Sam Caslin

A poster with a title that says "Call For Participants." The poster states: Are you part of the LGBTQIA+ community and have vivid memories from the 1970s and 1980s? We invite you to participate in an exciting project exploring the cultural significance of the tailored suit within the community. We are looking for volunteers, aged 18 and older, to participate in an exciting project exploring the cultural significance of the tailored suit within the LGBTQIA+ community during the 1970s and 1980s. This study is open to: • Individuals who self-identify as queer or belong to the LGBTQIA+ community and were 18+ in the 1970s and 1980s. • Relatives or close associates of queer individuals from this era, are encouraged to join. You would be invited to participate in an interview session, either online or in-person. If you choose to come to one in person, they will be held in The Townsend Room, located in the Bishopsgate Institute (230 Bishopsgate, London, EC2M 4QH) or in public spaces such as coffee shops, public libraries, or LJMU classrooms. If you choose to take part virtually, you will be sent a secure link to a Microsoft Teams meeting which you can join from. Each session would take about two hours of your time. You would be asked to share your personal stories related to the tailored suit, and ideally, bring a photograph or meaningful clothing item, although this is not required. If you are interested and would like more information, please reach out to the investigator. There is no obligation to take part. You will receive a gift card as a thank you for your valuable contributions. Thank you!

Hello! I’m seeking volunteers to be interviewed for my PhD thesis on the cultural significance of the tailored suit within queer communities during the 1970s and 1980s. If you’re interested and would like more information, please contact me. Thank you, and feel free to share this with your networks!

Brightly coloured and textured background with crumpled plastics and paper. Pinks and blues with a pink triangle and a blue spray paint effect giving the image energy. Atop all of this is “save the dates” scribble underlined and “Trans+ History Week 04-10 May 2026” Handwritten beneath on a ripped bit of paper is “our history, our power” And at the bottom it reads “a QueerAF launchpad project”

🗓️ Mark your calendars for Trans+ History Week 2026

04–10 May

Get the history lesson you never had, find our what’s in store, early-bird ticket alerts and a history article every day of Trans+ History Week with @wearequeeraf.com

Sign up www.wearequeeraf.com/transhistory...

📣 New publication! The second article of my postdoc project on the far right and anti-gender mobilization is now out #openaccess in #GermanPolitics doi.org/10.1080/0964...

It examines antifeminism in far-right party politics through the case of AfD

Key findings:

Antifeminism ✅
Radicalization ✅

What an amazing sci-fi archive! 💙💙🟦

screen grab of Sun Sport artilce about IOC ban for trans women including a picture of Cisgender Boxer Imame Khelife

Nothing illustrates the arseholery of the IOC and the British Press more than the use of the image of a not-Trans woman to illustrate a story about trans women being banned (because there are no current trans women competing at this level)

a man 's face is shown in a black and white photo with a purple background ALT: a man 's face is shown in a black and white photo with a purple background

Me: *Tells a joke that gets a slight chuckle from a room full of students* Also me: Yeah, I could do stand up comedy.

This is a gorgeous history of dogs - and a perfect present for dog lovers!

Black and white photo of a man sitting on a chair with prosthetic arms stroking his head and arms.

This month’s suitably spooky blog post is from our Research Associate, who has been speaking with the dead in the archives of the Society for Psychical Research!

Read here: www.thevictorianhand.uk/gallery/spir...

a man in a yellow shirt is sitting in a chair holding a cup and pointing ALT: a man in a yellow shirt is sitting in a chair holding a cup and pointing

Tfw when a student cites people I know

This looks so good! I'll share it with my students!

Detail from an 18th-century print depicting bewigged James Graham riding astride a large phallic instrument labelled 'Largest in the World' as a little duck says 'quack quack quack' at his feet

Feels a bit early in the day to be posting this, but if I'm spending the morning with 18th-century sex therapist & supposed 'Prince of the Quacks' Dr James Graham then so can you 🍆

If anyone needs a freelance researcher in London (or across the UK), I'm your person!
I've reasonable rates, lots of archive experience & great recommendations from academics globally. I'm only teaching 1 module this term, as the job market is what it is. Therefore, I'm open to all work. DM me!

Thanks so much! That is so kind. I may well take you up on that at some point!

The details about the 'gentleman publishers', and the ways they were all interconnected, are also really fun to discuss too!

I ran this seminar with students last year, too. Your work is a core text! We use your article to discuss the overlaps between early sexology and erotic print cultures. Your work is so useful for demonstrating how things weren't always so simple as medical text vs erotic text.

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

This week, some of my classes are going to be thinking about @sarahebull.bsky.social's 2021 research on adult entertainment and early sexology. I highly recommend this article to anyone interested in the topic. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Trump has strong opinions on your fanfic.

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Feminist Legal Studies Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope Amidst continuing backlash against trans rights, recognition and inclusion, two recent decisions from the UK have substantially impacted not only trans people’s legal status but also legal and social narratives of sex, gender and identity. The narrative that trans inclusion has a chilling effect on the rights of others, particularly women, has been adopted uncritically by both the UK Supreme Court in For Women Scotland and the Office for Students in its finding that the University of Sussex’s trans-inclusion policy had a chilling effect on free speech. These cases highlight a backlash that has been ongoing for some time, and sparks debates and fear of what may lie in the near future for trans people and kin, as well as other gender-variant persons, not only in the UK, but across jurisdictions and in a global perspective. The discourse of the ‘gender critical’ movement is splintering both the feminist and LGBT+ movements globally, with some aligning politically with the Far- and Christian Right against trans rights, adopting their terminology of ‘gender ideology’ and potentially posing a wider threat to sexual and reproductive rights. While this a difficult situation for trans people, kin and allies, this special issue seeks to emphasise that legal battles – including battles (temporarily) lost – are also an opportunity to seek to reinforce old alliances and to form new ones, to find new legal frontiers and imaginaries, to reinforce the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of legal arguments as well as intergenerational memory of what feminist legal work is, has been and should be about. How, we ask, do these decisions (and those like them globally) reflect and reproduce structures of coloniality, heteronormativity and cisnormativity? What do these decisions add to critiques of legal feminism? What would be construct…

📣🏳️‍⚧️ Call for Papers

We are inviting papers for our special issue, “Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope.” The issue will be dedicated to trans-inclusive feminist legal analysis that addresses attacks on trans rights & lives.

Details below. Please share.

'Scale of unite the kingdom march shows free speech alive and well in UK, says minister

This is, I believe, the first official word from the Government on what happened yesterday in London. Not only inaction in the face of violence and hate, but a celebration of it. I passed through London twice yesterday with my two kids & what Labour seem to be missing is that people aren't just...

This is class solidarity.

In case you’re at all confused.

The professor has been fired and senior administrators removed from their post. No mention of this in the New York Times, The Free Press, The Atlantic or other outlets who drove the campus speech moral panic.

Dear me, "students need to be exposed to challenging beliefs" season is over already

Bram Stoker 1847-1912 A PENGUIN SINCE 1979

This frontispiece in my book just made me laugh a lot. Is this Buddhist reincarnation, or some other form of afterlife?

This is a timely article on the broader significance of trans-exclusionary writers for contemporary anti-trans politics.

People would have said The Thick of It had jumped the shark if they had Peter Mannion doing a Robert Palmer-style number.

Starmer's Britain.

A place where peaceful protest is criminalised, the right to use a gender-appropriate toilet is prohibited, people persecuting refugees are told they have 'legitimate concerns', and the state backs a genocide.

Some legacy that for the 'human rights lawyer'.

I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset.
In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia.
In 2005 I started medical transition. (1/13)

Before Gender: Lost stories from trans history 1850–1950 Published in Women's History Review (Ahead of Print, 2025)

I reviewed Eli Erlick's new book Before Gender for @womenshistoryrev.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

This was the smoothest production process of all time and I'm grateful to see a venerable women's history journal making space for trans history!

Trans people have been prosecuted for non-disclosure in the UK since the 90s - but this is the first case I have heard of in which a trans woman is being charged, it’s usually transmasculine ppl. The UK is the only country that charges trans people for this, and it’s difficult to prove innocence.