Jeffrey WeeksOBE is an historian and sociologist specialising in work on sexuality. He is among the academics in the early period of gay men's studies in Britain that emerged from the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) which he joined in 1970 and the Gay Left of which he was a founding member.[1] He has been described as "the most significant British intellectual working on sexuality to emerge from the radical sexual movements of the 1970s.”[2][3]
Weeks was born in 1945 in the small town of Porth in the Rhondda Valleys in South Wales, historically one of the most famous coal mining areas in the world. His parents were both from mining stock. He grew up in a loving family in an overwhelmingly working class area where a strong sense of community was the basis for everyday life, and was educated in local schools and at Porth County Grammar School, one of the leading boys’ schools in the area. But he increasingly felt a tension between the strongly conservative gender and sexual values of the mining valleys and his own developing sexuality. He left home to go to university in London in 1964, and studied at University College London 1964-1969, where he obtained a BA (Hons) in History in 1967, followed by an MPhil in the History of Political Theory. His years as a student in London gave him the opportunity to explore his sexuality fully, and to begin to live a queer life.[4][5]
Gay Liberation
The beginning of the Gay Liberation Front in London in October, 1970, proved to be a transformative moment in his life. Through his involvement he came out publicly as gay, encountered new radical ideologies and beliefs, got involved in social activism and met new life long friends and his first long term partner, Angus Suttie, later an innovative potter. With Angus he was a founder member of the Gay Left journal which became a focus for debate about gay liberation and the left, and provided an opportunity for Weeks to begin writing about the history and sociology of gay politics and wider sexualities. Through early books, including Socialism and the New Life (with Sheila Rowbotham); Coming Out (1977), a study of the history of homosexual politics in Britain; Sex, Politics and Society (1981); Sexuality and Its Discontents; (1985), and Sexuality (1986), he developed an influential critique of essentialist theories of sexuality and gender (that is approaches which relied on deterministic biological and psychological explanations for sexual behaviour). He emphasised instead the social and historical factors which shape sexual values and identities and gendered assumptions, an approach that became known as social constructionism - though Weeks rarely used that term himself, regarding it as too mechanistic and narrow.[6]
Academic career
Weeks’ research and writings on sexuality made it difficult at first for him to obtain a permanent academic post. He taught and researched at a number of universities, including London School of Economics, Essex, Kent (from where he gained his PhD in 1983), Southampton, and West of England, where he first became a full professor, finally moving to London South Bank University (LSBU) in 1994 as Professor of Sociology.[7] He was the Executive Dean of Arts and Human Sciences at LSBU (2003–2008). He was also the Director of the Social Policy and Urban Regeneration Research Institute (SPUR) in 2005–2009, and university director of research. He subsequently became Emeritus Professor of Sociology at LSBU.[8] He has been on the editorial board of several journals including History Workshop Journal, the Journal of the History of Sexuality, the Journal of Homosexuality, the Sociological Review and Victorian Studies; and has delivered lectures and seminars in a wide range of conferences and universities in Europe, Australia, Latin America and North America. His articles and books have been translated into a number of languages, including French, Spanish, Catalan, Serbian, German, Chinese and Japanese.
He lives in London with Mark McNestry, his life-partner since 1990. They became civil partners in 2006.
Authored publications (selected)
Socialism and the New Life (with Sheila Rowbotham), Pluto Press, 1977. ISBN 0 904383 52 0 (pbk); 0 904383 53 9 (hbk); trans in Catalan , Sheila Rowbotham and Jeffrey Weeks, Dos Pioneros de la Liberacion Sexual: Edward Carpenter y Havelok Ellis. Homosexualidad, feminismo y socialismo, Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama 1978, ISBN 84 339 1308 5
Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, Quartet Books 1977; ISBN 0 7043 2146 7 (hbk); 0 7043 3175 6 (pbk). 2nd revised edition, with new chapter and bibliography, 1990, ISBN 0 7043 0123 -7
Sex, Politics and Society. The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800, Longman 1981; 2nd edition, with additional chapter and new bibliography, 1989 ISBN 0 582 48333 6; 2nd edition, with additional chapter and new bibliography, 1989, ISBN 0 582 02383 1. Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800, 3rd, fully revised edition, Routledge, xvi + 445 pp., 2012. ISBN 978 1 4082 4830 0 (limp)
Sexuality and its Discontents: Meanings, Myths and Modern Sexualities, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985. ISBN 0 7102 0564 3 9 (hbk); 0 7102 0565 1 (pbk) Published in Spanish edition as El Malestar de la Sexualidad: Significados, Mitos y Sexualidades Modernas, Madrid, Talasa Ediciones S.L, 1993, ISBN 84 88119 11 9
Sexuality, Ellis Horwood/Tavistock, 1986. ISBN 0 85312 879 0 (hbk); 0 7458 0002 5 (bbk). Published in Spanish translation as Sexualidad, Mexico City, PUEG/ Editorial Paidos, 1998. Published in Japanese, 1999. Revised second English edition, Routledge 2003, ISBN 0 415 28285 3 (hbk); 0 415 28286 1 9 (pbk). Third revised edition, pp xii + 194, Routledge 2009, ISBN10: 0-415-49711-6 (hbk) , 0-415-49712-4 (pbk), 0-203-87741-1 (ebk). ISBN13: 978-0-415-49711-4 (hbk), 978-0-415-49712-1 (pbk), 978-0-203-87741-8 (ebk). Fourth revised edition, xxii + 281pp, London, Routledge 2017, ISBN978 1 138 02288 1 (hbk), 02289 8 (pbk), 978 1 315 77681 1 (ebk)
Between the Acts. Lives of Homosexual Men 1885-1967 (with Kevin Porter), Routledge, 1990; 2nd edition, with new Preface, Rivers Oram Press, 1998. ISBN 0 415 00944 8; 2nd edition, with new Preface, Rivers Oram Press, 1998, ISBN 1 85489 093 X
Against Nature: Essays on History, Sexuality and Identity, Rivers Oram Press, 1991 ISBN 1 85489 004 2
Invented Moralities. Sexual Values in an Age of Uncertainty, UK: Polity Press 1995, ISBN 0 7456 1368 3. USA: Columbia University Press, 1995, ISBN 0 231 10410 3
Making Sexual History, Polity Press, 2000, pp x + 256, ISBN|0-7456-2114-7 (HB), 0 7456 2115 5 (PB); Chinese language edition, Nanjing 2001
Same Sex Intimacies: Families of Choice and other Life Experiments (with Brian Heaphy and Catherine Donovan), Routledge, 2001, pp ix + 245, ISBN 0 415 25476 0 (hbk), 0 415 25477 9 (pbk)
The World We Have Won: The Remaking of Erotic and Intimate Life, xvi + 269, Routledge 2007, ISBN 978 0 415 42200 0 (hbk), 42201 7 (pbk)
The Languages of Sexuality, pp. xvi + 247, Routledge, 2011, ISBN 978 0 415 37572 6 (hbk), 978 0 415 37573 3 (pbk), 978 0 203 93032 8 (ebk). Spanish translation as Lenguajes de la Sexualidid, trans Pablo I Betesh,, Ediciones Nueva Vision SAIC, Buenos Aires, 2012, ISBN 978 950 602 637 0
Sexuelle Gleichberechtigung: Gender, Sexualität und Homosexuuelle Emanzipation in Europe, Bundesstiftung Magnus Hirschfeld, Hirschfeld Lectures 4, Gottingen, Wallstein Verlag, 2014, pp. 59, ISBN 978 3 8353 1324 8
Sexualité, translation of 3rd edition by Samuel, Baudry, Colette Collomb-Boreau, Baudouin Millet, Françoise Orazi et Nathalie Zimpfer, with new Preface by author, and Introduction to the work of Jeffrey Weeks by Rommel Mendès-Leite, Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon 2014, ISBN 978 2 7297 0864 1, ISSN 2257 2678
Protive Prirode: Ogledi o Društvenom Konstruisanju Identiteta [Against Nature: The Social Construction of Identities], pp. 127, Belgrade: Karpos, 2015, ISBN 978 86 6435 011 2
What is Sexual History?, Polity Press, 2016, ISBN 13 978 0 7456 8024 8, and 8025 (pb). Translated as Ecrire l’Histoire des Sexualités, Press Universitaires de Lyon, 2019, ISBN 978 2 7297 0943 3
Coming Out: The Emergence of LGBT Identities in Britain from the 19th Century to the Present, 40th Anniversary edition, revised and updated, xxvi + 338 pp, Quartet Books 2016, ISBN 978 0 70437 417 1
Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800, 4th, fully revised edition, Routledge, 2018. ISBN 9781138963177; 3184 (pbk); 1525 (ebk)
Between Worlds: A Queer Boy from the Valleys, Parthian, 2021, xviii + 272, ISBN 978 1 912681 88 4, eISBN 978 1 912681 92 1
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