Bad Gays: A Homosexual History

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Giving an alternative view of queer history through its most lamentable figures, Miller and Lemmey go deep on Hadrian, James VI and I, Lawrence of Arabia, J Edgar Hoover and Ronnie Kray, and don’t let up on the debauched details of their lives. A smart, funny (and, just occasionally, catty) tour through the darker side of LGBTQ+ history. Far from being an excoriation, this book is a sign of confidence in a community that no longer has to present its antecedents as saints and martyrs but as real people: some of these gays were well-meaning but flawed; some of them were complicated; and some of them were just bloody awful. Juliet Jacques, author of Variations Why must liberatory history be populated by heroes? And what if it isn't? Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller confront the shadowy side of queer history, a seamy underworld populated by evil twinks and psychopathic villains. Delectable gossip aside, this revelatory book is really an account of toxic power relations, always with an eye to a better, stranger, wilder future. Olivia Laing, author of Everybody This is particularly true in their dismissive and condemnatory references to Mead's mentor the anthropologist Franz Boas. You would never know from the way his work and research is presented that this was the man who successfully demolished the theories race as spouted by eugenicists. Boas studied the children of immigrants in the USA and demonstrated that they were physically and mentally different from their parents. That rather than there being fixed physical and mental which were determined by what 'race' you were it was your environment which was the major influence on physical and mental development so they changed with each generation. Environment was the key and his work prevented eugenics becoming established within academia. He is denounced by many far right white supremacist groups in the USA and elsewhere as a hate figure and traitor to the 'white' race to this day. Vlessing, Etan (March 9, 2018). "Etan Cohen Adapting 'The Bad Guys' Books for DreamWorks Animation". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on October 8, 2019 . Retrieved December 13, 2019.

Lemmey and Miller gratifyingly believe in the intelligence of their readers. They don’t shy away from academic language and concepts, which bogs the book down in some places with an over-abundance of dry, rapid-fire facts and dates. Despite this, Bad Gays remains largely readable thanks to the tongue-in-cheek queer humor and comedic asides peppered throughout. This doesn’t lessen the severity of its content, as Lemmey and Miller never lose sight of who they are profiling. From colonizers to racists to fascists, not a single individual is let off the hook for problematic — or downright harmful— behaviour. Every person explored is held to account for their actions in a satisfying way. A principle of understanding our status as gay people both within our culture and within wider society is this: we are not just the protagonists, but also products of history." The above principle guides the work of authors and podcasters Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller in this new and wildly liberatory work of queer historiography which seeks to reveal new insights on LGBTQ history, sexuality, and identity through fourteen hitherto buried examples of homosexual evil and brutishness through the ages. Indeed, while "Be Gay, Do Crimes" may be a catchphrase easily uttered today on social media, there is a deeper relationship between queerness (which has been considered a form of villainy for a large part of history, and continues to be seen as such in several places), criminality, and political power. This book manages to systematically highlight these links while also challenging mainstream assumptions about structures of power and about sexual identity and deviance. This book probably deserves a more thorough review than I'm about to give it. I wasn't planning to review it at all, but I need to express some thoughts! Whilst I enjoyed the brief comedic moments, and queer humour we can all bask in, it was also surprisingly hard hitting. Part revisionist history, part historical biography and based on the hugely popular podcast series, Bad Gays subverts the notion of gay icons and queer heroes and asks what we can learn about LGBTQ history, sexuality and identity through its villains and baddies. From the Emperor Hadrian to notorious gangster Ronnie Kray, the authors excavate the buried history of queer lives. This includes fascist thugs, famous artists, austere puritans and debauched bon viveurs, imperialists, G-men and architects.

Agent Rhonda Shortfuse – A small dog but powerful member of the International League of Heroes, and in book 17 is revealed to be THE ONE Let’s start with the fact -if this had less graphic descriptions of sex- it would be so bloody perfect as material to be used and taught in schools. This book covers so much history, especially for Europeans and English folk, that our historians usually try to hide or barely mention beneath piles of text. What's worse is that these writers are jerks that think they are qualified to make moral judgments on others, such as saying things like "the mostly good gay Larry Mitchell." Whose objective scale are they using for what's good and bad, and can we place the authors in the bad column for thinking they have a right to make such judgments?

Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Libra Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Librarians Group is the official group for requesting additions or updates to the catalog, including: The authors state that by examining the lives and sexualities of a range of “evil and complicated queers from our history”, the book “investigates the failure of homosexuality as an identity and a political project.” Note the conflation of ‘evil’ and ‘complex’, probably a half-baked attempt to explain what Lawrence of Arabia and Margaret Mead (incidentally the only woman here) have in common in terms of ‘badness’. Too many popular histories seek to establish heroes, pioneers and martyrs but as Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller argue, the past is filled with queer people whose sexualities and dastardly deeds have been overlooked. We all remember Oscar Wilde, but who speaks for Bosie? What about those ‘bad gays’ whose unexemplary lives reveals more than we might expect? This is the question Bad Gays sets out to rectify. The book, based on Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller’s popular podcast of the same name, examines the lives of “bad gays” — a term that is a bit of a misnomer by design — by exploring how certain historical figures’ actions influenced those around them and how their actions, in turn, were influenced by their sexuality. By doing this, Lemmey and Miller subvert the typical way queer history and politics are usually talked about; this book is about villains, not heroes.You and Huw write in Bad Gays : “Both of us are deeply shaped by homosexuality but also deeply unsatisfied by it”. What do you find unsatisfying about homosexuality? Part-revisionist history, part-historical biography and based on the hugely popular podcast series, Bad Gays subverts the notion of gay icons and queer heroes and asks what we can learn about LGBTQ history, sexuality and identity through its villains and baddies. From the Emperor Hadrian to notorious gangster Ronnie Kray, the authors excavate the buried history of queer lives. This includes fascist thugs, famous artists, austere puritans and debauched bon viveurs, Imperialists, G-men and architects . Together these amazing life stories expand and challenge the mainstream assumptions of sexual identity. They show that homosexuality itself was an idea that emerged in the nineteenth century and that its interpretation has been central to major historical moments of conflict from the ruptures of Weimar Republic to red-baiting in Cold War America.

It mentions the Pits and Perverts benefits, history I’m wildly intrigued by and aware of, but also more out there tales I had no idea of.

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Further, even the earliest examples in the book make clear that the criminalisation, accusation, and persecution of homosexuals was not an ab initio attitude but a tool that developed, historically, as above all a means of consolidating political power: it allowed the elimination of otherwise formidable political rivals, facilitated the enclosure of land, and has been central to major historical conflicts, from the ruptures of the Weimar Republic and the Red-baiting terror in Cold War America to the wider projects of colonialism and anti-immigrant sentiments in an ostensibly post-colonial world. Tracing all these historical trysts with power also allows us to bear witness to our notions of homosexuality and queerness being products of historical shifts and change; fluid, contingent identities, "developed through a slow accrual of meaning over the centuries" that are not fixed today and have never been, and may well be due for redesign and redefinition in our current moment. The actual story is by the numbers. These animated features love the idea of teaching children to think outside the box and rising above what the world thinks you are, in a movie that's story arch could not have been more obvious if they tried, but that animation was so good that I'm too focus on it to care.