Homosexuality and the Scottish Periodical Press 1880-1930

Citation

Shaw M (2024) Homosexuality and the Scottish Periodical Press 1880-1930. [Blog Post] 04.10.2024. https://queerscotland.com/2024/10/04/homosexuality-and-the-scottish-press-1880-1930/

Abstract
First paragraph: In his History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault famously critiqued the ‘repressive hypothesis’. Far from simply being repressed or restricted over the nineteenth to twentieth centuries, Foucault argued that there was a proliferation of discussion on sexuality at this time, an ‘incitement to speak about it’. I’ve often wondered about how this idea might apply to Scotland, which is sometimes portrayed as a nation that was either silent or quiet on homosexuality before the 1960s. How extensively would homosexuality have been discussed in Scotland between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, and in what contexts? How would it have been alluded to? Was the treatment always hostile? And what materials might still exist to help us understand these discourses today?