Preserving Queer Stories: All Up in Your Business with Lavender Menace
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This month, we’re spending time with our Edinburgh-based neighbours: Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive, a community-led archive dedicated to collecting, preserving, and sharing LGBTQ+ books and heritage. But they’re much more than a collection on a shelf—they provide a free, welcoming space for the community, and are the only organisation in Scotland offering regular public access to an LGBTQ+ reading room.
From reading groups and author talks to the simple, radical act of sharing a cup of tea, their work is powered by a dedicated team of volunteers who ensure our history is lived, as well as preserved. As the Menaces launch a Crowdfunder to save the archive, we sat down to talk reclaiming radical history, the importance of queer community spaces today, and the work that goes into protecting our stories for the future.
Co-founders Sigrid Nielsen and Bob Orr at the bookshop’s first birthday. Credit: Malcolm Rix.
The name ‘Lavender Menace’ is deeply embedded in radical queer history. Can you explain the term and talk to the decision to reclaim it as a living, breathing archive?
We call ourselves Lavender Menace as we have our roots in Scotland’s first LGBT+ bookshop of the same name, which was co-founded in Edinburgh in 1982 by Sigrid Nielsen and Bob Orr (pictured above). At a time when LGBT+ lives and histories were largely invisible, the bookshop played an important cultural and social role within the community. In 2019, Sigrid and Bob re-established Lavender Menace as a community archive in response to the ongoing loss of LGBT+ books, stories, and culture.
Then, in the 1970’s, leaders of the women’s liberation movement like Betty Friedan sought to exclude lesbians from their organising to prevent them from tarnishing their ‘respectable heterosexual feminism’. She called lesbians a “lavender menace”, a threat to women’s liberation. Lesbians were having none of that and reclaimed the term as a badge of pride!
What does a typical morning look like at the archive?
Every day is different, but it always starts with putting the table outside with tea and coffee on it. It doesn’t sound exciting, but it’s an essential part of what we do in the archive’s reading room. Unlike a traditional archive, people can come in to browse the books, explore the ephemera collection, or just sit and talk. Our founders, Sigrid and Bob, offered cups of tea to visitors from the beginning, and it’s helped to make people feel at home in the space. The mornings are also the quietest part of the day before visitors and researchers arrive, so we tend to start by making coffees and teas for ourselves, too.
A talk at Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive in Edinburgh. Credit: JLF Photography.
“At a time when LGBT+ lives and histories were largely invisible, the bookshop played an important cultural and social role within Edinburgh’s community”
Being based in Edinburgh (and our neighbours!), how does the city influence the work you do? Is there something specific about the queer landscape here that shapes the archive?
Edinburgh is a place that people flow through. This means we get a real mix of visitors who live locally, as well as visitors from around the world. In terms of the team, some of us were born here, some are here for a short period of time, and others moved here, but all of us call Edinburgh home.
The Lavender Menace that exists today is very different from the one Bob and Sigrid founded as a bookshop in 1982 (we could not afford to rent a space in the city centre!), but there are similarities between the Archive and the original bookshop. Both are shaped by Edinburgh, and both respond to the city’s need for queer, sober spaces for people to find connection through books and shared interests. Both spaces offer a calm, inclusive, non-commercial environment where people can read, research, learn, and spend time with others outside of nightlife or commercial venues.
Running a community organisation can feel like building the bicycle while riding it. How have you kept the archive up and running until now, and what has it taught you?
We’re coming to the end of our current funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Awards for All in June, and have spent the past year applying for endless rounds of funding, which has been a struggle. There is so little funding out there and so many amazing and necessary projects. And so, we launched our fundraiser, and we’ve been absolutely overwhelmed by the love and support flooding in! Lavender Menace was not designed to make money. It’s free to visit, free to use, and there are always free tickets to our events, so we rely on donations and external funding. It just means so much to all of us to see people support our work. It’s taught us how much people value the space and how important it is to make sure it exists into the future.
“Lavender Menace was not designed to make money. It’s free to visit and free to use—we rely on donations and external funding.”
At Studio Lutalica, we talk a lot about designing a future to uplift women and queer people. To us, your archive feels like the foundations of that work. How do you view the act of archiving?
There are as many answers to this question as there are Menaces (and between our volunteers, part-time staff, visitors, and directors, there are a lot of us!) Many of us view archiving diverse queer histories as a protest against an increasingly right-wing culture, or as affirming queer lives through queer histories. For all of us, it is important to preserve queer histories and to make space for people to engage with them.
Your current exhibition, Past Shelves, is a powerful way to make history visible. If you had to pick one item in the archive that feels most relevant to the queer community today, which would it be?
We’ve been looking, and it’s so difficult to pick just one… Today, we would pick a book, Karla Jay’s Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation (2000). The author was part of the original Lavender Menace action by the Radicalesbians and relates her experiences as a lesbian who was demonised by the feminist movement. It’s a fantastic read and also an important one for the present day. The attempted exclusion of lesbians from the feminist movement in the 1970s employed the same arguments and logic that are being weaponised against trans people today.
Painting a Lavender Menace sign. Credit: Alison Orr.
“The attempted exclusion of lesbians from the feminist movement in the 1970s employed the same arguments and logic that are being weaponised against trans people today.”
As mentioned, you’ve launched a Crowdfunder to secure the future of the Menaces. What’s the dream outcome?
At the moment, we’re fundraising to keep doing what we’re doing—preserving a queer heritage space for our volunteer team, community, researchers, and anyone else who wants to join us. The dream version of Lavender Menace changes depending on which Menace you speak to (some dreams involve Gothic mansions), but all of us are committed to preserving and improving a queer and safe space that is created by and for our community, in whatever form we can.
For the wannabe archivist, say a queer zine collector, what’s one piece of advice for getting started?
Make sure the zines aren’t being crumpled up and that they aren’t in a humid space! Other than that, take pictures and document the zines in some way, even if it’s just a list on a spreadsheet. It’ll help you keep track of them. Social media is a great tool for connection, but it’s not a safe place to keep your queer things and thoughts as it relies on the goodwill of corporate platforms. Otherwise, get in touch—we’ll definitely try to accession your zines into the collection, but we’re always happy to chat about how to keep them safe at home, too!
Donate to save the Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive here.
