4. Bulldaggers and Lady Lovers
History is Gay
Leigh Pfeffer
4.6 • 536 Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2018
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, your hosts Leigh & Gretchen take a stroll down Jungle Alley and bring you stories of the vibrant black lesbian and gay subculture of the Harlem Renaissance and the blues legends who sang of its glory. With wild parties, bathtub gin, clandestine orgies, and crooning bulldaggers, the lesbian and bisexual blues legends of the 1920s and 1930s were definitely not as straight as you think.
Outline
0:00 – Introduction
3:46 – The Harlem Renaissance, Cultural Context, and the Language We Used
10:42 – Bio Time!: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, Gladys Bentley, Ethel Waters (& Ethel Williams), Alberta Hunter, & Lucille Bogan
39:13 – What Do You Mean They're Not Straight?
39:28 – Evidence from Historical/Cultural Context: Queer subculture & performance in Harlem nightlife
44:06 – Word(s) of the Week: Rent Party & Buffet Flat
48:56 – Evidence from Their Personal Lives & Music
1:04:41 – Pop Culture Tie-In: Bessie (2015)
1:05:29 – Takeaways
1:07:55 – How Gay Were They?
1:08:31 – Closing and Where to Find Us Online
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to History is Gay, a podcast that examines the underappreciated and overlooked queer ladies, gents, and gentle envies that have always been there in the unexplored corners of history, because history has never been as straight as you think. Hey, folks. I'm Lee. |
| 0:32.1 | And I'm Gretchen. |
| 0:33.3 | And we're recording in person together today. |
| 0:35.6 | We're in the same space. |
| 0:37.4 | It's super cool. |
| 0:38.9 | I don't know if y'all knew this, but we record over Skype far, far away from each other. |
| 0:44.1 | Literally two time zones away from each other. |
| 0:46.2 | Yeah. |
| 0:46.9 | So now we're sitting in the same room. |
| 0:48.9 | So we apologize for any weird soundy things because we don't know what we're doing. |
| 0:53.0 | But this is a new experience. I'm excited. we don't know what we're doing. Yeah. This is a new experience. |
| 0:55.8 | I'm excited. |
| 0:57.0 | I don't know if you're excited about this, but I'm excited. |
| 0:59.9 | We might laugh a little bit more in person. |
| 1:03.3 | We realize that recording together in the same room might be a little bit of a disaster. |
| 1:08.6 | We also have a friend here who is sitting in the corner drinking wine and trying not to laugh. |
| 1:14.7 | That may or may not be super successful. |
| 1:18.6 | Yeah. |
| 1:21.0 | What are we talking about? |
| 1:22.5 | Today we're going to be talking about bulldaggers and lady lovers. |
| 1:27.2 | So the lesbian and bisexual blues |
| 1:29.2 | legends of the Harlem Renaissance. Yes. Oh, man. Oh, boy. These ladies. I, I first started looking |
... |
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