Bad Gays

Are you ready to have your timbers shivered and your mainbrace spliced? Today’s subject is a mysterious one, a historical figure whose life and reputation are confused by propaganda, romance and mythology: the Irish pirate Anne Bonny. We'll use her story to discuss gender, race, and class in the Golden Age of Piracy. Visit www.badgayspod.com for an episode archive, a link to pre-order our book, and more information about the show. ----more---- SOURCES: B. R. Burg, Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean (New York: New York University Press, 1995) David Cordingly, Women Sailors and Sailors’ Women: An Untold Maritime History (Random House, 2001) Philip Gosse, The History of Piracy (Mineola: Dover Publications, 2012) Charles Johnson and David Cordingly, A General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates (Guilford, Conn: Lyons Press, 2010) Ulrike Klausmann, Marion Meinzerin, and Gabriel Kuhn, Women Pirates and the Politics of the Jolly Roger (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1997) Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, Second edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 2013) Marcus Rediker, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011) Marcus Rediker, The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2013) Marcus Rediker, Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail (Verso Books, 2014) 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.

The "Eulenberg Affair," a series of media scandals about homosexual behavior at the highest levels of the German Imperial court, dragged on in the press for years as it made and broke careers in journalism, sexology, and the court while helping define both Imperial Germany’s relationship to masculinity and the emerging homosexual emancipation movements. Plus drag ballet, Wagnerists, extremely racist paintings, songs about roses, and moustaches with names. ----more---- SOURCES: SOURCES: Robert Beachy, Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity (New York: Vintage, 2014) Miranda Carter, “What Happens When a Bad-Tempered, Distractible Doofus Runs an Empire?,” The New Yorker, June 6, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/what-happens-when-a-bad-tempered-distractible-doofus-runs-an-empire Norman Domeier, “The Homosexual Scare and the Masculinization of German Politics before World War I,” Central European History 47, no. 4 (2014): 737–59 Norman Domeier, “Scandal & Science – The Power of Sexology in the Eulenburg Affair, 1906-1909,” n.d., http://www.hist.ceu.hu/conferences/graceh/abstracts/domeier_norman.pdf Martin B. Duberman, Jews, Queers, Germans: A Novel/History, Seven Stories Press first edition (New York ; Oakland: Seven Stories Press, 2017) John C. G. Röhl, The Kaiser and His Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany, trans. Terence F. Cole, 1st ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1994) Alex Ross, Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music (New York: Picador Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021) Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, Theory and History of Literature, v. 22-23 (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1987). 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. The 15-second clip of "Monatsrose" by Philipp, Prince of Eulenburg is sung by tenor Marcel Wittrisch with orchestra and organ conducted by Bruno Seidler-Winkler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq2XXG8JRNU  

This Nazi diplomat was assassinated by the Jewish activist Herschel Grynszpan –– and his death became a pretext for the murderous pogroms of Kristallnacht. Grynszpan's lawyer, the flamboyant anti-fascist Vincent de Moro-Giafferi, pioneered in this case what was perhaps the first –– and only morally good –- use of some version of a 'gay panic' or ‘gay blackmail’ defense. But was vom Rath actually gay? ----more---- SOURCES: Jonathan Kirsch, The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan: A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris, First Edition (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, A Division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2013) Museum of Jewish Heritage, The Forgotten Life of Herschel Grynszpan, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLl_iK1xiiE; Gerald Schwab, The Day the Holocaust Began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan (New York: Praeger, 1990).

The eccentric inheritor of an enormous oil fortune and gender non-conforming-lesbian-trans man (we'll talk about it!) who dated Marlene Dietrich, raced speedboats, and turned their private Bahamian island into a domain over which they ruled over native people with an iron fist while allowing themselves and their guests every possible eccentricity and pleasure. All this accompanied by their lifelong companion: a foot-tall leather doll named Lord Tod Wadley. ----more---- SOURCES Michael Craton, A History of the Bahamas, 3rd ed (Waterloo, Ont., Canada: San Salvador Press, 1986). Kate Summerscale, The Queen of Whale Cay (New York: Viking, 1998). “Obeah: ‘Magical Art of Resistance,’” Early Caribbean Digital Archive (blog), September 2, 2018, https://ecda.northeastern.edu/home/about-exhibits/obeah-narratives-exhibit/ Tom Cheshire, “Boss of the Bahamas,” The Rake, accessed December 20, 2021, https://therake.com/stories/icons/joe-carstairs/. Zora Neale Hurston, “‘Bahamain Obeah’ (1931),” Bahamian Fragments: Bits and Pieces from the History of the Bahamas, accessed December 20, 2021, http://www.jabezcorner.com/Grand_Bahama/Ten%20Ten/hurston1.htm 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.

Francis Bacon was an artist whose radical generosity teetered on the edge of self-obliteration –– and he sometimes pulled others over the edge with him. Many of our listeners will be familiar with Bacon’s work, or at least would recognise his idiosyncratic style if they saw it; sweeps of fleshy paint across black fields of colour, portraying contorted, mangled bodies, racks of hanging meat, and the iconic screaming mouth. But Bacon is almost as famous for the way he lived his life: his raucous partying, brutal barbed tongue, and love of boozing made him an emblem of London’s bohemian Soho scene. What linked his work and his life was an obsession with violence, something that he knew intimately.  ----more---- Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993) John Maybury et al., Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, Biography, Drama, Romance (BBC Films, British Film Institute (BFI), Arts Council of England, 1998) Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2019) Richard Curson Smith et al., Francis Bacon: A Brush with Violence, Documentary, Biography (IWC Media, 2017) David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, Third edition (New York, NY: Thames & Hudson, 2016). 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.

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. ----more----   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

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. Visit our website for t-shirts, an episode archive, and more. ----more---- 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.  

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. ----more---- 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. Dennis Cooper's blog. 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.

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." ----more---- 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.  

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. ----more---- 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.