GAY TIMES
March 2003 (p.96)
One of the bits of queer theory that seems to have stuck is the idea of masculinity as a kind of drag. The more you do it, the more insecure you look. David Coad shows that gender and sexuality have always been troubled concepts for Australians, starting with the systematic destruction of manhood in the brutal plantations of transported colonists. While sexual exploitation was rife, same-sex liaisons were punished with death.
Coad places this colonial beginning as the source of an historic anxiety; one that celebrated the heroic deeds of outlaw bushrangers such as Ned Kelly and Chopper Read, while prudently overlooking the homoeroticism in their imagery and in their lives.
Much of this disturbance is centred upon gender identities, rather than same-sex choice of partner. It is cross-dressing which has horrified and stimulated Australian manhood. This leads us straight to Barry Humphries (Dame Edna Everage) and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Coad illustrates through film and fiction (Gallipoli, The Twyborn Affair) a flourishing of new ideas and attitudes around 1980. However, the public mutilations of body sculptor Leigh Bowery may plausibly be linked to the hanging and floggings of the colonial past. Gender Trouble Down Under ends in the 1990s with a flourishing of transgender, but also with a male backlash, as Iron John types meet up in the mountains to repel queerness and get in touch with their deep masculinity.
This well-researched book is carefully argued throughout. It is also vivid, full of lively instances and entirely readable.
Alan Sinfield
Professor of English
University of Sussex