Fish in a barrel: police targeting of Brisbane’s ephemeral gay spaces in the pre-decriminalization era

Article


Bleakley, P. 2019. Fish in a barrel: police targeting of Brisbane’s ephemeral gay spaces in the pre-decriminalization era. Journal of Homosexuality. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2019.1695424
TypeArticle
TitleFish in a barrel: police targeting of Brisbane’s ephemeral gay spaces in the pre-decriminalization era
AuthorsBleakley, P.
Abstract

Across history, and particularly in periods of criminalization, the gay community have often been forced to resort to public spaces—“beats”—to clandestinely seek out anonymized sex with partners who share their sexual preference. This article reframes the construction of gay beats as ephemeral spaces that prevails in existing sexuality literature. Instead, it shows that Brisbane’s beats were semi-permanent spaces with subcultural meaning to the local gay community—a fact that was used by police to target gay men during law enforcement’s attempts to reestablish a moral order in the postwar era. Using a combination of archival material, personal narratives and secondary sources, this article effectively reframes the concept of gay beats as transitory spaces, and instead argues that it was their permanence and resilience in Brisbane’s gay subculture that made them a perfect hunting ground for police looking to target a vulnerable homosexual community.

Research GroupCentre for Criminological and Social Research (CSRC)
Law and Politics
Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC)
PublisherTaylor & Francis (Routledge)
JournalJournal of Homosexuality
ISSN0091-8369
Electronic1540-3602
Publication dates
Online04 Dec 2019
Publication process dates
Deposited04 Dec 2019
Accepted01 Apr 2019
Accepted author manuscript
Copyright Statement

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Journal of Homosexuality on 04/12/2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00918369.2019.1695424.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2019.1695424
LanguageEnglish
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