Beating the Bounds: an ancient ritual still practiced today in the British Isles. Communities traditionally reinscribed the boundaries of their parishes by walking the edges carrying sticks, pounding on the boundary marking stones. In an era before maps were common, when literacy was rare, these annual events (also called “gangdays”) were intended to impress upon everyone where community boundaries lay. Since resources were allocated according to parish, it was vital that the knowledge was passed down accurately though successive generations. It also helped keep the neighbors in line. To reinforce the lesson, the gangs would (and d0) stop occasionally to literally beat the knowledge into the boys. Sometimes, the youngsters would also be flung against the rocky stiles. All in good fun! Part of a suite of jolly old British customs that includes flogging the peg boys.
Category Archives: History
An ancient ritual: Beating the Bounds for Gangdays…and whipping some boys on the way.
Posted in England, Europe, GAY GAZE: Visual Culture, Photos, Art, Comics, Film, Objects, etc..., History, Leather, Photography, Spirituality, Strange Holidays, Subcultures, Youth
Tagged Beating the Bounds, Boundaries, Britain, Culture, England, Gangdays, History, Kink, Photography, Ritual, Wales, Whipping
Rural Mural: Saddle Bronc Champ
Don Coleman. Circa 1930s. Cowboy. Silent Movie Star. Rancher. Saddle Bronc Champ. And local boy. Mural in downtown Willits. Mendocino County in Northern California. For a real cowboy in Willits, click here. For an even older cowboy, here.
Posted in ANIMALS: Human and otherwise..., GAY GAZE: Visual Culture, Photos, Art, Comics, Film, Objects, etc..., History, iPhone, Men, Mendocino County, North America, Northern California, Photography, Rodeo, Signage, Street Art, Grafitti, etc.
Tagged Art, Bronco, Country, Cowboy, Gay Gaze, Mural, Sexy, Willits
Big Gay Boat Trip: Jack Fritscher on Going Down on the Titanic
Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Honcho magazine published in serial form a short novel by author and advocate of homomasculinity Jack Fritscher. This weekend, Palm Drive Press is publishing his Titanic: The Untold Tale of Gay Passengers and Crew, 100th Anniversary Collectors’ Edition.
Fritscher notices the details and comments on contemporary media reportage, saying: “In movie-newsreel footage shot three days later on the deck of the rescue ship Carpathia immediately after it docked in New York, a dozen of the surviving Titanic crew, mostly sailor lads in tight white pants hiding little, showing lots, can be seen in very intimate horseplay, camping around, and posing in life jackets, pretending to faint. Of the 885 male crew on Titanic, 693 (or 78%) died. Altogether, 1,352 men perished. If, according to Kinsey, one out of six ordinary men is gay, then 225 gay men died. If two out of six in the travel industry are gay, 450 gay men died, making the Titanic an overlooked but essential chapter in gay history.”
Looking forward to this read! Flip open the cover…take a deep breath and…go down. Speaking of sweet-looking sailors, click here and here. Studio Royale’s take on ship discipline here. More on the gay implications of the Titanic and That Sinking Feeling here.
Posted in History, Literature, Men, Travel
Tagged Culture, Erotica, Gay, History, Jack Fritscher, Literature, Titanic
Leathers in Mozambique
From the small volume Scouts in Bondage and Other Violations of Literary Propriety. Edited by Michael Bell, a proprietor of secondhand books from the “ancient coastal town” of Lewes, England. Scouts is a collection of amusing covers, this one from 1959 is subtitled “An Adventure Story for Boys.” What? That’s what Neo-colonial crypto-homosexuality was called in the middle of the 20th century…
Posted in Africa, Collecting, England, Europe, GAY GAZE: Visual Culture, Photos, Art, Comics, Film, Objects, etc..., History, Leather, Literature, Military, SCANDAL: Politics, Crime, Revolution and More., Youth
Tagged Adventure, Art, Books, boys, Colonialism, Culture, Edward M. Christie, England, Gay Gaze, Leather, Literature, Michael Bell, Mozambique, Pop Culture, Wordplay
Bucking Bronco, Whipping Cowboy
Ride ’em, Cowboy! Throw ’em, Bronco!
Photo postcard published by Chas. E. Morris, Chinook Montana, 1906. Early color process. Collection of Gay Highwaymen.
Club Turkish Baths
More from the Gay Museum mini-exhibit on gay bathhouses here and here.
Activist in Chains: Life and Death in Black and White
From the exhibit Life and Death in Black and White. Photographers Jane Philomen Cleland, Patrick Clifton, Marc Geller, Rick Gerharter and Daniel Nicoletta picture AIDS activists and actions from the key years between 1985 – 1990. More on this exhibit here. See this small show concurrently with the long-running sampler of the museum’s collection: Our Vast Queer Past. above: April 7th, 1989, UN Plaza, San Francisco. Unidentified member of ACT UP/SF in chains protesting INS exclusion of tourists and potential immigrants with HIV/AIDS. Photo: Marc Geller.
Bathhouses: Coming Together or Waiting Outside?
From the exhibit Our Vast Gay Past at the GLBT History Museum in San Francisco. More on the bathhouse display here.
Big Gay History: Two Buck Fuck Night
Woof! Bulldog Baths. From the exhibit Our Vast Queer Past. On display at the GLBT History Museum in San Francisco’s Castro District. Micro-exhibit on the history of the City’s bathhouses. More to cum…
Danger! Don’t throw WHAT Where?!
Constructing a damn dam. The Hoover? No context for this strange sign. Was throwing workers into the ravine a real issue? Collection of Gay Highwaymen.
The Gay Highwaymen 