Abstract
The life stories of 80 men lie at the heart of this book. Among two of the more easily remembered stories is one an Aboriginal man told me about how when he came out to his aunties they joked that, as there had been no ‘poofters’1 in the Dreamtime, what did he think he was doing? The second is from a man in his 30s who explained that he did not want to come out to his family in case it upset the inheritance his grandparents had arranged for him. There were other stories from men who had recently experienced anti-homosexual prejudice even though public narratives were now more accepting of homosexuality, and from men who had not come out when they were young because of the hostility then and who had not been able to come out since because they could not identify with today’s gay narratives. Unlike Gore Vidal, however, who declared, in the mid-1980s when writing about his old friend Tennessee Williams, that ‘there is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person … only homo- or hetero-acts’, all the men interviewed for this study understood that their sexuality had shaped the lives they were living.2 How things changed and how they remained the same for gay men in the second half of the twentieth century is the big story this book tells from the life stories of the 80 men who volunteered to tell theirs.
‘I think it is impossible to separate me from my sexuality. It is one and the same thing, and it influences and changes every aspect of my life. As I get older being gay is less of an issue. It is not like a handbag that I carry with me. It is what I am.’ Jerome, 49.
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Notes
G. Vidal ‘Tennessee Williams: someone to laugh at the squares with’ in United States: Essays 1952–1992 (London: Little Brown and Company, UK, 1999), p. 440.
R. Sennett and J. Cobb The Hidden Injuries of Class (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1973);
L. P. Hinchman and S. K. Hinchman (eds) Memory, Identity, Community: the idea of narrative in the human sciences (New York: State University of New York, 2001);
K. Plummer Documents of Life: an introduction to the problems and literature of a humanistic method (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1983);
K. Plummer Telling Sexual Stories: power, change and social worlds (London: Routledge, 1995);
M. R. Somers and G. D. Gibson ‘Reclaiming the epistemological “other”: narrative and the social construction of identity’ in C. Calhoun (ed.) Social Theory and the Politics of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), pp. 37–99.
See, for example, D. Altman Homosexual: oppression and liberation (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1972);
D. Altman The Homosexualization of America, the Americanization of the Homosexual (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1982);
H. Bech When Men Meet: homosexuality and modernity trans. T. Mequit and T. Davies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997);
E. L. Kennedy and M. D. Davis Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: the history of a lesbian community (New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1994);
K. Plummer Sexual Stigma: an interactionist account (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975);
K. Plummer ‘Going gay: identities lifecycles and lifestyles in the male gay world’ in J. Hart and D. Richardson (eds) The Theory and Practice of Homosexuality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 93–110;
J. Weeks Coming out: homosexual politics in Britain from the nineteenth century to the present (London: Quartet Books, 1990f);
J. Weeks Sexuality and its Discontents: meanings, myths & modern sexualities (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985).
See, for example, G. Chauncey Gay New York: gender, urban culture, and the making of the gay male world, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994);
C. Moore Sunshine and Rainbows: the development of gay and lesbian culture in Queensland (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2001);
J. H. Gagnon An Interpretation of Desire: essays in the study of sexuality (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004);
G. Herdt (ed.) Gay Culture in America: essays from the field (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992);
G. Herdt Same sex, different cultures: exploring gay and lesbian lives (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997);
G. Wotherspoon City of the Plain: history of a gay sub-culture (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1991).
See, for example, G. W. Dowsett Practicing Desire: homosexual sex in the era of AIDS (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996)
E. K. Sedgwick Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
Ken Plummer defines heterosexism as ‘[A] diverse set of social practices—from the linguistic to the physical, in the public sphere and the private sphere, covert and overt—in an array of social arenas (e.g. work, home, school, media, church, courts, streets, etc.) in which the homo/hetero binary distinction is at work whereby heterosexuality is privileged’. Emphasis in the original. See K. Plummer ‘Speaking its name. Inventing a lesbian and gay studies.’ in K. Plummer (ed.) Modern Homosexualities: fragments of lesbian and gay experience (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 19.
For thorough description and analysis of homosexual language in Australia, see G. Simes ‘The language of homosexuality in Australia’ in R. Aldrich and G. Wotherspoon (eds) Gay Perspectives: essays in Australian gay culture (Sydney: Department of Economic History, University of Sydney, 1992), pp. 31–57. For equally thorough account of homosexual language in Britain in the nineteenth century, see Weeks, Coming out, ch. 3. For detailed discussion of homosexual language, sexual and social practices in homosexual subcultures in USA, 1900–40, see Chauncey, Gay New York, pp. 12–23. It is fairly clear there is an overlap between the language homosexual and gay men use in English-speaking countries and that since the 1940s North American gay men have been especially influential, that they have exerted a ‘global’ influence on gay sub-cultures in other countries, especially but not only English-speaking ones, because of the economic and military hegemony of the USA. Following the work of Gary Wotherspoon, it would seem that one of the first points of contact was WWII when tens of thousands of US servicemen were in Australia for rest and recreation leave or combat preparation. It was then that they passed on to local gay men the jargon of North American gay sub-cultures and knowledge of their institutions and practices. It is likely gay US servicemen had similar influence in countries where they were present in large numbers during and after WWII, such as in the UK, Holland and Germany.
For discussion of their influence in Australia, see G. Wotherspoon ‘Comrades-at-arms: World War II and male homosexuality in Australia’ in J. Damousi and M. Lake (eds) Gender and War: Australians at war in the twentieth century (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 205–22.
Chauncey Gay New York; A. McLaren Twentieth Century Sexuality: a history (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1999);
P.M. Nardi, D. Sanders and J. Marmor Growing up before Stonewall life stories of some gay men (London: Routledge, 1994); and Wotherspoon ‘Comrades-at-arms’, pp. 205–22.
A. Bérubé Coming out under fire: the history of gay men and women in World War Two (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), passim; McLaren Twentieth Century Sexuality, ch. 8.
McLaren, Twentieth Century Sexuality, p. 143. For examination of the persecution of homosexuals in USA during the Cold War, see for example, G. Chauncey Why Marriage? The history shaping today’s debate over gay equality (Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Books Group, 2004);
L. Segal Slow motion: changing masculinities, changing men (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1990).
For examples of homosexual persecution in Canada, West Germany, Britain, France and Australia, see D. Eribon Insult and the making of the gay self trans. M. Lucey (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 23; McLaren Twentieth Century, pp. 161–3;
G. Willett ‘The darkest decade: homophobia in 1950s Australia’ in J. Murphy and J. Smart (eds) The Forgotten Fifties: aspects of Australian society and culture in the 1950s (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997 and Australian Historical Studies, 109, 1997), pp. 120–32.
For effect of HIV-AIDS on communities of gay men, see, for example, D. Altman ‘AIDS and the reconceptualization of homosexuality’ in D. Altman et al. Homosexuality, which Homosexuality? Essays from the international conference on gay and lesbian studies (London: GMP Publishers, 1989), pp. 35–48;
D. Altman ‘Legitimation through disaster: AIDS and the gay movement’, in E. Fee and D. M. Fox (eds) AIDS: the burdens of history (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 301–15;
J. D’Emilio and E. B. Freedman Intimate Matters: a history of sexuality in America, 2nd edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), ch. 15;
G. W. Dowsett Practicing Desire: homosexual sex in the era of AIDS (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 90–117; McLaren Twentieth Century Sexuality, ch. 10.
For an interesting discussion of how and why HIV-AIDS affected gay men’s visibility in USA, see L. Bersani Homos (Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 19–29.
Authors whose works cover coming-out narratives in the post-liberation period include: Bech When Men Meet; L. Duggan ‘Queering the state’ in P. M. Nardi and B. E. Schneider (eds) Social Perspectives in Lesbian and Gay Studies: a reader (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 565–72; Eribon Insult; Gagnon An Interpretation of Desire; Herdt ‘“Coming out” as a rite of passage’, pp. 29–67;
G. Herdt and A. Boxer Children of Horizons: how gay and lesbian teens are leading a new way out of the closet (Boston: Beason Press, 1993);
K. Plummer ‘Lesbian and gay youth in England’ in G. Herdt (ed.) Gay and Lesbian Youth (New York: The Haworth Press, 1989), pp. 195–223;
M. Poliak ‘Male homosexuality — or happiness in the ghetto’ in P. Ariès and A. Béjin (eds) Western Sexuality: practice and precept in past and present times, trans. A. Forster (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 40–61.
For discussion of the gay scene before the gay liberation period and thereafter, see, for example, N. Achilles ‘The development of the homosexual bar as an institution’ in P. M. Nardi and B. E. Schneider (eds) Social Perspectives in Lesbian and Gay Studies: a reader (London: Routledge, 1998) pp. 175–82; Altman Homosexualization;
A. P. Bell and M. S. Weinberg Homosexualities: a study of diversity among men and women (Melbourne: The Macmillan Company of Australia, 1978); D’Emilio and Freedman Intimate Matters;
G. Hekma ‘Same-sex relations among men in Europe, 1700–1990’ in F. X. Elder, L. A. Hall and G. Hekma (eds) Sexual Cultures in Europe: themes in sexuality (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 79–103; Herdt ‘“Coming out” as a rite of passage’, pp. 29–67; K. Plummer ‘Going gay: identities lifecycles and lifestyles in the male gay world’ in Hart and Richardson The Theory and Practice of Homosexuality, pp. 93–110.
Sexualisation of the scene is examined in, for example, Bell and Weinberg Homosexualities; D’Emilio and Freedman Intimate Matters; S. Jeffreys Unpacking Queer Politics: a lesbian feminist perspective (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003); Poliak ‘Male homosexuality’, pp. 40–61;
J. Weeks Sex, Politics and Society: the regulation of sexuality since 1800, 2nd edn (London: Longman, 1989).
See, for example, G. Herdt Same sex, different cultures: exploring gay and lesbian lives (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), passim;
S. O. Murray Homosexualities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), ch. 9; Plummer ‘Going gay’, pp. 93–110;
J. Weeks, B. Heaphy and C. Donovan ‘Partners by choice: equality, power and commitment in non-heterosexual relationships’ in G. Allan (ed.) The sociology of the family: a reader (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1999), pp. 111–28.
L. Jamieson ‘The couple: intimate and equal?’ in J. Weeks, J. Holland and M. Waites (eds) Sexuality and Society: a reader (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), pp. 265–76.
For discussion of the term, ‘family of choice’, see J. Weeks Making Sexual History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), p. 213ff.
B. M. Dank ‘Coming out in the gay world’ in Psychiatry, 34 (1971) 180–97; Poliak ‘Male homosexuality’, pp. 40–61.
S. de Beauvoir Old Age, trans. P. O’Brien (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977), passim;
N. Elias ‘Ageing and dying: some sociological problems’ in The Loneliness of the Dying, trans. E. Jephcott (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 68–91.
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© 2008 Peter Robinson
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Robinson, P. (2008). Collecting and Understanding Gay Life Stories. In: The Changing World of Gay Men. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230584310_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230584310_1
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