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A review by ameyawarde
Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day by Peter Ackroyd
1.0
Though it has quite a bit of interesting trivia in here, I find this book DEEPLY problematic, and thus awful. Extremely triggering for anyone who has sexual-violence related PTSD as well. I'm choosing not to finish it. As the reviewer "Will" wrote in Jan 2018,
"First, he dwells on accounts of sexual assault and violence, as well as pedophilia and pederasty, without making any effort to separate them from consensual sexual encounters."
I truly don't understand how more reviewers haven't been commenting on this. I was surprised to hear the author is gay because such a deep convolution of gayness and pedophilia/pederasty offended _me_, and I am not a gay man. The author's narrative voice is present throughout the book, and yet never makes any sort of commentary suggesting any differences between the unbelievable amount of rape (of adults and children/teens) he covers and gay men/the gay community. I honest to god started to think the book was written by one of those American religious extremists who DO think gay = pedophilic. It did not help at all that the voice of the audiobook narrator did NOT take on any different tone in these parts, to the point where I had to pause it a few times because i was overwhelmed with the lighthearted tone that both the text and voice were taking with too-graphic accounts of rape and molestation.
As far as I got in the book I feel like the women he covered were discussed well enough-- not much on them, but I totally understand that the lack of materials is likely behind it, which is something historical research of even straight, cis women deal with, and yet he managed to find material other than graphic sexual assaults, and I really don't see why the hell he saw no problem including graphic and jaunty accounts of rape and molestation, pedophilia and pederasty in all the sections about gay men.
"First, he dwells on accounts of sexual assault and violence, as well as pedophilia and pederasty, without making any effort to separate them from consensual sexual encounters."
I truly don't understand how more reviewers haven't been commenting on this. I was surprised to hear the author is gay because such a deep convolution of gayness and pedophilia/pederasty offended _me_, and I am not a gay man. The author's narrative voice is present throughout the book, and yet never makes any sort of commentary suggesting any differences between the unbelievable amount of rape (of adults and children/teens) he covers and gay men/the gay community. I honest to god started to think the book was written by one of those American religious extremists who DO think gay = pedophilic. It did not help at all that the voice of the audiobook narrator did NOT take on any different tone in these parts, to the point where I had to pause it a few times because i was overwhelmed with the lighthearted tone that both the text and voice were taking with too-graphic accounts of rape and molestation.
As far as I got in the book I feel like the women he covered were discussed well enough-- not much on them, but I totally understand that the lack of materials is likely behind it, which is something historical research of even straight, cis women deal with, and yet he managed to find material other than graphic sexual assaults, and I really don't see why the hell he saw no problem including graphic and jaunty accounts of rape and molestation, pedophilia and pederasty in all the sections about gay men.