Bad Gays

A Homosexual History

Bad Gays
Ben Miller, Huw Lemmey
RRP:
NZ$ 32.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 26.39
Hardback
h234 x 153mm - 368pg
31 May 2022 UK
International import eta 7-19 days
9781839763274
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
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.
"Why must liberatory history be populated by heroes? And what if it isn' t? Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller confront the shadowy side of queer history, a seamy underworld populated by evil twinks and psychopathic villains. Delectable gossip aside, this revelatory book is really an account of toxic power relations, always with an eye to a better, stranger, wilder future. " -Olivia Laing, author of Everybody "A smart, funny (and, just occasionally, catty) tour through the darker side of LGBTQ+ history. Far from being an excoriation, this book is a sign of confidence in a community that no longer has to present its antecedents as saints and martyrs but as real people: some of these gays were well-meaning but flawed; some of them were complicated; and some of them were just bloody awful. " -Juliet Jacques, author of Variations "A wry, rigorous account of centuries of gay villainy. Lemmey and Miller' s historiography sparkles with salacious details and delights in showing us that there is nothing new under the sun. " -Shon Faye, author of The Transgender Issue
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.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9781839763274
Published: 31 May 2022
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Verso Books
Publisher: Verso Books
Format: Hardback
Height: 234mm
Width: 153mm
Pages: 368

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