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Methodology

The Case of the Sultry Mountie, or, We Need to Talk about Cecil

July, 2015 · By Justin Bengry

I never knew my great uncle Cecil Bengry. Affectionately known as Cic’, this bachelor uncle seems to have lived in the background of other people’s lives. Even the pictures of Cic’ in old age that I found among my own grandfather’s (his brother) papers are faded and overexposed, their physical condition seemingly recreating the fog that surrounds Cic’s life. We know that he spent most of his life caring for others: animals on the ranch, his mother in her old age, and his brother’s grandchildren in his own later years. They remembered Cic giving them treats of ‘sugar sandwiches’, and knew him as well as anyone could, yet they didn’t know if he had an education, if he had friends, even what he did during the day. He is remembered simply as ‘always there. Good to us.’ Though always around, Cic’ somehow remained unknown. When he died, Cic’ left only one record behind: a small cigarette tin of photos. Inside, along with a child’s glass marble and a few family pictures, were snapshots of numerous men, including one of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer I call the ‘sultry Mountie’.

Unlike every other photo in the tin box, the picture of the Mountie included no information: no caption, no name, no date. He simply stands there, anonymous, leaning casually against a wooden rail with hips thrust forward, looking confidently and directly at the camera. Posing for effect, he invites observation and perhaps objectification. I struggled to understand this image and the homosocial collection of photos with which it came. The tin of photos inspired me to organize, with Amy Tooth Murphy, workshops on what we called ‘Queer Inheritances’ at the London Metropolitan Archives in December 2014. We wondered: How do we discern a queer life from incomplete personal effects whose existence and content are often mediated by other family members? How do we, as queer inheritors, navigate lives lived before many could proclaim to be ‘out and proud’? Ultimately, I wondered, was Cecil queer?

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This post was originally published at “NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality” on 26 May 2015 and subsequently as ‘The Case of the Sultry Mountie: Doing Family History Queerly‘ on the Huffington Post on 24 June 2015.

Male Order: Tom of Finland and the Queer Iconography of Postage Stamps

April, 2014 · By Justin Bengry

On April 13, 2014, Itella Posti Oy, the Finnish postal service, announced the release in September of what are possibly the most openly erotic postage stamps to appear anywhere in mainstream circulation. The series of three stamps commemorate the work of Touko Laaksonen (1920-1991), better known as Tom of Finland (link NSFW). The Finnish stamps are remarkable for their unambiguous and deliberate depiction of homoerotic images, nudity, and dom/sub sexuality that Itella lauds as “confident and proud homoeroticism.” They are also remarkable for their memorialization of a queer man through explicit depictions of the erotic art for which he became an icon to other queer men around the world from the 1950s onward. But looking at the Tom of Finland stamps, and recognizing postage stamps as an incredibly accessible and widely distributed site for history and commemoration, it is worth considering how other queer men and women have recently been featured. How do postage stamps contribute to a public history of queer lives and sexualities?

Continue reading at NOTCHES…


This post was originally published at “NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality” on 14 April 2014.

 

Incoherent or Invigorated? The History of Sexuality

January, 2014 · By Justin Bengry

By what metric do we measure the vitality
of the History of Sexuality? If the overwhelming attendance at the launch of the new IHR seminar asking ‘What is the History of Sexuality?’ is anything to go by, it is far from dead, and scholars remain eager to further question what the field is, what it can be, and where it will go.

[Full disclosure: in addition to being an editor of this blog, I am also a co-convener of the IHR seminar and its social media dude.]

Tuesday evening I arrived at Senate House with fellow Notches editor Amy Tooth Murphy. At the door to the Court Room we stood gawping in surprise. The room was full beyond capacity with some folks spilling outside to stand or sit in the hall. Certainly a small flurry on twitter demonstrated interest in the upcoming seminar, but we never imagined this level of enthusiasm.

Continue reading at NOTCHES…


This post was originally published at “NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality” on 10 January 2014.