Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Moments in Time: Growing up Queer in Post-War Scotland

  • Chapter
Queer Voices in Post-War Scotland

Part of the book series: Genders and Sexualities in History Series ((GSX))

  • 1250 Accesses

Abstract

Growing up within an environment where hostile and discrediting discourses of homosexuality operate can have a negative impact upon the self-concept of non-heterosexuals.1 In Scotland, during the first three quarters of the twentieth century social and institutional attitudes to homosexuality were largely discrediting; therefore, it is important to establish just what influence these discourses had on gay and bisexual men (GBM) during their formative years. Additionally, it is also relevant to examine how processes of identity formation in adolescence impact upon self-identity schemas among GBM in adulthood.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. For example see Sharon L. Nicols (1999) ‘Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Youth: Understanding Diversity and Promoting Tolerance in Schools’, The Elementary School Journal, 99, pp. 505–19

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Caitlan Ryan & Ian Rivers (2003) ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth: Victimization and its Correlates in the USA and UK’, Culture, Health and Sexuality, 5, pp. 103–19

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. K. Buston & G. Hart (2001) ‘Heterosexism and Homophobia in Scottish School Sex Education: Exploring the Nature of the Problem’, Journal of Adolescence, 24, pp. 95–109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Roger Davidson & Gayle Davis (2005) ‘“This Thorniest of Problems”: School Sex Education Policy in Scotland 1939–80’, Scottish Historical Review, 84, p. 224.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Roger Davidson (2009) ‘Purity and Pedagogy: The Alliance-Scottish Council and School Sex Education in Scotland, 1955–67’, in Lutz D. H. Sauerteig & Roger Davidson (eds) Shaping Sexual Knowledge: A Cultural History of Sex Education in Twentieth Century Europe (London; New York: Routledge), p. 93.

    Google Scholar 

  6. C. Unwin & J. Hood-Williams (eds) (1988) Child Psychotherapy, War, and the Normal Child: Selected Papers of Margaret Lowenfeld (London: Free Association Books), pp. 7–8.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Hugh Crichton Miller (1922) The New Psychology and the Teacher (New York: Thomas Seltzer), pp. 84–5.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Justin Bengry (2012) ‘Queer Profits: Homosexual Scandal and the Origins of Legal Reform in Britain’, in Heike Bauer & Matt Cook (eds) Queer 1950s: Rethinking Sexuality in the Post-War Years (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), p. 171.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Peter Wildeblood (1957) Against the Law (Harmondsworth: Penguin), p. 36.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Mary Renault (1953) The Charioteer (London: Longman).

    Google Scholar 

  11. Caroline Zilboorg (2001) The Masks of Mary Renault: A Literary Biography (Columbia; London: University of Missouri Press), p. 111.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Bruce Bawer (1993) A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society (New York; London: Simon & Schuster), p. 199.

    Google Scholar 

  13. John Hill (1977) ‘Towards a Scottish People’s Theatre’, Theatre Quarterly, 7, p. 69.

    Google Scholar 

  14. John Binnie (1990) ‘Unity Then and Now’, Gay Times, 141, p. 29.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Andrew Wyllie (2009) Sex on Stage: Gender and Sexuality in Post-War British Theatre (Bristol: Intellect Books), p. 85.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Anthony Slide (2011) Lost Gay Novels; A Reference Guide to Fifty Works from the First Half of the Twentieth Century (New York; Abingdon: Routledge), p. 120.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Howard J. Booth (2007) ‘Experience and Homosexuality in the Writing of Compton Mackenzie’, English Studies, 88, pp. 324–5.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Francis Wheen (1990) Tom Driberg: His Life and Indiscretions (London: Chatto & Windus), pp. 188–9.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Angus McLaren (2002) Sexual Blackmail: A Modern History (Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press), p. 231.

    Google Scholar 

  20. George Orwell (2000) A Patriot After All: 1940–41 (London: Secker & Warburg), p. 154.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Christopher Barker (2010) The Arms of the Infinite: Elizabeth Smart and George Barker (Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press), p. 183.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Emmanuel Cooper (1994) The Sexual Perspective: Homosexuality and Art in the Last 100 Years in the West (London; New York: Routledge), p. 177.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Christopher Whyte (1994) ‘“Now You See it, Now You Don’t”: The Love Poetry of Edwin Morgan’, The Glasgow Review, 2, available from http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/STELLA/COMET/glasgrev/issue2/whyte.htm#Title, accessed 21 August 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Edwin Morgan (2008) ‘1993 Lifestories: Edwin Morgan’ (b. 1920), in Bob Cant (ed.) Footsteps and Witnesses: Lesbian and Gay Lifestories from Scotland (Edinburgh: Word Power Books), p. 30.

    Google Scholar 

  25. University of Glasgow Special Collections, 4848/21, as quoted in James McGonigal (2012) Beyond the Last Dragon: A Life of Edwin Morgan (Dingwall: Sandstone Press), p. 143.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Emma Vickers argues that the ‘normal-acting homosexual’ posed a problem for regulatory bodies during World War II: Emma Vickers (2013) Queen and Country: Same-Sex Desire in the British Armed Forces, 1939–45 (Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press), pp. 44–5.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Laurie Essig (1990) Queer in Russia: A Story of Sex, Self and the Other (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), pp. 7–8.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Dan Healey (2001) Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press), p. 188.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  29. Harry Whyte (2013) ‘A Letter to Stalin, May 1934’, translated by Thomas Campbell in Yevgeniy Fiks, Moscow (New York: Ugly Duckling Presse), p. 76.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Dan Healey (2002) ‘Homosexual Existence and Existing Socialism: New Light on the Repression of Male Homosexuality in Stalin’s Russia’, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 8, p. 362.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Jim Fyrth (1993) ‘The Aid Spain Movement in Britain, 1936–39’, History Workshop, 35, p. 156.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Michael Davidson (1977) The World, The Flesh and Myself (London: Quartet Books), pp. 214–20.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Nigel West (2007) Historical Dictionary of World War II Intelligence (Lanham: Scarecrow Press), p. 247.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Glasgow, UK

    Jeffrey Meek

Authors
  1. Jeffrey Meek
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2015 Jeffrey Meek

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Meek, J. (2015). Moments in Time: Growing up Queer in Post-War Scotland. In: Queer Voices in Post-War Scotland. Genders and Sexualities in History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137444110_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137444110_4

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49552-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-44411-0

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation