Homosexuality Post War

Homo informality Post WarThe democratization of G rester after(prenominal) the knowledgeable Offences coiffe (1967) and How It Affects Queer StudiesE.M. Forsters novel Maurice, written amidst 1913 and 1914, further non published after his death in 1970, is a originative work providing a moving, face-to-face portrayal of crotchet and homophobia in 20th-century England. geographic expedition of its detailed accounts of attitudes to the highest degree transvestites and their various reactions to the discrimination they facedfor instance, denying their transvestiteity and marrying compreh curiosity their transgenderedity, but discreetly leaving the country for more(prenominal) open-minded horti elaborationsserves as an excellent starting point for exploring the underlying ethnic framework and set which will form the subject matter of this strive. Of no sm entirely eyeshade is that Forster, whose re strayation as a literary genius, believed his own homo sex activity likewise powerful a secret to come protrude, as it were, until after his death, in a way squandering his own social power and the strength to liberate two himself and other(a) trans versed(prenominal)s.Britain, origin of so much cultural and semi semipolitical vibrancy and of the democratic dominions which are now held to be obvious in fresh Western nations, had a particularly surd m ridding itself of a virulent and persistent form of discrimination its stubbornly bourgeois refusal to accept homoness and homo knowledgeable behaviours into the cultural norm of its society. Indiscreet homointimates in England of the 20th century could look for struggled to a life of dogmatism and discrimination, to say nonhing of financial and personal ruin and imprisonment, as homoeroticism was smooth a reprehensible law-breaking in England until 1967.The limits of the sexu coadjutor bankable are still at that place. Geographical location and stinting status signifi force co me ontly affect how free individuals are to choose to be open rough their knowledgeable orientation. And some orientations are still problematic. As the above reference book of account suggests, the issue of homo sex carcass a divisive issue. This is in enkindle of cardinal eld going since the decriminalisation of homo sexual practice in Britain forty years that have also witnessed the amusing fraternity ( both(prenominal) males and females) move in from the margins of mainstream society in order to occupy more powerful positions of authority. This has been meted out in political office, in popular tillage and in the spheric mess media. Yet, in spite of this, there remains at the get hold of of the cardinal archetypal century a sense that homosexuality is a lifestyle that stands at odds to all told that decent society holds dear. unconstipated in the coupled Kingdom, probably the most secular country in the world, the moral aspect of homosexuality is never far from the surface of the subroutine over over how lively tribe are supposed to integrate into a predominantly heterosexual surface area. This is the crux of the disputation discussed herein.For the purpose of perspective, the following essay must adopt an integrated approach, attempting to synthesise the theoretical and historiographical debates regarding the scrams of cheery people in stand fight Britain. In this way, we back tooth trace the social, political and well-grounded phylogeny of the democratization and liberalisation of sexuality and gender in the UK eyepatch at the same time offering a reexamination of the aims and achievements of the animated style at this time. Furthermore, the continuities and changes of the homosexual landscape in post warfare Britain rat be more accurately depicted amid the germane(predicate) academic literature of the times. A end suffer then be sought that attempts to place the Sexual Offences arrange of 1967 in spite of a ppearance its correct historic and theoretical context. First, however, a brief over go out of this Act of Parliament must be ascertained so as to establish a conceptual framework for the remainder of the preaching.The Sexual Offences Act that was passed by Westminster in 1967 was a divide piece of legislation that sought to address the harsh wakeless inequalities among homosexual and heterosexual people with regards to their secluded lives and the way in which these private lives were dictated by the public and political sphere. The impetus behind the sort out of laws pertaining to homosexuality in the United Kingdom came from the Wolfendon Report, which was commissi unityd in 1957 to high sportying the congenital differences between crime and sin. Essentially, while society and the manu occurrenceuring of cultural consensus whitethorn indeed have deemed homosexuality as a sin (or a sickness) to equate it with criminality was deemed in many circles to be asynchronous and afflict against post war British obligingisation and its fosters. This is an of the essence(predicate) point and one that ought to be borne in mind throughout the discussion the 1967 Sexual Offences Act marked the first serious attempt at the legal decriminalisation of homosexuality in the United Kingdom since the Buggery Act of 1533 when the British claim first sought to wrest the issue of light mate away from the ecclesiastical courts and into the legal courts of the realm. Viewed through this prism, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act bottomland be seen to be a prognostic of the broader civilian rights run of the mid-sixties which oversaw the criminalisation of inequality relating to gender, race, creed and religion in all of the major(ip) countries of the western hemisphere. The Act could non have come about without there first having been in place the existence of liberal youth culture that was able to use the tools available within a democratic state in order to lobby th e political establishment for social and cultural reform.Thus, although the Act itself has since been open to charges of hypocrisy (the result of the Act witnessed an increase kinda than a decrease in the numbers of arrests of gay men for time out the revolutionary law) and prejudice (the Act clearly and identifiably differentiates between homosexual and heterosexual people with regards to the duration of consent with twenty one establishment used for gay people in comparison to sixteen for square(p) people) it should nevertheless still be seen as an cardinal milestone in the evolution of a more egalitarian British society. Certainly, in legal cost, 1967 must be seen as the starting point of any discussion with regards to the democratisation of homosexuality in post war Britain as forward the advent of the Sexual Offences Act homosexual acts were seen as essentially criminal activities and therefore placed outside of the bounds of the rules, regulations and customs of de cent, civilised society. Therefore, while mainstream culture and the political establishment may well have both publicly and privately continued to denounce homosexuality in all its forms as a sin (and preferred to keep homosexuality steadfastly outside of the realms of civilised society), the removal of the spectre of a criminal offence telegraphed a major turning point in the way in which gay people were viewed and treated in post war Britain. Furthermore, without the Act, the accompanying achievements of the gay movement in the UK would never have been able to obtain to take place as the legal framework in which the gay movement lobbied for reform during the 1970s and eighties would not have existed. Democratisation of sexuality in post war Britain thus begins in 1967.However, as suggested above, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act has left itself open (particularly within the gay community) to claims of universe as an essentially conservative measure that was unaccompanied passed due(p) to reasons of political expediency as opposed to the political establishment in Britain in reality wishing to see a tactual democratisation of sexuality. By establishing such(prenominal) a high age of consent for gay couples, the Act hardly served to cement the social stigma associated with homosexuality because after this point it was seen by law in Britain to be a coupling that was deemed unsuitable (and illegal) for puppyish people to interlock in. Considering that the teenage years are the most important stage of sexual development in both males and females, the high age of consent deliberately aimed to restrict the practice of homosexuality amongst the rattling demographic that would be most likely to engage in experimental sexuality. This scarcely increased the marked-up image of homosexuals in Britain at the time, implying that adult homosexual men were in some way intent upon grooming youth males to join their own sexual brand of subculture. Viewed through this prism, the Sexual Offences Act can be seen to be a confirmatory legal cadence but likewise a negative cultural step. The increase in the number of arrests of gay men in the years that immediately followed 1967 should be seen as recommendation to this ultimate perpetuation of inequality pertaining to sexuality which was the socio-political cor serveence of the Sexual Offences Act. In this way, the myth of the permissive society was established to replete the libertarian ideology of the left wing of the political elite. The satisfaction and status of gay people, on the other hand, seems not to have been a consideration denoteing the passing of this landmark piece of domestic legislation.In specific terms of the evolution of pansy guess, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act can be seen to have helped to perform fertile grand for the blossoming of the domestic and international gay rights movement because of the way in which the Act of Parliament served to legally solidify the di fferences between homosexual and heterosexual people. This sense of marginalisation from mainstream society was aided by the stymie Riots which took place in impudent York City in 1969 in response to police brutality against homosexual and transgender people at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. This episode provided the impetus behind the shaping of the merry Liberation Front (GLF) which was established in July 1969, quick becoming a trans-national phenomenon that deeply influenced the gay rights movement in the UK. The cumulative result of the prejudices legalised in the 1967 Sexual Offences Act in addition to the prejudices brutally realised in New York City in the Stonewall Riots was to construct a gay movement that was both durable and international. Furthermore, the perceived injustices of the 1960s also served to ally the lesbian and gay movements so that one tangible homosexual community was evident by the turn of the decade in both europium and the United States of America. This time point was therefore a crucial molybdenum in the development of frustrate guess in post war Britain.However, it can be argued that by forming a global gay movement that judged membership with the movement in terms of sexual identity element, international movements such as the Gay Liberation Front succeeded only in affirming the divisions put forward by measures like the Sexual Offences Act. Queer conjecture, from the outset, was intent upon intriguing the mainstream socio-political status quo by using sum that were essentially counter reproductive in light of the gay movements crinkles that gender and sexual identity was not fixed or cut up according to ones sexuality but was in fact much more fluid and interchangeable. Indeed, unwrap theorists have since argued that the miscellany of gender is likewise flawed with Anne Fausto-Sterling arguing that male and female are not enough. By separating them(heterosexuals) from us (homosexuals and transsexua ls) the queer movement merely served to support the fragmented vision of mainstream society and to further alienate homosexuality from mainstream culture and, as a result, to condemn queer conjecture to a palpable subculture status. Consequently, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act taken within the broader context of the worldwide civil rights movement of the 1960s can be seen to be an important milestone within the evolution of queer possibleness as not only did politicised society initiate a clear dividing line between the homosexual and the heterosexual communities but also the homosexual community itself was mostly obligated after this point for perpetuating this divide. In the final analysis therefore, it is difficult to imagine this development as positive or progressive. Indeed, as Michael Botnick demonstrates below, this want of knowingness on both sides of the historic debate resulted in a perceptible lack of consensus by the turn of the millennium.The lack of open-mind edness toward complex and graduated positions makes it difficult to obtain a full hearing of the issues, especially if those issues are value laden and cognitively dissonant to the audience (generally the public at large, the state, major corporations or other mega-organisations such as the media.)At this point in the discussion, aid must move away from the historiographic look at the formation of the gay rights movement within the context of the late 1960s to turn instead towards analysis of queer theory in post war twentieth century Britain. As has already been intimated, the evolution of queer theory in the UK is intrinsically tied to the advent of the Sexual Offences Act of 1967. The injustices conceptualised in this Act served to galvanise the gay community amid the broader backdrop of a civil rights movement that was established in order to attempt to attain likeness on the grounds of race, religion and gender as well as parity on the grounds of sexuality. This wider multicu ltural influence is the key to appreciation how the doctrine of queer theory in post war Britain quickly became divorced from the social, cultural and political reality of maintaining a subcultural movement within the context of a liberal democracy. It is certainly no coincidence that the manoeuvre principle of queer theory was inwroughtly similar to the guiding principle of the other civil rights movements of the epoch all highlighted the fallacy of using identity (be it sexual, racial, religious or gender) as a means of organising political society. each(prenominal) of these movements should therefore be viewed as part of a wider post-structuralist theory which advocated the end of identity based upon gender, sexuality, race and religion in favour of adopting a more egalitarian approach. In this way, post-structuralist theory was keen to destroy the touch between dominant western forms of rationality with male power and meet over women and temper, which is associated with v iolence, oppression and destruction.Queer theory should be seen as an important part of this desire to deconstruct male-ordered politicised society and to reconstruct this society not along lines pertaining to identity but along lines pertaining to humanity instead. In terms of results, the deconstruction of male-centric society can be seen to have had a positive impact upon the fusion of homosexual and heterosexual cultures in post war Britain, certainly after the 1980s when the assist epidemic in the United States quickly became a worldwide manifestation of what Stan Cohen had in the 1970s referred to as moral panic disseminated by an increasingly powerful global mass media apparatus. Whereas the 1970s and the 1980s can be seen as a historical period of perseverance with regards to the perpetuation of sexuality-based injustices in Britain, the 1990s on the other hand can be interpreted as a period of change when the barriers constructed by male-ordered mainstream society were s lowly, yet clearly being crumble in obvious ways. Politicians, for instance, in the 1990s were no longer punished in any tangible electoral way for being outed as homosexual. The briefly successful New Labour career of Peter Mandelson is testimony to this development. the likewise in popular culture where international stars such as George Michael (who was afraid to admit his sexuality in the 1980s) have been able to thunder in both the heterosexual and homosexual spheres regardless of their own sexual preferences since the 1990s. The turn of the millennium also witnessed a legal progression concerning gay people and their civil rights with amendments to the Sexual Offences Act (passed in 2003) in Britain lastly giving rise to parity with heterosexual people with regards to the age of consent. Indeed, it can be argued that the 2003 Sexual Offences Amendment Act is as fundamental and extensive as the changes which were telegraphed when the Theft Act (1968) replaced the outmoded L arceny Act (1916). In the UK in the twenty first century the age of consent for both heterosexual and homosexual people is at last set at sixteen, at last putting to an end the decades-long necktie of homosexuality with perversity and social abnormality.Yet, appearances can be deceptive. While the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty first century may appear to be the dawn of a new era of equality with regards to gender and sexuality, the reality may in fact be cleanse understood as a period of continuity with the perceived advances of gay people during this time being nothing more than a mirage as male-dominated society continues to give piecemeal concessions to those marginalised elements of post modern culture in order to maintain the faade of a permissive contemporary society.It seems were an altogether more open, more tolerant, sexier society and its getting better all the time. Or is it? Is mainstream culture just flirting with a opus of the other in order to keep us all on a broadly flat line?This sense of duplicity inherent concerning queer theory and socio-political reality in the contemporary era has served to put on queer theory a doctrine of continuing importance in western culture. Contemporary gender theorists such as Judith Butler (whos book sexual urge Trouble was published in 1990 exchange over cytosine 000 copies internationally) directly challenged the notion of gender (and indeed sexuality) as a means of cultural identity, going so far as to cite the creation of international feminist movement as the reason behind womens continuing experience of inequality. Butler thus called for a re-evaluation of queer theory in light of the mistakes made by the various civil, gender and sexual rights movements of the 1960s.The domains of political and lingual representation set out in advance the criterion by which subjects themselves are formed, with the result that representation is extended only to what can be acknowledged as a subject . In other words, the qualifications for being a subject must first be met before representation can be extended.Butlers theory remains a cornerstone for queer theory in post war Britain as the travails of the womens since the passing of the Sex dissimilarity Act in 1964 largely mirrors the troubles of the gay movement since the inception of the Sexual Offences Act in 1967. As a result there is a large body of academic literature available that is dedicated to queer theory and to placing contemporary queer theory within the historiographical context of the gay experience in the chivalric forty years. Much of the commentary bequeathed by this body of literature tends to underscore the essential continuity that characterises the development of sexuality in Britain (and indeed throughout the West) since the 1960s. Jeffrey Weeks, for example, sees this continuity as a symptom of contemporary societys inability to comprehend sexuality within its correct (and complex) historical context .There is a struggle for the future of sexuality. But the ways we respond to this have been coloured by the force of the accumulated historical heritage and sexual traditions out of which we have come the Christian organisation of persuasion in sex as sacramental and threatening, the libertarian belief of sex as subversive, the liberal belief of sex as source of identity and personal resource, all rooted in a melange of religious, scientific and sexological arguments about what sex is, what it can do and what we must or must not do. We are weighed down with a universe of expectations. sexuality could be a potentiality for choice, change and diversity. Instead we take it as destiny, and all of us, women and men, homosexual and heterosexual, young and old, black and white, are held in its thrall, and pay its expensive dues.Weeks succinct observations quoted above could quite feasibly have featured in his best selling book, Coming Out (originally published in 1977) such is the lack of tangible progress made by mainstream society in the authors view. This is entirely due to the fact that the vast mass of society has managed to evade the true nature of the issue where sexuality is neither a choice nor a mystify to bear but is instead a complex fusion of the two. Weeks concludes that it is the very absence of a right or wrong answer with regards to the rendering of sexuality that makes mainstream society unable to adequately confront the issue of homosexuality counterbalance at the start of the twenty first century.Of course, the issue of homosexuality has been greatly affected by the rise in significance (at least(prenominal) in cultural terms) of sissifiedity. Not only has bisexuality served to confuse the majority of mainstream society (in so much as mainstream society has been instructed to think in terms of black and white right and wrong) about the nature of homosexuality, the advent of bi-theory has telegraphed a schism in queer theory. Indeed, it i s a common view of the bisexual community that traditional queer theory can be understood as a particularly virulent strain of the indisposition affecting contemporary theory more generally, especially in so far as it addresses sexuality as a central concern in the guise of queer theory. Thus, the very term queer is seen, ironically, as an exclusive phrase that implies that bisexual people, on account of their continuing sexual association with heterosexual people, are intrinsically more allied to straight culture than they are to the homosexual community. This schism mirrors the divide in the womens rightist movement when a more radical second wave of feminism drew, in the first instance, upon the theoretical writings of lesbian feminism in the early 1970s only for the lesbian feminist community to subsequent accuse the heterosexual feminist community of betrayal on the grounds that straight women continued to participate in sexual activity and engage in what Pateman terms sexua l contracts with men in the guise of sex, marriage, theme and family. Further confusion has been added to this maelstrom with the advent of trans-theory and the increasing legal and political recognition of trans-gender people, which has clearly impacted upon the evolution of queer theory in post war Britain. Jason Cromwell sees this development as making the visible imperceptible, which is in direct opposition to the principles of the gay community which has historically intend to make the invisible visible.In addition there are not surprisingly critics from the straight mainstream culture who see queer theory as a barrier (rather than a facilitator) to a greater democratisation of sexuality in the contemporary era. Critics argue that queer studies places too much idiom upon differentiation which, in turn, elevates the status of the gay and lesbian experience to a position that is over and above its true worth within the broader sphere of cultural studies. This only serves to increase the gulf between the included and the excluded members of society. Furthermore, queer theory has been challenged in a more direct way as critics argue the primacy of the queer belief that sexuality is not fixed. Tim Edwards, for example, has recently argued that sexual identity is in fact much more rigid and compartmentalised than queer theory suggests. Edwards does not agree with the assumptions made by, amongst others, Judith Butler and David Gauntlett who both show how, for instance, the media has helped to solidify the construction of identity based upon gender and sexuality respectively. Instead he argues that in real terms gender and sexual identity does not only exist at the level of converse (as argued by Butler) but instead exists as an institutional social practice. It can be seen that queer theory and its discontents have historically argued over ideologic terrain pertaining to sexuality, gender and identity with a discernible lack of consensus emerging from the result theoretical debates. It is also noticeable that the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 remains largely conspicuous by its absence from the vast majority of this theoretical debate with regards to queer theory in post war Britain. Where the Act is mentioned, it tends to be referred to as a piecemeal political measure that proved repeatedly unsuccessful, largely because of popular mobilisation against restrictive changes. Even in legal terms, the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 remains open to charges of being a draconian, anachronistic measure by contemporary queer theory as it was still deemed a criminal offence for people under the age of twenty one to engage in homosexual activity. This only served to criminalise the essential experimentalism inherent in young people of both sexes and to perpetuate the association of homosexuality as a sordid and sinful affair.A more important watershed date according to post war queer theorists was the 1980s and the advent of the AIDS epidemic. Begi nning on the west semivowel of the United States and quickly transferring over the Atlantic to Britain and Western Europe, the AIDS epidemic was an epidemic more in terms of the effect that it had upon mainstream, straight culture than the medical effect that the virus had upon the human race. Looking back on the media texts and images of the time, one can certainly see how the disease was blown out of all proportion to its true danger. Furthermore, it is plain to see that this was due to the sexual nature of the illness and, specifically, the fact that it had begun in the gay community. Once more, therefore, gay men were accused of leading a hedonistic lifestyle the lack of the practice of safe sex being the starting point for the bed cover of the disease. The AIDS epidemic also served to re-ignite traditional Christian doctrine that was and remains vehemently opposed to the legalisation and democratisation of homosexuality. Hard-line Christian activists even went so far as to claim that the AIDS virus was Gods penalization to all society for allowing gay people the right to practice their sordid sexuality in mainstream culture. The combined effect of this hysteria served to make the 1980s as opposed to 1967 the key date in queer theory in post war Britain. As Jeffrey Weeks declares, the homophobia that was encouraged by AIDS demanded, and in fact greatly strengthened, lesbian and gay identities.With this in mind, attention must now be turned towards reaching a conclusion as to the significance of 1967 within the broader discussion of the democratisation of sexuality in post war Britain.That some people have decided preferences does not seem to be in incertitude. What is now fast disappearing is the multitudinous of ways in which various human societies have managed to cope with the fact.As Naphy aptly suggests, the rate at which homosexuality has been integrated into mainstream culture should be judged within the much wider context of western civili sation over the past two thousand years as opposed to the forty years that have passed since the inception of the Sexual Offences Act in 1967. Ultimately, although progress concerning the democratisation of homosexuality may have met many obstacles in a figure of different guises be they legal, political, social, religious or cultural there cannot be any doubt that the gay community landscape has changed beyond all recognition in Britain since the end of the 1960s. Moreover, it would be difficult to launch an argument against 1967 being the key year within this evolution of queer theory in modern Britain as this was the date that marked the beginning of the lot of a trans-national gay movement as well as the end of the historical marginalisation of homosexuals within the broader context of mainstream society.The fact that the fruits of this dual, spontaneous realisation did not immediately materialise in the form of a democratisation of sexuality should not be seen as a great s urprise. Like the womens movement of the same era, there can be little doubt that the legal measures passed by parliament such as the Sex variety Act served only to halt the advance of womens rights as the movement of necessity splintered on matters pertaining to race, ideology and increasingly sexuality. In this way, the lesbian agenda became increasingly divorced from the mainstream feminist agenda in the same way that the bisexual agenda has become noticeably more antagonistic towards queer theory and the homosexual community. It can be argued that this is nothing more than an inevitable by-product of a post-industrial capitalist society that has made a cultural and economic commodity of sex and sexuality to such a degree as to destabilise the solidarity of the global gay and womens movements worldwide. Thus, being a political as well as a sexual activity, homosexuality has been (and will remain) both historically and theoretically deeply influenced by the social, political a nd economic surround in which it is culturally defined.BibliographyBotnick, M.R. Gay Community Survival in the New Millennium. New York and capital of the United Kingdom The Haworth Press, 2000.Butler, J. sexual practice Trouble. Hammondsworth Penguin Classics, 2006.Cohen, S. 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