Piers Haslam 🌺

@phghaslam.bsky.social

1704 Followers 547 Following

PhD student @camhistory.bsky.social | Queer and gender historian | Researching confirmed bachelorhood in England 1880–1960 | they/she

The cover of The Invert and His Social Adjustment by Anomaly (Harry Baldwin), published in 1927.
The spine of a book called "The Distribution of Gas" by Walter Hole
A photo showing someone in a studio in a glamorous black evening gown with elaborate foliate patterns. They’re wearing an eye-catching choker with a white bejewelled star.
The title page of "London and Paris Through Indian Spectacles" (1897) by G. Paramaswaran Pillai. It features an image of two eyes peering through spectacles between the words of the title itself.
The front cover of Vol. 1 part 2 of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis from 1920.
From issue 13 of Come Together: "On Saturday night I felt pissed-off, and suddenly thought of going to the party in drag. Fantastic! Carol's long blue woolen dress, buttons down the front to mid-thigh, then swinging open. Clinging very sensual. Tights over underpants - no, pants off - half-hour into the party, tights off; free-and-easy. Pendant and bracelet; bit of blue eye-shadow, hair brushed back a bit. Really nice feeling - I wasn't a 'man' or 'woman', just me in a comfortable, sensuous dress - some of the role-playing really dropped away. I am a person loving and loved. It was nice. Can't wait till the next time."
"I append a glossary of the principal of these words, which I have compiled with the assistance of an urning me medical man of middle-age who has had considerable experience in dealing with homosexuals: "Camp": effeminate, obviously pertaining to urning life; may be used of behaviour, of persons, or of articles of dress, etc. etc. "Queer": " homosexual. "So": used as an adjective also denotes homosexual. "B.M." or "Hearty": heterosexual, normal, virile. "Cottage": a public lavatory. "Drag": woman's clothes used by men. en. "Dinge": negro. "Seaweed": sailors. "Queen": an invert. "Poof": a very effeminate invert. "To grope": to touch indecently. "To send up": to ridicule, to expose urning qualities in another. "Chicken" a very young boy. Slap": cosmetics. "Fairy": an invert. "Rent": earnings of male prostitutes, also used as an adjective in referring to male prostitutes. "Trade" or "Nonsense": homosexual relationships. Tatty": shabby. "Tom" or "Rory": a Lesbian woman."
Frontispiece of THE CLOVEN HOOF: A Study of Contemporary London Vices BY TAYLOR CROFT
The entrance to St Botoloph's church with many signs advertising the book sale.
Picture of a page of Elaine Showalter's "Literature of Their Own" (1977). Chapter on Woolf's supposed "flight into androgyny". The words "They [androgyny and the private room] have a darker side that is the sphere of the exile and the eunuch".
13 March. "Confirmed Bachelorhood and Family Life in England, 1880-1960". Piers Haslam (Cambridge)
The cover of his 1985 album "Settle Down".
From Shon Faye's Instagram: On the Hunter Schafer passport story: This isn't just America. in fact there are very well mobilised lobby groups in the U.K. making arguments for similar measures here. There's been a slow creep of this stuff: the constant litigation of "what a woman is" is designed to normalise interrogation and hectoring of trans people, the fact that despite having a legally changed my birth certificate I would now go to a men's prison in the UK, the constant attempts to get the Equality Act definition of "sex" changed... If Labour ultimately lose future elections due to their own incompetence and lack of vision (likely) and Tories and Reform clobber together some kind of mandate there will one hundred percent be discussion of preventing trans people from changing documents in the U.K. It's ironic how the term "woke" got bastardised by the right because the original exhortation by Black American communities to "stay woke" was about be awake and live to rising state hostility, violence and fascism. So to British non-trans people shocked by Trump please be alive to the fact we are also sleepwalking into something very dark.
Thumbnail of a YouTube video called "I Gaslit Far-Right Twitter Into Being Woke".
A long bookshelved room with desks and a few people working.
Three file names: "8. The boundaries of the state". "9. Demoncratisation". "11. Social democracy, 1945-79".
Extract entitled "The Sterner Sex" from Punch, 26 September 1891. Two figures wearing skirts and hats. Speech text below the image: "HULLO, GERTY! YOU'VE GOT FRED'S HAT ON, AND HIS COVER COAT?" "YES. DON'T YOU LIKE IT?" "WELL—IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A YOUNG MAN, YOU KNOW, AND THAT'S SO EFFEMINATE!"
A screenshot from an Ancestry person profile. It has a popup hint suggesting the user searches for "possible marriage records".
Two books: "Playboy" by Constance Debré and "A History of Cigarette and Trade Cards" by John Broom.
Tweet that reads "The G in LGBT is short for Guy who... erm, how shall I put this... prefers the company of men"
The cover of Bachelors Galore by Essie Summers, published by Mills & Boon in 1958.
A corner of New Court at Corpus Christi College in the winter sunshine.
A photo of the cover of a pamphlet called "The Sex Philosophy of a Batchelor Girl" (1920) by Clara Amy Burgess.
A black-and-white photo. Three people standing dressed in suits with canes and caps, and two sitting with dresses and wide-brimmed summer hats. A dog peaks out from under the arm of one of them.
The front court of Trinity Hall in the morning sun.
From Geoff Porteus's Yesterday's Town: Dartford (1981): "LEFT: Colyer's Mill c1910 (destroyed by fire 1961.) RIGHT: A remnant of Victorian times, a derelict gents' public lavatory on East Hill, 1971 (Note Greek anthemion upper decoration and lower floral panels). BELOW: Tenter's Field Bridge (behind Royal Victoria Mill) c. 1910."
A copy of Memoirs of an Aesthete by Harold Acton.
9.30 to 10.30am. Panel 1B: Modern philologies ‘Is the confirmed bachelor queer?’ Piers Haslam (University of Cambridge) ‘Gay “lesbian” versus gay “carefree”: the case of Gertrude Stein’s “Miss Furr and Miss Skeene” (1923)’ David J. Peterson (University of Nebraska at Omaha) ‘Queer and trans pronouns in literary history: a whistlestop tour’ Lena Mattheis (University of Surrey)
A page that reads ‘To my noncoresident extended kin group’
The colourful cover of Good Soups. Written by Ambrose Heath. Illustrated by Edward Bawden. Published by Faber & Faber in 1935.
A cosy cluttered bookshop scene. On my table stands a coffee and two books: Charles Kingsley’s Poems and Zola’s Germinal.
The shop front of Jein Solicitors.
A copy of the fourth volume of Peter Gay’s The Bourgeois Experience (1984–98).
André Hazes’ album Gewoon André (1981).
The title page of Edward Carpenter’s ‘The Intermediate Sex’. It’s the fifth edition from 1918.
A wintry view along the top of Trumpington Street, with the Pitt Building on the right and Pembroke College Chapel on the left.
A heading of a diary entry from April 1885 that reads ‘still queer’.