Day 4 of #TakeBackPride is for Radclyffe Hall, the English writer best known for her pioneering 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness.
Born into wealth, Hall dressed in men’s fashion and pursued relationships with women, and joined a circle of intellectual and artistic lesbians.
When published in 1928, the Well of Loneliness faced an obscenity trial for its sympathetic depiction of homosexuality and ‘unnatural practices between women’. It was banned until 1949.
The book ends with the plea: “Give us also the right to our existence!”
Due to misogyny and lesbophobia, modern TQ+ activists attempt to claim Hall as a transgender man, despite that label not existing at the time.
Radclyffe Hall was a butch lesbian and remains an inspiration to the lesbian community to this day.
