‘I met a swell Sheik on Saturday’: Male homosexual sex work in interwar Scotland
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Event details
Department of History Seminar Series
While the legal notables of interwar Scotland viewed male homosexual sex work as ‘plumbing the depths’ of moral turpitude, the lives of the young men who sold sex on the streets of Glasgow and Edinburgh were much more human, complex and colourful. Male sex work was organised, hierarchical and ubiquitous in Scottish urban centres, and the men themselves varied in their attachment to their occupation; some were transitory, others fully committed. Some were rough trade, others were immersed in a camp and queer underworld where identities were shaped by the glamour of the stage and screen. Yet ultimately, these men were increasingly targeted by the law enforcement in Edinburgh and Glasgow keen to crack down on such ‘abominable vice.’