Why do we choose to remember the witty and glamorous Wilde, and to forget the Machiavellian, anti-Semitic, and louche Bosie? And more crucially, why do we assume that Wilde’s life and attitudes shaped the track record of the project of homosexuality better than Bosie’s? Bosie was hardly the first gay to become obsessed with far-right and racist politics, or to confuse liberation with the freedom to live out his own desires and elevated class status.īad Gays is a book about such characters, a book about the gay people in history who do not flatter us, and whom we cannot make into heroes: the liars, the powerful, the criminal, and the successful. No less than Wilde, Bosie shaped and was shaped by the sexual attitudes and cultures of his time, and Bosie’s later life of far-right political involvement is just as unpleasant and illuminating as his years with Oscar.įor years, gay people have remembered Oscar as one of their own, but neglected Bosie as someone who has anything to tell us about how homosexuality came to be. Indeed, it was actually Bosie, and not Wilde, who had coined the term “the love that dare not speak its name” in one of his poems. Yet Bosie-the man, his desires, his attitudes, and his foibles-was just as integral to the eruption of homosexuality into the public sphere as was Wilde. Such a statement can almost be seen as a rallying cry for the century of LGBTQ rights activism that was to follow, and Wilde became one of its first martyrs.īosie became a footnote in the story: an embodiment of “evil twink energy,” a poisoned apple whose path through life left a wake of destruction that led to the great hero’s downfall. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as “the love that dare not speak its name,” and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. But at the core of Wilde’s story is his love for a terrible young man, a love that drove him close to madness and sparked the wildfire of events that led to his ruin. For that, conservative forces succeeded in destroying him. Wilde was one of the first men in British society to give a creative form to a sexuality that barely yet understood itself, let alone was understood or discussed by straight people.
It’s right and proper that we remember the role Wilde played within an otherwise staid and repressive Victorian culture, as well as the important, pioneering work he did describing, in public, a form of same-sex desire that otherwise lay hidden and criminalized on the margins. Less than a decade after he had reached the heights of literary stardom, Wilde was dead. Upon release, he fled into exile, living in penury under an assumed name. Sentenced to two years of backbreaking hard labor, Wilde was spat at by strangers as he was transported via train to jail. Yet within five years, Wilde’s reputation, and his health, were destroyed. England regarded this sparkling Irishman with a combination of fascination, admiration, and horror, but no one could deny he was becoming a titan of the national culture. He had successfully published works of prose and collections of poetry, and was preparing his first novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, for publication, a masterful account of a Faustian bargain dripping with desire, vanity, and corruption. For a decade he had been the talk of London, a literary wit who pioneered the fashion and philosophy of aestheticism. In 1891, Oscar Wilde’s star was on the rise.