Review by Choice Review
Polchin utilizes a variety of media sources, including news articles and tabloid magazines from across the county, the Kinsey Reports, and a series of scrapbooks compiled by the writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten about homosexual men and their lives, including crimes against them. Beginning with an exploration of a 1920s entrapment scheme involving US Navy servicemen up to the 1977 assassination of San Francisco supervisor and gay rights activist Harvey Milk, this work traces how changing theories about the origins of a homosexual orientation, popular theories about deviancy and sex crimes, and other social pressures and opinions affected the portrayals of gay men as victims. It explores how stereotypes of effeminacy, class, and racial background interacted with society's expectations of what a "real (read heterosexual) man should be and how the reading public assigned blame to the LGBTQ victims." Defense lawyers used the idea of "homosexual panic" to get their clients out of prison time. Useful history resource for public and undergraduate level libraries; extensive footnotes cite a host of primary resources useful for a graduate level researcher. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers; upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Amanda B. Johnson, independent scholar
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Polchin tells a sad story of violence perpetrated against gay men in the decades between the end of WWI and the Stonewall riots. A pattern quickly emerges: a gay man invites another man or men to his home or, more often, his hotel room and is subsequently found murdered. If the murderer was caught, he offered a homosexual panic defense, alleging he was moved to violence when his host made indecent advances. The result was often a mitigated sentence or a finding of innocence. Polchin discovers seemingly countless examples of such incidents in the press of the period. Not all of the incidents he records followed this pattern, however. One of the more celebrated exceptions was the murder of the incarcerated Richard Loeb (of Leopold and Loeb notoriety) by a fellow prisoner who once again used the homosexual-panic defense. In all of these cases, the victim is thus turned into the perpetrator. The injustice is appalling. Polchin's extraordinarily well-researched account offers a valuable contribution to both social and previously neglected gay history.--Michael Cart Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this insightful but somewhat gruesome debut work, cultural historian Polchin teases out details of the lives of urban, mostly white gay men from the 1920s through the 1960s via an analysis of newspapers' high-profile, "moral outrage and fascination"-driven true crime reports. As he writes, these stories "reflected and amplified the era's social prejudices and state-sanctioned discriminations" and showed the dangers, such as opportunistic thieves and police entrapment, that "queer men were forced to navigate... in their search for sexual adventure and social life." He looks at cultural trends, such as the courtroom defense of "acute homosexual panic" in response to "indecent advances" from the victim, but also digs deeply into individual high-profile cases, often quoting the most lurid details from the original reporting, which will likely delight true crime fans and satisfy academics but deeply disturb other readers. Polchin finishes by recounting the beginnings of progress, as the 1948 Kinsey Report began to influence the understanding of sexuality, the Mattachine Society promoted the idea of homosexuals as a social minority, and ONE magazine looked critically at newspaper reports of crime and highlighted a "collective experience of injury and abuse." Polchin's investigation of several decades of queer American life is an intelligent but darkly voyeuristic experience. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Polchin (liberal studies, New York Univ.) presents a reflective, thoughtful first book that perfectly blends true crime and the history of discrimination against gay men in the 20th century. The author takes a deep dive into the specific crimes against gay men and how their deaths fed the competing cultural narratives of the time; that homosexuality was both a crime and a mental illness. Using these two narratives and the salacious nature of true crime, the public began to see homosexuality as a social and moral issue instead of a personal one. Polchin expertly uses men's stories between World War I and the Stonewall Riots to prove that the fight for equal treatment is not over, and that the history of the LGBTQ+ movement is not always one of activism and celebration. In fact, the LGBTQ+ community is fighting against the stereotypes built on the deaths of these men. VERDICT This insightful history of crimes perpetrated against gay men is essential for social history fans. Readers who enjoy well-researched, deliberate social commentary will appreciate Polchin's enlightening and descriptive style.--Ahliah Bratzler, Indianapolis P.L.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A cultural historian examines true-crime stories from the early- and mid-20th-century press to recover a little-discussed history of violence against gay men."Queer history," writes Polchin (Liberal Studies/New York Univ.), "has often focused on narratives of progress in which sexual minorities prosper despite the social injuries done to them." In his first book the author takes a different tack, analyzing true-crime newspaper narratives to understand how the American press "shaped ideas of morality and immorality" about gay men. He begins around 1920, when the Justice Department grouped homosexuals with political subversives and a medical establishment steeped in Freudian theory promoted ideas about "homosexual panic (panic due to the pressure of uncontrollable perverse sexual cravings)," which later evolved into an in-court defense used by (straight) men charged with murder or assault. In the meantime, queer crime stories offered readers glimpses into a salacious demimonde. In the 1930s, increasingly sensationalized queer crime stories embodied what Polchin posits were emergent fears about sexual psychopaths. This led to gay men being arrested on minor charges and enduring "forced psychological treatments meant to control and cure abnormal sexual desires." By the 1940s, the trope of segregation began to emerge in queer crime accounts. Accounts of black men injured by male companions "rarely made headlines beyond the African-American press." By the 1950s, homosexual panic was officially listed as a psychological disorder in the first edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which was largely influenced by a guidebook assembled by the military. Yet on the edges of this oppressively homophobic world, LGBT artists like photographer Carl Van Vechten observed the suffering of queer men and filled scrapbooks with gay crime news stories meant to serve as an "unofficial history of queer life in mid-century America." Thoughtful, accessible and well-researched, Polchin's book offers useful insight into some of the lesser-known cultural currents that gave rise to the gay rights movement.An enlighteningly provocative cultural history. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
