tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/gay-history-39991/articlesGay history – The Conversation2024-03-06T13:23:19Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2235222024-03-06T13:23:19Z2024-03-06T13:23:19ZMary & George: homosexual relationships in the time of King James I were forbidden – but not uncommon<p>The Sky TV series Mary & George tells the story of the Countess of Buckingham, Mary Villiers (Julianne Moore), who moulded her son George (Nicholas Galitzine) to seduce King James I. She believed that, as the king’s lover, her son could become wealthy and wield power and influence.</p>
<p>No one identified as a “homosexual” in King James’s time (1566-1625). The word was only <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/homosexuality-in-renaissance-england/9780231102896">coined in the Victorian period</a> and sexuality was not used to construct identities as it is today. </p>
<p>There was also a more <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674543553">fluid concept of gender</a>. Male and female bodies were seen as <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Gender-and-the-English-Revolution/Hughes/p/book/9780415214919">fundamentally the same</a>, with sexual differences determined by the way bodily humours (fluids) flowed through them. </p>
<p>A man who desired sex with other men was seen as having an imbalance in his humours – and was <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674543553">blamed</a> for failing to control it. </p>
<p>Sexual acts between men were forbidden by the church, citing passages from the the Bible. <a href="https://biblia.com/bible/esv/1-corinthians/6/9">Corinthians 6:9</a> classed the “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind” among the “unrighteous” who would not inherit the kingdom of God. </p>
<p>The puritan theologian William Perkins, <a href="https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.12024/A09339/A09339.html?sequence=5&isAllowed=y">writing in 1591</a>, itemised “strange pleasures about generation, prohibited in the word of God”. This included sexual acts with beasts, devils and members of the same sex. </p>
<p>It was sometimes thought that men who had sex with men would give birth to monsters. Sodomites (people who engaged in anal sex) were said to be the offspring of witches having sex with devils.</p>
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<h2>Sodomy on trial</h2>
<p>Originally under the jurisdiction of the church courts, in 1533 <a href="https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/131232/1/Revised_submission_to_Parliamentary_History_WRR_version.pdf">sodomy or “buggery”</a> became a secular crime subject to the death penalty. The offender “not having God before his eyes” was said to have “devilishly” and against “almighty god” and the “order of nature” committed the “destestible” sin of sodomy “not to be named amongst Christians”. </p>
<p>This sort of phrasing was usually reserved for the most heinous offences such as witchcraft, blasphemy and treason.</p>
<p>In early modern southern Europe, hundreds of men were tried and executed for sodomy. But in northern Europe, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/forbidden-desire-in-early-modern-europe-9780198886334?lang=3n&cc=pa">very few cases were prosecuted</a>. </p>
<p>Low rates of prosecution can indicate one of two things. Either an unwillingness to prosecute a crime, or that the crime occurred infrequently. </p>
<p>Historian <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/homosexuality-in-renaissance-england/9780231102896">Alan Bray argues</a> that, in this instance, it indicates a lack of interest in prosecuting homosexual acts and thereby a degree of tolerance – particularly for acts that did not involve penetration. </p>
<p>Early modern historian Noel Malcolm offers <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/forbidden-desire-in-early-modern-europe-9780198886334?lang=3n&cc=pa">a different explanation</a>. He suggests that the higher rates of prosecution in southern Europe reflect a greater prevalence of homosexual acts involving men who were otherwise heterosexual by preference there. </p>
<p>It is a bold thesis, but is it correct? The low rates of prosecution for sodomy in England follow a comparable pattern to those for rape – so infrequently prosecuted that it’s hard to believe that either represents their actual incidence. Both often involved accusations by a person of lower status against someone in authority.</p>
<p>Jurors were <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296174755_The_patriarch_at_home_The_trial_of_the_2nd_Earl_of_Castlehaven_for_rape_and_sodomy">reluctant to convict</a> sexual crimes which carried the death penalty. There was also an inclination to doubt the credibility of victims. This discouraged accusations. In a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Wanton-Wenches-and-Wayward-Wives-Peasants-and-Illicit-Sex-in-Early-Seventeenth-Century-England/Quaife/p/book/9780367174743">1622 case from Somerset</a>, sex crimes involving multiple unwilling partners had been going on for 14 years before victims came forward. </p>
<p>The rarity of sodomy cases, and the sparse detail given in most English legal records, makes it difficult to conclude much about queer sexual practices. </p>
<p>A Sussex clergyman and an Essex schoolmaster <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/homosexuality-in-renaissance-england/9780231102896">were accused</a> in the late Elizabethan period. A coxswain on an East India ship who <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/homosexuality-in-renaissance-england/9780231102896">“committed buggery”</a> with a ship’s boy in 1609 was tried at sea and hanged. </p>
<p>A steward who had sexual contact of a different sort with the same boy was merely whipped. In another naval case from 1638 the offender was imprisoned but <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/homosexuality-in-renaissance-england/9780231102896">eventually pardoned</a>. </p>
<p>Accusations of sodomy were also used to attack religious opponents. Protestant polemicist John Bale made a <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/176987/the-anatomy-of-melancholy-by-burton-robert/9780141192284">“catalogue of sodomites”</a> supposedly discovered in Henry VIII’s monasteries. </p>
<p>An <a href="https://archive.org/details/puritanismemothe0098bcca">anti-puritan publication</a> of 1633 claimed that theologian John Calvin fled to Geneva not on account of religious persecution, but because he had been charged with sodomy in France. In the 1630s, puritans in Sussex framed the traditionalist vicar of Arlington, <a href="https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/library/browse/details.xhtml?recordId=3203052&recordType=Journal">John Wilson</a>, for supposedly attempting to “commit buggery” with three men and a mare.</p>
<h2>King James’s relationships</h2>
<p>But it wasn’t all negative. Growing up in the all-male environments of school, university and inns of court, it was seen as normal for the most intense emotional relationships of elite males to be with other men. </p>
<p>In the late 1500s, the French essayist <a href="https://hyperessays.net/essays/on-friendship/">Michel de Montaigne wrote</a> of his friend Étienne de la Boétie: “If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.”</p>
<p>Philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon considered heterosexual love a “weak passion” compared to the <a href="https://rictornorton.co.uk/baconfra.htm">love between male friends</a>. Bacon apparently preferred the “Ganymedes” (<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ganymede-Greek-mythology#:%7E:text=Ganymede%2C%20in%20Greek%20legend%2C%20the,Minos%2C%20to%20serve%20as%20cupbearer.">Ganymede</a> was a mythological beautiful boy abducted by Zeus) among his servants to his sexually frustrated wife. But he was never prosecuted. </p>
<p>When it came to powerful man like Bacon, and perhaps with lesser mortals as well, it seems that while people didn’t approve of his sexual inclinations, they were willing to ignore them. </p>
<p>As to what King James I got up to sexually with his male favourites in his bedroom, historians can never be sure. The stories of his Ganymedes which abounded after his death could simply reflect prejudice against him as a Scottish foreigner, or distaste at his extravagance towards his favourites. They may be a misreading of his <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23265594">physical demonstrativeness</a> with friends, which shocked his wife Anne when she first met him.</p>
<p>Though we don’t know the truth about his sexual preferences, we do know that James had three intense and exclusive <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt20q1z4b">romantic affairs with men</a>. It’s possible that they had a sexual side, just as it’s possible that had he lived today, he wouldn’t have <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254157154_James_VI_and_I_Time_for_a_Reconsideration">defined himself as heterosexual</a>.</p>
<p>Instead, shaped by his time, in his book <a href="https://archive.org/stream/cu31924097402626/cu31924097402626_djvu.txt">Basilikon Doron</a> (1599), James classed sodomy with witchcraft and murder as unforgivable crimes. It must have required some degree of hypocrisy – or cognitive dissociation – for him to square this statement with his own desires. But he probably thought the rules did not apply to him: it was a maxim in law that the king could do no wrong. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fiona McCall 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>It was sometimes thought that men who had sex with men would give birth to monsters.Fiona McCall, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2242622024-02-27T19:09:01Z2024-02-27T19:09:01ZA new Netflix doco shows Alexander the Great as queer, and some viewers aren’t happy. An expert weighs in<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577694/original/file-20240223-16-w18nq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=31%2C18%2C1470%2C1952&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia/Johann Heinrich Tischbein, oil painting (1781)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>You might be surprised to learn the sex life of a long-dead conqueror is making headlines in 2024. Netflix documentary <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27494999/">Alexander the Great: The Making of a God</a> has provoked outrage for its portrayal of Alexander in a romantic relationship with his male companion <a href="https://www.livius.org/articles/person/hephaestion/">Hephaestion</a>.</p>
<p>Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) spent his short life undertaking an enormous military campaign. He defeated the Persian king <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Darius-III">Darius III</a> and created an empire that stretched from Europe into Egypt, Western and Central Asia, and all the way to India. </p>
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<span class="caption">Conquest course of Alexander the Great from Greece to India to Babylon in 334-323 BC, with the most important provinces of his empire.</span>
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<p>After dying at the young age of 32, he has remained the subject of intense fascination and speculation.</p>
<p>The six-episode series is the latest to tackle some interesting questions about the conqueror’s life through dramatised scenes and commentary from a range of experts. Although the show doesn’t try to cover everything – and there are several gaps – its portrayal of Alexander’s sexuality is what has caused the greatest stir.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/romosexuality-embracing-queer-sex-and-love-in-ancient-times-130420">Romosexuality – embracing queer sex and love in Ancient times</a>
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<h2>Alexander, the great enigma</h2>
<p>One of the first scenes depicts Alexander sparring with Hephaestion before the pair share several kisses. Hephaestion promises he will be by Alexander’s side “til the bitter end”. The experts then note the pair were likely more than just close friends.</p>
<p>Some viewers, however, have accused the show of pushing a supposed agenda. Others found it “<a href="https://www.unilad.com/film-and-tv/netflix/new-netflix-drama-slammed-too-woke-brutal-reviews-974744-20240211">too woke</a>”. </p>
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<p>Even Greece’s Minister for Culture, Lina Mendoni, has spoken on the topic, insisting that historical sources offer no evidence for the relationship going “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/feb/20/alexander-the-great-netflix-show-greece-minister-for-culture-lina-mendoni-gay-characters">beyond the limits of friendship</a>”. </p>
<p>Mendoni’s comment was made in response to questions from Dimitris Natsiou, the president of a far-right Christian Orthodox political party. Natsiou has spoken out against the series for perceived inaccuracies. Along with other critics, he suggests the show’s portrayal of Alexander’s sexual identity is a historical distortion.</p>
<p>It’s true there is nothing written by Alexander himself that confirms how he viewed his own sexuality. But is it fair to call the show <em>inaccurate</em> for its interpretation of his relationship with Hephaestion?</p>
<h2>The ancient evidence</h2>
<p>While the ancient evidence suggests the pair were particularly close, reconstructing the past is not a straightforward matter. Most surviving ancient authors actually wrote centuries after Alexander’s death and often had their own interpretations of events. This makes it very challenging to uncover the truth. </p>
<p>Some sources do assume the pair were lovers, such as the Roman author Claudius Aelianus, or Aelian, because of the way they <a href="https://erenow.org/biographies/alexander-the-great-a-new-history/14.php">presented themselves in public</a>.</p>
<p>This public presentation is probably the strongest evidence for how important Hephaestion was to Alexander. Alexander was an absolute master of propaganda. He took care to restrict how he appeared <a href="https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103SXQ">in art and sculpture</a>, and controlled his campaign narrative through the use of his own historian, <a href="https://oxfordre.com/classics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/acrefore-9780199381135-e-1285#acrefore-9780199381135-e-1285">Callisthenes of Olynthus</a>. Callisthenes was responsible for glorifying Alexander’s victories and presenting the version of events Alexander wanted. </p>
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<span class="caption">Alexander claimed the mythological hero Achilles was his ancestor.</span>
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<p>Alexander also stage-managed a number of events at the start of his military campaign to make it seem like the beginning of another <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/myth-trojan-war">Trojan War</a>. The tale of this war was incredibly important to the ancient Greeks, and especially Alexander, who claimed the mythological hero Achilles was his ancestor.</p>
<p>During the important opening act, Alexander laid a wreath on the tomb of Achilles. Some ancient accounts say Hephaestion did the same for the tomb of Patroclus, who many in the ancient world <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Achilles-Greek-mythology">assumed was Achilles’ lover</a>. </p>
<p>Hephaestion is the only companion of Alexander who is mentioned by name doing something important like this. Alexander was no doubt astute enough to understand the implication in his own day; he was therefore probably comfortable with his followers assuming he and Hephaestion were lovers, just as Achilles and Patroclus were thought to be. </p>
<p>Ancient author Diodorus Siculus reports that Alexander preferred Hephaestion <a href="https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/17F*.html#ref67">above everyone else</a>, even claiming that Hephaestion loved him as Alexander, while his other close friend Craterus loved him as the king. These are just some of the numerous anecdotes that demonstrate Hephaestion had a significant role in Alexander’s life – and one that was different to that of a friend. </p>
<p>After Hephaestion’s death in 324 BC, Alexander <a href="https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/histfacpub/20/">mourned him extravagantly</a>, just as <a href="https://chs.harvard.edu/chapter/iii-5-the-weeping-body-of-achilles/">Achilles did for Patroclus</a>. </p>
<p>These very public displays might be as close as we can get to understanding how Alexander wanted the pair to be perceived. And they suggest a romantic relationship is a strong possibility.</p>
<h2>What does the scholarship say?</h2>
<p>Perhaps a more important question is why a documentary exploring this angle might provoke such a strong reaction today. </p>
<p>It’s true that scholarship on Alexander’s sex life has not always been accessible. It wasn’t until 1978 that K. J. Dover’s work <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674362703">Greek Homosexuality</a> paved the way for new insights into a more diverse interpretation of sexualities in the ancient world.</p>
<p>Before this, important scholars on Alexander, such as W. W. Tarn (1869–1957), had outright denied Alexander’s interest in men, asserting any such evidence was a result of “hostile” sources. <a href="https://erenow.org/biographies/alexander-the-great-a-new-history/14.php">Tarn even erased</a> certain figures from history, including another possible male lover of Alexander’s, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/637975?seq=3">Bagoas</a>. He was unable to accept Alexander as someone who didn’t fit with his own image of the conqueror. </p>
<p>The reality is that same-sex relationships were generally pretty common <a href="https://www.livius.org/articles/concept/greek-homosexuality/">during the time</a> of Alexander the Great, although there were also societal pressures on men, as they were expected to marry and have children with their legitimate wives. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-myth-of-the-ancient-greek-gay-utopia-88397">Friday essay: the myth of the ancient Greek 'gay utopia'</a>
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<p>Queer erasure has been all too common <a href="https://www.getty.edu/news/coming-out-queer-erasure-and-censorship-from-the-middle-ages-to-modernity/">in scholarship</a>, which has traditionally favoured hetero-normative interpretations, even when the evidence could clearly be interpreted in another way. </p>
<p>Media representations that explore these interpretations offer us a chance to understand ancient relationships in their own context. In doing so, they pave the way for a richer understanding of the possibilities of the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224262/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charlotte Dunn 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>The ancient evidence suggests Alexander was particularly close with one of his male companions. But how close exactly?Charlotte Dunn, Lecturer in Classics, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2062332023-06-14T11:31:23Z2023-06-14T11:31:23ZA brief history of camp: from minority sensibility to political protest<p>Early in the first episode of the BBC reality dating show <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001m01c">I Kissed A Boy</a>, glamorous pop star Danni Minogue descends a staircase to greet the all-male line-up of contestants. “Probably not the right heels for this,” she admits.</p>
<p>“Don’t worry, I’ve got another pair if they’re no good,” quips one of the men, Ollie, who sports an impressive moustache and a deep voice. Although the men have never met before, they quickly bond, finding common ground in this kind of camp humour, which has been the defining feature of gay or queer male friendships for centuries.</p>
<p>Camp is notoriously difficult to define, as I explain in my new book, <a href="https://footnotepress.com/product/camp/">Camp! The Story of the Attitude That Conquered The World</a>. It can be an attitude, a style or a behaviour and it consists of several components – exaggeration, artificiality or theatricality, breaking social norms and silliness which results in humour. </p>
<p>If the effect is not intended to be funny, it is camp. If the effect is intentionally funny, then it is campy – a term more commonly used in the US than the UK.</p>
<p>Camp has not always been understood. During the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0d1y6xn">Dublin Scandal trial</a> in 1884, several prominent men were accused of engaging in indecent acts. <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Fanny_and_Stella.html?id=YU3wNAEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">A letter by a young man called Malcolm Johnston</a> was read out to the court as evidence, containing the phrase, “Such camp!” </p>
<p>When giving evidence against the accused, Johnston was required to explain that it meant “proper amusement or … improper amusement”. Camp made it into a dictionary in 1909, with the author sniffily noting it was “chiefly used by persons of exceptional want of character”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The outside of the Stonewall Inn bar with pride flags and red brick walls." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527764/original/file-20230523-23-tst217.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527764/original/file-20230523-23-tst217.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527764/original/file-20230523-23-tst217.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527764/original/file-20230523-23-tst217.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527764/original/file-20230523-23-tst217.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527764/original/file-20230523-23-tst217.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527764/original/file-20230523-23-tst217.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">New York’s Stonewall Inn, site of the 1969 Stonewall Riots.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/new-york-city-august-24-2019-1490365643">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the last half of the 20th century, camp was used <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Stonewall.html?id=NyXjsB94E0QC&redir_esc=y">as part of political protest</a>. In 1969 at the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/the-stonewall-riots">riots over the raid of gay venue the Stonewall Inn</a> in New York, patrons faced off police by forming a kick-line, parodying the dancers at Radio City Music Hall, the Rockettes. </p>
<p>And in 1990s UK, to counter the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/cacc0b40-c3a4-473b-86cc-11863c0b3f30">homophobic stance of the government</a>, which had passed a law called Section 28 that made it difficult for homosexuality to be talked about in schools, the group <a href="https://www.thesisters.org/">The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence</a> used <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-polari-the-curious-after-life-of-the-dead-language-for-gay-men-72599">the camp language Polari</a> in ceremonies that canonised notable LGBTQ+ people.</p>
<h2>Camp controversy</h2>
<p>Historically, not everyone in the gay community approved of camp. In the 1970s, groups like the <a href="https://www.c-h-e.org.uk/">Campaign for Homosexual Equality</a> viewed camp comedian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/mar/09/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries">John Inman</a>, who played Mr Humphreys in the sitcom Are You Being Served, as a harmful stereotype and picketed him outside theatres.</p>
<p>But rather than being the end of camp, the campaign <a href="https://footnotepress.com/product/camp/">instigated a conversation</a> about lack of diversity in the media representation of gay men, something which would eventually be handled better in later decades.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1653017044843896832"}"></div></p>
<p>In the present day, with strides made in LGBTQ+ equality, camp has gone from being a minority sensibility to a thing so ubiquitous that current commentators like Andrew Bolton, costume curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, have described it as “<a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/costume-institute-2019-exhibition-camp-notes-on-fashion">everywhere</a>”. “<a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/photos/2019/05/met-gala-camp-on-theme">Camp: Notes on Fashion</a>” was the theme of the 2021 Met Gala, hosted by the museum.</p>
<p>The Eurovision Song Contest could qualify as <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-gay-world-cup-why-lgbtq-audiences-love-eurovision-205524">the camp Olympics</a>, while even the recent coronation of Charles III could be seen as a camp extravaganza, with MP <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/06/coronation-fashion-sprang-few-surprises-but-all-eyes-were-on-penny-mordaunt">Penny Mordaunt’s teal blue outfit with gold detail and matching cape and sword</a> receiving <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12107761/Game-Thrones-cast-write-Penny-Mordaunt-praise-sword-carrying-role-Coronation.html">accoclades from the cast of Game of Thrones</a> and the speculation over Prince Harry’s attendance giving the event distinct vibes of 1980s nighttime soap opera.</p>
<h2>Protecting camp</h2>
<p>Even conservatives have got in on the act. Gay artist and filmmaker <a href="https://twitter.com/BruceLaBruce?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Bruce LaBruce</a> has <a href="http://www.natbrutarchive.com/essay-notes-on-campanti-camp-by-bruce-labruce.html">talked about</a> how Donald Trump has appropriated camp in his rallies, playing songs by The Village People and Dolly Parton. </p>
<p>LaBruce views camp as having been turned into a commodity for the masses, while journalist <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/5/3/18514408/what-is-camp-explained-met-gala-susan-sontag">Constance Grady warns that Trump turned camp’s playfulness into reckless cruelty.</a></p>
<p>But people have been proclaiming that camp is over for over a century. In 1920, <a href="https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/47553/1/Dickon%20Edwards%20-%20PhD%20thesis%20final%20version%20.pdf">Variety magazine</a> reviewed an entertainment act writing: “The man during the talk leans a little too much to ‘camping’ for laughs. The day is past when that ‘nance’ stuff will get anything for anybody and it doesn’t belong.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZfLRemF35hQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Joe Lycett’s interview with Laura Kuenssberg.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>British comedian Joe Lycett is one of the strongest arguments for camp’s current relevance to politics. Interviewed by journalist Laura Kuenssberg about a speech by Liz Truss, who was prime minister for a few weeks in 2022, Lycett dead-panned: “I’m actually very right wing. And I loved it. I thought she was very clear … You’re reassured, I’m reassured.” </p>
<p>The silliness of the statement, on a serious television show, made the statement camp – as were Lycett’s tweets to Truss around the same time, in which he referred to her as “babe”. </p>
<p>To draw attention to Qatar’s dismal record on LGBTQ+ rights during the 2023 World Cup, Lycett, wearing a sparkly shirt, offered David Beckham an ultimatum: end his professional relationship with the Qatar before the first match, or Lycett would shred £10,000.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mEwJnodmCNQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Joe Lycett shredding £10,000 in protest against David Beckham’s involvement with the Qatar World Cup.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Beckham did not respond, Lycett truly appeared to shred the money, wearing an enormous multi-coloured, frilled outfit. He later revealed that the shredding had been faked and he had donated the money to LGBT+ charities instead.</p>
<p>Lycett’s clever use of camp helps to draw attention to important issues while also making people laugh. There will always be a role for camp in uniting outsiders, enabling them to laugh at their oppressors and, when needed, kicking back.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206233/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Baker 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>Camp can be an attitude, a style or a behaviour and it consists of several components – exaggeration, artificiality or theatricality, breaking social norms and silliness which results in humour.Paul Baker, Professor of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1808342022-05-31T12:13:20Z2022-05-31T12:13:20ZThe Asian Canadian gay activist whose theories on sexuality were decades ahead of their time<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465789/original/file-20220527-17-7f8ado.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=439%2C65%2C1437%2C994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Li Shiu Tong, right, was the boyfriend and intellectual heir of German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/german-sexologist-magnus-hirschfeld-during-a-trip-to-east-news-photo/167632908?adppopup=true">Imagno/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Historians are rediscovering one of the most important LGBTQ activists of the early 20th Century – an Asian Canadian named Li Shiu Tong. You probably don’t know the name, but he was at the center of the first wave of gay politics.</p>
<p>Much has been written about Li’s older boyfriend, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-early-20th-century-german-trans-rights-activist-who-was-decades-ahead-of-his-time-106278">Magnus Hirschfeld</a>. Hirschfeld was a closeted German doctor and sexologist who became famous in the 1930s as a defender of gay people. In books on Hirschfeld, Li is usually just a footnote. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487523978/racism-and-the-making-of-gay-rights/">as I found in my research</a>, Li was a sexologist and activist in his own right. And in my view, his ideas about sexuality speak to our moment better than his much more well-known boyfriend’s do. </p>
<p>When Li died in Vancouver in 1993, his unpublished manuscript about sexuality was thrown in the trash. Luckily, it was rescued by a curious neighbor and <a href="https://www.hirschfeld.in-berlin.de/publikationen/dose_alms.pdf">eventually ended up in an archive</a>. Since then, only a handful of people, myself included, have read it.</p>
<p>In its pages is a theory of LGBTQ people as the majority <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx">that would resonate with a lot of young people today.</a> </p>
<h2>Student and mentor</h2>
<p>Born in 1907 in Hong Kong, Li was a 24-year-old studying medicine at a university in Shanghai when he met Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld, then 63 years old, had come to China to give public lectures about the science of sex. The year was 1931. </p>
<p>The Shanghai newspapers billed Hirschfeld as the world’s foremost expert on sexuality. Li must have seen the papers, because he made sure to catch Hirschfeld’s very first lecture. In medical school, Li had read all he could about homosexuality, then a very controversial topic. He had often encountered Hirschfeld’s name, and he knew his reputation as a defender of homosexuals. Whether he suspected that the famous sexologist was gay is a mystery. <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487523978/racism-and-the-making-of-gay-rights/">Almost no one in the 1930s could afford to be out</a> – it would have destroyed either man’s career.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465794/original/file-20220527-12656-9sel6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Seated man reads book while second man stands beside him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465794/original/file-20220527-12656-9sel6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465794/original/file-20220527-12656-9sel6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465794/original/file-20220527-12656-9sel6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465794/original/file-20220527-12656-9sel6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465794/original/file-20220527-12656-9sel6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465794/original/file-20220527-12656-9sel6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465794/original/file-20220527-12656-9sel6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Magnus Hirschfeld and Li Shiu Tong appear on a 1933 issue of the French magazine Viola.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b53b13285ede173115cb784/1547689261191-P3ESO8K9EKRHDXL04PV5/Hirschfeld%2C+Voila.jpg?format=1500w">GLBT Historical Society</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The lecture that afternoon was hosted by a Chinese feminist club at <a href="https://www.alamy.com/racecourse-and-bubbling-well-road-shanghai-china-showing-the-china-united-apartments-and-the-ymca-building-date-circa-1930-image341387119.html">a fancy, modern apartment building</a>. When Hirschfeld finished speaking, Li came up and introduced himself. He offered to be his assistant. It was the beginning of a relationship that would profoundly shape gay history, as well as the rest of both of their lives.</p>
<p>With Li by his side, Hirschfeld spoke all over China. Li then accompanied Hirschfeld on a lecture tour around the world, traveling first class on ships to Indonesia, the Philippines, South Asia, Egypt and beyond. </p>
<p>In his lectures, Hirschfeld explained his <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/494557978">influential model of homosexuality</a>: It was a character trait that people were born with, a part of their nature. It was neither an illness nor a sin, and the persecution of homosexuality was unjust. He gave <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487523978/racism-and-the-making-of-gay-rights/">178 lectures, plus radio interviews</a>. His ideas reached hundreds of thousands of people. </p>
<p>This was <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487523978/racism-and-the-making-of-gay-rights/">the first time in world history</a> that anyone told so many people that being gay was not a bad thing and was, in fact, an inborn and natural condition.</p>
<h2>A love affair and professional collaboration</h2>
<p>On the world tour, the two fell in love, though to everyone else, they passed as teacher and student. Hirschfeld decided to make Li his successor. The plan was for Li to return to Berlin with him, train at his <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/Institute-for-Sexual-Science">Institute for Sexual Science</a> and carry on his research after his death.</p>
<p>Their shared dream was not to be. When they reached Europe, Hirschfeld realized he could never go back to his home in Berlin. Hitler was chancellor. The Nazis were after Hirschfeld <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487523978/racism-and-the-making-of-gay-rights/">because he was Jewish and because of his left-wing views on sexuality</a>. He went into exile in France. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two men pick through a pile of books." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465795/original/file-20220527-21-jb41br.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465795/original/file-20220527-21-jb41br.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465795/original/file-20220527-21-jb41br.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465795/original/file-20220527-21-jb41br.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465795/original/file-20220527-21-jb41br.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465795/original/file-20220527-21-jb41br.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465795/original/file-20220527-21-jb41br.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nazis select books for burning at the Magnus Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/reich-burning-of-the-books-students-of-the-natiional-news-photo/545950611?adppopup=true">ullstein bild/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Li stayed by his side and helped him write <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1266219649">a memoir of their travels</a>.</p>
<p>It is a stunning departure from Hirschfeld’s earlier work, which trades in racist thinking – containing, for example, <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487523978/racism-and-the-making-of-gay-rights/">the claim that Black Americans had stunted brains</a>.</p>
<p>In the book he wrote with Li’s help, a different Hirschfeld emerges. The text denounces imperialism – for example, calling British rule in South Asia “<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/723851227">one of the greatest political injustices in all of the world</a>.” Hirschfeld even saw a link between gay rights and the struggle against imperialism: both grew out of an undeniable human yearning for freedom. </p>
<p>After Hirschfeld died in France in 1935, his will named Li, then a student at the University of Zurich, his intellectual heir. </p>
<p>Hirschfeld was the most famous defender of gay people the world had yet known. But when Li died in Vancouver in 1993, it seems no one realized his connection to gay rights. </p>
<h2>Li’s vision of sexuality reemerges</h2>
<p>Yet Li’s rediscovered manuscript shows he did become a sexologist, even though he never published his findings.</p>
<p>In his manuscript, Li tells how after Hirschfeld died, he spent decades traveling the world, carrying on the research and taking detailed notes while living in Zurich, Hong Kong and then Vancouver. </p>
<p>The data he gathered would have startled Hirschfeld. 40% of people were bisexual, he wrote, 20% were homosexual and only 30% percent were heterosexual. (The last 10% were “other.”) Being trans was an important, beneficial part of the human experience, he added. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Seated man clasping hands and smiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465862/original/file-20220529-15-6p8lb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465862/original/file-20220529-15-6p8lb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465862/original/file-20220529-15-6p8lb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465862/original/file-20220529-15-6p8lb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465862/original/file-20220529-15-6p8lb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465862/original/file-20220529-15-6p8lb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465862/original/file-20220529-15-6p8lb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Li Shiu Tong at the 1932 conference for the World League for Sexual Reform.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/World_League_for_Sexual_Reform_conference_B.jpg">Wellcome Images/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hirschfeld thought bisexuals were scarce and that even homosexuals were only a minor slice of the population – a “sexual minority.” To Li, bisexuals plus homosexuals were the majority. It was lifelong heterosexuals who were rare – so rare, he wrote, that they “should be classified as an endangered species.” Li found same-sex desire to be even more common than had sexologist <a href="https://kinseyinstitute.org/about/history/alfred-kinsey.php">Alfred Kinsey</a>, whose studies identified widespread bisexuality. </p>
<p>Recent polling finds LGBTQ-identifying people at lower percentages, but it also points to <a href="https://theconversation.com/23-of-young-black-women-now-identify-as-bisexual-116116">the numbers rising</a>. According to a Feburary 2022 Gallup poll, <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx">they’ve doubled over the last ten years</a>. That same poll found that <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx">almost 21%</a> of Gen Z Americans – people born between 1997 and 2003 – identify as LGBTQ. </p>
<p>Some critics have suggested that these numbers reflect a fad. That’s the explanation given by the pollster whose very small survey found that <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/nearly-40-percent-us-gen-zs-30-percent-christians-identify-lgbtq-poll-shows-1641085">about 40% of Gen Z respondents were LGBTQ</a>. </p>
<p>Li’s vision conveys a more likely explaination: Same-sex desire is a very common part of human experience across history. Like Hirschfeld argued, it is natural. Unlike what he thought, however, it is not unusual. When Li was a young man in the 1930s, there was a very strong pressure not to act on same-sex desires. As that pressure lessened across the 20th century, more and more people seem to have embraced LGBTQ identities. </p>
<p>Why didn’t Li publish his work? I’m not sure. Perhaps he hesitated because his findings were so different from his mentor’s. <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487523978/racism-and-the-making-of-gay-rights/">In my book</a>, I investigate another possibility: how the racism in Hirschfeld’s earlier work may have dissuaded Li from carrying on his legacy.</p>
<p>Yet Li’s theory was ahead of his time. A queer Asian Canadian at the heart of early gay politics, a sexologist with an expansive view of queerness and transness, he is <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487523978/racism-and-the-making-of-gay-rights/">a gay hero worth rediscovering</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180834/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laurie Marhoefer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When Li Shiu Tong died in 1993, his unpublished manuscript about sexuality was almost thrown away. Yet it contains views on bisexuality and gender fluidity that would resonate with young people today.Laurie Marhoefer, Jon Bridgman Endowed Associate Professor of History, University of WashingtonLicensed 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>
</strong>
</em>
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<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andrew George Scott, alias Captain Moonlite.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<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>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<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>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<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>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
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>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<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/1490662020-11-04T12:39:21Z2020-11-04T12:39:21Z‘Rainbow wave’ of LGBTQ candidates run and win in 2020 election<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367418/original/file-20201104-15-1uiye72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C4752%2C3142&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">LGBTQ candidates made strides on Tuesday.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/close-up-of-rainbow-flag-with-crowd-in-background-royalty-free-image/1135535265?adppopup=true">Marc Bruxelle / EyeEm</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>More LGBTQ candidates ran for office in the United States in 2020 than ever before – <a href="https://victoryfund.org/news/2020-lgbtq-candidate-diversity-report-released-at-least-1006-lgbtq-people-running-in-2020/">at least 1,006</a>. That’s a 41% increase over the 2018 midterms, according to the LGBTQ Victory Fund.</p>
<p>While an estimated 5% of the U.S. population identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lgbtq-political-representation-jumped-21-percent-past-year-data-shows-n1234045">just 0.17% of elected officials</a> across all levels of the American government are LGBTQ. </p>
<p>Better political representation could help LGBTQ Americans maintain some of their hard-won rights, which have come under attack over the past four years. Since 2016, the Trump administration has weakened <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/us/politics/devos-sessions-transgender-students-rights.html">trans-inclusive protections in schools</a>, attempted to remove <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/12/868073068/transgender-health-protections-reversed-by-trump-administration">LGBTQ protections in health care</a> and proposed allowing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/us/politics/hud-transgender.html">homeless shelters to turn away transgender people</a>.</p>
<p>Marriage equality, too, may be under threat. In early October, Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito suggested that the 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which made same-sex marriage legal across the United States, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/10/14/amy-coney-barretts-confirmation-may-mean-end-lgbtq-marriage/5952960002/">should be overturned</a>.</p>
<p>In short, candidates and LGBTQ rights were both on the ballot in the 2020 election, either explicitly or implicitly. While many questions remain undecided at press time, here’s the takeaway from four down-ballot races I’ve been following as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-prosper-act-could-negatively-impact-lgbtq-students-100135">scholar of LGBTQ politics</a>.</p>
<h2>Delaware</h2>
<p>Democrat <a href="https://victoryfund.org/candidate/sarah-mcbride/">Sarah McBride</a> made history on Tuesday when she <a href="https://www.advocate.com/politics/2020/11/03/sarah-mcbride-makes-history-nations-1st-openly-trans-state-sen?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=politics&fbclid=IwAR0AEWihkmnyi8Eq_oHg9FjVTUdqM0bgenfI7bx6wZjP44VKx7amNXlHy8w">won a state Senate seat</a> in Delaware. In doing so, she’ll become the United States’ <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/us/politics/sarah-mcbride-delaware-transgender.html">highest-ranking transgender elected official</a> and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/us/politics/sarah-mcbride-delaware-transgender.html">first openly transgender person to serve in a state Senate</a> anywhere in the nation. McBride <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/03/sarah-mcbride-first-transgender-state-senator-delaware-433990">defeated Republican Steve Washington</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1323835825315028992"}"></div></p>
<p>Previously, <a href="https://victoryinstitute.org/team/roem-danica/">Danica Roem</a>, a Virginia Democrat who won a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017, was the <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2017-11-07/danica-roem-becomes-first-transgender-woman-to-win-state-seat-in-virginia">highest-ranking transgender person in elected office</a>. Roem <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/469163-danica-roem-wins-reelection-in-Virginia-state-legislature">was re-elected</a> in 2019.</p>
<p>Other transgender women, including <a href="https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2020/11/taylor-small-will-vermonts-first-transgender-legislator/">Taylor Smalls of Vermont</a> and <a href="https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/election/article246927272.html">Stephanie Byers of Kansas</a>, also won state-level races on Tuesday in notable victories. </p>
<h2>Hawaii and South Dakota</h2>
<p>At the start of this election cycle, only three U.S. states – Hawaii, South Dakota and Mississippi – had <a href="https://victoryfund.org/news/victory-fund-endorses-eight-more-lgbtq-candidates-for-2019-can-elect-lgbtq-city-councilmembers-across-the-country-2/">no openly LGBTQ elected officials</a> at any level of government. This year, candidates in Hawaii and South Dakota hoped to get their states off that list.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367320/original/file-20201103-21-f62i89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Headshot of Tam wearing a red lei" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367320/original/file-20201103-21-f62i89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367320/original/file-20201103-21-f62i89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367320/original/file-20201103-21-f62i89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367320/original/file-20201103-21-f62i89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367320/original/file-20201103-21-f62i89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367320/original/file-20201103-21-f62i89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367320/original/file-20201103-21-f62i89.jpg?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">Rep.-elect Tam of Hawai’s 22nd district.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://lgbtqnation-assets.imgix.net/2020/08/IMG_1648-scaled.jpg?w=790&h=530&fit=crop&auto=format&auto=compress&crop=faces">Facebook</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Democrat <a href="https://victoryfund.org/candidate/nieuwenhuis-jared/">Jared Nieuwenhuis</a> of South Dakota was <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/elections/results/race/2020-11-03-state-house-SD-42136/">unable to win a seat</a> for state House District 25 to become the state’s <a href="https://victoryfund.org/news/eight-lgbtq-election-night-stories-to-watch-live-tracking-results-for-310-victory-fund-endorsed-candidates/">first openly LGBTQ elected official in the state Legislature</a>. </p>
<p>However, in Hawaii, <a href="https://victoryfund.org/candidate/adrian-tam/">Adrian Tam</a> – who <a href="https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2020/08/09/with-huge-voter-turnout-primary-election-some-surprises-emerge/">upset a 14-year incumbent</a> in the August Democratic primary for the state House of Representatives – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-hawaii.html">defeated Republican Nicholas Ochs</a>, making him Hawaii’s <a href="https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2020/08/adrian-tam-way-becoming-lgbtq-elected-official-hawaii/">only openly LGBTQ elected official</a>.</p>
<h2>Georgia</h2>
<p>One Georgia Senate race <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-georgia.html">remained undecided on election night</a>. The other – an unusual race called a “<a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/georgia-will-now-have-two-senate-elections-in-2020/">jungle primary</a>” between Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and <a href="https://www.13wmaz.com/article/news/politics/elections/who-are-the-candidates-in-the-georgia-special-us-senate-election/93-116bf2c3-5283-4621-9327-cd92cf67f704">20 other candidates from various parties</a> – has drawn national attention from LGBTQ advocates.</p>
<p>A political newcomer, Loeffler was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/kelly-loeffler-georgia-senate.html">appointed to her seat</a> by Gov. Brian Kemp in late 2019 following the retirement of longtime Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson. Neither Loeffler nor her top opponent in the jungle primary, Democratic contender the Rev. Raphael Warnock, received over 50% of the vote, so <a href="https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/state/georgia/senate-special-election">a runoff election will be held in the coming weeks</a>. </p>
<p>This runoff will be significant for the LGBTQ community because of Loeffler’s recent sponsorship of <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/gop-senators-seek-ban-transgender-girls-female-sports-n1240992">a Senate bill to ban transgender girls</a> from playing school sports. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367094/original/file-20201102-23-waa0hr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Loeffler speaks in front of a tree, wearing a beige pantsuit" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367094/original/file-20201102-23-waa0hr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367094/original/file-20201102-23-waa0hr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367094/original/file-20201102-23-waa0hr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367094/original/file-20201102-23-waa0hr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367094/original/file-20201102-23-waa0hr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367094/original/file-20201102-23-waa0hr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367094/original/file-20201102-23-waa0hr.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia will have to defend her seat again in a runoff election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sen-kelly-loeffler-at-a-brief-press-conference-after-voting-news-photo/1229046653?adppopup=true">Lynsey Weatherspoon/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Loeffler’s proposed legislation is similar to Idaho’s new “<a href="https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/local/capitol-watch/idaho-governor-little-signs-into-law-anti-transgender-legislation/277-8541e9d3-2cbb-4780-8f4b-5a9b59232594">Fairness in Women’s Sports Act</a>” – a law that could require girls who excel in athletics to “prove their gender” through a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPxV72MPOC8">genital exam, DNA test or testosterone test</a>. LGBTQ rights groups fear Loeffler’s bill would allow schools across the country to <a href="https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2020/09/gop-senator-introduces-bill-require-genital-exams-girls-competing-school-sports/">conduct genital examinations of student athletes</a> who are presumed to be transgender. </p>
<p>Warnock, a pastor at Georgia’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, has made a <a href="https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2020/10/27/senate-candidate-rev-warnock-religious-freedom-and-lgbtq-rights">strong public commitment</a> to LGBTQ rights and <a href="https://www.projectq.us/raphael-warnock-equality-act-needed-now-more-than-ever/">condemned Loeffler’s legislation,</a> saying in an interview with the LGBTQ outlet Project Q that “no one is free until we are all free.” </p>
<p>In the same interview, Warnock expressed his support for the <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/the-equality-act">Equality Act</a>, proposed legislation that would add LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections into federal law.</p>
<p>[<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=experts">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get expert takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em>]</p>
<h2>Historic victories and challenges ahead</h2>
<p>LGBTQ Americans <a href="https://www.washingtonblade.com/2016/11/14/lgbt-voters-rejected-trump-lopsided-margin/">vote heavily Democratic</a>. In 2008, John McCain won 27% of the LGBTQ vote while running for president against Barack Obama. In 2012, Mitt Romney won 22% of the LGBTQ vote. And in 2016, nationwide <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/meet-lgbtq-voters-who-backed-trump-n684181">exit poll data of LGBTQ voters</a> shows that Donald Trump received roughly 14% of the LGBTQ vote.</p>
<p>Harvey Milk, the late San Francisco city councilman, is <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/meet-lesbian-who-made-political-history-years-harvey-milk-n1174941">often incorrectly cited</a> as the first openly LGBTQ elected official. That pioneer was actually Kathy Kozachenko, who at age 21 won a seat on the Ann Arbor City Council in Michigan in 1974.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367321/original/file-20201103-19-8ekwbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black-and-white photo of Kozachenko wearing a newsboy hat" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367321/original/file-20201103-19-8ekwbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367321/original/file-20201103-19-8ekwbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367321/original/file-20201103-19-8ekwbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367321/original/file-20201103-19-8ekwbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367321/original/file-20201103-19-8ekwbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367321/original/file-20201103-19-8ekwbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367321/original/file-20201103-19-8ekwbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kathy Kozachenko was an out lesbian and a college student when she was elected to the Ann Arbor City Council.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2020_14/3292216/200401-kathy-kozachenko-se-432p_5562e4b980f96e95de85a43ab1d47e3c.fit-2000w.jpg">Human Rights Party records / Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nearly 50 years later, LGBTQ candidates have made <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/rainbow-wave-2-0-nearly-100-lgbtq-candidates-claim-victory-n1077886">historic strides in political representation</a>. In 2017, there were <a href="https://victoryinstitute.org/news/america-report-map-provides-comprehensive-look-lgbtq-elected-officials-u-s/">under 450 openly LGBTQ elected officials</a> in the entire U.S. <a href="https://www.advocate.com/election/2018/11/07/84-plus-lgbtq-people-elected-amid-rainbow-wave">Over 150 LGBTQ candidates won</a> elections at the <a href="https://victoryinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Victory_Out-For-America-2018.pdf">federal, state and local levels in the 2018 midterm elections</a>. Another <a href="https://www.out.com/election/2019/11/06/over-80-lgbtq-candidates-won-election-2019-rainbow-wave">“rainbow wave”</a> came in 2019, bringing the total number of openly LGBTQ American elected officials to <a href="https://victoryinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Victory-Institute-Out-for-America-Report-2019.pdf">just under 700</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/bowmanmarsico/2020/07/28/the-march-of-public-opinion-on-lgbt-identity-and-issues/?sh=67afe34b0996">Social acceptance of LGBTQ people</a> is growing too, with over 70% of Americans saying transgender people should be protected from discrimination, according to polling by the <a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Public-Opinion-Trans-US-Aug-2019.pdf">Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law</a>, and a similar percentage supporting <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/311672/support-sex-marriage-matches-record-high.aspx">marriage equality</a>. That has translated into ever more openly LGBTQ candidates running for office – and winning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149066/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy R. Bussey made small contributions to several 2020 Democratic campaigns but did not support, endorse, or in any other way aid any of the candidates discussed in this story.</span></em></p>Delaware’s Sarah McBride made history on Tuesday when she won a state Senate seat, becoming the US’s highest-ranking transgender politician. A record 1,006 LGBTQ candidates ran for office this year.Dorian Rhea Debussy, Associate Director for the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Kenyon CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1317812020-02-13T17:08:02Z2020-02-13T17:08:02ZHow my research into 19th-century military music revealed progressive attitudes towards homosexuality in a farmer’s diary<p>Recently, quite by accident while looking for something completely different – information on British military music in the Napoleonic era, to be precise – I discovered a remarkable discussion of homosexuality in the diary of an early 19th-century Yorkshire farmer.</p>
<p>Reflecting on reports of the recent execution of a naval surgeon for sodomy, Matthew Tomlinson wrote on January 14 1810:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It appears a paradox to me, how men, who are men, shou’d possess such a passion; and more particularly so, if it is their nature from childhood (as I am informed it is) – If they feel such an inclination, and propensity, at that certain time of life when youth genders [develops] into manhood; it must then be considered as <em>natural</em> otherwise, as a <em>defect</em> in nature […] it seems cruel to punish that defect with death. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This inference sparked solemn religious introspection, as Tomlinson struggled to understand how a just creator could countenance such severe penalties for a God-given trait: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It must seem strange indeed that God Almighty shou’d make a being, with such a nature; or such a defect in nature; and at the same time make a decree that if that being whome <em>he had</em> formed, shou’d at any time follow the dictates of that Nature with which he was formed he shou’d be punished with death.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As part of my doctoral research I’ve investigated many cases that reflect attitudes to sexuality in the armed forces of the period. There were many accusations of drummers working as prostitutes or rumours of their sexual involvement with officers. But this was something quite different.</p>
<p>A 45-year-old tenant farmer, Tomlinson resided at Dog House Farm on the Lupset Hall estate, a mile south-west of Wakefield in Yorkshire. His voluminous diaries chronicle local Luddite disturbances, agricultural life, and his attempts to find a second soulmate after the demise of his first wife. </p>
<p>A former Methodist, Tomlinson was an observant but ecumenical Christian – he wrote extensively on faith, love, death, and the political and economic affairs of his day. Although a few historians, including Katrina Navickas, have <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/174587011X12928631621276">quoted from Tomlinson’s diaries in the past</a>, his meditations on homosexuality have never previously been brought to light.</p>
<h2>A chance discovery</h2>
<p>I identified the passage quite by chance. Returning by train from a 2018 conference on military history in Leeds, I decided to stop in Wakefield on a whim to view Tomlinson’s diaries in the local museum, having noticed colourful quotations from them in a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1750-0206.12249">book by Ellen Gibson Wilson</a> on the Yorkshire election of 1807.</p>
<p>As it turned out, the diaries had little to say about military music – Tomlinson was disdainful of patriotic pageantry – but his reflections on homosexuality, which I spotted while paging through the journals, stood out to me as striking and unusual for the time. I later decided to reach out to specialists on 18th and 19th-century sexuality to discern if my instincts were correct. UK-based American researcher <a href="http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/">Rictor Norton</a> and <a href="https://history.princeton.edu/people/fara-dabhoiwala">Fara Dabhoiwala</a> of Princeton University both generously shared their expertise, confirming the rarity and significance of my discovery.</p>
<p>The argument that same-sex relations were natural and innocuous was occasionally advanced in 18th-century England (in a <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/eighteenth-century-life/article-abstract/31/1/22/622/In-Search-of-Lost-Texts-Thomas-Cannon-s-Ancient">1749 tract by Thomas Cannon</a> for instance), while Enlightenment thinking on individual liberties and legal reform spurred calls for Britain to emulate its continental counterparts by abolishing the death penalty for homosexual acts. </p>
<p>Some men and women of the time who engaged in same-sex relationships viewed their sexual orientation as innate: Halifax landowner <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/37678">Anne Lister</a> justified her lesbian feelings as “natural” and “instinctive” <a href="https://theconversation.com/gentleman-jack-a-gripping-19th-century-tale-of-one-womans-bravery-in-sex-and-politics-116868">in her diary</a> in 1823. Utilitarian philosopher and social reformer <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/exhibitions/sw25/bentham/">Jeremy Bentham even expressed support</a> for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in various writings from the 1770s to the 1820s, contending that sodomy statutes stemmed from “no other foundation than prejudice”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gentleman-jack-a-gripping-19th-century-tale-of-one-womans-bravery-in-sex-and-politics-116868">Gentleman Jack: a gripping 19th-century tale of one woman's bravery in sex and politics</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But he did not dare publish such radical views. After all, this was an era when spreading false allegations of same-sex proclivities was considered by some commentators as akin to committing murder, such was the reputational ruin faced by the accused.</p>
<h2>‘Crime’ and punishment</h2>
<p>In an <a href="http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/twicken.htm">age of rampant persecution</a>, homosexual men in Georgian Britain were regularly executed or publicly disgraced, brutalised by hostile crowds in public pillories and forced into exile overseas. Tomlinson’s own meditations appear in his private diary, an intimate record of his thoughts not intended for a wider audience.</p>
<p>While Tomlinson’s writings reflect the opinions of only one man, the phrasing implies that his comments were informed by the views of others. This exciting new evidence perhaps complicates and enriches our understanding of historical attitudes towards sexuality, suggesting that the revolutionary conception of same-sex attraction as a natural human tendency, discernible from adolescence and deserving of acceptance, was mooted within the social circles of a Yorkshire farmer during the reign of George III.</p>
<p>Tomlinson’s reflections were prompted by reports of the court-martial and execution of naval surgeon James Nehemiah Taylor, who was hanged from the yard-arm of HMS Jamaica on December 26 1809 for committing sodomy with his young servant. Newspapers across Britain and Ireland <a href="http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/1810tayl.htm">published accounts of the case</a>, reminding their burgeoning readerships of the draconian state penalties for homosexual behaviour. </p>
<p>Contemporary media reporting on sodomy cases, often couched in the language of moral panic, both reflected and reinforced social stigma against same-sex intimacy. But Tomlinson’s writings suggests that not all readers uncritically accepted the homophobic assumptions they encountered in the press. Disheartened by the ignominious demise of an accomplished medical man, the diarist questioned the justice of Taylor’s punishment and debated whether so-called “unnatural” acts were truly deserving of such an appellation.</p>
<p>But Tomlinson’s musings are still very much the product of his time. Although the diarist seriously considered the proposition that sexual orientation was innate, he did not unequivocally endorse it. Erroneously believing homosexual behaviour was unknown among animals, Tomlinson still allowed for the possibility that homosexuality might be a choice and therefore (in his view) deserving of punishment, suggesting that capital sentences for sodomy be replaced by the still gruesome alternative of castration.</p>
<h2>Wider implications</h2>
<p>Tomlinson’s meditations thus prove ultimately inconclusive, but nonetheless provide rare and historically valuable insight into the efforts of an ordinary person of faith to grapple with questions of sexual ethics more than two centuries ago. His comments anticipate many of the arguments deployed successfully by the LGBT+ and marriage equality movements in recent decades to promote acceptance of sexual diversity. </p>
<p>Tomlinson’s remarkable reflections suggest that recognisably modern conceptions of human sexuality were circulating in British society more widely – and at an earlier date – than commonly assumed.</p>
<p>I am thrilled to be able to share this exciting and historically significant new evidence with a wider audience, particularly during LGBT+ History Month. I hope the find will inspire other historians and students to engage more fully with the rich collections available in local and regional archives, while serving as a reminder of the serendipity inherent in historical research. </p>
<p>Sometimes the most interesting and important discoveries are the ones you weren’t even looking for.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited version of an article published by the <a href="http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/arts-blog/how-i-made-remarkable-discovery-lgbt-history-mistake-0">University of Oxford’s arts blog</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131781/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eamonn O'Keeffe receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for his DPhil at the University of Oxford. </span></em></p>Matthew Tomlinson deplored the execution of a naval surgeon for sodomy, writing that the death penalty was cruel and unfair.Eamonn O'Keeffe, PhD Researcher in History, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1215062019-08-15T20:02:29Z2019-08-15T20:02:29ZFriday essay: my brush with Susan Sontag and other tales from the gay ‘golden age’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287810/original/file-20190813-9429-1lmgtro.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C176%2C2487%2C1896&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dennis Altman in Santa Cruz California in 1984,</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The years between the gay liberation movement at the beginning of the 1970s and the onset of AIDS a decade later are viewed in a certain strand of gay nostalgia as “the golden age”.</p>
<p>It’s hardly surprising that those who lived through the period might see it this way; in retrospect all youth is golden. What is surprising is the extent to which men not then adult — perhaps not yet born — have accepted the idea and are slightly disappointed when I try to disillusion them.</p>
<p>For me the entry to New York’s so-called golden age came one day in November 1977 when I had brunch with Michael Denneny, Edmund White, Doug Ireland and Chuck Ortleb. </p>
<p>Between them the four men represented an extraordinary agglomeration of gay cultural power: Denneny, the slightly acerbic editor who turned St Martin’s Press into a crucible for queer writing; Ireland, the cherubic faced, smart leftist journalist who knew everyone and would die of diabetes and stroke in 2013; White, then a fresh faced and largely unknown <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15975.Edmund_White">novelist</a>; Ortleb, editor of <a href="https://www.pinterest.com.au/cmfragrance/christopher-street-magazine/">Christopher Street Magazine</a>, the most prominent queer literary magazine to date. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287812/original/file-20190813-9429-1x9x9on.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287812/original/file-20190813-9429-1x9x9on.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287812/original/file-20190813-9429-1x9x9on.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287812/original/file-20190813-9429-1x9x9on.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287812/original/file-20190813-9429-1x9x9on.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287812/original/file-20190813-9429-1x9x9on.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1100&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287812/original/file-20190813-9429-1x9x9on.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1100&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287812/original/file-20190813-9429-1x9x9on.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1100&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The author in Manhattan circa 1983/4.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Three years later Ortleb and Denneny would found <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Native">The New York Native</a>, the cutting edge of gay journalism until it collapsed in a frenzy of denialism that HIV was the cause of AIDS.</p>
<p>Looking back what strikes me is the immediate intimacy of gay literary and political New York. The radicals of the early 1970s were gradually winning respect in a broader world, but there were still few enough people who were open about their sexuality for it to establish a common bond. It seemed possible, then, to know everyone; my diary mentions meeting the German film director, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0902823/">Rosa von Praunheim</a> and the Argentinian writer Manuel Puig.</p>
<p>I have no memory of Praunheim, whose film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066136/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_83">It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives</a> was an important influence on the German gay movement. I desperately wanted to meet Puig, because he had footnoted me several times in his novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=Kiss+of+the+Spider+Woman">Kiss of the Spider Woman</a>, an unusual device for a novel. </p>
<p>I met a small, depressed man in a downtown apartment, described by Suzanne Levine in her excellent book about Puig as “replicating the monkish austerity of his room in Buenos Aires”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287307/original/file-20190808-144868-1l17lal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287307/original/file-20190808-144868-1l17lal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287307/original/file-20190808-144868-1l17lal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287307/original/file-20190808-144868-1l17lal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287307/original/file-20190808-144868-1l17lal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287307/original/file-20190808-144868-1l17lal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287307/original/file-20190808-144868-1l17lal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287307/original/file-20190808-144868-1l17lal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Manuel Puig in 1979.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The overwhelming attraction of the New York gay literati world was sufficient for me to resign my lectureship at Sydney University and move to New York in 1981. The ten years at Sydney had been exciting, marked by bitter disputes within Philosophy and Economics, which led to a student strike and both departments splitting between traditionalists and radicals.</p>
<p>But the prospect of 30 more years in the same institution was stultifying: I wanted to live out the fantasy of becoming a real writer. </p>
<p>My New York in the first term of Reagan’s Presidency was defined by two extraordinary groups, the gay literati clustered around Christopher Street and the New York Native, and the hothouse intellectual world of New York University’s Institute for the Humanities, presided over by the sociologist <a href="https://www.richardsennett.com/site/senn/templates/home.aspx?pageid=1&cc=gb">Richard Sennett</a>. </p>
<h2>The Violet Quill</h2>
<p>The link between the two was Edmund White, a man of southern charm and northern ambition, ruthless in his pursuit of celebrity and celebrities, and capable of both great generosity and sudden barbs of wickedness. Edmund was one of group of gay writers who made up what became known as the Violet Quill.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288085/original/file-20190814-136222-163mc21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288085/original/file-20190814-136222-163mc21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288085/original/file-20190814-136222-163mc21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288085/original/file-20190814-136222-163mc21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288085/original/file-20190814-136222-163mc21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288085/original/file-20190814-136222-163mc21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288085/original/file-20190814-136222-163mc21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288085/original/file-20190814-136222-163mc21.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">White’s memoir of his time in 60s and 70s New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">goodreads</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Urged on by Doug Ireland who was then an editor at the Soho News, a spunkier version of the Village Voice, I wrote a piece called “a movable brunch — the fag lit mafia”, of which Christopher Bram later wrote: “This bitchery was the first bit of fame for the group.” </p>
<p>But gay writing was beginning to encroach on high culture. There was excitement when the New Yorker published what was thought to be its first overtly gay short story (David Leavitt’s Territory) in 1981 — and some chagrin amongst other New York writers. Now the New Yorker publishes gay cartoons and stories without comment.</p>
<p>Edmund was a central figure at the Institute for the Humanities, which I once described as the New York Review of Books at lunch, perhaps because of memories of seminars dominated by the presence of Susan Sontag, her legs sprawled across the table as she munched sandwiches and repartee with equal ferocity. </p>
<p>I barely knew Sontag when in a moment of rashness I agreed to speak about “dandyism” in a small seminar. Naively I had forgotten that Sontag wrote of dandyism in her iconic <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36436100-notes-on-camp?from_search=true">Notes on Camp</a>, and I suspect she was angered by my too easy equation of dandies with homosexuality. Susan turned her well-rehearsed wrath on me for what was self-evident fatuousness; I retired hurt; and Edmund took me to dinner, having seen others who had experienced Susan’s barbs. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287306/original/file-20190808-144851-1yscw26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287306/original/file-20190808-144851-1yscw26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287306/original/file-20190808-144851-1yscw26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287306/original/file-20190808-144851-1yscw26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287306/original/file-20190808-144851-1yscw26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287306/original/file-20190808-144851-1yscw26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287306/original/file-20190808-144851-1yscw26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287306/original/file-20190808-144851-1yscw26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Susan Sontag in 1979.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lynn Gilbert/Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Looking back, I realise this was a rite of passage; some months later Susan and I went to dinner together, my main memory of which is a Lower East Side Chinese restaurant which specialised in offal, and a discussion which touched for a time on opera. </p>
<h2>Ferocious determination</h2>
<p>What I glimpsed that evening was something of the ferocious determination with which she was constructing herself as a cultural icon, a ferocity that seemed shared by so many of the people I came across in New York, where every transaction, even at the bank or post office, demanded concentrated ambition.</p>
<p>Occasionally I went to evenings at Sennett’s house, where men gathered around the piano, in an arch approximation of a Proustian salon, and Sennett spoke of his developing friendship with Michel Foucault.</p>
<p>There are echoes of those moments in both Sennett’s novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3727748-the-frog-who-dared-to-croak?from_search=true">The Frog Who Dared to Croak</a> (1982) and White’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/109720.Caracole?from_search=true">Caracole</a> (1985), the latter of which caused a celebrated split between him and Sontag, who recognised herself and her son, David Rieff, in the novel.</p>
<p>Many famous people passed through the Institute. I met Nadine Gordimer while I was trying to decide whether to return to Australia, and leave New York, self-evidently the centre of the gay literary world. “But there are no centres anymore,” said Gordimer, a great comfort to me when a year later I decided to return to Australia.</p>
<p>My first year in New York was taken up with the final edits and publication of the book that would become <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3669429-the-homosexualization-of-america">The Homosexualization of America</a>; “Better” Vito Russo, whose book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/374224.The_Celluloid_Closet">The Celluloid Closet</a> remains a staple of queer film criticism, had said to me one day “To call it The Americanization of the Homosexual”, and in retrospect he was right. I worked on the book with Michael Denneny, the toughest and most demanding editor I’ve encountered. Of all the books I’ve written this one involved the most intense collaboration with an editor, Michael being even more determined than I that homosexuals were changing the shape of American culture.</p>
<p>The path to breaking down the massive silences around homosexuality, which viewed it as a crime or a pathology, was already far advanced before the hiatus of the AIDS epidemic. </p>
<p>That this was happening as mainstream politics moved to the right, symbolised by Reagan’s election in 1980, and the rise of the Moral Majority, reminds us that politics rarely move in a straight line. The references in Homosexualization to marriage seem to assume it is a dying institution, indeed claimed we were better off without it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The absence of gay marriage means that it is easier for homosexuals to develop other ways of living than in conventional coupledom; there has been considerable discussion, in the new gay writings, of the advantages and disadvantages of a whole range of possible living and social arrangements. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>That discussion has now largely disappeared as same sex marriage has become a barometer of acceptance of sexual diversity. Even those of us who are sceptical of winning the blessings of the state and the church for our relationships felt the need to campaign for marriage equality when it became the subject of an unnecessary and expensive postal ballot two years ago.</p>
<p>It is easy to lament the apparent shift to conservatism of the queer movement, but this is an inevitable result of it now embracing far more people than it did 40 years ago. Nostalgia for a radical past too easily overlooks the range of ideas and identities that now exist, in a very different world to that of the early 1980s.</p>
<p>The marriage vote was significant, marking as it did a further step in acceptance of sexual diversity. On November 15 2017 thousands of us gathered outside the State Library to hear the results of the postal vote. The live feed from Canberra almost collapsed, but the figures came across clearly: over 60% of the 12 million people who responded had voted yes. There were cheers, speeches, rainbow flags, jubilation; a group of us went for coffee and prosecco to the Library café, where the staff were flirting their relief. Did I think, someone asked, that this was a moment when the zeitgeist shifted? </p>
<p>There have been many moments in my life when social attitudes towards homosexuality have shifted, and times when people have mobilised to create change: this was true of moves for decriminalisation in NSW and Tasmania, painfully real during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. The marriage vote felt like a major milestone, but I don’t think that the zeitgeist shifted, rather that several decades of slow shifts towards greater acceptance came together, and most Australians recognised this. Let’s hope the current government remembers this.</p>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from Unrequited Love: Diary of an Accidental Activist (Monash University Press)</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121506/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dennis Altman received funding from Monash University Press as advance for Unrequited Love</span></em></p>New York in the early 1980s was a time of literary salons, concentrated ambition and a flowering of gay cultural power.Dennis Altman, Professorial Fellow in Human Security, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1192572019-06-28T09:38:02Z2019-06-28T09:38:02ZStonewall riots: global legacy shows there’s no simple story of progress for gay rights<p>Millions of people will take to the streets around the world in the coming weeks to celebrate “<a href="https://2019-worldpride-stonewall50.nycpride.org/">Pride</a>”. Those who find themselves doused in glitter or wrapped in rainbow flags may think this is merely an annual summer party of sexual and gender diversity. But, the last weekend in June anchors Prides around the world for a reason: it marks a queer uprising that took place at New York City’s Stonewall Inn in 1969. </p>
<p>Stonewall’s 50th anniversary is a moment to reflect on the riot that helped to globalise what many now call the “gay rights movement”.</p>
<p>In the early hours of June 28 1969, the New York Police Department raided the Stonewall Inn in an attempt to permanently close a bar that was violating licensing regulations. Police raids on Stonewall and other gay bars were routine but, on this particular night, local patrons refused to disperse or allow their friends to be arrested. These “queers” (such as drag queens, sex workers, trans women, gay men, lesbian butches), who came from various parts of the city to hang out at the bar, sung, threw objects, and used their bodies to resist the police invasion. The protests gathered momentum and continued throughout the week. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280854/original/file-20190623-61767-130ylrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280854/original/file-20190623-61767-130ylrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280854/original/file-20190623-61767-130ylrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280854/original/file-20190623-61767-130ylrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280854/original/file-20190623-61767-130ylrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280854/original/file-20190623-61767-130ylrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280854/original/file-20190623-61767-130ylrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stormé DeLarverie, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sen Raj</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Much has been <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/576364/the-stonewall-reader-by-edited-by-the-new-york-public-library/9780143133513/">written</a> about the roles of the various people involved, such as Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Stormé DeLarverie and Mark Segal. The fact that Stonewall celebrates so many iconic figures highlights why the event has <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/more-to-mardi-gras-than-glitter-and-theatrics-20110303-1bflv.html">global relevance to a range of communities</a>. </p>
<p>Stonewall is less a single event in gay history and more a historical constellation of queer expectations and experiences. This constellation captures the rage, pain, joy and hope of queer people – both then and now – fighting to exist in a world that negates atypical pleasures, intimacies and identities. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-new-york-media-covered-the-stonewall-riots-117954">How the New York media covered the Stonewall riots</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Political liberation and legal equality</h2>
<p>Stonewall is a current symbol of “gay liberation” – a movement that sought to radically transform political institutions which prized the heterosexual family and patriarchal kinship. Its symbolic power is tied to movements such as Women’s Liberation and Black Power. Many who rioted at Stonewall campaigned not just to end sodomy laws (gay sex was illegal in every US state except Illinois in 1969) but also to end military interventions and police brutality. </p>
<p>This gave rise to other campaigns. For example, <a href="http://actupny.org/">ACT UP</a> began 20 years later by using direct action to combat the US government’s inaction on HIV. Stonewall’s liberationist legacies are also embodied in recent queer-led campaigns such as <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/">#BlackLivesMatter</a>, rallying to stop state-sanctioned killing of black people in the US, and <a href="http://www.lgsmigrants.com/">Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants</a>, which organises to prevent state removal of people who seek refuge in the UK. </p>
<p>But gay liberation also emerged alongside activism for legal equality. As the black gay rights activist Ernestine Eckstein said in an interview with the lesbian magazine <a href="https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1003347905">The Ladder</a> in 1966: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I would like to see more test cases in courts, so that our grievances can be brought out into the open. That’s one of the ways for a movement to gain exposure, a way that’s completely acceptable to everybody. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Stonewall’s activist legacies expose some of the tensions between seeking legal equality and demanding political liberation. Legal rulings from the <a href="https://www.epic.org/privacy/gender/lawrencevtx.pdf">US</a>, <a href="http://ceere.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/CASE-OF-DUDGEON-v.-THE-UNITED-KINGDOM.pdf">Europe</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-indian-judges-wrote-love-into-law-as-they-decriminalised-gay-sex-102810">India</a> have decriminalised gay sex by recognising the dignity of gay people and their rights to intimately associate in equivalent ways to heterosexual people. Yet, queer <a href="https://www.againstequality.org/">activists</a> and <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315582207">researchers</a> note that these cases render gay people as sympathetic figures deserving of recognition because their intimacies and identities are “acceptable” to social institutions that value monogamy. </p>
<p>Queer people still navigate the question of subscribing to existing social norms for equality while seeking liberation from those norms altogether. </p>
<h2>Making room for queer progress</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280853/original/file-20190623-61733-169590x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280853/original/file-20190623-61733-169590x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280853/original/file-20190623-61733-169590x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280853/original/file-20190623-61733-169590x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280853/original/file-20190623-61733-169590x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280853/original/file-20190623-61733-169590x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280853/original/file-20190623-61733-169590x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Remembering the Stonewall riot in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sen Raj</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stonewall’s legacies are a reminder of the impossibility of telling a simple story of LGBTQ unity. Queer and trans people of colour, for example, have <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb-JIOWUw1o">recounted</a> the misogyny, racism, transphobia and classism they experienced before and after the riots. Similar exclusions within the LGBTQ community are apparent today in the <a href="https://www.mic.com/articles/179126/philadelphias-queer-people-of-color-have-fought-racism-for-years-now-the-city-is-paying-attention">racism of gay spaces</a> and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/anti-trans-protests-london-pride-transgender-transphobia-terf-lgbt-feminist-a8448521.html">anti-trans hostility at Pride</a>. </p>
<p>This should caution us against romanticising progress. Pro-LGBTQ governments lecture former colonies about decriminalising homosexuality – an offence in about <a href="https://ilga.org/downloads/ILGA_State_Sponsored_Homophobia_2019.pdf">70 countries</a> – without realising how <a href="https://www.them.us/story/queer-women-fight-for-equality">paternalism alienates local LGBTQ communities</a>. LGBTQ politicians today join Pride parades while pursuing policies that <a href="https://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2018/07/24/insufficient-emotive-terminology-the-bizarre-reasons-the-gov">deny LGBT people asylum</a> or <a href="https://www.mdedge.com/pediatrics/article/192965/transgender-health/homelessness-among-lgbt-youth-united-states">make them homeless</a>. Progressive media outlets subject trans people to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/02/guardian-editorial-response-transgender-rights-uk">hostile scrutiny</a>. Doctors still perform “<a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/how-many-intersex-children-being-operated-on">surgical normalisation</a>” on infants with differences in sex characteristics.</p>
<p>Many of us can live freely today because of the political legacies facilitated by Stonewall. We can cultivate greater freedom by making room for expansive activism and refusing to turn progress into a single story.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119257/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Senthorun Raj 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>Fifty years after the Stonewall riots, what is their political legacy for LGBTQ activism?Senthorun Raj, Lecturer, Keele Law School, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/939562018-05-02T20:20:24Z2018-05-02T20:20:24ZBig city gaybourhoods: where they come from and why they still matter<p><em>This is the third article in our series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cities-for-everyone-53005">Cities for Everyone</a>, which explores how members of different communities experience and shape our cities, and how we can create better public spaces for everyone.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In London, there is Soho; in New York, Chelsea and Greenwich Village; and in San Francisco, there is the Castro. In <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/gay-sydney/">Sydney</a>, there is Darlinghurst and, more specifically, Oxford Street. These are neighbourhoods of large cities that have, since at least the 1950s and often earlier, developed a reputation as queer spaces. </p>
<p>In more recent years, those reputations have <a href="http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2015/04/mckinnon.html">begun to fade</a> and the enduring meanings of the “gaybourhood” have come into question. </p>
<p>But what each of these places represents is the centrality of urban space to the emergence of visible, “out and proud” lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer identities and communities.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
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>
</p>
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<h2>Queer Sydney in the ‘Golden Mile’ era</h2>
<p>The peak years of Oxford Street’s queer life extended from the mid-1970s until the mid-1990s. In the years after the second world war, many gay men in Sydney socialised in CBD hotels, including the <a href="https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/hotel_australia">Hotel Australia</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215505/original/file-20180419-163971-8935d7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215505/original/file-20180419-163971-8935d7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215505/original/file-20180419-163971-8935d7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=230&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215505/original/file-20180419-163971-8935d7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=230&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215505/original/file-20180419-163971-8935d7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=230&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215505/original/file-20180419-163971-8935d7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=289&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215505/original/file-20180419-163971-8935d7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=289&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215505/original/file-20180419-163971-8935d7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=289&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 guide to the ‘Golden Mile’ published in the Oxford Weekender News, one of many ‘bar rag’ newspapers that circulated the 1980s queer scene.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The first LGBTQ clubs on Oxford Street were Ivy’s Birdcage and Capriccio’s, which both opened in 1969. By the beginning of the 1980s, Oxford Street was home to a string of bars, clubs, saunas and cafes and had become known as Sydney’s gay “Golden Mile”.</p>
<p>The emergence of this gay heartland represents extraordinary social change. Male homosexuality remained illegal in New South Wales until 1984. The homosexual men socialising in 1950s CBD hotels were required to do so with discretion – the consequences of discovery could be devastating. </p>
<p>In contrast, the queerness of a venue like <a href="https://dictionaryofsydney.org/media/1500">Capriccio’s</a> was defiantly visible and undeniable. As more venues were opened along the Golden Mile, the street itself became a gay space, as did the surrounding neighbourhoods where LGBTQ people – particularly gay men – made homes in the terraces and apartments of Darlinghurst and Paddington. </p>
<p>A simple walk along the street became an act of participation in an emerging community. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215348/original/file-20180418-163971-eb8b44.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215348/original/file-20180418-163971-eb8b44.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215348/original/file-20180418-163971-eb8b44.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215348/original/file-20180418-163971-eb8b44.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215348/original/file-20180418-163971-eb8b44.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215348/original/file-20180418-163971-eb8b44.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215348/original/file-20180418-163971-eb8b44.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ivy’s Birdcage at 191 Oxford Street was one of Darlinghurst’s first drag bars.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.camp.org.au/">Sydney Pride History Group</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Members of a marginalised social group were thus using urban space to resist oppression and build a community. For some, this produced a kind of utopia. In an interview with Sydney’s <a href="http://www.camp.org.au/">Pride History Group</a>, DJ Stephen Allkins described his first visit to the Oxford Street disco Patch’s as a teenager in 1976. He remembers: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was home. That was it. It was the most fabulous place I’d ever been in my life … It’s full of gay people and they’re all dressed to the nines. They’re not hiding under a rock … They’re expressing and happy.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Finding a place in the queer community</h2>
<p>But these feelings of joy at having found such a space can be complicated by a range of factors. The gay community was certainly not free from sexism, racism and transphobia, meaning that some within the LGBTQ community were granted far easier access to these spaces than others.</p>
<iframe src="https://public.tableau.com/views/NSWSameSexCouplesbyPostcode/SamesexcouplesinNSWbypostcode?:showVizHome=no&:embed=true"" width="100%" height="450" \=""></iframe>
<p>Indeed, although Golden Mile-era Oxford Street included venues popular with lesbians, including the women-only bar Ruby Reds, the surrounding neighbourhood was more identifiably gay than <a href="http://www.publishing.monash.edu/books/ud-9781922235701.html">lesbian</a>. </p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="103" data-image="" data-title="Katy O'Rourke recalls her first visit in the 1970s to queer venue Chez Ivy in Bondi Junction." data-size="1646383" data-source="Sydney Pride History Group" data-source-url="http://www.camp.org.au/sphg-home/35-100-voices-tabs/178-100-voices" data-license="Author provided" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/1141/090829-kor-chez-ivy.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Katy O'Rourke recalls her first visit in the 1970s to queer venue Chez Ivy in Bondi Junction.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.camp.org.au/sphg-home/35-100-voices-tabs/178-100-voices">Sydney Pride History Group</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span><span class="download"><span>1.57 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/1141/090829-kor-chez-ivy.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<p></p><h4>Source: <a href="http://www.camp.org.au/sphg-home/35-100-voices-tabs/178-100-voices">Sydney Pride History Grouop</a></h4> <p></p>
<p>Inner-west suburbs including Leichhardt and Petersham were far more significant urban spaces in the lives of many queer women. Lesbian share-houses in these neighbourhoods became central sites of feminist politics, activism, sex and romance. </p>
<p>Penny Gulliver, a resident of legendary 1970s share-house “Crystal Street”, has remembered that women “who were just coming out, because there was nothing like a counselling service then, they’d come to Crystal Street”.</p>
<p>Into the new millennium, Oxford Street’s place as the gay heart of Sydney became less certain. As LGBTQ businesses failed and venues closed, questions emerged as to whether a community now more a part of the mainstream still needed its own spaces. </p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="116" data-image="" data-title="Angela Crimmon talks about the ongoing importance of queer spaces in Sydney's west." data-size="1852034" data-source="Pride History Group" data-source-url="http://www.camp.org.au/sphg-home/35-100-voices-tabs/178-100-voices" data-license="Author provided" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/1137/080225-ac-lesbian-friendly-suburbs.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Angela Crimmon talks about the ongoing importance of queer spaces in Sydney’s west.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.camp.org.au/sphg-home/35-100-voices-tabs/178-100-voices">Pride History Group</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span><span class="download"><span>1.77 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/1137/080225-ac-lesbian-friendly-suburbs.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<p></p><h4>Source: <a href="http://www.camp.org.au/sphg-home/35-100-voices-tabs/178-100-voices">Sydney Pride History Group</a></h4> <p></p>
<p>For a time, King Street in <a href="http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0607/04-gorman-murray.php">Newtown</a> dominated as a queer alternative. In 1983 gay publican Barry Cecchini took over the Milton Hotel on Newtown’s King Street, renamed it Cecchini’s and launched it as the area’s first gay venue. Shortly after, the Newtown Hotel, just across the road, also became a gay pub. Cecchini told the Sydney Morning Herald in 1984 that gays were leaving “the scene” of Oxford Street looking for a “more cosmopolitan mix” in Newtown.</p>
<p>Through the following decades, venues including The Imperial in Erskineville (made famous as the site from which three drag queens launched their adventures in a bus named <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/australia-culture-blog/2014/may/09/the-adventures-of-priscilla-queen-of-the-desert-rewatching-classic-australian-films">Priscilla</a>) and the Sly Fox in Enmore, home to a popular lesbian night, further developed the area’s queer reputation.</p>
<h2>Protecting queer space</h2>
<p>In recent years, however, a range of factors, including changes to licensing laws, have produced significant challenges for <a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/CICrimJust/2016/16.html">queer socialising</a> in that neighbourhood. </p>
<p>Newtown sits outside the zone of the so-called “lockout laws”. Late-night partiers who might once have ventured to Kings Cross are instead heading to pubs along King Street, and reports of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-14/violence-increasing-newtown-alleged-homophobic-attack-victim/7328142">anti-LGBTQ abuse and violence</a> have increased. </p>
<p>In response, a campaign called “<a href="https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/zn7zp8/people-are-protesting-to-keep-newtown-weird-and-safe">Keep Newtown Weird and Safe</a>” has attempted to maintain the queer meanings of this urban space.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KIJEGdCw_is?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Keep Newtown Weird and Safe is an annual community festival that began in 2016 in response to homophobic and transphobic violence.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite changes in Oxford and King streets, efforts to keep Newtown “weird” highlight the continued value of urban space to LGBTQ communities. Indeed, among a younger generation, new forms of queer identity continue to inspire the search for spaces in which to celebrate difference. </p>
<p>In pockets of the inner west, for example, young queer, transgender and <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-genderqueer-48596">genderqueer</a> people are creating spaces of activism, partying, performance and everyday life. This new generation is exploring the fresh possibilities of queer identity and developing their community. Access to urban space remains central to this. </p>
<p>Like the city itself, the LGBTQ community continues to be less a fixed entity than a process of <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1068/d14012">movement</a>, adaptation and change.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can find other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cities-for-everyone-53005">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93956/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott McKinnon is Vice President of Sydney's Pride History Group. </span></em></p>Sydney’s LGBTQI heartland has moved and changed over time, but the importance of urban space to queer communities remains a constant.Scott McKinnon, Vice-Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/747852017-07-26T21:38:19Z2017-07-26T21:38:19ZAgainst The Law review: a fitting tribute to gay men whose persecution in 1950s paved way for new rights<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179483/original/file-20170724-24368-vc9uak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A dangerous romance in the 1950s. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The journalist Peter Wildeblood may not be a household name in Britain today, but he was in 1954. Along with the wealthy Lord Montagu and Michael Pitt-Rivers, Wildeblood was sent to prison for homosexual offences in a case that shocked Britain. His case is the subject of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p057nmkt">Against The Law</a>, a film premiered at the BFI Flare film festival and aired on BBC2 to mark the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality. </p>
<p>The post-war period saw a major upswing in the number of such cases coming before the courts in the UK and the US. This was not because men were having more sex with other men, but because the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic were acting with increased vigour to catch them. In 1948, the American biologist Alfred Kinsey and his team of scientists had published <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?isbn=0253334128">Sexual Behavior in the Human Male</a>, with its shock findings that same-sex incidents were widespread across the population.</p>
<p>Panic reactions, including attempts to identify secret homosexuals hiding in the closet, were <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/picturing-the-closet-9780190205638?cc=gb&lang=en&">spurred</a> by fears that the Soviet Union was using information about private lives to blackmail individuals into spying for them.</p>
<h2>Speaking out</h2>
<p>Wildeblood’s importance in reforming the strict laws in the UK lay not so much in his conviction but in his subsequent publication of <a href="https://www.orionbooks.co.uk/books/detail.page?isbn=9781780225418">Against The Law</a> in 1955. In this pioneering book, he openly advocated legal reform from the position of an avowedly gay man or, to use the language of the time, “a homosexual”.</p>
<p>The BBC film telling Wildeblood’s story – part dramatisation, part documentary – was produced in associated with the Wellcome Trust, which advised on the medical treatments for homosexuality on offer at the time, such as <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719095887/">hormone and aversion therapies</a> involving the administration of emetics and electric shocks.</p>
<p>Wildeblood was the only openly homosexual man to agree to give testimony to the committee, chaired by Lord Wolfenden, that was established in the wake of the trial. The resulting <a href="http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item107413.html">report</a>, published in 1957, laid the groundwork for the eventual (partial) decriminalisation of male homosexual sex brought about in England by the passing of the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1967/60/pdfs/ukpga_19670060_en.pdf">Sexual Offences Act</a> in July 1967. </p>
<p>When Wildeblood, played by Daniel Mays in the film, attests in court to being homosexual, he is not admitting that he has broken the law. Sexual acts such as “buggery” were illegal, but simply being a “sexual deviant” <a href="https://theconversation.com/buggery-bribery-and-a-committee-the-story-of-how-gay-sex-was-decriminalised-in-britain-79597#comment_1350236">was not</a>. Yet, whether they were celibate or not, gay men were loathed by a considerable proportion of the population and by the police who were paid to hunt them down. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179482/original/file-20170724-21564-z6ohqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179482/original/file-20170724-21564-z6ohqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179482/original/file-20170724-21564-z6ohqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179482/original/file-20170724-21564-z6ohqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179482/original/file-20170724-21564-z6ohqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179482/original/file-20170724-21564-z6ohqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179482/original/file-20170724-21564-z6ohqj.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">Peter Wildebood was sentenced to 18 months in prison.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Wildeblood’s former lover agrees to turn “Queen’s evidence” in return for immunity from prosecution, viewers are invited to think of the line “each man kills the thing he loves” from Oscar Wilde’s poem <a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/ballad-reading-gaol">The Ballad of Reading Gaol</a>. The ghostly presence of Wilde and his own <a href="http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item107514.html">trials</a> in 1895 haunt this production, implying that little had changed over the intervening 60 years. </p>
<h2>Insecurity leads to clampdown</h2>
<p>But interwar Britain had in fact witnessed several years of much more openly queer life, even if it had not seen a relaxation of the criminal law. World War II then brought all manner of opportunities for queer sex, even if not sustained love, in the blackout. As the writer and sometime sex-worker <a href="https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780006540441/the-naked-civil-servant">Quentin Crisp</a> said of the behaviour of American service personnel stationed in London: “Never in the history of sex was so much offered to so many by so few.”</p>
<p>What had changed, by the 1950s, was that the British establishment was far less secure than it had been. There was a real fear of the spread of communism across Europe, and the end of the British Empire was widely understood to be inevitable once India was given its independence in 1947. New methods of social control were introduced in the 1950s: the police manufactured evidence, intimidated witnesses, entrapped homosexual men, and ensured that careers and relationships were ruined.</p>
<p>The film’s dramatic reconstruction of events during the 1950s is intercut with testimony from men who lived through the time. Some of them enjoyed playing cat and mouse with the authorities. But others admit to years of shame and terror at the thought that their desires might become public.</p>
<p>Wildeblood was not a gay liberationist in the mould of the civil rights campaigners of the 1970s. What he wanted was the right to live a respectable private life and, to some extent, the 1967 law provided that opportunity. It was no proud exercise in identity affirmation, but rather the application of discretion to what was felt to be a pressing social problem. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, the BBC’s film, with its sexy scenes and celebratory tributes to men who endured years of bullying and intimidation, makes it clear that it was the establishment that was in retreat as British imperial power fell apart in the face of the rising demands of people across the former empire for independence, respect and self-determination.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74785/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dominic Janes has in the past received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. </span></em></p>The story of the trial of Peter Wildeblood.Dominic Janes, Professor of Modern History, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/788882017-06-22T19:12:46Z2017-06-22T19:12:46ZFrom gay Nazis to ‘we’re here, we’re queer’: A century of arguing about gay pride<p>This month, hundreds of thousands of people around the world will join gay pride marches in cities big and small. In many cities, pride marches are controversial. In some – <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/not-the-onion-moscow-bans-gay-pride-for-next-100-years/258296/">like Moscow</a> – they are even banned. But for many people in North America, parts of Europe, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/12/world/gallery/pride-parade-latam/">Latin America</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tokyo-pride-parade_us_57335fa3e4b0bc9cb048cd6f">elsewhere</a>, attending the local pride march has become an unremarkable ritual of summer. </p>
<p>There are still good reasons to march. Few countries around the world have <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-countries-score-an-f-on-our-lgbt-human-rights-report-card-78732">robust protections for gay and transgender rights</a>. And pride marches, the LGBTQ political rallies that take the form of exuberant, outrageous parades, often meet hostile <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-what-happened-when-christian-groups-tried-to-shut-do?utm_term=.huvYrkypx#.sl42EvKVp">counterdemonstrators</a>. </p>
<p>But such expressions of pride have faced another sort of opposition: from within the queer and trans communities themselves. One reason is that gay and trans rights doesn’t describe a single, unitary political movement.</p>
<p>I am a historian of queer and trans politics. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/907565880">My research</a>, together with that of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/505131967">James Steakley</a>, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5183378194">Katie Sutton</a>, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/950959961">Robert Beachy</a> and many others, shows that there are several traditions of gay and trans activism. These traditions have not always gotten along. And some of them hate what pride is all about. </p>
<h2>A history of multiple movements</h2>
<p>Gay and trans rights movements are quite old. For more than 100 years, political groups have been fighting on behalf of same-sex desires, gender nonconformity and transition from one gender to the other – although the terms “gay rights” and “trans rights” are <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-in-a-word-the-challenges-of-transgender-38633">relatively recent inventions</a>. </p>
<p>By the late 1800s, a movement that called itself “homosexual emancipation” formed in Germany. It <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-origins-of-the-modern-gay-rights-movement-in-wwi-76691">boomed after World War I</a> and flourished in the 1920s under <a href="http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/section.cfm?section_id=12">the democracy</a> that existed before the Nazis took over. The movement included people who called themselves “transvestites.” Were they alive today, many would probably use the term transgender. </p>
<p>From the beginning, gay and transgender activists split into a dizzying array of factions. All were in favor of greater legal and social tolerance for same-sex relationships. But beyond that narrow common ground, they were a political hodgepodge.</p>
<p>Some were leftists. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/907565880">One prominent leader</a> of a gay rights group was also an important player in Berlin’s communist party. Others were middle-of-the road, calling for the end of Germany’s law against sodomy but otherwise content with the status quo. There were even <a href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1137017">right-wing</a>, explicitly racist gay rights activists. </p>
<p>The Nazi Party itself was zealously anti-gay. Once in power, the Nazis murdered thousands of men <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005261">for the “crime” of male-male sex</a>. Yet, the historical record shows that a small number of men quietly belonged to both the homosexual emancipation movement and the Nazi Party, though they were not open about their sexuality within the party. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/362546906">Historians</a> are still <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/927276394">debating</a> the <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/907565880">significance</a> of homosexuality in the Nazi Party. The small faction of gay fascists lauded erotic relationships between manly, “Aryan” soldier types while loathing feminists, Jews and leftists.</p>
<p>As you might imagine, these different camps within the homosexual emancipation movement did not agree on lots of things. </p>
<h2>A debate about discretion</h2>
<p>One of their big disagreements was about discretion: Was it acceptable for same-sex couples and gender nonconformists to cavort in view of the straight public? </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/moOamKxW844?wmode=transparent&start=7" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The 1972 film ‘Cabaret’ is set in Berlin prior to the Nazi seizure of power. The story deals with homosexuality and the rise of Nazism.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fifty years before pride marches began, 1920s Berlin had <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/946218131">a jumping nightlife of gay male, lesbian and transvestite establishments</a> featuring clubs like the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_ph.php?ModuleId=0&MediaId=3162">Eldorado</a> – known for its cross-dressing wait staff – and dance palaces like the Magic Flute. There was even a yearly all-women moonlight cruise. The pre-Nazi government’s approach was <a href="https://youtu.be/moOamKxW844">live and let live.</a> </p>
<p>Not all advocates of gay rights, however, liked this public culture. </p>
<p>One man, a self-professed gay Nazi, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/13139401">wrote</a> that Berlin’s clubs were “<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/insalubrious">insalubrious</a>” places where people surrendered to their animal lusts, and that “the general public inevitably gets the impression that it” – that is, the gay rights movement – “is all about sex.” This man wanted to celebrate homoerotic comradeship, a spiritual love, as he described it, as well as a physical one. However, he wanted to celebrate this manly love with maximum discretion, and certainly not in public. He wrote: “What two men do in the barracks,” by which he meant the barracks of the Nazi Party militia, “is no one’s business.”</p>
<p>Such complaints were not limited to the far right. Moderate activists had their own doubts about the bars and dance halls. One leader of transvestites warned, “<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5183378194">When we demand that the public acknowledge us, then we have the duty to dress and conduct ourselves publicly in an inconspicuous manner</a>.” Transvestites were told to <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5183378194">avoid gaudy accessories like costume rings or oversized earrings</a>.</p>
<p>To admit that one was homosexual or a transvestite in public in the 1920s was to court serious social and legal consequences. Activists of that era probably could not have imagined that one day people would march in large groups down public streets celebrating their homosexual and transgender selves. </p>
<h2>‘We’re here, we’re queer’</h2>
<p>In 1970, activists organized the first pride marches to mark the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Those riots occurred the summer before when people fought back against a police raid of a queer bar called <a href="https://www.nps.gov/places/stonewall.htm">the Stonewall Inn</a> in New York’s Greenwich Village. </p>
<p>Pride exploded the old worries about discretion when it arrived in cities around the world in the 1970s.</p>
<p>Pride reveled in gaudy accessories. It had lots of scanty dress, too, from drag queens in slinky gowns to shirtless dykes with political slogans scrawled in marker across their chests. By bringing the party – along with the politics – into the streets in broad daylight, pride fought against homophobia. At the same time, it flatly rejected the old fears about overt public displays. </p>
<p>“We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,” a favorite chant at pride, was not only directed at mainstream, straight society. It was also, in my opinion, an answer-back to the debate about discretion that had marked the long history of gay and trans activism.</p>
<h2>More debates about pride</h2>
<p>By the 1990s, pride marches had run into more controversy within activist circles. They were criticized as too commercial, too male-dominated, too devoid of a broader left-of-center political agenda and insufficiently inclusive of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BlackCusePride/?hc_ref=SEARCH&fref=nf">people of color</a> – or indeed <a href="http://www.aviva-berlin.de/aviva/content_Interviews.php?id=1427323">downright racist and Islamophobic</a>. Alternative demonstrations cropped up, like Berlin’s <a href="https://xcsd.wordpress.com/">Alternative Pride</a> and New York City’s <a href="http://dykemarchnyc.org/">Dyke March</a>. Debates about pride continue to this day. </p>
<p>Pride is in part what people make of it. A pride march can have a social justice agenda. Or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/06/10/its-discrimination-gay-man-says-hes-barred-from-pride-parade-for-supporting-trump/?hpid=hp_no-name_hp-in-the-news%3Apage%2Fin-the-news&utm_term=.ca13eff4109b">it can have a pro-Trump agenda</a>. </p>
<p>Yet pride’s history is a story of a radical break with right-wing and even middle-of-the-road gay and trans politics. Pride rejected respectability and discretion. </p>
<p>Traces of that history probably survive in your local pride march. Look for the people who are not worried about alarming the straights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laurie Marhoefer has received funding from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</span></em></p>Gay pride has many exuberant advocates. It also has critics in unexpected places.Laurie Marhoefer, Associate Professor of History, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.