This post was submitted by Philip Clark

Hidden History is my new Monday afternoon column for The New Gay. Each week, I’ll cover a different nook or cranny in the gay and lesbian past.

Today is Labor Day. {Okay, not technically. This post was originally scheduled for Monday, except that nobody would have been at work to read it.) With this edition of Hidden History, I will celebrate Labor Day in two ways. First, I will take a bit of a break by writing a slightly shorter column than usual, and one where half the words are the work of someone else. Second, the writer I quote will address the idea of the purpose—the innate “work”—of homosexual men and women.

Without further ado, here is Edward Carpenter—an early gay rights, labor, and environmental activist—commenting on the special role of homosexuals in his 1908 book The Intermediate Sex:

“[The] immense capacity of emotional love represents of course a great driving force. Whether in the individual or in society, love is eminently creative. It is their great genius for attachment which gives to the best Uranian [homosexual] types their penetrating influence and activity, and which often makes them beloved and accepted far and wide even by those who know nothing of their inner mind. How many so-called philanthropists of the best kind (we need not mention names) have been inspired by the Uranian temperament, the world will probably never know. And in all walks of life the great number and influence of folk of this disposition, and the distinguished place they already occupy, is only realised by those who are more or less behind the scenes. It is probable also that it is this genius for emotional love which gives to the Uranians their remarkable youthfulness.

Anyhow, with their extraordinary gift for, and experience in affairs of the heart—from the double point of view, both of the man and of the woman—it is not difficult to see that these people have a special work to do as reconcilers and interpreters of the two sexes to each other…It is probable that the superior Urnings [male Uranians; in modern terms, roughly equivalent to gay men] will become, in affairs of the heart, to a large extent the teachers of future society; and if so that their influence will tend to the realisation and expression of an attachment less exclusively sensual than the average of to-day, and to the diffusion of this in all directions.”

If there was a social cause in late 19th and early 20th century Great Britain, Edward Carpenter was involved with it. During his own time, Carpenter was acknowledged and greatly respected, and he should still be a well-known folk hero to progressives everywhere. For whatever reason, his influence has not expanded widely in recent times, and the only modern biography about him was published in 1980 (Chushichi Tsuzuki’s Edward Carpenter, 1844-1929: Prophet of Human Fellowship; re-released in 2005 by Cambridge University Press, but quite expensive).

Perhaps the most personal for Carpenter of the many causes he championed was that of “homogenic love”; he lived for many years with his working class lover, George Merrill, and a visit to the couple inspired E.M. Forster’s long-suppressed gay novel Maurice. In the passage above, Carpenter is obviously influenced by then-current “scientific” theories about gay men and lesbians. His idea that Uranians are easily able to see the point of view “both of the man and of the woman” reflects the theory of the time that gays have the souls of women trapped in men’s bodies, and vice-versa for lesbians. Carpenter was also a major follower of Walt Whitman’s conception of the ideal love of comrades. That an Uranian “attachment” would be “less exclusively sensual” matches Whitman’s vision.

This could be one reason for the decline in Carpenter’s influence through the years: although occasionally near-prophetic in his writings about gays and lesbians, Carpenter was in some ways bound to the now-outmoded ideas of his time.

But how outmoded are the ideas in The Intermediate Sex? How many people believe that gay men somehow understand women better because they share certain characteristics with women? How many people believe that gays and lesbians are more creative or more sympathetic because of the influence of elements of their sexuality? How many people believe that gays and lesbians have “a penetrating influence” on society far beyond their actual known numbers?

Maybe the time is ripe for an Edward Carpenter revival.

For Hidden History, I’ll write more about pornographers and poets, furies and faggots, books and bootleggers, singers and scandals. If you’ve got suggestions about people, places, and ideas I should cover, particularly if they have a D.C. connection, shoot me an e-mail: philip@thenewgay.net.

Next week: The Lesbians of Michael Field

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