World war 2 gay males pictures
“Gee!! I Wish I Were A Man”: Queer Americans in World War II
June is Pride Month and festivals and parades are happening across the earth in celebration of LGBTQA+ Pride. But Pride didn’t start as a march, it started as a protest with the Stonewall Riots in 1969 and many historians posit that the roots of these LGBT activists can be found in the Planet War II experiences of gays men and lesbians in the American military.
Anti-sodomy laws and regulations had been around since the Revolutionary War, leading in some cases to dishonorable discharge, courts-martial, or imprisonment for military men create having sex with other men. However, until 1942, no specific proviso barred homosexuals from serving in the military. With the growing acceptance of the validity of psychoanalysis in the medical profession in the 1920s and 1930s, attitudes towards sodomy and homosexual individuals had changed. In 1942, the relatively new profession of military psychiatrists warned of the “psychopathic personality disorders” that would make homosexuals unfit to fight. The military’s policy that homosexual acts were a crime that merited discharge gave way to a psychiatrist-controlled theory tha
A Gay Soldier's Story
A male lover soldier's story
PETER TATCHELL tells the moving story of a gay soldier during WW2, PRIVATE DUDLEY CAVE.
Over five million men served in the British armed forces during Earth War 2. Of these, it's likely that at least 250,000 were lgbtq+ or bisexual (based on projections from the 1990-91 National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles which found that six per cent of men state having had homosexual experiences).
A friend of mine, Dudley Cave, who died a few years back, was one of these many gay soldiers.
Conscripted in 1941, aged 20 he joined the Royal Army Ordnance Corps as a driver.
Before his death, he told me his story, with a mixture of pride and sorrow. I retell it here, in remembrance of a good friend.
Having risked his life during WW2, and nearly died in a Japanese POW camp, Cave was angry that once the war was over Britain's gay soldiers were persecuted and jailed by the military authorities.
"They used us when it suited them, and then victimised us when the country was no longer in danger. I am glad I served but I am angry that military homophobia was allowed to wreck so many lives for over 50 years after we gave our all for a fr
Gay men at sea in WW2 - and raunchy divas. A minuscule of what you think of does you good, especially in wartime
Fighting Proudis the story of men in war. The few women who briefly appear in it are divas such as Bette Davis, who men emulated, or friends and supporters such as Elisabeth Welch, the mixed-race singer of Stormy Weather.
That means servicewomen with non-heterosexual identities, such as lesbian Wren Nancy Spain, are absent. That’s still a publication in search of an author.
This new rich publication devotes two chapters to queered men who were in sea-related work. They include musician George Melly (1926-2007) on aircraft carrier HMS Argus; and George Hayim (1920-2011), a millionaire idler slumming it among the 480 men on new cruiser HMS Cleopatra. After he left circa 1943 his (later) companion , Lt Cdr Anthony Heckstall-Smith (1904-1983) was also aboard.
Picture, left: George Melly as a young bloke, at his typewriter
Picture, right: Anthony Heckstall-Smith in later
Newly Published Portraits Document a Century of Gay Men in Love
“Loving” features around 300 photos that offer an intimate look at men’s love between the 1850s and 1950s
When Texas couple Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell stumbled onto a 1920s-era photograph in a Dallas antiques shop some 20 years ago, they were startled to see a relationship that looked much like theirs: two men, embracing and clearly in love.
As Dee Swann writes for the Washington Post, the image spoke to the couple about the history of love between men.
“The open expression of the love that they shared also revealed a moment of determination,” Nini and Treadwell say the Post. “Taking such a photo, during a second when they would have been less understood than they would be today, was not without risk. We were intrigued that a photo like this could have survived into the [21st] century. Who were they?”
In the decades that followed this initial discovery, the pair came across more than 2,800 photos of men in love—at first accidentally and later on purpose. The result of their trips to flea markets, shops, estate sales and family archives across Europe, Canada and the United States is a to
Given the introduction of conscription in Wonderful Britain in 1939, it is plain that tens of thousands of gender non-conforming men and women ended up in uniform despite gay activity, at least in the case of the former, being illegal. With a constant ask for for manpower in the armed forces, there is certainly evidence that the authorities were willing to turn a blind eye to a recruit’s sexuality at the required initial medical examination, even when it was manifestly obvious.
For example, Terry Gardener, who worked as a drag queen before the war and wanted to continue in production business, was advised by his friends to really camp it up and be outrageous in front of the medical board to ensure he would be rejected. Unfortunately for Gardener, despite his best bids, he was passed and sent into the Royal Navy as a fry. Indeed, it seems that in the event that a recruit’s queerness was identified by a medical board they were more likely than not to be accepted anyway because of a widespread belief that they could be straightened out by the rigours of military life.
Some of the richest sources of information we have for the experience of homosexual men and women during the war are the oral history