HISTSEX ARCHIVES: June 2000
© Lesley Hall and list contributors
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 17:38:59 +1000
From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@history.usyd.edu.au>
Subject: Re: toilet paper
The first sentence in this email should read interwar not mid war.
Apologies,
Hera
Hera Cook wrote:
> Histsex:For historians of sexuality - http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
>
> Hi,
> British working-class people used cut/torn up sheets of newspaper in the mid-war
> period. Elizabeth Roberts has a good photograph of a toilet seat with newspaper
> squares in the background in 'A women's place: An oral history of working-class
> women, 1890-1940', 1984, p.133.
Hera Cook
History Department
MacCallum Building A17
University of Sydney
NSW 2006
Australia
Phone 61 2 9351 2862, Fax 61 2 9351 3918
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: toilet paper
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 11:02:37 +0100
Purpose-made flat packs of sheets of thin paper were common in British
toilets even in the 1970s. The near-universality of toilet rolls only began
in the 1980s I think (which is when the British also discovered the luxury
of central heating and we no longer froze when going to the toilet). I've
noted the use of torn-up newspaper at camp sites in Sweden and Norway only a
few years ago, though that may have been due to a deliberate rusticity.
American and Northern European travellers are often surprised to discover
that the kind of toilet facilities we are used to is by no means universal.
Having just returned from three weeks' camping in Italy, I was a bit
surprised to discover that in most of "the facilities", the toilets had no
seats. In most restaurants, museums, motorway service stations, etc., one
simply sat on the ceramic bowl without a seat. This isn't done for reasons
of economy, for many of the toilets in Florence and Rome are covered with
marble and very well appointed; it's just the national preference, and I see
no objection to it except for an initial shock of coldness.
In many places, and certainly in all the campsites we stayed at, "Turkish"
or "footprint" toilets were provided (as well as a few "Western" toilets):
low square basins with raised footprint pedestals on which one places one's
feet before squatting. In these, toilet paper is not often provided. There
is a water faucet with a hose attached, and one cleans oneself with one's
hand and the water. If paper is provided, it is generally just for the
purpose of drying oneself. Experienced travellers always carry a little pack
of toilet paper with them in their wallets or handbags. Confrontation with
one's first footprint toilet comes as a culture shock, but necessity usually
prevails. I understand that voiding oneself while squatting is more quick
and complete than can be done sitting on Western toilets, and thus is
healthier.
Footprint toilets are not a matter of penny-pinching, but simply the
preferred style of toilet in many Mediterranean countries. In many
restaurants in Greece and Turkey (and some in Spain), that is the only kind
of toilet provided. People in Hindi and Islamic cultures clean themselves
with the left hand, which is why it is exceedingly bad manners to use your
left hand when eating. In India most people (in towns as well as rural
areas) simply relieve themselves in fields and beside the road (and of
course no toilet paper is used). In a train trip from Agra to Delhi one
morning I was startled to see innumerable bare bottoms flash by the windows,
as the people performed their early morning duties in the fields. You should
never take a picnic out into the beautiful countryside in India, and that's
not just because of the presence of cow patties. In towns there are many
"pissing walls", be it the wall of a bridge or a building, the smell of
which is enough to knock one out. Public toilet facilities, as at the train
station, are pretty much undrained cesspits. The apparent lack of toilet
training in India, and the lack of good public facilities (except in tourist
hotels) may be due to the fact that this aspect of human behaviour is
beneath the consideration of everyone except for the caste of Untouchables.
At the opposite end of the scale, I was interested to note that in France
the motorway service stations usually provided bidets (in the men's toilets,
and presumably in the women's too). I also noticed that the French are less
uptight than the British and Americans about strict separation between male
and female toilets. At one station, the queue for the women's toilets got
rather long (as it always does), so the women starting coming into the men's
toilets to use the cubicles. The women were neither "assertive" nor
apologetic, merely practical, and there was no outrage from the men, merely
a polite exchange "You've come through the wrong door." "No, we haven't, we
need to use these." "Oh, okay." In French restaurants (even expensive ones)
it is fairly common for a women's area and a men's area to flank a communal
washing area, and for there to be no doors between separating these areas.
At one campsite we stayed at in Italy, the very large and very well
appointed toilet block was meant to be used by both men and women. The
toilets themselves were in cubicles, except for the urinals, which obviously
were provided for the men, but were visible to everyone and were right next
to the wide entrance to the block, which had no door. Again, this was
clearly not an economic measure, but part of a less puritan attitude towards
natural functions. Or at least part of the "back to nature" ideology of
campers.
--
Rictor Norton, London
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 14:52:46 EDT
Subject: Re: toilet paper
Hi Hera
Thanks for the pointers.Yes, the torn-up newspapers is something I've been
told about before. Too young to recall it 1st hand :) What I'm interested in
is the manufacture of a dedicated product, whether in rolls or sheets, rather
than the adaptation of other existing objects, like the newspaper or the use
of coconut husks in Papua New Guinea or running streams in the Atlas
mountains (all true!). The web site Lisa told me about has loo paper in
existence in China in the 1st century, but this may be remarkable for it
being paper rather than leaves or whatever was being used in the west at that
point. What is also emerging from this on-going inquiry is the cultural
variability of public toilets and the provision of loo paper in them. I have
heard today a priceless anecdote about Hanover in the 1950s where you could
ask for the paper only after you had 'performed' from a stern woman who kept
custody of it. Any other stories on offer? Or is this too far from the list
subject to be appropriate?
Chris White
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 13:26:04 -0700
From: Jack Kolb <kolb@ucla.edu>
Subject: Fwd: REV: Hart on Young, _King James_ and Herrup, _A House in
Gross
Thought this might be of interest to the group.
Jack Kolb
Dept. of English, UCLA
kolb@ucla.edu
>Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 20:53:13 -0400
>From: Richard Gorrie <rgorrie@uoguelph.ca>
>Subject: REV: Hart on Young, _King James_ and Herrup, _A House in Gross
>Sender: H-Net List for British and Irish History <H-ALBION@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
>To: H-ALBION@H-NET.MSU.EDU
>Reply-to: H-Net List for British and Irish History <H-ALBION@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
>
>Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 16:47:50 -0500
>From: Newton Key <cfnek@eiu.edu>
>
>H-NET BOOK REVIEW
>Published by H-Albion@h-net.msu.edu (June, 2000)
>
>Michael B. Young. _King James and the History of Homosexuality_.
>New York University Press, 2000. xi + 155 pp. Notes,
>bibliography, and index. $40.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8147-9693-1
>
>Cynthia Herrup. _A House in Gross Disorder: Sex, Law and the 2nd
>Earl of Castlehaven_. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New
>York, 1999, xvi + 154 pp. Appendices, (3) genealogical charts,
>notes, bibliography, and index. $25.00 (cloth), ISBN
>0-19-512518-5.
>
>Reviewed for H-Albion by James S. Hart
><James.S.Hart-1.Jr@OU.edu>, Department of History, University of
>Oklahoma
>
>Sex and Sexuality in Stuart England
>
>Both of these books offer important new perspectives on a topic
>not often discussed in conventional Stuart historiography: the
>nature of sexual behavior and its attendant social and political
>consequences. Michael Young's book sets out to complete two
>separate but related tasks. The first is to examine the matter
>of James I's homosexuality -- and to do so in the most direct
>and unambiguous way possible. This becomes, quite rightly, the
>centerpiece of the book. James' homosexuality had an enormous
>impact, first, in real political terms, as a source of on-going
>(and frequently destabilizing) factionalism and court intrigue,
>but also, and perhaps more importantly, as a source for raising
>public awareness of (and discussion about) homosexuality as a
>sexual and social phenomenon. The former dimension of the
>subject has, of course, been well-covered, at least on one
>level. Historians have rarely failed to acknowledge the King's
>reliance on his male favorites or to measure their impact on his
>ability to govern effectively. But they have also tended to
>treat the subject of his homosexuality rather gingerly. When
>spoken of at all, it is usually referred to in imprecise
>language or with veiled allusions, and the relationships in
>question are assumed, in many cases, to be based on mutual
>affection and companionship rather than genuine sexual
>attraction.
>
>Professor Young pulls no such punches here. He very carefully
>traces the history of James' relationships, beginning with his
>earliest affairs in Scotland, in order to establish beyond any
>reasonable doubt that James I was actively involved in sexual
>relations with his young clients. Without direct first-hand
>evidence, of course, the case can never be proven to a legal
>certainty, but Young's argument and his thoughtful and careful
>use of evidence is certainly convincing. The second task evolves
>naturally from the first. Since the royal court was thought to
>be the apex of social and political life, James's errant
>behavior inevitably incited comment and criticism, and Professor
>Young sets out to measure that response, through private
>letters, dramatic and literary sources, and published pamphlets.
>
>He does so, in large measure, to suggest that the seventeenth
>century's understanding of homosexuality was a good deal broader
>and more complex than has been assumed to date. Historians of
>homosexuality have tended to argue, to the contrary, that
>contemporary perceptions of intimate male relationships were
>limited to the physical act of sodomy, something considered so
>'monstrous' that it was not to be spoken of or even
>acknowledged, pervasive as it may have been. Professor Young
>argues against this view, suggesting that while seventeenth
>century commentators may have lacked the vocabulary and the
>constructs necessary to articulate a sophisticated view of
>homosexuality, they were nonetheless well aware of its existence
>and were more than willing to comment upon it. He demonstrates
>convincingly that many of James' contemporaries, including
>members of his own government, not only recognized his behavior
>for what it was but were forthright in their condemnation of it,
>issuing what he calls a 'chorus of protest'. Moreover, their
>reasons for doing so, in Young's view, suggest that their
>perceptions of homosexual behavior involved more than just the
>sin of sodomy.
>
>Young argues that James' intimacy with and affection for his
>favorites, his 'sodomitical relationships', were condemned not
>only because they sinful and because they violated social norms,
>but because they bespoke weakness and effeminacy on the part of
>the King and his court. Sodomy and effeminacy became
>interchangeable. James' determined pacificism only fed into
>that perception and came to be seen as a by-product of his
>unmanly nature.
>
>The evidence marshalled here about James I 's homosexuality, and
>about the public response to it, is designed to refute the
>notion (articulated principally by Alan Bray) that our modern
>construct of homosexuality emerged suddenly, in revolutionary
>fashion, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Professor
>Young wants to argue instead that modern notions of
>homosexuality developed slowly, in an evolutionary process, and
>began much earlier. In essence, he argues that the reign of
>James I was critical because the revelations about this king
>forced the public to come to terms with a much broader concept
>of homosexual relations -- one which took a variety of forms and
>which often transcended simple matters of sex to embrace notions
>of genuine love between two men. Professor Young is well aware
>that such a hypothesis is difficult to prove definitively, and
>his claims are tempered with caution. But this is a
>well-written and and convincing account that will win many
>adherents.
>
>Cynthia Herrup's long awaited study of the notorious case of the
>earl of Castlehaven likewise deals with public perceptions of
>aberrant sexual behavior. The second earl of Castlehaven was
>accused in 1631 of abetting in the rape of his wife and
>committing sodomy with his male servants, and the charges
>(initiated by his son and heir) and his subsequent trial became
>one of the most scandalous affairs of the early seventeenth
>century. Professor Herrup retells the story in considerable
>detail -- and, it must be said, with great flair. This is an
>extraordinary tale in its own right and the characters are
>brought to life in compelling fashion. Professor Herrup has
>recast the story as a very human one, reflecting the complex
>personalities and relationships involved and the competing and
>contradictory motivations which drove the events and animated
>the ensuing legal proceedings.
>
>But her primary purpose here is not simply to explore the
>salacious charges (and counter-charges) or, indeed, to evaluate
>the legal merits or technicalities of the case against the earl.
>Castlehaven's guilt or innocence remains, throughout, a
>peripheral issue, and, in the event, indeterminate. It is,
>instead to use the case as a means to examine the matrix of
>values and beliefs -- about class, privilege, gender, religious
>affiliation, and the law which defined seventeenth century
>society. In fact, the legal case against the earl was not very
>strong and required considerable license on the part of the
>prosecution and the jury of his peers to make it work. The
>crimes for which he was indicted were effectively redefined in
>the course of the trial to fit the specific accusations made
>against him, rather than to meet the demands of statute. The
>witnesses marshalled against him included his own wife (contrary
>to standard legal practice), his menial servants, his dependents
>and Roman Catholic Irishmen. And, far from being taken for
>granted, his own credibility as a man of honor and aristocratic
>lineage was openly disparaged.
>
>But, as Professor Herrup argues, that is where the real interest
>in the case should lie -- in the Crown's dogged pursuit of the
>case, despite its inherent weaknesses, and in his peers'
>determination to convict. What alarmed Crown prosecutors, the
>jury and subsequent commentators were less the specifics of the
>charges than what they revealed about a much broader breakdown
>of social order and personal discipline. The earl's aberrant
>sexual behavior was symptomatic of a loss of self-control, but
>was only made possible by a loss of control over his own
>household, over members of his family, his dependant clients and
>his servants. He was guilty of inverting proper social order
>and hierarchy and of abrogating his responsibilities as a member
>of the aristocracy. It was that, more than anything else, which
>determined his fate.
>
>In historiographical terms, the book also makes a strong
>argument for a greater awareness of and interest in
>seventeenth-century law, not as a discrete discipline, but as
>part of a broader panorama of social and cultural history.
>Castlehaven's case provides a textbook example of the kinds of
>interactions that could take place, illustrating just how social
>constructs and cultural beliefs shaped and influenced legal
>proceedings, and how the law, in turn, could be used to define
>and maintain social norms. This is a compelling story,
>beautifully told. Professor Herrup is to be congratulated.
>
> Copyright (c) 2000 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work
> may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit
> is given to the author and the list. For other permission,
> please contact H-Net@h-net.msu.edu.
___________________________________________________________________
From: "PETER BARTLETT" <Peter.Bartlett@nottingham.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 16:21:16 GMT0BST
Subject: Re: toilet paper
> I doubt that toilet paper came in rolls until after WWII. There are complaints
> about rough or hard paper by the sheet in institutions - well within living
> memory!
Indeed. I assume many of us have seen the rather wonderful
advertisement from the 50s (I would guess) directed to employers,
with the caption "Is your bathroom breeding Bolsheviks?"
peter
The University of Nottingham
Department of Law
Nottingham
NG7 2RD
Tel: +44 (0) 115 951 5709
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 11:27:37 -0500
From: Frances Bernstein <fbernste@drew.edu>
Subject: Historiography of sexuality
Colleagues:
For a graduate-level European/American historiography class, I have been
asked to teach a session focusing on the history of sexuality. I need
to choose a key work in the field, something that will be helpful in
introducing students to important historiographical issues in the area,
but covers a broader rather than narrower canvas. Needless to say,
narrowing it down to one book is an almost impossible task. I have a
few ideas of my own (including both classics and more recent studies)
but was hoping members of the list could offer some other suggestions.
If you could choose one book to showcase the state of our field (well
defined and articulated methodology and theoretical approach, good
integration into historical context, entertaining narrative, etc.) what
would it be?
Fran Bernstein
Dept. of History
Drew University
Madison, NJ 07940
(973) 408-5342
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 02 Jun 2000 12:26:25 +0100
From: "Sam Pryke" <PRYKES@HOPE.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: The Alliance of Honour
I came across the Alliance of Honour through PhD research on the early Boy Scouts Movement. The publications of theirs which I read were Training of the Young in the Laws of Sex, Against His Own Body, Towards Racial Health and In Confidence to Boys. I think I obtained them all through ILL, and I seem to remember that they came from Cambridge University Library. There was some important interconnection between the Scouts and the Alliance. The editor of the Headquarters Gazzette -- a monthly publication for Scoutmasters -- Geoffrey Elles was a member of the Alliance. Baden PowelI seems to have known about it and was probably influenced by it as well as other 'authorities' in his initial advice about the dangers of masturbation. However, looking back about what I wrote in my dissertation it seems that their line on masturbation was not as strong as that of Baden-powell in the pre 1914 era: '
In Confidence to Boys was circulated to Scoutmasters at the request and expense of the Alliance
of Honour in 1911, a fact Baden-Powell saw fit to point out in The Headquarters Gazette. First
published in 1904, it was written by H. Bisseker, a retired public school house master and revised
by the Council of Medical Officers of Schools Association. In Confidence to Boys is a short,
clear and relatively well-written book which deals solely with "the special sin", and contains the
usual cataloguing of its physical, moral and mental ills. It did not however, claim that self-abuse
led to insanity, though it does refer to "mental problems".
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: Re: historiography of sexuality
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2000 21:09:45 +0100
An extremely useful anthology (which may not be quite what you are =
looking for?), which includes both primary and secondary texts, and =
excellent editorial matter, is Bob Nye's Sexuality, in the Oxford =
Readers Series.
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Philip Stokes" <philip.stokes@btinternet.com>
Subject: Re: toilet paper
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2000 14:06:43 +0100
I had thought to be able to answer Hera's and Chris's queries just like
that, from my enormous collection of stuff ... ah, vanity! However, maybe a
little rambling will serve instead.
For sheer sanitary joy and super photography, go to Lucinda Lambton's
"Temples of Convenience and Chambers of Delight," [London: Pavilion, 1995]
and take note of her bibliog. There you will find a reference to L. Wright's
"Clean and Decent," [London: Routledge, 1960]. My memory of that book is
that it may well be the true source of all wisdom; unfortunately, I don't
have notes on it.
Now for the anecdotal bit:
Between 1937 and 1939 I attended a school run by two sisters, very
upper-middle class. I believe they were the unmarried daughters of a
baronet, and at the time were getting on for elderly. The lavatory, to which
one stepped up [hence throne, no doubt] had the traditional newspaper
squares, with a hole in the corner for threading on a string. Holes were
usually made by what was then a standard piece of office gear, a long spike
thing with a wooden handle. Outside the lavatory was a bamboo table, and on
it a framed silk picture of Lt. Roberts winning the VC in the Indian Mutiny.
The house was gaslit, the becoming tattered wall paper was sombre, showing
ancient ruins with fledgling birds in nests. I say this to indicate the
style of what then were passing glories and ways of doing things.
Away from school, in what one might term the professional/executive style of
domesticity, toilet paper was already well and truly branded and packaged,
and the different varieties were catered for by appropriate roll holders and
dispensers in various materials; metal, wood, ceramic. Rolls were normally
supplied in a paper outer, printed with the name and advertising blurb.
There was Bronco, for instance. It had its name printed in black cursive
script on each sheet, and like the rest of its kind was generically tissue
paper, with one side tending towards smoothness, and the other veering off
in the other direction. Some paper was medicated. I think a brand in that
category would be Izal [or was it San-Izal?], that had its name printed on
the sheets in a running line of green, and if I have it right, exhortations
to hygeine printed in red [eg. "Wash your hands"].
The same sorts of paper were available in flat packs, the sheets not only
perforated but separated and folded, enclosed in a card outer which was
fiddled and jiggled into its often ceramic dispenser so that the next bit
protruded through a little letter-box opening and could be pulled out. This
by the way is written of the inter-war period ( - strictly meaning
1920-1939 - [Hera] the mid-war period might be taken as 1941-1943); but I
guess all of these sorts of paper might still be found.
Rough or hard paper in loose sheets only came into my orbit during military
service in the early 1950s. It was khaki, highly glazed on one side and
hideously abrasive on the other, and was my faithful companion and scourge
during chronic dysentry. I thought soft paper was introduced to the UK
market in the 1950s. My recall is that earlier forms were somewhat wanting
in structural integrity.
Dr Philip Stokes
philip.stokes@btinternet.com
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 02 Jun 2000 23:31:33 -0700
From: Jack Kolb <kolb@ucla.edu>
Subject: Fwd: Re: REV: Hart on Young, _King James_ and Herrup, _A House
in Gross
Can anyone help with Marta's query? Responses should probably be sent
directly to her, though I'm willing to pass them along. Thanks in advance.
Jack Kolb
Dept. of English, UCLA
kolb@ucla.edu
>Date: Fri, 02 Jun 2000 15:11:59 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Marta Sherwood-Pike <msherw@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>
>Subject: Re: REV: Hart on Young, _King James_ and Herrup, _A House in Gross
>To: Jack Kolb <kolb@ucla.edu>
>
>I don't think I want to be on this list, as it would contain so many posts
>not of interest to me. However, I would appreciate if you would cross-post
>my query. My interest in this case, incidentally, comes from working on a
>biography of Lord Castlereagh, who was reported to have confessed, at the
>very end of his life, to have committed the same crime as the Bishop of
>Clogher. The question is, is this evidence of insanity (as contemporaries
>believed) or bisexuality? I favor the latter theory. -Martha Sherwood-
>
>On Thu, 1 Jun 2000, Jack Kolb wrote:
>
>> Martha, you might want to consult the History of Sexuality list. Let me
>> know if you'd like subscription information.
>>
>> Jack Kolb
>> Dept. of English, UCLA
>> kolb@ucla.edu
>>
>> Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 19:49:37 -0700 (PDT)
>> From: Martha Sherwood-Pike <msherw@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>
>>
>> Is there anyone interested in work on this subject in the late 18th-early
>> 19th century? I am particularly interested in the affair of the Bishop of
>> Clogher, which resulted in his accuser being convicted of perjury, the
>> opinion of the judge being that falsely accusing prominent people of
>> sodomy in order to extort money was common in England, but that it was a
>> disgrace to see it practiced in Ireland. -Martha Sherwood-
___________________________________________________________________
Subject: Seeking Gilbert Herdt
Date: Fri, 02 Jun 2000 17:48:41 -0800
From: "andrei-f" <andrei-f@goplay.com>
Hello,
If anyone is able to put me in contact with Mr. Herdt I would be very
grateful.
Andrei Foldes
___________________________________________________________________ From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 08:07:47 EDT
Subject: Re: toilet paper and toilets
(For some unknown reason my last batty ramblings on this that I sent a week
ago? have only just shown up in my inbox.....)
It may also be the case that sex-divided facilities pertain in Germany too.
Although in some cases they are entered by clearly marked separate entrances,
the corridors meet in a single block with no sex distinction and paper only
on request. Not sure what this says about a lack of bodily privacy for such
functions. Not being wasteful with resources? Monitoring functions?
I don't recall a time before loo rolls in the home (those nasty shiny flat
packs being found in public facilities as a matter of course), but was it at
some point a luxury product and hence the prevalence of torn up newspaper?
I'm still in the dark as to when the first dedicated product was manufactured
outside China. But China has always been a source of ingenious innovation.....
Advertising of loo rolls on UK tv has recently undergone a transformation in
which it is actually represented more or less in use, albeit by cartoon
animals and children only. When did the stuff begin to be advertised at all?
Is it or has it been under the same kind of embargo/taboo as sanitary
products?
And as to experienced travellers carrying their own loo paper abroad, how
many women in Britain would blithely enter a public loo without some resource
of their own? <g> Now, in the US it's an entirely different story.... And in
how many countries is it normal to offer a monetary donation to a (fairly
inert) supervisor?
Chris White
___________________________________________________________________Date: 4 Jun 2000 04:41:32 -0000
From: "Histsex:For historians of sexuality" <histsex-owner@listbot.com>
Subject: Delays to posts
Histsex:For historians of sexuality - http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
As Chris White noted in a recent post to the list, messages sent several
days ago are only now being disseminated to the list. support@listbot.com
responded to a query of mine about these delays, as follows on 1st June:
'We experienced system router problems on May 29th, which resulted in a
backup of incoming message requests. This issue has since been resolved,
however we are still experiencing delivery delays as the backlog clears
itself out. This process should be rectified within the next 48-72 hours.'
Apologies to the list-members for this extremely annoying problem, which I
hope will be shortly resolved.
Lesley
histsex-owner@listbot.com
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: Interesting review
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2000 21:20:46 +0100
Of Elizabeth Foyster. Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and =
Marriage. Women and Men in History Series. London and New York: Addison =
Wesley and Longman Ltd., 1999. xi + 247 pp. Preface, further reading, =
index. $72.75 (cloth), ISBN 0-582-30734-1; $30.60 (paper), ISBN =
0-582-30735-X, and Tim Hitchcock and Michele Cohen, ed. English =
Masculinities 1660-1800. Women and Men in History Series. London and New =
York: Addison Wesley Longman Ltd., 1999. x + 268 pp. Further reading and =
index. $71.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-582-31919-6; $29.40 (paper), ISBN =
0-582-31922-6 by Amy Froide,=20
http://h-net2.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=3D12054959965239
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
cc: "Martha Sherwood-Pike" <msherw@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>
Subject: Re: Clogher and Castlereagh
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 23:49:39 +0100
Jack Kolb has passed on a query from Martha Sherwood (who is not on the
list) regarding Clogher and Castlereagh, to which I'll reply on the list, as
it may interest some of the members, as it illustrations some of the curious
byways of gay historical research.
For those not familiar with the affair, Percy Jocelyn, Lord Bishop of
Clogher in Ireland, on 19 July 1822 was apprehended in the back room of a
public house in London with his trousers down, in the company of the
Guardsman John Moverley. The affair caused a tremendous scandal, resulting
in more than a dozen illustrated satirical cartoons and numerous pamphlets
and limericks, such as:
The Devil to prove the Church was a farce
Went out to fish for a Bugger.
He baited his hook with a Soldier's arse
And pulled up the Bishop of Clogher.
Percy Jocelyn (or Clogher as he is usually called) was a high-ranking figure
in the Irish Anglican Church, and a member of the important Roden family,
brother to the recently deceased Earl of Roden and uncle to the new Earl of
Roden. Clogher and his soldier pick-up were bailed by Earl Roden and others;
Clogher went to Paris after extracting as much money etc. from the Episcopal
Palace in Ireland as he could and then disappeared, and Moverley also
disappeared. So there was no trial, which probably would have been more
scandalous than the trial of that other Irishman, Oscar Wilde, nearly three
generations later.
It was discovered that in 1811, James Byrne, coachman to the Bishop's
brother John, accused Clogher of buggery and was successfully prosecuted by
Clogher for false charges and imprisoned for two years and flogged nearly to
death. A public subscription was raised in 1822 to make up for this
miscarriage of justice.
Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, who was both the Foreign Secretary and
Leader of the House of Commons, had an audience with King George IV on 9
August 1822 to reveal the fact that he was being blackmailed, and to confess
that "I am accused of the same crime as the Bishop of Clogher." The King is
said to have advised him to "consult a physician". He accordingly went to
his country seat in Kent, and on 12 August cut his throat with a pen-knife.
I wrote a short sketch of Clogher in my book _Mother Clap's Molly House_ in
1992. Following this, in 1995 I was contacted by the Hon. James Jocelyn,
descendant of Percy Jocelyn and brother of the current Lord Roden. The Hon.
James Jocelyn had some delicious gossip to tell me about his family (which
alas I dare not repeat in this forum). Anyway, the story that Clogher died
in Scotland as a disguised butler, which I had reported, turns out not to be
quite true: he returned to his family in Co. Down and led a quiet life
there. The Hon. James Jocelyn laboriously transcribed and sent to me a copy
of Clogher's Last Will and Testament (the last codicil to which is dated
July 1840; he died in 1843) which he had turned up when sorting out the
family papers, and some other material. Clogher left most of his fairly
large estate to his sisters, but also a dozen bequests to named individuals
ranging from 100 pounds to 2200 pounds, notably 300 pounds "to my good
friend and relation The Reverend James Hill Poe of Nenagh ... as token of
Remembrance for all the Kindness and attention which my beloved sisters and
myself have uniformly experienced from him for many years past during a
period of extreme calamity and misfortune." He was also careful to leave
money not only to several of his favourite servants, but to the eldest sons
of his servants, to set themselves up in business. And to all his servants
he left half a year's wages.
The most interesting feature of the Will is the following clause: "I desire
and request that my remains may be committed to the Grave in the most
private manner at a very early hour in the morning and that no Publicity
whatsoever may attend my funeral, also that no name be inscribed on my
Coffin and my age. And I desire no publication of my death to be inserted in
any public paper." Some years ago, the Jocelyn family vault at Kilcoo Parish
Church in Bryansford, Co. Down was opened for structural repairs to the
church, and the Hon. James Jocelyn when he went inside the vault discovered
that it contained one more coffin than the number of grave markers would
indicate, and that the extra coffin was unmarked. He concludes that this is
the grave of the Bishop of Clogher.
Coincidentally, in late 1997 I was contacted by one Stuart Moverley, who
thought he might be a descendant of the Guardsman John Moverley. We
exchanged information, and after quite a lot of genealogical research Stuart
Moverley late in 1999 was able to confirm that John Moverley was his
great-great-great-great-uncle, and he has discovered various details about
John Moverley, e.g. "he was born in 1796 in the parish of Bramham, West
Riding of Yorkshire, one of eight known children of William & Mary Moverley
of that village. John Moverley joined the 1st. Regiment of Foot Guards
(Grenadier Guards) at York on 1st May 1819 and was described as being a
"labourer of Bramham" at the time of his enlistment and as being 5' 9" in
height with dark hair and a light complexion. Records show that he deserted
on 7th August 1822,presumably after being bailed from prison by Lord Sefton.
There appear to be no documents in the regimental archive relating to a
Courts Martial so I presume he was never caught. Nothing is currently known
about him after this but, considering the seriousness of his 'offence' in
those days,I should think it most likely that he would have not gone back to
his home village and changed his name after absconding in order to protect
himself and his family so I don't think I'll be able to pick up his trail
again. His father died four years later in 1826 and his Will,interestingly
enough,names the other four sons as beneficiaries but there is no mention of
John." This may be more than many people want to know about the Guardsman,
but in gay scandals we often know a lot about the aristocrat and nothing
about their plebian partner, and I find it a great satisfication to fill in
the record about Clogher's soldier pick-up.
In early 1998 I was contacted by Nick Angel, the primary researcher behind
Matthew Parris's book _The Great Unfrocked: Two Thousand Years of Church
Scandal_, which was published in London by Robson Books later that year.
Nick Angel has done a lot of research into the Clogher affair, including
examing Clogher's letters from Paris which are in the Public Records Office
of Ireland. Early in 1998 Angel persuaded the Archbishop of Armagh and
Primate of All Ireland, Robert Eames, to finally, and reluctantly, authorise
the release the files on the affair. His predecessor, Archbishop D'Arcy,
when he learned of the existence of these papers in the 1920s, instructed
that they be burnt, but his instructions were ignored. Anyway, it is now
clear that there was a high-level cover-up, now documented by letters from
Robert Peel's private secretary and then then Bishop of Armagh. It is also
clear that there was a direct link between the Clogher affair and the
suicide of Castlereagh. It is also clear that Castlereagh's wife confessed
to the Duke of Wellington that Castlereagh was a man who preferred men. He
was not insane, but his visible distress caused by being blackmailed during
the last few months of his life was fixed upon as an excuse to say he was
not in his right mind at the time he killed himself. A fair amount of
material is now known about both Clogher and Castlereagh. If the material in
my book and Parris's book is not sufficient, the best person to contact is
Nick Angel whose e-mail is <nick.angel@optomen.co.uk>.
In mid-1998 I got together with Nick Angel and an independent radio
producer, and we put together a detailed proposal for a radio documentary
which involved interviews with the Hon. James Jocelyn, who was happy to
participate. Unfortunately the BBC did not have the imagination to fund the
project. However, Nick Angel has hopes that someday a television documentary
will be funded, and he is working on a longer biography of Clogher and
steadily digging up information about Castlereagh and various other people
who were protected by the Irish authorities in the cover-up. I do have a
dream that such a documentary would begin with recounting the assignation of
Percy Jocelyn and John Moverley, and end with the joint interview between
their descendants, the Hon. James Jocelyn and Stuart Moverley.
--
Rictor Norton, London
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Cath Walker" <cathrainnadine@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: The Alliance of Honour
Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2000 21:30:28 PDT
HI
this is not your average email for sex historians but as a sex and singles
writer for an internet site I am looking for the strangest most unusual and
unique places people have met partners.
The best one yet is in a lift - hope to hear a lot more and better.
Thank you for your time
Cath
___________________________________________________________________
Date: 5 Jun 2000 08:56:22 -0000
From: "Histsex:For historians of sexuality" <histsex-owner@listbot.com>
Subject: Message headers
Could I remind list members that if you are 'piggy-backing' on a previous
posting by using 'reply to' to create an entirely new message, it is a
good idea to change the message header?
Thanks
And we are still having delays in message delivery, unfortunately.
Lesley Hall
histsex-owner@listbot.com
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2000 12:02:13 +0200
From: Gert Hekma <hekma@pscw.uva.nl>
Subject: Re: Historiography of sexuality
Dear Fran and friends,
it is slightly strange that Lesley does not mention the books we edited
together with Franz Eder, Sexual Cultures in Europe, Manchester Manchester
UP, 1999, 2 volumes, which gives also excellent overviews on countries &
topics, and a general intro.
Gert Hekma
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Hall ,Dr Lesley" <l.hall@wellcome.ac.uk>
Subject: Forwarded query: women/polygyny in the Balkans
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2000 15:25:15 +0100
I have been asked to forward this query from Beryl Nicholson
(beryl1@research32.freeserve.co.uk): while responses should be sent directly
to her, I think it would be of interest to post them also to the list
'I am an independent researcher, sociologist, currently working on southern
Albania. As one of the enlightened (?) sociologists who also takes an
interest in the past, I have also been researching Albanian society in the
30 years that preceded communism, and had the good fortune to find some
fascinating sources that I shall continue to work on in the future....
One of my current preocupations is polygyny in the Balkans, and neighbouring
areas, as I have some good data on it. I would be interested to hear from
anyone who knows of further sources, or who is researching women in the
Balkan area. I shall spend the next year doing participant observation among
women in Albanian villages, but I shall answer mails that arrive before I go
and get back to anyone who makes contact while I am away.'
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: Re: The Alliance of Honour
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 23:19:47 +0100
As Sam Pryke has pointed out, these social purity groups often tended to
work together or with organisations in related fields, so there might be
material on the A of H among the records of other societies, eg, the NVA and
the AMSH (archives at the Fawcett Library) - I have a feeling that they were
also represented on the National Council for Combatting Venereal
Diseases/British Social Hygiene Council (records at the Wellcome). It's also
possible that they gave evidence to the Royal Commission on VD and the
National Council on Public Morals survey on Youth and Sex, also the AMSH
State and Sexual Morality investigation. Sometimes it seems that all these
bodies consisted of the same dozen people wearing different hats!
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
___________________________________________________________________
From: MillerJimE@aol.com
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 20:37:46 EDT
Subject: Re: REV: Hart on Young, _King James_ and Herrup, _A House in Gross
Published by H-Albion@h-net.msu.edu (June, 2000)
Michael B. Young. _King James and the History of Homosexuality_.
New York University Press, 2000. xi + 155 pp. Notes,
bibliography, and index. $40.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8147-9693-1
Cynthia Herrup. _A House in Gross Disorder: Sex, Law and the 2nd
Earl of Castlehaven_. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New
York, 1999, xvi + 154 pp. Appendices, (3) genealogical charts,
notes, bibliography, and index. $25.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-19-512518-5.
Reviewed for H-Albion by James S. Hart
<James.S.Hart-1.Jr@OU.edu>, Department of History, University of Oklahoma
Sex and Sexuality in Stuart England
Both of these books offer important new perspectives on a topic
not often discussed in conventional Stuart historiography: the
nature of sexual behavior and its attendant social and political
consequences. Michael Young's book sets out to complete two
separate but related tasks. The first is to examine the matter
of James I's homosexuality -- and to do so in the most direct
and unambiguous way possible. This becomes, quite rightly, the
centerpiece of the book. James' homosexuality had an enormous
impact, first, in real political terms, as a source of on-going
(and frequently destabilizing) factionalism and court intrigue,
but also, and perhaps more importantly, as a source for raising
public awareness of (and discussion about) homosexuality as a
sexual and social phenomenon. The former dimension of the
subject has, of course, been well-covered, at least on one
level. Historians have rarely failed to acknowledge the King's
reliance on his male favorites or to measure their impact on his
ability to govern effectively. But they have also tended to
treat the subject of his homosexuality rather gingerly. When
spoken of at all, it is usually referred to in imprecise
language or with veiled allusions, and the relationships in
question are assumed, in many cases, to be based on mutual
affection and companionship rather than genuine sexual attraction.
Professor Young pulls no such punches here. He very carefully
traces the history of James' relationships, beginning with his
earliest affairs in Scotland, in order to establish beyond any
reasonable doubt that James I was actively involved in sexual
relations with his young clients. Without direct first-hand
evidence, of course, the case can never be proven to a legal
certainty, but Young's argument and his thoughtful and careful
use of evidence is certainly convincing. The second task evolves
naturally from the first. Since the royal court was thought to
be the apex of social and political life, James's errant
behavior inevitably incited comment and criticism, and Professor
Young sets out to measure that response, through private
letters, dramatic and literary sources, and published pamphlets.
He does so, in large measure, to suggest that the seventeenth
century's understanding of homosexuality was a good deal broader
and more complex than has been assumed to date. Historians of
homosexuality have tended to argue, to the contrary, that
contemporary perceptions of intimate male relationships were
limited to the physical act of sodomy, something considered so
'monstrous' that it was not to be spoken of or even
acknowledged, pervasive as it may have been. Professor Young
argues against this view, suggesting that while seventeenth
century commentators may have lacked the vocabulary and the
constructs necessary to articulate a sophisticated view of
homosexuality, they were nonetheless well aware of its existence
and were more than willing to comment upon it. He demonstrates
convincingly that many of James' contemporaries, including
members of his own government, not only recognized his behavior
for what it was but were forthright in their condemnation of it,
issuing what he calls a 'chorus of protest'. Moreover, their
reasons for doing so, in Young's view, suggest that their
perceptions of homosexual behavior involved more than just the
sin of sodomy.
Young argues that James' intimacy with and affection for his
favorites, his 'sodomitical relationships', were condemned not
only because they sinful and because they violated social norms,
but because they bespoke weakness and effeminacy on the part of
the King and his court. Sodomy and effeminacy became
interchangeable. James' determined pacificism only fed into
that perception and came to be seen as a by-product of his
unmanly nature.
The evidence marshalled here about James I 's homosexuality, and
about the public response to it, is designed to refute the
notion (articulated principally by Alan Bray) that our modern
construct of homosexuality emerged suddenly, in revolutionary
fashion, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Professor
Young wants to argue instead that modern notions of
homosexuality developed slowly, in an evolutionary process, and
began much earlier. In essence, he argues that the reign of
James I was critical because the revelations about this king
forced the public to come to terms with a much broader concept
of homosexual relations -- one which took a variety of forms and
which often transcended simple matters of sex to embrace notions
of genuine love between two men. Professor Young is well aware
that such a hypothesis is difficult to prove definitively, and
his claims are tempered with caution. But this is a
well-written and and convincing account that will win many
adherents.
Cynthia Herrup's long awaited study of the notorious case of the
earl of Castlehaven likewise deals with public perceptions of
>aberrant sexual behavior. The second earl of Castlehaven was
accused in 1631 of abetting in the rape of his wife and
committing sodomy with his male servants, and the charges
(initiated by his son and heir) and his subsequent trial became
one of the most scandalous affairs of the early seventeenth
century. Professor Herrup retells the story in considerable
detail -- and, it must be said, with great flair. This is an
extraordinary tale in its own right and the characters are
brought to life in compelling fashion. Professor Herrup has
recast the story as a very human one, reflecting the complex
personalities and relationships involved and the competing and
contradictory motivations which drove the events and animated
the ensuing legal proceedings.
But her primary purpose here is not simply to explore the
salacious charges (and counter-charges) or, indeed, to evaluate
the legal merits or technicalities of the case against the earl.
Castlehaven's guilt or innocence remains, throughout, a
peripheral issue, and, in the event, indeterminate. It is,
instead to use the case as a means to examine the matrix of
values and beliefs -- about class, privilege, gender, religious
affiliation, and the law which defined seventeenth century
society. In fact, the legal case against the earl was not very
strong and required considerable license on the part of the
prosecution and the jury of his peers to make it work. The
crimes for which he was indicted were effectively redefined in
the course of the trial to fit the specific accusations made
against him, rather than to meet the demands of statute. The
witnesses marshalled against him included his own wife (contrary
to standard legal practice), his menial servants, his dependents
and Roman Catholic Irishmen. And, far from being taken for
granted, his own credibility as a man of honor and aristocratic
lineage was openly disparaged.
But, as Professor Herrup argues, that is where the real interest
in the case should lie -- in the Crown's dogged pursuit of the
case, despite its inherent weaknesses, and in his peers'
determination to convict. What alarmed Crown prosecutors, the
jury and subsequent commentators were less the specifics of the
charges than what they revealed about a much broader breakdown
of social order and personal discipline. The earl's aberrant
sexual behavior was symptomatic of a loss of self-control, but
was only made possible by a loss of control over his own
household, over members of his family, his dependant clients and
his servants. He was guilty of inverting proper social order
and hierarchy and of abrogating his responsibilities as a member
of the aristocracy. It was that, more than anything else, which
determined his fate.
In historiographical terms, the book also makes a strong
argument for a greater awareness of and interest in
seventeenth-century law, not as a discrete discipline, but as
part of a broader panorama of social and cultural history.
Castlehaven's case provides a textbook example of the kinds of
interactions that could take place, illustrating just how social
constructs and cultural beliefs shaped and influenced legal
proceedings, and how the law, in turn, could be used to define
and maintain social norms. This is a compelling story,
beautifully told. Professor Herrup is to be congratulated.
Copyright (c) 2000 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work
may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit
is given to the author and the list. For other permission,
please contact H-Net@h-net.msu.edu.
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Lord Castlereagh
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 12:20:03 +0100
>biography of Lord Castlereagh, who was reported to have confessed, at the
>very end of his life, to have committed the same crime as the Bishop of
>Clogher. The question is, is this evidence of insanity (as contemporaries
>believed) or bisexuality?
While I am sure there are people out there on the list better able to answer
this than I am, I don't think this is an either/or issue. It seems to me
that confessing - even to a close friend - to have committed something that
was at the time a capital crime (rather than the practice itself) was a
moderately insane thing to do. Didn't Castlereagh commit suicide?
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
___________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 05:05:29 EDT
Subject: Marta's query
Not sure if this is what you want, but at the risk of blowing own trumpet,
there is contemporary primary material and reference to other sources on both
the Bishop of Clogher's arrest and trial, and Castlereagh's scandal and
suicide in my book.
Chris White, Nineteenth-Century Writings on Homsexuality, Routledge, London +
US, 1999
___________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 05:05:47 EDT
Subject: Re: toilet paper
Philip, what fantastic info! You've reminded me of seeing that paper bearing
the legend 'Now wash your hands', but the Bronco and the advertorial paper is
entirely new to me. (They still make Izal btw.) And the army had khaki paper?
I feel a consultation with "father-in-law" coming on, who served in India
during WW2...
Thanks :)
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Herrup's book on Castlehaven
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 18:15:33 +0100
There was recently posted on this list the joint review of Michael Young's
_King James and the History of Homosexuality_ and Cynthia Herrup's _A House
in Gross Disorder: Sex, Law and the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven_. It was a bit
odd that the reviewer did not directly compare the two books, because
Herrup's book relies heavily on the studies by Alan Bray and Jonathan
Goldberg regarding the earlly modern understandings of homosexuality,
studies which are specifically refuted in Michael Young's book, as indicated
in the review. I haven't finished studying Young's book, but listmembers may
be interested in the following comments on Herrup's book, expanded from my
review of it for _Gay Times_ (London, May 2000).
A HOUSE IN GROSS DISORDER:
SEX, LAW, AND THE 2ND EARL OF CASTLEHAVEN
Cynthia B. Herrup (Oxford University Press, £18.99)
In 1631 Mervin Touchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven, was tried for having
assisted in the rape of his own wife and for committing sodomy with his
menservants. In due course he was beheaded, and two of his menservants were
hanged. A rich mix of sexual scandal, family dishonour, avarice, religious
and nationalistic prejudice, outrage and drama, has ensured frequent
retellings of the story.
Cynthia Herrup has scoured the archives and discovered dozens of
contemporary accounts of the trial (which was held in public, and therefore
seen by many), plus innumerable pamphlets and poems. Her review of the
documents is exhaustive and scrupulous, and her style is as compelling as
the drama she reconstructs. However, although she is very good at
highlighting the essential legal and political issues in the trial, it seems
to me that she does not sufficiently engage our sympathy for any of the
people in the affair, particularly the menservants.
Castlehaven's claim to innocence was consistently tied to his defence that
no evidence confirmed sexual penetration (i.e. there was withdrawal before
emission) and therefore the alleged acts did not meet the statutory legal
definition of either rape or sodomy. He also steadfastly denied that he
could not be required to incriminate himself; and argued that a wife could
not testify against her husband, as man and wife were one person in law, and
that would be equivalent to self-incrimination; and argued that commoners
could not testify against a peer, but the judges disagreed with all these
arguments. This kind of technical legalistic manoeuvre on his part actually
demonstrates his "guilt" for modern historians despite the legal
irregularities.
Two of the menservants who had testified that they had consented to sodomy
with Castlehaven were subsequently tried at Kings Bench. One of the men
specifically insisted that although his testimony had convicted the earl, he
himself could not be convicted solely on his own testimony (his confession
during the Castlehaven trial was the only evidence against him, and at his
own trial he denied the charge after taking advice from counsel). The Chief
Justice acknowledged that acceptance of evidence based on self-incrimination
was irregular, but that in buggery all participants are culpable. Both
menservants were convicted despite obvious legal irregularities. The judges
felt it necessary to issue a defence of their judgment to the Lord Keeper:
"We for our parts thought it to stand with the
honor of common justice, that seeing their testimony had been taken to bring
a peer of the realm to his death, for an offense as much theirs as his, that
they should as well suffer for it as he did, lest any jealousy should arise
about the truth of the fact, and the justness of the proceedings."
Herrup demonstrates that the legal case against Castlehaven was technically
flawed, and he was convicted mainly because he was regarded as a Catholic
and an Irish sympathiser, and because he betrayed the patriarchal duty of
keeping his house and family in order, hence the title of Herrup's book.
Though Herrup does not dispute the abundant evidence of debauchery, she
foregrounds the political, legal, social and cultural contexts of the
affair, in effect retelling the tale for our postmodern times.
Herrup's argument that the earliest accounts of the trial were ideological
and that the sexual side came to the fore only later is belied by numerous
contemporary verses such as those affixed to Castlehaven's hearse, which
accused him of being "Besmeared with your sensual life". Numerous
contemporary verses, which Herrup includes in a full appendix, nearly all
emphasise lust rather than politics or religion or patriarchal
irresponsibility. Despite Herrup's view that sodomy was not the real point
of the trial, nearly all the public retellings in pamphlets in the following
hundred years not only catered for the public interest in bawdy
sensationalism, but were directly inspired by notorious cases of sodomy and
are demonstrably linked to the public interest in sodomites. For example,
the first pamphlet, in 1643, was inspired by the hanging of John Atherton,
Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, for sodomy in 1642. The second pamphlet, in
1679, may have been inspired by the Popish Plot of 1678, in which Titus
Oates was accused of being a sodomite. The third pamphlet, in 1699, was
prompted specifically by the prosecution of Capt. Edward Rigby for sodomy in
1698. The fourth pamphlet, in 1708, was prompted specifically by a series of
highly publicised arrests of sodomites in 1707. The next pamphlet, in 1710,
was titled _The Cases of Unnatural Lewdness_ and reprinted the trials of
both Atherton and Castlehaven. In other words, contrary to Herrup's apparent
wish to place the case at the centre of a political/ideological debate, it
invariably worked within the context of the social discourse concerning
sodomites.
Many of these pamphlet renditions of the trial give details which could only
have been known by eyewitnesses, and Herrup does not adequately prove that
their claims to be based on genuine sources are false, though she does
prove, for example, that other accounts in letters etc. are indeed genuine
and even that portions of the 1710 pamphlet, titled _The Case of Sodomy_,
use genuine manuscript sources. The best text, in my view, is the one of
1699, which uses direct quotations to report the testimony, but Herrup seems
to think that only a journalist could have fabricated this style of
reporting, an opinion (rather than an indisputable fact) which I do not
think is sufficient ground for dismissing it as a genuine source. The
authenticity and reliability of the texts need to be addressed more fully.
Certainly the data Herrup presents can hardly be challenged, but there
remains a fundamental problem about "framing" this sexual history. Herrup
briefly criticises my own account of the affair (in _Mother Clap's Molly
House_) for being "presentist" and "popular" and in service to Gay
Liberation (and so it was), and she apparently believes that the affair
should be removed from the field of Gay Studies and put into the field of
Women's Studies. Thus Herrup portrays Castlehaven's wife and daughter-in-law
as the victims in the affair, and she shrewdly constructs our sympathy for
them just as much as I directed our sympathy towards the sodomites. Herrup's
account uses the perspective of feminist history and critiques the
patriarchy, just as my account used the perspective of gay history and
critiqued homophobia. Herrup's agenda is seen in the fact that her account
of the trial was originally presented at a Women's History Seminar in 1990
under the title "Patriarchy at Home". Frankly, I think that it is
disingenuous for her to suggest that it is more "objective" to rethink the
story in terms of gender history rather than in terms of gay history.
Herrup's emphasis on female disempowerment is downright ironical in view of
the fact that it was three *men* who were executed. Herrup claims that "The
prosecutions of Castlehaven and Broadway for raping the Countess of
Castlehaven are a powerful example of how difficult it was for early modern
women, however privileged, to have an effective legal voice." However, the
simple fact is that the prosecution was successful, despite Tudor and Stuart
gender prejudices, and it is clear that justice - for the women - did
prevail.
Although Herrup's study is exhaustive and comprehensive, I do not think it
is the last word on the subject. There still remains the opportunity to
retell the story yet again, using the very sources she has abundantly
discovered, but foregrounding the gay perspective once more.
--
Rictor Norton, London
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 14:03:46 gmt
Subject: Re: Req: Bulter, anality etc.
>but does anyone on the list have a sense of the
>influence of Judith Butler's and Eve Sedgwick's work among Brits and
>European scholars of gender and sexuality? Both are ENORMOUSLY
>influential in certain circles in America.
As far as I know, these ideas may be influential in literary/cultural studies,
but I haven't found them being applied by historians to any great extent - which
is a pity as there could be interesting and productive tensions and resonances
generated by using them to address non-literary source material (trial records
or whatever).
>
>2. One of my anonymous readers claims that from the time of the Greeks
>the unavailable object of desire has been infinitely more desirable than
>the available one. Anyone know of a nice secondary source which
>summarizes this trend?
>
>3. I'm aware of a number of sources which discuss the liberatory
>possibilitites of an eroticism organized around the anus instead of the
>phallus: Hocquenghem, Michael Warner, Frank Browning, Lee Edelman, D. A.
>Miller. Anyone else aware of writings on anality, especially those which
>relate this topic to ocularity or visual culture generally?
I think some of these issues are addressed by Bataille in _Eroticism_, but it's
a while since I read it...
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
homepage: http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
;
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 08:33:05 gmt
Subject: Re: Clogher and Castlereagh
>
>Incidentally, I don't think it "was a moderately insane thing to do" (as
>Lesley Hall suggests) for him to confess his crime to others, because
>insofar as he was being blackmailed (by a soldier), he was in effect seeking
>advice from confidential advisers about how best to deal with the problem.
That explains to me now why he did it. Out of the blue, as it were, it seemed
to me an extraordinary thing for someone in Castlereagh's position to 'confess',
given the criminal law relating to sodomy at the time, quite apart from social
attitudes. But in these particular circumstances it would make sense. However,
they were not clear from the original posting, which was posed as 'Castlereagh:
insane vs bisexual' (or so I read it).
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
homepage: http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Hall ,Dr Lesley" <l.hall@wellcome.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Castlereah's suicide/'doing the decent thing'
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 10:00:45 +0100
I don't have access to my saved list messages on this machine so I can't
check to see if it's been addressed already. Is there any indication that
Castlereagh was under any pressure to 'do the decent thing' and commit
suicide before there was an open scandal (the equivalent of the loaded
pistol in the library)?
And does anyone know if this convention was anything more than a literary
device/urban legend? (George V is alleged to have said 'I thought chaps like
that shot themselves' - presumably this can be filed next to his
grandmother's apocryphal 'close your eyes and think of England'?)
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2000 10:33:55 +0100
From: "Sam Pryke" <PRYKES@HOPE.AC.UK>
Subject: national character and sexuality
Does anyone know of a book, article that charts the sexualised notion of national character? One
can come compile a thousand instances but I wonder if anyone has attempted a systematic or
thematic study. Please note that I am not referring here to the wider question of the relationship
of nationalism to sexuality, but rather the older discourse of attributing a particular sexuality to a
national character. The practice seems especially evident in the 18th century, but of course
continues to this day
Here's a couple of examples that I took down a little while back to cheer people up who are going
through the drudgery of exam meetings:
David Hume. Of National Character c.1770:
"The only observation with regard to the difference of men in different climates, on which we can rest any weight, is the vulgar one, that people in the northern regions have a greater inclination to strong liquors, and those in the South to love and women. One can assign a very probable physical cause for this difference.....The heat in the southern climates, obliging men and women to go half naked, thereby renders their frequent commerce more dangerous, and inflames their mutual passion. This makes parents and husbands more jealous and reserved; which further inflames the passion. Not to mention that women ripen sooner in the southern regions, it is necessary to observe greater jealousy and care in their education; it being evident that a girl of twelve cannot possess equal discretion to govern this passion with one that feels not its violence till she be seventeen or eighteen. Nothing so much encourages the passion of love as ease and leisure, or is more destructive to it than industry and hard labour; and as the necessities of men are evidently fewer in warm climates than in the cold ones, this circumstance alone may make a considerable difference between them..........When love goes beyond a certain pitch it renders men jealous and cuts off the free intercourse between the sexes, on which the politeness of a nation will commonly much depend. And if we would dwell and refine upon this point, we might observe, that the people in very temperate climates are the most likely to attain all sorts of improvement; their blood not being so inflamed as to render them jealous, and yet being warm enough to make them set a due value on the charms and endowments of the fair sex."
Émile Boutmy, the first director of the Paris School of Political Science, c.1900:
Anyone who has lived long England knows the bestiality of the majority of the race. Sport,
gambling and drunkenness are the pleasures the English appreciate most. In sexual relations they
are interested only in the direct satisfaction of the senses..... The Englishman goes straight to the
object of his desires, instead of combining love-making with light entertainment and with the
pleasure of conversation. The sensuality of the upper classes is concealed by a heavy hypocrisy.
SAM PRYKE
___________________________________________________________________
Subject: Req: Bulter, anality etc.
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 10:20:20 -0500
From: "Michael J. Murphy" <mjmurphy@artsci.wustl.edu>
Hi all! I just received reader responses to a piece I'm trying to publish
and I thought the list members might help me with a number of issues.
1. My major theoretical apparatus is derived from a source published in
Britain after Gender Trouble and Epistemology of the Closet were
published, but it doesn't cite either. Of course there are a number of
explanations for this, but does anyone on the list have a sense of the
influence of Judith Butler's and Eve Sedgwick's work among Brits and
European scholars of gender and sexuality? Both are ENORMOUSLY
influential in certain circles in America.
2. One of my anonymous readers claims that from the time of the Greeks
the unavailable object of desire has been infinitely more desirable than
the available one. Anyone know of a nice secondary source which
summarizes this trend?
3. I'm aware of a number of sources which discuss the liberatory
possibilitites of an eroticism organized around the anus instead of the
phallus: Hocquenghem, Michael Warner, Frank Browning, Lee Edelman, D. A.
Miller. Anyone else aware of writings on anality, especially those which
relate this topic to ocularity or visual culture generally?
I appreciate any help you might offer!
Best,
Michael J. Murphy, M.A.
Doctoral Student, Dept. of Art History and Archaeology
Washington University, St. Louis
mjmurphy@artsci.wustl.edu
"In episode #228, who or what is 'Foucauldian'? We have enclosed a
self-addressed stamped envelope for your convenience."
-Letter to Alison Bechdel, cartoonist of Dykes To Watch Out For
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: Fw: Gay and Lesbian Awareness Month Program at NLM
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 20:18:26 +0100
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Greenberg <greenbes@mail.nlm.nih.gov>
To: H-SCI-MED-TECH@H-NET.MSU.EDU <H-SCI-MED-TECH@H-NET.MSU.EDU>; <
<caduceus-L@list.umaryland.edu>
Date: 07 June 2000 16:59
Subject: Gay and Lesbian Awareness Month Program at NLM
>The National Library of Medicine and Salutaris, the NIH Gay and Lesbian
Employees Forum, will sponsor a special program for Gay and Lesbian
Awareness Month in 2000 on Thursday, June 15 at noon in the Lister Hill
Auditorium at NLM. The speaker will be Professor Bert Hansen of Baruch
College, CUNY. His topic will be "Has the Laboratory Been a Closet? Gay and
Lesbian Lives in the History of Science." Professor Hansen will examine
issues of sexual identity in the lives and careers of some significant
biomedical researchers.
>
>The Lister Hill Auditorium is located in Building 38A on the National
Institutes of Health campus on Rockville Pike in Bethesda, Maryland. The
program is open to the public: no tickets or reservations are required.
Sign language interpretation will be provided.
>
>For additional information call Stephen Greenberg (301-435-4995) at the
National Library of Medicine. E-mail inquiries can be sent to
stephen_greenberg@nlm.nih.gov
>
>Stephen J. Greenberg, MSLS, PhD
>Reference/Collection Access Librarian
>History of Medicine Division
>National Library of Medicine
>
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Clogher and Castlereagh
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 18:34:16 +0100
As Martha Sherwood is not a member of the list, I attach her recent comments
sent to me.
Incidentally, I don't think it "was a moderately insane thing to do" (as
Lesley Hall suggests) for him to confess his crime to others, because
insofar as he was being blackmailed (by a soldier), he was in effect seeking
advice from confidential advisers about how best to deal with the problem.
That is, he didn't just burst into the room a propos of nothing and suddenly
reveal his secret, which would indeed have been rather mad. The subject of
his "insanity" should probably be understood in three or four contexts:
(1) The pressure of blackmail did cause noticeable patterns of behaviour
indicative of distraction during his last couple of months, which could be
perceived as growing insanity by those who did not know its source. (2) The
pressure of the blackmail could actually have caused him to "snap". (3) The
subject of homosexuality could only be perceived by others as a symptom of
insanity, i.e. homosexuality even as early as 1822 was perceived as
behaviour requiring medical attention, so "homosexuality" and "insanity" are
part of the same discourse, and in some cases just synonyms of each other
(requiring deconstruction . . .). And (4) feelings of guilt could have
preyed on his mind to point of producing paranoia. His acquaintance Princess
Lieven noted her rejection of the coroner's verdict in a private letter on
13 August 1822: "I think he was mad. Terrible remorse was preying on his
conscience. But he was not mad when he killed himself."
Montgomery Hyde first revealed that the suicide had been preceded by
blackmail in his book about this subject, _The Strange Death of Lord
Castlereagh_ in 1959 (where he also discusses Castlereagh's wife's statement
to the Duke of Wellington), and there is a review of more recent research on
the subject in Louis Crompton's _Byron and Greek Love_ (1985). I haven't
kept up with the research since then.
--
Rictor Norton, London
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: Marta Sherwood-Pike <msherw@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>
To: Rictor Norton <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Cc: Histsex:For historians of sexuality <histsex@listbot.com>
Date: 07 June 2000 03:00
Subject: Re: Clogher and Castlereagh
>Castlereagh (then, officially Lord Londonderry) accused himself of the
>crime of the Bishop of Clogher to two confidantes, who pronounced him
>insane, as did his physician. His ending his life, efficiently and
>humanely on August 12, 1822, seems to deserve scrutiny, especially by
>historians interested in gay issues. -Martha Sherwood
>Based on reading of court accounts, there was a strong aversion to
>prosecuting cases of sodomy circa 1820; it was better, even if both the
>offenders were members of the lower classes, to pretend it hadn't
>happened. When there was a prosecution, and someone had been caught with
>his pants down, but not actually in the process of sodomy, a verdict of
>gross indecency was generally returned, resulting in revocation of
>military commissions, flogging, or imprisonment, but not hanging, which
>was the penalty for sodomy in 1820.
>
>Do you have a reliable reference for Lady Castlereagh saying her husband
>was a man who preferred men? They had a happy marriage, he was evidently
>faithful to her, and his love letters to her when they were separated are
>quite charming. They seem to have practiced perverse sex to avoid getting
>her pregnant, probably for health reasons. That Castlereagh was bisexual I
>have little doubt, though I presume his actual sex life as far as men were
>concerned pertained to the period before his marriage in 1795, when he
>swore to forsake all others. -Martha Sherwood-
>
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2000 18:57:08 -0400
Subject: Re: national character and sexuality
From: "Jane H. Rothstein" <jane_rothstein@mindspring.com>
In regard to Sam Pryke's message about national character & sexuality:
There is a good deal of literature on sexualized notions of racial and
ethnic identity in the US (which not surprisingly were gendered notions as
well). Probably the greatest amount of literature is on African Americans.
Nineteenth-century whites developed images of black men as essentially
sexual predators (who often "preyed" on white women, hence the "need" for
lynching) & black women as loose. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham's _Righteous
Discontent_ has a good discussion of the impact of this image on
middle-class black churchwomen. Darlene Clark Hine also has a classic essay
on black women migrants to the North & rape. On black
men/masculinity/sexuality, see books by Gail Bederman, Martha Hodes, and
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall.
There were also sexualized notions of Jewish identity, though most of the
work on this subject still needs to be done. Books by Sander Gilman, Daniel
Boyarin, and David Biale are useful. Discussions of Jewish involvement in
the "white slave" trade also highlight early 20th century Jews' desire that
they should NOT be seen as essentially sexualized. See Edward Bristow's
book, Ruth Abrams's dissertation (focusing on int'l prevention efforts), and
a book & several articles by Nora Glickman (focusing on Latin America).
hope this is useful,
Jane
Jane Rothstein,
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of History and
Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies
New York University
jr231@is5.nyu.edu
jane_rothstein@mindspring.com
"Racing between mysticism and revolution..."
-- Phil Ochs
___________________________________________________________________ From: Swamp1800@aol.com
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 10:10:32 EDT
Subject: Re: Clogher and Castlereagh
I'm a little uneasy at how we left this thread hanging. As was pointed out
prosecutions for sodomy were not the thing in the 1820s for any class. I
think it unwise to raise the ever present spector of the hangman's noose so
that the "ah me" of any exposed homosexual becomes the prelude to tragedy.
The Clogher episode has elements of farce, though a cruel one. As for
Castlereagh, perhaps this isn't a farfetched analogy. Suppose Kissinger told
David Frost that he was accused of the same crime as Pinochet and days later
slit his throat. Time passes and 180 years from now human rights becomes
quite the thing, and historians, just as we today examine sexuality in the
past, rake all old leaders over the coals for their human rights record,
easily finding much high sounding rhetoric to make them think that at the end
of the 20th century, it was of highest importance to contemporaries. Now, if
Kissinger slit his throat we would certainly call him insane. But the future
historians of human rights might easily be delude into thinking he did it to
avoid a war crimes tribunal.
Most of my research, and you can find all of it in a confusing pottage of
links beginning at http://members.aol.com/Swamp1800/Lenfant.html, is on US
society in the 1790s. My thesis is that the whoring elite was in no moral
position to make much ado about sodomites, though privately they might vent
their prejudices against them. From my recent reading, I sense this is not
quite with it. Trumbach has the use of whores being a great heterosexual
proving ground, part and parcel of the program to keep boys from becoming
queers. So heterosexual whoring did not necessarily give any space to
homosexuals (or I assume that's what he's driving at.) And in the 1790s in
the US, where I find no evidence of public vengence against homosexuals, I
have found an act of male violence which might be interpreted as gay bashing.
But I think in the England of 1822, from what little I know of it, that from
the King on down there was not anyone in power who had the moral authority to
tell or even hint to Castlereagh that his problems were best solved by
suicide. I would go farther and suggest (again I am woefully uninformed
but...) that in Anglo-American society circa 1790-1820 there was not much
effort made to conceal possibly scandalous behavior. Perhaps I take Nelson's
last words too much to heart, but this was not a stiff upper lip time even in
England. In some ages scandals just don't resonate let alone kill. (Clinton
could suddenly become gay and half the populace would yawn and the other say
they knew it all along.) Ergo, unless recent scholarship has a contemporary
of Castlereagh blaming his suicide principally on possible blackmail, I still
have to wonder about maids who serve me hot buttered toast for breakfast, and
think Castlereagh crazy for slitting his own throat.
Bob Arnebeck
___________________________________________________________________
From: TallSkinny@aol.com
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 14:08:54 EDT
Subject: Would anyone like to respond?
I am writing a statement for the series in progress "the objectification of
pornography" and I would like to pose the question that started the series to
the group:
"What is pornography and what's the objection?"
If anyone would like to respond please do so.
Thanks,
-jb
___________________________________________________________________
From: "LJ Hall, Historical Studies" <Lisa.J.Hall@bristol.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 13:13:40 +0100
Subject: Re: Clogher and Castlereagh
There's a few points here that I need to question. Firstly
although Bob Arnebeck writes that:
> prosecutions for sodomy were not
the thing in the 1820s for any class.
Surely the spectre of the hangings of the first decade of the century
would have played on the mind of anyone potentially about to be
exposed as a 'sodomite'... and secondly, although same-sex sexual
activity might not have been frowned upon in certain circles,
Castlereagh was not part of these 'circles', he was particularly
hated, wasn't he?? by the romantics who were (no, not as a homogenous
group by any means) fairly 'sodomy-friendly'... is it the
'traditionally' held belief that Castlereagh killed himself out of a
sense of general unpopularity, following the Peterloo massacre and the
Six Acts?? the threat of 'exposure' would no doubt have compounded
this.
On a not really related point, did Mary Shelley really run a 'lesbian
rescue service' in her later life?? Or is this a piece of mythology.
Lisa Hall.
LJ Hall, Historical Studies
Lisa.J.Hall@bristol.ac.uk
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Clogher and Castlereagh
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 12:09:46 +0100
Contrary to what Bob Arnebeck suggests, I don't think that the 1790s-1820s
was a particularly tolerant era for homosexuals, at least in England. During
the nineteenth century, before the death penalty was abolished for all
crimes (except treason and murder) in 1836, nearly 60 men were hanged for
sodomy. (Louis Crompton, _Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in 19th-Century
England_, 1985, reprinted 1998). In addition to this, hundreds of
prosecutions resulted in imprisonment (and pillorying before that was
abolished), and thousands resulted in fines. The Rolls for 1810 contain at
least 200 arrest slips for homosexual soliciting, mainly in Green Park and
St James's Park, near barracks, though most of the men arrested never
appeared in court, because they skipped bail.
I'm not suggesting that middle-class gentlemen or upper-class aristocrats
had much genuine fear of being hanged, but they were genuinely worried about
being prosecuted. During this pre-Victorian period (which isn't much studied
because it's neither Victorian nor really Georgian), there were many cases
of aristocrats and gentlemen fleeing England to go to the Continent, where
homosexual acts were not a statutory offence. George Ferrars, Earl of
Leicester, known as Lord Chartley, fled to Italy in 1808 because his wife
was preparing to reveal him as a sodomite. Newspapers reported this and he
sued them for libel (through his lawyers, as he never returned to England).
>From the 1790s a lot of clergymen (all gentlemen) fled to France (and even
America) shortly after arrest orders had been issued for their apprehension
(most of the material on them in Benbow's anti-clerical _Crimes of the
Clergy_, published in 1820, can be substantiated by contemporary trials and
newspaper reports). Henry Spencer Ashbee in his _Index Librorun
Prohibitorum_ of 1877 has a section based on his own knowledge of
upper-middle-class Scottish men who fled the country in the 1820s. The
famous book collector Richard Heber, brother of the Bishop of Calcutta, sued
the John Bull newspaper in 1826 for insinuating that he had left the country
to avoid a homosexual prosecution, but I think it can be established that
their insinuation was correct. The newspapers of the 1820s and 1830s are
full of reports about clergymen who have flown the country to avoid
prosecution for sodomitical misdemeanours. For example, in 1825 Rev William
Hayes, one of the Minor Canons of St Paul's, who was "found in a disgusting
situation with a
boy in a lane leading to a wharf in Upper Thames-street", was granted bail
and absconded, but was recaptured in Reading, found guilty by default, and
sent to Reading gaol for six months. In 1833 in Suffolk a rector and a
curate were charged with the capital felony of sodomy, but they disappeared
and lost only their recognizances rather than their heads. William Beckford,
the most famous upper-middle-class homosexual of this period, was forced
into long stays abroad while scandals involving him died down, and despite
his fabulous wealth and family connections he was nevertheless the most
comprehensively ostracized man in English society of his period. Viscount
Courtenay (later Lord Devon), the youth loved by Beckford in the 1780s, had
to flee to France in 1811 because a warrant was issued for his arrest after
picking up a soldier in a urinal. Other similar examples could be cited.
If Bob Arnebeck knows of any circle of upper-class British homosexuals
during this period whose behaviour was an open secret and whose behaviour
was readily condoned or ignored by their social class, I would be really
interested in hearing more about them and knowing their names. I am not
aware of such a circle, though, as I say, this period is relatively
under-researched. I am aware, however, of substantial evidence of blackmail
of upper-middle-class homosexuals during this period, which suggests a
milieu of secrecy and shame. Whatever may have been the case in America, in
England during this period great efforts were made to conceal such
scandalous behaviour.
Incidentally, most gay men who kill themselves do so not because of fear of
the legal consequences of prosecution, but because they cannot face the
shame of public disgrace that arises from prosecution or public exposés.
(This is true for non-sexual crimes as well, e.g. men who suffered financial
ruin constituted a large category of suicides during the eighteenth
century.) In England during the late twentieth century, literally hundreds
of men committed suicide shortly after being arrested by the police for
soliciting in public urinals, a misdemeanour punishable by small fine no
higher than that for a traffic violation. The spectre of the hangman's noose
is less directly feared than the certainty of the rituals of shame enforced
by society. The Times newspaper during the early nineteenth century is full
of reports of young men who have committed suicide, mostly loners who killed
themselves for no publicly stated reason, in circumstances that seem to
suggest that they had a secret that was discovered by their family or
neighbours. I've often thought it would be interesting to investigate these
to see what percentage may have been caused by fear of being exposed as a
homosexual, but the task is rather daunting, as it would require archive
research in coroners' records for details not reported in the newspapers.
Exactly what may have gone through Castlereagh's mind during the last two or
three months of his life we don't know, but I think it is fairly certain
that the blackmail played a pivotal role in his suicide. The best
contemporary source is Princess Lieven, wife of the Russian ambassador and
Metternich's mistress, who was the confidante of Lady Conyngham, mistress of
King George IV. Princess Lieven's retailed the information she had received
from Lady Conyngham to her own confidante Mrs Harriet Arbuthnot, wife of the
secretary to the Treasury, who recorded it in her Journal of 29 August 1822,
and also in two letters to Metternich on 12 and 14 August 1822:
"Ah, what a frightful tragedy -- I am shaking from head to foot --
Londonderry! What an end! You will hear the news -- accompanied by what
details I do not know. Here is the information I have just gathered from
Lady Conyngham. Last Friday, the 9th, Londonderry went to see the King at
Carlton House. He came from North Cray with his wife, and she put him down
at the door of the Palace. When he got into the King's study, he seized him
by the arm and said: "Have you heard the news, the terrible news? I am a
fugitive from justice, I am accused of the same crime as the Bishop of
Clogher. I have ordered my saddle horses; I am going to fly to Portsmouth,
and from there to the ends of the earth." The King took him by both hands
and begged him to compose himself, to be calm. They were alone: he accused
himself of every crime. . . . He showed the King two anonymous letters which
he had received the day before, Thursday. One of them threatened to reveal
his irregular conduct to his wife; the other concerned a more terrible
subject. This letter sent him off his head."
Incidentally, the travelling toiletry case containing the razor which which
Castlereagh slit his throat is on public display at Audley End House,
Saffron Walden, Essex, as well as his portrait. I forget by what family
connections it came to be there, but it satisfies a certain morbid interest
in such things.
--
Rictor Norton, London
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Clogher and Castlereagh - Correction
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 16:36:09 +0100
Re my earlier reference to "Viscount Courtenay (later Lord Devon)" -- I
meant to say "Earl of Devon".
--
Rictor Norton, London
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Houlbrook, Matthew" <mhoulb@essex.ac.uk>
Subject:
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 16:29:13 +0100
Is anyone aware of the location of the records of the Central South London
Free Church Council - another one of these moral purity groups active in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries? The Fawcett Library have no knowledge of
the organisation.
Many thanks
Matt Houlbrook
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Free Church Council
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2000 12:21:23 +0100
Re Matthew Houlbrook's query, this wouldn't be a specifically social purity
body: Free Church Councils were widespread throughout the UK, federated to a
central body, and represented the joint interests of the 'free', i.e.
nonconformist (Baptist, Methodist, Congregationalist, Presbysterian, etc)
churches. This would presumably have included, but not have been confined
to, moral concerns.
A 'Corporate Name' search on the National Register of Archives
(http://www.hmc.gov.uk/nra/simple.htm ) in 'Free Church Council' throws up a
large no of hits for local FC Councils and central organisation records. I
don't see one for 'Central South London' but there was certainly one for
Camberwell, Peckham and Dulwich, records in Lambeth Archives Dept (contact
details via ARCHON, also on the HMC website). Records of the Free Church
Federal Council are at the London Metropolitan Archives.
Hope this is of some use.
Lesley
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
___________________________________________________________________
From: Swamp1800@aol.com
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 21:26:15 EDT
Subject: Re: Clogher and Castlereagh
(From Bob Arnebeck: I got this from Martha Sherwood in reply to my recent
post for forwarding to the list)
I very much doubt that the blackmail attempt was the major factor in
Castlereagh's suicide, though it probably contributed. In August of 1822
he was seriously sleep-deprived, may have been using drugs to keep up a
gruelling schedule, and had serious health problems. When his physician
and several friends told him he was insane, based on his behavior which
suggests at the time he really was, he seems to have chosen death over the
possibility of being confined as a maniac, possibly for the rest of his
life. I have a paper on this in press, which I can send to anyone
interested. Main reference: transcript of the coroner's inquest, London
Times, August 14, 1822. I do think the evidence for the bisexuality of one
of Britain's leading statesmen and how it might have contributed to his
thinking and actions is a legitimate topic for discussion on this list,
for he is one of the few prominent political figures about whom this
question has been raised based on reAsonable historical documentation.
-Martha Sherwood-
msherw@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Marta Sherwood-Pike)
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Hall ,Dr Lesley" <l.hall@wellcome.ac.uk>
Subject: 'Sploshing'?
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 15:20:38 +0100
A colleague of mine who is building up a research collection of 'tart-cards'
as found in London phone-boxes, has recently come across one advertising
'sploshing services'. He and I have various surmises about what this might
mean, but I thought I would run it past the collective wisdom of Histsex to
see if anyone has a more definite definition.
Thanks
Lesley
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
___________________________________________________________________
From: Swamp1800@aol.com
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2000 21:00:41 EDT
Subject: Re: Clogher and Castlereagh
I certainly bow to Rictor's expertise on all this both in regard to treatment
of homosexuals in general in the 1820s and to Castlereagh's case in
particular. I suppose I am a bit thrown off in my ideas because of the
so-called Coward of Minden, Lord George Germain, who, of course, loomed so
large in the American Revolutionary War, though he was chastised, even in the
press, for his sexuality. Was there ever an easier time for homosexuals?
Perhaps the 1777 to 1790 period? Perhaps I am naive looking for this easier
time, but if there wasn't any variation what's the point of writing any more
history beyond stringing together all the private gossip, hangings and
newspaper gibes? Were homosexuals in power always easily victimized, or at
times were their virtues as statesmen and generals great enough to prompt
society to ignore their sexuality? As for the Castlereagh case, having just
re-read School for Scandal, I feel a little uneasy basing a case on:
"Princess Lieven's retailed the information she had received from Lady
Conyngham to her own confidante Mrs Harriet Arbuthnot, wife of the secretary
to the Treasury, who recorded it in her Journal of 29 August 1822, and also
in two letters to Metternich on 12 and 14 August 1822." However, as I already
said, I know very little about it. Was his sexuality known when he had his
duel with Canning? was it known to Metternich when they were reshaping
Europe? if it had been known by either would they have used it against
Castlereagh?
As for what was happening in America then, I think folks had a tendency to
think of themselves as more moral than the rest of world (time haven't
changed in that respect!), and it's quite possible that included
self-censorship even of private gossip!
Bob Arnebeck
http://hometown.aol.com/Swamp1800/Lenfant.html (L'Enfant's Homosexuality)
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 10:56:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: "=?iso-8859-1?q?Michael=20O'Rourke?=" <tranquilised_icon@yahoo.com>
Subject: Introduction
Dear Histsex list members,
I joined Histsex a week or so ago having stumbled
serendipitously upon it while trawling the net.
However, with one thing and another I have only got
around to introducing myself now. I am a 24 year old
heterosexual queer theorist( excuse my un-Foucauldian
move but less rigorous queer theorists than I seem to
think that one's academic course of study is reducible
to one's sexual identity)reading for a PhD at
University College Dublin.My interest in the history
of sexuality stems from my M. Litt thesis on Queer
Chaucer which I submitted last November, where I wrote
extensively on the historiography of medieval
sexuality. I have since migrated to the eighteenth
century and am working on the (homo)sexual identities
of several major/minor figures. However, I have been
dismayed by a lot of the amateurish histories of
Enlightenment sexuality I have encountered in the six
months since I began. Some lack insight and others are
plainly hampered by an insufficient knowledge of
enlightenment homosexual subcultures. Immersed as I
now am in social, sexual and cultural histories I hope
to meet like minded scholars on this list. I have
already found the exchangs about Clogher/ Castlereagh
most engaging. I myself was recently discussing what I
called "homodepression" with another enlightenment
cultural historian. There are a dazzling array of
homosexual men in the long eighteenth century who were
depressives, mad or took there own lives. I am
thinking of Cowper, Smart, Kleist, Edward Walpole,
John Robert Cozens, Richard Payne Knight, to name but
a few. I imagine these stricken deer are the products
of a homophobic society which could engender such a
deep self-hatred in Winckelmann that he almost
invited his own death.
Michael O' Rourke,
PhD student,
University College Dublin
___________________________________________________________________
From: Swamp1800@aol.com
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 10:32:56 EDT
Subject: Re: Introduction
Michael O'Rourke writes:
"There are a dazzling array of
homosexual men in the long eighteenth century who were
depressives, mad or took there own lives."
The principal subjects of my study are Pierre L'Enfant, who designed
Washington, DC, and Charles Adams, son and brother of the 2nd and 6th US
presidents. L'Enfant ended his days more or less insane and Adams drank
himself to death. So I can shout amen to "homodepression." However, what I
suggest is that there must have been just as many homosexuals in that long
century who did quite well for themselves. For example, L'Enfant and Adams
were close to Baron von Steuben, a German born American Revolutionary War
hero, wh died still a hero. And a lawyer named John Mulligan who was
Steuben's secretary and turned a number of men's head lived into his 80s and
told Steuben's biographer of his affection for the Baron. Of course, we can
argue that chaps like Steuben and Mulligan were merely homosocial (and I have
no explicit evidence regarding L'Enfant and Adams,) and that it was only the
men who got down and dirty who ended like Castlereagh and the others you list.
I wonder if it is productive to write the history of sexuality using
categories of insanity. I believe the American Psychiatric Association listed
homosexuality as insanity until recently. I think the better path is to make
a careful case by case study in those rare instances when it is possible.
Now as for the homodepressing 18th century. The end of the long century
seemed to be a wonderful time for male eccentricity tucked between the legacy
of religious wars and the Victorian Era. Hell fire and damnation were passe,
and scholars of other European nations can help me here, if it wasn't for the
English habit of periodically hanging sodomites, things were not so bad
during the Enlightenment.
Finally a little story: John Trumbull, a bad American artist, decided when a
young lad to become an artist when Benjamin West (I think it was) visited
Boston and received visitors clad completely in scarlet. Them were the days.
Bob Arnebeck
http://members.aol.com/Rarnebeck/Lenfant.html
___________________________________________________________________ From: "King, Michael" <m.king@rfc.ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: Introduction
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 18:01:34 +0100
Dear All
I have recently joined the list but have not had time to introduce myself.
I have enjoyed, however, some of the debates!
I am a research psychiatrist who is interested (among other things) in
research on sexuality. We have two funded projects running currently in
this area.
1) The first is a national (UK) study of the mental and social well-being of
gays, lesbians and bisexuals.
2) The second is an oral history study of gay men and lesbians who underwent
"treatment" for homosexuality in Britain after 1950. Treatments include
medical (e.g. hormonal) or psychological (aversion therapy and
psychoanalysis) treatments to change their sexuality. Thus, we are about to
recruit such people across Britain.
We have also studied the attitudes of psychoanalysts to their gay and
lesbian patients (no mean feat!).
We are trying to establish a Special Interest Group for "Lesbian and Gay
Mental Health" in the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Despite opposition,
we are nearing our target (number of expressions of interest among members)
and hope to form such a section later this year. We hope that such a
section will place G&L issues further up the College's agenda and try to
address the mistakes made by psychiatrists in the past (and in the future!).
Best wishes
Michael
Professor Michael King
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences
Royal Free and University College Medical School
Royal Free Campus
Rowland Hill Street
LONDON NW3 2PF
Tele +44 (0)20 7830 2397
Fax +44 (0)20 7830 2808
email m.king@rfc.ucl.ac.uk <mailto:m.king@rfc.ucl.ac.uk>
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: Review of interest
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 18:38:50 +0100
of Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. _Women in the Streets: Essays on Sex and
Power in Renaissance Italy_. Baltimore and London: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1996. xi + 250 pp. Bibliography and
index. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8018-5308-7; $15.95 (paper) ISBN
0-8018-5309-5.
by Carole Collier Frick
can be found at
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=3D3064960933930
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 12:45:33 -0500
From: David Nicholas Harley <David.N.Harley.4@nd.edu>
Subject: Sexuality and psychiatric categories
Bob Arnebeck wrote:
>I wonder if it is productive to write the history of sexuality using
>categories of insanity. I believe the American Psychiatric Association
listed
>homosexuality as insanity until recently. I think the better path is to make
>a careful case by case study in those rare instances when it is possible.
David Harley comments:
I'm not sure how fruitful it is to write the history of anything
(witchcraft, sexuality, disease, normal emotions, madness) using modern
medical or psychiatric categories. Since there is a feedback loop between
the categories (whether folk or professional), the experiences, and the
personality development of people at any given period and in any given
cultural environment, it surely makes rather more sense for us to deploy
the categories available at the time rather than the ones which structure
our own folk psychology. This is not to say that we can never gain any
insight by bringing modern ideas to bear - we have little choice but to be
people of our own place and time - only to say that we have to interpret
what people thought or did primarily in terms of the concepts and options
available to them.
David Harley
Dept. of History
219 O'Shaughnessy
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame IN 46556
219-631-7313
___________________________________________________________________
From: Mal123nash@aol.com
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 15:17:04 EDT
Subject: Melancholia
Dear List Members,
In my studies of Karl Ulrichs and Magnus Hirschfeld, melancholy was a
keyword that I soon learned meant depression. In Hirschfeld's "The
Homosexuality of Men and Women," which I recently translated, there were
eighteen instances where I indexed the word depression. I think that Gay men
and women are snared into this state by the pitfall of homophobia.
Sincerely,
Michael Lombardi-Nash, Ph.D.
http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/celebration2000
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: 175 Years of Pride
http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/uraniamanuscripts (more on Ulrichs)
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 11:36:24 -0500
From: David Nicholas Harley <David.N.Harley.4@nd.edu>
Subject: Re: Sexuality and psychiatric categories
David Harley wrote:
><< I'm not sure how fruitful it is to write the history of anything
> (witchcraft, sexuality, disease, normal emotions, madness) using modern
> medical or psychiatric categories. >>
Jim Miller replied:
> But I'm not sure how honest to write history pretending to use
pre-modern
>categories. If modern categories define how we think, it is very difficult
>to climb outside those categories and still function. Better, I think, to
>acknowledge our modern categories and make clear the problems you run into
>trying to understand one culture from the perspective of another culture.
David Harley comments:
There is clearly a problem of partial incommensurability. Total
incommensurability is clearly untenable, since it would render all
communication impossible. We all need to develop pigeons, trade languages,
to talk across disciplines and cultures and varying personal experiences.
We can perhaps never become fully bilingual in the language of the past or
that of a distant discipline, but we need to make the effort or we will not
recognize the problem. We may need to make some translations when we
struggle with what our forebears meant by some phrase, but our first task
must surely be to understand the linguistic field of the terms as used at
the time, instead of rushing to translate "possession", shall we say, as
"hysteria", a term that has already vanished from US professional
terminology. The translator is always a traitor.
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 11:52:02 -0500
From: David Nicholas Harley <David.N.Harley.4@nd.edu>
Subject: RE: Melancholia
Michael King wrote:
>The term melancholia does have a long history from its Greek origins. It
>was re-adopted last century by psychiatrists such as Kraeplin to mean a
>serious depression that was not like manic-depression. Melancholia was
>characterised by agitated depression, often with delusional convictions of
>serious physical illness, which usually came on in middle life. Even when
>used by the ancients, it referred to severe lowering of mood or spirits with
>bodily symptoms such as wasting and weakness. The idea of melancholia as
>"romantic suffering" may have been more literary than medico-scientific.
David Harley:
A problem with the above is that it reads pre-modern diagnoses through the
filter of an ontological theory of disease, it seems to me. Humoral
ailments were not things but imbalances of the individual constitution.
Thus, someone might be naturally melancholic without being ill, but simply
characterized by the hot/dry humour. Should that person fall into a
dyscrasia or imbalance, the melancholia might become adust, leading to a
severe drying of the radical moisture of the brain. This was why the
smoking of tobacco, a very hot/dry substance, was contra-indicated for
naturally melancholic people but not for phlegmatics (cold/wet).
It is thus an error to read all pre-modern references to "melancholy" as if
they were psychiatric diagnoses. Hippocratism and Galenism did not make
sharp mind/body distinctions, and nor for that matter did 18th-century
sensibility theory. When an eighteenth-century casebook refers to someone
being melancholy, this usually describes the patient's natural constitution.
As for the positive character ascribed to melancholy, this dates back to
Ficino's Three Books on Life rather than the Romantic period. Durer's
famous print is a somewhat ambivalent reflection of this re-evaluation.
Melancholia was decidedly fashionable in Elizabethan England, as one can
see from contemporary poetry and portaits, such as the miniatures of Hilliard.
___________________________________________________________________
From: "King, Michael" <m.king@rfc.ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Melancholia
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 08:36:27 +0100
The term melancholia does have a long history from its Greek origins. It
was re-adopted last century by psychiatrists such as Kraeplin to mean a
serious depression that was not like manic-depression. Melancholia was
characterised by agitated depression, often with delusional convictions of
serious physical illness, which usually came on in middle life. Even when
used by the ancients, it referred to severe lowering of mood or spirits with
bodily symptoms such as wasting and weakness. The idea of melancholia as
"romantic suffering" may have been more literary than medico-scientific.
Michael King
-----Original Message-----
From: Kazetnik@aol.com [mailto:Kazetnik@aol.com]
Sent: 21 June 2000 22:28
To: histsex@listbot.com
Subject: Re: Melancholia
Histsex:For historians of sexuality -
http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
I think the term melancholia is a good example of what David was earlier
discussing in terms of looking at historical specificity and available
contemporary models of explanation, since it is a word with a much longer
medico-scientific history than depression and the two don't seem to me to be
very co-terminus anyway. Doesn't melancholia carry with it connotations of
sensitivity, romantic suffering, excess of sensation (deriving in some
tortuous manner from Humeric theory) while depression is lack, of affect,
serotonin, whatever? I'm not as familiar with K-E as perhaps as I should be,
but does his version of melancholia in homosexuals precisely mirror what
current orthodoxy would describe as depression? I'm very doubtful.
Chris White
___________________________________________________________________
From: MillerJimE@aol.com
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 01:42:10 EDT
Subject: Re: Sexuality and psychiatric categories
In a message dated 06/21/2000 3:08:57 PM Central Daylight Time,
David.N.Harley.4@nd.edu writes:
<< I'm not sure how fruitful it is to write the history of anything
(witchcraft, sexuality, disease, normal emotions, madness) using modern
medical or psychiatric categories. >>
But I'm not sure how honest to write history pretending to use pre-modern
categories. If modern categories define how we think, it is very difficult
to climb outside those categories and still function. Better, I think, to
acknowledge our modern categories and make clear the problems you run into
trying to understand one culture from the perspective of another culture.
Jim Miller
___________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 17:27:44 EDT
Subject: Re: Melancholia
I think the term melancholia is a good example of what David was earlier
discussing in terms of looking at historical specificity and available
contemporary models of explanation, since it is a word with a much longer
medico-scientific history than depression and the two don't seem to me to be
very co-terminus anyway. Doesn't melancholia carry with it connotations of
sensitivity, romantic suffering, excess of sensation (deriving in some
tortuous manner from Humeric theory) while depression is lack, of affect,
serotonin, whatever? I'm not as familiar with K-E as perhaps as I should be,
but does his version of melancholia in homosexuals precisely mirror what
current orthodoxy would describe as depression? I'm very doubtful.
Chris White
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Winckelmann
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 21:26:51 +0100
Michael O'Rourke writes:
"I imagine these stricken deer are the products of a homophobic society
which could engender such a deep self-hatred in Winckelmann that he almost
invited his own death."
I think that if you trace the origin of this claim, you will find that it
originated in the words of some art historian in the late 1950s and drew
upon the homophobic assumptions of contemporary psychoanalytical theory
about homosexual men being innately unstable and suicidal.
It is extremely interesting to study the effects of homophobia (and
suppression) on Winckelmann, but I don't think there is sound evidence that
he was suicidal, or even that he fits the stereotype of the self-hating
homosexual. It is certainly the case that in 1754 he experienced an inner
struggle, with physical symptoms such as night sweats and loss of weight and
insomnia. He left Dresden behind in 1755, determined to devote his life to
the study of art in Rome, which can perhaps be seen as a sublimation of
desire. Once there, he freed himself from German puritanism and embraced
Italian sensuosity. In his correspondence he became fairly open about his
liaisons with, for example, Franz Stauder, a pupil of Anton Raphael Mengs,
the young Florentine Nicolo Castellani, and an unnamed "beautiful young
eunuch". By 1761 he had completely recovered his health and vitality --
clearly because he had stopped repressing his sexuality and came out to
himself and even to others. He wrote to a friend: "I can be satisfied with
my life. I have no worries other than my work, and have even found someone
with whom I can speak of love: a good-looking, blond young Roman of sixteen,
half a head taller than I am." Winckelmann later fell in love with
26-year-old Reinhold von Berg and wrote to another friend, "I have fallen in
love, and how! with a young Livonian." He even carved Berg's initials on the
bark of a sycamore tree in Frascati. These are not the actions of a
self-hating homosexual. I think there is some story about Casanova coming
abruptly into a room and finding Winckelmann in the arms of a pretty lad,
and Wincklemann feeling no discomposure other than the necessity of
adjusting his attire.
I don't think Winckelmann experienced any more depressions until he decided,
to return to Germany in 1768. On the way he had a nervous breakdown, and
broke off his journey near Ratisbone. Almost certainly this breakdown was
due to an onslaught of Germanic guilt which he thought he had forever left
behind. On his return, he checked into an inn in Trieste in June to await
until a suitable ship departed for Rome. There he fell in with Francesco
Arcangeli, an unemployed cook or cafe waiter and small-time thief, who went
to Winckelmann's room every night for the next few days. I don't think there
is any evidence that Winckelmann was in the habit of picking up rough trade
(though that in itself would not be sufficient evidence of self-hatred, but
perhaps only desire for risk and excitement). His attraction for Arcangeli
really cannot be construed as evidence of a death wish. It seems to me that
Winckelmann had decided to celebrate his return to the life of the senses
(i.e. his imminent return to Rome), and he wanted some company and some sex.
And like many single men when travelling abroad in an unfamiliar port, he
was not particularly discriminating about where he got it. In the event,
Arcangeli planned his actions over the next few days, bought a rope and
knife, and killed Winckelmann, ostensibly to rob him. But in his detailed
confession, Arcangeli pointedly noted that he spread Winckelmann's legs
apart and stabbed him repeatedly in the genitals. It seems to me that this
is evidence of a frenzied sexual attack, a case of what lawyers call
"homosexual panic". That is, the man who hated himself for engaging in
homosexual sex was not poor Winckelmann, who staggered down the stairs
clutching his bleeding crotch crying "Look what he has done to me!", but
Arcangeli, his murderer.
--
Rictor Norton, London
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 16:01:26 -0700
From: Jack Kolb <kolb@ucla.edu>
Subject: Lesbian magazine upsets gay lobby
[forwarded by Varda Ullman Novick. JK]
THE TIMES, LONDON
June 22 2000
FROM ADAM SAGE IN PARIS
FRENCH lesbians stepped into a row with the mainstream male-dominated gay
lobby yesterday after launching the country's first lesbian magazine.
The publication is designed to give lesbians a voice in a society where,
unlike homosexual men, they have been unable to benefit from social
change.
With urban French liberalism in constant tension with rural Catholicism,
the image of women is shaped by a self-proclaimed enlightened élite that
is invariably masculine.
The result is a series of stereotypes: the young, long-legged blonde
student, the successful, attractive working mother, and for lesbians, the
butch, comic, badly dressed loner.
The women journalists behind the new magazine Tetu, Madame (Stubborn,
Madame) said they had been marginalised by France's leading homosexual
publication Tetu.
In an editorial, Axelle le Dauphin, argued that Tetu's claim that it
represented lesbians as well as gay men was a giant swindle. This brought
a furious reply from Thomas Doustaly, the Editor of Tetu, who described
Mme le Dauphine as "spiteful".
M Doustaly's attack on what he refers to as "this little madame" betrays
the concerns of a gay community that is enjoying the social recognition
that has so far been refused to lesbians.
After years of ostracism and subterfuge male politicians, such as Bertrand
Delanoe, the socialist candidate for Mayor of Paris, feel free to affirm
their homosexuality. So too do television stars such as Pascal Sevran, a
variety show host.
However, the only lesbian celebrity in France is Amelie Mauresmo, a tennis
player whose sexual preference was made public when other players on the
women's circuit spoke about it.
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Philip Stokes" <philip.stokes@btinternet.com>
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond?
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2000 23:18:44 +0100
Dear TallSkinny,
One of the great difficulties that is so because people choose to ignore it,
is pornography's protean form. It may also be polymorphously perverse, but
I'd need to take strong drink before pursuing that one.
What I mean is that so very often one finds that pornography is that which,
usually amongst erotica, a writer happens to despise. [Unless the writer is
Nadine Strossen, when altogether more intelligent rules apply.] They seem to
expect readers to empathise and accept their definition, unstated as it may
be. I sense this is most often so for the adherents in the McDworkin camp.
I still value Morse Peckham's Art & Pornography: an experiment in
explanation, NY: 1969, and nag you to read it.
Regards,
Dr Philip Stokes
philip.stokes@btinternet.com
----- Original Message -----
From: <TallSkinny@aol.com>
To: <histsex@listbot.com>
Sent: 12 June 2000 19:08
Subject: Would anyone like to respond?
> Histsex:For historians of sexuality -
http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
>
> I am writing a statement for the series in progress "the objectification
of
> pornography" and I would like to pose the question that started the series
to
> the group:
>
> "What is pornography and what's the objection?"
>
> If anyone would like to respond please do so.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -jb
>
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 18:50:56 -0700 (MST)
From: Tim Hodgdon <Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu>
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond?
Dear Dr. Stokes:
Your post reminds me of some unattributed wisdom I once saw
carved into the wood of a study carrel at Macalester
College, where I spent my undergraduate days, many years
ago. I looked up from the book I was reading, and noticed
the name of someone I knew, engraved with the point of a
ball-point pen. Then my eye caught notice of an adjacent
message: "Dear Ron: You know very well that if you write
your name on a carrel, someone will write 'sucks' next to
it." Sure enough.
When you write things like
> They seem to
> expect readers to empathise and accept their definition, unstated as it may
> be. I sense this is most often so for the adherents in the McDworkin camp.
no one's going to write "sucks" next to it, because we're a
bit beyond that at this stage of the game. But they may
wonder if historians of sexuality are prone to playing
underhanded politics, because they may know that those whom
you're disparaging as "the McDworkin camp" (their
resemblance to the corporate entity sporting the Golden
Arches eludes me) cite the model ordinance for a definition
of pornography when writing for a scholarly audience in a
formal genre, and dispense with such formalities when
writing for a non-scholarly audience. Frequently, as in
articles in _off our backs,_ it's a safe assumption that
many readers already are familiar with the general outlines
of the ordinance and the movement behind it.
So, hey, man -- don't give us historians of sexuality a bad
name, okay? (Definition text below.)
Thanks
Tim Hodgdon
DEFINITIONS
1. "Pornography" means the graphic sexually
explicit subordination of women through pictures and/or
words, including by electronic or other data retrieval
systems, that also includes one or more of the following:
Women are presented dehumanized as sexual objects, things,
or commodities. Women are presented as sexual objects who
enjoy humiliation or pain; or as sexual objects experiencing
sexual pleasure in rape, incest, or other sexual assault;
or as sexual objects tied up, cut up, mutilated, bruised, or
physically hurt. Women are presented in postures or
positions of sexual submission, servility, or display.
Women's body parts--including but not limited to vaginas,
breasts, or buttocks--are exhibited such that women are
reduced to those parts. Women are presented being penetrated
by objects or animals. Women are presented in scenarios of
degradation, humiliation, injury, or torture, shown as
filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised, or hurt in a context
that makes these conditions sexual. 2. The use of men,
children, or transsexuals in the place of women is also
pornography for purposes of this law. [Source:
http://www.igc.org/Womensnet/dworkin/OrdinanceModelExcerpt.html
as of 27 June 2000.]
___________________________________________________________________
From: MillerJimE@aol.com
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 23:52:07 EDT
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond?
In a message dated 06/27/2000 8:51:46 PM Central Daylight Time,
Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu quotes:
<< 1. "Pornography" means the graphic sexually
explicit subordination of women through pictures and/or
words, including by electronic or other data retrieval
systems, that also includes one or more of the following:
Women are presented dehumanized as sexual objects, things,
or commodities. . . . 2. The use of men,
children, or transsexuals in the place of women is also
pornography for purposes of this law. [Source:
http://www.igc.org/Womensnet/dworkin/OrdinanceModelExcerpt.html
as of 27 June 2000.] >>
I can't buy into this definition. It is too long, to narrow and too
broad. It does, however, define pornography by its objection, which may be
what the inquirer wanted. I cannot define porn either by beginning with the
objection or by centering it on the woman. I would offer something simpler
and less polemical:
Pornography is text or images produced with the intention of stimulating
or satisfying lust and text or images purchased for the stimulation or
satisfying of lust.
The definition needs to recognize that materials purchased as pornography
may not have been produced as pornography. For instance, photographs of
athletes in action or of people in uniform, or Classical art . . . . or the
underwear sections of the old Sears catalogues . . . . or album covers. Any
of these may be acceptable to display in the presence of children, but also
be used for masturbation sessions.
One objection may be objectification of the sex object in the porn, but
that sex object is not always female, nor is it always the penetrated
individual. The sex object may be male and may be either in the role of
penetrator or the penetrated (or both). I do know some women who are
strongly stimulated by visuals of attractive males in various states of
undress. I also know of many examples in gay porn where the erotic
attraction of a porn piece is someone who primarily is the penetrator or who
is both penetrated and the penetrator.
The other objections to porn is the stimulation of lust itself ("lust is
dirty") or lust for someone you have never met ("relationless lust is
unhealthy") or lust for someone to whom you are not properly married
("fornication, even theoretical fornication, is a sin") or lust for unnatural
acts -- unnatural itself being a very open category.
Jim Miller
___________________________________________________________________
From: DrkHeavenX@aol.com
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 01:23:09 EDT
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond?
In a message dated 6/28/00 4:19:15 AM !!!First Boot!!!, MillerJimE@aol.com
writes:
<<
I can't buy into this definition. It is too long, to narrow and too
broad. It does, however, define pornography by its objection, which may be
what the inquirer wanted. I cannot define porn either by beginning with the
objection or by centering it on the woman. >>
I think I agree with this, but being usually a "lurker" on the list, having
not recieved a degree yet, perhaps I am not quite as up on this as the rest
of the list.
Does pornography HAVE to be the subordination of another person?
It seems to be that by loading the very definition of pornography as
something negative and harmful to the subject, we're going down the wrong
road.
I've personally always considered pornography as something visual, usually
photographic, that stimulates the viewer, and brings about a sexual response.
As a woman, I've never understood the negative association people have with
pornography. (Unless, of course, it is pornograhpy involving children,
animals or anyone not consenting)
Perhaps I'm wrong here, but that definition seems to be perpetuating the
"shameful" connotation pornography seems to have stapled to it. And quite
frankly, I'd have thought people beyond that brand of Victorian prudery by
now.
A. Forsyth
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 09:52:28 -0500
From: "jane e. larson" <jelarso1@facstaff.wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond?
Proposed legal definitions of pornography are intended to serve a
particular function, one distinct from that served by cultural definitions
of "pornography" or other words we use to describe related ideas, like
"erotica" and "obscenity" and "discourse." Legal definitions may be short
and pithy, like the antitrust laws, when we trust to enforcement
authorities to interpret that law in accordance with cultural
values. (There used to be a greater consensus in the society about the
validity of legal regulation of the economy, and this supported the
antitrust laws; witness the Microsoft case and we see that the consensus is
under strain.) This is not the case in regulation of sexual speech. So
instead -- even before the debate over the wisdom of a particular
regulation of sexual speech/conduct can get off the ground -- society
demands a long and carefully explicated definition, which in turn gives
that society tools to control the enforcement activities authorized under
such law. So when those who support a sexual regulation want to advance
their ideas, they must craft a long and technical definition that allows
others to know exactly what will be in and what will be outside the
boundaries the proposed law draws.
Still the world is complex and language is both over-and under-determined,
and so legal definitions are always to some degree imprecise. This is not
a particular weakness of sexual regulation; rather it is a generally
applicable description of the human enterprise of collective action through
law. But the demand for absolute precision and the demand for guarantees
that there will never be even one good sexual expression covered or
deterred by a proposed sexual regulation is one strategy used by opponents
of such laws. It allows an attack on the technology of the law and avoids
engaging the underlying substance.
The pornography ordinance definition is aimed to serve legal purposes of
discriminating between that sexually explicit imagery and words the law
will act against and that which it will leave alone as unregulated. It is
not intended to define the universe of words and images that are sexually
exciting or sexually transgressive of conventional values or degrading
vis-a-vis a marginalized social group. It is narrower and broader than
each of these other categories for which cultural debate might need
definitions. Jane Larson
Jane E. Larson
Professor of Law
University of Wisconsin - Madison
975 Bascom Mall
Madison, WI., 53706 U.S.A.
(608) 262-7367 (o)
jelarso1@facstaff.wisc.edu
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 13:09:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mario Rups <markin@patriot.net>
To: "Histsex:For historians of sexuality" <histsex@listbot.com>
On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 DrkHeavenX@aol.com wrote:
> It seems to be that by loading the very definition of pornography as
> something negative and harmful to the subject, we're going down the wrong
> road.
...
> As a woman, I've never understood the negative association people have with
> pornography. (Unless, of course, it is pornograhpy involving children,
> animals or anyone not consenting)
Seems like you're conflating pornography and erotica.
What bothers people about pornography as such (and as opposed to erotica)
is that it can too easily be taken as a reflection of reality by those
who either don't or cannot (due to diminished mental capacity of whatever
variety) know better. Hence, the danger of the objectification of women
or that despicable myth, much perpetuated by pornographical scenarios,
that a woman may *say* no but actually means yes. (One of the major topoi
of pornography being that someone, not necessarily female of course, is
forced either explicitly or implicitly into a sexual act and ends up
enjoying it.)
My definition of pornography being that it must contain some element of
force, explicit or implicit; if all parties to the sexuality being
depicted, in whatever medium, are participating of their own free will,
and with informed consent, as far as I'm concerned it's erotica, however
explicit. Hence, the inclusion of children or animals would immediately
flag something as pornography, since at that point there is no free and
informed consent.
Seems to me, though, that the answer isn't censorship (all the more
because the dividing line between erotica and pornography is in such a
grey area, and because some people are offended by *anything* with even a
hint of eroticism or sexuality) so much as education. Same sort of thing
that's going on in the U.S. re: alcohol consumption now, with it's basic
"It's okay to drink, but NOT to get drunk, and even less to drive while
drinking" message, as opposed to Prohibition, which demonstrably didn't
work.
> "shameful" connotation pornography seems to have stapled to it. And quite
> frankly, I'd have thought people beyond that brand of Victorian prudery by
> now.
Again, that holds only vis a vis erotica. Porn is something else.
> A. Forsyth
Mario Rups
markin@patriot.net
___________________________________________________________________
From: MillerJimE@aol.com
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 20:09:19 EDT
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond?
In a message dated 06/28/2000 2:59:36 PM Central Daylight Time,
markin@patriot.net writes:
<< Seems like you're conflating pornography and erotica. . . . .
My definition of pornography being that it must contain some element of
force, explicit or implicit; if all parties to the sexuality being
depicted, in whatever medium, are participating of their own free will,
and with informed consent, as far as I'm concerned it's erotica, however
explicit. >>
It is a matter of definitions, but I also cannot accept your distinction
between erotica and pornography. However, I would ask clarification on a
point. Is payment for services rendered to be considered "force" (economic
compulsion) or "free will" (It's my job and I do it well!)? Susan Faludi,
among others, observes that in the legitimate (above-ground, tax-paying,
open) heterosexual porn industry the female actors have far greater power
than their male counterparts. Perhaps in some cases payment is "force" but
in others it is "free will". So, if I stand in a Adult Video Store, How can
I tell the "porn" from the "erotica"?
Jim Miller
___________________________________________________________________
From: "docx2" <docx2@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond?
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 17:28:50 -0700
----- Original Message -----
From: Mario Rups <markin@patriot.net>
<much snipped>
> My definition of pornography being that it must contain some element of
> force, explicit or implicit; if all parties to the sexuality being
> depicted, in whatever medium, are participating of their own free will,
> and with informed consent, as far as I'm concerned it's erotica, however
> explicit. Hence, the inclusion of children or animals would immediately
> flag something as pornography, since at that point there is no free and
> informed consent.
Without getting in the middle of this pornography debate, the above quote
deserves some further comment. Many people are interested in S/M, which may
have an element of force, but it is still consensual. Additionally, the
above definition would brand a photo of a topless woman walking down the
street as pornographic, since not all the bystanders have given informed
consent. Philosophically, I am not sure that I can consent to having french
fries instead of a baked potato; we do not understand all the ramifications
of that decision and the cultural imperative to cut fat from our diet
impedes any free choice we might have. If you choose to have a less
absolute definition of consent, then children and animals can consent at
some level. This whole issue gets very murky very quickly.
Take care,
Charles Moser
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 19:42:35 -0700 (MST)
From: Tim Hodgdon <Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu>
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond? --interpretation of "force"
On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 MillerJimE@AOL.COM wrote:
> It is a matter of definitions, but I also cannot accept your distinction
> between erotica and pornography. However, I would ask clarification on a
> point. Is payment for services rendered to be considered "force" (economic
> compulsion) or "free will" (It's my job and I do it well!)? Susan Faludi,
> among others, observes that in the legitimate (above-ground, tax-paying,
> open) heterosexual porn industry the female actors have far greater power
> than their male counterparts.
These points, and those that followed, bring up some
interesting questions.
Power? Or did you mean "pay"? I think, the latter. If so,
why is it necessary to pay women more than men to
participate, especially when as a sex-class women's access
to resources compares so poorly to men's? It would seem to
me that if women, in a few cases of "star" status, earn more
for individual performances, it is because they take
significantly greater personal risk, and receive far less in
terms of non-monetary reward. All of this leaves aside the
very real question of how much money women actually receive,
and how much goes into the pockets of pimps and other middle
men, and the women who front for them.
> Perhaps in some cases payment is "force" but
> in others it is "free will".
What I find so significant about this is that it's so
difficult to distinguish force from free will when it comes
to women's choices. As Jane Larson said on the list a while
back, the presumption of "consent once, consent forever"
shapes the frame within which we attempt to distinguish the
two. Or, as someone once put it, "In a society where 'no'
doesn't mean 'no', what does 'yes' mean?" Consent becomes
even murkier when we consider the powerful constraints
involved in the gender segregation and stratification of the
entire economy, such that the only jobs in which women's pay
_consistently_ exceeds men's are those involving sexual
objectification to the nth degree: prostitution and
modeling.
As historians, I think it's time we stopped reflexively
equating women's historical agency with power, and agency
with consent. As the title of Herman and Chomsky's book so
elegantly puts it, the manufacture of consent is a process
that involves access both access to the means of production
and access to the means of speech--in a world of Rupert
Murdochs, a virtually exclusive masculine monopoly. We
really have to inquire into the conditions of consent when
it comes to evaluating the formal consent of the socially
subordinate. Otherwise we won't be able to tell the
difference between those times when individuals speak truth
to power, and those times when subordinated individuals may
benefit (at least, in the short term, although this too may
be manufactured) from telling the powerful exactly what they
want to hear.
> So, if I stand in a Adult Video Store, How can
> I tell the "porn" from the "erotica"?
If you're standing in an "adult" video store, or a
high-art gallery dedicated to the male-supremacist
canon, it's a distinction without a difference.
> Jim Miller
Tim Hodgdon
Ph.D. candidate
Department of History
Arizona State University
Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu
___________________________________________________________________ From: MillerJimE@aol.com
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 00:22:14 EDT
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond? --interpretation of "force"
In a message dated 06/28/2000 10:29:44 PM Central Daylight Time,
Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu writes:
<< Power? Or did you mean "pay"? I think, the latter. If so,
why is it necessary to pay women more than men to
participate, especially when as a sex-class women's access
to resources compares so poorly to men's? It would seem to
me that if women, in a few cases of "star" status, earn more
for individual performances, it is because they take
significantly greater personal risk, and receive far less in
terms of non-monetary reward. >>
I did not say the female stars get more pay (though that is often true).
I said they have more power. It is NOT because they take greater risks. In
the sex industry risk has a small part to play in setting the rates -- and
porn workers who have the greater star power often use that power to reduce
their risk. In the porn industry successful women have more power because
the audience (primarily heterosexual males) are more interested in the female
stars of the videos. The male stars are props, stand-ins for the
heterosexual viewer. In the legit porn industry, as with the movie industry,
the stars that sell best have the most power, and usually make the most money.
It is in the illegal sex trade where many sex workers are treated as
slave labor, etc. etc. These are the sex workers who take the greatest
risks, and no they do not receive greater pay for those risks.
Jim Miller
___________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 04:34:20 EDT
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond? --interpretation of "force"
Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu writes:
<< If you're standing in an "adult" video store, or a
high-art gallery dedicated to the male-supremacist
canon, it's a distinction without a difference. >>
Is this intended as academic irony? If not, where does it leave women who get
pleasure from the products of both kinds of establishment? Presumably
suffering from some kind of sad false consciousness where they believe they
have some form of autonomy over their own sexuality and in their capacity to
critically use such products for their own ends.
Much of this debate seems to me to rest upon a version of female sexuality as
cuddly and romance-bound, where women have no capacity to define an active
and even confrontational sexuality for themselves. Yes, there are huge
economic pressures operating in the industry, along with the documented
abuses of women working in the industry as well as a tendency for such
products to work within certain patriarchally defined ideas of woman/man,
hole/filler. But what of lesbian porn? And why such shyness in allowing women
any form of agency?
Chris White
___________________________________________________________________
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond?
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 11:00:24 -0500
From: "Michael J. Murphy" <mjmurphy@artsci.wustl.edu>
I wonder if our collective difficulties over defining pornography have
something to do with the hole at its middle? (Pun? At your discretion.)
Our definitions approximate what we understand to be pornography but
never seem to approach totalization.
I mean, perhaps we should be spending time considering what, and indeed
whose, purposes are served by the shifting and various definitions of
pornography, a project which seems overshadowed by the seemingly-futile
search for ontological or definitional certainty when it comes to visual
or textual sexual representations. Perhaps we need to consider the
question of pornography as a problem in the econo-political organization
of knowledge, not a problem of philosophical certainty? Or rather the
ontology of pornography actually lies in the organization of its
knowledges not in the material of the text? Pornogaphy is then less a
thing or style of representation than it is a sign of the border which
delimits acceptable and unacceptable sexual representations. Sorry to get
all Foucault here...
For instance, clearly the requirement of consent is martialed to
deligitimate the sexuality of children (Hmmm, even after Freud...),
couched in a language of 'protection' or 'supervision'. What/whose
purposes does this serve, and how can we reconcile it with images of a 14
y.o. Brooke Shields in her Calvin Kleins? A campaign which always felt
exploitative and pornographic to me, but which Shields defends to this
day as volitional. This instance is complicated by the model's motehr as
agent, but Brooks' consent was only validated by the widespread
acceptance of the ads as harmless, but would be invalidated by their
categorization as porn. In my schema above the pornographic nature of
this ad campaign should be a question of what/whose purposes are served
by its general acceptance as NOT pornography, when, if she had appeared
in an 'adult video' similarly clad, professing her absent undergarments,
the FBI would have long ago confiscated all the tapes (for its own
viewing pleasure?)
It also seems to me that proscriptions against interspecial sex are
intended to reinforce the always-cultural distinction between human and
animal, culture and nature, indeed a reassertion of that which actually
produces animal and nature as apart from human and culture. Perhaps that
is where the abject lies in interspecial sex, its threat to the very
definition of human? How should we then understand phrases like 'hot
animal sex'?
Michael J. Murphy, M.A.
Doctoral Student, Art History and Archaeology
Washington University, St. Louis
mjmurphy@artsci.wustl.edu
Identity categories tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes, whether
as the normalizing categories of oppressive structures or as the rallying
points for a liberatory contestation of that very oppression. That is
not to say that I will not appear at political occasions under the sign
of lesbian, but that I would like to have it permanently unclear what
precisely that sign signifies.
--Judith Butler "Imitation and Gender Insubordination" (1991)
___________________________________________________________________ From: DrkHeavenX@aol.com
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 12:24:58 EDT
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond?
In a message dated 6/29/00 2:07:16 AM !!!First Boot!!!, docx2@ix.netcom.com
writes:
<< If you choose to have a less
absolute definition of consent, then children and animals can consent at
some level. This whole issue gets very murky very quickly.
>>
I think that's why the usual phrase is "between consenting adults". I also
have to disagree with the whole erotica/pornograhpy distinction. The only
distinction that I can agree with in that, is that erotica tends to be
written and fictional, leaving no one "compromised".
However. I think that the reason I dislike the implication that the subjects
of pornography are nearly always victims are that a great majority of the
subjects of pornography have made a willing and adult choice to do so.
I've worked in this industry (although never as the subject of pornography),
and I cannot begin to tell you how many women enter that business thinking
they can make a fast buck, make terrible lifestyle choices (drugs,
promiscuous sex, drinking, violence), and once their lives take a turn for
the decidedly awful, they hide behind the excuse that they were victimized.
Perhaps the fact that the definition of pornography is SO insistent that
victimization has to take place in order for it to be porn, perhaps this is
more damaging to women than the business itself? By giving women that insist
on making selfish and stupid life decisions an excuse for the failure that
almost inevitably happens, isn't that more damaging?
I know that's not the point of this whole thread, but it strikes me as
something that should also be considered.
A. Forsyth
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond?
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 20:19:26 +0100
What is the difference between pornography and erotica? In erotica you use a
feather; in pornography you use the whole chicken.
--
Rictor Norton, London
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Philip Stokes" <philip.stokes@btinternet.com>
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond?
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 16:23:00 +0100
Dear Tim Hodgdon,
Oh yes, I walked into that one, didn't I? It comes of putting off because of
lack of time and then very quickly doing something very imperfect 'cos I
still didn't have any.
Well, let's hurry on and strike my content from the record with the
exception that I would still like to commend Nadine Strossen, and in
particular to recommend anyone to read Morse Peckham who elegantly lays out
some of the complexities and/or contradictions in the issues, and I feel is
still within his shelf-life.
Regards
Philip Stokes
philip.stokes@btinternet.com
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 13:36:47 -0700 (MST)
From: Tim Hodgdon <Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu>
Subject: Would anyone care to respond?--Chris White's questions
Hi Chris
Perhaps I can clarify. No, I didn't mean
<< If you're standing in an "adult" video store, or a
high-art gallery dedicated to the male-supremacist
canon, it's a distinction without a difference. >>
with any irony at all. So, where _does_ that leave "women
who get pleasure from the products of both kinds of
establishment"? It doesn't leave them with "false
consciousness." Rather, it leaves them with _gendered_
consciousness. We live in a gendered culture. Not
surprisingly, some women learn how to do more than just get
by; they learn how to eroticize the manipulation of the
cultural constituents of gender hierarchy into new
variations on the theme, to _gloss_ gender. So, when you
ask, "why such shyness in allowing women any form of
agency?" I'm more than happy to grant such women (and, in
fact, any woman who learns how to get by in gender
hierarchy) gobs of social agency. Gender is made, not born;
here we find women industriously engaged in remaking,
reforming gender. And yes, it does render some of them a
pretty close approximation of liberalism's autonomous
individual, both analytically and experientially. While
orthodox liberals reject polymorphous sexual individualism,
they do so only because it doesn't turn them on. They have
no compelling analysis for why it isn't a valid form of
liberalism.
But in distinguishing agency from power, I meant power in
the fullest sense: the collective self-determination of
women as a sex-class. (Right: I'm not a Foucauldian, so
we'll have to agree to disagree on the validity of
constructions such as "sex-class.") I'm not convinced that
any form of liberal individualism, including that of the
sexually enterprising and self-actualizing woman whom you
describe, leads women as a sex-class to the power of
collective self-determination, just as I'm not convinced
that liberal free enterprise is "freedom" for all. Liberal
(sex-)class mobility promises freedom, yet always already
presupposes the existence of (sex-)class, high and low,
according to one's capacity to accumulate capital by
extracting value: in capitalism, by appropriating the value
of the work of the laborer; in sex-class through the
objectification and possession of those whose sexual
labor-their socially constructed sexuality-reifies the
masculine. Sexual free enterprise can and does liberate
some women, but only at the cost of the substantive freedom
of others. There's so much shit-work to do when it comes to
reifying class identities, and free enterprise of all sorts
subordinates whole classes of individuals to make sure that
it always gets done. This requires, at the bottom line, a
willingness to use force--real force, which can be pretty
difficult to distinguish from the kinky kind, if you've ever
been as poor as I have been, and had the sadistic
supervisors I've had. They really got off.
Maybe that's why I find much more compelling the argument
that sex-class--gender itself--has to be destroyed, not
played with. Not a popular argument these days, but then
again, it never was. It's a much more demanding political
task, one that cannot be accomplished in our lifetimes. No
wonder so many people place their bets on liberal
alternatives: who wants to live their one and only life in
the state of being oppressed, and conscious? It's not false
consciousness to judge that to be a painful condition, and
to want to avoid it. Still, the hard question remains: how
does avoiding it, change it?
Lastly, and briefly, you observed that "much of this debate
seems to me to rest upon a version of female sexuality as
cuddly and romance-bound." Well, I'd suggest that the point
of view I find more persuasive remains unpopular partly
because it is not in any way sentimental about men, or about
the ugliness of sexual politics in the context of gender
hierarchy. This ought not obscure the fact that such an
unsentimental sexual politics actually springs from hope:
that human beings can, somehow, come to an agreement that
the best way to achieve sexual justice is to eliminate
gender, and thus eliminate the forced sexual labor of
reifying gender. That would amount to an agreement that the
very real pleasure that humans can derive from actualizing
the subject position of gendered sexuality--or, put another
way, from consuming the product of forced sexual
labor--isn't worth the price. But, having reached that
agreement, it wouldn't be just "female sexuality" that would
be "cuddly." If that sounds repulsively "vanilla" to anyone
out there, then so be it. But it sounds like a genuinely
better world to me, one that I regret I will never live in.
Tim Hodgdon
Ph.D. candidate
Department of History
Arizona State University
Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 16:58:48 -0500
From: "M.E. Buszek" <buszekme@chickmail.com>
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond?
>On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 DrkHeavenX@aol.com wrote:
>Seems like you're conflating pornography and erotica.
>
Am I the only one who finds the mere possibility of such distinctions problematic? The old saw "Pornography is what turns *you* on; Erotica is what turns *me* on" tends to be an apt one when such distinctions are made, in that it asserts a moral and aesthetic position as the difference between one or the other. And, while labeling *anything* as pornography is certainly going to involve a certain level of subjectivity, it seems to me labeling something as pornographic should try to be as objective as possible. Moreover, there's a tendency for "porn" to connote "bad sexuality" and "erotica" to mean "good sexuality"...again, inappropriately subjective.
The only use I've ever had for the term "pornography" is as a legal term...I agree with
whomever it was that acknowledged the potential for almost *anything* to be considered
erotic/arousing by *someone*. As silly as it is to actually look at the local/regional rules that
differentiate "porn" from the rest of erotic materials--fully-erect v. semi-erect penises; vaginal or
anal penetration v. just resting a penis/dildo *near* the orifice; etc.--it really is a pat way of
determining such things without applying sexual tastes/morals or aesthetics into the mix.
Maria-Elena Buszek
Ph.D. Candidate, Art History
The University of Kansas
______________________________________________________________________
From: "josey wells" <wells001@fda.net>
Subject: yes.. i shall raise my hand --to respond.
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 13:41:51 -0700
Good Afternoon Distinquished Ladies and Gentlemen.
The Idea of a photograph, and/or film, of Humans being, meaning , Man
and Woman,
in their nakedness, and then, displaying erotic ideas has caused many
problems from
both sides of the podium. The Righteous say it is wrong. they say that it is
vile. I see
pornagraphy as a moment-captured in time and spacialization relationship
together.
here's what i mean. I was with a friend and we were sitting at a bus
stop. A pregnant
woman walked and sat on the bench. When the Bus arrived and we were onboard
and seated
my friend turned to me and said--" my I wish i could have watched her
getting pregnant!"
Now , would that have been a base circumstance, or would his watching been
base?.
what would that woman have said were she aware that she was being
photographed?
Due to the explosion of the population i see many people having
children---wait let me back up--I see
many pregnant females on Earth. Now, how did they get that way? Um, shall I
say that to see
that articulation is wrong? should i say to see a woman and a man together ,
in each others embrace
is wrong. But, don't get me wrong as i am rational and don't esteem that
because i see a photograph
that thats how the basic human psyche prevails. I'm just saying that , the
people who type words,
generally end up in some ones arms, now, were those moments photographed,
should i look ill at
the persons on the picture?regardless off what that illicits, should i say
that because you to were
allowed to be photographed that the general public should shun that idea.?
You know, i was paying a traffic ticket which is across the street from
the W.I.C office.
WIC= Women with Children! and I saw myriad women and Myriad children. Now,
place my
friend there--he would have like to watched them GET Pregnant! Is he wrong
for wanting to watch?
well, I say Yes! because to watch someone engaging in intercourse or a
variant simular is Pornargraphy!
The OUTLAW
Josey Wells
CSUSM
Literature and Writing Dept
___________________________________________________________________
From: MillerJimE@aol.com
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 20:17:09 EDT
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond?
In a message dated 06/29/2000 2:33:39 PM Central Daylight Time,
norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk writes:
<< What is the difference between pornography and erotica? In erotica you use
a
feather; in pornography you use the whole chicken. >>
I love it. Perhaps a scholar (who lacks a sense of humor) could say the
same thing this way: Erotica is tasteful, Pornography is tasteless. Of
course it remains to define taste, that thing so difficult to pin down.
"But she's wearing a green teddy on orange-flowered sheets! Someone get
Martha Stewart on the line."
"I think these two guys are really straight. No self-respecting Gay man
would wear what they took off."
Jim Miller
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 13:25:02 +1000
From: Lisa Law <lisal@coombs.anu.edu.au>
Subject: Research Position, Level B/C
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
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Apologies for x-posting. Please forward to relevant
candidates.<br>
Best, Lisa<br>
<br>
ADVERTISEMENT<br>
<br>
Institute of Advanced Studies<br>
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies<br>
Division of Society & Environment<br>
Gender Relations Centre<br>
<br>
Research Fellow/Fellow<br>
Level B/Level C (Fixed term)<br>
<br>
Salary: Research Fellow $48,858 - $57,645<br>
=A0 Fellow $59,401 - $68,190<br>
<br>
Ref: PA 28.6.3<br>
<br>
The Gender Relations Centre (previously the Gender Relations Project) is
seeking to appoint a Research Fellow or Fellow. The applicant should have
research experience and a strong record of publication on gender
relations or sexuality in the Asian and/or Pacific regions. The
successful candidate will be expected to research and publish in their
own area of expertise, to assist in the collaborative work of the centre
as required and to supervise graduate scholars as appropriate. Applicants
should have a PhD and publications with a background in anthropology,
demography, history, politics, sociology or other relevant discipline.
They will be expected to have demonstrated a capacity for high quality
research and publication.=A0 Applications should include a full curriculum
vitae, names of three referees and a proposal of 3-5 pages outlining
research to be undertaken and completed during the term of the
Fellowship.<br>
<br>
Appointment: Fixed term for five years.<br>
<br>
Enquiries: For further information please contact Professor Margaret
Jolly preferably by email at
<font color=3D"#0000FF">grp@coombs.anu.edu.au</font><font color=3D"#000000">
or telephone (61 2) 6249 3150 or (61 2) 6249 3146 or fax (61 2) 6249=
4896.<br>
<br>
Contact: Further particulars, including the selection criteria, must be=
obtained before applying from the School Secretary, Research School of=
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email </font><font color=3D"#0000FF">schlsec.rspas@anu.edu.au<br>
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</font><font color=3D"#000000">Closing date: August 18th, 2000<br>
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Information on how to apply may be obtained from the ANU Web page=A0=
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Applications from suitably qualified women, including women from Asia or=
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</font>
___________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 04:25:39 EDT
Subject: Re: Would anyone like to respond?
In erotica you use a feather, in pornography you use the whole chicken, in
fetish porn you take the chicken to a club and party.
CW
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 21:57:13 +1000
From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@history.usyd.edu.au>
Subject: playing the chicken
Kazetnik@aol.com wrote:
> In erotica you use a feather, in pornography you use the whole chicken, in
> fetish porn you take the chicken to a club and party.
>
In erotica the chicken doesn't know anything happened. In pornography the chicken
gets screwed. With fetish porn both you and the chicken get to have a good time.
Is this what you are trying to tell us?
Hera
Hera Cook
History Department
MacCallum Building A17
University of Sydney
NSW 2006
Australia
Phone 61 2 9351 2862, Fax 61 2 9351 3918
___________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 08:37:09 EDT
Subject: Re: playing the chicken
<<In erotica the chicken doesn't know anything happened. In pornography the
chicken
gets screwed. With fetish porn both you and the chicken get to have a good
time.
Is this what you are trying to tell us?
Hera>>
Pretty much :) My point being that most of this debate has been conducted on
a rather limited basis, removing all contexts beyond commercial exploitation,
and disregarding (a) home-based production for personal pleasure and (b) the
often small gap within certain sexual circles between activity and recording
the activity for posterity/public consumption. The chicken is not always the
victim of the fox (?). And sometimes they even swap roles.
CW
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 15:44:21 -0400
From: Cristina Nelson <crn@alum.mit.edu>
Subject: erotica/porn/fetishism
>In erotica you use a feather, in pornography you use the whole chicken, in
>fetish porn you take the chicken to a club and party.
>
>Ummm...would that be a cooked chicken?
Cristina Nelson
___________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 16:05:40 EDT
Subject: Re: erotica/porn/fetishism
It depends on the fetish..... Although chances are, alive or cooked, the
chicken would be plucked and dressed in black leather.
CW
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 13:29:13 -0700 (MST)
From: Tim Hodgdon <Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu>
Subject: Re: playing the chicken
On Fri, 30 Jun 2000 Kazetnik@AOL.COM wrote:
> The chicken is not always the victim of the fox (?).
> [Question mark original.]
Yes--sometimes the chicken gets away.
>And sometimes they even swap roles.
Leaving, still, a fox and a chicken. And the chicken--if
she's a smart chicken--will always have to wonder when the
fox is going to get serious. After all, in order to
continue to be a fox, the fox has to eat.
Tim Hodgdon
Ph.D. candidate
Department of History
Arizona State University
Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu
___________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 17:35:47 EDT
Subject: Re: playing the chicken
Who said the chicken was female? Ok, so there's no equal opportunity term for
farmyard fowl and Reynards, but still....
CW
___________________________________________________________________
From: "hvalp" <hvalp@rhk.dk>
Subject: Re: playing the chicken
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 23:41:22 +0200
> Histsex:For historians of sexuality - http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
>
>
> On Fri, 30 Jun 2000 Kazetnik@AOL.COM wrote:
>
>
>
> > The chicken is not always the victim of the fox (?).
> > [Question mark original.]
>
> Yes--sometimes the chicken gets away.
>
> >And sometimes they even swap roles.
>
> Leaving, still, a fox and a chicken. And the chicken--if
> she's a smart chicken--will always have to wonder when the
> fox is going to get serious. After all, in order to
> continue to be a fox, the fox has to eat.
- Because a fox will always be a fox and a chicken always a chicken?
Lars Kolind
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 18:29:32 -0700 (MST)
From: Tim Hodgdon <Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu>
Subject: Re: playing the chicken
On Fri, 30 Jun 2000, hvalp wrote:
> > Yes--sometimes the chicken gets away.
> >
> > >And sometimes they even swap roles.
> >
> > Leaving, still, a fox and a chicken. And the chicken--if
> > she's a smart chicken--will always have to wonder when the
> > fox is going to get serious. After all, in order to
> > continue to be a fox, the fox has to eat.
>
> - Because a fox will always be a fox and a chicken always a chicken?
>
> Lars Kolind
Good question.
No; it can work even if they switch, because gender
hierarchy is a reified construction, and in order to
maintain it, the subject has to possess an object in order
to experience subjectivity--over and over and over again.
And if willing objects (whose consent has been manufactured
in the social process of the reification of gender
hierarchy) aren't available, or if the would-be subject has
become anxiety-ridden from the sensation of cognitive
dissonance of asserting a subjectivity that's supposed to
feel "natural," and only ends up feeling empty, then the
game gets rough in one way or another. The fox really needs
a chicken, and so just takes one--or more.
It is this process that remains subtextual in William
Lockridge's _On the Sources of Patriarchal Rage: The
Commonplace Books of William Byrd and Thomas Jefferson and
the Gendering of Power in the Eighteenth Century_ (New York
Univ. Press, 1992)--only because Lockridge doesn't draw on
the tools necessary to connect the patterns of thought
evinced by these elite men's writing to the larger pattern
of gendered sexuality. It's also clear in Martin P. Levine,
"The Life and Death of Gay Clones," in _Gay Culture in
America: Essays from the Field,_ ed. Gilbert Herdt (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1992), 68-86. So, to answer Chris White's
question, "why does the chicken always have to be a 'she'"
(another good question), "she" is the gendered object for
however long she's used as one, regardless of the shape of
the genitals.
We might substitute "chicken hawk" for "fox," but that might
reduce the general applicability of the metaphor to all
gendered forms of sexuality. For an alternative to gendered
sexuality, you might want to look at John Stoltenberg, _The
End of Manhood: A Book for Men of Conscience_ (New York:
Dutton, 1993), 123-124.
Tim Hodgdon
Ph.D. candidate
Department of History
Arizona State University
Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu
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