No Modernism Without Lesbians
When she was growing up, Diana Souhami says there was no vocabulary for what she felt she was. Born in 1940–“I’ll be 80 this year,” she says proudly–the references to homosexuality made by family members were negative and she remembers them vividly. “They weren’t vicious,” she remarks, “they were more like asides”.
She remembers her mother saying she thought her daughter preferred the company of women to men, to which the young Diana retorted, “Well, what if I do?” The reply lodged in her like a bullet: “Well, I can’t say we like it very much.” Once, her father said of Gertrude Stein, “Wasn’t she a dirty lesbian?” In the 1970s, during the gay sex scandal involving Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe, her youngest brother said, “I’ve nothing against homosexuals, I just don’t want them running the country”. Souhami’s mother concurred. “I couldn’t defend myself,” she recalls. “I would make some hot reply at the time,
