There were drag parti, lbian relatnships, a secret gay rights group - and more.
Contents:
- BEFORE STRAIGHT AND GAY
- SEX SYMBOL: HOW ANTO BEME A GAY CO WORD THE VICTORIAN ERA
- THE SURPRISG TTH ABOUT THE LIV OF GAY MEN VICTORIAN ENGLAND
BEFORE STRAIGHT AND GAY
Robert K. Mart, GAY STUDIES AND THE VICTORIAN PERIOD, Newsletter of the Victorian Studi Associatn of Wtern Canada, Vol. 13, No. 1 (SPRING 1987), pp. 69-76 * gay in the victorian age *
Before Straight and GayThe discreet, disorientg passns of the Victorian eraMarc BurckhardtEven by the formidable standards of ement Victorian fai, the Bensons were an timidatg lot.
SEX SYMBOL: HOW ANTO BEME A GAY CO WORD THE VICTORIAN ERA
As a great al of queer history has by now monstrated, the strictly fed tegori of “homosexual” and “heterosexual” are relatively new: bright l drawn across the late-20th-century sexual landspe that ma “g out” a dichotomo the Victorians, the suatn was much more fluid. Though sex between men was a crimal offense ( Bra, lbianism was visible before the law), there was, as yet, hardly a homosexual inty fed by same-sex sire.
He don’t diagnose the Bensons retrospectively and anachronistilly as a fay of reprsed homosexuals.
Even though the term homosexual was g to currency, he did not e until 1924, the year before he died.
THE SURPRISG TTH ABOUT THE LIV OF GAY MEN VICTORIAN ENGLAND
And when he did e , after a theoretil nversatn on the subject wh Fred, he wrote the word out—“the homo sexual qutn”— a way that suggted ’s another way of unrstandg reticence, though, which Fred, Arthur’s sunnier brother, suppli.
Unlike Fred Benson, she was unsentimental about her Victorian upbrgg, yet as the dichotomy between homosexual and heterosexual solidified, she uld see what had been lost: “Where people mistake, as I thk, is perpetually narrowg and namg the immensely pose and wi flung passns—drivg stak through them, herdg them between screens.
” The irony of all this is somethg that no gay liberatnist would have thought possible when the mpaign for homosexual rights was regard as a grave threat to the social orr. Sandwiched between the fluidy of the Victorian years and the proliferatg sexual and genr inti of the new lennium, the late 20th century’s straight-gay paradigm looks cidly old-fashned—maybe even a ltle stodgy.