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Memories by Bridget Malin

Growing up

Barbara was born in 1954 and lived in Germany until the age of three; she moved to Birmingham to go to University in 1973. Born in 1945 Bridget was adopted and brought up in Broadway in the Cotswolds and also moved to Birmingham for university, in...

Closet affairs

Bridget talked about life in the swinging sixties, where anything goes. She had a number of closet affairs with women, including another nurse while she was working at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. After a particularly painful break ...

Cross dressing queens at the Trocadero

Bridget hadn’t heard of anything going on for lesbians and gay men, other than the cross dressing queens that went to the Trocadero. ...

Switchboard met Bridget at the Matador late 70s

Fortunately Bridget somehow got hold of the number of the Gay Switchboard in the late seventies. They said “Come along and have a drink”. This was an important moment for her as volunteers arranged to meet her at the monthly lesbian disco at the M...

Barbara’s job as a solicitor

After she qualified as a solicitor in about 1983/84 and got her first job, Barbara’s boss (Brendon Flemming) invited Bridget as Barbara’s partner to a ‘do’ at the solicitors.  Then he devised a game of the men removing their trousers, then he...

Female friendships

Bridget talked about the fact that although it was never illegal for lesbians, it was assumed amongst most of the population that women didn’t really have a sexuality, so that lesbianism didn’t happen and was therefore ignored. “There was a sort o...

Butch/femme

Bridget worked at Lee Hospital in Bromsgrove in the sixties, “There were two women, a nursing Sister called Hardy and a nursing assistant called Rose, Rose and Hardy. Rose was 100% butch, she never wore anything other than men’s clothes, she had a...

Women’s Liberation Movement

The Women’s Liberation Movement was a life-transforming experience.Barbara compared the old butch/femme stereotypes with the way she came out. “That interestingly was very different from how I got into recognising my sexuality, which was through f...

Politicising through the Women’s Liberation Moveme

Barbara said that “During the early and mid seventies, 74 onwards, it was a very big political movement with lots of different strands and factions, there was a lot of infighting and stuff, not least between lesbians and straight women within the ...

Tensions with heterosexual women

90 Tensions with heterosexual womenFor heterosexual women, one of the big tensions, was that the straight women were made to feel, did feel, that they had to apologise for their sexuality, it was some how more right on to be lesbian. For some wome...

Seventies feminists rejected trans women

Bridget said the Women’s Liberation Movement was also “a safe haven for the misfits who would have had some difficulty fitting into society”. Barbara said, “Yes, there were some lesbians who were on the periphery and coming more from the sexuality...

Star Club

Barbara said that the Star Club was the centre of what happened in Birmingham, it was the social club of the Communist Party, in Essex Street, close to what is now the gay area. They made the Star Club available for loads of women’s things and les...

Working for Lesbian Line/Switchboard

Barbara worked for the Switchboard for a while in the late seventies / early eighties.  “For people who weren’t part of the gay or feminist movement, or even the more standard butch – femme scene which was still out there – making contact was...

The scene in the seventies

Bridget said there wasn’t really a gay area 9around the mid to late 1970s), but places dotted over the city, the Grosvenor Hotel up Hagley Road, the Greyhound (Holloway Head) at Five Ways, the Matador in town, the Jester, mainly men, the Silver Web...

The Old Moseley Arms

Bridget said “The biggest meeting place round here (King's Heath) was the Old Moseley Arms - the ‘Old Mo’ which was quite amazing really – in the public bar at the front, were prostitutes, tramps, alcoholics, police drinking, and a huge lesbian cl...

Lesbian Feminist meetings at Tindal Street School

“Opposite the Old Moseley Arms was Tindal Street School, which allowed lesbian feminist meetings to be held on a Sunday, and those were hilarious, you could look back now and do a sit com – there was one very diminutive woman who used to knit all ...

Trouble at the venues

Bridget said that “Some of the other places which were known as a gay pub, like the Jester, people would be tactile, but not so much at the Old Mo, although everyone knew it was a load of dykes. There was trouble at times, at of the places, for ex...

Political v straight lesbians

Bridget said “There were two completely different types of lesbian gathering in Birmingham – the political lesbians and feminists, and the straight dykes, and at most venues there was a predominance of one or the other. At the Old Mo there were ve...

Academic bullying amongst lesbians

Bridget said that during the mid seventies to mid eighties, “There was a great deal of academic bullying in the lesbian feminist movement, there was quite a lot of repression by people who were the most vocal and the most literate, on those that w...

Non-monogamy

The other great divider (between feminists) was the monogamy versus non-monogamy debate, which Bridget said “That was a cop out for people that wanted to whizz round as many parties as they wanted to. There was a period when everyone thought it wa...

Empowerment

Barbara said “Some women were quite empowered, got drawn into it and helped move things on, especially once women got beyond the self-destructive cliques that women’s liberation turned into and really just ended up destroying itself as a proper vi...

Consciousness raising

Barbara said “One of the chief tenets of women’s liberation was consciousness raising groups, which transformed things, as women who had been isolated with different men, were coming together in groups, and this enabled women to share their experi...

Men’s view of lesbians nowadays

Bridget said that “Nowadays, lesbians are quite objectified by men in porn, so now it’s a macho thing to like lesbians”. Barbara said that “There has been the feminisation of lesbians, lipstick lesbians, it’s gone mainstream, glamorous bimbos doin...

Younger lesbians nowadays

Bridget doesn’t think young lesbians are the same as in the 70s/80s, she doesn’t think they are politicised. “In our day, the Iraq/Iran thing, we had our doc martens on and would be going somewhere, not just about gay and lesbian issues, we would ...

Greenham Common women

Bridget said how proud she was of the Greenham Common Women, (a camp set up at an American base which was using it as a nuclear base) “There was lots of protest going on about nuclear war and missiles being used. Women camped out there for several...

Lesbian feminist views on Margaret Thatcher in the

“What did lesbians and feminists think of Margaret Thatcher? We loathed her, most of us seeing her would physically shudder, yet she was put up as woman prime minister but had such a male way of doing things with no interest in progressing women’s ca...

Inequalities for women in the seventies and eighti

Barbara said “It’s hard to imagine now but there were such huge inequalities, huge differences in pay, even in the early eighties there weren’t that many women lawyers around. There was a Women’s Centre in Balsall Heath, a little terraced house, but ...

Lesbians gravitated to Kings Heath

Barbara and Bridget live in Kings Heath. Barbara said “I’ve lived in Balsall Heath, Kings Heath or Moseley since my second or third year in university, which is the area most lesbians gravitate to be with others of the same kind, lots of feminists, l...

Sexism on the golf course in 2001

Barbara and Bridget got into a huge row about women’s access to private golf clubs. “We were outed in the Observer, at the time that was happening, we were getting abusive phone calls, ‘Fucking lesbians ruining our golf club’, and so on. We were set ...

Positive Police response

Bridget and Barbara contacted the police when they were getting the obscene calls regarding their objections to the sexism at the golf club. “It would not be PC if the Police didn’t respond appropriately, there is still some homophobia but a lot of p...

Getting active again

“We’ve tended to get very isolated from things, which is a shame, but what is the movement, now, we used to go to things that were for younger people, what else is there, there isn’t a big movement that we would be part. Bridget said “There was about...

Lesbians’ relationships to gay men

Barbara said for her the relationship between lesbians and gay men has changed. “In my most radical phase, in the 70s, it was so women focussed to the exclusion of men, obviously we identified as lesbians and as such, with gay liberation, but there w...

Coming out to their families

Barbara said “Feminism provided a smoke screen for coming out, while I made it clear to my family that my politics had changed and I was into Women’s Liberation and goodness knows what else, going through their minds with the associations with bra bu...

Coming out

Bridget came out in 1965. Having been married for 50 years, Bridget’s father ended up living with them for years while he was in his eighties. She said “Some people have this amazing ability, they can’t see what’s right in front of them. My father li...

Coming out at work

Regarding coming out at work Barbara said “On the work front, it’s not our mission in life to say ‘I’m gay’ but equally if the issue crops up I’ve never lied about it, and people do know, and it’s quite liberal. In the early stages I would have been ...

Civil partnership after 26 years together

After 26 years together, Barbara and Bridget became civil partners. They had their Civil Partnership ceremony on 29th September 2007 at Birmingham Register Office. ...

Gender tensions at the Lesbian and Gay Centre

An article in the January 1985 issue of the Birmingham Lesbian and Gay Community Centre Newsletter which suggested that more male members were needed to get involved in the Lesbian and Gay Community Centre Aston, resulted in the following letter from...