GAY STUDIES AND THE VICTORIAN PERIOD on JSTOR

Contents:

• BEFORE STRAIGHT AND GAY
• SEX SYMBOL: HOW ANTO BEME A GAY CO WORD THE VICTORIAN ERA
• THE 200-YEAR-OLD DIARY THAT'S REWRG GAY HISTORY

BEFORE STRAIGHT AND GAY

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. 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.

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. The Victorian era is important to be looked at so that we know the cultural ntext which Osr Wil ed to live homosexualy went agast the notn of masculy, was talked about rarely and threatened the fay stcture as well as was believed to go agast beg fundamentally Brish.

SEX SYMBOL: HOW ANTO BEME A GAY CO WORD THE VICTORIAN ERA

Discsns about homosexualy among society was very mimal bee Victorian cizens tried to ignore the fact ncept that mal might have sexual relatnship wh other mal. Many believed that one uld be moral and at the same time have sexual was one of the reasons why homosexualy was extremely problematic issue the Brish society faced at that time. In the fundamental Brish society, was embarrassg to speak of this sexual was only when the trials of Osr Wil were gog on that the term and ia of classifyg homosexualy me to limelight.

Observable homosexualyEven though heterosexualy was nsired normal and natural throughout Victorian era, there is seen visible crease homosexualy pecially among men as well as telligentsia durg that perd of history. The reason was that homosexualy was prohibed as cent behavur public and privately, gay sex behd closed doors was not nsired crimal offence until 1885. It is believed that Victorians had a more lenient attu towards gay relatnships or attu to sex between men than their 1960s unterparts.

THE 200-YEAR-OLD DIARY THAT'S REWRG GAY HISTORY

And more than a thoand years after he drowned, he spired a new generatn of the Renaissance, gay men redisvered Anto’s bety and tragic story. Brgg antique statu of Anto (or replis of the origals) back to Bra was a way for gay men to remember the eedom and liberti they experienced on their tours.

A nobleman, displayg an Anto his stately home, uld show off his taste and knowledge of the Classics, and perhaps drop a ht about his sexual 1861 Brish law did away wh the ath penalty for homosexual acts but ma them punishable by a mimum of 10 years prison. Victorian poets and wrers began g Anto as a word for love between men, shieldg their exploratns of the forbidn ncept om censor 18th-century brooch shows reliefs of Anto (left) and Hadrian, and was likely worn by a gay man as a d signal to others. ” Symonds argued that love between men rose to the plane of gay wrers were not as overt as Symonds but ed Anto as for same-sex sire, knowg that gay rears would pick up on the subtext and pdish typ would be none the Osr Wil’s nt novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), the tle character embodi the late 19th-century tensn between sexualy and moraly.

Wil’s romantic affair wh the younger Aled Douglas eventually led to his crimal prosecutn for “gross cency”—another, ls appealg word for homosexualy. This June the Molly Brown Hoe Mm has created a Thirsty Thursday event to ci wh Lbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgenr (LGBT) Pri Month tled Queer the Age of the Queen.