Men Like That: A Southern Queer History (review)

In Men Like That: A Southern Queer History, John Howard goes well beyond providing a fascinating case study of Mississippi gay life from 1945 to 1985. In addition to documenting the presence of male same-sex sexualities in places where many readers may least expect to find them, Howard makes major contributions to the history of sexuality, southern history, urban and rural history, civil rights history, and post-WWII history.

In an introduction that challenges the urban, progressive, and identity-based narratives that have dominated the writing of gay history, Howard traces the contours of alternative frameworks that can more fully deal with the queer worlds of rural and small town Mississippians. These are the worlds of both “men like that” and “men (who) like that” (xix). Based on extensive documentary and oral history sources, the book then proceeds in two parts. Part One provides a detailed panorama of queer male life. In the first chapter, readers learn about everyday experiences and memories of queer desires and acts. A second chapter, which explores home, church, school, college, and work, introduces queer locations in the geography of the state. After this, in a third chapter focussed on cities, towns, bars, cars, roads, roadsides, migrations, and mobilizations, readers see social actors moving within and between queer sites, “circulating” in addition to “congregating” (78).

As Howard rightly states, “part 1 is perhaps best viewed as a set of contexts out of which develop, in part 2, a series of changes” (xxi). Chapter Four, “Norms and Laws,” uses four episodes—-a 1955 murder of an interior decorator, a 1962 arrest of an African American civil rights activist, a 1963 arrest of a Euro-American civil rights activist, and a 1965 arrest of a local symphony conductor—-to trace shifts in sexual and gender norms and crackdowns on queers in the midst of the civil rights movement. Chapter Five, “Representations,” explores a rich range of queer novels, physique art, newspaper articles, music, and films, including the popular suicide narrative “Ode to Billy Joe.” Here Howard traces multiple discourses of same-sex sexualities; multiple racial, class, and regional relationships; and multiple authors and audiences. Chapter Six, “Politics and Beliefs,” focuses on gay identity politics, examining the Mississippi Gay Alliance of the 1970s and the Metropolitan Community Church of the 1980s. Chapter Seven, “Scandals,” provides revealing accounts of the political careers of U.S. Representative Jon Hinson and Mississippi Governor Bill Allain, both of whom faced public accusations concerning same-sex sexualities in the 1980s. An epilogue introduces one final figure, an African American man whose complicated oral history narrative is filled with ambiguous references to the sexes of his sexual partners and who thus reintroduces several of the central themes of Men Like That.

Howard’s first major accomplishment is that he documents the distinctive presence of queer life in the South. As he states in the introduction, “male-male desire in Mississippi was well enmeshed in the patterns of everyday life” and “men interested in intimate and sexual relations with other men found numerous opportunities to act on their desires, and did so within the primary institutions of the local community—-home, church, school, and workplace” (xi). Instead of describing an environment of brutal anti-queer hostility, Howard writes that “homosexuality and gender insubordination were acknowledged and accommodated with a pervasive, deflective pretense of ignorance” (xi). “Around deviant sexuality,” he concludes, “a quiet accommodation was the norm” (142). Working to avoid presenting the south as exotic, backwards, or premodern, Howard explores the unique character of southern queer life.

Men Like That also succeeds in challenging the notion that queer life was necessarily urban. It does so by emphasizing that many gay Mississippians chose to remain in or return to this predominantly rural and small-town state, and by treating those who did with a minimum of pathos or nostalgia. In addition to examining rural worlds on their own terms, Howard persuasively argues for “an understanding of urban centers...