as written and published by Andrew Hodges and David Hutter in 1974
A preface by Andrew Hodges (1995)
| Between April 1973 and April 1974, when I was a maths student in London, I worked with the artist David Hutter on writing a pamphlet on the concept of Self-Oppression which had earlier been promulgated in the Gay Liberation Front Manifesto (1971). We collaborated very closely in the writing, and then we published it ourselves, under the name of Pomegranate Press. We launched it at Great Malvern, Worcestershire, where the conference of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality took place in May 1974. | |
| We sold 3000 copies at 20p, and then reprinted it in April 1975. But in 1977 we passed it on to Pink Triangle Press in Toronto. About 12000 copies were printed in all, roughly half circulating in Britain and half in North America. On the whole it got quite a welcome in the gay activist world of that time. It might even be true to say, as the Queer Resources Directory listing now does, that it was a seminal text. Thanks, QRD! (But in my mind's ear I can hear David laughing at the metaphor). It was translated into French and German, and excerpts also appeared in Swedish and Italian magazines. | |
It has been out of print since about 1981. David and I talked about the possibility of it being republished with a new introduction in 1984, but nothing came of it.
I'm delighted that I can now return to our original spirit of nonprofit self-publication, by using the World Wide Web to make the text available to anyone who is interested. Of course, in some ways it reads like ancient history --- but perhaps some of the issues are not so different today.
About two-thirds of the text of With Downcast Gays is expected to appear in book form in 1998. Columbia University Press is to publish the Columbia Reader in Lesbian and Gay Studies, edited by Larry Gross and James D. Woods.This will be a very large anthology of lesbian and gay writing, and will include those portions of our text thought relevant today.
So after twenty-three years I become respectable. It is a bit of a shock.
Later I'll try to write a more extended description of the context, with a funny picture of me with long hair, something on David's painting and also something of how it was part of the background to my starting to write Alan Turing: the Enigma in 1977.
The original pamphlet ran to 40 printed A5 pages. I have divided the material into eight parts:
| Other Relevant Links:
a historical list of resources and texts the first bookstore to promote the text another fine bookstore site. |
More about me on my 
Second Home Page |