Overview

Belfastmen reconstructs the everyday experiences of queer men in a region infamous for its recent history of intolerance, violence, and religious homophobia to show how queer lives before the gay rights movement were not only possible but also rich, exciting, and fulfilling. Irish churches and governmental authorities found the topic of sex between men unmentionable and imagined such vice as a problem only found in decadent and degenerate societies abroad. Belfastmen shows how this tacit ignorance and public silence paradoxically enabled male queerness to flourish with only rare exposure, condemnation, or regulation. Tom Hulme traces the intimate lives of men across time, space, and self-understanding: their meeting places, their sexual and romantic relationships, the scientific and social models of desire they used to define themselves, and the responses to them from families, neighborhoods, and the law. From Belfast's industrial boom in the late nineteenth century to the social transformations accompanying WWII, Belfastmen reveals how homosexuality finally emerged as a recognized social problem in the 1950s. Only then did Northern Ireland start to transform into the expressively homophobic society of the more recent past.

Full Product Details

9781501786440

Table of Contents

Reviews

“Belfastmen is a brave, unflinching, and deeply humane exploration of complex past queer lives in their historical time. Tom Hulme masters, with imagination and intellectual depth, the challenge of respecting the integrity of past sexual experiences and understandings, while enabling that history to enlighten the present.” – Lindsey Earner-Byrne, Trinity College Dublin “This book is a rich, powerful, and moving intervention into pressing debates in queer history, urban history, and histories of masculinity.” – Matt Houlbrook, author of Queer London “Belfastmen is a love letter to a lost world: a queer Belfast before the Troubles and before sexual liberation. Recounting gender and sexual transgressions and tender love affairs, scandals and mundane acceptance, surprising solidarities and painful hierarchies, this book reassures me of the resilience of queer life.” – Mo Moulton, author of The Mutual Admiration Society

Author Information

Tom Hulme is a cultural historian of modern Britain and Ireland, Reader in Modern British History at Queen's University Belfast, and Principal Investigator of the Arts and Humanities Research Council project Queer Northern Ireland: Sexuality Before Liberation. He is the author of After the Shock City.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available