5 - Normality and queerness in gay fiction

Summary

In 1955 the British journalist and playwright Peter Wildeblood explained in Against the Law, an apologia pro vita sua he wrote after serving a prison sentence in HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs for homosexual offences, that society should tolerate good homosexuals like himself, but not 'the pathetically flamboyant pansy with the flapping wrists . . . corrupters of youth, not even the effeminate creatures who love to make an exhibition of themselves'. Wildeblood's argument for tolerance works by opposing a notion of decent homosexuality, which he believes should be legitimized, to demonized constructions of homosexuality - the elderly predator, the effeminate queen - from which he distances himself. This kind of opposition is precisely the kind of gesture challenged by 'queer' theory and activism. Although 'queer' became popular as a category in American lesbian and gay politics and scholarship in the early 1990s, the conflicts the term addressed have a long history in lesbian and gay culture. Formerly a term of abuse, 'queer' began to be used by lesbians and gay men to describe themselves. Used as a self-description, queer re-emphasized the dissident and subversive potential of gay and lesbian identities, and embraced elements of sexual culture, such as drag, fetishism, sadomasochism and cruising, which mainstream lesbian and gay politics were seen as disavowing.