The day Jo Cox was murdered, the Daily Mail ran a shrill front page story about migrants, stoking fear and hate in the referendum campaign. The story was plain wrong — but instead of remorsefully retracting it, the Mail just buried a tiny correction in the paper. Our democracy relies on media that tells the…
Tag: social movements
Imagining Better Worlds, Intimate citizenship, Living Humanity, Politics and change, Sociological Imaginations
Liberating Generations: a new paper in a new book
A new book has been launched this week. The Ashgate Research Companion to Lesbian and Gay Activism provides scholars and students with a comprehensive and authoritative state-of-the-art review of the current research in this subject. Each of the twenty-two specially commissioned chapters develops and summarises their key issue or debate in…
Art and Photos, Books, Articles & Research, Imagining Better Worlds, Intimate citizenship, Living Humanity, Politics and change, Sociological Imaginations
The Making of the Modern Homosexual Revisited
‘The Making of the Modern Homosexual’ Revisited
A discussion between Ken Plummer, Jeffrey Weeks and other contributors chaired by Gregg Blachford; with an update with Róisín Ryan-Flood was held in the Sociology Department at the University of Essex on Thursday March 19th 2015. The Making of the Modern Homosexual was published in June 1981 in hardback and paperback. The book was inspired by Mary McIntosh’s article ‘The Homosexual Role” Social Problems Vol. 16, No 2, Fall 1968 which was republished in the book and followed by a discussion. The book was developed in an early workshop, linked to an Open University Second Level Intro to Sociology Course (Study Section 8), and held at Essex in 1979. (The O.U. programme ran for over a decade, throughout the 1980’s.)
The Book ‘Blurb’
‘Is the “homosexual” a type of person that has been with us in various guises throughout history? Is he or she simply a “being” that we are slowly discovering and understanding better? Or is the “homosexual” simply an invention of our century? The authors of this original and important new work take this last view and argue that although “same-sex” sexual experiences may have existed throughout history, the notion of the “homosexual” is a peculiarly modern idea, which has profound consequences in the structuring of recent homosexual experiences. The essays in this book take the contemporary construction of the homosexual as their common concern’.
The Book Contents
Part One: The Making of a Sociology of Homosexuality
- Building a Sociology of Homosexuality (Ken Plummer)
- ‘The Homosexual Role’ (Mary McIntosh); with interview (McIntosh, Weeks, Plummer)
Part Two: Directions for Enquiry
- Homosexual Categories (Ken Plummer)
- Discourse, Desire And Sexual Deviance: Some Problems In The History Of Historiography (Jeffrey Weeks)
- Liberating Lesbian Research (Annabel Faraday)
Part Three: The Making Of The `Modern Male Homosexual: Explorations In Research
- Pansies, Perverts And Macho Men: Changing Conceptions Of Male Homosexuality (John Marshall)
- Gender Confusions: Psychological And Psychiatric Conceptions Of Transvestism And Transexualism (Dave King)
- Male Dominance And The Gay World (Gregg Blachford)
Appendices on Research
Some images from those early days -1980
A day meeting to discuss the book and organised by the Open University who used many images for their programme broadcast throughout the 1980’s. The photos show Jeffrey Weeks, Ken Plummer, Gregg Blachford, John Marshall, Mary McIntosh and Annabel Faraday.
No Other Way
There’s no other way
That’s what they say.
Economics must put money before people
And medicine must put profit before health.
Education must put management before wisdom
And religion must put war before love.
Technology must put machines before environments.
And politicians must put power before care.
We must follow the way things are done.
There’s no other way
That’s what they say.
But what if economics valued feelings
And medicine fostered dignity
Education aimed for all to flourish
And religion wanted better worlds for all
Technology looked out for justice
And politicians put people first.
If we would just be kind and care for each other.
Then we would have the road less travelled.
A much better way
Than the way they say.
There is never only one way.
This was my little contribution to Global Chorus: 365 Voices on the Future of the Planet which has just been published.
Global Chorus is a groundbreaking collection of over 365 perspectives on our environmental future. As a global roundtable for our times, in the format of a daily reader, this book is a trove of insight, guidance, passion and wisdom that has poured in from all over the Earth. Its message is enormously inspiring, and ominous in its warnings. And yet, united in a thread of hope, its contents are capable of helping even the most faithless global citizen to believe that we have the capacity to bring about lasting positive change in our world. Places at this roundtable are occupied by writers, environmentalists, spiritual leaders, politicians, professors, doctors, athletes, businesspeople, farmers, chefs, yogis, painters, actors, architects, musicians, TV personalities, humanitarians, adventurers, concerned youth, concerned senior citizens, civil servants, carpenters, bus drivers, activists, CEO’s, scientists, and essentially those who have something thoughtful and visionary to say about humanity’s place upon Earth. Compiled for your reading as a set of 365 pieces, Global Chorus presents to you a different person’s point of view for each day of your year.
Contributors to Global Chorus have provided one-page responses to the following line of questioning:
“Do you think that humanity can find a way past the current global environmental and social crises? Will we be able to create the conditions necessary for our own survival, as well as that of other species on the planet? What would these conditions look like? In summary, then, and in the plainest of terms, do we have hope, and can we do it?”
End Violence Against Women
Today is ‘End Violence Against Women’ Day – and runs for the next two weeks ( and forever!). The Issue To raise awareness and trigger action to end the global scourge of violence against women and girls, the UN observes International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November. The 16…
The Marrying Kind: a book review
The Marrying Kind. Edited by Mary Bernstein and Verta Taylor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. Pp 432 $25.00pb $75.00 cloth Reviewed by Ken Plummer in the American Journal of Sociology Vol. 19, No 6, May 2014. p1765-7. Gay Marriage was scarcely a whisper twenty years ago. Now it has become a global public…
Telling Sexual Stories Twenty Years On: Fragments Towards A Humanist Politics Of Storytelling
I gave this lecture at the Huddersfield Conference TROUBLING NARRATIVES: IDENTITY MATTERS on June 20th 2014. In this lecture I revisited my study Telling Sexual Stories, published nearly twenty years ago. I began by considering the background – how it came to be written. I then asked what its original contributions might have…
Imagining Better Worlds, Insipirations, Living Humanity, Politics and change, Sociological Imaginations
Remembering Michael Schofield
A dear friend Michael Schofield, the researcher and campaigner, died on Thursday 27th March, aged 94. This “Tribute to Michael” was presented at Golders Green Crematorium on Tuesday 15h April by Ken For timeline , click here…….. For the service, Click here The service 1 I first met Michael in 1967 as…
Henning Bech Retires
Meeting Men: A Little Poetic for Henning Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers? Walt Whitman This is a little poetic for Henning Bech on the occasion of his retirement, composed mainly of his own words. I first met Henning Bech together with Jeffrey Weeks in the…
Erasing 76 Crimes
I have recently found this very lively and active blog which keeps its eye on the law against same sex relations across the world. This site is really worth a look. Click here Erasing 76 Crimes: http://76crimes.com/ It documents the ongoing horrors of discrimination, oppression and inhumanity around the world toward, suggesting what needs to be…