Joseph Fischel reflects on histories of sexual ethics, pederasty, and power in this first post in our online symposium on Rachel Hope Cleves’s Unspeakable: A Life Beyond Sexual Morality.

Joseph Fischel reflects on histories of sexual ethics, pederasty, and power in this first post in our online symposium on Rachel Hope Cleves’s Unspeakable: A Life Beyond Sexual Morality.
As historians know, the archive is ruthless in preserving categories over time.
In 1970s United States gay patrol units rallied around their whiteness to produce a sense of safety.
The Chatterley trial hinged on the disavowing or defending of ‘deviant’ sexual acts within the novel, making it a distinctly queer case.
Sex workers living under these regimes have to keep selling sex in a climate made significantly more hostile by further criminalization.
On Thursday afternoon, August 12, 1982, Amber Hollibaugh called Dorothy Allison to finalize cat-sitting arrangements for Alice B. Toklas, the cat.
Coming out at work was challenging enough but it was often overlooked in the early gay liberation movement.