My first sexual experience was with a girl called Shirley: I was 10, she was 12. I knew I was gay before I knew what the word was to describe what I was.... way before anyone ever spoke about The Personal Being The Political, I knew it instinctively.

Like a lot of people my age, I cut my political teeth on CHE (Campaign for Homosexual Equality)committees, and the beliefs and convictions I held then haven't changed much, whatever the colour of the party I vote for might be: it isn't enough to be out in your own life - it's necessary to be willing to stand up for the rights of others in the community.... My closest friend then was Peter Wells, who had had two years taken out of his life by our legal system simply for sleeping with a boyfriend aged a few months short of 21...when he was little more than that age himself. He later had the rest of his life taken away by the brother of another boyfriend: he was shot two days after my mother died of cancer, and shortly before his case was due to be heard in Strasbourg. I'm writing this on the anniversary of his death in February '79, and we still haven't achieved equality in the age of consent or equality in the legal status of partnerships...and we've had the idiocy of Spanner. His name lives on in one of the early live recordings of Tom Robinson's "Glad to Be Gay".

Peter Wells was one of the kindest, generous and most supportive people I have ever met. He taught me much, (including a lot about the crossover between pleasure and pain!), gave me the space to explore much of my own sexuality without worrying about where on the continuum I had to pick a label from, and also encouraged me to write: being openly bisexual in the 70s was far less common than nowadays... writing in Gay News about being married and gay , which I did with his encouragement, almost unheard of.

I remember him today with love and respect.

In recent times, I was part of the original triumvirate that made up the joint queer coordinators of Newnham College's LesBiGay group, NewBiLes, for two years : part of our hidden agenda was to make sure that of all the Cambridge University colleges, Newnham College was going to have the reunions of its alumnae be well & truly, errrrm, " Interesting" in the 21st century... Of course, I can say modestly that I was only roped in because Jane & Hazel needed another idiot willing to be Out & Proud on the posters while they were off in the field (PhD research, not sport!).... and I was fool enough to volunteer to DTP, and later put webpages together for the cause... I made the classic error of putting a palm tree on the poster for one of our film nights: well, Desert Hearts was just asking for one. The posters were for the first and only time taken down by the more evangelical element in college: I printed more, put them back up, and the same evening came out publicly in the student christian group of the church I belonged to... with predictable results... it became my church no longer.

NewBiLes grew during that two years: no, we didn't go out there recruiting, but every event we held was open to all women, & we even had the odd honorary male NewBiLe. We were all very active members of Newnham College's graduate community, particularly on the welfare side, & most of us held exec positions on the MCR committee - though it never quite reached the stage where it was in the job spec that you had to be queer to be nominated. My fellow Joint Queer Coordinator Hazel became my girlfriend for a while, and remains the woman I feel intellectually closest to, and whom I love dearly, even though we're both married to guys now...

This group together with friends who didn't run quick enough, suffered long and hard with me through my final year in the interest of my dissertation. I wanted to research Evolving Identities (the evolution of lesbianism as perceived in media form from The Killing of Sister George to the abseiling incident...), so they watched films with minimal lesbian content, drunk bad wine, and offered support and their best lesbian books for discourse analysis with no hope of reward... Their views on literary and classical references in The Hunger would be recorded here if only I had the time... .

My involvement with NewBiLes continued beyond graduation, despite one elderly (female) fellow's complaint that my promoting Newnham College as a gay friendly environment to potential PhD candidates from overseas made it sound as if the place was a lesbian ghetto (we wish....) Of course, NewBiLes has moved on: from its humble beginnings, where gathering 13 of Newbs & friends together for veggie lasagne and a trip to Go Fish for my birthday was the high spot of the term, it now runs the largest mailist for gay women in Cambridge, across the university and Town. Today Cambridge.. Tomorrow, who knows?? The online version of NewBiLes has grown to become Cambridge's women's mailist soc-lbg-blue (send enquiries to soc-lbg-blue-request@lists.cam.ac.uk ).

Nowadays my enthusiasm for gay politics is being sublimated in acting as Wise Woman & Agéd Crone [or aggravating bitch, depending on your viewpoint] of one of Digital Diversity's lists. I'm usually proud to be a member of UK-MOTSS which can at times be the most supportive gay arena for online discussion in the UK Wielding the Broomstick as one sixth of the team of List Administrators, I can even sigh with relief when my tour of duty's complete without too much blood being shed... The heated discussions are a particular specially, but some of the loveliest gay people you could hope to meet anywhere are scattered throughout the present and past membership, and my fellow list admins are amongst the most trustworthy people I know online. This trust has been tested in times of crisis as we've supported members by phone and in person as well as online. If anyone thinks that all we need is Mardi Gras nowadays, I suggest they sit on the end of a phone for a few days trying to support both a young guy who's been abducted and raped, and his boyfriend. Clue: your first task is to find the correct medical advice for a male rape victim while staying on that phoneline; his life may depend on the advice you're giving. What was hardest for me to deal with was my own anger: anger at the way his parents let him down at this time, anger that the police could only give out an out of date leaflet designed for female rape victims, anger on discovering that this was only one of a series of similar events around Waterloo (it had happened at 5pm) and that the gay press were unwilling to give out warnings for fear it would damage the advertising revenue: my father's death while this crisis was happening was almost incidental. Both the young guy and his boyfriend survived, they are still together today in a strong and stable relationship.

Crises aside, being an e-group that does get to meet up socially in real life, they have added a certain amount colour to my life over the past 7 years... only in a group such as this would a dedicated conservative voter following the general election throw open his whole house from cellar to attic to hold a Red Party... only within this group is it possible to get a truly straight answer should you ask for advice on your latest relationship.... and only a member of this group would walk into the Town & Gown clutching a pile of CD-ROMs for my eight year old godson on the off-chance that I'd be there that evening...

Sexuality? This might be obvious if you've read this far, but for those of you coming on this page either from my signature file on an email, or a websearch, it may have been a shock, so p'raps it's pertinent to explain that as this site's situated in the West Hollywood section of Geocities, I definitely identify myself as gay: Queer & Proud Of It.... Even though one of my Bi friends decided a couple of years back that I was The Ideal Person to act as a Bi spokesperson when the Daily Express were looking for someone to interview in the run up to Bi-con... and gave them my phone number, forgetting to ask me if this was OK first.... Of course I declined the opportunity... after all, there are plenty of well placed vocally-out-thereBi people far better equipped than I am to speak ....
Have I forgiven him....?
Well, yes, eventually....

When pressed, usually by someone who can't see how I can equate that with who my partner is, I might expand to the Nitpicking Irritant (N.I.)that my particular sexuality's on the gay side of Bi, that I define myself as gay but that I am [and hope, Reader, that you are, too] tolerant of the whole gay continuum... and I'm particularly unsympathetic to any form of separatism. .
And, yes, my partner is well aware of my sexuality, and always has been: we met on a train, and I was reading Gay News at the time... Funny thing is, in the past few years, I can only remember two people actually seriously questioning that I define myself as gay in the tone that has me reaching for something sharp - only one stroppy separatist and one miserable heterosexual bitch in nine years *must* be a positive sign that the world's getting better? Definitely!

I have friends online of all genders: I believe that as far as gender is concerned, you are the gender you choose to be. In particular, when a person has gone through whatever it takes to aligned their outer body with the gender they know themselves to be, it is cruel and inhumane that institutionalised intolerance refuses to allow them legal recognition in the gender of their choice. Ideally, passports and all 'official' documents would be gender-free... or if that's asking too much of even New Labour, at least allow for official changes in gender, to try and compensate for the intolerance.

After all,intolerance killed my best friend 23 years ago today...

© 1998, 2002 Franni Vincent

Beyond sexuality

A postscript...

If the goddess came, what would she be like?