Appx 900 words
Forty Devastating Pages
With Downcast Gays: Aspects of Homosexual Self-oppression
Andrew Hodges and David Hutter. Pomegranate Press, London, U.K., 1974
(James Fraser Library monograph collection, items 455, 567, 745)
Review by Walter Bruno
The Body Politic, # 15, Sep / Oct 1974
That same collective would later make With Downcast Gays their first non-periodical publication. (See items 300, 524, 724 and 746 of the Archives' monograph collection for copies of the 1977 and 1979 Pink Triangle Press editions; see also the Inventory of the Records of The Body Politic and Pink Triangle Press: Other Press ventures for archival records related to the project.)
With Downcast Gays also appeared in Swedish (serialized in the gay magazine Revolt), Italian (in Fuori!), French (as Pardonnez-vous notre existence, published by le Groupe gai de l'Université de Laval, Quebec City, 1979) and German (also in 1979, as Das unerhörte Schweigen der Schwulen, Verlag Rosa Winkel, Berlin). In August 1975 Mister X, a play based on the booklet, was produced by London's Gay Sweatshop Theatre and later toured Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands.
More information on the pamphlet, its authors -- and the full text of With Downcast Gays 
-- is available online. Mathematician Andrew Hodges went on to write the definitive biography of World War II code-breaker and gay father of the computer, Alan Turing. There is a link fom the site noted to Andrew Hodges's own home page.
(Full address: http://www.outgay.co.uk/intro.html)
This review originally appeared without a title; the one I've applied here seemed apt. The "extract elsewhere in this issue" noted in the third-to-last paragraph is not included here. It consisted of the first two parts ("Self-hatred" and "Evading the issue") of a section of With Downcast Gays called "Pardon us for living."
Rick Bébout, April 1997
Since this book is about attitudes, it is appropriate that we should salute the authors first. The current gay lib vogue in publishing has offered until now a pretentious array of volumes filled with superficial reportage, hasty theorizing and above all frivolous analysis.
In contrast, these forty devastating pages sweep all prior rubbish into a tidy heap, and organise the disposal. What we are left with a is a splendid manifesto imbued with a seriousness, objectivity, creativity and sense of commitment to which the subject of gay liberation is entitled. Small wonder that With Downcast Gays has caused a sensation amongst Canadian gay liberationists.
The accomplishment of Andrew Hodges and David Hutter is all the more remarkable for the fact that, unlike so many of their predecessors, they know how to write in the English language. And that's an understatement.
With Downcast Gays makes political education a joyous experience, illustrating its points with an assortment of dazzling one-liners: commenting on the "faggot joke" of straight comedians and gay closet queens, the authors observe that "Wit is seldom wasted on us, since we are its cheap alternative."
With Downcast Gays is an overview of the phenomenon of homosexual self-oppression -- the way in which we reproduce the values of straight society amongst ourselves. The booklet discusses topics as diverse as male chauvinism and literary elitism, touching on liberalism, adaptionism, patriotism and medical obscurantism en route, to name but a few. It is a breathtaking survey.
Breathtaking, too, the possibilities presented by the publication, which is more a "course outline" than frame of reference: "We have not tried to formulate a political theory, but only described a state of mind in which gay people can approach one without betraying their gay experience."
Although this is an entirely commendable motivation -- creating a spirit of uncompromising defense of the principles of gay liberation -- it does present problems of consistency and methodology.
Moreover, With Downcast Gays offers ample evidence that the authors have indeed thought through the theoretical implications of gay liberation and have organised their thoughts methodically. We're hopeful that they will complete their work in a later publication setting down some sort of ideological infrastructure, because without such a foundation their ideas can be successfully challenged by the very sophists against which they polemicise.
But the lack of such things as basic ideology does not prevent us from greeting this book and rejoicing in most of its novel ideas. The confines of this review do not permit us adequate coverage of the subject, but the extract reproduced elsewhere in this issue will give readers a sampling.
Suffice it to say that these two gay thinkers have taken gay liberation literature off the level of apologies, platitudes and mechanical analogies and raised the discussion of gay oppression to a qualitatively higher level. We recommend With Downcast Gays to anyone for whom simply being a homosexual is a poor substitute for gay freedom.
Buy it, study it, and by all means go out and emulate Hodges and Hutter.
[TBP / PTP Inventory: Other Press ventures]
[Text of With Downcast Gays]
[TBP / PTP Inventory: Published sources]