Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller, hosts of a popular podst, take a look at history through the lens of problematic gay figur.
Contents:
- IN ‘BAD GAYS,’ HISTORIL FIGUR ARE PRODUCTS OF THEIR TIM
- BAD GAYS: A HOMOSEXUAL HISTORY
- BAD GAYS: BEN MILLER ON QUEER HISTORY’S GREATT ANTAGONISTS
IN ‘BAD GAYS,’ HISTORIL FIGUR ARE PRODUCTS OF THEIR TIM
* bad gay book *
They suggt an answer “Bad Gays, ” a ntextual history based on the popular podst of the same name, about “the gay people history who do not flatter , and whom we nnot make to hero: the liars, the powerful, the crimal, and the succsful.
”At a time when a nservative Supreme Court is signalg s willgns to revis qutns of privacy and self-termatn long nsired settled, and the rights of LGBTQ people to live their liv eely rema an open bate, a book tellg the stori of some of the worst gays history might seem ill-timed.
BAD GAYS: A HOMOSEXUAL HISTORY
“The history of homosexualy is a long history of failure, ” they wre.
”The tle “Bad Gays” is a b of a misnomer, however. The are the stori of gay and queer people who did terrible thgs and held terrible views, but the bulk of the histori are ls about “evil” gays and more about gays who reacted to the world around them, sometim shockg ways, sometim stctive ways, but que often the only ways that ma sense to them, given the tim. This approach is pecially helpful amg the liv and choic of people like Frerick the Great and notor Italian Renaissance satirist and blackmailer Pietro Areto, well before the ia of gayns as an inty existed.
BAD GAYS: BEN MILLER ON QUEER HISTORY’S GREATT ANTAGONISTS
Context is provid for choic and actns, but the thors take every one of their subjects to task for their racism, misogyny, genocidal actns, predatory natur and all-around bad behavr if not bad book is at s most bg when assailg a bad gay person’s athetic choic. Roy Cohn’s ho are scribed as beg “well-stocked wh young, blon men draped over the furnure or the pool, ” and there is an acid asi about the archect Philip Johnson’s mil tast: “like so many [slur for gay men] before him, he was ptivated by the mic of Wagner. ” The thors don’t fet that n be fun to be faced wh the stori of so many awful queers, one after another, partially bee of a long-standg gay tradn of sha and gossip: a tradn which they ocsnally dulge, to the book’s benef.