Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
Forty years ago, the UK found itself in the grip of a virus that killed thousands of people and sparked fear, confusion and prejudice – HIV. Janet Weston explores the Aids crisis as it unfolded throughout the 1980s, and how it transformed attitudes about everything from sexuality to healthcare
In the early 1980s, reports of a strange new disease began emerging from the United States. It was picked up in the British gay press – Gay News ran a story in November 1981 under the headline “Gay cancer or mass media scare?” – but relatively few people noticed. Even among those who did, confusion and doubt reigned: weren’t these tales of a “gay cancer” just fear-mongering, a backlash against the gains of the fight for gay liberation in the 1970s? How could a disease target gay men, anyway? Such suspicions were not without good reason. The medical profession had a difficult history with people who didn’t conform to heterosexual norms: less than 10 years earlier, homosexuality had still been categorised by the internationally influential American Psychiatric Association as a mental disorder. And when it came to Aids, the lack of knowledge about its cause or mode of transmission led to wild speculation. One theory linked Aids to the use of “poppers”, a recreational drug popular on the gay scene; another proposed that Aids was the end point of too many sexually transmitted infections. The picture grew still more complex as the symptoms associated with this new illness were also identified both among injecting drug users and people with the blood-clotting disorder haemophilia, including women and children. By July 1983, there had been 14 reported cases of Aids in Britain, all among men. Most were gay, including one man who also injected drugs, but the group included another who had been receiving treatment for haemophilia in the form of blood products. Just two months later, the number had risen to 24, and included a woman and a second man with haemophilia. As numbers of diagnoses in the United Kingdom started to rise sharply, the deaths began. Many people died very soon after diagnosis, as an array of opportunistic infections took advantage of their weakened immune systems. Terrence Higgins died in July 1982, one of the first deaths in the UK attributed to Aids. His partner, Rupert Whitaker, recalled asking the doctors whether Higgins’ death could have been caused by the strange “American disease”, but was dismissed out of hand: he was not family, so they couldn’t tell him anything. It wasn’t until a few years later that he found out they expected him to die soon, too. In the aftermath of Higgins’ death, his friends joined with Whitaker to set up a trust in his name to provide information and education in this information vacuum – and to provide support and services for people affected by Aids. In those frightening early years, charities such as the Terrence Higgins Trust led the charge. Men and women who had begun to see the impact of this disease first-hand devoted themselves to taking action. As well as fundraising, they gathered and shared the latest information, often looking abroad for insights from countries with more advanced epidemics. Volunteers and activists also campaigned for accurate media coverage and government attention, and ran phone lines and community centres to provide counselling and advice. Dread of infection Given the uncertain and rapidly changing state of knowledge about Aids, it was often difficult to know what advice to offer. If this really was a sexually transmitted disease, then perhaps abstinence was the answer – but with a newly self-confident gay community and a flourishing scene in many of Britain’s cities, this hardly seemed realistic. There was an idea that condoms might reduce the risks, but it was far from certain, and there were fears that condoms might give a false sense of security. Campaigners and volunteers struggled to decide on the best line to take. Even so, given the paucity of medical knowledge, many of these volunteers were better informed than the average doctor or nurse. In fact, many people with Aids in the 1980s knew more about their condition than their own clinicians, and some clinicians were willing to listen and learn. The idea of patients as participants in or even consumers of healthcare, whose experiences and views should be valued by biomedicine, had been building since the 1950s and was given a huge boost by patient expertise and advocacy during the first decades of HIV and Aids. With no known cause, no certainty over the mode of transmission, and all early signs indicating that Aids was invariably quickly fatal, the dread of infection was overwhelming. Nurses recalled being scared of their patients, caring for them in isolation while wearing two sets of gloves and gowns, using disposable cutlery and plates and burning bedsheets after use. “Nurses didn’t even touch a patient’s notes (which had ‘Infectious’ written at the top) without gloves,” one recalled. “It was just horrendous.” Life and death on the margins The virus causing Aids, now known as HIV, was identified in 1984. Soon thereafter a test for HIV antibodies – indicating exposure to the virus – was approved for use in the UK. The ability to test individuals, including those showing no symptoms, was transformative in terms of gathering data about the epidemic, but the results were alarming. Initial testing revealed that perhaps as many as three-quarters of people with haemophilia already had HIV, as did some of their sexual partners. Haemophilia was commonly treated with products generated from blood donations from large numbers of people, and around 1,200 people in the UK with haemophilia were infected with HIV in the 1980s. For the press, they were the “innocent victims” of the virus. That label naturally also served as a reminder that there were supposedly “guilty” ones, too, and fear quickly turned into hostility and discrimination. Those affected by Aids were mostly gay men, with drug users the second-largest group. These were already marginalised communities who could easily be blamed for their own misfortune, and Aids soon became deeply stigmatised: a marker of deviant living. Some of those with Aids were glad to be informed that their condition had finally led to a form of cancer, because at least cancer was something that you could tell people about without shame. In Edinburgh, heroin use had become particularly prevalent in the early 1980s; testing carried out by one doctor, Roy Robertson, revealed that more than half of his patients were HIV positive. The scarcity of needles and syringes, which were often seized by police, meant that drug users shared and repeatedly reused their injecting equipment, and infection had been spreading rapidly. Public health policy regarding drugs in Scotland underwent a dramatic shift in response, with attention turning to ways of minimising the harms of drug use instead of insisting on abstinence. It became a priority to reduce injecting drug use as much as possible, for example by prescribing methadone to those addicted to heroin, and for those who continued to inject, to provide sterile equipment. The anxiety surrounding HIV/Aids and its high profile made such radical policy changes possible. The availability of a test for HIV brought its own problems, though. Many people were tested without their knowledge and permission, misinformed of the meaning of their test result, or not told at all. Eighteen-year-old John Campbell, who would later set up the Coalition of People Living with HIV and Aids and advise the government on HIV in prisons, had been arrested in 1986 for “male importuning” and was tested on arrival into prison. But the charges were dropped, he was released, and he had no idea that he had tested positive for another 10 months. Fear and loathing The profile of HIV/Aids increased in the second half of the 1980s. Many people in the UK had remained entirely or mostly oblivious to the unfolding disaster, but this soon changed. Although emerging research indicated that HIV could not be transmitted by casual contact, such as a handshake or a shared cup, a lot of the media coverage became increasingly hyperbolic. “I’d shoot my son if he had Aids, says vicar” ran one lurid headline in The Sun in October 1985. Such coverage often quoted the extreme views of people from all walks of life, from publicans seeking to ban people with Aids from their establishments, to the chief constable of Greater Manchester who said that people with Aids were “swirling around in a human cesspit of their own making”. The fact that people with HIV or Aids might hold down jobs seemed particularly horrifying. Newspapers anxiously reported that people with HIV or Aids might work as airline cabin crews, bus drivers, teachers – or most worryingly of all, as doctors and dentists. Many people with, or suspected of having, HIV or Aids were fired: the Terrence Higgins Trust dealt with about 100 cases of employment discrimination each year. This period has been characterised as one of “wartime emergency”, with mounting panic finally leading to government action. The Conservative government appointed a cabinet committee to tackle Aids in autumn 1986, and on 21 November there was an emergency debate in the House of Commons. Opinions diverged dramatically, between those favouring regulatory measures such as quarantines and compulsory testing, to those who preferred a more liberal approach, including the promotion or provision of condoms and guarantees of confidentiality for those testing positive. Perhaps most memorable, in terms of government response to the crisis, was the nationwide health education campaign launched in January 1987. In the face of a significant lack of enthusiasm from then prime minister Margaret Thatcher, this included television spots, billboards and a leaflet for every household. Actor John Hurt lent his voice to the now-notorious television advert. Over footage of the word “Aids” being chiselled into a tombstone, he intoned: “If you ignore Aids, it could be the death of you. Don’t die of ignorance.” This campaign has often been remembered as a success. It was a clear sign of action, and expensive too, costing around £20m. Polls afterwards suggested that viewers felt more confident of their understanding of Aids, and ultimately, the worst predictions for the epidemic in the UK did not materialise. However, the campaign also relied heavily upon generalised impressions of death, disaster and doom, doing little to dispel rumours or to educate and help those already affected or most at risk. Artist and activist Leigh Neal received her diagnosis just as these adverts aired; she remembered their clear message that Aids meant death, and the environment of fear and hostility that this created towards her – including bricks thrown through her window. For those who were not white gay men, this lack of information and support could be particularly acute. The later 1980s saw the creation of more specialist advocacy and support groups to fill these gaps. One of the founders of Positively Women, a group set up in 1987 by and for women with HIV, remembered feeling “doubly isolated” in most HIV/Aids support groups, as a woman and a former drug user. Mainliners, a support group run by and for HIV-positive drug users, was founded in the same year. So, too, was the Broderip Ward at Middlesex Hospital in London: a specialist ward for those with HIV and Aids. It was opened by Princess Diana, who took pains to shake hands multiple times with patients at the ward before the cameras, without wearing gloves. Garnering huge press coverage, many recalled this as a vital moment, helping to dispel some of the myths swirling around Aids at the time. This ward and others like it represented greater resources and medical expertise dedicated to HIV and Aids, but also many more people suffering and dying. Specialist wards could provide a sense of community and even fun, in dark times. HIV nurse Barbara von Barsewich described one patient, “a tall, Italian, glamorous man who came out of a side room [in the ward] at night-time in a blue ball gown and six-inch heels... he swung around and just looked so gorgeous. And then he started coughing up bits of his lung... It was just so hard. It was so painful. You knew exactly what was happening.” Love and loss For the most severely affected communities, the extent of the loss in the late 1980s and early 1990s was overwhelming. Julian Hows recalled the deaths of four lovers over these years. One was passionate about cars and was eventually driven to hospital by Hows and friends in a Mercedes-Benz, borrowed for the occasion. As they arrived at the hospital and opened the car door, Hows remembered: “A really nice nurse said, ‘You realise your friend has gone.’” He had died on the journey. Gay men and their friends experienced years of countless funerals, with social circles of young people all but obliterated. At many of these funerals, it remained taboo to mention Aids. Many families felt, as writer and activist Simon Watney put it, “condemned to silence, to euphemism”. In the mass media and popular discourse, Aids stubbornly remained something that happened to “other people”. Generalised fears became more deeply racialised, as news emerged of the epidemic’s disastrous spread and possible origins in Africa. Continuing the tradition of self-help and community organising among those affected by HIV and Aids, volunteers set up the Black HIV/Aids Network in 1989 and began to deliver literature, films and services specifically addressing black and Asian people in the UK. Towards the end of the 1980s, activism surrounding Aids reached a high point. Members of the newly formed London branch of ACT-UP – the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power – organised a series of eye-catching protests designed to attract headlines. Targets included Australia House, in response to new laws requiring immigrants to take an HIV test, and Pentonville Prison, where helium-filled condoms were released to carry leaflets about Aids over prison walls. Read more: From Sappho to It’s a Sin: 9 LGBT+ histories, chosen by experts The London branch of ACT-UP soon disbanded, though, and in the 1990s Aids gradually disappeared from the headlines. The arrival of much more effective drug treatments from the mid-1990s onwards transformed HIV into a chronic but manageable condition. And, although there had previously been a great deal of interest in deploying insights from history to understand and contextualise responses to Aids, historical attention to the epidemic also waned. HIV/Aids had transformed attitudes, practices and policies around sex and sexuality, drug addiction, activism and community-building, as well as hospital hygiene, clinical research and doctor-patient relationships. As the sense of urgency and, later, the memory of the epidemic began to fade, not all of these changes were sustained. Roy Robertson, still working in addiction studies in Scotland, reported that HIV had reappeared in a vulnerable population of injecting drug users in Glasgow in 2015, in a political and policy context that bore striking similarities to that of the early 1980s. Four decades on from the first diagnoses and deaths, there is now a resurgence of interest. Oral history projects are springing up, and new research is beginning to investigate less well-known experiences. There is a campaign for a public memorial to the lives lost to Aids, and a clear desire to ensure that all the losses and gains of those years are not forgotten. After all, a generation of people diagnosed in the 1980s are now the first people with HIV to reach retirement age. The history of HIV/Aids in the 1980s is still unfolding. A global concern: 7 key moments in the world’s battle with HIV/Aids in the 1980s United States 1981 Clinical reports began to describe clusters of a rare type of pneumonia and other unusual infections among gay men and then injecting drug users, in California and New York. News of this novel disease was picked up by the gay press. Different names and possible explanations were floated and the term “Aids” was coined in 1982, but the original idea of a “gay plague” proved difficult to dislodge. Cuba 1983 The government set up a National Aids Commission and ordered the destruction of all blood products imported from overseas. Law 41 was passed, giving the Ministry of Public Health power to enforce the quarantining and mandatory treatment of anyone affected by diseases deemed to pose significant community risk. The first case of HIV was diagnosed three years later, and the quarantining in sanatoria of anyone diagnosed with HIV or Aids began. This remained in place until 1993. Zaire 1984 Research in Kinshasa provided strong evidence of the transmission of HIV between heterosexual couples. Here, there were just as many women with HIV or Aids as men. These findings were not easily accepted by the scientific community but were finally published in The Lancet. The prospect of a global epidemic affecting not only gay men, drug users and haemophiliacs, but also heterosexual couples, began to stir more governments to action. Netherlands 1984 A drug users’ “union”, known as a junkibonden and active since 1980, began to provide sterile needles and syringes to injecting drug users in Amsterdam. Initially introduced to tackle the spread of hepatitis B through shared needles, the scale of needle provision was stepped up considerably in light of HIV and Aids and eventually received government funding. The union published literature by and for drug users, and offered peer support and advice on safer injecting. Senegal 1986 The first cases of Aids were reported. This was a different and less virulent strand of the virus, first identified in West Africa by Senegalese researchers the year before. It brought international recognition and encouraged national political attention to HIV and Aids. Rates of infection remained consistently low, thanks not only to the different viral strand, but also factors including the legalisation and regulation of sex work and high safety standards concerning blood products, both of which pre-dated the epidemic. USSR 1987 The first Aids-related death was recorded, a few years after Russia’s health minister declared that it was a “western disease” that would have no impact on a country without drug addicts or prostitution. There were more than 500 known cases by 1990, but the Soviet authorities emphasised that most of these were foreign nationals. A few years after the collapse of the USSR, reports of rapid HIV spread emerged: by the mid-1990s Russia was said to be on the brink of a vast epidemic. Japan 1989 Haemophiliacs infected with HIV filed lawsuits in Tokyo and Osaka, demanding compensation from the government and pharmaceutical companies. Contaminated blood products imported from the US meant that around 40 per cent of Japanese people with haemophilia were infected with HIV. This “tainted blood” scandal dominated headlines and perceptions of HIV and Aids in Japan: plaintiffs and their families finally received a formal apology and compensation in 1996. Janet Weston is assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. An episode of the BBC Two series Saved by a Stranger covered the HIV/Aids crisis. You can catch up with that on the BBC iPlayer This article was first published in the June 2021 edition of BBC History Magazine
John Gilbert McCurdy explores attitudes to sexuality and liberty on the eve of revolutionary war, by examining the trials of Robert Newburgh
In 1774, as Britain’s colonies in America teetered on the brink of revolution, one regiment was torn apart by the trials of a British army chaplain – Robert Newburgh – who was accused of having sex with another man. In this episode, John Gilbert McCurdy examines evolving attitudes to sexuality and liberty in the colonies on the eve of revolutionary war, and explores how Newburgh's trials became a flashpoint for wider fears of moral and political disorder. (Ad) John Gilbert McCurdy is the author of Vicious and Immoral: Homosexuality, the American Revolution, and the Trials of Robert Newburgh (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon
How Georgian and Victorian same-sex couples co-opted marital traditions and made them their own
Dr Anthony Delaney looks back to same-sex couples who lived and loved in previous centuries, and how marriage traditions of the era were used to signal their intimacy and union at a time when such relationships were illegal
When Gabriel Lawrence, a milkman, was apprehended at the notorious Margaret Clap’s molly house in 1725, he was subsequently tried at the Old Bailey for “the heinous and detestable Sin of Sodomy”. A ‘molly’ – a mostly derogatory term used mainly across the 18th and 19th centuries to describe men who had sex with other men – could be found at various molly houses. These were something akin to 18th-century gay bars, with the provision of lodging rooms. There, men might meet similar men for drinks, conversation, and, according to one witness, “marriages”. Samuel Stevens, a witness for the prosecution against Lawrence, was called to give evidence and in his damning account he shocked those assembled with what he recalled of his visit to the molly house. Stevens stated that the mollies spent time “together kissing and hugging and making love (as they called it) in a very indecent manner… they used to go out by couples into another room, and when they came back[,] they would tell what they had been doing, which in their dialect they called marrying.” Despite numerous appeals from friends and family on Lawrence’s behalf, Stevens’ account of the ‘marriage-making’ at the molly house proved ruinous. In April 1726, the jury found him guilty of sodomy and on 9 May 1726 Gabriel Lawrence was hanged at Tyburn. Read more | What are the challenges of telling LGBTQ history? Soon, we will mark 10 years since the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill was introduced to parliament in England and Wales, in January 2013. This went on to provide the legal framework through which same-sex couples could access the benefits, comforts, and marital status already available to others within legally recognised marriages. But before this legal framework was extended to include them, people who we might now recognise as gay, lesbian, or bisexual had long been co-opting and adapting the traditions and language of marriage for their own relationships. As shown in the recorded testimony against Lawrence, and others, there are examples of 18th- and 19th-century ‘marriage-like’ unions that allow us to trace the history of same-sex marriage beyond the 21st century. In the same year as Lawrence’s trial, one Edward Courtney provided evidence against another man, George Whittle, who ran the Royal Oak, a molly house at “the Corner of St. George’s-Square in Pall Mall.” Courtney testified that: “He [Whittle] had a back room for mollies to drink in private betwixt that and the kitchen. There is a bed in the middle of the room for the use of the company…[to] be married; and for that reason they call that room the Chappel.” A threat to Georgian society? The proceedings from the Old Bailey show us that the language of, and certain customs associated with, marriage had been adopted by the mollies at Margaret Clap’s and the Royal Oak, and presumably further afield too, certainly by the 18th century. For many contemporaries – such as commentator Ned Ward, who published The Secret History of Clubs n 1709 – and for historians since, the molly custom of ‘marrying’ demonstrated a contempt for the traditional institution, an undermining of customs and values which threatened Georgian society as they knew it. However, many mollies, including Lawrence, were married to women. Marriage was an important part of their everyday lives. In this way, while molly-marrying language might have reflected the boundaries that some same-sex attracted men were willing to cross to explore their sexual identities, they were forced to use this language to reflect their experiences of intimacy with men too. Intimacy and companionship For other Georgian men, they never married women and performed the significant emotional intimacies of their lives with other men. These relationships may even be known to their closest friends, as was the case for John Chute (1701–76) and Francis Whithed (c1719–51). Chute had inherited the Vyne in Hampshire (now under the care of the National Trust) in 1754, and the two men had travelled extensively together across Europe. On their return to England, Whithed was warmly welcomed amongst Chute’s wider circle of bachelor friends, and their relationship was embraced with a marriage-like naming ritual. On 13 May 1747, the poet and scholar Thomas Gray informed the writer and collector Horace Walpole of his intention to leave his mother’s house and “call at your Door, & that of the Chuteheds, if possible”. Walpole would then write to another of their friends, Horace Mann, on 26 June 1747 about Lord Middlesex’s loss of his lordship stating: “I intend to laugh over this disgrazia with the Chuteheds, when they return triumphant from Hampshire, where Whitehed [sic] has no enemy.” This compound naming ritual lent a formalised status to the Chuteheds’ companionship. It positioned them beyond friendship and elevated their intimacies above the sex acts recounted at the molly houses. Their union was explicitly referred to by this coterie of “Finger-twirlers”, as the writer Hester Thrale Piozzi had called them, in domestic terms. These friends visit with both Chuteheds, they call at their shared door, and they spend their time idling with the couple at Chute’s homes in Hampshire and London. Their unofficial, new shared surname marked the public acknowledgement of their union, and echoed the fashion for hyphenated surnames across elite families who found themselves newly connected through legal marriage. The example of the Chuteheds further demonstrates the legal ‘work-arounds’ that were available to elite, same-sex attracted men. If inheritance and property exchange could not be granted directly through marriage, then Chute harnessed the possibilities afforded him within another system to reflect the legal status of his relationship with Whithed. He adopted the younger man, thus situating him firmly within his family and ensuring his inheritance – although this did not materialise as Whithed died before Chute. By co-opting marital naming rituals and harnessing legal benefits associated with the institution in other ways, these men demonstrated a proficiency beyond (but inspired by) the traditional matrimonial frameworks that were not available to them. Perhaps the most famous historic same-sex ‘marriage’ occurred between two landholding women from Yorkshire, Anne Lister and Ann Walker (the subject of the popular TV series Gentleman Jack). Today, visitors to Holy Trinity Church on Goodramgate, York, will notice a plaque commemorating the ‘blessing’ of their union which would, as Lister saw it, “be as good as marriage”. The plaque states that, “Anne Lister 1791–1840 of Shibden Hall, Halifax, Lesbian and Diarist; took sacrament here to seal her union with Ann Walker, Easter 1834.” On the podcast | Angela Steidele explores the life of 19th-century gay pioneer Anne Lister If Chute and Whithed manipulated the law to overcome their exclusion from the legal benefits of marriage, Walker and Lister privately harnessed certain religious elements of the ceremony to formalise their own companionship. This was later legally enhanced as they each named the other their primary beneficiaries in their respective wills. Similarly, the American actress Charlotte Cushman (1816–76) had multiple intimate and sexual relationships with women across her lifetime. Some of these she and, crucially, others assigned marriage-like status to. For example, in 1852 Elizabeth Barrett Browning grappled with the idea of Cushman’s relationship with Matilda Hays when she recalled, “I understand that she & Miss Hayes [sic] have made vows of celibacy & of eternal attachment to each other – they live together, dress alike… it is a female marriage. I happened to say, ‘Well, I have never heard of such a thing before.’ ‘Haven’t you?’ said Mrs Corkrane [sic]… ‘oh, it is by no means uncommon.’” For same-sex attracted women, elements of traditional married life might be more readily reflected in their relationships than was the case for men. Similarly, these relationships were more widely discussed and proclaimed than those between men. In the first instance, this was likely due to the fact that sex between women has never been a criminal offence. Secondly as ‘home life’ was more readily associated with women, it was accepted that single sisters, female cousins, and other ‘spinsters’ might combine households and share their domestic burdens on the basis of financial practicalities. For same-sex attracted women, these expectations provided welcome opportunities. Read more | Who were the Ladies of Llangollen? These, of course, are only a selection of the cases from which we can extract marriage-like patterns across the archive. We might only begin to imagine the true number of unions shared by same-sex attracted men and women that have, thus far, escaped the eye of the historian. Yet these small number of case studies serve to demonstrate that LGBTQ+ people have co-opted, adapted, and circumnavigated traditional elements of marriage long before the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill in 2013. The likes of Gabriel Lawrence, John Chute and Anne Lister indicate that LGBTQ+ histories, specifically the history of same-sex marriage, did not begin with legislation. It is a history that transcended legislation, while ultimately shaping it; a history that challenged marriage from within, while acknowledging and adapting its structures from without. Here, then, is a history of union. A history of tumult and triumphs, stories of lives lived together, of love and loss – a history of marriage indeed. Dr Anthony Delaney is a historian at the University of Exeter. He specialises in 18th century Britain, particularly histories of gender and sexuality. He also works as an actor; his screen credits include Hellboy, Penny Dreadful, and Harry Wild
The boy that emperor Nero made his ‘wife’: what the tragedy of the castrated Sporus tells us about homosexuality in ancient Rome
Eunuch, ‘empress’ and ultimately victim of abuse: Sporus is a lesser-known character in the story of the brutal Roman emperor Nero. But his life, and the messages it reveals, are the things of outlandish drama, as evidenced by his memorable reference in the hit series, Succession. Hilary Mitchell takes up Sporus’s story
To think about gender and sexuality in ancient Rome, there are several things that may spring to mind first. Would it be the oiled-up, Bacchanalian orgies so often depicted in movies? The heinous treatment that was so commonplace towards women? Or could it be the abuses endured by Roman slaves? If the latter, the name Sporus may already be familiar. Sporus was a boy who caught the attentions of Nero. The notorious emperor had him forcibly castrated and then married him to be his empress, perhaps to replace his former wife. Sporus isn’t someone we can ever hear from directly. We only know about Sporus through the writings of Roman historians, who had reason to depict Nero in as negative and debauched a light as possible. Sporus’s own voice has been completely lost; there is no knowing how he felt about what happened to him or if he considered himself homosexual in any modern sense of the word. His life was short and tragic, and only recorded by posterity in relation to a more powerful man. Yet it can help to reveal the complex attitudes toward sexuality, gender and power in ancient Rome, especially the acceptance and perception of homosexuality. Who was Sporus? Sporus was a young boy of extraordinary beauty, though it is important to note that the young boy’s name may not have been Sporus at all. The Greek word σπόρος (sporos) means ‘seed’ or ‘semen’, so was likely a belittling epithet that seems to have been given to the boy after his abuse began. It was said that Sporus bore a striking resemblance to Nero’s second wife, Poppaea Sabrina, who had died in AD 65. Suetonius has it that she had complained to her husband about how much time he spent at the races and, in a fit of rage, Nero kicked her to death, losing both his wife and his unborn child. Another possibility is that Poppaea died in childbirth. Either way, Nero is said to have become deeply infatuated with Sporus upon seeing him. In AD 67, the emperor ordered the boy be castrated, turning him into a eunuch. There were several methods of castration in Roman times, including rubbing or squeezing the gonads to pieces. Sometimes, the penis would also be removed. What was life like for Sporus as the ‘wife’ of Nero? At this point, Nero already had a new wife – his third, a noblewoman named Statilia Messalina – as well as a ‘husband’, a freed slave named Pythagoras. In that, Nero took the role of ‘bride’. With Sporus, it seems that he wanted to switch roles again. Suetonius wrote that Sporus was dressed in women’s clothing and decked out in jewellery befitting an empress, before being married “with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil”. Dio Cassius corroborated this account, writing: “Though already ‘married’ to Pythagoras, a freedman, he formally ‘married’ Sporus… and the Romans as well as others publicly celebrated their wedding.” Roman Britain | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | In this four-week course, discover everything you need to know about Roman Britain, guided by Rob Collins, professor of frontier archaeology at Newcastle University. Explore the course now While it is impossible to say what Sporus thought of all this, Suetonius provides an intriguing clue from later on in the ‘marriage’. Sporus gave Nero a gift: “a ring with a stone on which was engraved the Rape of Proserpina.” In Roman mythology, the goddess Proserpina was abducted by the god of the underworld and ultimately made to live with him for six months of every year. A ring depicting that scene hardly made for a romantic present: perhaps it expressed how Sporus really felt. What happened to Sporus after Nero? It would not be long before Sporus’s life was uprooted again. In AD 68, Nero was ousted from power and, fleeing Rome, committed suicide. Amidst the chaos that followed, Sporus taken by a Praetorian prefect named Nymphidius Sabinus, who treated him as a wife and called ‘Poppaea’. When Nymphidius was killed – by his own soldiers as he bid to be made emperor – Sporus was passed on to Otho, the second to rule in the so-called ‘Year of the Four Emperors’. In a bizarre coincidence, Otho had been married to Poppaea Sabina before Nero. After Otho came Vitellius, who ruled for eight months and heaped more woe upon Sporus. He decided to use the boy for public entertainment in the gladiatorial arena, planning a re-enactment of the Rape of Proserpina. To avoid this abominable fate, Sporus killed himself sometime in AD 69. Male homosexuality in ancient Rome What can Sporus’s life tell us about homosexuality and gender in ancient Rome? The answer is quite a lot, particularly about the supremacy of the penis and the hierarchy of Roman relationships, which were about power, dominance and virility rather than the gender binary. The accounts of Sporus and Nero demonstrate how the wider tolerance of male same-sex acts in Rome largely came down to social class. Romans had a ‘penetrator-penetrated’ binary model, where there would be a passive, inferior partner that would certainly have been of lower status instead of a fellow freeman. Read more | Violence, rebellion and sexual exploitation: the darker side of ancient Rome For a freeborn Roman man to enter into a submissive sexual relationship with another freeborn Roman man would have been emasculating, shameful and, if the Greek historian Polybius was to be believed, dangerous. He reported that the punishment for a Roman soldier who willingly submitted to penetration by another freeborn man was fustuarium, or being cudgelled to death. Masculinity was linked to dominance, both in social and sexual contexts. It was totally natural and acceptable for a Roman man to engage in sexual acts with both women and men, but only as long as he was the penetrative partner (the vir). The status and gender of the passive partner (the cinaedus) were crucial too. The penetration of women, slaves and male prostitutes was acceptable. Male entertainers were fair game too, since their lifestyle placed them in a nebulous social realm called infamia, which led to a loss of legal and social standing. For a freeborn man, to have a passive role in anal sex resulted in a loss of masculinity. Yet none of this means that equal, loving relationships between freeborn men did not exist; rather that negative societal attitudes combined with a fear of being clubbed to death ensured that they were conducted in secret. As well as cinaedus, other terms were used for passive male partners, like Sporus. These included puer delicatus (‘exquisite’ or ‘dainty’ boy), pullus (‘chick’), mollis (‘soft’), tener (‘delicate’), debilis (‘weak’) and effeminatus (‘effeminate’). How do we know about Sporus? The fact that we know about Sporus, and Pythagoras before him, is proof of how negatively Nero’s subversive relationships were perceived by wider Roman society. Suetonius and Dio Cassius presented the boy’s castration and status as ‘wife’ as evidence of the emperor’s moral depravity; a grotesque parody of a traditional marriage that proved Nero’s madness and disregard for Roman values. Taking a lowly slave as a cinaedus was one thing. Marrying them and publicly parading them around Rome as a facsimile of your dead empress was a step too far. Read more | Could Roman slaves buy their own freedom? Sporus's feminisation reflected the Roman obsession with control over others' bodies. He wasn’t merely a eunuch, but a symbol of Nero’s power. The emperor could remake reality according to his desires and assert his imperial power over societal norms. Essentially, Nero wanted everyone to know that he could do what he wanted, and Sporus was the victim of his hubris. His tragic story should continue to serve as a potent reminder of how, far more than things like sexuality and love, power and privilege defined the sexual and gender boundaries of the ancient world. More from us HistoryExtra members can explore this topic further with exclusive content from our archives The Invisible Romans: how the brutal lives of the enslaved shaped an empire Rethinking Nero: was the Roman emperor really so bad? The long death of the Roman republic The Pax Romana: how the Romans maintained peace at the point of a sword Not a HistoryExtra member? Explore our latest membership offers Hilary Mitchell is a journalist with a Masters degree in Classics from Edinburgh University, where she specialised in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age of Greece
Challenging gender in the Victorian Age: the 'masculine' New Woman and 'effeminate' New Man
As the Victorian age neared its end, a vibrant cultural movement emerged that flipped conventional notions of femininity and masculinity on their head. Jad Adams reveals how a new generation challenged stereotypical gender identities
In the 1890s, two new social identities emerged that represented the first widespread challenge to gender stereotypes in Britain. This was the time of the ‘New Woman’, who possessed levels of daring regarded as masculine, and of the effeminate ‘New Man,’ who loved ‘art for art’s sake’. Her determined persistence to go her own way, and his foppish indifference to soldiering and other established notions of ‘manliness’, were both deemed equally appalling to Victorian elders. Indeed, to some commentators, it seemed as if men and women were losing their distinct characteristics. As a Punch magazine writer noted in a verse titled ‘Sexomania’: When Adam delved and Eve span, No one need ask which was the man. Bicycling, footballing, scarce human, All wonder now “Which is the woman?” But a new fear my bosom vexes; To-morrow there may be no sexes! Unless, as end to all the pother, Each one in fact becomes the other. This was a seismic shift, and one partly driven by changes in the UK population. By the 1890s, women outnumbered men by around a million, and by the 1901 census, the gap had grown to 1.25 million. There were not enough husbands to go around due to the higher death rate of men from their more dangerous jobs, their tendency to violence, and because of the number of men who had headed abroad with the armed forces or imperial administration. In many middle-class families, the lack of men became a significant issue, because daughters were traditionally provided for by their fathers until their husbands ‘took over’. If they did not end up marrying and their parents died, they then became the responsibility of their elder brothers – leading in some cases to family tensions. Yet this demographic shift also coincided with a high point in the social movement of women’s education and independence, which had been under way since the mid-19th century. For the first time, large numbers of women who had received a good or moderate education became more determined to live away from their families and earn their own keep. This blend of factors led to a continuing female advance, and new questions arose regarding women’s roles in the family, the institution of marriage, and the workplace. The New Woman phenomenon The idea of the New Woman developed slowly, but became widespread in the 1890s due to the expansion of urban employment opportunities for women caused by the new technologies of typewriting and telephony and the print industry, which needed writers and illustrators. The labour market was quick to recognise that women could do the same office jobs as men, but be paid less. These were young, middle-class women, often with some education. Some worked in accountancy and the law, though they were not permitted to take professional qualifications. Thus the ‘New Woman’ was born. With her bicycle, cigarette, necktie, and dark jacket that hid the grime of public transport and office life, she looked and behaved markedly differently to women of previous decades. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/05/PCL108772webready-b87727c.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Two ‘New Women’ as depicted in a satirical 19th-century cartoon. The era witnessed the emergence of new forms of gender identity – for both men and women (Photo by Punch Cartoon Library/TopFoto)" title="Two ‘New Women’ as depicted in a satirical 19th-century cartoon. The era witnessed the emergence of new forms of gender identity – for both men and women (Photo by Punch Cartoon Library/TopFoto)" /> Not everyone was enamoured of the New Woman, however. The term itself had been popularised by Maria Louise Ramé, an English novelist and French wine merchant’s daughter who went by the name of Ouida. She wrote scathingly of the archetype and her view of its proponents’ “fierce vanity, her undigested knowledge, her over-weaning estimate of her own value and her fatal want of all sense of the ridiculous”. Another commentator, meanwhile, referred to “a somewhat aggressive air of independence which finds birth in the length of her stride”. In some cases, the New Woman was almost seen as another form of humanity. The journalist Eliza Lynn Linton characterised her as masculine not just in behaviour, but physique: “The bass voice, flat chest, and lean hips of a woman who has physically failed in her rightful development.” The newspaper editor Frederick Greenwood also decided to publish his views on the subject, writing in an article entitled ‘Women – Wives or Mothers?’ that the redundant female birth-rate threatened “more revolutions than all the forces of the anarchists in active combination”. Greenwood chose to share his thoughts under the pseudonym ‘A Woman’ – a gender misappropriation partly driven by devilment, and partly to give the piece a sense of authenticity for his readers. Indeed, while women were taking on postures and pursuits previously regarded as masculine, men were travelling in the other direction. Like Greenwood, the author Arnold Bennett wrote for the magazine Woman (of which he was assistant editor) under the names ‘Gwendolen’ and ‘Barbara’, and reviewed books in Home and Hearth under the name ‘Sarah Volatile’. William Sharp or Fiona Macleod? Or both? The Scottish author made a name writing as a woman, but this was no mere pseudonym William Sharp (1855–1905) was a late Victorian author and mystic who wrote under his own name and as his female alter-ego, Fiona Macleod. Born in Paisley, Scotland, Sharp moved to London in his early twenties to pursue a career as a poet and art critic, before moving into magazine publishing. In 1892, he edited a oneoff periodical called The Pagan Review, calling for the widespread adoption of neo-paganism, which he believed would abolish inequality between men and women. The author’s interest in gender fluidity would become more apparent by 1893, however, when he began writing as the Highlander Fiona Macleod, whose lyrical novels contributed to the birth of Britain’s Celtic Revival movement. Inspired by tales from Scottish folklore, Sharp’s work as Macleod was not only better reviewed than his previous output, but more commercially successful, too. In fact, so devoted was Sharp to his alter ego that he would maintain a voluminous correspondence with publishers and fellow authors as Macleod, without revealing his true identity. Fiona Macleod was not merely a writer’s pseudonym, however. Sharp maintained that she had a separate existence, and as such, she was even given her own entry in Who’s Who. “I am tempted to believe I am half a woman,” Sharp wrote in a letter to his friend Catherine Ann Janvier in 1895. Sharp’s wife, Elizabeth, accepted her husband’s dual nature, calling him Wilfion. After his death, she wrote a biography split into two parts: ‘William Sharp’ and ‘Fiona Macleod’. Aestheticism and the decadent movement At around the same time, the advance of aestheticism – an artistic movement prioritising beauty above function – was giving men the opportunity of a ‘feminine’ creative outlet that drove them to create ‘the house beautiful’. As the character Gwendolen Fairfax declares in Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play The Importance of Being Earnest, “the home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man”. Wilde had himself come to fame as editor of The Woman’s World and an as aesthete. As the 1880s turned into the 1890s, however, aestheticism morphed into a new movement: the decadents, who revelled in the artificial to a degree the average Victorian considered abhorrent. The decadents drew inspiration from ancient Rome and from France, which was considered morally suspect by respectable people. While the movement’s theories of art were the preserve of elites in London, Manchester, Edinburgh and the university towns, their influence was widespread on fashion, advertisements and home décor. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/05/GettyImages-815166516webrady-6fd2601.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A 19th-century depiction of a London telegraph room, at a time when questions were being asked about women's roles in the workplace (Photo by Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" title="A 19th-century depiction of a London telegraph room, at a time when questions were being asked about women's roles in the workplace (Photo by Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" /> A ‘New Man’ who came to prominence around this time was the poet, essayist and critic Richard Le Gallienne, the son of a Birkenhead brewery manager. He moved to London, changed his name (he added the ‘Le’ to imply a French connection) and took to sporting velvet knee breeches and long hair. Yet he was also evidence that the decadent man was not necessarily homosexual. In fact, he was undeniably what was called a ‘ladies’ man’, taking full advantage of his attractiveness to women and the sexual freedom that New Women allowed themselves. In 1895, Le Gallienne declared that gender was a matter of custom and personal choice, and nothing more. Writing in his essay The Arbitrary Classification of Sex, he explained: “There is no such thing as looking manly or womanly. There is looking beautiful or ugly, distinguished or commonplace… The essentials of ‘manliness’ and ‘womanliness’ belong to man and woman alike – the externals are purely artistic considerations, and subject to the vagaries of fashion.” It was a kind of thinking that upended conventional certainties. “I was bewildered, it sounded somehow as if there were three sexes,” wrote the novelist Henry James in a story for quarterly journal The Yellow Book in 1894. Set within Britain’s hedonistic literary scene, the narrator of the tale, Neil Paraday, is forced to ask whether a fellow author named ‘Miss Forbes’ is a gentleman, upon which he is informed, “it wouldn’t be ‘Miss’ – there’s a wife!”. Dora Forbes, it transpires, is a man with a big red moustache. “In the age we live in, one gets lost amongst the genders and the pronouns,” laments Paraday. Such lifestyle changes went beyond literary circles, however. In March 1894, the month before the launch of The Yellow Book, the rigid, sanctimonious William Gladstone retired as Britain’s prime minister. He was replaced by Lord Rosebery, whose effortless style both inspired and irritated. Rosebery was a typical example of why respectable Victorians condemned the aristocracy as idle and decadent, with the Tory Lord Curzon criticising what he saw as Rosebery’s “feminine sensitiveness to criticism”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/05/GettyImages-3381137webready-6b1d0a7.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Poet and essayist Richard Le Gallienne, one of the leading proponents of the latest gender-blurring styles (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="Poet and essayist Richard Le Gallienne, one of the leading proponents of the latest gender-blurring styles (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> There had also, in recent years, been numerous scandals touching the ruling class: Prince Albert Victor had been rumoured to visit gay brothels, and there were countless stories about the Prince of Wales’s dissolute lifestyle. Rosebery remained reticent about his private life, but he was widely rumoured to be homosexual – with commentators noting his preference for the company of “smart young men”. One such man was the 26-year-old Viscount Drumlanrig, son of boxing pioneer Lord Queensberry. Enraged by the duo’s close relationship, he followed Rosebery on holiday to Germany and had to be restrained from engaging the then foreign secretary in a fist fight. Oscar Wilde and the downfall of the decadents Famously, Queensberry later turned his wrath on Wilde because of his relationship with another of his sons, Lord Alfred Douglas. According to Queensberry, Wilde was a “damned cur and coward of the Rosebery type”. The story of Wilde’s downfall has been much told: he was involved in three scandalous 1895 trials before being convicted of homosexual offences and sentenced to two years’ hard labour in Reading Gaol. Notwithstanding sporadic gestures of sympathy, Wilde’s trials crushed the nascent decadent movement in Britain. While there may have been feelings for him from many New Women, the debacle consigned male behaviour regarded as ‘effeminate’ to a cultural underworld. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/05/2AX1GFPwebready-29491a4.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas pictured in c1893. The scandal sparked by their relationship proved a major blow to the decadent movement (Photo by ARCHIVIO GBB/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas pictured in c1893. The scandal sparked by their relationship proved a major blow to the decadent movement (Photo by ARCHIVIO GBB/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> If the 19th century had seen gains for women and men in a blurring of gender identities, the dawn of the 20th century would see a reassertion of ‘maleness’ in the exercise of that most traditionally masculine pursuit: war. In 1899, shortly after the Wilde trials and the backlash against the decadents, the Second Boer War began. It was a shock to the complacency of empire, and was the harbinger of a decline in the influence of the artistic imagination. The traditional gender roles that had sustained the British empire – with clearly defined soldiers, housewives and mothers – may have been under attack, but now they fought back. As a 1905 book entitled The Decline and Fall of the British Empire admonished, “the emancipated Englishwoman of the age used her freedom for selfish rather than national ends”. The Boer War hero Robert Baden Powell was similarly critical, noting that the Roman empire had “[fallen] at last, chiefly because the young Romans gave up soldiering and manliness altogether”. Through the creation of his Scouting Movement, he was going to make sure that the British empire didn’t follow a similar path. Listen | Joseph Bristow explores the court case against Oscar Wilde for “gross indecency”, and the dangers of living in a society where homosexuality was illegal Indeed, from 1899 on, Britain entered a resolutely masculine phase in which the national effort was focused on trying to avoid, recovering from, or preparing for three major conflicts. In the world wars, women took on men’s roles in industry – but after those conflicts, they were expected to return to the domestic sphere. By and large they did, comforted by the peace of domesticity and the desire for family life as a counterpoint to the horrors of conflict. In the 1920s, some women took advantage of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act and went into professions such as law or accountancy – but these were women in a man’s world, and there was no repetition of the erosion of gender stereotypes that had been apparent in the 1890s. It was in the post-1945 period that people born during and after the Second World War again started challenging strict gender classifications. The era of peace, prosperity and renewal in the west led to a questioning of values in every area, with an explosion of new expressions in politics, music and the arts. Sixty years after the New Man and New Woman, gender again became more mutable, with men wearing their hair long and women wearing trouser suits and jeans. In the 1960s, drag and gender changing became acceptable once more, at first for comedians and then in music where performers wore make up and sometimes, like Mick Jagger in 1969, dresses. Soon unisex fashions became a familiar sight – as they still are today. This article first appeared in the June 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Jason Okundaye on the Black gay community and its tensions: “The movement has always been a broad church”
Jason Okundaye talks to Matt Elton about his new book charting the political, social and sexual lives of Black gay men who lived in London in the second half of the 20th century
Matt Elton: Your book is based on interviews with a group of men from the London district of Brixton. Who did you speak to, and how did you meet? Jason Okundaye: I was researching rates of HIV among Black gay men in Britain, and part of that involved exploring archive material about Black men who have sex with men. There didn’t turn out to be much of that material, but one name – Marc Thompson – kept coming up, so I knew I had to get in touch with him. We met, and talked about his life in Brixton and the area’s history. And through Marc I met more and more people, until eventually I had a big cast of characters: a group of Black gay men aged between 50 and 70 based in and around Brixton who had been incredible activists, artists, poets and DJs. Between them they had created a thriving subculture, so I wanted to bring their voices together and paint, from a minority experience, a broader, beautiful picture. On the podcast | Jason Okundaye on the social, sexual and political history of London’s community of Black gay men in the late 20th century You get a real sense of the men’s characters. Was that important? I’ve sometimes felt that Black British history has lacked texture and character: the details that reveal someone’s individuality and personality. We might focus on what a person achieved in the context of getting the law changed, for example, but miss a sense of who they actually were. This book is as much about the individuals as it is about the big events and changes in which they played a part. I particularly wanted to communicate that the period between the 1970s and 1990s was a historical moment at which things were tense. People were facing racism, homophobia and the Aids crisis, and there was a nascent, growing gay activist and cultural movement. They may have been united on the fronts of race or sexuality, but that didn’t necessarily mean everything was harmonious – and, anyway, that’s not the way I think we should look at queer history or Black history. We need to look at the conflicts, and the tensions, and the ways in which people felt let down or even isolated by their community, as well as the ways in which they came together to make each other’s lives better. One of the characters you open the book with is a man named Ted Brown. Can you tell us about his story? Ted was born in New York. His parents were British Jamaicans: his mother was a civil rights activist who was deported during the 1950s era of paranoia about communism. The family eventually found their way to London in 1959, where they were met by the National Front shoving dog waste through their letterbox. During this time, Ted was coming to know his sexuality. It’s important to remember that, at this time in Britain, there weren’t gay institutions, let alone Black gay institutions. So while people such as Ted may have realised they were gay, they wouldn’t necessarily have known of or had access to anywhere that they could go. But, by the start of the 1970s, the Gay Liberation Front [an early gay activist organisation] had emerged, which marked the first point at which people in Britain were organising as out and proud gay men and lesbians. Ted first encountered its members in 1970, and through his story I wanted to communicate what it was like to have been a Black man working as an activist within the parameters of both race and sexuality. What did those differences mean for how you were treated within activist movements, and the way people were able to navigate those spaces? You write that people such as Ted had to navigate such spaces with less buoyancy and more subtlety than, say, white counterparts. Why was that the case, and what impact did it have? When I first started looking at Brixton, I found that plenty of narratives focused on the Black activism that took place there, and plenty of separate narratives explored its gay activism. I think this separation has historical roots. Organisations such as the South London Gay Liberation Front hosted street parties, theatre productions and big public demonstrations, but the fact that Brixton had a strong Black community meant that, if you were a Black gay person, those activities might have taken place in front of your relatives or members of your church – who might not have been ready for that. The fact that you had these different groups witnessing and monitoring what went on meant that some Black gay men were not able to be open. We should explore the fact that Brixton is the site for the stories in your book. Why were so many people drawn to the area? Brixton was the place in which you really started to see an open Black gay scene develop, and that’s largely due to one man. Patrick Liverpool, who had come down from Huddersfield, bought a house on Morval Road in Brixton in which he started to host regular parties. Word got out that there would be these fabulous parties attended by lots of Black gay men with music, DJing, and drag queen pageants, and a scene grew up in which people were really able to get to know each other. The news reached other parts of the UK, too: men would hear about the parties and decide they wanted to move closer. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/04/GettyImages-1313261451-ec61e8e.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Posters for club nights in Brixton, 1973. Young Black gay men were drawn to the area by stories of its social life (Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="Posters for club nights in Brixton, 1973. Young Black gay men were drawn to the area by stories of its social life (Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> All of this led, eventually, to the kinds of stories you hear of Brixton in later years: the guy who used to take a boombox and dance outside the police station wearing really short glitter shorts, and the drag queens who cycled down the street wearing wigs and full faces of makeup. But I should also stress that Black people have long been attracted to Brixton and south London in general, because there’s always been a thriving community and food, music and art scene. Even today, it is still a crucible and a reflection of wider race relations in Britain. What does the story of another interviewee, Dirg Aaab-Richards, tell us about being Black and gay in Britain in the 1970s and 80s? Dirg was massively influential in educating young people about the issues surrounding being LGBTQ, and in setting up youth clubs around south London during the 1980s. These weren’t just for Black gay men, but all sorts of LGBTQ youth. This was at a time when the law [in England and Wales] said you could only have same-sex sexual relationships over the age of 21, so he was trying to create a space in which young people could build a family and community with each other. An interesting discrepancy you highlight is that Dirg describes himself as a “modest revolutionary”, yet other people you spoke to talk about him as being a really central, pivotal figure. Yeah, that’s right. I didn’t want to present the history of activism, and particularly Black gay men’s activism, only as pure pageantry, big demonstrations and confrontations with the state. Of course, it did include those things. But it was also about putting out chairs and locking the room at the end of the day, and communication: typing things up, sticking posters on walls and getting flyers out to mobilise people. The experiences of another man, Alex Owolade, highlight the frictions between Brixton’s activists. What was his background? I felt it was vital to include Alex’s story because it really shows that the Black gay movement has always been a broad church. People have come from such different backgrounds and political persuasions, and yet ultimately have been able achieve political goals together. Alex’s mother was a nursery teacher who organised against the closures of nurseries, and he was always taught to be on the side of striking workers. By his teens, he was proudly and openly aligned with communist movements, which meant that when he joined the Black gay and lesbian movement he had a very different ideology from many of the other men I spoke to. People were either really inspired by him or really repelled. This is one of the key ways in which I wanted to show that writing a history of a minority community isn’t just about togetherness, but also about conflicts, differences and frictions. A key moment of tension within this community surrounded the Black newspaper The Voice, which had been founded in 1982. What happened? The differences between people within Brixton’s Black gay community really came to the surface in 1990, when Justin Fashanu became the first footballer in the top tiers of the sport to publicly confirm he was gay. The interview he gave to The Sun newspaper that October was a bit of a seismic moment, because Fashanu was a popular Black sports star and an aspirational model for the Black community. The Voice, a national Black newspaper published weekly at the time, ran an interview with Fashanu’s brother, John [also a famous footballer], in which he said he saw Justin as an outcast, disowning and disgracing him. There were a number of other articles, too, describing how homosexuals were apparently attention-seekers and all sorts of other homophobic drivel. Read more | Are some LGBTQ histories being overlooked? Ted Brown and Alex had very different visions of how they should approach The Voice. Ted had set up a group, Black Lesbians and Gays Against Media Homophobia, and wanted to take a diplomatic route to challenging the newspaper: appealing to its advertisers, for instance, and trying to meet with the people in charge to force a right to reply. Alex took a more military approach: he wanted to campaign outside of its offices, be really loud and visible, and even shut the paper down. Ted, in turn, didn’t want to be seen to be attacking the newspaper, this Black institution, because he knew that – despite the fact it had been homophobic – it was still a valuable resource for Black people. He didn’t want trying to shut it down to be seen by some people as indistinguishable from, say, a racist attack. Meanwhile, Alex’s argument was that it was pushing poison into the community and so wasn’t fit for purpose. I was really interested to bring out those differences and show that, even within an activist movement with shared goals, different strategies can lead to conflict. You stress in the book that Black gay men don’t lead solely political lives, and that it’s also important to look at their social and sexual stories – without sanitising them. Which aspects don’t get the attention they deserve? I think, with queer history, we sometimes shy away from the fact that, ultimately, these people came together because they were sexually attracted to each other. I didn’t want to present a history purely about the activism with none of the sex, none of the desire and none of the pleasure. Omitting the cruising, the cottaging and the sex parties that went on would just have been dishonest. When I talk about the importance of not sanitising things, I also mean that I didn’t want to skip over the fact that sometimes Black gay men might not be nice people to each other. A key example of that was Marc Thompson’s HIV diagnosis in 1986, at the age of 17. Rather than finding immediate solidarity and community with other Black gay men, he found that people were gossiping about him and revealing his HIV status to other people behind his back. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/04/eyevine02865637-82ba277.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Marc Thompson, one of the men Jason Okundaye interviewed for his book, pictured in 2021 (Photo by Anselm Ebulue/Guardian/eyevine)" title="Marc Thompson, one of the men Jason Okundaye interviewed for his book, pictured in 2021 (Photo by Anselm Ebulue/Guardian/eyevine)" /> It’s uncomfortable to realise that these men weren’t necessarily supporting each other, particularly when you consider what the media, the police and politicians were saying about gay men diagnosed as HIV positive at the time. Sometimes community fails us, and we need to hold ourselves accountable for that. The ways in which gay men have treated other HIV-positive gay men has not always been supportive, and for some people, the Black gay community hasn’t always necessarily been a positive thing. I want to talk a bit more about the social spaces Black gay men set up. How important is it to consider the physical environment? We’ve talked about the way Brixton is central to this story. One of the reasons is that you can walk down a street and the public toilets you pass were where Black gay men used to have sex with each other, but also meet and become friends. Or, on another street, a house that has been carved up and turned into flats was where fabulous house parties went on. I wanted to show that you can walk through an area and not even realise just how much history is around you. Black gay house parties were particularly important because they mimicked the spaces in which Black gay men had grown up: the family functions, the barbecues, the parties. They transposed them and gave them a new identity, offering an introduction to this community and a space in which people were really able to express themselves – and, in some cases, have sex for the first time. The start of this Black gay party scene meant that there was now a demand for nightlife, which began in tiny little sweatbox venues. But those house parties and small early venues proved that there was demand – and as the new out Black generation started feeling happier and safer to enjoy themselves, demand increased until there was an entire Black gay entertainment ecosystem. At the start, we touched on the fact that these stories don’t tend to exist in traditional, formal archives. Why do you think that is? There are a couple of reasons. If people don’t see their lives as important to the national story, they’re not necessarily going to be that forthcoming about them. Some of the people I interviewed asked me, what are you interested in this for? If you aren’t used to seeing people like you in history or in the media, then you can’t imagine that someone in 30 or 40 years might be interested in asking about it. You might not necessarily expect, either, that a book on Black gay history might be something people want to read. Read more | What are the challenges of telling LGBTQ history? We’ve got to talk about the commercial context: I’ve written a Black gay history book, now, in 2024. Could it have come out in 2014? I don’t think so. But times have changed, and people’s interests have changed too. Something the men also told me is that they have not necessarily been the best at recording their own lives. That makes sense, because when you go on a night out, for instance, you’re not necessarily thinking, 'I’ll take a photo for history.' You’re just taking a photo with your friends, rather than thinking that in 20 years’ time someone might want it for a digital archive. These men just had less of a sense they were living through history. You write that the act of researching and writing this book has not only enriched your life but also forever changed your perception of the Black presence in Britain. Why do you think it’s had such an impact? The men I spoke to were so spirited and so proud to be openly gay, and had such incredible stories to tell. They achieved such amazing things but, strikingly, were so unassuming. They weren’t big public figures – you’re not necessarily going to find them on Wikipedia or even on Google – but that just proves you could be sitting next to an older Black person at a bus stop and have no idea about the amazing things they’ve done or witnessed. It just shows that there is such a heritage, and such an inheritance, we can take from all Black people, not just Black gay people, and continue to pass it on. But that really depends on us being curious, and open, and willing to learn from them. I felt so inspired by that: even if you’ve gone through the worst and hardest of times, your story doesn’t have to end there. Jason Okundaye is a London-based journalist and author of Revolutionary Acts: Love & Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain (Faber & Faber, 2024) This interview first appeared in the April 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Sir Noel Malcolm explores the history of sexual relationships between men in early modern Europe and the Ottoman world
Until recently, the history of sex between men was a taboo topic. But by delving into the historical archive, historian Sir Noel Malcolm has uncovered a more complex story of same-sex relationships and encounters in early modern Europe and the Ottoman world. He speaks to Rebecca Franks about his findings. Noel Malcolm is the author of Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations, 1400-1750 (Oxford University Press, 2024). Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Waterstones
Jason Okundaye explores the social, sexual and political history of London’s community of Black gay men in the late 20th century
Author and journalist Jason Okundaye's new book features interviews with a community of Black gay men who lived in the London district of Brixton across the later decades of the 20th century. From disagreements about politics and the best way to fight discrimination, to intimate details of sexual relationships, house parties and nightlife, their stories offer revealing insights into the experiences of being Black and gay in postwar Britain. Matt Elton caught up with Jason to find out more. Jason Okundaye is the author of Revolutionary Acts: Love & Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain (Faber & Faber, 2024) <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Revolutionary-Acts-Brotherhood-Black-Britain/dp/057137221X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=24VKJSAHEF0XF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Iy6qgOtwfZ68gKTAySTvug.8CdWt_jZXL6Qpq9hxw94S7OREhcTdEPv5o3flmtNLV0&dib_tag=se&keywords=Revolutionary+Acts%3A+Love+%26+Brotherhood+in+Black+Gay+Britain&qid=1713430364&sprefix=revolutionary+acts+love+%26+brotherhood+in+black+gay+britain%2Caps%2C50&sr=8-1&tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-265595" rel="sponsored" target="_blank">Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Waterstones
James VI and I and his favourites: what were their relationships like?
As Mary and George chooses to dramatise a sexual relationship between King James VI and I, and his favourite, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham – how much is really known about the king’s relationships with his favoured male courtiers?
Who were James VI and I’s favourites? King James VI and I was renowned for his enjoyment of the company of handsome young male courtiers. His relationships were no secret at court, and he was very open about the men whom he favoured. In 1603, when James VI succeeded Elizabeth I to become James I of England, his court was packed with Scottish courtiers, and “this was particularly noticeable in the bedchamber”, explains Joe Ellis of the University of York on an upcoming episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. This was “the real inner sanctum of royal life, where only very few courtiers were allowed to be,” says Ellis. “The bedchamber was somewhere where everybody wanted to be if they wanted to get ahead.” While the king married Anne of Denmark in 1589, and fathered as many as seven children, there was a culture within his court of elevating the status of young, attractive men. They shared his bedchamber with him – a convention of the time (more below). This trait of raising up the status of his male favourites dates back to when the young king was a teen, explains Ellis. Read more | The honeymoon of James VI and Anna of Denmark “When he was only 13 years old, the absence of his own family, I think, led James to call Esmé Stewart, his cousin, back to Scotland from France.” At 37 years old, Stewart was much older than James, and Ellis explains that he was something of an exotic presence at court who fascinated the young king. “Stewart was showered with rewards. He was made the only duke in Scotland at the time. But he was deeply unpopular at court, because he was French, and also Catholic,” says Ellis. “I think what we see here is the beginning of a pattern emerging, where James was facilitating the rise of a favourite.” Soon after James’s accession to the English throne, Scottish noble Robert Carr became a prominent favourite, gaining status as a groom of the bedchamber around 1604. Having been knighted by the king, Carr soon became influential in royal policy and was given titles and property (including Sherborne Manor, formerly owned by the condemned Sir Walter Raleigh). In 1613, he was advanced to the Earldom of Somerset, and Carr (and his wife, Frances Howard) enjoyed much favour. In 1614/15, George Villiers, a second son born into a family of middling nobility on the edges of royal favour, was backed by a group of English courtiers (including his mother, Mary Villiers) who sought to combat the influence of the Scottish nobles that had previously formed James’s inner circle. Villiers began to cultivate a relationship with the king, which put him at odds with Carr, resulting in a bitter contest that culminated in Carr's fall from grace and implication in a court poisoning; he ended up imprisoned in the Tower of London. Having gained the king’s favour, Villiers enjoyed an unprecedented rise to power that continued into the early reign of Charles I. View Green Video on the source website “He had an extraordinary amount of power and status very quickly,” explains Benjamin Woolley, author and biographer of George Villiers. “The most obvious example of that was being made duke.” Villers was granted the title of 1st Duke of Buckingham in 1623. “Elizabeth [I] never made anyone a duke,” says Woolley on the HistoryExtra podcast. “That hadn't really been done, I think, for about a century.” “There were dukes like the Howards, who went back to the time of the Normans, or there were members of the royal family. Dukedom, in other words, normally denoted some direct relationship to the royal family. And George got a dukedom. He also got his mother to be made countess, an extraordinary thing to achieve.” What was the nature of the relationships between James and his favourites? James and his favourites certainly enjoyed political partnerships, explains Joe Ellis. The young men often informed royal policy, and acted as a bridge between the king and his army of suitors. “But I also think it's likely, based on the very small amount of evidence available, that the relationships between James and his favourites were more than platonic,” says Ellis. While no sources exist to fully confirm the nature of the relationship, there are some slivers of evidence of James’s feelings towards certain courtiers. As a teenager, the young James wrote a poem about Esmé Stuart, explains Benjamin Woolley, “an extraordinary poem talking about a phoenix resting between the thighs of this figure in a way that was highly suggestive.” What was really happening behind the closed doors of the king’s bedchamber is almost unknowable, explains Ellis, “because there’s no real hard evidence. However, many at the time, and now, suspect that they were sexual in nature." “Sexual acts between men were reasonably common at the time,” he says. “It was very much seen as a physical act, as opposed to a kind of partnership in the sense that we see it now. Obviously, men were friends, and this is often how [such a relationship] was viewed by contemporaries.” Perhaps the strongest evidence that the relationship between George and James was sexual, is a letter from Buckingham to the king, says Ellis. “In this letter, Buckingham mentions that he shall never forget at Farnham when they were on progress: ‘when the bed's head could not be found between the master and his dog’. “There are quite a few ways that you could take this, but I think that certainly does suggest some kind of physicality between the two,” says Ellis. Woolley also highlights the letters exchanged between the two, and their analysis by American academic David Moore Bergeron, who published a 1999 volume called King James and the Letters of Homoerotic Desire – “which is a bit of a breakthrough book”, says Woolley. “If you read [Bergeron], they're a set of love letters,” Woolley says. “There’s lots of ambiguous, suggestive phrasing in these letters. There are also very moving parts, such as when James sent a letter at Christmastime to George, after the death of James's queen, Anne, sort of pleading with George to become his wife. “And that kind of language clearly shows a very deep, complex, probably sexual relationship between them.” Academics Alastair Bellany and Thomas Cogswell have also considered the pair’s letters amid their shared experience of illness; both suffered ailments and bonded over this. “James and Buckingham nursed each other through bouts of ill health,” they write, “and exchanged reports about unorthodox remedies. When Buckingham’s conversion to the anti-Spanish cause nearly broke their friendship in 1624, it was the duke’s subsequent illness that provided the occasion for its renewal.” Was James VI and I gay or bisexual? Joe Ellis warns against applying modern labels. “I think we have to be careful here about transferring modern concepts of sexual identity onto early modern people,” he says. “The concepts of homosexuality and bisexuality, for example, they simply didn't exist in the 16th and 17th centuries.” Likewise, Woolley urges caution when considering the king’s relationships. Bergeron’s 1999 study of the correspondence between the king and Villiers brought “a new way of looking at these letters,” says Woolley, which had proved challenging for Victorian and Edwardian historians, in particular. “They found them difficult to interpret without writing about James in ways that were difficult to do at the time.” Read more | What are the challenges of telling LGBTQ+ history? “But now it's much easier. However, we have to be careful, because identity politics – as we understand it now – didn't exist then. So, you wouldn't describe James as homosexual. That, I think, would be anachronistic. He had a wife, he had children.” The relationship with Villiers, says Woolley, speaks more to “that part of James's make-up, part of his need. And part of what George could provide was a physical, as well as a formal or courtly bond. And that physical connection was extremely important to the relationship between the two – as it was in the relationships between lots of men at the time.” “It's an intriguing and absolutely crucial aspect to the story of George's role in James's court,” says Woolley. Read more | Was King James VI and I murdered? The picture is complicated by the fact that “James was vehement that laws be put into place against the act of sodomy itself,” Ellis explains. The king listed the act in one of his books as being among “horrible crimes which ye are bound in conscience never to forgive”. James, as Ellis reminds, also fathered seven royal children – “so evidently he was able to rise to the occasion when necessary”. Ellis adds that there were some rumours during the king’s earlier reign in Scotland that he had a mistress – “Agnes Murray, which is something that doesn't get spoken about enough, I don't think.” This was unlikely to have been a sexual relationship with the young Murray – it was “more likely to be an exercise in political spin to demonstrate the king's virility and masculinity,” Ellis explains. “But I think it needs to be remembered that this is how James viewed his kingship, and this is what he had to do. He had to sort of invent a mistress, if that was the case, to display his kingship in that way.” James VI and I’s relationships on screen The intimate and sexual relationship between James VI and I and George Villers is depicted in certain terms on screen in the drama Mary & George, based on Woolley’s 2017 book The King’s Assassin: The Fatal Affair of George Villiers and James I (Pan Macmillan). “Obviously one can speculate about what happened in the bedchamber,” says Woolley, “but in Mary and George, the interesting thing about this becoming drama, is that speculation isn't quite going to do it. You have to dramatise what's happening. “And one of the most fascinating parts of this adventure, of being involved in this production – not just in that respect, in so many respects – was how you actually visualise something that you only had to kind of speculate about, when you were writing about it historically.” Woolley explains the types of questions that the show grappled with, including: “How do you show what kind of sex they had, and things like that. And we had discussions –bizarre, you could say, discussions about it. I had my views on it. Others had other views on it. And what you see is what you get, so to speak. It really is quite bold.” Joe Ellis and Benjamin Woolley were speaking to Elinor Evans on episodes of the HistoryExtra podcast
Stonewall: the 1969 fight for gay rights
Chris Parkes reflects on the 1969 Stonewall riots
To mark LGBT+ history month, we're revisiting a classic episode on a pivotal moment in LGBTQ+ history. Speaking to Matt Elton in 2019, historian Chris Parkes explored the background to the 1969 Stonewall riots, when LGBT protests erupted at New York’s Stonewall Inn.