LGBT History Month

Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans History Month takes place every year in February. It celebrates the lives and achievements of the LGBT community.

The following events will be taking place at Hydra Books, 34 Old Market, Bristol BS2 0EZ.

Changing images of trans people in speculative literature

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Cheryl Morgan

Thursday 2 February 2012 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

The availability of magic and advanced science have allowed writers of fantasy and science fiction literature to explore issues of gender in their work. Hugo Award winning critic, Cheryl Morgan, explores how the way in which trans characters have been portrayed in speculative literature has changed as real trans people have become better known to the general public.

Cheryl Morgan is, to her knowledge, the only out trans person ever to have won science fiction’s highest honour, the Hugo Award. Born in Somerset, she has lived in Australia and California and now resides near Bath where she runs a small ebook publishing company and bookstore. She blogs regularly at www.cheryl-morgan.com

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Celebration of Lesbian and Gay Literature

OutStories Bristol

Tuesday 7 February 2012 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

From love poems to sci-fi and satire – come and join us in an evening of readings from literature with LGBT themes. Bring your favourite poem or excerpt and share it with the audience. Tell us what it means to you and where we can find more like it. Help us raise the profile of this new bookshop in the heart of Bristol’s Gay Village.

Organised and run by OutStories Bristol, a community group collecting and documenting the stories of LGBT people in Bristol.

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Transgender before transgender: Cross-dressers and the establishment in Victorian England

Juliet Jacques

Thursday 9 February 2012 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

The emergence of public cross-dressing in the 19th century industrial city caused great anxiety to the Victorian legal establishment and England’s new police forces alike. In this talk, Guardian and New Statesman writer Juliet Jacques (longlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2011) explores how those who cross-dressed were criminalised, most famously in the scandalous trial of Ernest “Stella” Boulton and Frederick “Fanny” Park in 1871, and how contemporary transgender identities began to evolve in response.

Juliet Jacques is a journalist and author, best known for writing A Transgender Journey for The Guardian – the first time that the gender reassignment process has been serialised for a mainstream British publication. She has also written for the New Statesman and TimeOut, and was longlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2011.

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Celebrating Trans Lives: Trans People’s Contributions to Modern Medicine and Culture

Dr Louis Bailey

Thursday 16 February 2012 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Far from being passive and unwitting subjects of medical experimentation, trans people are here shown to be active agents of change – within the NHS, social justice, and British society as a whole. This talk demonstrates the ways in which trans people have contributed to the development of modern-day healthcare, and how the trans community continues to shape medical understandings of, and social responses to, gender variancy.

Dr Louis Bailey is the Co-Founder of TREC – the Trans Resource and Empowerment Centre (www.transcentre.org.uk) – and represents TREC as a Strategic Executive Partner of the National LGB&T Partnership (Department of Health). Dr Bailey’s research concerns the medical history of gender variancy, and issues of trans life course and ageing.