Ha ha, and now I've actually read your post! Big YES to everything you say about Redmond's fapping.
And I, too, am reading "Strangers" at present, and was going to review and rec it as "19th century gay life: not all that bad, actually!" I agree that it's quite sweet and optimistic.
Have you read Harry Cocks' "Unnamed Offenses"? It's interesting, but I'm only just getting started and couldn't really characterise it clearly. It's mostly talking about the "unspeakable crime" and how unspeakability/unnamability/secrecy/privacy/repression/expression all work to, um, kind of implicitly create space for homosexual practices in the 19th century even as they deny their existence. If I'm understanding it right from the first chapter or so, which I may not be.
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Date: 2010-04-26 11:25 pm (UTC)And I, too, am reading "Strangers" at present, and was going to review and rec it as "19th century gay life: not all that bad, actually!" I agree that it's quite sweet and optimistic.
Have you read Harry Cocks' "Unnamed Offenses"? It's interesting, but I'm only just getting started and couldn't really characterise it clearly. It's mostly talking about the "unspeakable crime" and how unspeakability/unnamability/secrecy/privacy/repression/expression all work to, um, kind of implicitly create space for homosexual practices in the 19th century even as they deny their existence. If I'm understanding it right from the first chapter or so, which I may not be.