Onni Gust Robert Baden-Powell, Cecil Rhodes and Lawrence of Arabia have three things in common: 1) They are all white and male- assigned; 2) They are all suspected to have harbored homosexual desires, and, in the case of Rhodes, to have had a male lover and partner; 3) They all […]
Tag: British history
A Bit of Casual Sex Up North: And What it Could Mean to the History of Sexuality
Helen Smith In 2009 when I made the decision to come back to academia and start a PhD, I had it all planned out how it would go. I was freshly inspired by my umpteenth re-read of the brilliant Queer London and was determined to try and do something similar […]
Ageing and the history of sexuality
Ben Mechen Reading Lynne Segal’s recent book on growing old, Out of time: the pleasures and the perils of ageing (2013), has got me thinking about the place (or possibly absence) of old age, as an analytic category, in both my own research and the history of sexuality more generally. […]
"A filthy bruitish offence": Child sex abuse and the law in C17th England
Jen Baker Records from the Old Bailey proceedings (the Central Criminal Court for England and Wales) indicate that the acknowledgement and subsequent punishment of sexual offences against children are not modern phenomena. Between 1674 and 1913 – when online public records cease – there are at least 570 documented cases, predominantly from the City […]
Between the cracks: on being a historian of sex
Julia Laite It’s a familiar feeling. I stare at the email or online form that requests my biographical information for the university website/conference booklet/journal publication. This is the place where I am meant to ‘tag’ myself, to tell people what I work on. It should be simple enough. But […]