Thread by @MattDrapps

I'm back on Havelock today. Had to take a break to read the wonderful Heaven Come Down book from Chrissie. But now I'm back. #havelockellis

Part 2 is here. If you missed it.

https://twitter.com/MattDrapps/status/1409488910342893569?s=19

Honestly Have, for all his faults, is an engaging writer and drops take downs into his writing with greatest of ease.

He discusses how when the 'sexual instinct' first appears in youth it is often not specifically directed, and mentions that women are often forced on young -

-men in order to direct their sexuality.

In modern terms, see: baby-gro slogons, the pink and bluening of gender, 'is she your girlfriend?' of two year old, and this clip from my old church's secret Homosexuality document. #stthomasphiladelphia #networkchurchsheffield

He scolds reports from schools that suggest, "some of our public schools almost provoke the punishment of the cities of the Plain" - which is a reference to Sodom and Gomorrah.

He says school medics arnt trained to record what's going on with sexuality, and that

Schools would rather cover things up and expel a few students than deal with scandal. He writes those schools up by saying that those expelled students to their 'own grave and perhaps life-long injury'.

He says schools, 'appear to view homosexuality with too much disgust to care to pay any careful attention to it.'

Havelock, the sympathetic king 👑

Max Dossoir (1894) states, in the early period the sexual emotion has not become centered in the sexual organs.

He says that gay too often grown ups tend to forget this and assume that crushes have a physical side which 'children would have no suspicion of.'

I'm looking at you parents protesting outside school gates 👀 👀 👀 and YOU Thatcher.

No fixed line suggests an unnamed source of Havelock's in a letter. Just cultural norms and gender roles.

A fascinating case of a man who seems to switch through life with little warning from being turned on by men, to impotence, to women, to men again. I beg

But, by all means, churches with no process whatsoever just 'know' homosexuality in men is caused by a problem with their fathers.

No process, no dice

"a love-disappointment-" Have suggests in that tone I love, "-it need not be said, is no adequate cause for a total change in the direction of the sexual current."

#havelockellis #sexualinversion #queerhistory

'wishy' is used as a word for an attractive young man with no beard or hair (read: twink) #queerhistory

Not the boy who first realised he liked boys when he was on a boat imagining the rocking of the boat was a fit lad between his legs, and got jealous when girls were on the boat with him 🛥 😬😬😬

I've had to change locations because the Internet was not having it.

WiFi is a human right.

Case III: "He cannot whistle or play rough games"

Case III says: 'The only wickedness, logically speaking, is acting wrongly to others. Our passions and desires are implanted by Diety or Nature, either of whom or both must take the blame if there be any.'

Of Case IV: 'He practised onanism to a limited extent at school and up to the age of about 22.'

But wait, how does Onanism differ from masturbation?

Case IV says, of marriage: 'As there seems no immediate danger of the race dying out, I leave marriage to those who like it.'

I mean, fair.

Case IV says, "I believe that affection between persons of the same sex, even when it includes the sexual passion and indulgence, may lead to results as splendid as human nature can ever attend to."

K I'm gunna need a series of inspirational posters of just Case Quotes from Have

Wots Venus Aversa please

Case V: parents first cousins, but of good stock.

Something interesting about this book of cases is that there is a big mix of masturbators and non. So put that theory to bed too please.

Case VI: 'Prayers, struggles, all means used were of no avail. The thoughts, the imagination remained, bent in one fixed direction.' O no VI I feel you 😐😑 Mary Benson vibes. He's sixty at the time his Case file is written. ❤️ 'His has been a miserable life.'

Case VI says: "Of all the miserable hours of wretchedness and despair could be counted up which I have suffered in my life, they would form a hell." 😭😭😭😭😭

Case VI adds: 'Even now I cannot decide for myself how far one is exactly accountable for morbid instincts and feeling from which no prayers, no struggle, can deliver one.'

No, VI, 😭😭😭😭 I cannot

#queerhistory

Have the full case.

Case VII says: 'I cannot regard my sexual feelings as unnatural or abnormal, since they have disclosed themselves to me so perfectly naturally and spontaneously within me.'

Case VII: discuses consent more than most Christian books on sex. He says, 'no bodily satisfaction should be sought at the cost of another person's distress or degradation.'

Case VII, adds: 'I am sure that this kind of love (same sex) is, notwithstanding the physical difficulties that attend to it, as deeply stirring and ennobling as the other kind, if not more so.'

The majority of Bottoms agree.

Case VII: 'I think that for a perfect relationship the actual sex gratifications - whatever they may be - probably hold a less important place in this life than in the other.'

Remember every one of these cases is recorded prior to 1901. #queerhistory #gayhistory #lgbthistory

Case VIII says (and I'm SCREAMING!!!!): 'My grandfather.....organised and carried out an extremely arduous mission work and became an accomplished linguist, translating THE BIBLE into an Eastern tongue and compiling the first dictionary of that language.' WHO IS THIS?!?

Case VIII: 'He (grandfather translator) died, practically of overwork, at the age of 45. He was twice married. I believe that two, if not more, of my family (of seven) were inverted (gay/trans) and the only one of them to marry was my father.'

Case VIII: 'My grandmother was the last representative of an old and very WILD Irish family.'

Okay I NEED to know more about this queer, over-achieving family IMMEDIATELY.

Link made by Case VII between Inversion and Freemasonry groups 👀

STOP.

Case VII also cannot whistle. Think we've solved the case folks. Gays can't whistle?

Case IX: 'As a child I was passionately fond of flowers, loved to be in the woods alone.'

Not me in the rose garden making perfumes 😬😬😬😬😬😬

Case IX loved the fit acrobats and riders at the circus and I......

Case IV says: "People told me that circus-actors were wicked and would steal little boys, and so I can't to look upon my favourites as half-devil, half-angel. When I was older and could go about alone, I would often hang around the tents of travelling shows in hope of catching a

-glimpse of the actors. I longed to see them naked, without their tights, and used to lay awake at night, thinking of them.'

Case IV says: 'It was always the Prince in fairy-tales who held my interest and affection.'

Who's Mr Addington Symonds?

Case IV never had 'sex', and fell deeply in love with a friend, but they never got together because his friend was not gay. He instead directed his love towards religion and the saints, as many have done before and after him.

Case IV says: 'I am certain, even if it were possible, I would not exchange my inverted nature for a normal one.' 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Case IX (sorry, I got the case number wrong before), says: 'Moral and intellectual worth is, I know, of greater value, but physical beauty I SEE more clearly and it appears to me the most VIVID - if not the most perfect - manifestation of the divine.'

Case IX says, 'God grant that, after the end here, I may be drawn from the shadow, and seemingly vain imaginings into the possession of their nevereding reality hereafter.'

😭😭😭😭👏👏👏👏

Case X (who fell into such a stupor of depression after a male friendship was broken off that he almost ended up in an asylum), says: 'To me what people call unnatural is the most natural of all conditions. In any case the word "unnatural' is a really stupid word as-

- whatever IS must be natural.'

Case X says: 'Poets know more about such matters than doctors.'

Quite right.

Case XI CAN whistle. So, maybe he's a top? I...

Case XII, would be described as nonbinary perhaps today.

They say that the love of the colour Green is very widespread among their inverted friends, which Case XI also said 👀

Is he, loves the colour Green?

As much as I ADORE sharing all the Cases with you, I think I will hurry through a few more of them as I am rather behind on my reading and have more books on the post. Suffice to say, each case is unique and gorgeous in its own way. Can we make a series???? Please? 🙏

What's your fav Case quote from above so far?

I'll let you know if anyone else can't whistle or like Green okay?

#queerhistory #havelockellis #sexualinversion

😭😭😭😍😍😍

Case XI says: 'My moral view of the matter is that....the economic conditions of women make it altogether unfair to use them as merely channels for satisfying sexual passion."

Case XIV, says: '...the law... is a relic of the ages gone by.'

Case XV: 'Penis is very large.' 👀

Case XVI: I'm sorry to report CANNOT whistle.

Case XVII: 'He was very religious, even to the verge of hysteria.'

Interestingly almost all the Cases do not like fellatio, or Sodomy (in the traditional sense) but rather love the beauty of a man and to be near to them, sleep beside them, SPOON them is enough sexual excitement for them.

Though this is possibly how the stories are recorded. But I also think it's interesting to note that 'sex' as an act can include so many different things and naturally will differ in different eras due to hygiene, desire etc. People who used 'natural' and 'unnatural' with -

-no qualifiers of time or place have no idea what that are talking about. *cough* Church of England Living in Love and Faith *cough*

LLF has virtually NO queer history on it AT ALL. LGBT+ folk just appear in the west in 1990.

Case XIX says: 'If Alchibiades himself tried to woo me and had bad teeth, his labour would be in vain.' AHHHAHA

Case XXII, on consent: 'The utter ABANDON of the person with me is necessary to act degree of pleasure, and the acts must be mutual.'

Case XXV: Cannot whistle.

@UnrollHelper Please unroll

Case XXVII, would be described as a Trans woman now. Cannot whistle.