Being Gay in the Thirties in London

[PeterRS]

Quite by chance I came across this rather fascinating short film highlighting the difference between the ease with which homosexuals mixed in London in the 1930s compared to the much stricter climate that existed in the 1950s. It was made by London Weekend Television in 1981 and inevitably considers homosexual men as of that time.

The video explains why views on homosexuals changed as the works of sexologists like Freud slowly began to seep outside academia after the Second World War. The word "homosexual" became much better known, along with such terms as inverts and perversion. Very quickly the public would become obsessed with the idea of dangerous effeminate homosexuals corrupting those around them. With spies like Guy Burgess being known homosexuals, the idea of homosexuals also being traitors mutiplied. In 1954 police arrested ten times more homosexual men than in the 1930s. So those interviewed in the film regard the 1930s in a much more favourable light.

[thaiophilus]

Not "homosexuals"; that word couldn't stand on its own. It was always "practising homosexuals", "predatory homosexuals", "avowed homosexuals" or some such Homeric epithet 🙄. And they never had friends, only "rings" .