Justin Bengry | Goldsmiths, University of London (original) (raw)

Books by Justin Bengry

Melding together traditional political histories with cultural and gender analyses, The Pink Poun... more Melding together traditional political histories with cultural and gender analyses, The Pink Pound is the first full-length study of the history of the pink economy. Using diverse sources ranging through early men’s magazines and queer erotic publications, film and theatre regulations, tabloids and popular newspapers, sources on fashion and retailing, government documents and parliamentary papers, business archives and oral histories, it asks who benefited from commercial interest in homosexuality? How were debates surrounding the extension of civil rights to homosexuals propelled forward in the public commercial sphere? How did reformers utilize capitalist strategy and infrastructure to effect social and legal change? And finally, what effect have more open relationships between homosexuality and consumer capitalism had on both business interests and queer citizen-consumers? The Pink Pound is unique and innovative in recognizing the place of homosexuality in mainstream consumption practices and the effect this had on broader social, cultural, and political change.

The Pink Pound is the first sustained and systematic historical study of the shifting relationship between the consumer economy and social, cultural and political formations of ‘homosexuality’ in twentieth century Britain.
– Anonymous Reviewer, University of Chicago Press

The Pink Pound is currently under contract with the University of Chicago Press.

Papers by Justin Bengry

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) histories and heritage are everywhere. Prid... more Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) histories and heritage are everywhere. Pride of Place is a Historic England initiative to identify the locations and landscapes associated with England's LGBTQ heritage. Pride of Place would love to learn more about: clubs and pubs we used to go to; where we met friends and lovers; places where our group has met over the years; locations associated with historic LGBTQ figures; important places for older LGBTQ people; and much more

The pink pound is not what you think it is; or, rather, I want to convince you that it’s a lot mo... more The pink pound is not what you think it is; or, rather, I want to convince you that it’s a lot more than you think it is. Depending on whom you think has most agency in commercial relationships, the pink pound (or pink economy) has generally been defined as the spending power of gay men and lesbians, or as an increasingly lucrative target market courted by some savvy marketers. Proponents of the value of the pink pound describe gay men in particular as having a greater disposable income than the average consumer and as being earlier adopters of new products. According to an Ingenious Group marketing conference in 2006, the pink pound was already worth some £70 billion to British business

This special panel discussion brought together authorities on Alan Turing and the statutory pardo... more This special panel discussion brought together authorities on Alan Turing and the statutory pardon legislation intended to honour him. Leading academics, in conversation with those who have unsuccessfully petitioned to have offences disregarded, were joined by the Turing Bill’s author

Huffington Post, Aug 6, 2015

Historians of the ‘queer’ past have expressed deep concerns about the state issuing royal pardons... more Historians of the ‘queer’ past have expressed deep concerns about the state issuing royal pardons for convictions under outdated and antiquated laws against homosexual sex. As Matt Houlbrook has pointed out, ‘Pardoning Alan Turing might be good politics, but it’s certainly bad history’. The same is even more true of a general pardon that includes further posthumous pardons. I believe it offers too great an opportunity for the state to strategically forget and erase history rather than atone for the damage it has wrought on the lives of queer men

Huffington Post, Jun 24, 2015

Surely the quest for a queer past is more powerful at the more intimate level of family, in the n... more Surely the quest for a queer past is more powerful at the more intimate level of family, in the networks of kinship, and the familiarity of photo albums passed on from loved ones. Going beyond the lists of so-called ‘famous queers’ of the past, queer family history locates us in a shared history; it gives us a history in which to place ourselves

Interview with Raúl Necochea López about his book, A History of Family Planning in Twentieth-cent... more Interview with Raúl Necochea López about his book, A History of Family Planning in Twentieth-century Peru (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).

History Workshop, Oct 23, 2016

In the late 1950s, Carnaby Street designer and retailer John Stephen began a systematic program t... more In the late 1950s, Carnaby Street designer and retailer John Stephen began a systematic program to decouple himself, the products he sold, and the very notion of male fashionability from associations of effeminacy and homosexuality. Of course this project was never complete, but nor did it need to be. Carnaby Street shops, beginning with those of John Stephen, traded on a sense of playful camp that distinguished them from what were seen as old-fashioned or short-back-and-sides fashion establishments and worldviews. This article examines how producers and retailers of queer styles interacted with 1950s and 1960s consumers, and how these consumer interactions illuminate the changing relationship between homosexuality and hetero-normative constructions of masculinity in mid twentieth-century Britain.

History: Reviews of New Books, 2010

The Journal of British Studies, 2007

History Workshop Journal, 2009

... Editor Reginald Arkell&amp;amp;#x27;s papers (Victoria and Albert Museum, Theatre Arc... more ... Editor Reginald Arkell&amp;amp;#x27;s papers (Victoria and Albert Museum, Theatre Archive, THM/67) make no mention of the magazine, and are instead ... Century Media and the Construction of Identities, ed. Laurel Brake, Bill Bell and David Finkelstein, Basingstoke, 2000; Matt Cook, London ...

History Workshop Journal, 2008

Marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Wolfenden Report, 'Wolfenden50' was organized b... more Marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Wolfenden Report, 'Wolfenden50' was organized by the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne and the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies at King's College, London, to consider the report's international impact and subsequent ...

The Pink Pound is currently under contract with the University of Chicago Press.

Huffington Post, Aug 6, 2015

Huffington Post, Jun 24, 2015

History Workshop, Oct 23, 2016

History: Reviews of New Books, 2010

The Journal of British Studies, 2007

History Workshop Journal, 2009

History Workshop Journal, 2008

Social History 42 no 1 (2017): 143-145.

Journal of British Studies

... period, 6 the relative lack of pri-mary materials that openly acknowledge men's acti... more ... period, 6 the relative lack of pri-mary materials that openly acknowledge men's active interest in fashion, 7 and the wholesale acceptance of a ... Studies speciﬁcally on dress and masculinity are scarcer still, and no proper theoretical framework has been established by which to ap ...

The world of social media offers historians opportunities to find collaborators and colleagues, c... more The world of social media offers historians opportunities to find collaborators and colleagues, communicate and uncover new avenues of research, shape ideas and contribute to new, global communities of enquiry. But entering this world can be a daunting prospect, particularly for PhD students and early-career academics. Building and maintaining a profile for your work, negotiating online relationships and protecting your academic 'capital' are just some of the challenges. When your work touches on 'difficult' pasts then 'daunting' can become 'terrifying' as new social media opportunities emerge and continue to evolve. Historians increasingly rely on Facebook as a professional tool, contribute to Wikipedia, use WordPress and other systems to blog about their research, and engage on Twitter with other #twitterstorians. Others rely on image sites like Tumblr and Flickr to uncover and disseminate resources, while there is also a community of historians on Reddit. This session, jointly convened by the Public History and History of Sexuality seminars, tackles the question of how to navigate social media, making the most of the new spaces they open up while managing some of the risks and pitfalls.

More than thirty years ago, Jeffrey Weeks described post-war popular tabloids as “magnifiers of d... more More than thirty years ago, Jeffrey Weeks described post-war popular tabloids as “magnifiers of deviance” that objectified and dehumanized homosexuals. Similarly, Patrick Higgins describes the popular press as “one of the most ruthless antagonists to male homosexuality.” More recently, Matt Houlbrook argues that the “queer” was imagined to be “a predatory and lustful danger” who “embodied a wider postwar crisis of Britishness.” This helps to explain why tabloid executives exploited the scandal of homosexuality to increase circulations in the keenly competitive 1950s, but have yet to uncover how queer readers consumed these messages. We have taken for granted the received wisdom that in an era characterized by repression and hostility, homosexual men and women can only have been offended, felt betrayed, or internalized messages that denigrated them. But in so doing, we have denied their agency to find in the tabloids other messages, to read them against the grain, and to be active consumers choosing to buy tabloids for complex reasons.

Though directed at a mainstream, ostensibly heterosexual audience of consumers who would be intrigued, scandalized, or titillated by the tabloids’ treatment of homosexuality, the scandal and popular press also appealed to queer men and women who consumed these products for their own purposes. They purchased publications trading in even the most vicious treatments of queer scandal for a variety of complicated reasons. And while some eagerly read such vitriol because it validated their own existence, others actively resisted the messages they found in the tabloids. By the mid 1960s we find the first instances of queer consumer activism emerging in opposition to the messages of disease, contagion, and danger that inundated Britain.

Relying extensively upon oral histories and the underutilized National Lesbian and Gay Survey, as well as a variety of newspaper reports, commentary and business histories, this paper explores how homosexual men and women understood their relationship to the tabloid press. Their response to the tabloids illuminates what they gained and how they used these publications for their own purposes. In the process they fashioned their own identities, in part, in response and in opposition to what they read in the Sunday papers.

Long before homosexual activity between consenting men was decriminalized in Britain in 1967, Fil... more Long before homosexual activity between consenting men was decriminalized in Britain in 1967, Films and Filming subtly established its queer leanings. From its initial issues in 1954, Films and Filming sought what we would today call the Pink Pound, or Britain’s queer market segment. It included commercial advertisements for queer-friendly businesses as well as articles on censorship, profiles and images of sexually ambiguous male actors, and homoerotic photo spreads. The magazine’s contact ads further helped foster a network of queer men across Britain and internationally. Taken together, these elements all reinforced for many readers that despite its respectable credentials and mainstream accessibility Films and Filming was, in fact, queer. But even as it increasingly focused on its homosexual audience, Films and Filming nonetheless remained an internationally respected and successful film journal widely available at mainstream newsagents. This duality was key to both the magazine’s mainstream financial success and its appeal to many gay men would not buy more explicit publications.

Long before homosexual activity between men was decriminalized in Britain in 1967, Films and Film... more Long before homosexual activity between men was decriminalized in Britain in 1967, Films and Filming subtly included articles and images, erotically charged commercial advertisements, and same-sex contact ads that established its queer leanings. From its initial issues in 1954, Films and Filming sought what we would today call the Pink Pound, or Britain’s queer market segment. Taken together, these elements all reinforced for many readers that despite its respectable credentials and mainstream success Films and Filming was, in fact, queer. Relying on evidence from Films & Filming itself, including editorials, advertisements, personals, and imagery, this paper demonstrates the magazine’s active cultivation of and engagement with a queer marketplace. Interviews with editors and contributors, and reminiscences from readers further reinforce its role in pre-decriminalization British queer history. Films & Filming was in fact the longest-running pre-decriminalization magazine to gain success and respect in the mainstream while actively courting a queer market segment. Surrounded by the victimization of queer men by the state and press in the early 1950s, publisher Philip Dosse recognized both a thriving subculture and a potential market. Following decriminalization, however, Dosse and his editors were unable to navigate the changing queer marketplace or compete with a range of other titles that emerged in a more liberal Britain.

"The Pink Pound is not what you think it is; or rather, I hope to convince you that it’s a lot mo... more "The Pink Pound is not what you think it is; or rather, I hope to convince you that it’s a lot more than you think it is. Generally defined as the economic or spending power of gay men and lesbians, the Pink Pound appeals to twenty-first century marketers as a lucrative target market. Since the onset of Gay Liberation from the 1970s, but particularly from the 1980s and 90s, queer men and women have been increasingly targeted as a valuable market segment assumed to have higher incomes and lower financial responsibilities than other consumers, greater interest in leisure services and related goods, and also eager and early adopters of new products. They are, according to a 2006 Ingenious Group marketing conference, worth some £70 billion to British business. The Pink Pound has since been valued in excess of £100 billion. But the virtually exponential growth of recognition and interest in queer consumers over the last decades of the twentieth century and first years of the twenty-first has actually elided the existence of a long and vibrant relationship between homosexuality and consumer capitalism throughout the twentieth century. This paper seeks to uncover relationships between queer consumers and business enterprise that go beyond the tendency to see such interactions simply as relatively recent and unidirectional expressions either of oppression or opposition. A history of the pink pound, I argue, illuminates a much earlier and quite complicated relationship between homosexuality and the marketplace."

One of the earliest commercial enterprises in which we can discern an awareness of both the comme... more One of the earliest commercial enterprises in which we can discern an awareness of both the commercial opportunity and also danger of homosexuality is publishing. Some publishers recognized the potential sales opportunities afforded by appealing to readers drawn to themes and issues that they could relate to their own lives and desires. But publishers also recognized that their market included diverse readers who might buy these books for other reasons as well. Many consumers sought titles whose contents matched their own progressive social or reformist politics. Others, regardless of their own sexuality, were titillated and aroused by discussions of forbidden desires. And some consumers, representing any combination of these positions, appeared in the wake of trials or scandals that erupted in the press. While the writings of Edward Carpenter, Rose Allatini, and Radclyffe Hall have all been scrutinized at considerable length, I contend that their books’ relationships to the marketplace, their publishers’ motivations and relationships with the subject of homosexuality, and the complex negotiations and business strategies inherent in book production have received only passing note by scholars who have long been more interested in literary analysis, biographical study, and the construction of individual or collective queer identities. Taken together, however, these three examples illustrate how publishers and critics alike imagined and targeted queer consumers, how business enterprise mingled with politics, and how the scandal and titillation of queer desires helped build sales at a remarkably early moment in the history of the pink pound.

Glaswegian John Stephen was perhaps the most successful interpreter of queer menswear styles in p... more Glaswegian John Stephen was perhaps the most successful interpreter of queer menswear styles in postwar Britain. This paper will consider the evolution of Stephen’s retail strategies with regard to the queer styles he proffered and the queer life he hid. Coming out of post-WWII physique photography and magazines, through the small gay-owned Soho boutiques emerging in the 1950s, the success of styles that gave rise to Carnaby Street as a global centre of men’s fashion reaching its peak success in the md 1960s can be directly attributed to John Stephen’s invocation, manipulation, sanitization, and popularization of queer style.

Since his days as a sales assistant at Vince Man’s Shop, the notoriously queer Soho menswear shop the mid 1950s, John Stephen recognized the potential first for expanding the queer market, and then of harnessing a still edgy aesthetic to mainstream previously queer-coded fashions to a wider audience. For the next decade Stephen, the ‘King of Carnaby Street’, created a male fashion empire by interpreting and designing fashions based on an aesthetic of beauty long associated with gay men. Still further, his retailing and marketing strategies were directly influenced by his products’ queerness, his position as an icon of Mod menswear, and his own homosexuality. Stephen’s transformation of a queer aesthetic for mainstream male consumers did not go uncontested, however, and at the height of his success in the mid 1960s, Stephen was forced once again to contend with accusations of his products’ queer associations.

This paper is based on a variety of sources across business archives, media coverage, and the oral histories. It relies upon collections held at the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Art and Design Collection, the Brighton Ourstory Oral History Archive, the Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive, the Hall-Carpenter Archive of Gay and Lesbian History, as well as numerous smaller library and media collections. This primary evidence is supported by analysis and historiography from gay and lesbian history, cultural history and the history of consumerism.

On 25 May 1952, readers of the Sunday Pictorial encountered dire warnings of ‘male degenerates’ i... more On 25 May 1952, readers of the Sunday Pictorial encountered dire warnings of ‘male degenerates’ infesting not only London’s West End but even provincial centres throughout the country. Douglas Warth’s sensationalist three-part exposé of the ‘homosexual problem’, provocatively entitled ‘Evil Men’, scandalized readers and became a part of queer folklore. Under the guidance of managing editor Hugh Cudlipp the Pictorial, and its counterpart the Mirror, were at the forefront of using sexual sensations to encourage readership, fatten circulation, attract advertisers, and surpass competitors the People and News of the World. In its coverage of sexual topics, and especially homosexuality, the Mirror Group of papers fused a variety of competing interests in determining content and its position on key public issues.

Going beyond existing scholarship that positions tabloid coverage either as pure vitriol designed to foment hatred of homosexuals or as strategic ploys focussed only on securing profits, this paper recognizes that these and other factors worked together in dynamic tension. Personality, profits and politics were each key. The market is not amoral, and the personal beliefs of editors and publishers actively shaped the direction and focus of coverage. At the same time profits were never far from the minds of savvy producers who felt acutely the desire to scoop competitors and increase circulation figures. Finally, the political moment is significant, as editors fused together the desire to shape public opinion but also capitalize on an issue of current interest.

By examining the specific tactics, motivations, and influences of the Mirror Group of papers, this paper will offer a more nuanced analysis of how personality, profit and politics merged to influence tabloid treatment of homosexuality in post-war Britain in the years before its decriminalization in 1967.

Long before homosexual activity was decriminalized in Britain in 1967, Films and Filming subtly i... more Long before homosexual activity was decriminalized in Britain in 1967, Films and Filming subtly included articles and images, erotically charged commercial advertisements, and same-sex contact ads that established its queer leanings. From its initial issues in 1954, Films and Filming sought what we would today call the Pink Pound, or Britain’s queer market segment. Taken together, these elements all reinforced for many readers that despite its respectable credentials and mainstream success Films and Filming was, in fact, queer. Relying on evidence from Films & Filming itself, including editorials, advertisements, personals, and imagery, this paper demonstrates the magazine’s active cultivation of and engagement with a queer marketplace. Interviews with editors and contributors, and reminiscences from readers further reinforce its role in pre-decriminalization British queer history. Films & Filming was in fact the longest-running pre-decriminalization magazine to gain success and respect in the mainstream while actively courting a queer market segment. Surrounded by the victimization of queer men by the state and press in the early 1950s, publisher Philip Dosse recognized both a thriving subculture and a potential market.

Long before homosexual activity between consenting men was decriminalized in Britain in 1967, Fil... more Long before homosexual activity between consenting men was decriminalized in Britain in 1967, Films and Filming subtly included articles and images, erotically charged commercial advertisements, and same-sex contact ads that established its queer leanings. From its initial issues in 1954, Films and Filming sought what we would today call the Pink Pound, or Britain’s queer market segment. Commercial advertisements promoted queer-friendly businesses, and some of the first issues included spots for Vince Man’s Shop, a notoriously queer Soho men’s boutique. The magazine also included articles on censorship of homosexual themes in film and theatre, profiles and images of sexually ambiguous male actors like Dirk Bogarde and Rock Hudson, and photo spreads selected specifically for their display of male flesh. The magazine’s contact ads further helped foster a network of queer men across Britain, and even internationally. Discreet ‘bachelor’ ads from men looking for same-sex partners, which appeared already in the mid 1950s, became a regular feature of the magazine through the 1960s. Taken together, these elements all reinforced for many readers that despite its respectable credentials and mainstream accessibility Films and Filming was, in fact, queer.

Even as it increasingly focused on its homosexual audience, throughout the 1950s and 1960s Films and Filming nonetheless remained an internationally respected and successful film journal. It was widely available in mainstream bookshops and newsagents in Britain and abroad. Films and Filming writers included important critics like Raymond Durgnat and Gordon Gow, and articles appeared from world-famous writers, directors, and actors. This fact was key to both the magazine’s financial success and its appeal to many gay men. Editor Robin Bean once explained his vision for Films and Filming to a contributor: ‘Gay men who were in the closet, especially those who still lived at home with their parents or were married, could openly sit on the tube or a bus or in school or the office and be viewed reading the magazine without fear of anyone suspecting they were gay’.

Relying on evidence from Films & Filming itself, including editorials, advertisements, personals, and imagery, this chapter demonstrates the magazine’s cultivation of and engagement with a queer marketplace. Interviews with editors and contributors, and reminiscences from readers further reinforce its role in pre-decriminalization British queer history. Films & Filming was in fact the longest-running pre-decriminalization magazine to gain success and respect in the mainstream while actively courting a queer market segment. It offered a nationally (and even internationally) distributed opportunity for men to find public discussions of homosexuality, suggestive commentary, and homoerotic imagery from contemporary films. It even opened up a space for them to find each other. But it was precisely because of its widespread accessibility in a time of repression that queer men also used the magazine to encode specialized services and private desires. Surrounded by the victimization of queer men by the state and press in the early 1950s, publisher Philip Dosse had recognized both a thriving subculture and a potential market.

Going beyond the traditional definition of the pink pound which is interested only in gay and les... more Going beyond the traditional definition of the pink pound which is interested only in gay and lesbian consumers, I argue that the pink pound includes any economic incentives offered by homosexuality, and is not restricted by the sexuality of the consumer. As such it still encompasses marketing to (and the purchasing power of) homosexuals, but also includes invoking homosexuality, either positively or negatively, to sell goods and services to diverse consumers. This re-orientation promises to illuminate an entire constellation of economic incentives that have at their core a consumer appeal based upon the market’s relationship to homosexuality. This can include: 1) the standard definition, above, which highlights the role of homosexuals as consumers; 2) politicized invocations of homosexuality, both positive and negative, including progressive stands and even those that are vitriolic and anti-homosexual, which find support among consumers who may share these opinions; and 3) the use of scandal or titillation to attract audiences of any sexuality by the public discussion of homosexual experience and desire. Key is the role of consumption and the selling to homosexuals or the “selling” of homosexuality in each of these appeals.

Queer history scholars have rightfully emphasized the harm of this kind of negative vitriol spewed from the tabloid and Sunday press through most of the twentieth century. While it is important to recognize this history of intolerance, and to understand the social pressures that may have fueled it, it is also important to consider the motivations for this kind of coverage. There is a material and commercial component here. Newspapers are themselves consumer goods seeking readerships and circulations, and search out methods to attract them. Such publications traded on the potential of homosexuality to sell papers, magazines, and even books, and contributed to the commodification of homosexuality as a scandalous subject to be sold in the Sunday press. Such coverage also inscribed the subject of homosexuality as a significant public issue in the minds of Britons generally, and legislators specifically.

This paper concludes with an in depth discussion of secret documents from Churchill’s Cabinet. Discussion among ministers demonstrates the how concerns among legislators with both the tabloid press’s reliance on queer scandal and investigation into the ‘problem’ of homosexuality were related. My argument here is not that newspaper headlines forced the government to re-evaluate laws relating to homosexuality. Rather, as a result of the lucrative potential of homosexual vice and desire as a feature of scandal reportage, the subject of homosexuality and press coverage was increasingly created as a pressing public issue that seemingly required official intervention.

In 1968, the Earl of Arran, sponsor in the House of Lords of the Sexual Offences Bill, wrote Dirk... more In 1968, the Earl of Arran, sponsor in the House of Lords of the Sexual Offences Bill, wrote Dirk Bogarde after seeing the film Victim on television. Commending Bogarde for the role, Arran believed that the transformation in public opinion in favour of reform was largely due to Bogarde’s two films The Servant and Victim. It is impossible to quantify exactly what effect films like Victim might have had on promoting increased tolerance for homosexuality. Nonetheless, it was one of many public commercial productions created between the Wolfenden Committee’s report advocating reform in 1957 and the actual decriminalization of homosexual acts between consenting men in private ten years later. In these ten years, homosexuals, the reformist movement, and indeed the general public all existed in an entirely new social and commercial world that increasingly acknowledged, or bemoaned, the position of homosexuality in society. Ranging though film, theatre, publishing, and the traditional press, homosexuality remained a timely topic in the public commercial sphere in this last decade before legal reform. All range of opinions on reform were voiced in these media, sometimes for political ends, but also with commercial concerns in mind. Based on extensive archival research and oral history interviews, I consider the relationship between public commercial activity and homosexual legal reform. I examine both pro-reform and anti-reform materials, and those which capitalized and even commodified the subject of homosexuality in this period of increased dialogue. Ultimately, I ask what effect the public commercial sphere had on the reform movement, how reformers reacted to this public response to reform, and what relationship existed between commerce and homosexual legal reform.

From its initial issues, Films & Filming printed a number of advertisements for products and cont... more From its initial issues, Films & Filming printed a number of advertisements for products and contacts that established its queer leanings. Ads for Vince Man’s Shop, a notoriously queer Soho men’s boutique, were followed by discreet ads looking for same-sex companions, and later, some readers even sought to buy or sell homoerotic magazines and films. But even though Films & Filming came to be associated with a queer clientele by the 1960s, it was not the first or only place such ads could be found. From at least the 1920s notices were posted at newsagents, and coded ads were found in even the most mainstream newspapers including the Times and even (according to one Wolfenden Committee member) the Church Times. They drew the attention of interested parties and the ire of social conservatives seeking to root out unnatural vice.

By 1967, these ads had been so decoded that MPs devoted an entire debate in the course of hearings for the Sexual Offences Bill to the question of how to eliminate the so-called ‘gay bachelor’ ads then appearing in magazines and newspapers. MPs were most concerned that unsavoury individuals were not only facilitating such contacts, but that their businesses were profiting from them, combining the already suspect world of mass consumerism with homosexuality. Ultimately, MPs expressed anxiety over the appearance of a queer economy decades before marketers and advertisers would identify the appearance of the so-called Pink Pound in the 1980s and 1990s.

In this space where sexuality and commerce intersect and overlap, we find a unique opportunity to explore both the social world of pre-decriminalization homosexuality, its commercial construction, and also containment of that world. While men like Frank Birkhill found friends and lovers in such ads, other men, like MP Ray Mawby, were appalled that homosexual contacts could be made through a commercial medium. This paper will explore the tension between these conflicting and contested notions of queer commercial space. For homosexual men it could be public forum in which to encode private messages, but for conservative observers, it was most dangerous precisely because it was a public and commercial medium offering expression to ‘unnatural desires’. This paper will use original magazines and ads, official reports, oral histories, and parliamentary debates to argue that it is the commercial component of these notices which must be highlighted, and will offer a re-evaluation of the role of the commercial sphere in pre-decriminalization queer history.

The opening of TreCamp, John Stephen’s Carnaby Street women’s boutique in 1965, marks the culmina... more The opening of TreCamp, John Stephen’s Carnaby Street women’s boutique in 1965, marks the culmination of his mainstreaming of gay male ideals of beauty and fashionability. Developing since his days as a sales assistant at Vince Man’s Shop, a notoriously queer site of male fashion and consumerism, some ten years earlier, Stephen was perhaps the most successful interpreter of gay styles. This paper will consider the trajectory of these aesthetics from post-WWII physique photography studios, through the small gay-owned Soho boutiques emerging in the 1950s, to the rise of Carnaby Street as a wildly successful fashion venture spearheaded by young Glaswegian John Stephen. I argue that rather than just a story of fashion sensibilities trickling down from subcultural style leaders to a broader clientele, the success of Carnaby Street and the gay aesthetic often associated with it, is also related to an ongoing financial incentive of the post-WWII period that would later be termed the ‘Pink Pound.’

The ‘pink economy,’ or the economic power of gay men and lesbians, has only been a matter of public discussion among advertisers and media since the 1990s. But we must recognize that, though a relatively small consumer group, homosexuals often constituted an attractive and sought after market segment for advertisers and retailers throughout the twentieth century. This was especially the case in areas like fashion and the arts that had long been stereotyped as potentially ‘queer’. It was also true for purveyors of erotica, many gay themselves, who felt little compunction against selling materials to appeal to a range of sexual tastes. Consequently by the 1940s trade in erotic male nudes was already well established by a number of photographic studios which came to rely upon the custom of queer consumers.

Vince, a pseudonym for Bill Green, was one such photographer whose male photography circulated in the 1940s and 1950s, but who gained even greater success as a supplier of the fashions modeled in his erotic prints. By the mid 1950s a young sales assistant named John Stephen recognized the potential for expanding this market, harnessing a still edgy aesthetic of beauty, and mainstreaming previously queer-coded fashions to a wider audience. For the next decade Stephen, the ‘King of Carnaby Street’, created a male fashion empire by interpreting and designing fashions based on an aesthetics of beauty long associated with gay men.

This paper traces the relationship between fashion and beauty, consumerism and the Pink Pound through business archival sources, media coverage, and the extensive use of oral histories. It relies upon collections held at the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Art and Design Collection, the Brighton Ourstory Oral History Archive, the Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive, the Hall-Carpenter Archive of Gay and Lesbian History, as well as numerous smaller library and media collections. This primary evidence is supported by analysis and historiography from gay and lesbian history, cultural history and the history of consumerism.

“It doesn’t want women readers…won’t have them…It is unique in British journalism!” If the titl... more “It doesn’t want women readers…won’t have them…It is unique in British journalism!” If the title was not already clear enough, this text of a pre-production ad for Men Only from November 1935 made it unambiguous. Men Only would be a new magazine devoted to solidly masculine interests and diversions, eschewing anything suggesting femininity. It was to be a remedy against “all that castrated nonsense,” as editor Reginald Arkell characterized other lifestyle magazines. But these claims were more than a little disingenuous. Despite its constant protestations to the contrary, Men Only, in fact, attracted a vibrant female audience who engaged with the magazine and its content.

Before examining the female audience of Men Only, this paper identifies and discusses the magazine’s so-called preferred readership of middle-class men in the late 1930s. The attention to this audience by most historians, however, has tended to focus on one group of men and consider women only in the abstract. So while this does explain a substantial part of Men Only’s project, it is insufficient to fully understand the magazine. This paper therefore continues with a discussion of another audience, namely women. I will describe the Editor’s treatment of women, their engagement with the magazine, and the impact this had on the magazine’s messages. Finally, I outline the significance of a fuller awareness of the magazine’s multiple audiences, and the import of this awareness on studies of masculinity and consumption.

This paper shows that the orthodox model used to understand interwar men’s magazines is inadequate to understand the gender and identity dynamics underway in Men Only. Orthodox interpretations laid important groundwork from which I build, but they uncritically accepted the homogeneity of audience – men only – that the magazines themselves identified. These studies also assumed a unity of intention on the part of producers throughout the magazines, which I show was not the case. The magazine simultaneously addressed multiple audiences, whose values and identities often conflicted. The example of Men Only, the first mass circulation publication in Britain focussed on the male consumer, shows us that he was from his genesis implicated in a web of identities, the full interrogation of which is necessary to understand his construction. It is this complex interpenetration of audience, voice and identity that this paper highlights.

Men Only presented men whose wit, intelligence, knowledge of fashion and access to women identified them among the elect of British manhood. In defining a new consumerist model of masculinity, producers delineated, but also carefully guarded, many gender boundaries. The model of masculinity offered in Men Only was not predicated purely on an uncompromising delineation of a consumerist masculinity. Instead, I argue, the producers of Men Only addressed a variety of audiences in addition to its ostensibly preferred reader. So while scholars have looked to interwar men’s magazines in both Britain and America as sites whose gender commentary extended no further than to valorizing new modes of masculine identity while vilifying its rivals, I show that this is not the case. Or, at least, this is not the only case.

While scholars have increasingly called for a fuller examination of the worlds of consumption, an... more While scholars have increasingly called for a fuller examination of the worlds of consumption, and the cultural import they have had since the nineteenth century, interest in this vibrant field has remained largely polarized, focusing alternatively on Victorian or post-WWII Britain, and even then almost exclusively upon women’s relationship to mass consumption. This paper examines Men Only, the first magazine in Britain to promote a decidedly consumerist agenda to middle-class men, and considers the complex relationship between homosexuality and the consuming male subject in interwar Britain. Between its inaugural number in December 1935 and the outbreak of war in September 1939, Men Only established within its pages a public space where fashionable male consumption was acknowledged and validated. But the magazine’s construction of this consumerist identity was more complicated and its elements more complex than current histories recognize.

The magazine’s ostensibly preferred audience of middle-class heterosexual men, or “he-men” as at least one correspondent to the magazine called them, were not the only group to attract the attention of editors. Homosexuals, like women, had long been associated with the worlds of consumption, and this association did not go unnoticed in the magazine. This study re-evaluates the place of the queer men in consumer worlds of the 1930s and identifies their role as a cultural symbol of modernity and sexual knowingness, exploited by Men Only to appeal to a variety of audiences. I also argue that the magazine deliberately targeted a queer audience through complex visual codes and markers. This is significant because it suggests and awareness of buying power, what has come to be known as the “pink economy,” long before this market became publicly desirable and “sexy” to marketers in the 1980s and 1990s.

Men Only’s repeated discussions of homosexuality, and the many cartoons and images which invoke or allude to transgressive behaviour, force us to reconsider its relationship to the production of interwar consumer identities. Because queer men were associated with consumer excesses, historians maintain that editors initiated a negative commentary on homosexuality to avoid this taint. Correct – so far as it goes – this analysis of homosexuality in interwar magazines as a strategy to differentiate and insulate masculine from effeminate consumption fails to acknowledge that the treatment of homosexuality must be historically and geographically situated. The repeated and regular invocations of homosexuality in Men Only suggests several only apparently contradictory forces at work as the magazine directed its appeal to as broad an audience as possible. Taken together, the magazine’s treatments of homosexuality suggest a more complicated relationship with emergent masculine consumer identities than models of silence or homophobia present.

Arriving at a West End London hotel at 3:25 for his 3:30 dance lesson, one pupil, described as “a... more Arriving at a West End London hotel at 3:25 for his 3:30 dance lesson, one pupil, described as “a man of some position,” retired to the lavatory. Removing his overcoat and pullover he asked the attendant, an “overgrown pimply youth,” if he would mind his things, and then proceeded to the hall to begin the 3:30 lesson. Midway through his half-hour lesson the man was interrupted by another attendant who directed him to the manager’s office, where he was accused of “indecently assaulting the youth in the lavatory.” The case went to trial where the attendant claimed that this “respectable” gentleman had “cuddled and fondled him for nine or ten minutes.” It was only the £100 investment in the skills of an expensive K.C., according to the author of this cautionary tale, a friend of the gentleman in question, that he was able to secure his innocence.

L. A. Mann related this story in the February 1936 issue of Men Only, a popular mainstream men’s magazine, which, following on the heels of Esquire in America, introduced the concept of the men’s lifestyle magazine to Britain. Paired with a similar cautionary tale involving a woman in an enclosed railway carriage, the article ostensibly offered worldly magazine readers savvy advice on dealing with “hysterical women and oversexed youths.” But while the article’s author identified his audience as innocent victims, I argue that this wasn’t entirely true. This article would no doubt appeal to another audience segment for whom such sexual encounters were a genuine possibility and accusations a significant threat. Particularly in the late 1930s when, as Matt Houlbrook has recently argued, the Metropolitan Police stepped up enforcement of public indecency laws and increased lavatory raids, both queer and straight men would have recognized the public lavatory as both a site of sexuality, but also of danger. And many men, as Houlbrook recounts, whether they identified as queer or not, had already by February 1936 been caught in the Met’s net. I argue in this paper that throughout the late 1930s Men Only assumed and deliberately cultivated a queer audience segment, and relied upon queer imagery to court this and other groups of consumers. This interpretation departs from existing literatures on the interwar men’s press, and suggests an awareness and exploitation of a queer consumer long before this became a valued market segment in the last couple decades.

Workshop Questions/Subjects: The Pink Economy/ Queer Consumption What has been the role of ... more Workshop Questions/Subjects:

The Pink Economy/ Queer Consumption

What has been the role of the Pink Economy in the Market Economy? Can we speak of a Pink Economy before the gay-liberation movement? What is the history, development, and significance of queer consumption? What is queer about queer consumption?

Consumption in the Interwar Period

Between pre-WWI market expansion and post-WWII austerity is a period underdeveloped by scholars of consumption, when understandings of consumption and citizenship, the market and economics, and gender and sexuality were all shifting. How does examining the interrelation of these factors help us re-examine the importance of the interwar period, particularly in manufacturing new cultural frameworks at the heart of post-war society? And what impact would they have on the continuing development of mass consumer culture in the twentieth century?

Having slept little, enjoying only a fitful and restless sleep, Jonathan Harker got up to shave. ... more Having slept little, enjoying only a fitful and restless sleep, Jonathan Harker got up to shave. He was startled by the appearance behind him of his host, the Count Dracula, whose reflection had not appeared in his shaving mirror.

"In starting I had cut myself slightly, but did not notice it at the moment. … the cut had bled a little, and the blood was trickling over my chin. I laid down the razor, turning as I did so half round to look for some sticking plaster. When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demonic fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat. "

It is significant that our first awareness in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) of the danger in which Jonathan Harker finds himself is realized while he is shaving. This paper will argue that shaving and shaving product advertisements are particularly revealing, offering insights into fin-de-siècle English culture and masculinities. We can see multiple masculinities identified in the iconography and promotional text of these ads. Only apparently contradictory, these representations of masculinity served to manage social and cultural pressures which were equally inconsistent, contradictory, and vague. Imperial examples of masculinity existed comfortably beside representations of domestic masculinity. Men were exhorted to be both modern and traditional. It is, then, through consumerism generally, and shaving imagery particularly, that we can explore hegemonic masculinity and recognize in it a greater malleability than historians often acknowledge. These inconsistencies and apparent contradictions, not necessarily signs of a perpetual state of crisis, may indicate instead continuing power.

The Vancouver Courier, Oct 20, 2004

Daily Herald, Aug 20, 2004

The Press and Journal, Aug 14, 2004

COURSE DESCRIPTION This course surveys the major political, diplomatic, social, economic, and cu... more COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course surveys the major political, diplomatic, social, economic, and cultural developments of twentieth-century Europe. Topics covered include Colonialism and European Empires; the Russian Revolution and the Origins of Communism; the First World War and the Division of Europe; the Economic and Political Crises of the 1920s and 1930s; Women and Minorities in Europe; and the Origins of WWII. Students will read a variety of primary texts related to each topic as well as a textbook and other sources. Written assignments will emphasize the development of research, critical thinking and strong writing skills. Seminar days and group discussions will further foster analysis and communication skills while promoting the expression of a variety of opinions and perspectives.

COURSE DESCRIPTION This course surveys the major political, diplomatic, social, economic, and cu... more COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course surveys the major political, diplomatic, social, economic, and cultural developments of twentieth-century Europe. Topics covered include the Second World War and the Holocaust; the Cold War; the Rise of Communism; Empire and Decolonization; the Social Movements of the 1960s; and the Fall of Communism and its consequences; Women and Minorities in Europe; Europe after Communism; and the Future of Europe. Students will read a variety of primary texts related to each topic as well as a textbook and other secondary sources. Writing assignments will emphasize the development of research and communication skills.

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This is an upper-division course that examines gender and sexuality in conte... more COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This is an upper-division course that examines gender and sexuality in contemporary Europe. We will consider the experience of war, fascism, reconstruction and consumerism as well as the effects of political, economic and social change on understandings and experiences of gender and sexuality. Our discussions will seek to understand the effects of these issues on both women and men, femininity and masculinity, as well as heterosexuality and homosexuality.
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COURSE DESCRIPTION Since the 1990s, scholars have increasingly accepted that masculinity, like f... more COURSE DESCRIPTION
Since the 1990s, scholars have increasingly accepted that masculinity, like femininity, is a social construct subject to dynamic historical and cultural forces. This course will consider these forces by examining understandings and experiences of masculinity in the modern period from the seventeenth century to the present. Our goal will be to understand conceptions of masculinities, and how they change across time and space, in both specific national but also global contexts. To do so, we will consider: moments of political and economic change, warfare and social turmoil, legacies of colonialism, capitalism and consumer culture, and sexuality, among other themes.

COURSE OBJECTIVES
In this course we will ask: What constitutes masculinity or masculinities? Does masculinity change over time or is it an historical constant? How is masculinity historically and culturally specific? What pressures most influenced understandings and experiences of masculinity at particular moments? In the process of answering these questions, we will examine scholarly work relying upon a variety of research methods, and various forms of historical evidence. The goals of this course, then, are multiple: to understand the nature of masculinity as an historical phenomenon; to consider historical approaches to the study of gender; to examine the multiple research methods and historical sources used to investigate gender and masculinity.

COURSE DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES This course will explore a wide range of experiences and under... more COURSE DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES
This course will explore a wide range of experiences and understandings of gender variance and same-sex desire though an examination of documents and readings from various regions and periods. In this course we will ask: How was gender variance and same-sex desire experienced and understood in different cultures and at different times? What social function might they have offered in particular cultures and periods? In what ways did individuals who experienced gender variance or same-sex desire identify themselves (or not), and how did society characterize them? In the process of answering these questions, we will examine an interdisciplinary range of scholarly work relying upon a variety of research methods, and multiple forms of evidence.

COURSE DESCRIPTION In a time of critical concern about the effects of consumer capitalism and al... more COURSE DESCRIPTION
In a time of critical concern about the effects of consumer capitalism and also ongoing interest in the civil rights of gays and lesbians, it is remarkable that we know so little about the relationship between the two. The goal of this upper-division course is threefold. First, it identifies the significant relationship between consumer capitalism and homosexuality. Second, we will consider the fullest range of discourses and debates on homosexuality and the public commercial sphere, including progressive, conservative, and homophobic perspectives. Finally, we will explore the long-term relationship between consumer capitalism and homosexuality going beyond 1970s and the onset of the gay liberation movement.