"All Boys Together" podcast

[anteros_lmc]

A couple of months ago I wrote a wee post about the Bishopgate Institute's season of events, Girls & Boys, which set out to "examine the changing nature of gender roles, what gender is, how we interpret our gender identity and gender equality." Many of the events sounded fascinating, but the one that caught my eye was a talk by Justin Bengry, of Birkbeck college, called "All Boys Together - Homing in on Homosociality". Rather obligingly, the Bishopgate Institute have now made podcasts of these events freely available online :)

So far, I've only had a chance to listen to Bengry's talk, and it is indeed fascinating. He focuses primarily on the 20th century interwar period and he draws a clear, and very useful, distinction between homosocial, homosexual and homoerotic spaces. Both real, e.g. social clubs, baths, public schools, and virtual spaces, e.g. magazines and the press, are covered. There's a really interesting discussion of the kind of intense romantic male friendships that were the norm in the late 19th / early 20th centuries, but which we are less familiar with now, and there's also a wealth of fascinating detail about homosexual culture and spaces in early 20th centre London. If you're at all interested in the history of homosexuality, I can highly recommend giving Dr Bengry an hour of your time.

The podcast of "Fanny and Stella, a Victorian cross-dressing couple" is also available online though I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet.

~ Podcasts ~

Podcast Playlist
All Boys Together: Homing in on homosociality
Fanny & Stella: the young men who shocked Victorian England

Comments

[esmerelda-t.livejournal.com]

I wonder if intense male friendships really are not so much a thing of the past but just not as socially acceptable as 'normal' as they once were? The phrase immediately made me think of the intense friendships you have as a teenager with a new friend where all your other friends sulkily say 'God why don't you just marry her!'

Never having been a teenage boy I can't say for sure if they also have those relationships but I suspect they do. Certainly when I was at secondary school boys could be best friends but would sit with a huge space between them for fear of being accused of being Gay. Which is all kinds of ridiculous.

I think it's swinging back the other way though with those kind of male relationships being seen increasingly as cute. Look at RPS for example.

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

I think there's a lot of truth in that. I suspect that you're right that such friendships do still exist, though their expression is less of a norm. It's very difficult to discuss concepts like this, as we now have such a distinct concept of homosexuality, which is itself a fairly recent construct. (Though I know that's a moot point.) Now, feelings of intense love between men ( or indeed women), tend to be interpreted as "gay" but I don't think that was necessarily the case in the past. Out concepts of sexual identity have shifted radically, but our concepts of "friendship" have altered too. In some ways I think we have become very polarised in the way we view relationships.

I think Brideshead Revisited is a perfect example of this. Remember Cara's speech to Charles? "I know of these romantic friendships of the English and the Germans. They are not Latin. I think they are very good if they do not go on too long…It is a kind of love that comes to children before they know its meaning. In England it comes when you are almost men; I think I like that. It is better to have that kind of love for another boy than for a girl."

Also how do we interpret a letter like this? Is this a prime example of a deeply emotional and romantic friendship between two men, or something more? It's almost impossible to interpret without being influenced by our own conceptualisations of friendship, love and sexuality.