QueerQuest #7

Streetview: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Zi7EZn6WWAjoDz2E9
Geocache code: GCBE21J

On the third day at the castle, Lady Bertilak gives Gawain three kisses and a green sash, which she tells him will protect him. That night, he passes on the three kisses to the lord but withholds the green sash, knowing that the following day he will face the Green Knight’s challenge.

Gawain prepares to face the Green Knight with the protection of the green sash, choosing this ‘protection’ over honesty and leading to a secret shame – he’s not really facing up to the challenge. This act is about survival, but at what cost?

What parts of your identity or experiences have you felt compelled to hide, perhaps for fear of not being accepted, or out of a sense of shame?

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Artist statement: drawing on the heritage of the tape mill at Tean in the South Moorlands, this piece also speaks of the silk industry in Leek whilst simultaneously exploring the idea of ‘Lady Bertilak’s green sash’ in the Gawain poem.

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For those coming of age queer in the 1970s Moorlands, the map for self-discovery was often entirely blank. “That feeling of not fitting in, being different but not really knowing why was overwhelming,” recalls one woman, age 65, who grew up in Tean.

She describes her traditional Christian family and rural community, where she found silence on gay or lesbian issues. She felt that the media offered little help, providing only negative stereotypes and malicious rumours.

With only secrecy and ridicule available, she felt that the path forward became a forced migration. The only solution was exile to the city, “to cut the ties and cords with my old life.” The subsequent journey became a life lived in hiding, laced with guilt, where anonymity was the only form of safety. She concludes: “There was no such thing as PRIDE in the Staffordshire Moorlands when I was growing up,”.                          

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On June 20th, 1990, arrests were made at public toilets on Silk Street, an event that underscores a difficult reality for gay men before the internet. With few other options to meet, some men were forced to seek out partners in public places, or “cottages.”

During a period of public hysteria around HIV, Staffordshire Police conducted heavy-handed surveillance operations. The resulting arrests devastated the lives of men who, fearing social rejection, had kept their sexuality hidden from their families and communities.

LINK: https://olgbtstoke.org.uk/lgbt-history-in-the-staffordshire-moorlands/ 

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“I moved to this area 50 years ago to live in Knypersley and then moved to Biddulph Moor…I was working as a teacher… it was a horrible time really. I was living a double life. At school I was ‘straight’, at home I’d got a boyfriend. At school I had started a windband, which grew into a brass ensemble, and into an orchestra. And I started a choir which grew…The whole school came together… and of course you start getting close to [people] and then you think ‘this is getting dangerous’.”