It’s Not Unusual: A History of Lesbian and Gay Britain in the Twentieth Century

by Alkarim Jivani

"Alkarim Jivani has fashioned a lively introduction to our queer brothers and sisters across the Atlantic." —Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco, CA "An interesting primary source for comprehensive gay and lesbian collections." —Library Journal It’s Not Unusual is a lively, anecdotal account of lesbian and gay Britain told through the testimony of those who lived through it all. What it was like to attend West End premieres in the Twenties with a monocled, cross-dressed Radclyffe Hall. What signs and signals lesbians and gay men used to recognize each other in the Thirties. How London became a "vast double bed" during the blackout. Why camp humor defused tension among soldiers under fire during the Second World War. What it felt like to undergo "treatment" at the hands of psychiatrists armed with injections and emetics during the repressive Fifties. How, in the Sixties, the long battle for law reform was fought and won. How gay men and lesbians partied through the Seventies and rallied together in the Eighties, and what issues concern them in the Nineties. The clothes they wore, the books they read, the music they enjoyed, the slang they used, the people they loved, the things that made them laugh, and the things that made them cry are all vividly recalled. The result is a poignant and powerfully told history that casts a new light on Britain in our century.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, LGBT

224 pages, Hardcover

First published March 7, 1997

Reviews

[Nick Imrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I recently read The Letters of Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford. If you were judging by their correspondence, you'd think that every gay person was out and proud. Waugh and Mitford had numerous gay friends, none of whom were in the closet. They didn't seem to disapprove, even though Waugh was Roman Catholic. He wouldn't stop moaning about the unfairness of having so many children, if only he were a pansy he'd have money to spare for doing up the house! Meanwhile, Nancy's books were full of gay men who lived happily ever after. They laughed heartily at American prudery, as Waugh said: 'Americans have discovered about homosexuality from a book called Kinsey Report & they take it very seriously. All popular plays in New York are about buggers but they all commit suicide. The idea of a happy pansy is inconceivable to them'.
And yet I know that before these letters started Oscar Wilde went to prison, and while they were writing Alan Turing committed suicide. How come Waugh and Mitford actually lived in a world were homosexuality was illegal but seemed to live in a world entirely without homophobia?

This wasn't exactly the book to answer my question. It's an excellent book - don't get me wrong. But it's more intimate than what I was looking for. I was hoping for an informative analysis of the gay community - how many people were gay? What percentage were open about it? How many were closeted? How many were persecuted by the law? How many lost their families? Was their some difference between the people who live openly and unpersecuted, and those who were unlucky enough to draw the attention of the law or was it just dumb luck? Jivani doesn't really cover that, instead we get a broad sketch of the gay community, and the lives of some of the more interesting greats.

So we learn about Polari, the secret gay slang that allowed people to communicate safely while in general company. We learn how gay people would indicate their sexuality to each other by the way they wore their rings and shirts. It's all very interesting stuff - but there's very little about exactly how necessary the subterfuge was, or how dangerous it was to become known as gay. Oscar Wilde is mentioned in the book, but there's no mention of the fact that he practically forced the law to prosecute him by obliging Lord Queensbury to prove in court that Wilde was a 'sodomite' as self-defense in a libel case.

The Wars were a rather wonderful time for gays, as the rules of behaviour were relaxed for everyone and chaotic living arrangements and military service made everything easier. Men and women were living largely segregated lives, as men were all in the armed forces, and women all working. There are some great anecdotes here about nurses jumping in bed together on the ward, and sailors doing what sailors do!

The lives of famous lesbians like Radclyffe Hall and Vita Sackville-West are covered, as well as their art. The Well of Loneliness seems to have benefited hugely from the Streisand Effect, with one vitriolic condemnation leading to the censorship that made it more popular than ever. It's cringily funny that Hall managed to alienated a great many friends, all of whom were firmly against censorship and wanted to oppose it, by insisting that they defended the book on its artistic merits, not on pure principle, which left many like Virginia Woolf shuffling awkwardly.

After WWII there was a huge backlash, as the government really persecuted gay people in an attempt to return to pre-war normality. Some of the stories here are truly shocking, as people are entrapped and blackmailed, and forced to take 'the cure' which was nothing more than medical torture. What's interesting in this part is that the general public seems to have been very much against this persecution and on the side of the gay community.
When Lord Montagu was being prosecuted the cabby who took him to court said: 'If two chaps carry on like that and don't do no harm to no one, what business is it of any else's?' Old women in the gallery cried out, 'Oh, poor boy' when he was convicted, and a massive crowd of supporters prevented his being transported to prison. This support existed across most classes. Fred Dyson, working at his local colliery, found that after his conviction for cottaging was reported in the local paper, his fellow coal-miners welcomed him at work and at the pub with nothing more than ribald jokes. Even the Church of England's report was broadly supportive, holding that although sex between men was a sin, so were adultery and fornication, neither of which were illegal.

This reminded me of C. S. Lewis's book Surprised By Joy. Lewis describes his childhood at English boarding schools, which were rife with affairs and prostitution between the boys. Indeed, it's something of a joke that every English aristocrat was buggered senseless in his childhood. Lewis's opinion was very similar to the CofE, that the loveless fornicating between the boys was wrong, but no more wrong than any other of their faults and sins.
Jivani discusses the way that our conceptualisation of homosexuality changes, from a choice, to a disease, to fierce pride, to mundane acceptance. I think Lewis was more helpful in understanding why people thought of sodomy as a choice, rather than homosexuality as a fixed trait. There must've been many men who rated 0, 1, or 2 on the Kinsey scale (entirely or mostly straight) who had some homosexual encounters during their boarding school days, and then grew up to assume that what was true for them must also be true for everyone else: sodomy is something you do when you have no other choice and you're horny.

The fight to understand homosexuality as an orientation led to the gay pride of the sixties and seventies. There was another interesting shift here as gay people stopped thinking of themselves as reflections or parodies of straight people. Among lesbians in the 50s, it was unbiquitous to pick a side 'butch' or 'femme' in the relationship and anyone who failed to pick a role had a lot of trouble dating. This all faded away in the seventies, as it became easier to just be yourself. Apparently the general public were surprised to learn that not all gay men were a limp-wristed nancy-boys, but exhibited the same range of personality types as straight men!

This book was published in the 1990s, so it really ends on the AIDS crisis of the 80s. This is a bit of a depressing way to finish, but Jivani does it well, with several uplifting stories of people coming together to support and care for each other.

[Jasper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative, but it lacks proper referencing.