Simon Joyce, "LGBT Victorians: Sexuality and Gender in the Nineteenth-Century Archives" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Dec 5, 2023
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Simon Joyce, writer and author on LGBT Victorians in the 19th century, discusses revisiting gender and sexual identity in Victorian era. The podcast explores the tension within the LGBTQ+ movement, advocacy for gay rights in 19th-century Germany, the evolution of classification systems for sexuality and gender, historical records of gender identity and acceptance, the decline of dominant superpowers and gender incoherence, identity struggles and repression in 19th-century desires.
The podcast challenges the notion of Victorian sexual repression and reveals the existence of LGBTQ+ individuals who lived outside traditional gender and sexual norms during the 19th century.
Dr. Simon Joyce's research delves into the stories of various individuals and couples, highlighting themes of gender variance, class, and religion in shaping LGBTQ+ experiences in the Victorian era, while recognizing the limitations of archival evidence.
The podcast discusses the influence of the Oscar Wilde trial on LGBTQ+ advocacy, highlighting the need for diverse perspectives and alternative arguments to advance LGBTQ+ rights.
Deep dives
Victorian LGBTQ+ identities challenged norms
The podcast episode explores the lives of LGBTQ+ individuals in the 19th century Victorian era. It challenges the notion that the Victorian age was solely one of sexual repression, showcasing various cases of same-sex desire. By examining diaries, court cases, and personal stories, the episode reveals that there were individuals who identified and lived outside of traditional gender and sexual norms during this time. These stories complicate the binary understanding of masculine and feminine identities, and highlight the intersections of gender, class, and religion in shaping LGBTQ+ experiences in the 19th century.
Dr. Simon Joyce's research on LGBT Victorian sexuality
Dr. Simon Joyce discusses his book 'LGBT Victorian Sexuality and Gender in the 19th century Archives' and the motivations behind writing it. He explains that his previous work on neo-Victorian studies prompted him to reexamine the prevailing assumption that the Victorian era was marked by sexual oppression. Dr. Joyce wanted to correct this record and explore how sexuality and gender were understood and lived during this period. His research delves into the stories of various individuals and couples, highlighting themes of gender variance, class, and religion, while recognizing the limitations of the archival evidence in constructing a cohesive understanding of LGBTQ+ identities at the time.
The impact of the Oscar Wilde trial on LGBTQ+ advocacy
The episode also delves into the influence of the Oscar Wilde trial on LGBTQ+ advocacy in the late 19th century. It examines how the trial disrupted the work of figures like Edward Carpenter and forced them to reconsider their arguments and strategies. Carpenter's book 'Love's Coming of Age' was significantly altered due to the trial, leading to a shift in his advocacy approach. The trial highlighted the limitations of emphasizing historical and intellectual justifications for homosexuality, pushing advocates to develop alternative arguments and explore new narratives for LGBTQ+ identities. Overall, the episode underscores the complex and evolving nature of LGBTQ+ history and the ongoing need for diverse and nuanced perspectives.
Recognition of historical LGBTQ+ experiences
The book highlights that the challenges and debates surrounding LGBTQ+ identities and rights are not new and have been experienced in the past. The trial of Fanny and Stella in Victorian England, for example, reflects discussions on gender non-normativity and transgender identity. This historical perspective reminds us that current debates are not unprecedented and that there have been attempts to understand and accept diverse sexual and gender expressions in the past.
The complex relationship between gender and power
The book examines the connections between gender, power, and societal structures. It explores how the fear of losing masculinity was linked to concerns about the decline of the British Empire. The decline of hegemonic power led to anxieties over societal decadence, which were reflected in anxieties about transgressions of traditional gender roles. This analysis sheds light on how power dynamics and cultural anxieties shape attitudes towards gender non-conformity and sexual identities, and how these dynamics continue to impact contemporary debates and understanding.
It has been decades since Michel Foucault urged us to rethink "the repressive hypothesis" and see new forms of sexual discourse as coming into being in the nineteenth century, yet the term "Victorian" still has largely negative connotations. LGBT Victorians: Sexuality and Gender in the Nineteenth-Century Archives(Oxford UP, 2022) argues for re-visiting the period's thinking about gender and sexual identity at a time when our queer alliances are fraying. We think of those whose primary self-definition is in terms of sexuality (lesbians, gay men, bisexuals) and those for whom it is gender identity (intersex and transgender people, genderqueers) as simultaneously in coalition and distinct from each other, on the assumption that gender and sexuality are independent aspects of self-identification. Re-examining how the Victorians considered such identity categories to have produced and shaped each other can ground a more durable basis for strengthening our present LGBTQ+ coalition.
LGBT Victorians draws on scholarship reconsidering the significance of sexology and efforts to retrospectively discover transgender people in historical archives, particularly in the gap between what the nineteenth century termed the sodomite and the hermaphrodite. It highlights a broad range of individuals (including Anne Lister, and the defendants in the "Fanny and Stella" trial of the 1870s), key thinkers and activists (including Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs and Edward Carpenter), and writers such as Walt Whitman and John Addington Symonds to map the complicated landscape of gender and sexuality in the Victorian period. In the process, it decenters Oscar Wilde and his imprisonment from our historical understanding of sexual and gender nonconformity.
Simon Joyce is Professor of English, College of William and Mary. He holds a BA and MA from the University of Sussex and a PhD from the University of Buffalo. He is a Professor of English at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where he teaches Victorian and modernist literature from Britain and Ireland and LGBTQI+ Studies.
Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.
