Ungovernable

by Therese Oneill

  The late nineteenth century saw the introduction and quick demise of every type of “cure” possible for male homosexuality. Hypnosis was very popular for a while, early psychoanalysts building on Freud’s teachings to draw out a man’s early love for his mother and expand it to all womankind, which was the current belief on how heterosexuality was formed. But the recidivism was nearly 100 percent.

  Q: Hmm. Maybe because sex and your mom are not as sexy a combination as Freud supposed.

  A: Agreed. Moll himself supported an “association bridge” technique wherein a homosexual man unable to perform sexually with his wife “read homosexual literature and contemplated male figures. Becoming greatly excited he went into his wife’s room and succeeded for the first time in coitus.” It was Moll’s theory that though homosexual thoughts got the party swinging, since the climax of the event would be heterosexual, the inverted man would learn to associate orgasms and sex with his wife. That didn’t work. Men just realized they could manage to have depressing sex with women if they thought about men while doing it.

  Some doctors recommended an “uneventful, hardening life” with spare diet and hard work regimens, until it was realized that method bore great resemblance to prison life: a place not known for its lack of homosexual encounters.

  Isolation in colonies was considered, but was dismissed for being too cruel and unnecessary, as most homosexuals were not dangerous and in fact contributed to society. Though some asked to be isolated, as a measure to protect others. At least one man, described in a study by the nineteenth-century German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, submitted to it voluntarily. He had “been interned as a criminal lunatic for twenty years and at his own request. He occupies a fine room, supplied with books and pursues philosophical studies. His impulses are entirely toward boys who have just passed puberty. He expected to end his life there.”

  Even after years of living the prescribed “uneventful, hardening life,” Matvey and Stiven had to conclude they still felt pretty gay.

  Other homosexuals were so desperate they sought the “scorched earth” cure, castration (not the chemical kind—the Uranus kind), sometimes followed by emasculation.

  Q: Oh, God, that’s heartbreaking. Those poor men.

  A: And sadly ineffective. Says Leon Pierce Clark in A Critical Digest of Some of the Newer Work Upon Homosexuality in Man and Woman, it still did not make men stop desiring their own sex. Says Clark,

  Homosexuals have asked for castration and it has been advocated but this would seem highly illogical and experience shows that to remove the testicles of a homosexual aggravates his state. As it has been done only in extreme cases the impulses were not increased but remained the same. The additional emasculation weakened the patient’s will and made him, if possible, more of a menace than he was at first.

  The “menace” implied in this context was not the fact of homosexuality, but men who abused unwilling partners.

  The bottom line seeming to be, your Uranian is yours to keep. He (and his parents) may not like it, but for him, it appears to be a natural state.

  Or, more eloquently put by the poet John Addington Symonds, saying of his own homosexuality in an 1897 edition of Havelock Ellis’s Sexual Inversion:

  I cannot regard my sexual feelings as unnatural or abnormal, since they have disclosed themselves so perfectly naturally and spontaneously within me. With regard to the morality of this complex subject, my feeling is that it is the same as should prevail in love between man and woman—namely, that no bodily satisfaction should be sought at the cost of another person’s distress or degradation. I am sure that this kind of love is, notwithstanding the physical difficulties that attend it, as deeply stirring and ennobling as the other kind.

  Besides, our goal is masculinity. It doesn’t matter if you need to make your peace with the fact that your grandchildren will be furry and want bacon-flavored plastic for Christmas, or that your son wants to kiss other boys. What matters is that he has the strength of mind and body to also punch them if he needs to.

  John Addington Symonds.

  Q: All right. The bottom line is I do want a strong, bold, and happy boy. I guess that means masculine. But I don’t want an entitled little dude-bro jerk. How can I have one and not the other?

  “I can’t sing, I can’t speak French, but I can punch your head!”

  A: And here will be the test of your parenting. To raise a man of perfect masculinity, not a mama’s boy, without creating a cruel and animalistic brute. But, loving Mother, though you can and should expect your boy to shun you as he grows, these precious early years are when you unleash your secret weapon. You have a woman’s heart. And many Victorians were of the opinion that no man could be complete without absorbing a bit of it into his own.

  Charles Benjamin Tayler was a country parson who’d lost his own mother in childhood. In 1822 he published May You Like It, by a Country Curate, which contains the best advice for accomplishing your mission. And it came, from all places, from a father. Said Tayler:

  My father was anxious to make me manly and courageous. “I cannot bear,” he would say, “to see a weak effeminate boy; ill health can be the only excuse for it. I would have you fear no one but God. But remember, my dear Charles, there is a great difference between being effeminate, and possessing many of those gentle and humble graces, which are more peculiarly present in the character of the best women; and are called therefore feminine. Many of these were displayed in the conduct of our Saviour, and all truly good and noble men have possessed the most gentle hearts. To be effeminate, is to act like a weak silly woman; to be almost feminine in some things, is to act with the purity, and gentleness, and humanity, of a virtuous woman.

  There’s no denying how tricky a balancing act it is to build a masculine boy. He must be tough, stubborn, and feminine without being effeminate. Because until humans have finished their evolution into genderless light beams of telepathy, men and women will have different concerns, problems, and demands. Plus, men are ordained by God to subjugate the earth to their will. Which is a big job. Following the robust Victorian standard, it is your job to prepare your son for that, without getting in his way.

  8

  How May I Distinguish Healthful Amusements My Child Might Engage in from Those That Are Satan Disguised in the Raiment of Light and Joy?

  On Appropriate Recreations for Children

  The first necessity in arranging safe and uplifting amusement for your Victorian child is to understand that almost no amusement is safe and uplifting. Sin lurks everywhere, in the most enticing, or innocent, of places.

  To wit: In 1915, Fred F. McClure measured the amount of sin in Kansas City and presented his findings in Christianity and Amusements, by Richard Henry Edwards.

  Please note: “Medical museums, social clubs, wine gardens, chop suey restaurants, and saloons are not graded. They would undoubtedly lower the average of good, wholesome recreation.”

  McClure was then able to provide the following conclusions: “The totals show traditionally ‘wholesome’ amusements are actually 68 per cent wholesome; they are 32 per cent loathsome. The 32 per cent consists of ‘intemperance, obscenity, suggestions of crime, dissipation, late hours, representing an expenditure of $1,923,211.99.’”

  Percentage of goodness (as opposed to sinfulness) in common Kansas City amusements.

  Q: Chop suey restaurants? Dissipation? How could he possibly measure wholesomeness of museums and Chinese restaurants, much less find them wanting?

  A: I don’t know, I’m not a scientist. I don’t think he was either, but, look, he used math. So there you have it. The world then, as now, was steeped in the raw sewage of unmonitored pleasures for youth. It is our duty as parents to select amusement for our children that is edifying, wholesome, and free of MSG.

  As George Sumner Weaver wrote in 1868’s Hopes and Helps for the Young of Both Sexes,

  Amusements have dissipated [a child’s] mind, stolen his heart, corrupted his manners and morals, eaten up
his earnings, made him the child of folly, and the dupe of an insatiable desire for a life of giddiness. The more exciting any amusement is, the more dangerous it is. I say dangerous, yes, dangerous—that is the word. It is truly so.

  “Fun,” Mother dear, stands for “fool’s unrighteous nonsense” if not attended to with the greatest of severity and solemnity.

  Q: All right, fair enough. I agree that there are many things my children enjoy that aren’t good for them. What sort of entertainments were suitable for Victorian children?

  A: Much depends on age and gender. But all amusements must have purpose. Outdoor play was considered a very noble undertaking, necessary to help children who lived in an increasingly urban world partake of the fresh air, physical movement, and sunshine so necessary to health.

  There were a handful of activities both genders could engage in together. Everyone could play a little lawn tennis or croquet. Wading into the ocean dressed in full woolen mourning garb was permitted to both sexes. Most outdoor sports were intended for boys alone.

  “Whatever you do, don’t get that suit wet. You’ll sink like a stone.”

  Q: Wait! No, stop. I appreciate Victorian values, but I also believe boys and girls are equal in their need for challenging physical play and that a girl can and should do anything a boy does.

  A: Then you in no way appreciate Victorian values. Boys were trained by their games to become tough and clever under fire. Girls were being trained in patience and piety to balance their masculine counterparts. Our good German doctor Heinrich Hoffmann (often listed as “Henry” Hoffmann, depending on whom we were at war with) can illustrate the dangers of intergender play better than anyone. Meet “Romping Polly.”

  Polly was warned not to play with the boys by her auntie, who said:

  Do try to be more steady.

  I know that you will often see

  Rude boys push, drive, and hurry;

  But little girls should never be

  All in a heat and flurry.

  Polly didn’t listen. She went out to play with the boys, but, being a delicate female, fell and broke her leg. Popped that sucker clean off, left her little brother wandering around the yard holding it.

  And then was horribly crippled and died slowly.

  Q: …

  A: Stop face-palming, dear. It’s terrible for your complexion. We’ll explore girls’ amusements in a moment. Now. Games for boys!

  For organized sports, both baseball and basketball made their debut toward the end of the nineteenth century, though they were slow to take hold. The “organized” aspect was a challenge to children in a world with few parks, no standardized schedules, and limited transportation. Not to mention, the necessary equipment, even if only a simple ball and bat, was hard to come by. An exception is soccer, which could be played with anything remotely resembling a ball. Variations of soccer have been found by archaeologists the world over, from nearly every time and culture.

  Q: Hey, quick question. How come the rest of the world calls soccer football, and what do they call actual football?

  A: They call it American football. We Americans call it football because we changed it so much that we couldn’t call it rugby anymore, which in turn had become so different from the nineteenth-century version of itself that it couldn’t be called by its original name, which was football, and both had to be differentiated from the original ball-kicking game we now call soccer.

  Q: Oh. I see.

  A: Oh, please. No, you don’t. No one does. That’s not even taking into account all the other versions of “football” that different nations claim as their own. But as for American football, its origins are dimly brought to light in an 1883 volume of the periodical Young England, where the Reverend Thomas Keyworth writes an article painstakingly explaining the difference between “the two kinds of football.” The first kind was favored by the men attending Rugby College in England, so it became the rugby style, which involves less padded, muddy, sexy young men in tiny shorts and wool sweaters brawling over a ball that resembles a lumpy ham. The other way to play was to follow rules set forth by some guys at a pub who called themselves the Football Association. This was less handsy and more kicky. So, you either played rugby style or “Soc” (“Association”) style. Or, “rugger versus socker” styles.

  “Sockyfootruggeryball” was very popular among colleges of the late nineteenth century.

  American Ivy League schools had rugby football and Association football clubs. Over the decades, the schools begin refining the rules of rugby until it no longer fit under that heading, so it was just “football.”

  A historic match held by the Carlisle Indian School, a college meant to train Native Americans for skilled labor, helped draw even more interest to the sport when they played Harvard in an exhibition match and first used some of the favored guerrilla tactics of the game, like the false pass-off. They nearly tied the far more practiced men of Harvard.

  Association football, “soccer,” never gained the passionate following in America that the rest of the world held for it, perhaps, as suggested by Virgil C. Aldrich in an article entitled “A Theory of Ball-Play,” published in an 1879 edition of the Psychological Review, because Americans care less about “aerial play” and truly enjoy the displays of “power and deception” that “are the two fundamentals of American football.”

  Q: That’s rather small-minded and insult—

  A: USA! USA! USA! Own it, honey.

  Q: Fine. What about nonorganized sports? What sort of games will help build my child’s character?

  A: Ah! Now the real fun begins! Throw out the iPad and cancel the noncompetitive fun runs, Mother! We’re going to teach your children strength and cunning! (Do not throw out the ice compresses, bandages, or antiseptic ointments, however. You’re going to need a lot of those.) Here are some popular amusements set forth in the Reverend John George Wood’s 1891 book The Boy’s Modern Playmate: A Book of Sports, Games, and Pastimes. (As his title tells you, these are, of course, intended only for boys.)

  Jingling

  First pen and blindfold your children. Except for the one you tie a bell to. He is the Jingler! And his job is to escape the pen without being wrestled down by his blind companions, all while constantly jingling his bell.

  Says Wood,

  There is positively no end to the fun that may be got out of the game: a good jingler will lead the blind men into all sorts of scrapes, of course without compromising himself—into each other’s arms, over the ropes, or over some luckless companion who has come to grief in labouring after the jingler, or a hundred other devices equally effective and amusing.

  The winner is whoever pins the Jingler down in the mud, or the Jingler himself, if he escapes after a set time limit without being caught.

  But for real fun you’ll need an angry pig and some buggy whips.

  Q: Obviously. I’m always thinking how those exact objects would liven up the office.

  A: Because, as Wood explains,

  A somewhat similar though rougher game is played in some parts of the country. A pig is substituted for the jingler, and the blind men are all armed with cart-whips. He who hits the pig gets him.

  At first the players are very cautious and try to find out the pig before they strike; but they soon find that does not pay, and begin slashing about recklessly right and left, and the fun gets fast and furious: their heads and faces are protected from the blows, but the way they belabour each other, especially about the legs, is enough to make the spectator die with laughter.

  This version of jingling is superior because in many cases the Pig Smacker then gets to eat the pig! Worth a bit of flayed skin, I’d say!

  Q: I’m sorry… I actually didn’t get much past the “pen and blindfolding” part. Anything without bondage?

  A: Come now, Mater! You’re already practicing bondage if you keep a boy tied to your apron strings! But perhaps you’d rather something with a bit more mobility? Something like Sling the Monkey or Baste the Bear.


  Sling the Monkey

  First, you’ll need a good strong tree from which to hang your child. Or, if shipboard, the masting will work quite well. The treed child is “the Monkey.” Ideally he will be suspended so that just his toes brush the earth, allowing him a swinging freedom of movement à la Mad Max in the Thunderdome.

  The way the game works is, the boy being swung about in the tree gets “basted,” or beaten, with heavily knotted handkerchiefs. Often a rock would be knotted into the kerchief to give it some oomph, though I doubt any real boy would object to saving time and just filling socks with smashed bricks. As the author says, “With players who don’t mind a little buffeting this game becomes exceedingly lively: an active monkey is very difficult to approach with safety, and of course gives much more life to the game.”

  The good news is, the Monkey also gets a weapon, and he may do his best to strike the horde of boys beating him, with the added advantage of being airborne. Whoever he hits has to be the new Monkey. And the beatings continue.

  Baste the Bear

  This variation of the beating games, of which there are many, derives from a centuries-old sport in which a restrained wild bear was set upon by trained dogs in a bloody fight for survival.

  In this game, a boy, “the Bear,” must get down on his hands and knees in a circle in the dirt and be tied with a rope to his “Keeper.” The other boys proceed as they did with the swinging monkey; that is, they try to beat the child on the ground without being hit by the Keeper, who is protecting his charge but not allowed to let go of the Bear’s rope or step outside the circle. The bear himself is given no weapon, but he is allowed to grab at the legs of any boy who dares come close, and though biting is not explicitly encouraged… it’s not called “Bait the Toothless Granny,” is it? The reverend warns against the temptation to soften the game for the Bear: “In some places the bears stipulate for an extra coat or similar protection from their assailants, but that is an effeminacy to which no encouragement should be given.”