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There is something of a paradox in the discussion of sex between men in Britain in the nineteenth century. For generations it was thought to have been unspeakable and unspoken-about in this period, and the discussion of it is almost entirely absent from nineteenth-century diaries, novels, parliamentary papers and other sources. Yet for most of the nineteenth century, sex between men was regularly discussed in the mainstream newspapers, primarily through articles about court cases ranging in length from one paragraph to multiple columns of text. These
The operation of the British model of imperialism was never consistent, seldom coherent, and far from comprehensive. Purity campaigns, controversies about the age of consent, the regulation of prostitution and passage and repeal of contagious diseases laws, as well as a new legislative awareness of homosexuality, were all part of the sexual currency of the late Victorian age. Colonial governments, institutions and companies recognised that in many ways the effective operation of the Empire depended upon sexual arrangements. They devised elaborate systems of sexual governance, but also devoted disproportionate energy to marking and policing the sexual margins. This book not only investigates controversies surrounding prostitution, homosexuality and the age of consent in the British Empire, but also revolutionises people's notions about the importance of sex as a nexus of imperial power relations. The derivative hypothesis, which reads colonial sexuality politics as something England did or gave to its colonies, is illustrated and made explicit by the
to bury them with the barest of mentions, leaving them as a hidden subtext, an obvious and suggestive silence. A link might be made between this awkward silence in the ‘Maiden Tribute’ and new prohibitions against sex between male persons, which were included in the Criminal Law Amendment Act (1885). 15 Arguably Stead had helped place sex between men on the political agenda, if out of the reach of open debate. And there it remained. Those who spoke out against the new law tended to do so indirectly. The amendment had passed
convicts, while a quarter of them were free immigrants, with roughly another quarter freed ex-convicts and the rest native-born Australians. 44 Notoriously few sex offences of any kind came to court in early Australia, least of all the sodomy ones. All historians are agreed, however, that sex between men flourished in the convict settlements, even if it did not leave much definite evidence. 45 Indeed, one
anxiety among policy-makers and the media alike. Injecting drug use before and during incarceration, sex between men in prison, violence among inmates and towards staff, overcrowding and bad hygiene, and the poor general health of many of those behind bars were all highlighted as factors potentially contributing to the rapid spread of disease. 2 This, coupled with concern about the provision of adequate
government to seriously consider changing the age. 10 By contrast, Victorian legislation on sex between men has gradually given way, since the 1960s, to something more tolerant. In England, the provisions of the Labouchere Amendment remained in place for over 80 years, until 1967 when sex between men was partially decriminalised, subject to a higher age of consent (21) than applied to heterosexual sex (16); it took another 34 years and 2 major interventions through the European Court of Human Rights for the homosexual and heterosexual
foreseeable future in this, one of the richest seams of recent modern British historiography. Charles Upchurch begins the collection with a topic of concern to all the authors: the effective interrogation of archival sources in pursuit of British queer history. In previous studies of the nature and frequency of the discussion of sex between men in leading London newspapers between 1820 and 1870, Upchurch highlighted the pros and cons of full-text electronic searches of books, periodicals and government documents. 18 Although such searches allowed historians to
partying. This underpinned their sense of what was particular about the spirit of their queer city from the 1980s onwards. As we’ve seen for Brighton, lesbians and gay men started to work together again in anti-Clause 28 and AIDS activism in the 1980s and early 1990s. Straight allies also stepped up in wider ripples of support and conviviality to make common cause. The new treatments for HIV/AIDS and the lowering of the age of consent for sex between men helped to create a more expansive feeling among LGBTQ people from the
Wildeblood and Pitt-Rivers faced eighteen months. Montagu’s dignified pleas for leniency and the subsequent pressure applied by the Church of England and the Hardwicke Society helped to persuade Maxwell-Fyfe that a committee should be established to discuss whether a change in the law was needed. The Church of England was particularly active in calling for change. In 1954 its Moral Welfare Council published The Problem of Homosexuality: An Interim Report which argued that although sex between men was a sin, so were adultery and fornication, yet these activities were not
were in laws that had an impact on LGBTQ people or cultural shifts which fluctuated between tolerance and homophobia. Lesbians and gay men were gaining a voice in mainstream media from the 1960s on national TV programmes such as This Week (1964 and 1965), aired in the context of debates about decriminalizing sex between men. 11 Soon after the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, countercultural and new left politics helped to generate the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the longer-lasting Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM), both of which