Remember the fuss about that Naomi Wolf book? In May 2019, during the course of a radio interview with Matthew Sweet, it became embarrassingly clear that Wolf had misinterpreted the historical records. The death sentences passed down to "sodomists" in Victorian Britain, which she'd presented in her book Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalisation of Love as evidence - as a searing indictment, indeed - of the appalling persecution suffered by gay men at the time, were not death sentences at all. "Death recorded", it turned out, didn't mean what she thought it meant but was a legal term indicating that a convict was in fact pardoned for his crimes.
Now the paperback's out, published by Virago. A chance to edit out those unfortunate errors? Well, yes and no:
Naomi Wolf faces new row as book confuses persecution of gay men with paedophiles, claim historians:
The American feminist Dr Naomi Wolf has been accused of ignoring evidence of crimes against children to support her view of mid-Victorian Britain as a time when gay men were victims of aggressive persecution by the courts.
In her book Outrages Dr Wolf presents the middle years of the nineteenth century as a time when homosexual men were terrified by the prospect of long prison sentences, including hard labour, because of criminal convictions for “unnatural offences”.
But she has now been accused by British historians of basing this outlook on a misreading of criminal records, which showed that several of her examples were in fact not cases of consensual sex between adult men, but of child abuse, rape and even bestiality.
Dr Fern Riddell, a cultural historian and expert in sex and gender during the Victorian era, said the book is a “calumny against gay people” of the time.
“Outrages is not only horrendously innacurate in its use of historical sources, but it also does a huge diservice to the lives of gay men of that period,” she told The Telegraph.
“Naomi presents child rapists and those taking part in acts of bestiality as being gay men in consensual relationships and that is completely wrong.”
Oh dear.
The book has now been reissued in paperback edition by the British publisher Virago, with the removal of references to the regular execution of men for the crime of sodomy after 1835.
However, Dr Sweet said the paperback edition continues to rely on a profound misreading of historical records and that several of the men Dr Wolf claims were victims of anti-gay injustice had in fact found been guilty of sexual offences against children and animals.
Dr Sweet told The Telegraph: “Dr Wolf has misrepresented the experiences of victims of child abuse and violent sexual assault. This is the most profound offence against her discipline, as well as the memories of real people on the historical record."
In the book Dr Wolf tells of a William Mepham, writing that he was indicted for b*****y and sentenced to two years hard labour. She fails to record however that the victim was a child.
A contemporary newspaper report of the Mepham case, published on Feb 29 1860 and available in The British Newspaper Archive, reported that: “William Mepham, 43, carman, was indicted for committing a heinous offence upon a boy named Peter Paskerell.”
Dr Wolf also writes of another case: “Sentencing became more aggressive: John Spencer, a sixty-year-old man, was tried three times, accused of ‘b*****y’ with three different men.”
However, she does not mention that according to contemporary newspaper accounts from 1860, held in the British Newspaper Archive records, Spencer was a 60-year-old Hackney schoolmaster and that his three alleged victims were in fact not adult men, but schoolchildren, named Reuben Brascher, Leon Moresco and Wiliam Roberts.
Moresco was aged 12 at the time of Spencer’s trial, and would have been aged 10 or 11 at the time of the offence. Roberts was aged 13 at the time of the trial. Brascher’s age was not recorded in the newspaper accounts, but the only Reuben Brascher in the census of 1861 would have been aged 12.
It gets worse.
Two other cases cited by Dr Wolf in a way that suggested the Victorian courts victimised young gay men and teenagers are those of Stephen Alexander and William Tibble, both 15, who were found guilty of attempted sodomy. Alexander received a six-month sentence, while Tibble was sentenced to a year in prison.
But Dr Wolf fails to report that the offences involved animals. In Tibble’s case the offence is recorded as “B*****y with an Ass, while Alexander was indicted for “bestiality”.
Dr Sweet said: “This matters because scholarship matters and history matters. If one of the world’s most prestigious universities can award a doctorate for work that is sloppy or inaccurate, that’s a cause for concern. In half an hour’s work online, I was able to discover the flaws in her work – that some of the men she identifies as consensual lovers persecuted by the state were rapists or abusers of children and animals.”
Dr Riddell added: “It’s deeply embarrassing for Virago that they didn’t request that these checks be made for the paperback. The paperback edition is when you put things right and she hasn’t done any of that, despite Matthew presenting her with the evidence.
“Historians have to justify that everything they write is true. There’s been a failure at university level and a catastrophic failure at Virago, but ultimately the blame must lie with Naomi.”
"but ultimately the blame must lie with Naomi"
When this first came out I wondered where her PhD advisor was. This being rather their function, to stop people haring off after something already known to be wrong.....
Posted by: Tim Worstall | February 07, 2021 at 11:17 AM