Queerstories in Brighton

Abstract

If a common purpose of oral history and life writing is to uncover or preserve expanses of human experience which have been disregarded or suppressed, lesbian, gay and bisexual subcultures would seem obvious candidates. Yet apparently necessary terms (such as self, history, orality and life) are problematic; the more so because oral history and life writing have embedded deep in their construction, and in their textual practice, a claim for authenticity, legitimacy, presence and, in short, reality. For instance, one premise is that we should be speaking or writing for ourselves, but the process depends on the activist who organises the archive. I have been reading ten books published in Britain and the United States which rely on personal testimony and interviews, offering a fuller account of lesbian and gay lives. A key distinction is whether the material is presented as a sequence of specified men and women, each of whom tells his or her story, framed by a few introductory remarks by the editor; or whether the archival material is organised by the editor into topics, with paragraphs of individual accounts placed strategically to illustrate the topics. Exploring this distinction may lead into some of the dilemmas and achievements (faultlines) of the genre. (Note that I don't use the familiar acronym 'lgb' and its amplifications--currently standing at 'lgbttq' I believe--because they were scarcely current until recently. Bisexuals in particular may well complain at the lack of attention to them in all the books studied in the present essay.) IN THEIR OWN WORDS Kevin Porter and Jeffrey Weeks in Between the Acts give a chapter to each man; they have been asked to tell their life histories: 'A soldier's life', 'A rough life', 'A loner's life', 'A kept life', and so on. (1) The editors explain that the interviews were conducted in 1978-79 with the goal of retrieving gay history, but not published until 1991, so they are doubly archaic. (The oldest man was born in 1892.) The book is offered as history 'told by the men themselves ... ordinary people' (pi). However, Porter and Weeks admit that 'as editors' they have 'helped shape the material' (p2). Actually they have a considered view of how gay men lived in the period between the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 which, decisively, made all sexual acts between men illegal, and the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 which began a process of decriminalisation. The emphasis on the two laws, as well as making a nifty title, offers the 'important point' that 'homosexually-inclined people were forced to come to terms with their desires, construct their personal and social identities, build relationships and discover new ways of life in a situation of illegality, prejudice, ignorance and social hostility' (Porter and Weeks, p1). The forms of dissident sexual expression were determined by those prevailing conditions. 'These years between the acts formed the crucible in which lesbian and gay identities were formed' (p1). Porter and Weeks associate themselves with Mary McIntosh, Ken Plummer and the University of Essex, where the idea that sexual dissidents come to occupy a 'homosexual role' was being developed (pix). (2) Thus they oppose the view of other scholars, who believe queerness to be innate and its forms basically the same through the ages. (3) For Porter and Weeks, the twentieth-century modes of gay life are subcultural responses to legal harassment and social stigma. It was 'through contact with others that most people were able to make sense of their feelings, and to begin to forge viable identities' (p3). Best of all, in the conclusions of several accounts, these older men might find CHE (the Campaign for Homosexual Equality) or Gay Switchboard, and hence political commitment and an unprecedented dignity and comradeship. A comparable collection shows the flexibility of the chapter-per-person mode. For Roger Sutton in Hearing Us Out, the target readership is American young adults, who may believe they are alone in facing peer-group harassment: there is hope. …