Was anyone else mystified by this Guardian article about the clothes worn by the Bloomsbury group?

[MaybeDoctor]

I was recently rather puzzled by a Guardian article which focuses on the clothing worn by the Bloomsbury group when staying at Charleston. Everyone who has come across Virgina Woolf and friends knows that members of the Bloomsbury group had heterosexual, gay and lesbian relationships, but there seems to be a huge emphasis on re-examining this in the lens of queer theory.

The bit that jumped out at me was the analysis of a very mundane photograph, of JM Keynes and Duncan Grant standing opposite each other. It is literally a photograph of two men standing a couple of feet apart, chatting, wearing three-piece-suits - utterly innocuous - but it is re-interpreted as one man 'thrusting his crotch' at the other and the other man 'shielding' himself with his hands. The description came before the photograph and I was expecting something completely different from the bland picture that followed! The article seems bizarrely determined to sexualise things that are not sexual at all...

To the authors of the article and the book:

The Bloomsbury group had sex, as well as being mothers, fathers, artists and well-educated individuals.
They had same-sex relationships, as many people do over the course of a long life. This is not intrinsically extraordinary, although same sex-relationships either broke social norms or were illegal at the time.
This was known long before you came into being and does not need to be 'queered'!

‘You’re not getting any’ – the secret sexual signals in the Bloomsbury Group’s clothes | Culture | The Guardian

I'm never not mystified by the Guardian these days.

The only thing I can trust there now is the cookery section.

Totally! I saw the title of the article, because I like reading the cooking and travel bits, raised my eyebrows, and didn't read it. Now I feel no need to!

Really glad that I started this thread as it has sent me on a fascinating Bloomsbury group and Edwardian quest:

‘Life in Squares’ was divine, a must-watch
Re-watched ‘Howards End’ (film) and might hunt out the TV adaptation
I have a book about Virginia and Vanessa on order plus Angelica Garnett’s autobiography.
Might even slip down to Charleston to see what all the fuss is about!

Wasn't there an episode of Blackadder where Hugh Laurie's character had truly enormous trousers?

The cake was quite good at Charleston last time I was there.
The room volunteer in one room was agog to tell me about the sexual shenanigans but wasn't able to answer an art related question....

The football writing is pretty good - if overly fond of interpreting every international game as a geo-political allegory.

The Bloomsbury Group are basically The Real Housewives for people who own a Brompton Bike and an MA (Cantab) in English.

I love reading about Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Vita Sackville-West etc.. Why does the Guardian have to link the Bloomsury Group with this read-in salaciousness? They used to be sensible..a long time ago.

Although I've haven't laughed so much for a while!

I thought the Bloomsburies were similar to lots of other groups of upper class people at the time in that it was fairly normal to have sex with whoever happened to be at home when one dropped round for tea. Not so much queer as decadent - unlike factory workers they had a fair bit of spare time and money and there wasn't any telly.

So , Virginia had her own moustache but used Lawrence as her beard.

I'll see myself out....

I have never bought it and I don’t subscribe on-line, but most of what they write is total left wing rubbish, and lots of trans nonsense. Still interesting what these extremists think

It's about as leftwing as Bojo's left testicle.

Oh I'm so glad you enjoyed Life in Squares!

Sometimes I think I would have liked to have lived in that era, but then I remember I would probably have been a kitchen maid or housekeeper or something, rater than one of the floaty artists!

Virginia Woolf was sexually abused repeatedly by one of her male relatives and his friends. They used to stand her on a table.

Probably contributed to her lifelong struggles with mental health, but the Guardian wouldn’t be interested in that aspect of ‘queerness’, would they?

Not part of the group (I don't think) but who could forget ...

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20s-people/20-people-of-the-20s/marguerite-radclyffe-hall/

So sad that in later accounts she has been 'queered'.

Listening to my great granny mill-worker as a child, I know the lower classes could also quite ‘decadent’ with sex - it’s just they didn’t have the free time to write it down or the contacts/money to get published. (And obviously the problem of contraception).
There’s so many stories that could have been told but only a certain demographics that did. D H Lawrence was a notable exception.

in the gruan's defence, in this piece from today about women's health they do use the w-word 8 times.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/11/the-vaginal-microbiome-how-to-look-after-it-and-what-to-avoid

Did anyone else watch the Lucy Worsley BBC series a while back called something like 'A History of Romance'? There was a good segment on Marguerite R-H and 'The Well of Loneliness'. Plus a segment on E.M. Forster and Maurice.

It was probably made about ten years ago and I very much doubt that it would be made now.

No! I'll look for it though.

I like LW.

I haven't heard her come out with any gender rubbish.

There’s a seismic shift going on in contraception, and health professionals are scrambling to catch up. The TikTok health claims above are wildly exaggerated and often incorrect, but that’s not stopping a generation of women, trans and non-binary people binning their pills

^www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/11/women-tiktok-pill-doctors-social-media-contraception^

That’s actually quite an interesting article about contraception, but the Guardian muddles the first couple of paragraphs by bringing in a reference to trans people.

Yes. Hugh Laurie was the Prince Regent. It was all about sexual prowess, which he hadn't got. Might be the one with the actors.

Thanks for the Lucy Worsley recommendation. I think she probably would support the gender stuff-but her work is very focused on women... I suppose even if she disagrees she probably would toe the line as she relies on the BBC.

I volunteered at VW's cottage in Sussex for a time. People would sometimes do that house and Charleston in one day out as they're close together. As a result we had some fascinating visitors, particularly for me as someone who loves VW (who survived so much including sexual abuse as mentioned in this thread already).

One day a visitor came round the house and he said he'd grown up in the village. Oh great, I said, you must have some stories. Well the main thing was all the adults in my life all told me never to get in their cars, he said. The men of the Bloomsbury group were known to go after the local children. Lots of the them had stories of being assaulted and paid off with sweets etc, he said. It was never any secret, it was all carried out quite openly. I don't know which of the men, I'm not about to guess, and it wasn't exactly appropriate to stand there in that moment talking about who exactly was doing this, but his face was horrible as he was talking about it. He looked really haunted and I believed him.

So with any honest appraisal of the Bloomsbury group and Charleston with it's horrible unisex loos, the least they could do is honestly scrutinise what abuse happened in that house/area. There are clearly victims still living locally. I love those houses and Vita and VW but let's not gloss over reality just because it's unpleasant to learn the truth.

This is terrible, but if it's true, and I suspect it is, it's not really surprising to me. People love the idea of these people being all libertine and sexually uninhibited, but don't seem to clue into the fact that people who let go of sexual boundaries don't stop at just the slightly spicy ones. It's the same with the way people treat Oscar Wilde, and are up in arms about his prison time. Yes, today we would not put him in prison for sex with other consenting men, but we might very well for gadding off to North Africa in order to have easy access to adolescent boys, or pursuing the same sort of thing back home in England, which for many was seen as part and parcel of that whole lifestyle.

That being said, unless it's documented, I think it would be very difficult for a property or museum to talk about it in official materials or talks.

Yes it's a difficult one and it's not something I've ever mentioned elsewhere. It's not really my place to do so. I would hope this man would speak up publicly one day but it's very hard when these people are loved (even if they're long dead) and the houses are making money from their reputations.

There was no reason for him to lie to me, I was just a volunteer at the property. It's tragic if it's true but there we go, so many children have been victims and never spoken out or had any justice the world over.