Queer Geography

Matt Houlbrook. Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 398 pp. $29.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-226-35460-6. Reviewed by Rictor Norton Published on H-Histsex (May, 2008) "Perils and pleasures" in the subtitle of Matt sex, but promenades for open queer display. The Houlbrook's book refer to the fact that queer ur‐ Biograph cinema near Victoria Station was a fa‐ ban lives from the end of the First World War to mous queer landmark (nicknamed the "Bi‐ the publication of the Wolfenden Report were ogrope") for several decades. Despite intermittent conducted in a surprisingly public manner, mak‐ police crackdowns and the occasional moral re‐ ing them unsafe yet full of vitality. Cruising the form campaign, this was "a vibrant queer world" streets in the West End of London was common‐ where social as well as sexual interactions con‐ place from the 1930s. Especially visible were the tributed to the construction of queer culture. "queans" (particularly the "screamers" and "pan‐ Houlbrook brilliantly maps the four key sies" who wore make-up), but hundreds of mascu‐ spheres of queer social geography, devoting a line youths or "trade" (working-class lads ready chapter each to the public world of cruising in "to be had") passed unnoticed as they loitered at parks, the streets, and urinals; the commercial street corners, waiting to be picked up by middle- world of bars and nightclubs; the bath houses; class gentlemen who came to think of themselves and the residential world of bachelor chambers, as "respectable homosexuals." After dusk, Hyde furnished rooms, and queer lodging houses. Other Park, Clapham Common, Hampstead Heath, and chapters focus on the representative types who many other parks were hives of queer interaction. intermingled in this queer culture: the "queans" And not only sexual activity: Hyde Park was also or effeminate men who adopted female nick‐ an important "site of sociability" (p. 55), where names and organized drag-balls; the working- queer men strolled with their friends on Sunday class men or "trade" who enjoyed sex and long- mornings before going to Lyons Corner House for term emotional relationships with men, but who lunch. Far from being a "twilight world," this was often had girlfriends and thought of themselves an "open-air queer culture." London's cinemas, as normal; and the respectable middle-class self- theaters, and music halls were also important aware "homosexuals" who sought to distance queer sites, offering not merely concealment for H-Net Reviews themselves from the public perception of effemi‐ more exclusively homosexual and in some ways nacy on the one hand and promiscuity and prosti‐ less "queer." Houlbrook amply demonstrates that tution on the other (though in fact they often fell the exuberant queer culture of the 1920s and victim to blackmail by "rough trade"). Class analy‐ 1930s was a golden age. sis works very well for pinning down these differ‐ Houlbrook has delved deeply into primary ent "modes of queerness": the constructs of sources not exploited before. Proceedings at the "quean" and "trade" were overwhelmingly work‐ Metropolitan Magistrates' Courts and City of Lon‐ ing class, while that of "homosexual" was over‐ don Justice Rooms have been surveyed at fve- whelmingly middle class. The vibrancy of queer year intervals, yielding data for more than 2,500 culture was created mainly by the two former "queer incidents"; to this are added material from groups, which have become much less visible private diaries and letters, oral history, and nu‐ since the end of the Second World War. merous newspaper reports. Houlbrook's wide By the end of the 1950s, Houlbrook argues, reading in the theoretical secondary literature has trade had practically disappeared. Working-class been used to interrogate the data. He is a careful youths earned more money in regular jobs, girls collector, and subjects the data to rigorous scruti‐ of their own class became more accessible in an ny. For instance, his statistics are based on count‐ increasingly liberal society, and the old working- ing incidents (a queer incident being a single in‐ class communities were broken up by new hous‐ stance in which one or more men are arrested ing developments. As the fuid street culture dis‐ and subsequently charged), which is a more accu‐ appeared, workingmen no longer casually en‐ rate way of measuring patterns of behavior and countered queers without making a special effort regulation than counting total numbers of offend‐ to frequent queer pubs and clubs, where they ers or total numbers of offences prosecuted. Rich‐ would be more strictly defined as "renters." Houl‐ ly detailed descriptions are used to illustrate each brook thinks that trade is no longer recognizable point being made, and Houlbrook keeps us aware in modern society, but he overlooks the numerous of the fact that we are analyzing the lives of real working-class youths who have gone on to lucra‐ people, not simply sets of behavior patterns and tive work for porn magazines and the queer video jurisprudential statistics. The queer scene comes industry, or in "massage" work. Queens have also alive with abundant testimony from men like declined in numbers, and men who enjoy going Bobby B., who loved doing his Salome dance at out in women's clothes are now too few to sup‐ queer parties, or "Miss Footsore," who in 1928 port the fabulous drag balls that were staged in made hand-drawn maps of the "Comfort Stations the Albert Hall in the 1930s. A new emphasis of the Cross" (p. 51). upon masculine self-presentation, and the split Houlbrook's focus on queer geography pro‐ between gender identification and sexual orienta‐ duces an illuminating structuralist interpretation tion into separate concepts, have made it easier of urinals, the streets, parks, lodging houses, com‐ for a manly man to love a man without reconcep‐ mercial venues, enclaves, working-class areas, tualizing himself as a woman. While all this may and marginal areas. He shows, for example, how be true, Houlbrook ignores the increasingly visi‐ the organizational structures of police forces and ble presence of transgender individuals in mod‐ social/governmental agencies relate to parame‐ ern queer culture, and the possibility that some ters of surveillance of public spaces such as uri‐ queens have followed the ultimate route toward nals or clubs. However, his near-obsessive use of female reconceptualization. Overall, stricter con‐ theories of social geography threatens to lead him ceptual boundaries between queer and normal or away from knowledge rather than toward it. He "gay" and "straight" have made the queer world 2 H-Net Reviews claims, for example, that something as common vate and public spheres used by queers resulted as picking up sailors in a bar and taking them in a reconceptualization of queer space was not of home "brought the city into the home, collapsing sufficient importance to justify his overuse of the nominally distinct spatial realms" (p. 130). He fur‐ theories of spatial/social geography. Traditional ther claims that because queers sometimes held historians have always recognized the blurring of open-house parties which admitted near- boundaries in the demimonde or "underworld," strangers, they thereby "collapsed the conceptual and in the marginalized subcultures of minority separation of public and private spheres" (p. 131). groups. Houlbrook seems desperately keen to sug‐ These formulations greatly overstate the case: the gest that the regulation and policing of homosexu‐ burglar who breaks into one's home is more of a al behavior were central to "constructing" queer spatial deconstructionist than a bit of trade invit‐ geography, even while he grudgingly admits that ed home for the night. the policing in fact reflected queer activity pretty Many important features of queer culture do accurately. The data suggest fairly clearly that "of‐ not lend themselves to spatial analysis: queer lan‐ ficial geographies of regulation" (p. 25) and police guage or "polari," effeminacy, and, ultimately, ho‐ surveillance in fact discovered rather than con‐ mosexual desire itself. A psychological analysis of structed queer geographies. Urinals became an in‐ the widespread taste for rough trade (including stitution in the queer world because queers loved Guardsmen) might be more illuminating than cottaging, not because the police found it fairly teasing out alleged distinctions between public easy to make arrests in urinals. Of course it is true and private space as used by queers. Rough trade that the stereotypes of "West End poofs" and "Dilly is enjoyed as much on Clapham Common as in a Boys" ignore the existence of respectable homo‐ furnished fat: the desire itself remains constant sexuals meeting in their private homes, but the regardless of the place where it is experienced. I public queer spaces exposed and "constructed" by was not convinced by Houlbrook's concluding "ge‐ newspaper reports were nevertheless real ographical" argument that the modern queer enough, and created by queers themselves rather world became more "privatized" than it had been than by a "homophobic" society. The important in the past. As a symbol for the alleged "move‐ theme that Houlbrook has emphasized, and ment from visibility to invisibility, from an open which many previous historians have not appreci‐ public sexual culture to an exclusive commercial ated, is that even places such as urinals and baths sociability" (p. 271) he unwisely chooses Brydges were "important sites of sociability" (p. 55), not Place off St. Martin's Lane in the year 1953, when merely places for making sexual contact. a popular cast-iron urinal was demolished and This is overwhelmingly a study of men. Les‐ the Festival Club was opened for private mem‐ bians get little more than half a dozen references bers.

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