Out in Time: The Public Lives of Gay Men from Stonewall to the Queer Generation

by Perry N. Halkitis

The civil rights of LGBTQ people have slowly yet steadily strengthened since the Stonewall Riots of June, 1969. Despite enormous opposition from some political segments and the catastrophic effects of the AIDS crisis, the last five decades have witnessed improvement in the conditions of the lives of LGBTQ individuals in the United States. As such, the realities and challenges faced by a young gay man coming of age and coming out in the 1960s is, in many profound ways, different from the experiences of a young gay man coming of age and coming out today.

Out in Time explores the life experiences of three generations of gay men --the Stonewall, AIDS, and Queer generations-- arguing that while there are generational differences in the lived experiences of young gay men, each one confronts its own unique historical events, realities, and socio-political conditions, there are consistencies across time that define and unify the identity formation of gay men. Guided by the vast research literature on gay identity formation and coming out, the ideas and themes explored here are seen through the oral histories of a diverse set of fifteen gay men, five from each generation. Out in Time demonstrates how early life challenges define and shape the life courses of gay men, demarcating both the specific time-bound challenges encountered by each generation, and the universal challenges encountered by gay men coming of age across all generations and the conditions that define their lives.

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, LGBT, History

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[ace · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting to learn about the different mindsets of gay (cis, male) generations, but places undue emphasis on coming out, going so far as claiming revealing one’s identity to others is vital to queer actualization. That’s fucked up. Queer people are queer, despite who they choose to tell or not tell. Straight (or cis) people don’t have to blatantly come out to anyone, and no ones telling them their identities are undeveloped until they explicitly state them. Not to mention that not everyone has the privilege (financial means, accepting community) to come out, and suggesting coming out is necessary is — classist? if that’s the term.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. Poorly edited, with lots of distracting errors. Would have been significantly better if presented as transcripts of the interviews with conclusions at the end and skippable because they didn't add anything.

[Jared Knepper · Rating 1 out of 5]

While Halkitis can be commended for the investigation and amplification of both a history especially worth knowing and a dialogue especially worth opening, my respect for his aspirations do not undermine the fact that his book is poorly constructed, naïvely negligent, and shoddily edited to such a degree that it becomes painstakingly hard to read. Only in the table of contents did I see solid structure, for within the chapters there was little to no sense of narrative with sequence or flow—and that absence of narrative persists both in the author's own reflections and also in the pieces he includes from his interviewees. The selected excerpts of interview transcripts from the men around whose stories the book was built were inserted as block quotes with no editing; the resulting "stories," not spliced to coordinate with the specific subjects of the chapters or even to sit within the larger context of the book as a whole, read more often than not as unnecessary at best. At worst the quotes were nonsensical, having not been scrubbed of their colloquial meanderings where—and I exaggerate only EVER so slightly in saying this—there are potentially more speech disfluencies ("uh," "uhm," "hmm," etc.) than actual words and phrases of substance. A simple insertion of brackets here and there with some clarifying words inside seems like an obvious solution, though I worry even this might have made for an equally messy book given both author's and publisher's lack of attention to detail. Somewhere in the first 50 pages, I stumbled upon a sentence at the end of which sat "[CITE]," an apparent note-to-self to which the author and publisher alike never returned to add a footnote that would match the rest of the citations in the book. Various spelling errors—in common and proper nouns alike—and grammatical gaffes were scattered throughout too, unfortunately with a frequency that only accentuated the messy nature of the whole ordeal. For me personally, the saddest reality remains the elementary level of construction—and of conclusions drawn, too—that, had I not known better, might have inspired the assumption that I were reading not a legitimate publication but rather the penultimate draft of a high-school research paper. If it's a compelling read on the complex experience of coming out that you seek, stick with a piece from The Atlantic.

[James Burke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some information was good - but to attack someone because they have a preference and say it's racism - just wrong. My opinion and I stand by it. Attack away.