Reviews tagging 'Hate crime'

Bad Gays: A Homosexual History by Ben Miller, Huw Lemmey

4 reviews

the_vegan_bookworm's review against another edition

informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

I feel like this book sets out with a really interesting thesis and then proceeds to not be able to address it adequately at all. It seems to me to be a problem of trying to tackle too many angles, which leads to not adequately discussing any of them well. On one hand, this book seeks to go through history from a queer perspective, which is interesting but falls apart when trying to deep dive into the "bad gays" it is profiling. The chosen profiles don't really fit into the chosen narrative arc of homosexuality throughout history, so it feels muddled as a focus. This is not helped by the run-on sentences and lack of overarching reflections for the thesis statement.

The book also tries to look at queers who are evil or bad throughout history, but it doesn't provide enough context on any of them to really substantiate these claims of evilness. For many, the individuals just seem to be participants in a colonial/imperial/racist system rather than people actively enacting harm. For individuals with whom I was familiar (such as J. Edgar Hoover), I felt that the details were far too light on the very real and active harm perpetuated by the individual. If you go into this story without the background knowledge on the people profiled, I don't feel the authors really provide it or justify it enough for you to think "ah yes, this is a person who could be seen as truly evil". They also have a very white and male selection of individuals that they profile, which they don't address at any time. 

They might have had better results if they chose fewer individuals and really dived into their respective backgrounds, while making stronger points and analysis related to the thesis they set out to discuss. With the great number of people profiled, the biographies feel very disjointed and not cohesive as a book.

This is still 4-star for me, since I learned a lot of interesting things about homosexuality throughout history and the figures highlighted in the book. If you're really interested in history, I think there are some great historical nuggets buried in here that still make it an interesting read!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Homophobia, Racism, Transphobia, Xenophobia, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Colonisation

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship and Sexual content

Minor: Genocide and Hate crime

rchaps's review against another edition

4.0

So many bad gays. So much new knowledge.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Hate crime, Homophobia, Racism, Transphobia, and Antisemitism

queerloras's review against another edition

funny informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

3.75

I thought this was a really interesting look at queer history, focusing not on the familiar heroes - Marsha P. Johnson, Harvey Milk, Oscar Wilde, etc. - but the messy types who we are less keen to claim as "one of us". The section on Magnus Hirschfeld was particularly interesting, and I liked how global the history was  admittedly generally the Global North, but the people covered were from everywhere between the USA and Japan.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Ableism, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Bullying, Cancer, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Fatphobia, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Torture, Toxic relationship, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Grief, Religious bigotry, Suicide attempt, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Lesbophobia, Outing, Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Colonisation, and Classism

proceduralbob's review against another edition

informative medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Racism, Transphobia, and Outing

Moderate: Drug use, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Sexual violence, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Religious bigotry, Colonisation, War, and Classism