Queer pleasure: masculinity, male homosexuality and public space

Public space has been a defining feature of modern homosexual subcultures. Like most western cultures, Queensland outlawed sex between men during the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century; the local scientific community considered homosexuals as perverse and mentally-ill. But despite this opprobrium, certain men enacted public codes and behaviours as part of their identity, using them to attract like-minded others. At the turn of the nineteenth century, these markers began to coalesce; creating the beginnings of urban male subculture and informing a common sense of self. Patterns in Brisbane were paralleled, in part, by developments in rural areas and small towns with travel between the city and country diffusing shared ideas and experiences. Only the rich could afford their own privacy, and this helps explain why most of the remaining court evidence appears to be the domain of the working classes. The records reveal that 116 definitive charges of male-only sex appear in the courts between 1890 and 1914.