Special Episode: Pacchierotto and Florentine Sodomites (with Max Fox)
Not a huge amount is known about Pacchierotto, a sodomite who was convicted and publicly humiliated in Florence, Italy, in 1486, but his story tells us much about the changing fortunes of sodomites at the time, and the important role they played in the politics of the time. In this special episode, Huw talks to Max Fox, editor of Christopher Chitty's Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System about Florentine sodomy in the Renaissance, and Chitty's groundbreaking new book.
Sources:
Chitty, Christopher, Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System, Duke University Press, 2020
Rocke, Michael, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence, Oxford University Press, 1996
Online Digital Map: Flynn, Aidan, Sodomy and The City: Mapping Fear, Surveillance, Sexuality, and Punishment, University of Toronto, 2018 https://utoronto.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=590a95cd059240388f003c49cd722dc9
Scelta di prediche e scritti di fra Girolamo Savonarola. [A cura di] P. Villari [e] E. Casanova. Con nuovi documenti intorno alla sua vita, https://archive.org/details/sceltadiprediche00savo
Image via: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Colored_woodcut_town_view_of_Florence.jpg
Special Episode: Arthur Gary Bishop (with David Eichert)
His crimes, trial and execution seemed to be the manifestation of many of both the public fears and moral panics of the United States in the 1980s. 'Stranger Danger', pornography, homosexuality and childhood sexual abuse became the focus of heated public debate.
The crimes, trial and execution of Utah citizen and devout Mormon Arthur Gary Bishop seemed to be the manifestation of many of both the public fears and moral panics of the United States in the 1980s. 'Stranger Danger', pornography, homosexuality and childhood sexual abuse became the focus of heated public debate and new religiously-inspired political organisations such as the Moral Majority. Huw is joined by David Eichert, a PhD candidate studying international law, sexual violence, gender and sexuality, to discuss Bishop, his relationship with his Mormon faith, and wider social attitudes towards his crimes.
SOURCES:
Carlisle, Al, The Mind of the Devil: The Cases of Arthur Gary Bishop and Westley Allan Dodd, Carlisle Legacy Books, 2020
Petrey, Taylor G., Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism, University of North Carolina Press, 2020
Nathan, Debbie and Snedeker, Michael, Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt, iUniverse, 2001
Strub, Whitney, Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right, Columbia University Press, 2013
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
Image via: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arthur_Gary_Bishop.png
Special Episode: Dennis Cooper (with Diarmuid Hester)
The (in)famous author of the George Miles cycle, The Sluts, and many other classic works of radically transgressive fiction as challenging to traditional notions of gay writing as they are to the hetero mainstream.
On the (in)famous author of the George Miles cycle, The Sluts, and many other classic works of radically transgressive gay fiction. Joining Ben to tackle Cooper's work––as challenging to traditional notions of identity-driven and self-consciously pretty gay fiction as it is to the hetero mainstream––is Diarmuid Hester, a radical cultural historian of the United States after 1950, and an authority on sexually dissident literature, art, film, and performance. He is based at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, and is the author of the acclaimed new critical biography of Cooper, Wrong.
SOURCES:
Cooper, Dennis. The Sluts. New York: Da Capo Press, 2004.
Cooper, Dennis. The George Miles Cycle. Five novels, information available here: http://www.dennis-cooper.net/georgemiles.htm.
Hester, Diarmuid. Wrong: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper. Iowa City: The University of Iowa Press, 2020.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
S4E10: Violette Morris
A powerhouse athlete with 14-inch biceps who dated Josephine Baker, smoked, and cut her breasts off to better fit behind the wheel of a race car: and when she was cast out of respectable society, she became a Nazi spy and a sadistic torturer known as the "hyena of the Gestapo."
Violette Morris, a powerhouse athlete with 14-inch biceps, discovered a love for trousers and fast driving while piloting ambulances for the Red Cross during the First World War. But her outrageous and mannish style – she dated Josephine Baker, smoked, and cut her breasts off to better fit behind the wheel of a race car – outraged the respectable upper-middle-class world of women's athletics. And when she was cast out of respectable society, she became a Nazi spy and a sadistic torturer known as the "hyena of the Gestapo."
SOURCES:
Colvin, Kelly Ricciardi. Gender and French Identity after the Second World War, 1944-1954: Engendering Frenchness. London ; New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.
Doyle, Jack. “How a Pioneering Lesbian Became the Nazis’ ‘Hyena.’” OZY, May 25, 2015. http://test-2017-elb-web-us-west-2.aws.ozymandias.com/flashback/how-a-pioneering-lesbian-became-the-nazis-hyena/40366.
Kessler, Martin. “Violette Morris: Pioneering Female Athlete Turned Nazi Spy.” WBUR, February 24, 2017. https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2017/02/24/gestapo-hitler-book-anne-sebba.
Mansky, Jackie, and Maya Wei-Haas. “The Rise of the Modern Sportswoman.” Smithsonian Magazine, August 18, 2016. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rise-modern-sportswoman-180960174/.
Papirblat, Shlomo. “Sporting Champion, Feminist Icon, Nazi Spy? The Extraordinary Life of Violette Morris.” Haaretz.Com. Accessed December 21, 2020. https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/.premium-sporting-champion-feminist-icon-nazi-spy-the-crazy-life-of-violette-morris-1.6869492.
Stryker, Susan. Transgender History. Seal Press, 2008.
FemBio: Frauen.Biografieforschung. “Violette Morris.” Accessed December 21, 2020. https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/biographie/violette-morris/.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violette_Morris#/media/File:Violette_Morris_1920.jpg
S4E9: Camilla Hall
Nothing about the life of this daughter of a Lutheran pastor seemed out of the ordinary –– until she joined a strange, cult-like organization called the Symbionese Liberation Army, and helped kidnap the heiress Patty Hearst.
Camilla Christine Hall was born on March 24th, 1945, in St Peter Minnesota. Her father was a Lutheran pastor, and her childhood was suburban and unremarkable. Like many of her generation, she would become involved in the anti-war movement and the New Left; unlike many of her generation, she would also become involved in Gay Liberation, and a strange cult-like organization called the Symbionese Liberation Army, which became infamous for bank robberies, murders –– and the 1974 kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst.
SOURCES:
Hearings, Reports and Prints of the United States House Committee on Internal Security.
Honig, Harvey Hilbert. “A Psychobiographical Study of Camilla Hall.” Loyola University of Chicago, 1979. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/1788.
Lauters, Amy. “On Camilla Hall.” Amy Lauters On Everything (blog), September 3, 2020. https://amylauters.com/2020/09/03/on-camilla-hall/.
Matusitz, Jonathan Andre, and Elena Berisha. Female Terrorism in America: Past and Current Perspectives. Contemporary Terrorism Studies. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2020.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
Image via: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Camilla_Hall_as_a_child.jpg
S4E8: Gertrude Stein
A novelist, playwright, poet, and, art collector and the hostess of a Paris salon that gathered the cream of interwar modernism. A semi-open lesbian, in the last years of her life, Stein sustained her lifestyle as an art collector and ensured her safety through the protection of powerful Vichy government officials.
Gertrude Stein is remembered as a novelist, playwright, poet, and, art collector –– and the hostess of a Paris salon that gathered the cream of interwar modernism, including Picasso, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Matisse. A semi-open lesbian, her books include Q.E.D., one of the earliest English-language lesbian novels, and Tender Buttons, a book of poems full of allusion to lesbian sexuality. But in the last years of her life, as a Jew living in Nazi-occupied France, Stein sustained her lifestyle as an art collector and ensured her safety through the protection of powerful Vichy government officials – part of a pattern of involvement in far-right, antisemitic, and fascist politics.
SOURCES:
Johnston, Georgia. The Formation of 20th-Century Queer Autobiography: Reading Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf, Hilda Doolittle, and Gertrude Stein. Palgrave Macmillan US, 2007.
Malcolm, Janet. “Gertrude Stein’s War.” The New Yorker. June 2, 2003. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/06/02/gertrude-steins-war.
Pavloska, Susanna. Modern Primitives: Race and Language in Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Stein, Gertrude. Tender Buttons. Reissue edition. Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications, 1997.
———. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Reissue edition. New York: Vintage, 1990.
Wineapple, Brenda. Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein. Lincoln: Combined Academic Publishing, 2008.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
Image via: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gertrude_Stein_1935-01-04.jpg
S4E7: Prince Albert Victor
An intellectually dull man, charmless, with neither cultural interests nor creative talents, but who, due to sheer accident of birth, found himself permitted to indulge all his whims.
Today’s subject is the man who would be King, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, firstborn son of Edward VII, Grandson of Queen Victoria, known to his friends and family simply as “Eddy." Wrapped up in a sizzling sex scandal, he became a prime example of a British royal story: an intellectually dull man, charmless, with neither cultural interests nor creative talents, but who, due to sheer accident of birth, found himself permitted to indulge all his whims.
SOURCES:
Ackroyd, Peter. Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day. London: Vintage, 2018.
Cook, Andrew. Prince Eddy: The King Britain Never Had. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2009.
Cook, Matt. London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Hyde, H. Montgomery. The Cleveland Street Scandal. New York: Coward McCann, 1976.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
Image via: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Prince_Albert_Victor%2C_Duke_of_Clarence_%281864-1892%29.jpg/460px-Prince_Albert_Victor%2C_Duke_of_Clarence_%281864-1892%29.jpg
S4E6: Truman Capote
A fantastically talented writer who rose from a difficult and violent childhood to literary fame and the highest echelons of society–only to be destroyed by his own demons.
Born in a violent and difficult childhood in the American South, Truman Capote would rise to the highest levels of literary celebrity, praise, and fame: even joining the highly-exclusive jet set of 1960s and 1970s high society. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966), which he labeled a "nonfiction novel". His works have been adapted into more than 20 films and television dramas. But Capote would be pursued by demons throughout his life – alcoholism, other forms of addiction, and crippling self-doubt which would end up leading him to destroy his own social reputation.
SOURCES:
Als, Hilton. “The Shadows in Truman Capote’s Early Stories.” The New Yorker, October 13, 2015. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-shadows-in-truman-capotes-early-stories.
Capote, Truman. Answered Prayers. Reissue edition. New York: Vintage, 1994.
———. Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories. Reprint edition. New York: Vintage, 1993.
———. In Cold Blood. Reprint edition. New York: Vintage, 1994.
———. Other Voices, Other Rooms. Reprint edition. New York: Vintage, 1994.
Clarke, Gerald. Capote: A Biography. Illustrated edition. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
Image via: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Truman_Capote_Moscot.jpg
S4E5: Carl Van Vechten
This white author, critic and photographer became enchanted with the Harlem Renaissance, approached Black cultures as a source of ideas that he could take and exploit, and perpetuated racist stereotypes in his work.
A man with a passion for the dangerous, subversive, and avant-garde; who eschewed the middle brow and loved the urbane and modern. Known in his life not just as a man of taste, but a tastemaker, someone who set the tone for elite cultural society in his lifetime; the white author, critic and photographer Carl Van Vechten became enchanted with the Harlem Renaissance, approached Black cultures as a source of ideas that he could take and exploit, and perpetuated racist stereotypes in his work.
SOURCES:
Bernard, Emily. Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White. 0 edition. Yale University Press, 2013.
Holmes, David G. “Cross-Racial Voicing: Carl Van Vechten’s Imagination and the Search for an African American Ethos.” College English 68, no. 3 (2006): 291–307. https://doi.org/10.2307/25472153.
Sanneh, Kelefa. “White Mischief.” The New Yorker, February 17, 2014. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/white-mischief-2.
White, Edward. “The Making of an American.” The Paris Review (blog), May 14, 2014. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/05/14/the-making-of-an-american/.
———. The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America. 1st edition. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
Woolner, Cookie. “‘Have We a New Sex Problem Here?’ Black Queer Women in the Early Great Migration.” Process: A Blog for American History (blog), October 24, 2017. http://www.processhistory.org/woolner-black-queer-women/.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
Image via: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Carl_Van_Vechten.jpg/500px-Carl_Van_Vechten.jpg
S4E4: Benjamin Britten
A fervent pacifist, antinationalist, and homosexual – with a deep, complex, and troubling love of children – Britten, through the strength of his music and through the nation’s desire to have a musical hero, became an utterly unlikely national celebrity.
The composer Benjamin Britten was a central figure of 20th century music; and the national composer that Britain had been searching for since the death of Henry Purcell in 1695. He never shook his Communist and pacifist sympathies –– even as he rose to the highest levels of elite British cultural production. A fervent pacifist, antinationalist, and homosexual –– with a deep, complex, and troubling love of children –– Britten, through the strength of his music and through the nation’s desire to have a musical hero of its own, became an utterly unlikely national celebrity.
Content warning: this episode contains discussions of sexual attraction to children.
SOURCES:
Bridcut, John. Britten’s Children. Main edition. London: Faber and Faber, 2006.
Britten, Benjamin. Peter Grimes. London: BBC, 1969. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MyBUetbE38&t=1705s.
Conlon, James. “Message, Meaning and Code in the Operas of Benjamin Britten." Hudson Review LXVI, no. 3 (Autumn 2013). https://hudsonreview.com/2013/10/message-meaning-and-code-in-the-operas-of-benjamin-britten/.
Kildea, Paul. Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century. Allen Lane, 2013.
Ryan, Hugh. When Brooklyn Was Queer: A History. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2019.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
Image via: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Benjamin_Britten%2C_London_Records_1968_publicity_photo_for_Wikipedia.jpg
S4E3: Jeremy Thorpe
The “Very English Scandal” of disgraced Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe reveals how the law is impervious to the informal networks of power in the British establishment, and how homosexuality was subject to a series of double standards, tolerated in the powerful but suppressed in the ordinary citizen, practiced in private and denied in public.
This is a story of sex, death and political malfeasance that will make Teddy Kennedy look like Anne of Green Gables. It has everything you’ve come to expect from a Bad Gays story about the English upper classes — psychosexual repression, violence, class prejudice, hypocrisy, the brutality and cheapness of life at the heart of the political system, and plenty of people named things like Rupert, Auberon and Emlyn.
But as ridiculous and kinky as the fruity rulers of Britain are, the story is darker than that. This story is also about the way the law is impervious to the informal networks of power in the British establishment, and how homosexuality was subject to a series of double standards, tolerated in the powerful but suppressed in the ordinary citizen, practiced in private and denied in public. Today we’re discussing the life of a man whose sexuality stole his chance at power, the MP and leader of the Liberal Party, the Right Honorable Jeremy Thorpe.
Content warning for child sexual abuse in the early parts of this story.
SOURCES:
Bloch, Michael. Jeremy Thorpe. London: Time Warner Books, 2004.
Freeman, Simon, and Barrie Penrose. Rinkagate: The Rise and Fall of Jeremy Thorpe. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1996.
Preston, John. A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies, and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment. New York: Other Press, 2016.
Thorpe, Jeremy. In My Own Time: Reminiscences of a Liberal Leader. Edited by Duncan Brack. London: Politico’s Publishing Ltd, 1999.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
Image via: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw208944/Jeremy-Thorpe?
S4E2: Liberace
A flamboyant pianist who became an unlikely icon of Middle American family entertainment.
This "deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love" rose to stardom playing "classical music without the boring parts" and didn't need to stay in the closet because he wore its entire contents. How could he become an emblem of Middle American family entertainment? The United States of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s was undergoing enormous social change –– the Civil Rights Movement, the Summer of Love, Women’s Lib, the Stonewall Riots, Gay Liberation, and the beginning of the AIDS movement –– and Liberace was an entertainer who appealed to precisely those parts of the country who sought to resist those changes. Hated by classical music critics, he was beloved by audiences precisely because of the openness of his secret and the way he performed a kind of minstrel act that nevertheless won him fame, riches, and glory.
SOURCES:
Gabler, Neal. “Robert Harrison’s Scandalous Confidential Magazine.” Vanity Fair, April 2003. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2003/04/robert-harrison-confidential-magazine.
Liberace Music Video & Entrance 1981, 2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dioRwB4RvrQ.
O’Connor, Pauline. “Mapping the Many Razzle-Dazzle Homes of Liberace.” Curbed LA, May 24, 2013. https://la.curbed.com/maps/mapping-the-many-razzledazzle-homes-of-liberace.
Pyron, Darden Asbury. Liberace: An American Boy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Rechy, John. “Randy Dandy.” Los Angeles Times, August 6, 2000. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-aug-06-bk-65295-story.html.
Thorson, Scott. Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace. Head of Zeus, 2013.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
Image via: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Liberace_Colour_Allan_Warren.jpg/1920px-Liberace_Colour_Allan_Warren.jpg
S4E1: Cecil Rhodes
A British colonist and mining magnate who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. An ardent white supremacist, he rose from being a sickly child to having a near-complete domination of the world diamond market.
Season 4 –– ! –– with apologies for socially-distanced audio quality. Today's victim was a British colonist and mining magnate who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. An ardent white supremacist – no matter what revisionist historians and the right-wing press claim – he rose from being a sickly child to having a near-complete domination of the world diamond market. Come for the "private secretaries," stay for the Big Hole.
SOURCES:
Aldrich, Robert. Colonialism and Homosexuality. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2003.
Brown, Robin. The Secret Society: Cecil John Rhodes' Plans for a New World Order. London: Penguin Books, 2015.
Jourdan, Philip. Cecil Rhodes: His Private Life By His Private Secretary. London: Bodley Head, 1911.
Rotberg, Robert I. The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
Image via: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cecil_Rhodes_karikat%C3%BAr%C3%A1ja.jpg