A unconventional history of Homosexuality
Too many popular histories seek to establish heroes, pioneers and martyrs but as Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller argue, the past is filled with queer people whose sexualities and/or dastardly deeds have been overlooked. We all remember Oscar Wilde, but who speaks for Bosie? What about those 'bad gays' whose un-exemplary lives reveals more than we might expect?
Part-revisionist history, part-historical biography and based on the hugely popular podcast series, Bad Gays subverts the notion of gay icons and queer heroes and asks what we can learn about LGBTQ history, sexuality and identity through its villains and baddies. From the Emperor Hadrian to notorious gangster Ronnie Kray, the authors excavate the buried history of queer lives. This includes fascist thugs, famous artists, austere puritans and debauched bon viveurs, Imperialists, G-men and architects. Together these amazing life stories expand and challenge the mainstream assumptions of sexual identity. They show that homosexuality itself was an idea that emerged in the nineteenth century and that its interpretation has been central to major historical moments of conflict from the ruptures of Weimar Republic to red-baiting in Cold War America.
Amusing, disturbing and fascinating, Bad Gays puts centre stage the queers villains and evil twinks in history.
About the Authors
Huw Lemmey is a novelist, artist and critic. He is the author of three novels- Unknown Language, Red Tory, and Chubz. He has written for the Guardian, Frieze, Flash Art, Tribune, The Architectural Review, Art Monthly, New Humanist, the White Review, and L'Uomo Vogue, amongst others. As an artist and filmmaker his work has been shown at the ICA, Lux Biennial of Moving Image, Mumok Vienna, Warsaw Museum of Contemporary Art and the Design Museum, London.
Ben Miller is a writer and researcher and a Doctoral Fellow at the Graduate School of Global Intellectual History at the Freie Universitat Berlin. He has taught on queer history, literature, and visual cultures at the Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin and The New Centre for Research & Practice. He has written for New York Times, Slate, Literary Hub, the Los Angeles Review of Books and Jacobin. His fiction has been published in SAND, Apogee Journal and Tin House. He is the author of The New Queer Photography.
