Book description
'A grisly, sobering, comprehensively researched new history.' - The New Yorker
Indecent Advances is a skilful hybrid of true crime and social history that examines the often-coded portrayal of crimes against gay men in the decades before Stonewall.
New York University professor and critic James Polchin illustrates how homosexuals were…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Indecent Advances as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
As with physique photographs, I never associated murder with gay history, but newspapers were full of reports of it, often in coded and lewd language, as early as the 1920s. The cases were virtually identical. An older man meets a younger, attractive one and invites him home. In a fit of “homosexual panic” after the older man’s “indecent advance” toward him, the younger kills the older but, tried, is found innocent, given a light sentence, or paroled. Juries, judges, newspaper reporters, and the police engaged in and promoted such extreme homophobia. Indecent Advances helped me understand a principal excuse our…
From Jim's list on gay history before Stonewall.
This is a great book for discovering the way that the American Justice System has handled the LGBT community and the crimes perpetrated against them over the years. This is a detailed example of the prejudices and hidden history of violence against the gay community in history. Like it’s title, Victims were quite often accused of having made indecent advances.
From Alan's list on covering the criminal justice system in America.
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