Bad Gays

Christmas Special: Colonel Victor Barker

For a special episode, Huw is joined the writer and filmmaker Juliet Jacques to discuss Colonel Victor Barker. 
 
As a military nurse, ambulance driver, kennelman, horse trainer, fascist, car salesman, thief, and actor, Colonel Victor Barker was the embodiment of early 20th century upper-class British masculinity. But he became famous after his trial and imprisonment for committing perjury on his marriage certificate to his wife —because Victor Barker was assigned female at birth. Juliet and Huw explore his life, and the questions it raises around gender identity a century ago.
 
SOURCES:
 
Collis, Rose. Colonel Barker's Monstrous Regiment: A Tale of Female Husbandry, Boston: Little, Brown Book Group, 2001 
 
Zagria. A Gender Variance Who's Who https://zagria.blogspot.com/
 
Oram, Alison: Her Husband was a Woman! Women's Gender-Crossing in Modern British Popular Culture, London: Routledge, 2008
 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
 

J. Edgar Hoover

The other polestar of human evil. "Justice is incidental to law and order." Johnny and Clyde. 

Piers Gaveston

The namesake of the secret dining society at Oxford where David Cameron may or may not have committed unspeakable acts with a pig. Perhaps you’ll have a clue to the themes of today’s episode when we tell you that the motto of the Piers Gaveston Society is "(Sane) non memini ne audisse unum alterum ita dilixisse" or, for those of us without a private school Latin education, "Truly, none remember hearing of a man enjoying another so much".

The Stonewall Colony

What happens when a political analysis that comes out of the politics of alliance ends up departing from alliance: in other words, when people think that making something “gay” is enough. The kinds of people that get forgotten and spoken over when a certain kind of essentialist gay politics are deployed. And even though this crackpot plan never came to pass, today's show, about the failed attempt to establish a gay nation in rural California, reveals some of the flaws at the heart of ‘70s radical gay politics. 

Nicky Crane

A young white London lad driven by a passion for extreme violence and racial hatred, who climbed pretty easily through the ranks of a small fascist party, and went on to become something of a big fish in the far-right's murky, polluted, poisonous pond. But in 1992, the Sun ran the following story, under a photo of Nicky Crane in his White Power vest: "Nazi Nick is a Pansy." 

Pim Fortuyn

The fairy godmother of the new European far-right. A vile racist named "The Greatest Dutchman of All Time" in a 2004 TV poll. A lens into how a particular version of homosexuality is compatibile with a particular kind of far-right politics – how a certain kind of “live and let live” attitude at the heart of white liberal gay politics can immediately turn into a wave of immigrant-bashing hatred that turns, inevitably, on queer people themselves. “I don’t hate Arab men," he said. "I even sleep with them.” 

Gordon of Khartoum

A colonialist and conqueror, upholder of ideals of English masculinity, and religious fanatic; possessed of a powerful death wish. “Yes, that is flesh, that is what I hate, and what makes me wish to die.”

Frederick the Great

Enlightenment monarch! Composer of hundreds of flute concertos. Emerged from the “sandbox of the Holy Roman Empire" to conquer vast swaths of Europe! Built a giant pink palace his wife wasn't allowed to visit. Worst dad in Bad Gays history? "Everything that speaks to eyes and touches hearts, Was found in the fond object that enflamed his parts." 

Pietro Aretino

A vituperative satirist who made kings tremble. Also, he wrote this:
My fingers are but stragglers at the rear,
Who go a-foraging for what they find;
And they are not ashamed to lag behind,
Since there’s no foe in front they need to fear.
They’ve wandered through a tufted valley near.
And you yourself have said they were most kind,
And so, I know, my lady will not mind
If they see other booty, nor think it queer. 
And yet, it may be, you prefer the Lance;
Then, let your stragglers reconnoiter, sweet,
And guide him like a blind man to safe cover.
He is no coward, since he takes a chance.
Though he, my dear, has neither eyes nor feet;
For a soldier always makes a perfect lover!

Andrew Cunanan

"The man who shot Versace." Vague intimations of homosexuality as a form of bloody death. A pure expression of the poisonous narcissism of American celebrity culture. The dark heart of evil twink energy. A black hole of gay narcissism. Black holes are attractors. We risk being sucked in.