European Social Science History Conference

Aktivitet: Deltagit i eller arrangerat evenemangDeltagit i konferens

Beskrivning

Re-engaging with the Rent-boy in Queer History. Narratives of Transactional Sex in Stockholm c. 1951–1960

The so-called rent-boy, a youth that engaged in same-sex sexual acts for (often meagre) economical compensation, holds an important place in queer history. For large parts of the 19th and 20th centuries age and class were important differences in the structuring of same sex desire between men in Western Europe and North America.
At the same time fears of homosexual corruption of boys and young men has served as a nexus of moral panic and homophobia from the early 20th century well into our own time. During large parts of the 20th dominant scientific, political and moral discourses on rent-boys portrayed them as heterosexual victims of predatory homosexual men. This understanding of male youth who sold sex was closely connected to the policing of homosexuality, especially during the lavender scare in the post-war decades.
Queer history typically acknowledges the existence of sex for sale, describes how it happened and its place within an urban queer life in the first half of the 20th century. These histories tend to put the buyer of sex in focus and in a way relegates the youth and boys who sold sex to the background. To the extent that transactional sex is analysed, it tends to be portrayed as a willing exchange stressing the agency and/or the homosexuality of rent-boys. However, I would argue that this older tradition of queer history should be read within a wider context of a perceived need to defend won rights by disassociating gay identity from pederasty and by stressing the homosexual identity and agency of the rent-boys.
Historian Rachel Cleves argues that there is a wider tendency in queer historiography that have “treated the history of modern pederasty as only relevant to queer history insofar as it signified a bogeyman that haunted the social acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults” (2020, 48). In relation to Cleves, I would argue that the downplaying of difference between adult men who bought and minors who sold sex run the risk of strengthening a narrative of a homogenous gay historical subjectivity.

Thus, the purpose of this paper is to make an argument for an intersectional queer history of transactional sex by engaging analytically with asymmetrical power relations based on differences of age and social vulnerability. I will do so by bringing forward narratives of transactional sex in Stockholm during the 1950s, as told by youths who were suspected of selling sex. While these aren’t subaltern voices from the past (but rather printed papers in a police archive) the police reports are the closest thing available for a historian seeking to show how these youths navigated between victimhood and agency, the complexities of these lives and the daily living conditions of youths who traded sex for cash, a hot meal or a bed for the night.
Period2023 apr. 15
Typ av evenemangKonferens
Konferensnummer14
PlatsGöteborg, SverigeVisa på karta
OmfattningInternationell

Ämnesklassifikation (UKÄ)

  • Historia
  • Genusstudier

Fria nyckelord

  • Pojkprostituerade
  • Homosexkommissionen
  • Stockholm
  • 1950-tal