Policing Public Sex by Dangerous Bedfellows

He had a delightful ability to bring to life the stories of the people he talked to through his animated readings of their words, and the combination of this with photos and archival materials in his slide show.

cities in the postwar years.īérubé’s research was based on the discovery of people’s letters and diaries, interviews with gay and lesbian veterans, and critical examination of declassified government documents. military with the label of “homosexual” expelled people from “straight” society, creating the basis for groups of people to begin to create openly gay and lesbian spaces in some of the larger U.S. This slide show was a groundbreaking investigation of how the new same-gender segregated contexts that men and women were thrown into in the military and war industry during the war mobilizations allowed for many “coming out” experiences.Īt the same time the purging of queers from the U.S. gay and lesbian experience in World War II, called Marching to A Different Drummer, at the Sex and the State lesbian and gay history conference in Toronto in 1985. I first met Allan Bérubé when he was doing his wonderful slide show on U.S. Sexuality, for him, was thought and practiced in relation to class, race and gender. Bérubé’s historical work, while centering on gay and queer experiences, always examined the ways in which sexuality, class, race and gender relations are made in and through each other. Some of his earliest work with the History Project was on women who cross-dressed and passed as men. Instead his remarkable skills grew out of his decade long involvement in the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project and the broader grassroots queer history movement based on developing ways to return our history to our communities.

He was not formally trained as a historian. Bérubé’s histories, as he put it, were about the lives of ordinary lesbians and gay men. He left us with major contributions of exciting historical work, but also important unfinished work that needs to be continued.īérubé’s allegiance was not to the academy but to the movement and community.

Gary Kinsman: Allan Bérubé, 1946–2007 Allan BérubéĪN INSPIRING AND broad-ranging queer historian, Allan Bérubé died at the age of 61 on December 11, 2007.

Policing Public Sex by Dangerous Bedfellows