The stereotypical gay man is stylish, with interests in arts and theatre. He is flamboyant, perhaps a little effeminate and definitely versed in innuendo, shade and charm. He is camp and confident and lives a life of leisure and pleasure.
But where did this image come from? Unlike a lot of other aspects of queer aesthetics and stereotypes, the origins of this particular image can be found in 1895.
Before we can get into the specifics, we need to set the scene. Sodomy (in this context referring to anal sex between men) was a crime, but the harsh punishment (until 1865, being charged with sodomy meant being put to death, and from 1865-1967 it meant life imprisonment) combined with the difficulty of proving consensual anal sex had occurred made convictions relatively rare.
Enter the Labouchere Amendment. This piece of legislation was passed in 1885 and created the crime of "gross indecency", which came with a lesser sentence but meant that gay men could be charged with a crime even when a court couldn't prove that they'd had anal sex.
This was the charge under which Oscar Wilde was convicted.
In 1891, Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas, also known as Bosie. The two began an affair very shortly afterwards, which was tumultuous and fascinating enough that Robert Hitchens, another writer of the late Victorian era, wrote a novel that was in part based on their relationship in 1894. That is not to say that they were iconic lovers; the two actually fought and broke up multiple times, and Douglas reportedly treated Wilde with contempt and entitlement. Despite this, the two still ended up getting back together each time.
But Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensbury, did not approve of Wilde and suspected the two to share more than just a friendship. The relationship between the Marquess and his son was even more of a mess than the relationship between Douglas and Wilde, which is saying something. After threatening to disown Douglas if he didn't end the relationship and being mocked by his son for the attempt, the Marquess shifted his attention to Wilde.
He publicly accused Wilde of being a "sodomite". Considering how very illegal and potentially damaging to his life and career this was, Wilde tried to sue the Marquess for libel. Unfortunately, he lost the case and instead was himself put on trial following the court's decision that the accusations were valid. There wasn't enough evidence to prove he was a "sodomite", but thanks to the introduction of the Labouchere Amendment ten years prior to the trial, there was enough for him to be charged with "gross indecency". Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labour in prison in one of the most famous and public anti-gay cases of the century.
But what does this all have to do with queer aesthetics?
Wilde was every bit the stereotypical gay man. But his behaviour was not as prominent in the evidence as you might expect. His work, poetry by Lord Alfred Douglas, testimony from employees who accused him of sleeping with men while staying at hotels, gifts he had given to other men and evidence of their interactions, and letters he had written were all used against him, but to many, it was a shock that Wilde - flamboyant, effeminate, stylish, camp, shady, witty, artistic, charming, confident Wilde - was in any way not straight.
This is because through his trial, Wilde became the very foundation for the stereotype. The vast majority of the traits associated with queer men were Wilde's before they were queer and are queer because they were Wilde's. He was influential enough within queer culture before his trial - the use of green carnations in the buttonhole as a covert symbol of male homosexuality was popularised by Wilde - but afterwards, that is when he truly became emblematic of queer masculinity, when the traits which were recognisably Wildesque became tied to and seen to represent queerness, mostly by other queer people. He wasn't just a queer man, he was THE queer man.
In E.M. Forster's novel Maurice, published posthumously in 1971 but written between 1913 and 1914, the titular character comes out through the phrase "I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort". Even today, I can safely say that queer culture, stereotypes, and aesthetics would be unrecognisable without Oscar Wilde.
By Tristan Oscar Smith
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