#and probably also the movie Pride on Amazon prime which really shows the England Charles lived in

[stargirl-and-potts]

All of this, and also: Charles Rowland died in 1989. Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979. The AIDS panic gained public momentum through the eighties. In 1988 Thatcher’s government instituted the famously cruel Section 28, prohibiting “promoting homosexuality”—forcing most of the queer students’ movement underground.

In other words, even after the decriminalization of adult gay relationships in ‘67, the England Charles grew up in was terribly similar to the England Edwin knew: the same backlash against increasing visibility, the same public silence in the aftermath, the same moral panic and general communal disgust, the same shame projected by teachers and leaders, the same loneliness. Any reason Edwin had ever had not to understand or allow his queerness — Charles had had it too.

hi if you want me to be insane for a sec i wanna talk about what environment re: homosexuality edwin was raised in

there was, at the time of edwin's birth, a national panic about the decline of masculinity in the UK. there was an idea that the uncontrollable sexual appetites of gay men would erode the moral foundation of the country and destroy it.

gay men, especially effeminate gay men, were seen as morally insane, degenerate, and as sexual criminals on par with child abusers. being gay was a criminal offense seen as contributing to social collapse. it was further criminalized under the labouchere amendment in 1885. gay sex was banned, but so was something as innocent as kissing. even, in some cases, just smiling or talking to other men in places suspected of being gay hotspots could be punished with imprisonment and hard labor.

edwin was born about 5 years after oscar wilde was imprisoned for "gross indecency" with other men, and about 50 years BEFORE alan turing was chemically castrated for the same crime. following wilde's highly publicized prosecution, there emerged a culture of hunting down, ratting out, and blackmailing gay men under threat of arrest. i'd go so far as to say edwin was becoming a teenager at the HEIGHT of the gay panic that emerged after wilde's trial - arrest rates had ballooned by 1912, and edwin was in school from 1913 to 1916.

it would have been rough, looking and acting the way he does.