John Ibson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226656083
- eISBN:
- 9780226656250
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226656250.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
Before the movement commonly described as “gay liberation” was well under way, queer life in the United States is sometimes thought to have been a veritable prison of shame, repression, illegality, ...
More
Before the movement commonly described as “gay liberation” was well under way, queer life in the United States is sometimes thought to have been a veritable prison of shame, repression, illegality, and invisibility. Indeed during the 1950s, on the very eve of the “liberation,” the United States experienced an especially harsh, widespread outbreak of homophobia—with countless arrests, lost jobs, even lost lives, in a fierce cultural orgy of mandatory heterosexuality. Focusing on several American males who lived before the “liberation,” in stories of agency as well as agony, of fulfillment and pleasure as well as thwarted desire and self-loathing, Men without Maps freshly explores the actual quality of life for those “of the generation before Stonewall” who yearned for and sometimes experienced sexual involvements with other men. A few of the men studied are moderately well known today, but most are not. The involvements of some with other men were examples of long-lasting gay domesticity, while the encounters that others had were fleeting. Relying mostly on archival material--such as letters, memoirs, and snapshots--previously unused by a scholar, the book first explores those midcentury males, more numerous than usually realized, who lived as part of a male couple; it then examines experiences of solitary queer men who found coupling to be either unappealing or simply unattainable. Men without Maps joins John Ibson’s acclaimed previous books, Picturing Men and The Mourning After, to form a trilogy of studies, from varying angles, of male relationships in modern American society.Less
Before the movement commonly described as “gay liberation” was well under way, queer life in the United States is sometimes thought to have been a veritable prison of shame, repression, illegality, and invisibility. Indeed during the 1950s, on the very eve of the “liberation,” the United States experienced an especially harsh, widespread outbreak of homophobia—with countless arrests, lost jobs, even lost lives, in a fierce cultural orgy of mandatory heterosexuality. Focusing on several American males who lived before the “liberation,” in stories of agency as well as agony, of fulfillment and pleasure as well as thwarted desire and self-loathing, Men without Maps freshly explores the actual quality of life for those “of the generation before Stonewall” who yearned for and sometimes experienced sexual involvements with other men. A few of the men studied are moderately well known today, but most are not. The involvements of some with other men were examples of long-lasting gay domesticity, while the encounters that others had were fleeting. Relying mostly on archival material--such as letters, memoirs, and snapshots--previously unused by a scholar, the book first explores those midcentury males, more numerous than usually realized, who lived as part of a male couple; it then examines experiences of solitary queer men who found coupling to be either unappealing or simply unattainable. Men without Maps joins John Ibson’s acclaimed previous books, Picturing Men and The Mourning After, to form a trilogy of studies, from varying angles, of male relationships in modern American society.
John Ibson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226656083
- eISBN:
- 9780226656250
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226656250.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
Part Two examines the experiences of several uncoupled queer men of the generation before Stonewall--assessing the nature, apparent reasons, particular pains and singular advantages of their living ...
More
Part Two examines the experiences of several uncoupled queer men of the generation before Stonewall--assessing the nature, apparent reasons, particular pains and singular advantages of their living lives without domestic companions. Apart from the important modernist photographer Minor White, the men of Part Two are not even moderately well known today, yet all have left behind revealing documents of their lives in correspondence, memoirs, and photographs, much of this material housed in either Cornell’s Human Sexuality Collection or the archives of San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society. These men include a chemist, a State Department official, a university clerk, an electrician, and a historian. Especially significant in Part Two is a longtime religion professor at Texas Christian University who left behind a vast collection of snapshots as well as many friends with fond memories of him, some of whom the author interviewed. With individuality, even a certain isolation from others, a common component of mainstream American masculinity, these solitary queer men not only illuminate certain features of gay male life in the generation before Stonewall, but also, more broadly, they exemplify certain problematic paradoxes inhering in the cultural recipes provided to most modern American males.Less
Part Two examines the experiences of several uncoupled queer men of the generation before Stonewall--assessing the nature, apparent reasons, particular pains and singular advantages of their living lives without domestic companions. Apart from the important modernist photographer Minor White, the men of Part Two are not even moderately well known today, yet all have left behind revealing documents of their lives in correspondence, memoirs, and photographs, much of this material housed in either Cornell’s Human Sexuality Collection or the archives of San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society. These men include a chemist, a State Department official, a university clerk, an electrician, and a historian. Especially significant in Part Two is a longtime religion professor at Texas Christian University who left behind a vast collection of snapshots as well as many friends with fond memories of him, some of whom the author interviewed. With individuality, even a certain isolation from others, a common component of mainstream American masculinity, these solitary queer men not only illuminate certain features of gay male life in the generation before Stonewall, but also, more broadly, they exemplify certain problematic paradoxes inhering in the cultural recipes provided to most modern American males.
Richard Hornsey
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816653140
- eISBN:
- 9781452946139
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816653140.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter explains how the urban machinations of London’s queer men were characterized as a malignant mode of spatial criminality. It discusses the tabloid moral panic regarding the metropolitan ...
More
This chapter explains how the urban machinations of London’s queer men were characterized as a malignant mode of spatial criminality. It discusses the tabloid moral panic regarding the metropolitan “male vice” in the early 1950s and traces the complex geographies by which queer male behavior was marked as a demonic social force. In May 1952, the weekly tabloid Sunday Pictorial began a three-part series of articles titled Evil Men that urged readers to break the “conspiracy of silence” surrounding urban vice, implying that “silence” is a factor that enabled the evil of homosexuality to spread. The chapter also reviews the 1951 British film The Lavender Hill Mob, which portrays a story on queer criminality.Less
This chapter explains how the urban machinations of London’s queer men were characterized as a malignant mode of spatial criminality. It discusses the tabloid moral panic regarding the metropolitan “male vice” in the early 1950s and traces the complex geographies by which queer male behavior was marked as a demonic social force. In May 1952, the weekly tabloid Sunday Pictorial began a three-part series of articles titled Evil Men that urged readers to break the “conspiracy of silence” surrounding urban vice, implying that “silence” is a factor that enabled the evil of homosexuality to spread. The chapter also reviews the 1951 British film The Lavender Hill Mob, which portrays a story on queer criminality.
Richard Hornsey
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816653140
- eISBN:
- 9781452946139
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816653140.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
As London emerged from the devastation of the Second World War, planners and policymakers sought to rebuild the city in ways that would reshape the behavior of its citizens as much as it would its ...
More
As London emerged from the devastation of the Second World War, planners and policymakers sought to rebuild the city in ways that would reshape the behavior of its citizens as much as it would its buildings and infrastructure—a program defined by a strong emphasis on civic order and conservative values of national community. One of the groups most significantly affected by this new, moralistic climate of reformation and renewal was queer men, whom the police, the media, and lawmakers targeted as an urgent urban problem by marking their lives and desires as criminal and deviant. This book examines how queer men legitimized, resisted, and reinvented this ambitious reconstruction program, which extended from the design of basic public spaces and municipal libraries to private living rooms and home decor. From their association with the urban stereotype of the spiv (slang for a young petty criminal who lived by his wits and shirked legitimate work) and vilification in the tabloids as perverts to the assimilated homosexuals within reformist psychology, the author details how these efforts to transform London fundamentally restructured the experiences and identities of gay men in the city and throughout the country.Less
As London emerged from the devastation of the Second World War, planners and policymakers sought to rebuild the city in ways that would reshape the behavior of its citizens as much as it would its buildings and infrastructure—a program defined by a strong emphasis on civic order and conservative values of national community. One of the groups most significantly affected by this new, moralistic climate of reformation and renewal was queer men, whom the police, the media, and lawmakers targeted as an urgent urban problem by marking their lives and desires as criminal and deviant. This book examines how queer men legitimized, resisted, and reinvented this ambitious reconstruction program, which extended from the design of basic public spaces and municipal libraries to private living rooms and home decor. From their association with the urban stereotype of the spiv (slang for a young petty criminal who lived by his wits and shirked legitimate work) and vilification in the tabloids as perverts to the assimilated homosexuals within reformist psychology, the author details how these efforts to transform London fundamentally restructured the experiences and identities of gay men in the city and throughout the country.
Richard Hornsey
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816653140
- eISBN:
- 9781452946139
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816653140.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This introductory chapter provides a background to Britain’s efforts in reorganizing everyday space and time within postwar London, focusing on the dominant projections of social order, and the ...
More
This introductory chapter provides a background to Britain’s efforts in reorganizing everyday space and time within postwar London, focusing on the dominant projections of social order, and the various ways in which male same-sex desire was demonized, defended, and negotiated in relief. It talks about the various forms of queer subjectivity and alternative modes of resistance that emerged during the early postwar decades, and describes cultural arguments about the dynamics of the metropolitan queer men. The chapter also gives account of the journalist Peter Wildeblood, one of the well-known queer men that publicly defended homosexuality.Less
This introductory chapter provides a background to Britain’s efforts in reorganizing everyday space and time within postwar London, focusing on the dominant projections of social order, and the various ways in which male same-sex desire was demonized, defended, and negotiated in relief. It talks about the various forms of queer subjectivity and alternative modes of resistance that emerged during the early postwar decades, and describes cultural arguments about the dynamics of the metropolitan queer men. The chapter also gives account of the journalist Peter Wildeblood, one of the well-known queer men that publicly defended homosexuality.
Richard Hornsey
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816653140
- eISBN:
- 9781452946139
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816653140.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter surveys how in the late 1950s certain queer men found new ways of orienting themselves within the metropolitan landscape. It focuses on the queer journalist and novelist Colin MacInnes ...
More
This chapter surveys how in the late 1950s certain queer men found new ways of orienting themselves within the metropolitan landscape. It focuses on the queer journalist and novelist Colin MacInnes and his works, such as City of Spades, Absolute Beginners, and Mr. Love and Justice, which expressed an increased engagement with metropolitan consumerism, expansive urban media, and proliferating forms of popular culture. The chapter also analyzes MacInnes’ writings about the urban youth culture, in which he voiced a developing form of queer sensibility that is accustomed to the shifting metropolitan landscapes of the later 1950s.Less
This chapter surveys how in the late 1950s certain queer men found new ways of orienting themselves within the metropolitan landscape. It focuses on the queer journalist and novelist Colin MacInnes and his works, such as City of Spades, Absolute Beginners, and Mr. Love and Justice, which expressed an increased engagement with metropolitan consumerism, expansive urban media, and proliferating forms of popular culture. The chapter also analyzes MacInnes’ writings about the urban youth culture, in which he voiced a developing form of queer sensibility that is accustomed to the shifting metropolitan landscapes of the later 1950s.
