I recently reviewed Charles Upchurch’s Before Wilde: Sex Between Men in Britain’s Age of Reform. In the period roughly spanning the first three quarters of the nineteenth century Upchurch has uncovered a range of voices discussing male same-sex sexuality. In the press, courts, letters, and other documents he finds an active discourse in this period largely overlooked by historians who have favoured  the earlier subculture of the “mollies,” or the later period of sexological discourse and scandalous trials like those of Oscar Wilde. Family relations, economic considerations, class and status, among others, Upchurch argues, inflect this discourse.

I enjoyed the book. I learned a lot. It certainly didn’t radically reposition the historiography, but it responded to gaps in the literature with solid evidence and exhaustive archival research. By all measures of historical scholarship, I believe, it is a good, solid book, one which Upchurch can be deservedly proud.

Then I read other reviews online.

I found others who hail it as a masterpiece of profound merit that illuminates the truth of history that has been occluded by dangerous queer theorists like Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. Larry Kramer, celebrated playwright and gay-rights activist, offered effusive praise of the book in his Huffington Post review that sums up this distinction:

This is a very important book. It may even be a historic book, one with which gay history can arm itself with more sufficient factual veracity as to start vanquishing at last the devil known as queer studies. Queer studies is that stuff that is taught in place of gay history and which elevates theory over facts because its practitioners, having been unsuccessful in uncovering enough of the hard stuff, are haughtily trying to make do.

He goes on to malign,

…Foucaultian and Butlerian (to name but two) nightmares with the obtuse vocabularies they invented and demanded be utilized to pierce their dark inchoate spectacles of a world of their own imaginings.

Kramer, and others, who demand the “hard stuff” of history—just the facts ma’am—are drawn to Upchurch’s solid base of social history. His work gives voice to the excluded, reclaims untold stories, highlights the role of minority subjects in greater narratives of politics and the state. For many outside the academy, this is what should be the stuff of history

But if Kramer is anything to go by, then, even educated, informed, and engaged individuals aren’t actually getting the distinction between history and other related fields upon which we may build our work. Kramer wants history, and maligns Philosophy, English, Sociology, and Interdisciplinary Studies for not being History. But the history he wants is social history, and a relatively narrow version of social history at that. To be fair, Upchurch does offer a more complex and sophisticated discussion that goes beyond mere politics of visibility.

These issues bring up hard questions for us as practitioners of history. I struggle with my love of history and my dedication to this craft. I want to write sophisticated, rigorous, intellectually powerful works of scholarship. But I also want them to be read and valued by more than a handful of like-minded colleagues. I value social history’s relevance and appeal to wider audiences, but I also feel that so many of us have gone further than what social history alone offers.

How do we respond to well-intentioned, but potentially disruptive, individuals like Kramer, who love history, but fear the history they don’t understand? Who want history, but don’t quite know what it is anymore? How do we tell our advocates that we’ve changed, that we are everything they value, but more?

But I’m concerned at the messages in the ad, and wonder exactly which market McDonald’s is seeking.

Response to the ad on the blogosphere seems positive. Brand Fabulousness thinks it’s “great” and wishes “they’d run it here in English.” Queerty suggests a similar sentiment by juxtaposing the ad against another English ad employing Shrek to hawk  the Aero McFlurry – no social content in that one! Tim McElravy over at Carnal Nation is a bit more cynical with his comment “McDonald’s Loves Your Gay Son”:

When not trying to entice you with its menu options, McDonald’s advertising has often tried to convince you that the fast-food restaurant is an integral part of your everyday life—a happy place with happy meals for happy people. With the tagline “Come as you are” (“Venez comme vous êtes”), a new ad campaign in France makes those familiar booths the stage for touching, personal moments, tender as a Chicken McNugget.

It’s great that a mainstream commercial is contributing to public dialogue about queer youth. It’s an issue that needs telling, and one largely overlooked. So, kudos for that.

But there’s a number of issues I take with this ad:

The suggestion that McDonald’s will love you and welcome you, even when your parents might not, is a troubling one. This transfer of emotional investment to a corporate body is so troubling, especially when that corporation’s first priority is certainly NOT to the social and personal well-being of the customers it serves.

But even beyond what it says to queer youth, I question whether the ad is even talking to queer youth. It’s disingenuous at best!

Queer youth are only a fractional market compared to McDonald’s larger international consumer base. Young French gays and lesbians are not going to change the bottom line for this company. I don’t even know if older gays and lesbians, like some of the bloggers above, would have any real impact by buying an extra big mac now and again.

Instead, the ad seems pretty strongly directed at another youth market. Gen Y, that demographic cohort of young consumers who followed Gen X are now the target for marketers seeking their interest in leisure, their disposable income, and their access to their baby boomer parent’s wallets.

Gen Y is also characterized as more socially conscious and activist in their buying habits. They disdain large corporations who put profits over people, and instead look to support those who at least appear to be concerned with social issues. And for many Gen Y consumers, increasingly growing up around, and friends with, queer youth, sexuality and youth issues are another important social concern. McDonald’s has hit on that concern.

So, whatever the message in the ad that might be directed at boys with crushes on other boys, the bigger message goes to their school chums: “Eat a Big Mac, because we care about the things you do.”

Antony Grey

On April 30th, Antony Grey, a founder of the UK movement for gay equality and civil rights died in London at the age of 82.

Beginning in the 1950s, Grey was instrumental in the movement for homosexual legal reform at a time when any homosexual act between men was a criminal offence punishable by up to two years in prison. As the Secretary of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, he played a fundamental role in lobbying for legislation that partially decriminalized male homosexuality in 1967.

Despite his decades of work on behalf of homosexual equality, Grey remained largely unknown outside of activist and historical circles. And even among some of these he has been unfairly branded as too conservative, a compromiser who gave away too much for the Sexual Offences Bill that was finally passed.

Peter Tatchell, a founder of OutRage!, remembers:

When he first attended Gay Liberation Front meetings in the early 1970s he was often treated quite shabbily. I was involved in GLF and remember some radical firebrands unfairly branding him as an “Uncle Tom”. In fact, he was much more radical than his critics claimed. He was a supportive of GLF and later of OutRage!

I only had limited contact with Antony Grey via email in his final years as I was completing my PhD dissertation. And while our correspondence wasn’t always easy, I regret that I’ll never be able to interview Grey on his life and work.

Fortunately, he leaves behind his papers, deposited with the Hall-Carpenter Collection at the London School of Economics, and several books, including Quest For Justice, which recounts his experiences with the HLRS and work for legal reform.

See Grey’s obituary in the Times.

Will Kevin change Riverdale High?

No, Veronica and Betty haven’t finally acknowledged their Lady Love. And Archie and Jughead didn’t find that kind of solace in each another. But a new character has joined the crew at Riverdale High. Archie Comics announced the introduction of Kevin Keller, the first openly gay character in Riverdale this fall.

According to the Archie Comics release:

Kevin Keller is the new hunk in town and Veronica just has to have him. After Kevin defeats Jughead in a burger eating contest at Pop’s Chocklit Shoppe, she desperately latches onto him. Mayhem and hilarity ensue as Kevin desperately attempts to let Veronica down easy and her flirtations only become increasingly persistent.

Archie Comics Co-CEO, Jon Goldwater calls the introduction of Kevin “keeping the world of Archie Comics current and inclusive.” These are good words, and good deeds, but the company’s online release also indicates that Kevin’s character “is part of the commitment to keep Archie properties reflective of the current world of teens and teen media.” This gets more at the reality of 60+ year-old comic book seeking to remain relevant as the lives and experiences of youth change.

Douglas Wolk at Salon.com put gay comic Kevin into some historical perspective:

Kevin Keller, it’s worth noting, isn’t the first openly gay character in American comic books by a very long shot — he’s just the first character to say “I’m gay” on a panel in an Archie comic book. In superhero comics, it’s old news (and in art comics, it’s very, very old news).

Hilarity Ensues?

In the end, a comic like Archie, directed predominantly at a youth market (unlike other comics and graphic novels directed more obviously at adults) will contribute to an overall sense of normalcy around homosexuality, rather than toleration, a problematic concept at best. But I worry too that the “mayhem and hilarity” that ensue in Riverdale upon Kevin’s arrival and Veronica’s misdirected interest will also serve to reinforce the idea of gay men as obstacles who thwart female desire. Nonetheless, any discussion of homosexuality among youth will help form more aware adults.

Currently, the large concrete memorial includes a window through which visitors can watch a looped film of two men kissing. Plans to replace the film with another loop of women kissing has drawn the ire of some historians.

The German English-language newspaper The Local reports:

…Alexander Zinn, a board member of the foundation that maintains the former Nazi concentration camps near Berlin, said such a move would distort history as there were no known Holocaust victims targeted for being lesbian.

“Historical truth must remain the focus,” Zinn told AFP.

He has banded together with other Holocaust experts and fired off a letter of protest to Culture Minister Michael Neumann and Berlin’s openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit.

There are several issues here: Who exactly were identified and victimized by the Nazis? How were lesbians targeted by the Third Reich? Is the purpose of the memorial only to recognize the issues of the past, or to make a statement about the presnt built upon it?

It is hard to believe Alexander Zinn’s sweeping and absolute statement that there were NO lesbian victims of the Third Reich. But his concerns do speak to what the purpose of the memorial should be.

Change.org responds:

The point of including lesbians in a Holocaust memorial exhibit is to draw the links between continued prejudice against lesbian populations in our own society, and the violent repression and social cleansing of the Nazis.

It is a sad thing if memorials to the past become, like the victims they honour, dead things themselves with little contemporary relevance or comment about present conditions. In this case, balancing the past and the present, however, remains mired in the politics of memory as well as contemporary gender and sexual politics that consistently downplay lesbian histories and experiences.

LGBT History Month

February is LGBT History Month in the UK, which focuses attention on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans issues in the present, and also the experiences of queer Britons in the past. This yearly program to promote diversity and LGBT histories reminds us just how rich queer history actually is. But it is still taken as a truism by many that the lives of gay men and lesbians remain absent in the archive, that their stories are “hidden from history.” While it is true that the stories of many gay men and lesbians cannot be found in the traditional archive, we are nonetheless discovering their footprints across the historical record.

Traditional archives have, in fact, been at the forefront of this work in the UK. The National Archives has actively participated in identifying LGBT sources across its collection. Together with the London Metropolitan Archives it is also creating guides to better access these histories in other collections. A number of specialist archives also record the histories of political action, legal reform, and campaigning; women’s and lesbian histories; as well as newspaper and media coverage of homosexuality in the twentieth century. But, even beyond these, researchers of queer history have at their disposal so much more.

As Jean Smith recently reminded us in a  History Compass posting, we need to look outside the traditional archive for fuller and richer histories of the past. Scholars of queer history in Britain are fortunate to have access to an enormous range of oral history collections, national survey testimony, and other repositories of gay and lesbian history. And in my own research, I have discovered film archives, theater collections, local archives, and personal collections teeming with possibilities after a little digging.

I write this post because I was almost dissuaded from undertaking dissertation research in queer history. This was not because of homophobia or reduced funding on account of my subject. I began graduate school believing, like many, that queer histories were largely marginal, inaccessible, and poorly recorded in the archive.  But after arriving in the UK, exploring the archives, and jettisoning the entire PhD project I had initially proposed and the prospectus my committee had authorized (after many sleepless nights), I was able to embark upon the project I was passionate about and which became my dissertation. I had thought that an LGBT history project was not viable as a dissertation. I was wrong. And I hope that programs like LGBT History Month will remind other junior scholars of the range of research possibilities that are available to us, and also of the innumerable histories remaining in the archive but still untold.

Recent events at the American Historical Association’s annual conference in San Diego have raised questions about how we as historians consider homosexuality and LGBTQ issues, both in our own research and teaching as well as the professional as a whole. At the AHA, queer scholars, scholars of sexuality, allies, and other supporters expressed concerns about events taking place at the Manchester Grand Hyatt because of its association with Douglas Manchester, a prominent supporter of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California. Many observed a boycott of the hotel, finding accommodation elsewhere and avoiding panels at the Hyatt. Others participated in mini-conference sessions specifically addressing LGBTQ issues and histories.

Iowa Pro-Gay Marriage Rally

This interest in contemporary gay and lesbian issues at our national conference also forces us to consider how we, as historians, address gay and lesbian histories on a smaller scale in our own work. After all, it is in the university with our students where many of us will have the greatest impact. This is not to say that we as historians should make it our mission to teach a particular politics in the classroom. Our students come from a wide variety of backgrounds, faiths, and political positions. We can respect these perspectives, and the positions of our students, even as we seek to explore questions of contemporary relevance that might be fraught with personal passions and politics.

At one AHA mini-conference session on Proposition 8, Jennifer Manion (Connecticut College) evaluated historians’ engagement with LGBTQ lives and histories. Even as queer history has grown as a subfield in the last two decades, and an increasing number of dissertations explore gay and lesbian questions, too often professors’ treatment of LGBTQ history is little more than neglect. Few textbooks incorporate more than a couple paragraphs on gay and lesbian lives. Arguably, for many professors, fitting queer topics into already full syllabi means dropping another subject in favor of what many colleagues, chairs, and tenure committees might see as only a relatively small, marginalized group. But, argues Manion, even ongoing interest in a few important or successful books like George Chauncey’s Gay New York has amounted to little more than tokenism, rather than a genuine reconceptualization of what and how we teach.

Which brings us back to the first question: Why teach queer history? Very often, history is in fact the study of the present. Our research and publications can inform heated questions that society must still deal with. Is this not also the case with same-sex marriage? And is it not incumbent upon us to include gay and lesbian histories in our courses, syllabi, and overall department catalogues? Opposition to issues like gay marriage might be based on personal values, faith, and other perspectives. It is not our job to “correct” these positions. But, opposition can also be based on false histories, lack of knowledge, and ahistorical arguments that deny the past. A reconceptualization of our teaching strategies that incorporates gay and lesbian histories into courses as part of the diversity of our nations and communities, rather than as a theme week or small graduate seminar, necessarily promotes understanding and sensitivity to difference in the past, and perhaps the present too.

For the AHA’s response see:

http://www.historians.org/press/2009_01_05_2010MeetingResolution.cfm

http://www.historians.org/members/emails/2009/September/SanDiegoStatement.cfm

For other responses to the AHA and the Hyatt boycott see:

http://tenured-radical.blogspot.com/2009/11/status-of-american-historical.html

http://www.historiann.com/2010/01/09/historiann-exclusive-classy-claude-at-the-aha-in-san-diego/

http://tenured-radical.blogspot.com/2010/01/guest-post-aha-blew-it.htmlOut in the Academy: Why Teach Queer History?