¹ See my comments on this period in Weeks, Jeffrey, “Making the Human Gesture: History, Sexuality and Social Justice,” History Workshop Journal 70 (Autumn 2010): 5–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² An obvious exception, whose career trajectory confirms the point, is Bray, Alan, whose Homosexuality in Renaissance England (London, 1982) made an enormous impact on early modern researchGoogle Scholar. Until his early retirement from work owing to ill health, he was a career civil servant, not simply marginal to but outside the academy.

³ Weeks, Jeffrey, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Plummer, Ken, ed., The Making of the Modern Homosexual (London, 1981)Google Scholar.

⁴ Here I draw on my discussion of “queer” in Weeks, Jeffrey, The Languages of Sexuality (London, 2011), 144–46Google Scholar.

⁵ See discussion of various terms used in the 1940s and 1950s in Houlbrook, Matt, Queer London: Pleasures and Perils in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918–1957 (London and New York, 2005)Google Scholar.

⁶ See Warner, Michael, ed., Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory (Minneapolis and London, 1993), xxiiGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Seidman, Steven, ed., Queer Theory/Sociology (Oxford and Cambridge, 1996)Google Scholar.

⁸ Halperin, David M., Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (Oxford and New York, 1996), 62Google Scholar.

⁹ Warner, Michael, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics and the Ethics of Queer Life (New York, 1999)Google Scholar; Weeks, Jeffrey, Invented Moralities: Sexual Values in an Age of Uncertainty (London and New York, 1995), 115Google Scholar. Key texts in theorizing the binary include Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosexual Desire (New York, 1985)Google Scholar; Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley, 1990)Google Scholar; and Dollimore, Jonathan, Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault (Oxford, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Neither author was a historian.

¹⁰ This is particularly prevalent in Houlbrook, Queer London, a major work of scholarship, which is structured around the assumption that the Wolfenden agenda after 1957 represented a narrowing and normalization of same-sex activities that destroyed the fluidity and indeterminacy of earlier times. See discussion in Waters, Chris, “Distance and Desire in the New British Queer History,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14, no. 1 (2007): 139–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a defense of nostalgia in a wider perspective of sexual history, echoing and endorsing Houlbrook’s position, see Szreter, Simon and Fisher, Kate, Sex before the Sexual Revolution: Intimate Life in England, 1918–1963 (Cambridge and New York, 2010), 50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ This section follows the argument I make in Weeks, “Making the Human Gesture,” 12–16.

¹² Rowse, A. L., Homosexuals in History: A Study of Ambivalence in Society, Literature, and the Arts (London, 1977)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the situation as I saw it at the beginning of the 1980s, see Jeffrey Weeks, “Discourse, Desire and Sexual Deviance: Some Problems in a History of Sexuality,” in Plummer, The Making, 76–111.

¹³ Lafitte, François, “Homosexuality and the Law,” British Journal of Delinquency 9 (1958–59): 8Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Weeks, Coming Out, 2.

¹⁵ Rowbotham, Sheila, Hidden from History: 300 Years of Women’s Oppression and the Fight against It (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Duberman, Martin, Vicinus, Martha B., and Chauncey, George, eds., Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past (New York, 1989)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ I was associated with the History Workshop movement from the late-1970s and a member of the editorial collective of History Workshop Journal throughout the 1980s. The journal published my first article on homosexual history in its first edition: Weeks, Jeffrey, “Sins and Diseases: Some Notes on Male Homosexuality in Nineteenth Century England,” History Workshop Journal 1 (Spring, 1976): 211–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Weeks, , “Making the Human Gesture.” Radical History Review has a similar role in the United States, and it is noticeable that it was one of the first journals to publish the new sexual history: see Radical History Review 20 (Spring/Summer 1979), “Special Issue: Sexuality in History,” with contributions, inter alia, from Robert A. Padgug, E. P. Thompson, Blanche Wiesen Cook, Ellen Ross, Ann Barr Snitow, Donna Haraway, and myself.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Katz, Jonathan Ned, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the USA (New York, 1976)Google Scholar; Gay/Lesbian Almanac (New York, 1983).

¹⁸ Katz, Gay American History, 1–2.

¹⁹ For a brief overview of Bérubé’s work, see the obituary notice I wrote: Weeks, Jeffrey, “Allan Bérubé (1946–2007),” History Workshop Journal 69 (Spring 2010): 294–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ Weeks, Jeffrey and Porter, Kevin, Between the Acts: Lives of Homosexual Men, 1885–1967 (London, 1998)Google Scholar; Hall Carpenter Archives, Walking after Midnight: Gay Men’s Life Stories (London, 1989)Google Scholar; Hall Carpenter Archives, Inventing Ourselves: Lesbian Life Stories (London, 1989)Google Scholar. For a local community history, see Brighton Ourstory Project, Daring Hearts: Lesbian and Gay Lives in the 1950s and 1960s (Brighton, 1992).

²¹ For overviews of recent scholarship in British lesbian and gay history, see Cook, Matt, Mills, Robert, Trumbach, Randolph, and Cocks, H. G., A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex between Men since the Middle Ages (Oxford and Westport, CT, 2007)Google Scholar, and Jennings, Rebecca, A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and Sex between Women since 1500 (Oxford and Westport, CT, 2007)Google Scholar. It is notable that community development projects with older lesbians and gay men frequently involve “memory work,” while LGBT History Month in Britain every February has become an important institution, sponsored by prominent public bodies such as the Metropolitan Police.

²² Halperin, David M., How to Do the History of Homosexuality (Chicago and London, 2002), 11Google Scholar.

²³ For an overview of the essentialist/constructionist controversy, see essays in Altman, Dennis et al. , Homosexuality, Which Homosexuality? (London, 1989)Google Scholar; and Stein, Edward, ed., Forms of Desire: Sexual Orientation and the Social Construction Controversy (New York and London, 1992)Google Scholar. For summary of the main issues, which I have drawn on in this discussion, see “Social Construction, ” in Weeks, The Languages of Sexuality, 204–8.

²⁴ McIntosh, Mary, “The Homosexual Role,” Social Problems 16, no. 2 (Fall 1968): 182–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ See Weeks, Coming Out, 3–4; Trumbach, Randolph, “London’s Sodomites: Homosexual Behavior and Western Culture in the 18th Century,” Journal of Social History 11, no. 1 (Fall 1977): 1–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Examples of the anthologization of the McIntosh essay include Plummer, The Making, and Stein, Forms of Desire. For an assessment of McIntosh’s work, see Weeks, Jeffrey, “Mary McIntosh and the ‘Homosexual Role,’” in Making Sexual History (Cambridge, 2000), 53–74Google Scholar.

²⁶ Gagnon, John H. and Simon, William, Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources of Human Sexuality (London, 1974)Google Scholar.

²⁷ Plummer, Kenneth, Sexual Stigma: An Interactionist Account (London, 1975)Google Scholar.

²⁸ Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction (London, 1979)Google Scholar.

²⁹ The major exception was the American historian Boswell, John, who strongly argued for the continuities of gay history: see his Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago and London, 1980)Google Scholar; and Boswell, John, “Revolutions, Universals and Sexual Categories,” Salmagundi, nos. 58–59 (Fall 1982/Winter 1983): 89–113Google Scholar.

³⁰ Compare my argument in Weeks, “Making the Human Gesture,” 12–13.

³¹ See Rubin, Gayle, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, ed. Vance, Carole (Boston and London, 1984), 267–319Google Scholar. For her later reflections on this essay, see Rubin, Gayle, “Blood under the Bridge: Reflections on ‘Thinking Sex,’” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 17, no. 1 (2011): 15–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The journal as a whole is a special issue on the impact of Rubin’s essay.

³² See the contributions to Taylor, Yvette, Hines, Sally, and Casey, Mark, eds., Theorizing Intersectionality and Sexuality (London, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³³ Weeks, Coming Out, 1.

³⁴ Plummer, The Making, 11–12.

³⁵ Ibid., 29.

³⁶ Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York and London, 1990)Google Scholar; Weeks, Jeffrey, Invented Moralities: Sexual Values in an Age of Uncertainty (London and New York, 1995)Google Scholar.

³⁷ Wildeblood, Peter, A Way of Life (London, 1956)Google Scholar.

³⁸ For a review of recent writings that critique my early work, see Bristow, Joseph, “Remapping the Sites of Modern Gay History: Legal Reform, Medico-Legal Thought, Homosexual Scandal, Erotic Geography,” Journal of British Studies 46, no. 1 (2007): 116–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Waters, “Distance and Desire.” What Waters has called the “New British Queer History” is represented, inter alia, by the following works: Brady, Sean, Masculinity and Male Homosexuality in Britain, 1861–1913 (London, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cocks, H. G., Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire in the 19th Century (London and New York, 2003)Google Scholar; Cook, Matt, London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885–1914 (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar; Houlbrook, Matt, Queer LondonGoogle Scholar. On the reevaluation of modern lesbian history, see Vicinus, Martha, Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778–1928 (Chicago and London, 2004)Google Scholar; Doan, Laura, Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of a Modern English Lesbian Culture (New York and Chichester, 2001)Google Scholar; and Oram, Alison, Her Husband Was a Woman! Women’s Gender-crossing in Modern British Popular Culture (London and New York, 2007)Google Scholar.

³⁹ For a more detailed discussion, see Weeks, Jeffrey, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800, 3rd ed. (Harlow, 2012), esp. chap. 6, “The Construction of Homosexuality.”Google Scholar

⁴⁰ The work of Randolph Trumbach has been central to our understanding of the significance of developments in the eighteenth century. See “London’s Sodomites.” See also his “Modern Sodomy: The Origins of Homosexuality, 1700–1800,” in Cook et al., A Gay History of Britain, 77–106; “London’s Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making of Modern Culture,” in Bodyguards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, ed. Epstein, Julia and Straub, Kristina (New York and London, 1991): and for the wider context Trumbach’s book, Sex and the Gender Revolution, vol. 2Google Scholar, Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London (Chicago and London, 1998)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Cocks, Nameless Offences; Brady, Masculinity; Upchurch, Charles, Before Wilde: Sex between Men in Britain’s Age of Reform (Los Angeles and Berkeley, 2009)Google Scholar.

⁴² Cocks, Nameless Offences, 90.

⁴³ Ibid., 48–51.

⁴⁴ Cook, London, 44.

⁴⁵ For a powerful new account of the complex sexual climate in the London of the 1950s, see Mort, Frank, Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society (London, 2010)Google Scholar. See also the discussion in Houlbrook, Queer London; and Waters, “Distance and Desire,” 149–50.

⁴⁶ On the role of sexology, see Weeks, Jeffrey, Sexuality and Its Discontents: Meanings, Myths and Modern Sexualities (London, 1985CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and Waters, Chris, “Sexology,” in Palgrave Advances in the Modern History of Sexuality, ed. Cocks, H. G. and Houlbrook, Matt (Basingstoke and New York, 2006), 41–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁷ Weeks, Coming Out, 23–32.

⁴⁸ The classic example of this is provided by Krafft-Ebing, who modified his views of homosexuality in consecutive editions of his Psychopathia Sexualis, in large part as a result of dialogue with his patients and case studies. See Oosterhuis, Harry, Stepchildren of Nature: Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the Making of Sexual Identity (Chicago, 2000)Google Scholar. The same is true of other pioneering writers on sexuality, including Havelock Ellis and Freud.

⁴⁹ Matt Cook, London, convincingly documents the role of London at the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. See also Kaplan, Morris, Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love, and Scandal in Wilde Times (Ithaca, NY, 2005)Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Laura Doan, Fashioning Sapphism.

⁵¹ See Plummer, The Making. The relevant chapters are: Jeffrey Weeks and Kenneth Plummer interview Mary McIntosh, “Postscript: ‘The Homosexual Role’ Revisited,” 44–49; Kenneth Plummer, “Homosexual Categories: Some Research Problems in the Labelling Perspective of Homosexuality,” 53–75; Annabel Faraday, “Liberating Lesbian Research,” 112–29; John Marshall, “Pansies, Perverts and Macho Men: Changing Conceptions of Male Homosexuality,” 133–54; Dave King, “Gender Confusions: Psychological and Psychiatric Conceptions of Transvestism a Transsexualism,” 155–83; and Gregg Blachford, “Male Dominance and the Gay World,” 184–210.

⁵² Weeks, “Discourse,” 76–111.

⁵³ Waters, “Distance and Desire,” 141.

⁵⁴ Caudewell, Christopher, Studies and Further Studies in a Dying Culture (New York and London, 1971), 129Google Scholar, quoted in Weeks, Coming Out, 3.

⁵⁵ Katz, Gay American History, 8.

⁵⁶ Weeks, Coming Out, 79.