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Outrages
Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love | Naomi Wolf
4 posts | 1 to read
The best-selling author of Vagina, Give Me Liberty, and The End of America illuminates a dramatic buried story of gay historyhow a single English law in 1857 led to a maelstrom, with reverberations lasting down to our day Until 1857, the State did not link the idea of homosexuality to deviancy. In the same year, the concept of the obscene was coined. New York Times best-selling author Naomi Wolfs Outrages is the story, brilliantly told, of why this two-pronged State repression took holdfirst in England and spreading quickly to Americaand why it was attached so dramatically, for the first time, to homosexual men. Before 1857 it wasnt homosexuality that was a crime, but simply the act of sodomy. But in a single stroke, not only was love between men illegal, but anything referring to this love became obscene, unprintable, unspeakable. Wolf paints the dramatic ways this played out among a bohemian group of sexual dissidents, including Walt Whitman in America and the closeted homosexual English critic John Addington Symondsin love with Whitmans homoerotic voice in Leaves of Grassas, decades before the infamous 1895 trial of Oscar Wilde, dire prison terms became the States penalty for homosexuality. Most powerfully, Wolf recounts how a dying Symonds helped write the book on sexual inversion that created our modern understanding of homosexuality. And she convinces that his secret memoir, mined here fully for the first time, stands as the first gay rights manifesto in the west.
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Birdsong28
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julesG Thanks for sharing. Strange that the author still insists the book will be published. 5y
GingerAntics I‘m liking this woman less and less. I wasn‘t as excited about The Beauty Myth as others. I actually read her book Vagina, but some of it was really odd. I don‘t think I‘ll be reading any more of her books, that‘s for sure. 5y
32 likes2 comments
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esurient
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Recap: Formerly scheduled for release this past June, was delayed for revisions after pre-publication buzz uncovered misunderstandings of legal terms upon which the book premise was based. Now cancelled.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/books/naomi-wolf-outrages.html

esurient I had not been aware, but this journalist also apparently had a habit of backing conspiracy theories: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2014/10/5/6909837/naomi-wolf-isis-ebola-scotlan... 5y
Clare-Dragonfly “Death recorded” meant “criminal pardoned”? Does anyone know more about this? What a bizarre legal term. 5y
esurient The focus of the book, and context of the term, was specifically the Victorian-era legal system (or so I understand; I have not researched this much either). The June interview that began questioning her understanding of the term is discussed in this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/books/review-outrages-naomi-wolf.html 5y
esurient @Clare-Dragonfly Correction: the interview took place in May. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00057k4 5y
esurient Que to approx. the 21:00 timemark for interviewer discussion of the term. 5y
6 likes5 comments
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Birdsong28
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@julesg One for our historical inaccuracy group. Can you tag the other members please and use the hashtag (not sure myself) thanks

Don't know if you can read that but the jist is that she had misinterpreted Old Bailey trial evidence and put it in her new book.

Source: BBC History Magazine August 2019

julesG And now I need to check the internet 5y
Birdsong28 @julesG Thanks. Thought you might be interested in this! 📚📖 5y
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GingerAntics What in the world?! Okay, I‘m going to have to check this out, too. That‘s crazy. 5y
Leftcoastzen I thought they pushed back the publication date for corrections? 5y
Birdsong28 @Leftcoastzen They have but I thought I would highlight this as someone who is supposed to know what they are doing to make this big of a mistake. Also if you are going to be reading this then you need to be aware that this has happened I know corrections are needed but it makes you doubt the rest of this 5y
julesG Exactly, it makes you doubt the whole book. It might make me doubt all of the author's work. 5y
Caroline2 🤦🏻‍♀️ oh my.....she must be mortified!!! What a mistake to make?!? Kinda feel sorry for her. 😳 I need to get this magazine ASAP! I need the whole story now!!! 😆 5y
Leftcoastzen I agree with you, check and double check lest your entire text be rendered suspect. 5y
Birdsong28 @Caroline2 It's out today! I subscribe to this so I get it posted but you should be able to find it. It's page 8. 📚📖 5y
Caroline2 @Birdsong28 cool! I‘m totally picking this up tomorrow. That‘s the trouble tho isn‘t it; one error, one misinterpretation and your whole work is thrown into question! 🤦🏻‍♀️ 5y
32 likes11 comments
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TimSpalding
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I one gave a talk on Hellenistic history and I wasn't 100% on one point. Someone caught me, and I'll die remembering how I wanted to hide.

This clip of Wolf discussing her new book on the BBC is 1,000% times worse. It makes me want to jump into a well. Basically, a major part of her thesis falls apart on air, revealed to be, among other things, misunderstanding a legal term.

The discussion overall is very interesting. The cringe is after 21:00.

TimSpalding Link at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00057k4

A summary of subsequent developments is here https://twitter.com/DrMatthewSweet/status/1131628734279294981 . Wolf is indeed being rather generous in her reactions. Yipes.
(edited) 6y
SW-T Oh dear....😳 6y
shanaqui I can't bear to look/listen. Gaaaaah! 6y
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SW-T I listened to part of it yesterday and the whole thing today. Wow. You saw bad things coming but couldn‘t stop them.... 6y
Arbol I read about this earlier today and experienced such acute embarrassment by proxy. I can't imagine listening to the interview. 6y
TimSpalding I feel for her; yesterday it was a fringe story, today it's everywhere! But it's bad. People make mistakes, but if you're a half-trained, non-specialist American who thinks they've found out something major and never-before spotted—that all previous historians have missed “dozens“ of Victorian homosexual executions, long after they were believed to have ceased—have the humility to check with some experts first. 6y
Theaelizabet I just read about this. She is absolutely at fault, but where were her editors? 6y
TimSpalding @Theaelizabet Well, HMCO is a non-academic press. For things like this you need peer review, or at least peer input. 6y
Theaelizabet @TimSpalding Point taken. I forget that book publishing isn't the same process as, say, publishing in the New Yorker, for example.

(edited) 6y
Theaelizabet FYI: “A Houghton Mifflin Harcourt spokesperson offered this statement: “While HMH employs professional editors, copyeditors, and proofreaders for each book project, we rely ultimately on authors for the integrity of their research and fact-checking. Despite this unfortunate error we believe the overall thesis of the book Outrages still holds. We are discussing corrections with the author.”“ 6y
TimSpalding @Theaelizabet Thanks. I saw. I used to work for HMCO. Blech. 6y
AceOnRoam I just heard that the publisher has RECALLED this book in the US. Its garbage. 5y
41 likes12 comments