Mary Mcintosh and Queer Liberation in Britain

Mary McIntosh (1936-2013) is one of the names synonymous with British sociology. Her Marxist, feminist and sexuality based work in the second half of the 20th century has cemented her in the history of Sociology. This work does not go unnoticed now, just as it didn’t then, for example, when she was deported from the US in 1960 for speaking against the House Un-American Activities Committee. McIntosh’s politics, her activism and her academic research are intertwined. Perhaps her most famous paper ‘The Homosexual Role’ in 1968 was pivotal and sits across the bridge of her academic and activist life. Some files in the McIntosh archive offer a more in depth view of just how ‘The Homosexual Role’ came about and include details of her membership to lesser known British lesbian activist groups such as the Minorities Research Group and Kendric. In this paper I will explore these more hidden histories of queer liberation and academia in Britain and pay close attention to Mary McIntosh and the networks she had, which included psychologists, authors and activists. McIntosh’s involvement with the gay liberation front has been well documented, however these lesbian organisations often get forgotten about in histories of queer liberation, and I pay closer attention to these more marginalised groups. At the core of what McIntosh fought against was injustice. Her work has contributed to our understandings of power and it is through studying and this history we might be able to recognise and contextualise our own time. In doing so, I argue, we might be able to tackle the stubborn injustices still present today more effectively.