Polchin...presents a reflective, thoughtful first book that perfectly blends true crime and the history of discrimination against gay men in the 20th century ... Polchin expertly uses men's stories between World War I and the Stonewall Riots to prove that the fight for equal treatment is not over, and that the history of the LGBTQ+ movement is not always one of activism and celebration ... This insightful history of crimes perpetrated against gay men is essential for social history fans. Readers who enjoy well-researched, deliberate social commentary will appreciate Polchin's enlightening and descriptive style.
...a grisly, sobering, comprehensively researched new history. The subject matter doesn’t make for light reading; Polchin admits to feeling 'haunted' by what he discovered in archives. But it’s impossible to understand gay life in twentieth-century America without reckoning with the dark stories. Gay men were unable to shake free of them until they figured out how to tell the stories themselves, in a new way ... Polchin’s historicizing observations seem valid and accurate, as far as they go, but, if a nineteen-thirties murder was a little more likely to start with hitchhiking, and a nineteen-sixties murder with a pickup in a bar, the variations seem minor compared with the transhistorical—almost ahistorical—sameness of the underlying pattern, a threat that seems to have been a constant presence in gay lives for most of the century.
Although excerpts from sources as stylistically disparate as tabloids, texts, novels, and the Physicians’ Desk Reference curb the fluidity of the prose, they enrich the scope of the book’s analysis to an extent otherwise impossible. Tracing the journey of viciously persecuted people necessitates traveling treacherous, unmapped roads where the final picture is more of a mosaic in progress than a complete work of art ... James Polchin’s Indecent Advances inspires further exploration into the hidden histories of marginalized populations and how the violence they suffer might be the result of a system that excludes some people from its protections, exiling them to places where they are made more vulnerable.
Compact and powerful, Polchin’s social history of crimes against queer men in the first half of the 20th century coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City. An important book for an important anniversary ... I have no significant criticisms of this book ... this book is not light reading. Polchin describes these murders in graphic, heartbreaking detail ... Indecent Advances should be required reading. Highly recommended.
... formidably researched ... While Polchin does ultimately make his larger points, the narrative is so dominated by extended accounts of the grisly murders that his argument can sometimes be submerged beneath the gore. Nonetheless, Indecent Advances is a significant contribution to queer history and to understanding the forces that shape contemporary queer identity ... Indecent Advances is an important book not least of all because, as the Stonewall celebrations begin, it reminds us that queer identity has been shaped as much by trauma as by courage.
...original and revealing ... Through extensive research, Polchin has collected innumerable long-lost newspaper accounts of anonymous sex crimes involving gay men and, through careful analysis, given them historical and political meaning ... The author considers reports of gay sex crimes from across the country to paint a vivid picture of not simply individual crimes and the men who committed—and suffered—them but to illuminate how the nature of homosexuality and crimes involving gay men have fundamentally changed ... Polchin concludes his valuable study by bringing the lessons he carefully recounts from the 1920s to the critical 1960s and the significance of the gay rights movement.
Polchin exposes American society’s exploitative misunderstanding of gay men ... Viewing gay history through the lens of crime, Polchin re-orders mid-century events and history-makers in startling ways ... The works of Baldwin and Gore Vidal provide additional insight, and Polchin mines the African-American press of the time to provide a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the era.
For readers searching for a fast-paced, meticulously researched, thoroughly engaging (and often infuriating) look-see into the systematic criminalization of gay men and widespread condemnation of homosexuality post-World War I, cultural historian James Polchin’s first book is a smart bet ... In later chapters, Polchin rightly shifts his focus to hint at the seeds of progress in the struggle for gay equality.
Thoughtful, accessible and well-researched, Polchin’s book offers useful insight into some of the lesser-known cultural currents that gave rise to the gay rights movement. An enlighteningly provocative cultural history.
...insightful but somewhat gruesome ... Polchin’s investigation of several decades of queer American life is an intelligent but darkly voyeuristic experience.
