ABSTRACT
Same-sex desire not merely impels one to action but marks one’s subjectivity and traced back to antiquity. The Victorian age subjectivities marked by same-sex desire were specifically understood in terms of homosexuality (an object of sustained scientific study for the newly established discipline of sexology). The Dublin and Cleveland Street scandals employed a number of rhetorical strategies to construct a relationship of radical incompatibility between same-sex desire and good government. No degree of ignorance, or bad training, or evil conditions will avail them. The most effective of the strategies were ‘unspeakable’, ‘nameless’ or ‘unmentionable’. Their same-sex desire turned them into poor rulers because it exposed them to the bad advice of their favourites, drove them to drawing arbitrary preferences among their subjects, distanced them from the people, encouraged them to waste public money on their lovers, or made them too lenient and peaceful, or uninterested in public affairs.
