Gay life & culture
Gay Life and Culture: A World History
Edited by Robert Aldrich
Thames & Hudson, 2006, £25
Reviewed by
Greg Randall
WHEN I told a friend about being asked to review
this book he asked if it was any more than ‘a coffee table book for
queers’. Certainly, it pretends to a higher status, as do many coffee
table books. Gay Life and Culture: A World History is a sumptuously,
sometimes erotically, illustrated collection of essays on lesbian, gay,
bisexual and (to a lesser extent) transgender (LGBT) history. The
contributors are writers and academics specialising in the study of the
LGBT past, as historians or specialists in particular non-western
cultures.
Is any higher aim achieved? The essays forming the
first half of the work are of genuine interest. These provide a
historical overview of European culture starting with the ancients of
Greece and Rome, for whom homosexual acts among men were charged with
power relations between active and passive partners. Frequently, older
ruling-class men penetrated youths or slaves. The relationships that
resulted, usually alongside forms of heterosexual partnership, were not
stigmatised or regarded as anything out of the normal run of life.
Christianity became the dominant religion and
ideology of the feudal world. Same-sex sexual acts were part of the
widely defined category of ‘sodomy’. When caught, perpetrators were
severely punished for the acts both criminal and sinful. At the same
time, intimate same-sex relationships flourished among aristocrats and
in monasteries and convents.
As medieval society became ‘early modern’,
enforcement of sexual morality was transferred from religious to secular
authorities. Subsequently, the industrialisation and urbanisation of
Europe and North America led to the emergence of a homosexual identity
available to those who enjoyed and sought out same-sex erotic
experience. Ideological and theoretical trends treated homosexuality as,
first, a medical, then a social and political phenomenon. Interestingly,
this book shows the roots of the modern homosexual (who would eventually
be known as ‘gay’) stretching back to the 18th century; many historians
place the emergence of a specific homosexual identity later, in the 19th
century.
The historical essays have much to commend them,
although perhaps not many great revelations to readers who are familiar
with the subject matter. The later chapters, however, either thematic in
scope or examining ‘gay’ life in non-western cultures, are not so
successful. They tend to adopt the postmodernist view that cultural
phenomena are the ultimate bearers of truth. This is misconceived. Truth
is concrete. People’s lives within societies and the trends within those
societies are not simple. They may be mediated and recorded via cultural
experiences. However, they are ultimately based on material facts.
Societies in all their aspects have an economic base rather than being
formed from a cultural soufflé of ideas.
For example, it was not an ‘insight’ of Native
Americans when one tribe believed that "sexual anatomy is achieved
rather than determined at birth". The belief was wrong, being based on
an unscientific understanding of biology. The postmodernist approach
obscures the subject matter rather than illuminating it.
The essay, Homosexuality in North Africa and the
Middle East, exemplifies the worst of the book’s approach. It examines
homoeroticism in classical (feudal) Islamic culture. This was outside
the cultural mainstream, more so than the essay explores, and is an
important area of study. Even so, it is wrong for the author, an Italian
teacher of the history of art, to insist on and seek a Muslim gay
identity. He idealises pre-colonial society and bemoans young Algerian
gay men having only superficial religious commitment. Why are gay men
and lesbians of the Middle East and western ‘Muslim’ communities
excluded from seeking and achieving a secular culture?
One result of the book’s bias towards academically
fashionable theories is the absence of discussion of class. Other than
by a sideways glance, there is no mention that the experiences of
lesbians and gay men differ because of class status and economic
pressure. You will not find out how working-class gay men and lesbians
lived in the past from this book.
Allied to this, the question as to why LGBT
communities are oppressed today is not properly raised let alone
answered. Same-sex eroticism may once have been seen as sinful but the
lingering effect of this cannot by itself explain today’s oppression.
The creation of homosexual identity at the same time
as the birth of capitalism was not a coincidence. The new economy and
society needed to give the family a special status, the husband/father
being head and breadwinner, with women giving birth to and caring for
children. The family was required to pass wealth and power down
generations of the ruling class and, at the same time, ensure that the
next generation of workers was bred.
Those who did not fit in with this were stigmatised
and used as scapegoats to divide workers. With the opportunity to meet
and form networks in urbanised and more anonymous societies, persecuted
homosexuals could adopt pubs and clubs and find meeting places for sex.
A gay identity came to be.
Rights were won in the last third of the 20th
century only because battles were fought to win them, some of which are
mentioned in this book. Groups such as the Gay Liberation Front, ACT-UP
and others demanded the liberation of sexuality and campaigned on
specific questions such as decriminalisation of gay sex or AIDS
treatment.
Some groups were more radical than others. The late
sixties and early seventies were especially fertile times for the
radicals, activists being inspired by the anti-Vietnam war and civil
rights movements. Society as a whole was moving in a leftwards
direction. Notably, the earliest North American gay rights group, the
Mattachine Society, was founded by former members of the US Communist
Party who sought refuge from the homophobia of the Stalinist left. Not
that the impact of these wider shifts in society is analysed here.
The final chapter of the book attempts an overview
of gay life today and the battles for equality to come. In some
countries these will aim to fill in the gaps between legal gains already
won while defending against future attacks. This is no small task. As I
write, the Anglican and Catholic bishops of England are arguing for
their churches (and by extension all religious bodies) to be exempted
from anti-discrimination laws. Would they be so bold if the
anti-discrimination laws were against anti-Semitism? As the experience
of Germany shows, gains are not guaranteed once won. Gay Life and
Culture details the vibrant gay and lesbian nightlife of Berlin between
the world wars, which was smashed by the Nazi regime. Its habitués were
given the choice of staying as far underground as they could manage or
being sent to the horrors of the concentration camps.
Even if legal gains are won these do not guarantee
equal treatment and safety of gays and lesbians. The threat of dismissal
and queer-bashing will always be present. LGBT rights can only be
secured for good by the socialist transformation of society, ending
prejudice, the power of the bosses and the scarcity that sets workers
against each other.
In many countries the battle for gay rights includes
achieving the decriminalisation of gay sex and the right of free
association with other LGBT people. As with other aspects of democratic
rights only the organised working class can win this, where necessary in
alliance with poor peasants. LGBT liberation is not completed unless it
is international in scope, again linking it with the struggle for
socialism.
A socialist society, by raising living standards,
would free relationships between people from the constraints imposed by
capitalism and enable everyone to live life, not merely survive it. Its
positive effects would transform both individual and family life. For
example, good quality childcare facilities could be made available
alongside options for lengthy maternity/paternity leave. With a general
liberation of sexuality, labels such as ‘homosexuality’ and
‘heterosexuality’ could become obsolete. They may both turn out to be
limiting concepts that humanity no longer needs.
You will find none of this analysis in Gay Life and
Culture. Despite its strengths in the historical sections, it frequently
frustrates, either because of analytical weaknesses or failure to do
more than scratch the surface of interesting topics. Perhaps its main
purpose will be to spur readers to more in-depth reading. For my friend
I can say that it is not ‘just’ a coffee table book, but perhaps not
much more.
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