Men Like That: A Southern Queer History

About this book

We dont usually associate thriving queer culture with rural America but John Howards unparalleled history of queer life in the South persuasively debunks the myth that same-sex desires cant find expression outside the big city. In fact this book shows that the nominally conservative institutions of small-town lifehome church school and workplacewere the very sites where queer sexuality flourished. As Howard recounts the life stories of the ordinary and the famous often in their own words he also locates the material traces of queer sexuality in the landscape: from the farmhouse to the church social from sports facilities to roadside rest areas. Spanning four decades Men Like That complicates traditional notions of a post-WWII conformist wave in America. Howard argues that the 1950s for example were a period of vibrant queer networking in Mississippi while during the so-called "free love" 1960s homosexuals faced aggressive oppression. When queer sex was linked to racial agitation and when key civil rights leaders were implicated in homosexual acts authorities cracked down and literally ran the accused out of town. In addition to firsthand accounts Men Like That finds representations of homosexuality in regional pulp fiction and artwork as well as in the number one pop song about a suicidal youth who jumps off the Tallahatchie Bridge. And Howard offers frank unprecedented assessments of outrageous public scandals: a conservative U.S. congressman caught in the act in Washington and a white candidate for governor accused of patronizing black transgender sex workers. The first book-length history of the queer South Men Like That completely reorients our presuppositions about gay identity and about the dynamics of country life.