![]() ![]() But in a single stroke, not only was love between men illegal, but anything referring to this love became obscene, unprintable, unspeakable. New York Times best-selling author Naomi Wolf’s Outrages is the story, brilliantly told, of why this two-pronged State repression took hold-first in England and spreading quickly to America-and why it was attached so dramatically, for the first time, to homosexual men.īefore 1857 it wasn’t ‘homosexuality’ that was a crime, but simply the act of sodomy. In the same year, the concept of the “obscene” was coined. Until 1857, the State did not link the idea of ‘homosexuality’ to deviancy. The GoodReads blurb for this book reads, as of Friday evening: Rather, Wolf learned about her gaffe on air, during an interview with Matthew Sweet on BBC’s “Arts & Ideas.” Wolf’s lack of understanding and subsequent inaccurate portrayal of history has broad ramifications for how we regard academic works and new views on history. She didn’t learn about this regrettable lapse in research on her own, fact-checking done by her publisher, or a kind friend pulling her aside and asking if she was really sure she grasped the nuances of Victorian England’s sentencing guidelines. But I read every Old Bailey record throughout the 19th century, so I know that not only did they continue they got worse.” She covers this assertion in her book, but as a recent interview revealed, it rested on her misunderstanding of the legal term “death recorded” in the records.Įveryone listen to Naomi Wolf realize on live radio that the historical thesis of the book she's there to promote is based on her misunderstanding a legal term /a3tB77g3c1 ![]() Wolf initially alleged that “People widely believe that the last executions for sodomy were in 1830. No Victorian man was ever executed for sodomy. This is a big claim that goes against every history of the subject I have read, and it is wrong. It is supposedly about the “dramatic buried story of gay history,” but it appears she got her history very, very wrong.įor the record: Outrages says that the Victorians executed men for having sex with each other. ![]() Naomi Wolf’s latest book “Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalisation of Love” is the center of attention for a reason no writer wants to be widely discussed: her book contains incorrect information and a faulty premise. ![]()
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