out of anybody I've ever known. But, but you know what that's about, don't you? That's not about you. I learned that when I was teaching, um, when things happen, when terrible things happen to the children, like particularly if you're in a girls school, you're always getting somebody who's got pregnant. Um, and you would see the parents and the parents would be worried about what they were going to say to their own parents.

Yeah. How can we tell your granny? Yeah. Because what it is, it reflects on them, or at least they think it does. Yeah. So, yeah, but it's such a, yeah, but it's so hurtful. It's so hurtful. And yeah, I mean, you, you know what I'm talking about, don't you? Yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, you, you mentioned your grandparents, David, I feel like I missed the last 10 years of my grandmother's life because of my parents own shame around my sexuality. Yeah, it's such a shame. Yeah. I think my, you know, you're talking about your family all coming to your book launch and I imagine, you know, you thinking at some point in the past, this is something that is never, ever, ever going to happen for me.

It's just, I can't imagine it ever happening for me. And then, and then it does one day. I think, I think the other thing of course, is the old queers of my generation, um, having children of our own wasn't an option. I mean, you either were a lesbian or you had kids pretty much. Um, but most of the older lesbians I know who've got children, well, all of them, I think, um, had them in heterosexual relationships. But if like me, you never had heterosexual relationships, you didn't have kids and now you haven't got grandkids either. Um, so yeah, that's really, really important. No, it's wonderful. And I thank you so much for sharing so candidly and so personally, Jane, like it's been a really moving conversation.

And I think hopefully our listeners will really relate to it because I think it's so universal what you're, you're talking about. And before you go, though, I did want you to have the opportunity to share a little bit about your novel that you recently published. And I went to the launch and it was a wonderful event. And so can you just maybe just give a little bit of a, um, a little bit of a blurb, a bit of a, um, taster of, of your novels and your writing? I had a long-term lesbian partner. And when we were, oh, we were middle-aged, I think, when we decided that there really weren't any fiction with people like us in it. So we decided we would write one. And over quite a long period of years, just as something we did together when we weren't at work or when we were, you know, had a break, it was something to do together as much as anything.

We wrote a historical novel. It was called Rebellion. And, um, it was published in the late nineties, I think, the first one. Uh, and there wasn't, I mean, literally wasn't any lesbian fiction in those days because I think it was published even before Tipping the Velvet. So we enjoyed that and we chose this joint pen name of Jay Taffiner. And when we'd had it published by Only Women Press and we'd had a launch and we'd seen it on the shelves in bookshops and we'd started reading at, uh, queer literary events and that kind of thing, we thought, oh, this is good. We'll write another one. So we wrote another one and we published that, I think in about 2000. And then we wrote another one. So we, we had three novels published under the name of Jay Taffiner.

And then sadly, early in this century, we split up. And I have to say that we both thought that Jay Taffiner had gone, definitely gone down with the wreck. Um, I, I didn't even have any of the books. I, you know, I'd walked away from it all. So when, as old lesbians do, we finally managed to make friends again. It was a long time. It was a messy breakup. Um, we said to each other, what do you reckon? Do you reckon we could write another one? Because when we parted, we actually had half a novel that had never got finished. So we picked it up and we started to work on it. And we found to our great surprise, that although we now have very different lives and, um, you know, in, in many ways, they don't align, but we still had this thing that we could write together.

That was very surprising to us, but it didn't seem to have gone away or been damaged by anything that happened in between. So we finished the book. We called it Liberty because it's set around the French Revolution. And that was the one that we published last month and that you came to the launch of. And it only was, uh, 20 years since the one before. So now we have to work hard to find Jane Cavanagh, a whole new set of readers, because we've got a lot of faithful readers, but they're as old as we are. Um, and it's been great. It's been great fun connecting with, with younger readers who haven't read the others. Um, cause now we've got a series. Amazing. Fab. Thank you, Jane. Well, yeah, check out Jane Cavanagh's, uh, work.

And thank you so much, Jane, for being with us today. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so, so much. That's all right. It's been lovely talking to you.

Well, that was a really interesting episode and I'm here with our in-house queer museum curator and sweetheart EJ Scott from Museum of Translation. Oh, shut up, Roni. Come on, you make me blush, baby. I love that. And I'd love to know, I know EJ's listened to this and, and found it very moving. And, and cause it really, really is. And I'd love to know what you've got to tell us about this EJ. Well, it was really moving, wasn't it? You know, it feels like it's kind of a privilege and an honour to, to hear from our joyful Jane Traies. Really. Right. Yeah. Teacher, queer historian, lesbian activist. I came up with a little title that I'd like to give to her, all around Sussex queer community, DICON.

DICON. Do you like that? I love that. I've got to say that she's also one of the best speakers and storytellers I've ever met. It just, I can, I could listen to Jane Traies forever. She just really takes you in a journey. I think sometimes it feels a little bit surreal, doesn't it? When you know someone so close to you as that, who you think, and you see them as being so out and so proud. And then you hear accounts of what they went through and, in sort of days gone by. And, and it's almost a shock to the system. It is a complete shock to the system. It's someone we meet constantly as, you know, members of the community at queer events and they're outspoken and their research is published. And, you know, if anything, they're kind of a catalyst for other women and older women for telling their stories.

Migrants. I mean, they've done so much work to really like help other people have, find a voice. And like to think of them being silenced in that way. I think you're absolutely right. It is a shock. You know, it is not a version of Jane Traies that we know. Yeah. And I think, and I, I mean, I know you, we, we heard from her about sort of being a, you know, she must have been a baby dyke in the mid sixties, living with a partner. Being isolated. So mid sixties, that's 20 years before section 28 that she then has to go on to work through because she's in the education system as well. And I guess I, I took the entire account as a real reminder of how important it is for us to pass on our experiences through queer generations, because it does remind us of the strength and bravery that our communities built on and how we still benefit from it today.

You know, she, I, I, I was really particularly, well, I was touched by all her objects that she gave to our queer museum, but it was the, the, the first object that she donated Maureen Duffy's 1966 copy of the microcosm. And it's like a, the, the book itself. It's the story is like a psychological diatribe. It's like a stream of consciousness. It's radical. It's political. It's an experimental piece of writing. Duffy was actually really heavily influenced by James Joyce. Interestingly, which explains, explains the style of it a lot. I mean, what it is not is a well of loneliness, right? And actually just this year, it was adapted into a screenplay that centered around the iconic lesbian, iconic lesbian club, Gateways, that shut in 1985.

So Gateways was established in 1931. It becomes a members club in 1936. And so for that, that reason, it's thought to have been this longest surviving club of, of its kind, but that's exactly when Duffy was born as well. She was born in 1933. So it's exactly the same period. She had a difficult, that was my little dog, Binky flapping his ears. Sorry. She, she had a difficult childhood. Her father left the family. Her mum died when she was 15. And she was all, I guess she's always, we can read into it that she was always really brave and strong because she put herself through university by teaching on the side in junior schools. So she was a teacher like Jane was. And with her first ever book advance of 450 pounds, she bought a houseboat.

So it's not like she could not have come out as a lesbian, right? Cotton socks. And she went on to become, you know, this really, really prolific British writer, novelist, poet, playwright. She's authored more than 30 books. And she's got an archive of all her personal effects of, of, of, of, of her writing. It's full of manuscripts. They're all typed. It's full of printers, comments. The rest is archive. Yeah. Okay. So it's at King's College in London and get this. It's got 127 boxes in it. Good luck to anyone who wants to take that little job on board. You know what I mean? I'm like, Oh, thank you for just giving us a couple of objects, Jane. It's enough. Yeah. So, and do you know what? One of my favorite things that I found in the archive when I was looking through the catalog was her, all the bits and bobs that relate to the making of her 1984 manifesto, Men and Beast, an animal rights handbook.

So, mid eighties, she's, she's bought her narrow boat. She's writing manifestos on, on animal rights, you know, long live lesbian vegetarians. Amazing. So, so really, she's, she's really amazing. And she's considered, Maureen Duffy is considered to be one of the first women to ever come out publicly as a lesbian in the UK. And she's since spent over 50 years advocating for LGBT rights. So she's provided inspiration for a generation of women who found same sex love in the UK in the sixties, just like Jane. And, and I think, like you say, Roni, if you haven't heard Jane speak about her research into local lesbian herstory, you just must because she, as you say, she's a storyteller, like Duffy, like she, she weaves these sort of spellbots.

Sort of spellbinding accounts of local lesbian love affairs that make your heart beat fast when you listen to her. But it's Jane's work is also really important because it brings to life stories that are at risk of being overlooked because quite often they're everyday stories. You know, so on the one hand, we sort of have these accounts of lesbian life in fiction. On the other hand, we, you know, we know about lives that were, you know, we're fortunate enough to have the privilege to be able to record themselves in diaries and, you know, these kinds of things. But it's the everyday lives that Jane investigates that she's an amazing researcher. It's just beautiful. And it's funny you mentioned in gateway and, and coming out, you know, because I think when we're talking about Jane, I said I'd recently read in, in Claire Summerskill is an oral oral historian in her book called gateway to heaven.

So just like oral histories of queer life in London. She has a whole chapter where like the introduction to that is about how difficult it is and still is in the teaching profession to come out. It's the profession where it's still the hardest of all professions to come out. And it's, you know, obviously a lot to do with section 28, but a lot to do with shame, a lot to do with working with young people. And, you know, in that, in that light, like Jane's story is all of a sudden not as surprising as one. Well, yeah. And, and, and I do think that it has real relevance, you know, this, this idea that we're sort of reaching through time and taking the time when we listen to each other's stories over the decades and to remember queer history, you know, the, the, the, the way in which so many of these things actually are still alive today.

And I think that's really, I think that's really, I think that's really important. And I think that's really important to me as ongoing issues, despite there being advancements. But also I think what really touched me about Jane's story was the generosity that Maureen Duffy showed to Jane and her partner by writing back, you know, she gets a letter in the mail that's, you know, a sensibly from a complete stranger, a random stranger, right. But they're not a random stranger because they're a lesbian like her going through the same experiences, the joys, the love, but also, but also the challenges. And she writes back. That's just beautiful. And for me, it's, oh my goodness. It's, it, it really is.

It made me pause and go, this is the whole point of having a queer museum, isn't it? It's, it's, it's, it's to hold these moments actually that aren't just the artifacts. It's about the values of who we are as a community, right? It's about caring about who we are over time. And now it's, it's this showing each other, this, this love and this warmth that keeps our community going strong. So I felt very touched and I wanted to say thank you to Jane and to Maureen because it really, it really warmed my heart. It's a beautiful story. Yeah. It's like, you know, as you say, it's like when you're at a straight event and you see another queer person in the room, they're not a stranger. You know, it's, it's not, they're not a stranger.

And that is, that is something magic. Our commonalities. EJ, thank you so much. It's always such a pleasure to talk to you and, you know, hear your hot takes. Oh, again, it's all about Jane, isn't it? It's all about Jane. Thank you, Lani. We'll do a whole season about Jane. The My Queer Museum podcast is a Queer Heritage South, Queer and Brighton project created by Marlborough Productions and supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. For more information about our work, visit www.queerheritagesouth.co.uk. Original music and editing by Olive Mondegreen. Thank you. Thank you.