A few landmarks in the history of gay
Rootes Corporation (UK) advertisement for the Hillman Minx, 1955. "Go gay" was an advertising slogan and not an editorial imperative; at this time, reflecting the early practice of newspapers, advertising was carried on the covers of magazines. It was not until the 1960s the relationship between cover photography and the news-stand sales of magazines became better understood.
There’s a widespread perception that gay shifted
meaning from describing happy folk or events to a chauvinistic assertion of group
identity as an overtly political act dating from the late 1960s. The specific use actually dates from the
1920s, the years immediately after the First World War when first it appeared
as an adjective. It was used thus by
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) in Miss Furr & Miss
Skeene (1922), becoming widespread in certain circles in US cities by the
late 1930s. Academic literature picked
this up and reports of gay as slang
began to be cited in psychological journals in the late 1940s. Later, archivists found the term gay cat existed as early as 1893 among
itinerants in north-east American cities and the use clearly persisted,
attested to in Erskine's 1933 dictionary of Underworld
& Prison Slang. Nothing is known about the author of this work and the name N. Erskine may be a pseudonym, one assumption being he had served time in prison. However, not for decades would, in most of the English-speaking word, shift in predominant meaning from "happy; joyful".
Ford
(UK) advertisement for the Cortina (1962-1982), 1963.
The
letters on the license plate (HRT) attracted some wry comment when this image
began circulating on the web but HRT (Hormone replacement therapy) refers to a
class or regimes administered to women to treat the symptoms of menopause; the
companion treatments in matters associated with gender being MHT (Masculinizing
hormone therapy) and FHT (Feminizing hormone therapy). As this example indicates, in 1963 the word “gay”
was, in general use, still most used as a synonym of “happy; joyful”. Nor would “HRT” have bothered the advertising
agency because although as early as the late nineteenth century, research was
being undertaken into using ovarian extracts to treat menopausal symptoms and
the term “Hormone replacement therapy: had appeared in the medical literature
in 1945, it wasn’t until the late 1960s the initializm began with any frequency
to appear in such publications and not for two decades did it come into common academic
use. By the 1970s, manufacturers had of
course ceased suggesting their cars were associated with gayness and because late
in the century “HRT” had entered general use, a license plate including “HRT”
probably also would have been avoided.
Lesbians
(some in sensible shoes, some not) in Le
Monocle nightclub, Paris, 1932, one of a series of “authorized” images
taken by Brassaï (professional name of Hungarian–French photographer &
writer Gyula Halász, 1899–1984).
An
institution created as a dedicated space for lesbians, Le Monocle opened in
1926 and operated continuously until the occupation of France in 1940. As might be imagined, the Nazis did not
tolerate such places and among their first acts upon taking power in Germany in 1933 had been a swift crackdown on Berlin's thriving club scene for homosexual men, a milieu described vividly in the writings of Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986).
Within
the community, those “in the linguistic know” certainly made use of “gay” in
the modern sense well before the 1960s.
The troubled English mathematician Dr Alan Turing (1912–1954) spent time
in the US (taking his PhD at Princeton University (1936-1938)) and it may have
been there he, by some path, became acquainted with the re-purposing. Whether it was part of his general speech (at
least is some circles) isn’t recorded but in 1951 he wrote a “short story”
(three pages of which still exist) in which appeared: “Now that his paper was finished he might
justifiably consider that he had earned another gay man, and he knew where he
might find one who might be suitable.” There is though little to suggest that in the
early post-war years “gay” in that sense was widely used outside the US with “homosexual”
still the prevalent term although it seems between gay man, it wasn’t uncommon
for them to reclaim “queer”, then otherwise a gay slur.
Admiring glance: Lindsay Lohan (right) during her "L" phase with former special friend Samantha Ronson (left).
It wasn’t gay’s first fluidity in meaning; for
centuries it’d been used in reference to various flavors of sexual conduct,
ranging from female prostitutes to womanizing(!) men, all while the traditional
use continued in parallel. The most
recent shift, essentially an appropriation for political purposes, ended the
duality and has become so entrenched this may be final. This final shift began in the late 1960s and
quickly won the linguistic battle, use of gay in the new sense being common,
though not universal, throughout the English-speaking world within a decade. Other things changed too, some quickly, some
not. When in 1974 the American Psychiatric Association (APA) issued the seventh printing of second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II (1968)), they (sort of) de-listed homosexuality as a mental disorder although it wasn't wholly removed the publication of until the DSM-III in 1980; legislative changes unfolded over many decades. One practical effect of removing homosexuality from the DSM's list of mental disorders was that overnight, millions instantly were "cured", a achievement which usually would gain someone the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Flying the rainbow flag: Members of Gay Men Fighting AIDS with their pink SPG, London for Pride Parade, 24 June 1995.
In service with both the British and Indian armies variously between 1965-2016, Vickers built 234 of the FV433 "Abbot" 105 mm Self-Propelled Gun (SPG) Field Artillery vehicles, using the existing FV430 platform with the addition of a fully-rotating turret. The factory project code (and informal military designation) was “Abbot”, in the World War II (1939-1945) British tradition of using ecclesiastical titles for self-propelled artillery (following the Bishop, Deacon & Sexton). The official model name was “L109” but to avoid confusion with the US-built 155 mm “M109” howitzer, 144 of which also entered British Army service in 1965, this rarely was used. While the sight of a cluster of gay men atop a pink SPG might have frightened a few, the thought of one in the hands of a pack of lesbians truly is terrifying.
LGBTQQIAAOP: The Glossary: The generally accepted oral shorthand used to be “LGBT” but any truncation can suggest issues around the politics of hierarchy and exclusion. The modern practice seems to be to use variations of “LGBTQI plus” (often written as LGBTQI+).
L: Lesbian: Women attracted only to women.
G: Gay: Men attracted only to men (historically gay can used to describe homosexual men and women but modern convention is still to use lesbian for women although many lesbians self-describe as gay).
B: Bisexual: A person attracted to both sexes.
T:Transgendered: A person who has or is transitioning to the opposite sex, as they were born as the wrong sex, in the wrong body. The most obvious category to illustrate sex and gender are not synonymous.
Q: Queer: A non-heterosexual person who prefers to call themselves queer. Often used by those in the queer art movement, especially by those who maintain there is a distinct queer aesthetic. Queer used to be a term of disparagement directed at certain non-heterosexuals but (like slut in another context), became a word claimed and re-purposed.
Q: Questioning: Someone questioning their sexual orientation, either unsure of which gender to which they’re attracted or not yet ready to commit.
I: Intersex: Anyone anywhere on the spectrum which used to be defined by the term hermaphrodite. Intersex is now the accepted term and hermaphrodite should be used only where necessary in the technical language of medicine.
A: Asexual: A person not sexually attracted to anyone or anything (sometimes styled as aromantic).
A: Allies: A straight person who accepts and supports those anywhere in the LGBTQQIAAOP range(s).
O: Objectum: A person attracted to an inanimate object. Curiously, despite being the only category which, by definition, can't harm another, objectum is now the most controversial entry on the spectrum.
P: Pansexual: A person attracted to a person because of their personality; sex and gender are both irrelevant.
Crown
Prince Wilhelm (1882-1951) of the German Empire (the so-called “Second Reich”,
1871-1918), on the Western Front, inspecting troops, circa 1915.
In popular culture, there definitely exists a
number of tropes and clichés which are use as signifiers of “gayness” including
“gay poses”. A “pose” is a static thing
but if a image in snapped while and individual is moving, what’s captured can
look like the stereotypical stance of someone gay. As far as is known, Crown Prince Wilhelm definitely
was not gay.
One amusing
footnote in the history of matters LGBTQQIAAOP is the persistent urban myth Queen
Victoria (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901) prevailed on the government not
to include women under the provisions of “Gross
Indecency contrary to Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885”
because she didn’t believe there was anyone lesbionic in the world (or at least
the British world). Unfortunately, the tale almost certainly is apocryphal and no evidence has ever emerged suggesting the government even contemplated including lesbians in the legislation. Anyway, Victoria clearly had no illusions men were capable of such things and without objection granted royal ascent to an act with the new phrase “Gross Indecency” (which covered the whole
vista of “unnatural caresses”) and it was under this law the the Irish writer Oscar
Wilde (1854–1900) was tried and convicted, receiving a sentence of two years.
Lord Alfred
"Bosie" Douglas (1870–1945, left) and Oscar Wilde (1854–1900, right)
in sepia, London, 1893.
It seems
only to have been in the late 1960s the “Queen
Victoria didn’t believe lesbians existed” story appeared in print when it
was reported as “campus
student lore” and it first attracted wide publicity when, during a lesbian
rights demonstration in Wellington, New Zealand in 1977, protestors draped a
statue of Victoria with a banner reading: “Lesbians Are Everywhere”. No evidence (parliamentary records,
government papers, royal correspondence etc) has ever emerged to suggest she
was ever consulted about the matter or attempted to “warn, counsel or advise” and that’s in accordance with British
constitutional law in which the monarch possesses no “line-item power of veto”; no king or queen had since the early
eighteenth century withheld royal assent to a act. While it was true Victoria did on occasion try
to influence things (by threatening to abdicate), her interest was piqued by
great matters of state or foreign affairs, not the details of criminal law,
especially if something she’d likely have thought distasteful. Historians have concluded lesbians were not included
in the 1885 act because male politicians and churchmen (1) believed women were unlikely
to engage in such acts and (2) if they did it didn’t really matter because it
was just something women did. Victorian
legislators were more anxious about the threat of male homosexuality to
patriarchal structures, military, and public schools. However, as the diaries of many middle and upper-class chaps in twentieth century Britain attest, “unnatural caresses” between men remained far from uncommon.
The Illustrated Police News reports the
final Wilde trial, 4 May 1895.
There were
though many judges and politicians who, drawing on classical literature and
other sources, were aware of the long history of female same-sex activity but
it does seem to have been thought an “upper class” thing of the drawing room
set and thus less of a concern to the law, the argument being criminalising
lesbianism would risk drawing attention to it and encouraging it among those “not of the better
classes”. However, in 1921
the House of Commons did vote to add women to the act because of the moral
panic around the so-called “Black Book”,
compiled during World War I (1914-1918) by the German espionage service which
listed the names of thousands of “sexual perverts” (men and women). Fearing the subjects may be subject to
blackmail and thus a threat to national security the government decided to discourage
such acts but the House of Lords rejected the bill, deciding that to
acknowledge sapphism in statute was at some level to legitimize it in cultural
discourse; their lordships thought it might give women ideas, never something
of which men much approve.
The wheel: Tread-wheel
and oakum-shed, City Prison, Holloway.
The “Gross
Indecency” provision was called the Labouchère Amendment because it was
introduced (apparently as an afterthought) by Liberal Party MP Henry Labouchère
(1831–1912) during the late stages of debate on the Criminal Law Amendment Act
1885. As originally envisaged, the act primarily
was concerned with raising the age of consent (from 13 to 16) and tackling
child prostitution with Mr Labouchère adding his clause as a proposed amendment
during the second reading (the substantive debate) after agreement mostly had been
reached. The wording of Labouchère’s amendment
was clever in that it was an early example of “fuzzy law”, a vague, catch-all
provision which, by not descending to specifics allowed to state to prosecute any
conduct between men much beyond a handshake; to the many moralists in the
state, it was delightfully vague with the additional attraction of not demanding as much evidence to secure a conviction. What Dr Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010 & 2013) might have liked to describe as “terminological
exactitude” had, by the mid-nineteenth century, become an impediment to successful prosecutions because even though the wording in the statute of 1553 (dating from the reign Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547) had in 1861 been updated from “the detestable and abominable vice of buggery” to “the abominable crime of buggery”, the operative word remained “buggery” and thus a high standard was imposed on the evidential onus of proof (the responsibility of the prosecution which needed, beyond reasonable doubt, to prove the act (anal penetration) had occurred, when, where and between the two male persons alleged). As late as 1861, a conviction could attract the death penalty and this had come to be regarded as too onerous a punishment for what was often a consensual act so, with little prospect of success, prosecutions had become rare. By comparison, judges and juries could more easily be persuaded a “gross indecency” had been committed and, with capital punishment no longer available, juries in particular were more amenable.
Truth,
10 February, 1937.
Henry
Labouchère was described as “a paradoxical Victorian figure: a radical in some
respects, yet profoundly reactionary in others, a defender of democracy and free
speech yet the man who authored the repressive law used to persecute Oscar Wilde.” That is however a modern view and on matters
of personal sexual morality, the “small l liberals” of the nineteenth century probably
tended to be as conservative as many of the era. Also, there’s nothing novel about individuals
holding apparently disparate views, Arthur Calwell (1896-1973; Australian
Labor Party (ALP) leader of the opposition 1960-1967) in his memoir (Be Just and Fear Not (1972)) writing of
one colleague: “…he
was left-wing on some issues and right-wing on others, just as many men are.” It's doubtful old Arthur Calwell ever thought to discuss politics with a woman but his point was well-made and Labouchère was in this vein, backing causes
such as republicanism, extending the franchise, Irish Home Rule, opposition to
the monarchy’s lavish spending, and anti-imperialism while being deeply
prejudiced in other fields: he was anti-Semitic, homophobic and a puritanical moralist
who helped entrench one of the harshest anti-homosexual laws in modern Europe. He may also have had a financial interest,
being the founder and editor of the popular weekly newspaper Truth, which
specialised in muckraking exposés of corruption, quackery and hypocrisy. The Truth often featured articles concerned
with sexual “immorality” and giving the police scope to “scoop up” men
performing “gross
indecencies” upon each other would have provided much juicy content.
