Queer Heroes and Queer Villains I (Panel / In-Person)

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Special Session
Our Ruling Classes: Class, Power, Conflict / Gender and Sexuality

Nikolai Endres (Western Kentucky University)
niko@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

In their 2022 book Bad Gays: A Homosexual History, Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller write about “gay people in history who do not flatter us, and whom we cannot make into heroes: the liars, the powerful, the criminal, and the successful.” What makes a villain or a hero? What is their relationship to the ruling classes? What is the status of the wisdom of the elders in a community that seems predicated on youth? What is the role of a queer cult of celebrity? What are the hierarchies of power, where many queer heroes are still seemingly white and male, while villains tend to be the opposite? What makes heroes and villains queer?

In their 2022 book Bad Gays: A Homosexual History, Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller write about “gay people in history who do not flatter us, and whom we cannot make into heroes: the liars, the powerful, the criminal, and the successful.” What makes a villain or a hero? What is their relationship to the ruling classes? What is gained by a book on bad gays? Like all minorities, queer people have always struggled with the question of how and when to empower and elevate individuals or subgroups within a community. Specifically, what is the status of the wisdom of the elders in a community that seems predicated on youth? What is the role of a queer cult of celebrity? What are the hierarchies of power, where many queer heroes are still seemingly white and male, while villains tend to be the opposite? Do heroes and villains come from economic or cultural elites? What makes heroes and villains queer? This panel welcomes proposals on all kinds of queer heroes and queer villains, from Alexander the Great to Oscar Wilde, from Sappho to Gertrude Stein, from Marsha T. Johnson to Caitlyn Jenner, from Dr. Frank-N-Furter to Scar, from Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” to Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do,” from unsung heroes to erased villains.