Talk:Homintern

A few references

I found a few references that might help, Excerpts from: The Homosexual Revolution, END TIME ABOMINATION BY DAVID A. NOEBEL, with GERALD S. POPE, JULIAN WILLIAMS, 1977; CHAPTER 3, The Homosexual Life Style [1]

and from "Marriage marks the end of a gay era" by Robert Fulford (The National Post, 21 June 2003)[2] "W.H. Auden, who has been called the last unquestionably great poet born in England, liked the word "Homintern." He may even have invented it, as a joke on the laws against homosexual love-making. The word implied a mythical underground, an international gay resistance movement modelled on the Communist International (known as the Comintern), the real organization that Moscow operated from 1919 to 1943 for purposes of infiltration and espionage." Benjiboi 21:56, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Unsupported assertions

This article makes a lot of broad claims that need strong support, without supporting them at all. "Even most gay people" believed in a Homintern? How do we know that? The only secondary source cited here that could plausibly support it is the Gregory Woods essay, which in fact says the exact opposite, that "The only people who ever took this simple play on words seriously were those who feared the spread of homosexual influence."

And "These magazine articles were always illustrated with the color lavender"? Really, every one? Who looked at all of them to make sure?

And it was widely believed in the 60s that the Batman TV series deliberately promoted homosexuality. Really. I'd love to see a source for that; it should be mentioned in the article for the series, if true.

Funny that there's a dubious tag on the words "In the 1960s, the majority of gay people had not publicly discussed their sexuality". That's possibly the only claim in the whole article that I consider too obvious to need a citation. What's the dispute there? —Celithemis 21:13, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Couldn't have agreed more with the above. Whole article has a bizarre, conspiratorial air, with no support. Have added a couple of quotations which are better phrased, and will think about how to revise the article, if there are no objections. - User:the1james 00:25, 9 October 2008

Just because Auden gets probably-misplaced credit for coining the term--via Norse (also gay, like Auden) as the source--doesn't mean there was wide acceptance of the McCarthyist "Homintern" concept among homophiles. (I won't say "gay community," as one didn't really exist at the time. BTW the word "homophile" is widely used by queer historians, and not regarded as pejorative if in proper context.) There certainly was a conspiratorial air afoot in the U.S. at the time. Which should not be denied, even by omission: despite the fact that simply documenting this very-real "Jew-commie-homo" paranoia is certain to sound peculiar to current-day readers not acquainted with the worst excesses of those days.drone5 (talk) 01:19, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Fascinating article

The sentence "... so homophiles had to use what we today call gaydar to determine who was gay" is not so good. We should stay away from the pejorative "homophile' and the slang "gaydar". Can we rewrite this? Also, some of the assertions are still quite remarkable. They should have inline references.--Knulclunk (talk) 16:29, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Term 1949

[Other writers ... Capote ...] The new one [ Vidal: The Season of Comfort] is a study of a homosexual, and its terrain ranges from Virginia to Hollywood to Mexico to, inevitably, New York. Where Capote excels, Vidal falls far, far behind. He seems to have absolutely no respect for writing as craft, and his books sound as though he fell asleep in every English class he ever attended. But that is a minor objection. If the activities of writers in New York are not clear reflections of our contemporary life, neither are the shenanigans of the fictional Homintern (as someone has called the weak-wristed young men). Vidal has given us an elaborately detailed picture of their world, but he hasn't said anything that Thomas Mann didn't say better in Death in Venice.

Richard B. Gehman: "Where Are the Postwar Novels?" in: Esquire: the magazine for men, Vol. 31, Esquire Publishing Company, March 1949, p. 91, right column of 4 columns (article begins p. 74 and continued p. 91) --Franz (Fg68at) de:Talk 19:54, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Term 1940/1941

There is stated in different papers and books, that Auden used it in the beginning of the 1940s or 1941 in Partisan Review. It seems this come from Harold Norse (1989). But Auden wrote at least until 1955 rarely for the Partisan Review. But he made this one article about Oscar Wilde in 1950, which had further impact later. The next was Shakespear.

Joseph P. Clancy: A W. H. Auden Bibliography 1924-1955, in: Thought: Fordham University Quarterly ISSN 2154-2139, Volume 30, Issue 2, Summer 1955, Pages 260-270 (Philosophy Documentation Center, Google-Cache)

• Partisan Review according compilation from Joseph P. Clancy:
  • From Auden until 1955
    • "Religion and the Intellectuals," Partisan Review, XVII (1950), 120·128.
    • "A Playboy of the Western World: St. Oscar, the Homintern Martyr," Partisn Review, XVII (1950), 390-394.
    • "Some Reflections on Music and Opera," Partisan Review, XIX (1952). 10-18.
  • About Auden until 1955
    • Jarrell, Randall, "From Freud to Paul: The Stages of Auden's Ideology," Partisan Review, XII (1945),437-457.
• ESSAYS AND REVIEWS from Auden 1940-1941 according compilation from Joseph P. Clancy:
  • "The Icon and the Portrait," Nation, CL (1940), 48.
  • "Tradition and V alue," New Republic, CI (1940), 90-91.
  • "Against Romanticism," New Republic, CII (1940), 187.
  • "Literary Transference," Southern Review VI (1940), 78-86.
  • "What is Culture?," Nation, CLI (1940), 18.
  • "Poet in Wartime," New Republic, CIII (1940),59-60.
  • "Tract for the Times," Nation, CLII (1941); 24-25.
  • "A Note on Order," Nation, CLII (1941), 131-133.
  • "The Wandering Jew," New Republic, CIV (1941), 185-186.
  • "The Means of Grace," New Republic, CIV (1941), 765-766.
  • "Ambiguous Answers," New Republic, CIV (1941), 861-862.
  • "Eros and Agape," Nation, CLII (1941), 756-758.
  • "A Grammar of Assent," New Republic, CV (1941), 59l.263
  • "Criticism in a Mass Society," in D. Stauffer ed., The Intent of the Critic, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1941, pp. 127-147.
  • "The Role of Intellectuals in World Affairs," Decision, I (No.1, 1941),44-45.
  • "Where Are We Now?," Decision, I (No.1, 1941),49-52.
  • "The Masses Defined," Decision, I (No.5, 1941), 63-65.

--Franz (Fg68at) de:Talk 15:13, 17 May 2012 (UTC)