tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/gay-liberation-6624/articlesGay liberation – The Conversation2023-09-07T20:01:32Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2112392023-09-07T20:01:32Z2023-09-07T20:01:32ZFriday essay: homosexuality was still illegal when Frank Moorhouse started writing – but it was there from his earliest fiction<p>Frank Moorhouse had been having sex with men since the age of 17 but did not openly identify as gay or bisexual.</p>
<p>David Marr, who edited Moorhouse’s work at The National Times in the early 1980s, told me in an interview about Moorhouse: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>He was seen as a straight writer, no doubt about that […] it was really only with the publication of <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-everlasting-secret-family-9781742746586">The Everlasting Secret Family</a> [in 1980] that I began to think, ‘Oh maybe Frank’s a poof, maybe he’s bi, whatever.’ </p>
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<p>According to Marr, there was often a lag between what men who had sex with men did in private and what they wrote about, prior to the era when “coming out” was acceptable.</p>
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<p>In Patrick White’s words, the lag is disgraceful, and Patrick, of course, tended to make homosexuals figures of ridicule in his works for a very long time. I said to him once: “Why didn’t you write [positively about homosexuality or being homosexual] earlier?” […] He said: ‘It’s been impossible, my publishers told me it would be completely impossible.’</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-literary-life-of-frank-moorhouse-a-giant-of-australian-letters-185862">The literary life of Frank Moorhouse, a giant of Australian letters</a>
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<h2>Queer literature in Australia</h2>
<p>The history of gay and what is now known as queer literature in Australia has been fraught with debates over how homosexual characters and their desires are represented. </p>
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<p>When Moorhouse was writing his first collection of short stories, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/futility-and-other-animals-9781740511384">Futility and Other Animals</a>, in the late 1960s, he was deeply immersed in his first serious homosexual relationship – and it was a time when homosexual acts were illegal and outing himself as bisexual would have put him at risk of becoming a social pariah.</p>
<p>In the 1970s, the nascent gay liberation movement largely focused on changing laws that criminalised homosexual acts between men, and on “normalising” the notion of gay and lesbian relationships. The notion of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-gay-nazis-to-were-here-were-queer-a-century-of-arguing-about-gay-pride-78888">gay pride</a>” came later; the positive use of the term “queer”, let alone “queer fiction”, was not in existence.</p>
<p>A number of scholarly literary critics writing in the 1980s took issue with the way Moorhouse represented homosexual characters and acts in his early work. </p>
<p>Chelva Kanaganayakam writes, for instance, that the narrative voice in Moorhouse’s work is “instrumental in transforming a celebration of homosexuality into a castigation of it”. Stephen Kirby <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C413555">argues</a> that “the question of self-censorship within apparently ‘liberated’ texts has considerable application to Frank Moorhouse’s work”.</p>
<p>With his characteristic clarity, Dennis Altman <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C252074">refutes</a> this kind of hunting down of an “appropriate” representation of homosexual desire and makes the following point about Moorhouse’s portrayal of homosexuality: </p>
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<p>To speak of “lesbian/gay” writing is to raise problems of boundaries and definition: the boundaries of politics are not those of literature, which tends to be more concerned with the ambivalences and ambiguities of individual lives than with the sociological construction of individual identities.</p>
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<p>Altman is alluding to the way that the shifts in political and social frameworks for understanding and advocating on behalf of LGBTQI identities are historically nuanced. </p>
<p>Essentially he is arguing that it is a misreading to project contemporary
notions of queer identities back onto earlier literary texts. He also opens up the question of whether it is ever appropriate to critique a work of literature on the basis that it somehow fails an ideological test.</p>
<p>Gay liberation was a movement of personal as well as political interest to Moorhouse. For all their espousal of unfettered sexual relationships, the men of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Push">the Push</a>, a loose collection of libertarian thinkers who gathered to drink, eat and talk about politics in the 50s, 60s and early 70s in Sydney, had little interest in opposing the oppression of homosexuals. </p>
<p>The only openly gay man in the Push for many years was a man known as Della. Anne Coombs <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3202961-sex-and-anarchy">writes</a> in her history of the Push that: “The men of the Push delighted in his stories. He sometimes fucked straight Push men when they were drunk.” Sandra Grimes hung out with a group of younger gay men from Sydney’s Northern Beaches; Coombs reports that they found the Push too straight for them.</p>
<p>Moorhouse said he never talked about homosexuality with the Push men. But he was writing about it in his earliest fiction and had been having sexual and romantic relationships with men since he arrived in Sydney in the late 1950s. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-hidden-in-plain-sight-australian-queer-men-and-women-before-gay-liberation-155964">Friday essay: hidden in plain sight — Australian queer men and women before gay liberation</a>
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<h2>‘The police persecuted gays’</h2>
<p>I have chosen not to name any of the men with whom Moorhouse had multiple casual and long-term sexual relationships throughout his life, although the chronology and character of some of these relationships can be pieced together from letters in his archive. And I have steered away from using that material, because to do so would be to “out” a number of men who have lived outwardly heterosexual lives. </p>
<p>More importantly, the quotidian details of Moorhouse’s sex life are beside the point here. The interesting thing is how he grappled with his own anxieties about his sexuality in print – an act of astonishing commitment to self-interrogation and
to writing.</p>
<p>Moorhouse recalled that he seduced an older man, a work colleague, when he first arrived in Sydney, and that their sexual as well as personal relationship continued for many decades, crisscrossing the relationships he had with other women and men.</p>
<p>For Moorhouse, the relationship was a hinge in his sexual life. His parallel homosexual life, which continued after he married, was something that he “compartmentalised”. But in relation to his early writing, he reflected: </p>
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<p>The word “gay” came a lot later. When I was writing about – drawing on – my own homosexual experiences there was no support system, and it was illegal and it was persecuted. I mean, the police persecuted gays. So it was a very different milieu to the world of the gay movement, and so it was much more furtive and dangerous, and dangerous in terms of one’s occupation.</p>
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<p>Moorhouse drew on his homosexual experiences in his work nonetheless, observing: “I think when I was writing fiction, I had numbed myself to the risks I was taking.”</p>
<p>In his <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Graham-Willett-Living-out-Loud-9781864489491">history of gay and lesbian activism in Australia</a>, Graham Willett writes that the gay community in this era </p>
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<p>differed most strongly from the later gay community in its nocturnal nature. It was a scene of the night and was very largely invisible to the rest of society. It was also, and most obviously, a radically apolitical scene. Its members hoped for nothing more than to be left alone.</p>
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<p>In an Australia where same-sex marriage is legal, as it is in most Western democracies, it is difficult to imagine the violent institutionalised prejudice that gay men and lesbians faced so recently. There was scant history of organised gay politics in Australia until the <a href="https://www.pridehistory.org.au/camp-ink">Campaign Against Moral Persecution</a> (CAMP) was established in 1970 by John Ware and Christabel Poll. </p>
<p>Robert Reynolds <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/318853">writes</a> about the shifts that were occurring in gay identity and politics at the time:</p>
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<p>From 1970 to 1973, the first generation of CAMP activists participated in a remaking of Australian homosexuality. More specifically, it is possible to mark off these three years as a crucial phase in the creation of a homosexual who was, in CAMP’s own words, “open” and “proud”.</p>
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<p>Prior to this era, homosexual life was lived clandestinely and was, for some men and women, a source of shame and conflict. In a short story published in <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-americans-baby-9781740511377">The Americans, Baby</a>, Moorhouse writes about a series of sexual encounters between the narrator, Carl, and an American journalist named Paul. After they first have sex, Carl leaves the American’s flat abruptly in disgust. But he agrees to drink with him again and returns to the same apartment.</p>
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<p>This time they went to Paul’s bed. Afterwards, he lay there bewildered, wanting to run from the flat. The distance between himself in the bed and the clothes crumpled on the floor beside the bed, was too great. He could not make the move.<br>
‘Christ,’ he said bitterly, ‘you said we wouldn’t.’<br>
‘We’re too attracted,’ said Paul hopelessly.<br>
‘I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to do it. I’m not like this.’<br>
‘I’m not homosexual either,’ said Paul defensively, ‘we have affinity – it happens to people sometimes.’<br></p>
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<h2>Experimental times</h2>
<p>Moorhouse grew up in a world where “passing” as straight was a basic necessity if you wanted to keep the love and approval of your family and the ability to earn a living and basic social acceptance. </p>
<p>The fact that he openly wrote homosexual characters into his first book of short stories is a mark of his commitment to his life as a writer, in the face of the undeniable pull his middle-class and conformist upbringing exercised on him. </p>
<p>In one story in <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/futility-and-other-animals-9781740511384">Futility and Other Animals</a> he writes about a young man who develops a sexual crush on a visiting American: </p>
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<p>There in the alcove of the pub our hands gripped. Mine partly the grip of a mate and partly the grip of a lover. Mark’s? How did Mark’s hands grip? And then a blush. And then a laugh.</p>
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<p>Despite the growing visibility of the gay liberation movement in the Balmain milieu, straight men, even self-professed radicals, were not always comfortable with homosexuality, according to Moorhouse. He once told me that “there’s a difference between politics and what men in an intensely homosocial society
were prepared to acknowledge”. </p>
<p>Michael Wilding remarks on Moorhouse’s homosexuality in his memoir, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/91335622-growing-wild">Growing Wild</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Frank’s homosexuality was something it took me a while to realise […] Gillian and his other ex-girlfriends joked about our friendship, but I thought that was merely a joke and didn’t detect the dark undercurrents. His proud announcement that he had opened the dancing at the Purple Onion [a gay club] meant nothing to me, night clubs were never part of my world. As far as I knew his late-night runs in Rushcutters Bay park were just part of his exercise routine.</p>
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<p>After this slightly anxious reflection on Moorhouse’s homosexual side, Wilding recounts that, “drunk or stoned after the pub or a party”, he once gave into the “experimental times” and decided to “experiment” with his friend.</p>
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<p>I climbed into his bed. He lay there inert. I reached out in the direction of his genitals but encountered nothing. Significant absence, as the literary theorists put it. Then one of us fell out of the bed. It was a narrow one. I don’t know whether it was then that peering over the side to see where he had fallen, or lying on the floor looking under the bed, I saw the rifle.</p>
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<p>It’s an interesting segue from the penis to the gun, and one guaranteed to waken the Freudian in Moorhouse. Wilding goes on to say that seeing the rifle caused him to harbour oddly unspecified “grim suspicions”. </p>
<p>Moorhouse was open about keeping a gun at the time of this incident. Indeed, as he recounts in the documentary A Writer’s Camp, made by director Judy Rymer in 1987, he bought a Winchester rifle with his first publisher’s advance, “to satisfy a boyish dream”. </p>
<p>In the film, which details the 19 years he spent at Ewenton Street in Balmain, where he had his writer’s studio, Moorhouse is interviewed by his desk and goes to the corner of his office to take the rifle out of its carrying case. He used the rifle for hunting with his friend and patron Murray Sime. </p>
<p>Moorhouse goes on to say that it played a number of parts in his life: “If it was under the bed, it scared away the phantoms of anxiety” and that “in very low periods it’s been the rifle I’ve considered using to end it all”.</p>
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<p>It seems unlikely that Wilding, who was a close friend of Moorhouse’s at the time, would have been unaware that his fellow author owned at least one gun. Wilding’s anecdote about the fumbled sexual encounter and the gun under the bed is, however, illuminating on another count. </p>
<p>Moorhouse always juggled an apparent but central contradiction in his personality and his interests. On one hand, he was a man with a strong sense of his feminine side. Moorhouse had a lifelong interest in cross-dressing in private, and he talked openly in interviews about it. On the other, he always enjoyed traditionally masculine pursuits such as going bush and hunting. </p>
<p>This apparent contradiction in his own personality and persona is connected to his lifelong fascination with crossing borders – including the borders of gender and sexuality. </p>
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<p><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Catharine-Lumby-Frank-Moorhouse-9781742372242/">Frank Moorhouse: A Life</a> by Catharine Lumby (Allen & Unwin).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211239/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catharine Lumby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Frank Moorhouse had a lifelong fascination with crossing borders – including the borders of gender and sexuality. It was reflected in both his life and his writing.Catharine Lumby, Professor of Media, Department of Media, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1559642021-03-04T19:23:57Z2021-03-04T19:23:57ZFriday essay: hidden in plain sight — Australian queer men and women before gay liberation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387127/original/file-20210302-13-1a4ucaj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C797%2C824&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A mug shot of Neville McQuade (aged 18) and Lewis Stanley Keith (aged 19), taken at North Sydney Police Station in June 1942.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sydney Living Museums</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s Sydney Lesbian and Gay Mardi Gras festival time. LGBTQI people are enjoying what some call “gay or lesbian Christmas”. It’s not quite the same in the era of COVID, but <a href="https://www.mardigras.org.au/events/parade">a contained version of the famous street parade</a> will be beamed into living rooms on Saturday. </p>
<p>The public face of Mardi Gras, which began in 1978 with a protest parade, is remarkable in a nation that has been deeply prejudiced toward gay and lesbian people. Part of the power of Mardi Gras for older generations was that it removed queer sexualities from the “secret” confines of semi-legal bar and club locations and private parties to the public street. Being on the front page of the newspaper no longer meant you might be going to jail.</p>
<p>Still, Australian queer people did not suddenly emerge in the 1960s and 70s, the years of gay liberation. Where were they before and how can they be identified? Because male homosexuality was criminalised, much can be discovered from the press and crime reports. Letters, memoirs, diaries, art, photographs and the memories of gay, lesbian, and transgender people also provide clues. </p>
<h2>From the bush to the boudoir</h2>
<p>The Australian colonies were marked by a shortage of women and the dominance of homosocial environments. Francis Forbes, former Chief Justice in the colony, when questioned at the so-called <a href="https://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/convict-sydney/molsworth-report">Molesworth inquiry into convict transportation in the 1830s</a>, had to admit Sydney <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27508924?seq=1">“had been called a Sodom”</a>. Sodomy in the Tasmanian coal mines was also <a href="https://www.monash.edu/arts/philosophical-historical-international-studies/eras/past-editions/edition-six-2004-november/space-sexuality-and-convict-resistance-in-van-diemens-land-the-limits-of-repression">the subject of a British government inquiry</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/debauchery-on-the-fatal-shore-the-sex-lives-of-australias-convicts-88321">Debauchery on the fatal shore: the sex lives of Australia's convicts</a>
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<span class="caption">Andrew George Scott, alias Captain Moonlite.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>There is evidence of what historian Robert Aldrich calls “conjoined” same-sex male couples in 19th-century Australia, including the famous bushranger <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/november/1446296400/jeff-sparrow/queer-bushranger#mtr">Captain Moonlite</a> (Andrew George Scott). As he waited to be hanged in Darlinghurst Jail in 1880, he wrote of his fellow ranger James Nesbitt: “We were one in heart and soul, he died in my arms and I long to join him …”</p>
<p>Homosexuality was often associated with foreigners and cosmopolitan affectation. George Francis Alexander Seymour, future Marquess of Hertford, lived in Queensland briefly around 1895. Likely inspired by international dance sensation <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loie_Fuller">Loie Fuller</a>, he shocked locals by wearing sequins and a veil for “skirt dancing” performances in front of “kanakas” (South Pacific men coerced to work in the canefields). </p>
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<span class="caption">George Francis Alexander Seymour, future Marquess of Hertford, dancing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia.</span></span>
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<p><a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/beauchamp-seventh-earl-5174">William Lygon</a>, later 7th Earl Beauchamp — the governor of New South Wales for a short time from 1899 — travelled with a retinue of good-looking footmen and lavished praise on the natural grace of Australian athletes and lifesavers. </p>
<p>He was disgraced as a homosexual by his brother-in-law in 1931 and became the subject of the famous statement by King George V: “I thought people like that always shot themselves.”</p>
<p>He <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/lgbtq-history/walmer-castle-and-homosexuality/">subsequently inspired</a> the famous novel by Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited.</p>
<h2>Interwar life: fashion and fancy</h2>
<p>In the inter-war years, there was a marked queer presence in the worlds of Australian art, design, entertainment and retail. This was the period of art deco and Australian “genteel modernism”. Art Deco (called moderne or futurist style at the time) was inseparable from fashion and fantasy and frequently derided as an effeminate style — it has even been called the “International Style in drag”. </p>
<p>Cultural nationalist and the director of Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria from 1936–1941, J. S. MacDonald, claimed this type of art and design had been promoted by women and “pansies”, meaning homosexual men.</p>
<p>Smith’s Weekly, The Bulletin and the New Triad mocked the “wasp waists” and “goo goo boys” who worked in retail and enjoyed theatre. </p>
<p>Some queers worked as entertainers or drag queens. In NSW this was a summary offence of indecency (still used by police in the 1970s). Drag queens and cross-dressers had to wear male underwear or else risk arrest. </p>
<p>Cross-dressing was also associated at the time with <a href="https://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/exhibitions/city-shadows">street prostitution</a>. A police mugshot from 1942 shows two cross-dressed male sex workers wearing women’s coats, one with huge rabbit-fur-trimmed sleeves, as well as a turban and makeup. The men still look very male and defiant, suggesting a part of their sexual charge came from precisely this lack of ambiguity; it was clear they were not women.</p>
<p>Clearly annoyed, one of the pair remarked to the tabloid Truth:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We were bundled out of the police cell, and snapped immediately. My friend and I had no chance to fix our hair or arrange our make-up. We were half asleep and my turban was on the wrong side.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gay male artists and commercial designers in Sydney lived their queer lives discreetly on moderate incomes. The flower painter <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/feint-adrian-george-10161">Adrian Feint</a>, who lived in Elizabeth Bay, produced many bookplates depicting languid young men with a queer mood. </p>
<p>His disguised self-portrait etching of a dandy entitled The Collector (1925) carried the suggestion of eye and lip makeup, depicting archaic Edwardian dress, a top hat, a cane, plaid suit and cape.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adrian Feint’s disguised self portrait.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His remarkable cover for the upmarket magazine The Home (July 1929) featured a “Rum Corps” officer whom Feint transformed into a languid, heavily made-up beauty, recalling both the Ballets Russes, who were touring Australia, and the famous queer movie star Rudolph Valentino. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cover of The Home journal, Volume 7 No.10. July 1 1929, designed by Adrian Feint.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The culture of hedonism, promiscuity, heavy drinking, pub life and mixed-class socialising that characterised life in the colonies pervaded Australian gay life until recently. Pubs and clubs were crude, brash and fun. Bohemian ideas were also important. All sorts of behaviour were excused at the <a href="http://melbourneblogger.blogspot.com/2013/10/lascivious-artists-balls-1900-1939.html">Artists’ Balls</a>, which were held in Sydney from the 1920s until 1964. Gay balls were often accompanied by a blind orchestra (not unusual at the time due to war injuries) so the goings on could not be observed.</p>
<p>A 1925 sketch by Mandi McCrae of one such ball in The Home, September 1925, delineates a transsexual, two men with arms akimbo, and several gender-indeterminate figures. The press loved running stories of cross-dressed men whose dresses were so large they had to arrive in delivery vans. One told of a live bird in a cage worn as a Marie Antoinette-style headdress.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sketch of an Artist’s Ball from The Home, September 1925.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Urban subcultures</h2>
<p>In the interwar years, a queer urban subculture coalesced for the first time in Sydney around art deco sites and buildings: city hotels, the Archibald Fountain by night for cruising, and the new high-density housing of Kings Cross, Potts Point, Darlinghurst and East Sydney. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">High density housing helped foster the bachelor life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter McNeil</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Boonara, a middle-class block of flats in Woollahra, built by a widow and a “spinster” in 1918, was let only to women and one male artist, <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lister-william-lister-604">William Lister Lister</a>. Restaurants catering to a homosexual clientele included Madame Pura’s Latin Cafe in the now demolished Royal Arcade. </p>
<p>Many Australian artists and writers became expatriate in this period to escape wowserism, censorship and the anti-art tenor of Australian society. They included Nobel winning novelist Patrick White, who conducted one of the great same-sex love affairs with Manoly Lascaris from 1941 until White’s death in 1990. White spent his youth in England, writing from a desk designed by the queer interior decorator and later famed artist Francis Bacon.</p>
<p>Back home in the 1940s, a group of queer artists, dancers and designers lived in Merioola, a run-down mansion in Edgecliff known then as “Buggery Barn”. They included artists <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/friend-donald-stuart-leslie-12516">Donald Friend</a> and <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/justin-obrien/">Justin O'Brien</a>, acclaimed costume designer <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/sainthill-loudon-11602">Loudon Sainthill</a> and his partner, the theatre critic and gallery director <a href="http://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/fghij/Harry%20Tatlock%20Miller.html">Harry Tatlock Miller</a>. The landlady was the butch looking <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-136208998/view">Chica Lowe</a>. She provided a set-like stage on which residents performed their counter-cultural lives.</p>
<p>Wealthier queers conducted their lives at private dinners, where ironic cross-dressing provided entertainment. They used camp girls’ names such as Connie, Simone, Zena and Maude. Cross-dressing was a popular diversion for groups of gay friends, who hired country and beach houses for private parties around the country. </p>
<p>A queer sensibility can tell us as much as a queer identification at a time when non-binary sexuality could lead to financial ruin for both women and men. </p>
<p>Australia’s first interior decorator, Margaret Jaye, was almost certainly a lesbian, and one of the nation’s first industrial designers, Molly Grey, was photographed in 1935 with a Sapphic hairstyle and severe dress of oversize mannish collar, bow tie, and cuffs. Interior design, being connected to domesticity and the home, was one of the few professions where married women and gay men could work undisturbed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Molly Grey photographed in Potts Point Sydney by Harold Cazneaux circa 1935.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of New South Wales</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The author <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/langley-eve-10784">Eve Langley</a> (who changed her name to Oscar Wilde by deed poll in 1954) and her sister June cross-dressed in country Gippsland when young, where they were known as the “trouser women”. Eve continued to wear mannish attire in her old age in the Blue Mountains.</p>
<h2>Sydney: from port to gay city</h2>
<p>World War II was a watershed for Australian queer identity. <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/blogs/garry-wotherspoon-oral-history-interviews-gay-men-1980-1988-have-been-released-librarys-oral">Historians such as Garry Wotherspoon</a> have noted how port cities such as Sydney and San Francisco threw large numbers of young men together, away from their families, in new types of housing such as bachelor flats. These cities were the ones that later developed the first large homosexual communities, often in neglected inner-city areas, in the 1960s and 1970s. </p>
<p>World War II also threw into the mix female impersonators who performed for the forces. The Australian armed forces had 20 concert party groups and gave 12,000 shows in Australia, the Middle East and the Pacific. The Kiwi (New Zealand) Concert Party wore drag made from muslin, dishcloths and silver paper as well as real fashions. They continued to perform for nine years after the war ended. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Official war artist Roy Hodgkinson captured a moment of revelry among Australian military forces at a New Guinea Concert Party in 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Academic Chris Brickell has made <a href="https://www.brickell.nz/home/index.php/publications/books/mates-and-lovers">the important point</a> that although many of the performers pretended to be co-opted for their roles, most were more than willing. Their drag acts “drew from, and subsequently inspired, gay civilians’ own drag performances”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lance-Corporal J. C. Robinson adjusting the wig of Private G. J. Buckham, female impersonator in the dressing room of the Kookaroos Concert Party, Torokina, Bougainville, 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-didnt-know-that-world-existed-how-lesbian-women-found-a-life-in-the-armed-forces-88943">'I didn't know that world existed': how lesbian women found a life in the armed forces</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>1950s Australia saw an increasing witch hunt around queer sexuality, fuelled by the churches, the demands of the police and Cold War anxiety about Communist inflitration. The tabloid press continued earlier sensational reporting: (“Degenerate Dressed up as a Doll … St Kilda Sensation—Man-Woman Masquerader”) with headlines such as “Police War on this Nest of Perverts”. Even the famed 1950s American <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/physique-magazines-and-photographs">muscle culture magazines</a> were banned under strict censorship here. </p>
<p>Lesbian butch and femme subcultures had emerged by this time, in which one partner was styled in a hyper-feminine way, the other donning trousers and shorter hair. Writer Gavin Harris notes that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_May_Armfield">Lillian Armfield</a>, NSW’s first policewoman, claimed department stores blacklisted lesbians who were trying to “recruit” from among their “innocent” customers. </p>
<h2>Blak and queer</h2>
<p>Queer Indigenous people have been prominent for several decades in art forms such as dance, where they contribute to new formulations of ideas of “blak beauty,” blak being a term consciously deployed by contemporary queer visual artists, including <a href="http://www.artdes.monash.edu.au/globe/issue10/batxt.html">Brook Andrew</a>.</p>
<p>The biography and survival story of Indigenous dancer and choreographer Noel Tovey (born 1934) charts a trajectory from abandonment and abuse to a life as a successful actor and dancer in London in the 1960s. Here Tovey mixed with gay circles and gained resilience and self-esteem. </p>
<p>Tovey described in his autobiography <a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/Little-Black-Bastard-Noel-Tovey/9780733619472">Little Black Bastard</a> the Artist’s Ball in Melbourne as “the only night of the year when the police turned a blind eye to the number of drag queens looking for a cab”. Characters who might turn up there included “Puss in Boots” or a reclusive “Greta Garbo”: the latter refused to talk to anyone all night. Tovey was later involved with the spectacular Awakenings opening dance sequence at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games </p>
<h2>From blending to assertion</h2>
<p>William Yang has been photographing queer Brisbane and Sydney <a href="https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/artists/william-yang/">since 1969</a>. In that year, he photographed David Williams, or Beatrice, who performed in drag at the Purple Onion Club, Sydney (opened 1962), singing “The Sound of Mucus” and “A Streetcar Named Beatrice”. The clothes matched the crude titles: synthetic crinolines and huge feather hats. </p>
<p>Yang also photographed gays who wished to blend, whose clothes appear very ordinary, with a slight edge that can only be read through the focus on casual softness. </p>
<p>Calls for an end to the criminalisation of homosexuality in Australia appeared by the early 1960s, following the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenden_report#:%7E:text=The%20Report%20of%20the%20Departmental,Montagu%20of%20Beaulieu%2C%20Michael%20Pitt%2D">UK Wolfenden Committee report of 1957</a>, which recommended decriminalisation. The concept of “gay liberation” spread from activism in Sydney with the formation of CAMP Inc group in 1970, and at the University of Melbourne in 1971, into the wider public domain. </p>
<p>Sydney’s notorious street protest, the first Sydney Gay Mardi Gras (later Gay and Lesbian), took <a href="https://www.mardigras.org.au/history">place in 1978</a>. The first march was notorious for the arrests and the violence directed at the participants at the old Darlinghurst Police Station (now closed) and created a catalyst for further activism. Many more bars, clubs and community organisations opened and provided relatively safe spaces for LGBTQI to gather.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-on-the-sydney-mardi-gras-march-of-1978-54337">Friday essay: on the Sydney Mardi Gras march of 1978</a>
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</em>
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<p>In recent decades we have witnessed a massive shift from situational, private and criminalised sexualities to open, liberationist and perhaps also commodified ones. </p>
<p>But there are gays and lesbians everywhere if you look carefully in the past, even if not all were as striking or spectacular as the ones outlined here.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155964/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter McNeil consults for Alphawood Exhibitions LLC in the Unites States of America. </span></em></p>From the “goo goo” boys mocked for their love of theatre to cross-dressing troops and “trouser women”, Australia has a rich queer history.Peter McNeil, Distinguished Professor of Design History, UTS, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1050182018-11-12T22:08:01Z2018-11-12T22:08:01ZPioneering sociologist foresaw our current chaos 100 years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248278/original/file-20181202-194935-12i0ftp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Emile Durkheim who taught at Sorbonne University is considered a founder of modern sociology.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Globally, we are currently experiencing tremendous social and political turbulence. At the institutional level, <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674976825">liberal democracy faces the threat</a> of rising authoritarianism and far-right extremism. At the local level, we seem to be living in an ever-increasing <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/My-Age-Anxiety-Dread-Search/dp/0307269876">age of anxiety</a>, engendered by precarious economic conditions and the gradual erosion of shared social norms. How might we navigate these difficult and disorienting times? </p>
<p><a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/durkheim/">Emile Durkheim</a>, one of the pioneers of the discipline of sociology, died 101 years ago this month. Although few outside of social science departments know his name, his intellectual legacy has been integral to shaping modern thought about society. His work may provide us with some assistance in diagnosing the perennial problems associated with modernity.</p>
<p>Whenever commentators argue that a social problem is “structural” in nature, they are invoking Durkheim’s ideas. It was Durkheim who introduced the idea that society is composed not simply of a collection of individuals, but also social and cultural structures that impose themselves upon, and even shape, individual action and thought. In his book <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Rules-Sociological-Method-Emile-Durkheim/dp/0029079403"><em>The Rules of the Sociological Method</em></a> he called these “social facts.”</p>
<p>A famous example of a social fact is found in Durkheim’s study, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58095.Suicide"><em>Suicide</em></a>. In this book, Durkheim argues that the suicide rate of a country is not random, but rather reflects the degree of social cohesion within that society. He famously compares the suicide rate in Protestant and Catholic countries, concluding that the suicide rate in Protestant countries is higher because Protestantism encourages rugged individualism, while Catholicism fosters a form of collectivism. </p>
<p>What was so innovative about this theory is that it challenged long-standing assumptions about individual pathologies, which viewed these as mere byproducts of individual psychology. Adapting this theory to the contemporary era, we can say, according to Durkheim, the rate of <a href="https://suicideprevention.ca/page-18154">suicide</a> or mental illness in modern societies cannot be explained by merely appealing to individual psychology, but must also take into account macro conditions such as a society’s culture and institutions. </p>
<p>In other words, if more and more people feel disconnected and alienated from each other, this reveals something crucial about the nature of society.</p>
<h2>The shift from premodern to modern</h2>
<p>Born in France in 1858, the son of a rabbi, Durkheim grew up amid profound social change. The Industrial Revolution had drastically altered the social order and the Enlightenment had by this time thrown into doubt many once-taken-for-granted assumptions about human nature and religious (specifically Judeo-Christian) doctrine. </p>
<p>Durkheim foresaw that with the shift from premodern to modern society came, on the one hand, incredible emancipation of individual autonomy and productivity; while on the other, a radical erosion of social ties and rootedness.</p>
<p>An heir of the Enlightenment, Durkheim championed the liberation of individuals from religious dogmas, but he also feared that with their release from tradition individuals would fall into a state of anomie — a condition that is best thought of as “normlessness” — which he believed to be a core pathology of modern life. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244410/original/file-20181107-74778-1j04oo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244410/original/file-20181107-74778-1j04oo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244410/original/file-20181107-74778-1j04oo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244410/original/file-20181107-74778-1j04oo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244410/original/file-20181107-74778-1j04oo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244410/original/file-20181107-74778-1j04oo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244410/original/file-20181107-74778-1j04oo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Emile Durkheim, professor and founder of French Sociology, at the Sorbonne, in the Guizot amphitheatre, in early 1900.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nubis.univ-paris1.fr/">Nubis Digital Library</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For this reason, he spent his entire career trying to identify the bases of social solidarity in modernity; he was obsessed with reconciling the need for individual freedom and the need for community in liberal democracies.</p>
<p>In his mature years, Durkheim found what he believed to be a solution to this intractable problem: religion. But not “religion” as understood in the conventional sense. True to his sociological convictions, Durkheim came to understand religion as another social fact, that is, as a byproduct of social life. In his classic <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Elementary-Forms-Religious-Life/dp/0199540128/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1541542635&sr=1-1&keywords=elementary+forms+of+religious+life"><em>The Elementary Forms of Religious Life</em></a>, he defined “religion” in the following way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden — beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The sacred and the quest for solidarity</h2>
<p>For Durkheim, religion is endemic to social life, because it is a necessary feature of all moral communities. The key term here is sacred. By sacred Durkheim meant something like, unquestionable, taken-for-granted, and binding, or emitting a special aura. Wherever you find the sacred, thought Durkheim, there you have religion.</p>
<p>There is a sense in which this way of thinking has become entirely commonplace. When people describe, say, European soccer fans as religious in their devotion to their home team, they are drawing on a Durkheimian conception of religion. They are signaling the fact that fans of this nature are intensely devoted to their teams — so devoted, we might say, that the team itself, along with its associated symbols, are considered sacred.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244407/original/file-20181107-74760-1e41xag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244407/original/file-20181107-74760-1e41xag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244407/original/file-20181107-74760-1e41xag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244407/original/file-20181107-74760-1e41xag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244407/original/file-20181107-74760-1e41xag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244407/original/file-20181107-74760-1e41xag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244407/original/file-20181107-74760-1e41xag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Emile Durkheim.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We can think of plenty of other contemporary examples: one’s relationship with one’s child or life partner may be sacred, some artists view art itself — or at least the creation of it — as sacred, and environmentalists often champion the sacrality of the natural world. </p>
<p>The sacred is a necessary feature of social life because it is what enables individuals to bond with one another. Through devotion to a particular sacred form, we become tied to one another in a deep and meaningful way.</p>
<p>This is not to say that the sacred is always a good thing. We find the sacred among hate groups, terrorist factions and revanchist political movements. Nationalism in its many guises always entails a particular conception of the sacred, be it ethnic or civic. </p>
<p>But, at the same time, the sacred lies at the heart of all progressive movements. Just think of the civil rights, feminist and gay liberation movements, all of which sacralized the <a href="https://theconversation.com/millennials-abandon-hope-for-religion-but-revere-human-rights-90537">liberal ideals of human rights and moral equality</a>. Social progress is impossible without a shared conception of the sacred.</p>
<p>Durkheim’s profound insight was that despite the negative risks associated with the sacred, humans cannot live without it. He asserted that a lack of social solidarity within society would not only lead individuals to experience anomie and alienation, but might also encourage them to engage in extremist politics. Why? Because extremist politics would satiate their desperate desire to belong. </p>
<p>Thus we can sum up the great dilemma of liberal modernity in the following way: how do we construct a shared conception of the sacred that will bind us together for the common good, without falling prey to the potential for violence and exclusion inherent to the sacred itself?</p>
<p>This question which preoccupied Durkheim throughout his entire life — remains as urgent today as ever before.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105018/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Galen Watts receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA). </span></em></p>Emile Durkheim helped to lay the foundations of sociological thought and theory. He spoke of our current condition as being influenced by social structures and institutions.Galen Watts, PhD Candidate in the Cultural Studies Graduate Program, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/978372018-06-19T21:57:55Z2018-06-19T21:57:55ZIs queer culture losing its radical roots?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223887/original/file-20180619-126566-1nujdh6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Has Pride been coopted? This year's Pride parade spectators have been asked to wear black in honour of the victims of serial killers. A drag queen at the Toronto 2016 gay pride parade.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you check out popular Canadian gay magazines such as <a href="http://inmagazine.ca/"><em>IN Magazine</em></a>, <a href="https://www.out.com/"><em>OUT Magazine</em></a> and <a href="https://gayliving.ca/magazines/"><em>Gay Living</em></a>, you may find headlines like: “Gay couple travels across Spain with pets” and “Middle-Age, Sexless Marriage: What’s to be Done?” along with the latest news about RuPaul’s <em>Drag Race</em> or the new <em>Queer Eye</em> series. Perusing these articles, one wouldn’t think gay men had any serious problems at all.</p>
<p>However, the more political <a href="https://www.dailyxtra.com/toronto-raises-the-pride-and-trans-flags-at-a-time-of-tragedy-87032"><em>Daily Xtra</em></a> featured a headline about this year’s Toronto 2018 Pride procession planned <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/pride-toronto-mcarthur-gayvillage-parade-1.4643568">to remember not only the victims of an alleged gay serial killer,</a> but also <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/05/02/annual-pride-toronto-parade-to-be-a-mourning-procession-for-victims-of-alleged-serial-killer-and-the-van-rampage.html">those murdered by a van driver</a> in Toronto in April. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.pridetoronto.com/2018/04/17/pride-torontos-2018-theme-35-years-of-aids-activism/">official theme of this year’s Pride Parade</a>, “35 years of AIDS Activism” seems to have <a href="http://inmagazine.ca/2018/05/torontos-pride-parade-will-pay-tribute-to-bruce-mcarthurs-victims/">subtly shifted to emphasizing Toronto’s loss</a> related to these recent serial murders.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223885/original/file-20180619-126550-10f2cli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223885/original/file-20180619-126550-10f2cli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223885/original/file-20180619-126550-10f2cli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223885/original/file-20180619-126550-10f2cli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223885/original/file-20180619-126550-10f2cli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223885/original/file-20180619-126550-10f2cli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223885/original/file-20180619-126550-10f2cli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman walks during the Pride parade in Toronto in June 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mark Blinch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Spectators at this year’s Pride <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/05/02/annual-pride-toronto-parade-to-be-a-mourning-procession-for-victims-of-alleged-serial-killer-and-the-van-rampage.html">are now being urged to wear black</a>, “to signify that while the festival goes on, this is a period of huge trauma for the whole city, particularly the LGBTQ community,” as executive director Olivia Nuamah told <em>the Toronto Star</em>.</p>
<p>I do not mean to diminish the horrors perpetrated by these (or any other) serial killers. Yet I would suggest that serial killers are not the most serious problem facing gay men in Toronto today. </p>
<h2>Depression, minority stress and suicide</h2>
<p>Cultural reporter Michael Hobbes writes about suicide and depression in the gay male community in a 2017 article, “<a href="https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/gay-loneliness/">The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness</a>.”</p>
<p>Hobbes writes that gay people are now, depending on the study, between two and 10 times more likely than straight people to take their own lives. We’re twice as likely to have a major depressive episode. </p>
<p>In Sweden, which has had civil unions since 1995 and full marriage since 2009, men married to men have triple the suicide rate of men married to women. So even with all the legal changes, it is still dangerously alienating to go through life as a man attracted to other men.</p>
<p>Hobbes attributes the escalating suicide rates to what is called “minority stress.” He says: “Minority stress in its most direct form, it’s pretty simple: Being a member of a marginalized group requires extra effort.” </p>
<p>Part of the stress also comes from online dating apps like Grindr, Hobbes says. “If someone rejected you at a bathhouse, you could still have a conversation afterwards. Maybe you end up with a friend out of it, or at least something that becomes a positive social experience. On the apps, you just get ignored if someone doesn’t perceive you as a sexual or romantic conquest.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223891/original/file-20180619-126531-p7qvrg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223891/original/file-20180619-126531-p7qvrg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223891/original/file-20180619-126531-p7qvrg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223891/original/file-20180619-126531-p7qvrg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223891/original/file-20180619-126531-p7qvrg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223891/original/file-20180619-126531-p7qvrg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223891/original/file-20180619-126531-p7qvrg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The early days of gay liberation: A dance at Gay Activist Alliance Firehouse in 1971.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e3-5edd-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99">Diana Davies/The New York Public Library Digital Collections.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Addiction linked to depression</h2>
<p>Depression comes with a side effect: Drug addiction. A 2017 article by music producer Anthony “aCe” Pabey, “<a href="https://thump.vice.com/en_us/article/zmvej4/meth-ghb-epidemic-gay-queer-men-grindr">We Need to Talk About the Queer Community’s Meth and GHB Epidemic</a>” explains the situation.</p>
<p>In London, meth users who inject the drug while having sex jumped from 20 per cent in 2011 to 80 per cent in 2012, according to LGBT drug-and-alcohol support service <a href="https://www.nationalvoices.org.uk/wellbeing-our-way/wow-exchange/antidote">Antidote</a>. Hookup apps like Grindr and Scruff have gone so far as to ban words associated with drug use such as “meth” and “party.” </p>
<p><em>Buzzfeed</em> reported that <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/amandachicagolewis/the-responsible-high-that-is-also-a-date-rape-drug?utm_term=.mbLDeqBRN#.uslV3on8m">emergency room doctors in San Francisco have encountered the drug with increasing regularity</a>, particularly among gay professionals. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223896/original/file-20180619-126534-8r33hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223896/original/file-20180619-126534-8r33hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223896/original/file-20180619-126534-8r33hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223896/original/file-20180619-126534-8r33hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223896/original/file-20180619-126534-8r33hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223896/original/file-20180619-126534-8r33hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223896/original/file-20180619-126534-8r33hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this 2016 photo, a 19-year-old transgender teen who declined to be identified because she feared for her life after receiving death threats poses for a photo in Texas. Juvenile detention centres are largely ill-equipped to house transgender young people, leaving them vulnerable to bullying, sexual assault, depression and suicide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Eric Gay)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Many economic challenges</h2>
<p>Depression, suicide and epidemic drug use? How can this be? Aren’t gay men happy hedonists and rich as hell to boot? Not according to a 2014 article in <em>The Atlantic</em>, “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/the-myth-of-gay-affluence/284570/">The Myth of Gay Affluence</a>:” “In reality, gay Americans face disproportionately greater economic challenges than their straight counterparts. </p>
<p>A new report released by UCLA’s Williams Institute found <a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/press-releases/study-finds-lgbt-adults-experience-food-insecurity-and-snap-participation-at-higher-levels-than-non-lgbt-adults/">29 per cent of LGBT adults, about 2.4 million people, experienced food insecurity.</a></p>
<h2>The Stockholm Syndrome</h2>
<p>If the plight of gay men is so dire, why are gay magazines obsessed with pets who travel — and RuPaul? Why is the message of this year’s Pride that gay men are just the same as anyone else — including, tragically, the victims of serial killers? </p>
<p>Why are gay men dedicated to perpetrating a false image of themselves as not being victims of oppression? </p>
<p>I believe gay men are presently passing through a kind of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22447726">Stockholm Syndrome</a> in which the captured begin to identify with their captors to such an extent that they wish to become them. In this case, it is the oppressed identifying with their oppressors. </p>
<p>Though the phrase Stockholm Syndrome was coined <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/six-day-hostage-standoff-gave-rise-stockholm-syndrome-180964537/">after a bank robbery in 1973</a>, Irish novelist James Joyce spoke eloquently of the symptoms of identifying with your oppressors in his collection of short stories called <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/321917/dubliners-by-james-joyce/9780140247749/readers-guide/"><em>Dubliners</em></a>. </p>
<p>In "A Little Cloud,” the leading character is a dreamy, melancholy Irishman named Little Chandler — prone to fantasizing about being an English poet: “The English critics, perhaps, would recognize him as one of the Celtic school by reason of the melancholy tone of his poems.” <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-26883211">England ruled Ireland from the time of Henry VIII to 1949.</a> Irish citizens — who were persecuted for their Catholicism — toiled away as servants for absentee British landlords on their own stolen farms. </p>
<p>Despite or perhaps because of this history of oppression, Joyce’s Little Chandler has an epiphany: <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/james-joyce-and-the-problem-of-justice/D852158AA22F5ABCF0012521CF99154D">“Was it too late for him to try to live bravely like Gallaher? Could he go to London?</a>” </p>
<p>Joyce’s character does not have the strength of will to rebel against his oppressors. On the contrary, he sympathizes with them, because, English literature scholar <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/james-joyce-and-the-problem-of-justice/D852158AA22F5ABCF0012521CF99154D">Joseph Valente says</a> — “Chandler has been colonized by Gallaher’s attitude.”</p>
<p>In the same way, has resistance to homophobia been co-opted?</p>
<p>Recently, hip hop star Kanye West tweeted: “I love the way Candace Owen thinks.” Candace Owens’ message, <a href="http://quillette.com/2018/04/24/kanye-west-future-black-conservatism/">according to critical race writer Coleman Hughes,</a> “is that there’s a stubborn refusal — among Blacks and whites alike — to let go of the narrative that Blacks are continually beleaguered by white racism.”</p>
<p>According to Owens, what we need is a new story about what Black America can be, which “looks toward a bright future instead of clinging to an ugly past.” </p>
<p>Owens is not alone — many people hold these conservative views. Hughes mentions that “a <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/06/27/on-views-of-race-and-inequality-blacks-and-whites-are-worlds-apart/">2016 Pew poll found that</a> 60 per cent of Blacks without college degrees say their race hasn’t affected their chances of success.”</p>
<p>But we all know that racism and homophobia are systemic issues woven throughout our daily lives.</p>
<h2>Origins of gay liberation</h2>
<p>Is it any wonder that an oppressed minority might hope that wishful thinking might spirit oppression away? </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/01/an-amazing-1969-account-of-the-stonewall-uprising/272467/">Stonewall uprising</a> — the much celebrated night of rebellion of 1969 when radical queers (sex trade workers, lesbians and drag queens) took to the streets to riot against the police at the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan — inspired the modern gay liberation movement and it’s the reason we mark Pride weekend. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223892/original/file-20180619-126534-5431u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223892/original/file-20180619-126534-5431u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223892/original/file-20180619-126534-5431u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223892/original/file-20180619-126534-5431u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223892/original/file-20180619-126534-5431u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223892/original/file-20180619-126534-5431u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223892/original/file-20180619-126534-5431u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The raid of New York’s Stonewall Inn in 1969 and the protests that followed inspired gay liberation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Diana Davies/The New York Public Library</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet gay liberation didn’t begin with Stonewall. </p>
<p><a href="http://progressive.org/magazine/meet-pioneer-gay-rights-harry-hay/">Harry Hay</a> — a card-carrying communist and proud effeminate “fairy” — founded <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mattachine-Society">The Mattachine Society</a> in 1950. It was devoted to the notion that oppression had made gay men into different beings than straight men and that consequently there was such a thing as gay culture. </p>
<p>However, in 1953, as the oral historian <a href="http://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/john-d-emilio--oral-histories/harry-hay">John D’Emilio tells us</a>, Hay was ousted by the New Mattachine society, which then tackled the enormous task of trying to “adjust to a pattern of behaviour that is acceptable to society in general (and) compatible with the recognized institutions…of home, church and state.” </p>
<p>But this more conservative Mattachine Society had little success. </p>
<p>It took a decade, and the Stonewall uprisings, to effect the changes that helped create what we know today as gay liberation. </p>
<h2>Let’s be radical</h2>
<p>But the pendulum has swung back again. It seems that once again, gay men are committed to lying about their oppression. How long will we continue this futile pattern of oppressing ourselves?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223886/original/file-20180619-126563-1ac4xg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223886/original/file-20180619-126563-1ac4xg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223886/original/file-20180619-126563-1ac4xg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223886/original/file-20180619-126563-1ac4xg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223886/original/file-20180619-126563-1ac4xg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223886/original/file-20180619-126563-1ac4xg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223886/original/file-20180619-126563-1ac4xg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman dances in bubbles during the Toronto Pride Parade in Toronto in July 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mark Blinch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I had the privilege of meeting Harry Hay once — by chance — in a Provincetown restaurant in the ‘90s. I’ll never forget it. </p>
<p>I immediately recognized him and felt compelled to introduce myself. (This was a “once-in-a-lifetime” chance!) Hay was old. Standing near, but at a bit of a distance from him, was his lifetime partner, John. </p>
<p>I asked Mr. Hay why he was in Provincetown, and he said, “You won’t like my answer.” I said, “You never know.” </p>
<p>“I’m here to protest gay marriage,” he said. I told him that I agreed with his position. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223904/original/file-20180619-126566-7n0mw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223904/original/file-20180619-126566-7n0mw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223904/original/file-20180619-126566-7n0mw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223904/original/file-20180619-126566-7n0mw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223904/original/file-20180619-126566-7n0mw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223904/original/file-20180619-126566-7n0mw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223904/original/file-20180619-126566-7n0mw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Burnside and Harry Hay with matching caps, June 25, 1994.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.sfpl.org/sfphotos">SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nevertheless, he felt compelled to explain it. “You see that man over there? He’s my lover John. John and I have been together for a very long time. But we are not married. We would never marry. You see, at any moment I could leave him. We have that kind of relationship. I mean I could leave him for someone like…like well…like for you, for instance.” And his eyes sparkled. </p>
<p>I can say that Harry Hay — the founder of the gay liberation movement — flirted with me when he suggested he might very well cheat — with me — on his lifetime partner. </p>
<p>I’m not bragging about this. But it all just goes to prove that, unlike many gay men today, Harry Hay was not afraid to tell the truth. </p>
<p>Harry Hay knew that it was only by the admission of difficult truths that we can ever find the path to true liberation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97837/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sky Gilbert does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Spectators at Toronto’s Pride parade this year are being asked to wear black to honour victims of serial killers. While it’s right to mourn, it’s not the biggest issue facing gay communities today.Sky Gilbert, Professor, School of English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/365032015-02-25T03:56:23Z2015-02-25T03:56:23ZMen’s shorts are getting shorter and should be worn with pride<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72453/original/image-20150219-20810-1o0oahm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Short shorts are big news in men's fashion – and for that, we can thank the rising profile of gay liberation movements.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Caroline Blumberg</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Late 2014 saw the rise of a new fashion norm for men: above-the-knee shorts. Last year several <a href="http://www.fashionbeans.com/2014/mens-ss14-shorts-guide/">articles</a> circulated online featuring must-have shopping guides for men in 2014. Almost all of them have insisted that below-the-knee shorts for men are outdated. Buzzfeed called <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/lindseyadler/shopping-guide-to-mens-short-shorts#.dmX2vPj3bB">it</a> “the summer of short shorts”.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/05/14/mens-shorts_n_5324106.html">Wall Street Journal</a>, men’s shorts have been progressively getting lot shorter and more form-fitting for years. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the past few years, the low-water-mark length of a 15-inch-or-so inseam receded to knee-length (11 inches), then a knee-baring 9 inches, then to a quadriceps-exposing 7 inches and on to the newly fashionable thigh-flaunting 5 inches. If men’s shorts were a glacier in Greenland, scientists would be freaking out.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72451/original/image-20150219-20793-1r8c1v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72451/original/image-20150219-20793-1r8c1v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72451/original/image-20150219-20793-1r8c1v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72451/original/image-20150219-20793-1r8c1v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72451/original/image-20150219-20793-1r8c1v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72451/original/image-20150219-20793-1r8c1v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72451/original/image-20150219-20793-1r8c1v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72451/original/image-20150219-20793-1r8c1v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On the catwalk and on the streets, short shorts are in fashion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Caroline Blumberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Daily Mail declared inseams are currently at their <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2634059/The-rise-rise-menswear-hemline-Growing-trend-shorter-shorts-takes-hold.html">trendiest</a> when between five-and-a-half and eight inches – instead of the previously trendy 11 inches that were popular for the past two decades. </p>
<p>The modern fit is more tailored and less tight than the short shorts of the 70s and 80s. Many male <a href="https://celebrity.yahoo.com/photos/celeb-hunks-rock-short-shorts-1401992521-slideshow/">celebrities</a> are being applauded on Entertainment gossip blogs for their public commitment to short shorts. Pharell Williams, Cristiano Ronaldo, Zac Efron and Penn Bagdley (just to name a few), have all validated their commitment to this newer length shorts with numerous snaps of their street style going viral.</p>
<p>Considered by most to be the pinnacle of the fashion calender, Paris and Milan’s fashion weeks both featured male models sporting above-the-knee <a href="http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/fashion/lanvin-short-shorts-steal-the-show-at-paris-fashion-week/story-fnet01u7-1226672291510">shorts</a>. </p>
<p>Even walking around Melbourne, I have noticed that recently men of all demographics (myself included) seem to be wearing shorter and shorter hem lines. Why short shorts? And why now? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72450/original/image-20150219-20806-1thxo3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72450/original/image-20150219-20806-1thxo3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72450/original/image-20150219-20806-1thxo3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72450/original/image-20150219-20806-1thxo3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72450/original/image-20150219-20806-1thxo3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72450/original/image-20150219-20806-1thxo3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72450/original/image-20150219-20806-1thxo3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Short shorts are making a comeback – and yes, it’s political.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Briles Takes Pictures/Flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To answer this question we need to look to fashion history and in particular at the last time raising the hemline caused a political stir.</p>
<h2>The mini revolution</h2>
<p>The miniskirt revolution of the 1960s lifted dresses and skirts to new heights. This risky attitude to hemlines turned fashion on its ear and signalled the beginning of a new movement of women’s liberation. </p>
<p>Women no longer needed to follow the dress protocols determined by morality and etiquette – which most saw as a patriarchal double standard. This new approach to fashion matched the political viewpoints of the women’s liberation movement and short skirts became a symbol for the expression of 1960s feminism.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72452/original/image-20150219-20793-glii74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72452/original/image-20150219-20793-glii74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72452/original/image-20150219-20793-glii74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72452/original/image-20150219-20793-glii74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72452/original/image-20150219-20793-glii74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72452/original/image-20150219-20793-glii74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72452/original/image-20150219-20793-glii74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The mini was inseparable from women’s lib.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ierdnall/Flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a similar way, since the early 2000s the profile of the gay liberation movement has been rising. There has been great progress for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer (commonly referred to as GLBTIQ) rights since this period. </p>
<p>This includes the repeal of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_ask,_don't_tell">don’t ask don’t tell</a> in the US, the ever growing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage">list</a> of countries to introduce same sex marriage reform, and the cornerstone gay rights speech made by US President Barrack Obama at his inaugural <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/21/obama-inauguration-speech-stonewall-gays_n_2520962.html">speech</a>. </p>
<h2>A short story about gay liberation</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72447/original/image-20150219-20778-1ljyscp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72447/original/image-20150219-20778-1ljyscp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72447/original/image-20150219-20778-1ljyscp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72447/original/image-20150219-20778-1ljyscp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72447/original/image-20150219-20778-1ljyscp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72447/original/image-20150219-20778-1ljyscp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72447/original/image-20150219-20778-1ljyscp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72447/original/image-20150219-20778-1ljyscp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Short enough?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Fashion Wire Daily</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Short shorts have long been associated with boyishness and some have understood them as a symbol of weakness. </p>
<p>In the 19th and early 20th centuries shorts were considered outerwear only to be worn by juvenile boys. Grown men did not wear shorts to avoid looking immature and being perceived as weak. </p>
<p>Since the second world war, when shorts were uniform for soldiers serving in tropical locations, shorts worn by adult men have become quite normal, especially in summer weather. </p>
<p>But the perception of above-the-knee shorts as being only for young boys has taken several decades to change. The 1980s saw the emergence of men’s short shorts and since then there has been a slow but steady rise in their popularity. Longer, baggy relaxed shorts were popular for a stint in the 1990s but now, it is more tailored shorts that are in vogue – and shorter shorts. </p>
<p>Caricatures of gay people have involved shorty shorts for as long as I can remember. Growing up, the shorter my shorts the more homophobic the abuse I would hear walking down the street. </p>
<p>I suggest that it is no coincidence that the mainstreaming of above-the-knee fashion for men has coincided with a higher profile gay rights movement. Men’s fashion featuring short shorts is as much an act of appropriation of gay iconography by the mainstream as it is an act of solidarity with the GLBTIQ community in their struggle for equality.</p>
<p>Just as the gay male represents just one aspect of the GLBTIQ community, so too does the mainstreaming of short shorts represent only a small aspect of changes in attitudes. Still, if putting on a mini was understood to be a political decision, why not celebrate this new trend? Men’s short shorts are now indirectly at least, a symbol for the gay rights movement and should be worn with pride.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36503/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Myles Russell Cook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Men of all demographics seem to be wearing shorter and shorter hem lines. To what can we attribute this change?Myles Russell Cook, Lecturer, Design Anthropology and Indigenous Studies, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/235622014-02-28T03:17:55Z2014-02-28T03:17:55ZPolice violence against Mardi Gras revellers reminds us of an intolerant history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42508/original/nqkksyqv-1393374133.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A violent clash last year at Sydney's Mardi Gras raised old questions about the complex relationship between police and LGBTQI communities.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Toby Mann</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hundreds of thousands of people will be drawn to Sydney’s <a href="http://www.mardigras.org.au/event-category/whatshot/">Mardi Gras festival</a> this weekend. This world-famous event celebrates gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer, intersex (LGBTQI) and other sexually diverse people. But several police-related incidents last year cast a pall over the celebration and raised old questions about the complex relationship between police and LGBTQI communities. </p>
<p>In 2013, a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDSIQxmPf2Y">widely circulated video</a> captured graphic and frightening images of police aggressively arresting a young man at Mardi Gras. Although police representatives were <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/06/police-brutality-gay-mardi-gras1">quick to point out</a> that it was hard to interpret the video without context, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mardi-gras-police-reminded-not-to-harass-20140208-328kw.html">recent court rulings</a> found that in this case – and in one other incident that night – police used excessive force. </p>
<p>There were also <a href="http://www.starobserver.com.au/opinion/soapbox-opinion/the-lawyer-and-the-reveller-in-me-was-mortified-by-mg2013/118455">allegations</a> of illegal body and cavity searches performed on those attending the party that followed the Mardi Gras parade.</p>
<p>Incidents such as these are jarring not just because of their violence, but because they remind us of a not-so-distant past when LGBTQI people in Australia were openly harassed and persecuted by police. Until the 1980s, for example, it was illegal to have sex with someone of the same gender. Some men still bear these charges as part of their permanent record, which <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-12/men-convicted-of-gay-sex-in-vic-to-have-convictions-removed/5195978">recent work in Victoria</a> has sought to erase. </p>
<p>Police are a cornerstone of how governments enforce order and legislation. As such, police are the immediate public faces of a country’s laws. Although laws and society have changed dramatically, it is through a historical lens that we must view the present-day relationship between law enforcement and LGBTQI people.</p>
<h2>Stonewall riots and early Mardi Gras</h2>
<p>In June 1969, a police raid of a New York City gay bar sparked the start of what came to be known as the “Stonewall riots”. Raids of gay bars were standard practice during this period. At that moment, patrons and eventually other LGBTQI people in the community decided to stand firm against bullying and harassment by police officers. </p>
<p>Many have <a href="http://www.civilrights.org/archives/2009/06/449-stonewall.html">identified Stonewall</a> as a starting point for the so-called “gay rights movement”. It signified a major turning point in the relationship between LGBTQI people and police, which reverberated around the world. This contributed to the establishment of associated rights groups in Australia.</p>
<p>The first Sydney Mardi Gras in 1978 was held, in part, to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and to protest police harassment and anti-gay laws. As police moved to block the dancing and marching from Taylor Square to Hyde Park, violence broke out. </p>
<p>The LGBTQI communities in Sydney experienced their own police-community confrontation. The violent arrests of <a href="http://www.mardigras.org.au/homepage/about/history/">53 protest participants</a> were an aggressive beginning to what is now Australia’s largest annual festival.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42510/original/yzvn6f3t-1393375380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42510/original/yzvn6f3t-1393375380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42510/original/yzvn6f3t-1393375380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42510/original/yzvn6f3t-1393375380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42510/original/yzvn6f3t-1393375380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42510/original/yzvn6f3t-1393375380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42510/original/yzvn6f3t-1393375380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1969 Stonewall riots in New York have been identified as a starting point for the so-called ‘gay rights movement’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">New York Daily News</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, the type of intolerance perpetrated against LGBTQI protesters in 1978 was reflective of and legitimised by the broader legal and social structures of the time. </p>
<p>As Australian sociologist Angela Dwyer <a href="http://eprints.qut.edu.au/66161/">argues</a>, policing LGBTQI people can be seen as the enforcement of sex and gender norms. As LGBTQI people, by definition, challenge such norms, they may be subject to disproportionate scrutiny or harassment, even in a contemporary society that <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/guide-australias-anti-discrimination-laws">prohibits sexuality-based discrimination</a>. The challenge with prejudice and intolerance is that these are social forces that run deep and can linger for generations.</p>
<h2>What’s changed?</h2>
<p>Today, many Australian police forces have made efforts to improve the treatment of LGBTQI people. NSW Police has developed a <a href="http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/195154/Sexuality_and_Gender_Policy_Doc_LRES.pdf">specific policy</a>, which positions itself as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… a strong public statement of the NSW Police Force commitment to working with GLBTI people and communities. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Other forces across Australia have made similar attempts to overcome mistrust. The forces have installed special police liaison officers, held sensitivity training and participated in LGBTQI community events. This progress, however, has not been entirely uniform, as demonstrated by an <a href="http://www.starobserver.com.au/news/gllo-unit-dissolved/73063">announcement</a> in 2012 that the Victoria Police Gay and Lesbian Advisory Unit was being disbanded.</p>
<p>With respect to LGBTQI communities and police, Angela Dwyer challenges the idea of a “lineal progression from a painful past to a more productive present”. The events of last year took place in a state where the police force has, arguably, taken the greatest strides of any jurisdiction in Australia to improve its approach to LGBTQI peoples. For that reason, Mardi Gras 2013 is a special reminder of the inconsistent and frustrating nature of social change.</p>
<p>Encouragingly, media and community reaction to this violence <a href="http://www.samesame.com.au/features/9580/Police-Youve-spoken-Weve-listened-More-to-come.htm">reignited discussion</a> of these issues. It also led to <a href="http://www.samesame.com.au/news/10574/Mardi-Gras-welcomes-new-police-accord">an agreement</a> enshrining the promise that policing will be handled differently for future Mardi Gras. </p>
<p>In spite of this promise, several LGBTQI publications have prepared <a href="http://gaynewsnetwork.com.au/feature/mardi-gras-gay-survival-guide-12991.html">guides for being safe</a> during the festival. The advice includes how to handle interactions with police. Decades of mistrust do not vanish overnight and the type of violence perpetrated last year raises old fears anew. </p>
<p>While more time is needed to know if the promises made will result in actual change, the big-picture message to be drawn across the history of policing and LGBTQI communities is, generally, optimistic. This is never a perfectly progressive journey, but it is ultimately a forward-moving one.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23562/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denton Callander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hundreds of thousands of people will be drawn to Sydney’s Mardi Gras festival this weekend. This world-famous event celebrates gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer, intersex (LGBTQI) and other sexually…Denton Callander, Lecturer, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/169142013-08-12T15:59:30Z2013-08-12T15:59:30ZAcademics should stand with Fry against anti-gay Russia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/29087/original/rykkx8w2-1376318671.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">He has a point, you know.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anthony Devlin/PA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Stephen Fry’s viral <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/stephen-fry/stephen-fry-open-letter-to-david-cameron_b_3718389.html">open letter</a> calling for “an absolute ban” on the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi over Russia’s controversial new anti-homosexuality laws was a clarion call for activists. But it should be a call to arms for academics, too.</p>
<p>I don’t care much for sport, and as a musicologist my knowledge of the Olympics is essentially limited to the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18624954">official song</a> and the music of the opening and closing ceremonies. So prior to Fry’s intervention, my interest in this story was piqued largely by association with the anti-Putin <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN5inCayfnM">protest staged by Russian punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral</a> 18 months ago.</p>
<p>Speaking personally, I have of course been appalled by the reports of the Russian authorities turning a blind eye to the beatings of gay rights campaigners. But in my professional capacity, I noticed an altogether different comment in Fry’s letter, namely:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Any statement, for example, that Tchaikovsky was gay and that his art and life reflects this sexuality and are an inspiration to other gay artists would be punishable by imprisonment.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For me, the ideological implications of legislation that denies the undeniable in relation to music history are both chilling and unfathomable. My research on musical biography centres around questions including the relationship between composers’ lives and their works. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/29086/original/76yssfqy-1376318639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/29086/original/76yssfqy-1376318639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/29086/original/76yssfqy-1376318639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29086/original/76yssfqy-1376318639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29086/original/76yssfqy-1376318639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29086/original/76yssfqy-1376318639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29086/original/76yssfqy-1376318639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29086/original/76yssfqy-1376318639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tchaikovsky’s legacy must not be censored.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is a deeply uncomfortable thought that certain innocuous lines of enquiry I have explored in my scholarship, both about Tchaikovsky and others, might actually be construed as illegal in contemporary Russia. Should writers, historians and cultural critics face the threat of heavy fines or arrest just for telling the truth?</p>
<p>Tchaikovsky’s name has frequently been cited in the past few days as an example of a famous gay Russian. As one of the country’s greatest ever composers, but also the creator of such iconic musical celebrations of heterosexuality as Romeo and Juliet and Eugene Onegin, his sexual identity has long been a source of considerable unease. </p>
<p>Two stories have even come down to us about his death: the widely held one, that he died of cholera from drinking unboiled water; and a more recently emerged version, which claims he may have been forced by a committee of his peers to commit suicide to avoid his homosexuality bringing shame to his <em>alma mater</em>. But that was 120 years ago.</p>
<p>Closer to the present but also closer to home, we might consider the sobering tale of Britain and Britten. Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which legislated against the promotion of homosexuality as a “pretended family relationship” (which all sounds worryingly familiar in light of the above), led directly to the cancellation of a special school staging of Benjamin Britten’s Death in Venice by Glyndebourne Touring Opera. In some respects, perhaps the forward-thinking UK is not so far behind Russia: Section 28 was repealed less than a decade ago.</p>
<p>Another subject of my research for more than 10 years is the fascinating, pathbreaking artist Ethel Smyth. Smyth overcame substantial (male) opposition to the notion of a woman composer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, writing six operas and many other musical works as well as twelve volumes’ worth of memoirs, biographical sketches and essays. She also dedicated two years of her life to the suffrage cause, becoming prominently involved; she and Emmeline Pankhurst may even have been lovers.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3526233">an article published in 2004</a>, I described Smyth’s sexual identity as having “provided a source of inspiration for her creative output and a basis for her opposition to male-dominated society”. This is exactly the kind of suggestion that Fry notes would be “punishable by imprisonment” in Russia today. But I passionately believe that it is both the historian’s duty and right to explore the truth – even if it may not always be what bigoted individuals want to hear.</p>
<p>When, two years ago, I spoke about Smyth alongside Fry’s <a href="http://www.city.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/105023/Flier_WomensLibraryEvent_SandiToksvig_DrChristopherWiley.pdf">sometime QI colleague Sandi Toksvig</a> at The Women’s Library, London, there was no question of pretending that the composer was somebody she wasn’t. More recently it has been announced that Smyth and Britten are, deservedly, among those to be <a href="http://lgbthistorymonth.org.uk/website/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Bulletin-105.pdf#page=2">commemorated during LGBT History Month 2014</a>. I can only begin to imagine what a loss it would be to the public advancement of knowledge if outdated, homophobic propaganda laws were to prohibit such legitimate avenues of scholarly investigation.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/29090/original/hbn3z7yn-1376318952.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/29090/original/hbn3z7yn-1376318952.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/29090/original/hbn3z7yn-1376318952.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29090/original/hbn3z7yn-1376318952.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29090/original/hbn3z7yn-1376318952.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29090/original/hbn3z7yn-1376318952.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29090/original/hbn3z7yn-1376318952.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29090/original/hbn3z7yn-1376318952.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trailblazing composer Ethel Smyth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tchaikovsky, Smyth and Britten merely scratch the surface of a vast international contribution to culture and the arts by homosexual-identified individuals across the centuries. During a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC01cbDvaw0">recent module on Musical Theatre</a>, for instance, I felt duty-bound to point out that one of the greatest works of the Broadway canon, West Side Story, was the product of a gay composer, a gay librettist, a gay lyricist and a gay choreographer-director.</p>
<p>There is, I suspect, a wider issue at stake here. Were legislation to preclude the academic exploration and discussion of basic sexual truths, we might successfully avoid one crime only to commit another far worse: a crime against scholarship, and therefore against humanity. We might as well start burning books.</p>
<p>Academia has a social responsibility to promote equality, to preserve knowledge in all its forms, and to raise awareness where history is infelicitously repeating itself or failing to heed its own lessons. Standing up and being counted shouldn’t merely be left to celebrities, even if that gets more results. On Friday, IOC president Jacques Rogge called upon Russia to clarify the impact of its anti-gay legislation on the upcoming Olympics; while David Cameron responded personally to Fry via Twitter the following day. </p>
<p>The threat of boycotting or moving the Winter Games – or even establishing a bespoke symbolic gesture that athletes might adopt by way of protest during the Olympics, as Fry suggested over the weekend – may or may not be the answer. But if it does turn out to be the high-profile message of disapproval that Putin needs to hear, then I hope academia will welcome it too. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/16914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Wiley’s research has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Board. </span></em></p>Stephen Fry’s viral open letter calling for “an absolute ban” on the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi over Russia’s controversial new anti-homosexuality laws was a clarion call for activists. But it should…Christopher Wiley, Senior Lecturer in Music, School Director of Learning and Teaching, University of SurreyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/165212013-08-07T20:17:27Z2013-08-07T20:17:27ZThe End of the Homosexual?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28814/original/zsswngdm-1375842769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In his new book, activist and author Dennis Altman takes a look at how far the global gay liberation movement has come since events such as the Stonewall riots in New York.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">New York Daily News</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a <a href="http://www.vicaids.asn.au/adam-carrs-speech-presented-friday-12-july-2013">recent speech</a> celebrating 30 years of the Victorian AIDS Council, Adam Carr, one of its founders who went onto pursue a PhD in history, made the point that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…not many people get to make history in their youth, and then to come back 30 years later and pass judgement on their own actions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Indeed, some academic historians might say it is a privilege too fraught to indulge.</p>
<p>But many contemporary academics have come to understand that the personal can be scholarly: that we not only have little to fear in foregrounding our own experience but that we have much to gain. If Carol Hanisch’s much-quoted dictum that <a href="http://www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PIP.html">“the personal is political”</a> is true, there is great value in a scholarship which is both personal and political.</p>
<p>Few Australian academics embody these characteristics better than Dennis Altman. His latest book, <a href="http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/Book.aspx/1261/The%20End%20of%20the%20Homosexual">The End of the Homosexual?</a>, is a great example of what might be called personal scholarship or conversational history. He gives a impressive overview of the evolution of the LGBTI rights movement from its radical beginnings in gay liberation through to the current fight for same-sex marriage. At each point, it seems Altman was there, marching, helping out, giving a speech, having a chat or observing in the corner. </p>
<p>He relates how he became a gay activist “by accident largely as a result of living in New York in 1971, when the gay liberation movement was starting”. He found himself at the heart of that movement by sharing an apartment that became the meeting place for an early gay movement publication: Come Out. </p>
<p>In 1971, Altman wrote one of the first books about the then nascent gay liberation movement, <a href="http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9780702249372/homosexual-oppression-and-liberation">Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation</a>. It is sometimes referred to as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/sep/27/gender.society">The Female Eunuch</a> of the gay movement and like Germaine Greer’s classic, it has had a lasting impact on our understanding of the evolving politics of sexuality. </p>
<p>Over the last 40 years, Altman - until recently professor of politics at La Trobe University (he is now a professorial fellow) - has been a prolific author, publishing a novel, a memoir and a range of other books on homosexuality, AIDS and the politics of social change. He has been an indispensable part of the LGBTI rights movement both in Australia and globally and has played a significant role in HIV/AIDS politics nationally and throughout the region as the president of the AIDS Society of Asia Pacific. </p>
<p>Altman’s new book takes its title from the final chapter of his 1971 classic in which he posited the birth of a future “new human”, so comfortable with fluid understandings of sex, sexuality and gender that rigid binaries such as gay and straight would no longer be necessary or helpful. </p>
<p>In 1971 Altman began that chapter: “any movement has a double impact both on those it represents and on society at large”. He goes on to write:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Homosexuals can win acceptance as distinct from tolerance only by a transformation of society, one that is based on a “new human” one who is able to accept the multifaceted and varied nature of his or her sexual identity. That such a society can be found is the gamble upon which gay and women’s liberation are based; like all radical movements they hold to an optimistic view of human nature, above all to its mutability.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These two themes: the intersection of the movement for LGBTI rights and the broader politics of social change, and the link between the personal and the political at the heart of this, became central to Altman’s writing, scholarship and activism.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28815/original/fzrkdbp5-1375843140.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28815/original/fzrkdbp5-1375843140.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28815/original/fzrkdbp5-1375843140.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28815/original/fzrkdbp5-1375843140.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28815/original/fzrkdbp5-1375843140.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28815/original/fzrkdbp5-1375843140.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28815/original/fzrkdbp5-1375843140.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dennis Altman’s latest book is a follow-up to his groundbreaking 1971 work Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UQP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In The End of the Homosexual?, Altman returns to these questions. In charting the journey of LGBTI people through tolerance to acceptance, he catalogues the impressive gains that now see homosexuality as an unquestioned part of mainstream life in many parts of the world. </p>
<p>But what are we to make of a world which has a pro-marriage equality <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/09/obama-same-sex-marriage-position_n_1504067.html">US president</a> but an increasingly homophobic <a href="http://rt.com/politics/ban-adoptions-sign-ready-210/">Russian leader</a>; a world where legal impediments to homosexual behaviour have been removed in most of the western world but where lesbian and gay young people still account for a larger portion of suicide risks than their peers? As Altman asks: “is the glass half empty or half full?”</p>
<p>Altman manages to maintain some of the optimistic utopian fervour clearly apparent in his original book, but he is scrupulous in documenting the many stress points, contradictions and outright oppression that still exists in some parts of the world and in many discrete corners of otherwise liberal spaces. </p>
<p>Strangely, it is not the “end” part of the proposition of the “end of the homosexual” that has proved most problematic. It is the notion that there is such a being as “the homosexual” – singular. One of the most interesting aspects of Altman’s book is the way that he moves at a rapid pace across geographic, historic, gender and other boundaries in charting the birth of these many homosexualities.</p>
<p>One of the other significant observations Altman makes in concluding this new book is about that intersection between society and social movements - that “double impact” that he noted in 1971. Unlike the changes in gender politics, the changes in our attitudes to homosexuality remain “largely invisible” in the larger story of social change in Australia. Altman notes how recent books by <a href="http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9780670075218/australian-moment">George Megalogenis</a>, <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/items/119916">Gideon Haigh</a> and <a href="http://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/title/money-shot/">Jeff Sparrow</a> have each documented the progress of social change in interesting ways but:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…remain too heteronormative to notice the extent to which the perception, regulation and popular imagination of homosexuality has changed over the past few decades.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The End of the Homosexual? begins to correct that omission. However, it points to the need for more work that brings the LGBTI story into the larger story of the nation and of social change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/16521/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marcus O'Donnell has known Dennis Altman as a friend and colleague for thirty years.</span></em></p>In a recent speech celebrating 30 years of the Victorian AIDS Council, Adam Carr, one of its founders who went onto pursue a PhD in history, made the point that: …not many people get to make history in…Marcus O'Donnell, Lecturer, Program Convenor, Journalism, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.