ABSTRACT
It is tempting to draw an analogy here between the poet’s young sinner and the contemporary gay1 Londoner, assuming that a representative of the latter can in fact be found. He could be said to have changed the image he projects to the broader society, as well as his own self-perceptions, to ones that can be seen as more acceptable. Those aspects of his identity which centre upon his homosexuality – his same-sex desires and behaviour – may have become more prominent of late, but he appears to have moved away from seeing himself, and being seen by others, as a ‘gender invert’, a ‘feminine’ soul in a ‘male’ body, and towards seeing himself and being seen as a complete (that is, ‘real’) man: a union of his biological sex with what he perceives to be, and what he assumes to be socially accepted as, the natural mental, physical, individual and social characteristics of men. In a move variously documented as ‘the butch-shift’ (Segal 1990; Fernbach
1981) or as the ‘masculinization of the gay man’ (Gough 1989; Marshall 1981), the last three decades have seen the emergence of such ‘macho’ figures as the moustached ‘clone’, the tattooed ‘leatherman’ or ‘biker’, and more recently the all-American ‘jock’. Gay men, it now seems, are going to the city’s gyms in droves. In virtually all gay erotica and in the advertisements for gay chat-lines, escorts, and bars and clubs, macho posturing, bulging biceps, sculpted pectorals and lashings of torn denim, black leather and sports gear appear to be the norm rather than the exception.
