A round-up of the bizarre and brilliant of the web corralled by the University of Portsmouth Library.
What’s in a name? Often, a name focuses the mind and tells us what is important to a movement.
Until the nineteenth century, there was no word for being gay. Once the feelings people had for one another could be described separately from the physical act of making love, progress started to come slowly. At least for gay men. History has shown us that even within a community, and within a movement, different groups are privileged far above others.
PressReader now natively supports Zotero, so you can export references for all the great news and magazine articles you find in PressReader straight to Zotero with a few simple taps. Happy news for all media savvy Zotero users out there!
Portsmouth Film Society/Peccadillo Pictures are very kindly providing a number of voucher codes to staff and students that will allow you to watch these films for free as part of LGBTQ+ History Month. Watch the previews below and then scroll on to the end of this post to find out how to get the codes to view these films for free.
People who identify – or who others identify – with more than one minority group experience social violence, oppression and disadvantage from all the different aspects of their minority identity. Black trans women are the archetypal minority within a minority – living with daily intersectional violence targeting women, trans people, trans women in particular, on top of racism.
Trans people have doubtless existed for all of human history, and the surgical advances needed for people to transition came about in the mid-twentieth century, so it might seem strange to some that trans people are still feared and vilified today. Yet, trans lives are threatened on a daily basis by rising levels of violence and hostility and failing healthcare.
Bring your children to the Global Week children’s storytime in the University Library! On Wednesday 13 March 2024, we are inviting staff, students and members of the local community to bring their children to a storytime event in the University Library starting at 4 pm, where we will read translated children’s stories sourced from around the world.
Today’s LGBTQIA+ Pride Marches are an ongoing celebration of the changes that started outside the Stonewall Inn. We now have specific Black Pride marches, and Trans Pride marches as well, which draw particular attention to sub-groups of the LGBTQIA+ community that are peculiarly vulnerable. Pride is a protest that is in danger of becoming a party, causing many young people, both within and outside of the LGBTQ+ community, to begin to question the point of pride. The point of Pride is that LGBTQ+ rights are very recently won and it would be only too easy for all the progress towards equality to be rolled back.
February is Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans, Queer, Intersex and Asexual (and all the other strands of sexual and gender diversity) awareness month. I will be posting regularly here on the Library blog about the history of how the understanding of sexual diversity developed since the concept of sexuality was discovered or perhaps invented in the nineteenth century, through the fight to develop greater awareness, tolerance and freedoms for all people throughout the twentieth century and then looking at the state of LGBTQIA+ rights today.
I’d like to start this LGBTQIA+ History Month with a focus on some largely forgotten LGBTQIA+ artists. There are several art exhibitions featuring works by LGBTQIA+ artists that you can visit between February and April 2024, including several in London and one in nearby Chichester you could visit, any of which will make for a pleasant day out.
Are you a budding artist, designer or hobbyist? Are you passionate about a social issue, your home country, or an academic subject? Is there an academic or work-based project that you have completed that fascinated you and that you would like to share with others? The library display space is available to all students and staff to share their interests with the world, from art and design to photographic collections, painted miniature collections, academic posters suitable for a general audience or more conceptual pieces.
