Topaz Academia

[SilentSentinel]

Deleted this essay because it sucked ass. I got a D on it lol.

[Reliability]

There's a topic like this on 1337planet and it was interesting, so I figured I'd try it here.

Here, you may post essays or reports that you have done that you would like to share with others for comment or you would like revision/proofreading help. Obviously I'm not sure how many people have written things that are shareable... but I figure why not, at least I can show you how awesome I am. ^.^

Here's a handy-dandy template if you wish to use it:

Title:
Subject: (school subject or general content)
Approximate Word Count:
Level: (school grade/year if applicable)
Additional Info: (anything else)

I'll start off with an essay I did a few months ago.

Title: World Population Sustainability: The Effects of Healthcare and the Developed World
Subject: World Issues -Population Issues
Aprox. Word count: 1200
Level: Grd. 12
Add. info: MLA format

Though the earth is rich in resources, it was never meant to support this many people at once. Though 95% of current global population growth comes from developing countries (Bandarage, 1994), the developed world also needs to contribute to the solution. Population control measures need to be implemented in third world countries as well as urban areas in the United States (Bandarage, 1994). Birth rates in the United States, as well as other similar nations, are too low to effectively ‘control’ the population, meaning that the only thing to change is the death rate. Though the suggestion seems to imply killing people, all that really needs to be done is stopping the process of keeping people alive simply because it is possible. By consuming more resources to keep the sick and dying alive, the healthy are made to survive on less. Now, this pressure on resources is hard to sense, but as essential resources like fuel and water become scarcer, people will realise that the kind of immortality that is trying to be achieved in developed society is damaging to our future survival.

The decision to allow a sick person to die has been an ethical problem for a long time. Using artificial means, such as respirators, feeding tubes and medication used to raise blood pressure, patients can be kept alive for months (Schneiderman, 2000). Using these measures to prolong the life of terminal patients that are awake and aware can be helpful for families to say goodbye, but for patients that cannot respond, these things are not practical. When in a persistent or permanent vegetative state, a patient sometimes appears wakeful; leading some families to believe they are aware when in fact they have almost no chance of recovery (Rakestraw, 1992). These people absorb resources like time and energy from doctors that could be used in treating those with a better prognosis. Currently there are ten thousand Americans in persistent vegetative states (Rubin, 2005). As this number increases, healthcare resources will be spread continuously thin, making the ability to treat those that can make a contribution to society weaker than it could be.

The growth of our population is not just because of expanding lifespan. Natural forces are denied the use of any means to keep the population under control. In the past, human kind has experienced several plagues and pandemics that have killed hundreds of thousands of people. This death is simply nature’s way of saying that humankind is over expanding. In the fourteenth century, the black plague reached Europe, killing twenty eight million people (Routt, 2008). Though the death toll seems like a tragedy, Europe was going through a time of famine and food shortage. It just wasn’t able to sustain the amount of people that were trying to live off of scarce resources (Kreis, 2006). Another disease of similar magnitude was the Spanish influenza of 1918. The Spanish flu was wider in scope than the black plague and crossed oceans to infect a fifth of the world’s population (Billings, 2005). However, just as the H1-N1 flu is today, the Spanish flu was just a variation of the regular influenza virus. The current death toll for H1-N1 is only about 12,800 (CBC, 2010), nowhere near the toll of the 1918 flu that killed 40 million people (Billings, 2005). The fact that effective vaccines have been formulated has definitely improved the ability to combat diseases like these, but this may not be a good thing. Vaccines are denying the population checks that nature is trying to administer like it did in the fourteenth century, meaning that the population will not stop expanding: a kind of growth that is not natural, but completely sustained on science.

Vaccines are a way of preventing disease, but it is only part of the problem. In attempting to get better when sick, people kill bacteria with antibiotics. Though they are effective means of combating sickness, continued use of antibiotics is slowly leading to a big problem: “as the use of antibiotics [becomes] more widespread, the prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria increase[s]. ...25% of bacterial pneumonia cases [are] shown to be resistant to penicillin.” (Yim, 2009). Another example of this resistance occurring is the bacterial infection methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, also known as MRSA. Usually, this disease is treated with vancomycin (NIAID, 2009), but because of overuse of this drug, a strain called vancomycin-resistant enterococci, shortened to VRE, has appeared. These bacteria, as its name suggests, are completely resistant to vancomycin and can only be treated on a case-by-case basis with other antibiotics (NCPDCID, 2008). This process has shown that it is possible for bacteria to gain resistance, which happens even more easily because most antibiotics produced are closely related to ones already in use, making it easy to gain resistance to multiple antibiotics at once (Yim, 2009). Though antibiotics are currently effective at making people healthy, if the overuse of them continues, diseases will gain resistance and will not be treatable by anything that can be proven effective enough to be marketable. This means that the population will rise until we can no longer control any diseases, at which time our population will drop from waves of diseases that were not previously fatal.

It is clear that the developed world is not as responsible for population growth as the developing world. However, the responsibility to solve the problem needs to fall evenly across the world. If this means that people cannot keep themselves alive longer than is natural, if it means we should not vaccinate against every serious disease that comes along, if it means being sustainable with prescription of medication, then so be it. To do nothing would mean that the world is being abandoned by developed countries , simply because the solution they have to implement is contradictory with their philosophy of invincibility. In order for the world to keep surviving, everyone has to give a little.

Works Cited

Bandrage, Asoka. “A New and Improved Population Control Policy?” 1994. <http://cwpe.org/node/71> (Januray 23 2010).

Billings, Molly. “The Influenza Pandemic of 1918.” February 2005. <http://www.stanford.edu/group/virus/uda/> (January 21 2010).

Kries, Steven. “In Wake of the Black Death.” March 8 2008. <http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture30b.html> (January 20 2010).

National Center for the Preparedness, Detection and Control of Infectious Disease. “Vancomycin-resistant enerococci: Information for the public about VRE.” April 30 2008. <http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/ar_VRE_publicFAQ.html> (January 23 2010).

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. “Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA): Treatment.” December 23 2009. <http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/topics/antimicrobialResistance/Examples/mrsa/treatment.htm> (January 23 2010).

Rakestraw, Robert V. “The Persistent Vegetative State and the Withdrawal of Nutrition and Hydration.” September 1992. <http://www.bethel.edu/~rakrob/files/PVS.html> (January 21 2010).

Routt, David. “The Economic Impact of the Black Death.” July 20 2008. <http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/Routt.Black.Death> (January 21 2010).

Rubin, Rita. “Doctors Work to Understand Vegetative States.” March 20 2005. <http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-03-20-schiavo-inside_x.htm> (January 21 2010).

Schneiderman, Lawrence. “Session Two: Time—Counting the Moments/Making Moments Count.” June 1 2000. <http://seeingthedifference.berkeley.edu/schneiderman.html> (January 21 2010).

Yim, Grace. “Attach of the Superbugs: Antibiotic Resistance.” 2009. <http://www.scq.ubc.ca/attack-of-the-superbugs-antibiotic-resistance/> (January 21 2010).

[zeroality]

Meh. I don't really like any of these essays but I did get high grades on them. This one was a 98. I can't seem to find a copy of the 8 page paper I wrote on stem cell research but I'll keep looking.

Why Visual Basic Is the Easiest Programming Language to Learn

There are many different spoken languages today in the world. Russian, Spanish, French, German, English, Japanese, Chinese, and Polish to name a few. Programming languages are no different. You have Delphi, Visual Basic, Pascal, FORTRAN, COBOL, C++, Java, etc. If you are a beginner programmer, choosing which language to use can be difficult. You want a language that will enable you to learn the fundamentals of programming. At the same time, you don’t want a language that will make you pull your hair out over the level of difficulty. Visual Basic is such a language.

I tried to start programming using C++ as my first language. That was a big mistake. I nearly gave up trying to learn how to program out of frustration. I then bought a book on programming fundamentals that covered all the different languages. I found out that with C++, you have to learn commands and other such things before you can even start writing any type of program. With VB, you can install it and start programming right away, learning as you go.

VB provides a lot of shortcuts that other languages don’t have. Such as with C++, after you come up with which program you want to make and write out the outline, you then have to design the Graphical User Interface (GUI). The GUI is what the user interacts with, such as the buttons, menu, textboxes, and the program window containing all of these objects. In programming languages, things you put on a program, like a button, are called objects. Then after you design the GUI, using code, you then have to “throw it away” and start working on the real program itself, doing the GUI code all over again along with the code that makes it function. In VB, designing the GUI is similar to a paint program that

any ten year old could use. You start with a visible blank window that you can resize. Then you can click on objects in the menu to add them to the program. After adding the objects, you double-click on them to type in the code, which will handle the function for that particular object. You get to design your GUI visually, rather than using code, hence the name, Visual Basic.

The biggest advantage with VB is the simplicity. All programming languages are written in what is called code. Code is what you type into a program, which in turn, tells it what to do. Not all languages use the same commands that make up the code. The code it requires for a program to print something across the window is different in VB than in Pascal, for example. The code in VB would be simply this:

PRINT “Sample Line”

In Pascal, it would be:

Program Message (Input, Output);

Begin

WriteIn (“Sample Line”)

End.

There are also disadvantages to VB. Programs written in that language are much larger and slower to run than ones in C++. Suppose you had two programs that did the exact same thing. In C++ it might be 20kb and take up 5% of your computer resources, whereas in VB, it would be 80kb and take up 15% of your resources. The ultimate goal of programming is to write smaller and faster programs. Not only that, a program written in C++ on a Macintosh, in theory, could be easily ported to an IBM computer with little or no modification. With VB, it would be nearly impossible to port a program to a different type of computer. You would be better off re-writing the program from scratch. Suppose you wrote a puzzle game on a Macintosh computer. With VB, you could not run it on an IBM computer, whereas with C++, you could with slight or no modifications.

The type of program you are writing also makes a difference. C++ was developed for multi purpose programs. Windows 95, 98, NT, and 2000 are all written in C++. VB is for smaller programs, such as calculators, small games, or simple text programs such as Windows Notepad. While it is possible to write a large program in VB, it would be so big and so slow that nobody would want to use it. If Bill Gates had used VB to write the first version of windows, he would have gone out of business faster than he earned his first million. Windows 98 generally takes up about 600 megabytes of disk space. With VB, it would take up around two gigabytes. (1 gigabyte equals 1,000 megabytes.)

VB is easy to design, faster to code, but that results in slower and bigger programs. VB is good for grasping the fundamentals of programming but not to design a sophisticated program such as this Microsoft Word program that I am using. It would be so slow that it would take around 5 seconds for a letter to show up after it was typed and I wouldn’t be able to run anything else. Right now, I have two instant messaging programs, a website, a folder, and a virus scan running at the same time as this. If you are looking to write impressive programs and have no patience for learning something you won’t use in the long run, go for C++. If you are overwhelmed by the tremendous difficulty, then VB is a very good language to start with. Once you master VB, you can learn any programming language fairly easy.

Beginning Programming for Dummies; Wallace Wang; IDG Books

Moved this into RP's existing thread.

[MewLoverEX]

Warning: controversial views on symbolism below.

Title: Disparity, as Represented in Lord of the Flies
Subject: (school subject or general content) Honors English
Approximate Word Count: 800
Level: (school grade/year if applicable) Freshman
Additional Info: Received a 100/100 on it.

The chief. The rival. The mysterious loner. The outcast. The boys from William Golding’s Lord of the Flies are certainly different, inside and out. They look, act, and are perceived by others in certainly contrasting ways. But for all their differences, they have one integral characteristic in common: they are all important parts of the story.
At the boys’ first assembly, a chief must be selected. One of the boys nominates “him with the shell.” (Chapter 1, page 22.) This happens to be the fair-haired Ralph, and he is elected chief by an overwhelming majority vote. Ralph, though expected to be the leader of the tribe of boys, has trouble focusing and making decisions. He doesn’t enforce his rules, though he often complains that they aren’t being followed. Generally liked at the beginning but hunted like an animal at the end, Ralph watches the society he fought so hard to build fall apart at the hands of the others, and is helpless to stop it.
Not everyone likes Ralph. One boy resents the fact that Ralph was selected to be the tribe’s chief, and not him. The red-haired boy called Jack- the “chapter chorister and head boy” (Chapter 1, page 22) believes that he is the rightful leader, and never relinquishes this belief. He does not always follow Ralph’s rules, deciding to hunt instead of keeping the fire going, even after Ralph’s repeated statements about the fire being their only chance for rescue. Jack becomes obsessed with hunting, painting his face and acting like a savage. Eventually, the rift between the boys becomes too great. Jack leaves the tribe, creating his own. By the end of the book, literally all of the surviving boys except Ralph have joined Jack’s tribe. Jack has finally won. He is chief.
Symbolism. Golding uses it frequently in Lord of the Flies. Many readers suggest that one boy is the “Christ figure” of the novel. This boy is the dark-haired Simon, and he does seem to fit this description. Simon, like Jesus, travels to the forest alone to think. Simon knows things he shouldn’t know. For example, he tells Ralph “You'll get back to where you came from,” (Chapter 7, page 111), but with no substantial evidence to support this theory, and no attempt to defend it to Ralph. Simon remains focused on reality and does not allow everyone else’s irrational fears to sway him. For example, he tells Jack and Ralph “I don’t believe in the beast.” (Chapter 6, page 105). As the rest of the boys fall into madness, Simon remains a pacifist, and the only boy that does not revert to savagery at some point. He is manifestly good, while the others draw nearer and nearer to evil. And, like Jesus, Simon is killed trying to spread the truth to those that will not listen. He is killed as he attempts to deliver a message about the “beastie” that the boys are consistently frightened of.
Piggy. He is disliked by most- especially Jack- and ridiculed by all. He tells Ralph not to call him Piggy, and Ralph deliberately disobeys his trust. When he is called Fatty, Ralph says, “He’s not Fatty, his real name’s Piggy!” (Chapter 1, page 21.) He is “shorter than the fair boy (Ralph) and very fat.” (Chapter 1, page 7.) He wears glasses, which the other boys take from him repeatedly to light the fire. Piggy remains concerned with the adult world, always talking about his auntie and what she would say in their current situation. He is not respected in the slightest, though he is probably the most rational boy on the island. He is killed by Roger at Castle Rock (Chapter 11, page 181).
Without any one of these boys, Golding’s Lord of the Flies would certainly not be the same. Each represents a demographic of those in our society, though explanations of some references to our world are never expressly given. But on an even deeper level, each boy represents a part of each of us. Everyone has a side of them that tells them what rules they must follow; how they must react in each situation they encounter. We all want to be in charge at some point, and place our own values and beliefs above those of our peers. We have all been outsiders; felt that what is happening is wrong, but been helpless to stop it, or simply unwilling to upset the natural order of things, with us at the bottom. Like the boys, there is a darkness in each of us. Perhaps the Lord of the Flies himself said it best. “You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you?” (Chapter 8, page 143.) We all have the ability to do similar things. But, like each of the aforementioned characters, our choices make us different.

[Reliability]

This may be a bit complex for people not at all familiar with philosophy, so let me know if anything needs clarification.

Title: “The Intention [of Scepticism] Is to Bring About a Kind of Therapeutic Apostasy”: A Comparison Examining The Sceptic’s Way of Living
Subject: Philosophy
Approximate Word Count: 1000
Level: Grd. 12

One of the greatest strengths, and some would say greatest flaws, of civilization is curiosity. This quality had lead to major discoveries like new continents, history that had been previously lost and scientific principles. Although some of these discoveries and ideas seem concrete, there is still a possibility that they could all be false, as many competing answers exist for a single question. If there is no real way to take all of these ‘answers’ into account without making a potentially faulty decision, then a sceptical philosophy which does not accept anything as true, solves this problem. Though scepticism does not provide any answers of its own, it does remove all possibility of making a flawed judgement. Many argue that it is impossible to live in a world where nothing is true. However, through a comparison between the philosophies of Carneades and Sextus Empiricus, the most well known in the schools of scepticism, and their philosophies on the belief that it is impossible to know anything, the decision making process that they advise and the mindset that can come from it, it can be proven that scepticism allows a person to live with less torment than those who do not.

The principal argument of scepticism is that we cannot know anything with certainty. The two schools of philosophy, the Pyrrhonists and Academics, agree on this fact. Sextus Empiricus defines a sceptic as “someone who has investigated the questions of philosophy but has suspended judgement” (Groarke 2008). This is the same as the principal belief of his school, Pyrrhonism: one cannot justify one idea with any more justification than its opposite, summed up in the example, “it is no more justified to assert ‘X’ than ‘not X,’” (Stokes 2004).

To add to the conundrum, Sextus stated that reality and appearance do not mesh as nicely as many philosophers would like, that the same object can look differently from different perspectives, so to make an assumption would be to hold one view over another (Stokes 2004). For example, snow is white but water is colourless. To give an explanation to why either snow or water appears this way is to favour one perspective over another (Stokes 2004). By overlooking other ideas, we are ignoring an equally compelling argument because of problems like bias and the time that the perception is created (Kaya 2010).

The other school of scepticism is Academic scepticism, developed by the students of Plato’s Academy (Groarke 2008). Carneades was a leader of the Academy sometime before 155BCE (Allen 2004) and, like all members of the Academy, used scepticism to help others in the search for knowledge (Groarke 2008). Carneades made two arguments against the belief that knowledge can be attained. First, there is nothing that can establish the truth, because people can be mislead by dreams, illusions, madness and other things that cloud the senses. Secondly; perception, and therefore argument, can never be completely objective (Groarke 2008). Critics have stated that of both of these are taken into account, no human being could make a rational action. In response, Carneades held that plausible explanations are the proper name for the impressions that people make (Allen 2004).

The problem that arises about how a person is supposed to apply scepticism into a decision making process is the area where the two philosophers differ. Sextus Empiricus suggested that judgement be suspended in all matters (Kaya 2010) because it is still possible to live without committing to any arguments, even though scepticism itself is an argument. If scepticism cannot be argued over another philosophy, then judgement on the matter should not be passed at all, just as Sextus wanted (Stokes 2004).

The approach Carneades took in addressing problem solving was different than that of the Pyrrhonists. Carneades, as previously stated, believed in following the most plausible explanation (Allen 2004). He theorized that there are different levels of plausibility that an impression can have: implausible, plausible, irreversible, and tested (Groarke 2008). Each impression is a relation between itself and the object and between itself and the perceiver which helps to determine the plausibility of our perception, not the truth as it is commonly believed (Thorsrud 2006). An illustration of how this can be applied is as follows: a man sees a coiled rope and believes it to be a snake, which is a plausible impression. After further observation, he finds it to be motionless, which makes the snake theory less plausible. However, he knows that snakes are often motionless in cool environments, so he furthers tests the question by poking the object with a stick (Groarke 2008). The original impression has been abandoned as more information became available for a tested impression. Carneades recommended finding enough plausibility to fit the weight of the matter at hand, a more important matter requiring more plausibility, while keeping in mind that no amount of checking can guarantee truth (Allen 2004).

Though the application of scepticism differs between philosophers, its endgame remains the same. If it is accepted that it is impossible to know, thought unbiased and open, always accepting of the possibility of error. If information is examined in a sceptical way, intellectual progress can occur much faster than if it gets stuck against a flawed idea that is incorrectly considered the truth. Furthermore, scepticism leads people to peace of mind, as they are not tormented by the problems that arise when knowledge is pursued (Stokes 2004). By looking at both sides of an argument and accounting for flaws in knowledge, convoluted arguments and meaningless debates can be avoided and a greater understanding of what the truth is not can be achieved.

Works Cited

Allen, James. “Carneades.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Wednesday August 11, 2004. < http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/carneades> (February 14 2010).

Groarke, Leo. “Ancient Skepticism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Friday January 11, 2008. < http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-ancient> (February 14 2010).

Kaya, Serdar. ed. “Sextus Empiricus.” PhilosophyProfessor. 2010. <philosophyproffessor.com/philosophers/sextus-empiricus.php> (February 14 2010).

Stokes, Philip. “Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers: Sextus Empiricus.” Toronto: Capella, 2004. p. 40-41.

Thorsrud, Harold. ”Ancient Greek Skepticism.” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006. <http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/skepanci.htm> (February 14 2010).

[neon.Barnacle]

Well, in my Technosonics class we had to write a review of a concert we watched, so being the hopeless Miku fanatic I am I decided to review her Giving Day concert:

http://tz3md.tumblr.com/post/4512135...s-virtual-diva

[Reliability]

I wrote a lot of essays this year for university. Most of them were for English and are on things that most people won't have read, so I'll likely avoid putting any of those up. For now, I'll do two:

Title: Creativity as Identity
Subject: Writing
Approximate Word Count: 750
Level: First Year University
Additional Info: Was submitted on the professor's suggestion to a university publication.

Though everyone is given a name at birth, there is much more to a person’s identity then the name or its meaning. When we are young, and still do not know ourselves completely, it is possible to feel lost. In her poem, “named”, Christine McNair proposes that creation is a route into identity. As the speaker creates her crayon drawing, the ideas that have been locked up inside of her escape onto the page, and she finally finds her “name.” This poem illustrates the journey that a child, or any person for that matter, can take in finding their identity through creativity: the thoughts and feelings that exist inside of the person can find ways to express themselves.

The entire poem is written in a way that is childlike: there are no capitals or periods. Assumptions have to be made as to what words belong in each sentence, since even the line and stanza breaks do not necessarily mean the end of a sentence. The age of the speaker can also be drawn from some of the observations that he or she makes. Noticing that the crayon is “fat [and] red” (l. 2) as well as “waxy” (l. 10) are simple tactile observations, something that a child might pick up on and an older writer might explain differently. However, this point is shaken by some of the vocabulary used: “fishtailed” (l. 3), “strands” (l. 11) and “slipstream” (l.12) are not the words of a young child. It can therefore be deduced that the speaker is older but trying to remember this moment. By not observing punctuation and capitalization, the speaker is trying to go back to where her mind was at this moment of discovery but still uses the language of a more experienced writer.

The meaning of the poem is best explained in the fourth stanza: “nobody named me—there was nothing / to name” (l. 8). The speaker feels as if, though he or she has a name, it does not define him or her as an established identity. Only the art is certain, and “everything else was maybe” (l. 4). She describes these other things in her life as “crinkly old stories and thickets” (l. 5), things that are decrepit, tired and confusing. His or her identity gets lost in these things but not in her art. The speaker states that the ideas expressed in her art are “in the slipstream of [his or her] blood” (l.12): they are as necessary for her survival as her blood. It is clear that the speaker does establish her identity, since the title, “named” is in past tense, since the speaker has found the name that she had been missing.

Throughout the poem, there is a transition from clumsiness to mastery as the speaker lets out her creativity. The first line opens with, “nobody names me until I got me fist / around that fat red crayon” (l.2). The use of the word “fist” instead of hand has a bulkier and imprecise connotation as if the speaker has not gotten full control of her hand motion yet. The descriptions of her drawing process note how the crayon “skidded” (l. 2) and “fishtailed” (l.3), both words indicating a lack of control. The ideas that the speaker is trying to express are “buzzing beneath [his or her] wrists” (l.9), with buzzing being an annoying, harsh sound. However, in the final three lines there is a reversal. After releasing all of her ideas, the speaker how has his or her “hands tight around waxy crayons” (l.10). She does not hold the crayon in her “fist” any longer, but now has realised her own physical potential. The “buzzing” has been replaced by “mumbling” (l.12), which, though still present, is softer and quieter. Though finding her identity, the speaker achieves greater control over herself.

Christine McNair establishes a story of self-discovery through art, emphasising the necessity of art in self-discovery. Though people may believe they know all about themselves, sometimes there are things below the surface that “[buzz] beneath [their] wrists” (l. 9) and cannot come out in any way but through a crayon or an instrument or a pen. These emotions and ideas that appear in art sometimes come as a surprise to their creators, and create questions about whether you can really name anything for what it appears to be, and that identity is not static.


Work Cited
McNair, Christine. “named.” Descant 151, Winter 2010 Winter Reader. Karen Mulhallen ed. 41.4. Toronto: Magazines Canada, 2010. Print. 130.

Title: Imagined Images: British Homosexuality in Modern History
Subject: Modern European History
Approximate Word Count: 3000
Level: First Year University
Additional Info: Footnotes don't transfer over, so feel free to ask for citation for a particular fact or date and I can provide it.

Homosexuality is not a visual minority. With no visual basis to establish a mental picture, humans have a need to create a stereotype to stand in as a definition of homosexuality. Though this stereotype changes as time passes, it never seems to represent all homosexuals accurately or fairly. Receiving equal rights and being taken seriously become difficult if the image society holds of the group is largely negative. There is proof of the positive effects that image can have: the establishment of a homosexual identity deemed acceptable by British society made possible the passing of the Sexual Offences Bill in 1967, the first gain made in Great Britain towards the advancement of homosexual legality. However, this victory was built on an identity that represented only part of homosexual male population in Britain. By 1900, men who engaged in sex with other men were defined as homosexual, but over a hundred years later, there is still a gap between the perception of the gay community by the heterosexual majority, and what homosexuals understand it to be. It is the views of the former, however, that ultimately shape social and legal toleration.

Before the trial of Oscar Wilde at the end of the nineteenth century, the topic of homosexuality was avoided in public discussion. It was considered dangerous to talk about homosexuality, or even detail court proceedings in legal documentation, because the ideas might corrupt men into acting upon their own feelings that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. The charge that made homosexuality illegal through this period, and began the negative association, was sodomy, a part of male homosexual intimacy. First made illegal by Henry VIII, the original statue was replaced in 1828. The Offences Against the Person Act made it easier to convict sodomy by no longer requiring proof of emission. This distanced the law from the religious concern with a waste of semen and directed the focus instead to morality. The Labourchère Amendment in 1885 extended the law to what was called gross indecency, which referred to oral sex. The illegality of homosexuality for so long in British history, there was little reason for the British people to question whether homosexuality was wrong or not.

There were several instances of male-male sexual contact documented in court trials, but likely many more that never made it court. Within their own classes, disputes over unwanted sexual advances were solved without the justice system, in an effort to protect the respectability of the two parties. This issue of differing class morality meant that the perceptions of sex between men vary across class borders. Most cases brought to court were cross-class, where one party felt economically exploited by the other, as masculinity was linked to economic domination.

In working and upper-class morality, sexual domination, whatever the sex of the partner, was also linked to masculinity. This allowed for a degree of toleration for sex between men, a morality that would fade as the social perception homosexuality moved towards effeminacy, where the line between masculine and feminine was blurry. Among these classes, same-sex sexual activity was justifiable, economic motivations being important reasoning to the working class. Middle-class morality, which had dominated British society in the late nineteenth century, did not have the same acceptance toward sex between men. This was because of a notion of respectability: homosexuality would destroy a man’s good character. This class division even penetrated through to homosexual men: “[d]iscreet and respectable middle-class queers defined themselves against the flamboyant and public working-class queans”. Perceptions of homosexuality were starkly divided, even as discussion was just reaching the public sphere.

The trial and conviction of Oscar Wilde set a new image in motion. All of the traits that Wilde had displayed, “effeminacy, leisure, idleness, immorality, luxury, insouciance, decadence and aestheticism”, were “the yardstick by which all homosexuals were measured and identified.” The effeminacy that came to be associated with homosexuality was considered to be dangerous, and the outbreak of the First World War was seen as a chance to “restore a manly, martial Britain” from “as great a menace as the Kaiser.” Noel Pemberton Billing attempted to support the German war effort by claiming a ‘Black Book’ of the German Secret Service contained the names of forty-seven thousand homosexual English citizens. Science sought to portray homosexuality a self-contained disease that couldn’t spread beyond the sub-category of humans that it affected, so all heterosexuals were safe from immorality. With this medical and political lobbying, homosexuality began a negative public existence.

The interwar decades brought a new social environment. In contrast to the culture of the war, people engaged in bohemianism, which “stood for a ‘gay disorderliness of life, cheerful bad manners and no fixed hours or sexual standards”. Gay men did not declare their sexuality, as the Victorian laws were still in place, but they “did not try to hide the difference between them and the other guests—in their manners, their tone of voice or their clothes.” A homosexual community developed in the West End of London, where “campness of Wilde and the Aesthetes” was outdone and each person felt safe in each other’s company. The nineteen twenties also brought forth instances of judicial opposition to the current homosexuality laws, in the form of acquittals or easier sentences given by judges. During the 1920s and 30s, The writer Nowel Coward manipulated the word ‘gay’ for the first time to refer to homosexuality, though it was still used widely to mean “innocence and frivolity”. At this point, two images of homosexuality began to appear: first, the criminal cases and arrests that made headlines; secondly, as an eccentric, effeminate character with a luxurious lifestyle that persevered through the depression.

The male-dominated moral society from before the Second World War was crumbling as women entered the workforce. Acceptance for female authority was increased, and thereby, to a degree, acceptance of effeminacy. By the 1950s, a club system had developed where “men did not go primarily to drink, but to relax in an atmosphere when it was not necessary to keep up pretences.” But with homosexual sub-culture becoming more visible during the war, the idea of homosexuality robbing Britain of its “manhood” resurfaced. The 1950s sought to re-establish “the moral standards of the 1930s that had been eroded away by six years of war, a concerted ‘drive against male vice’ was initiated”. Workers were forced to sign oaths of moral purity, the psychoanalytic idea of latent homosexuality in everyone was used in witch-hunts, and entrapment became a common means of arresting homosexuals, with offences climbing steadily through the 1950s.

The portrayal of homosexuality was more concerned with the ‘weakness’ associated with effeminacy: “Abram Kardiner, a prominent psychoanalyst, perceived in 1954 an ‘enormous’ increase in homosexuality, and regarded it as […] ‘a symptom that the society is not functioning properly’”. Failure, through a series of seemingly logical connections, was associated with being homosexual, thereby portraying homosexuals as failed men. Though the idea of latency was used to prove that everyone could be potentially homosexual, it was also contradictorily believed in the 1950s that there was an identifiable group of real homosexuals that could be “weeded out.” The weakness of homosexuality was also associated with disloyalty, making homosexuals unsuited for military and political positions. These factors cumulated in a portrayal of homosexuality as weak and inferior, even dangerous to the nation, any moderate social gains were over.

It was in this environment that legal reform would appear. The moral fear, as well as complaints about the harshness of the criminality of homosexuality, effected the appointment in 1954 of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, chaired by John Wolfenden. Their task was to gather information from homosexual men about their opposition to the law, but also to find a way to regulate these “dangerous sexualities”. Though homosexual men were included, the men chosen were very particular. Patrick Trevor-Roper, Carl Winter, and Peter Wildeblood, the three men interviewed, were all well-educated and respectable by heterosexual standards, even making a point of distancing themselves “from these ‘absurd people’, defining their own respectability by repudiating ‘the pathetically flamboyant pansy’, the corruptors of youth’ and the promiscuous who dared to transgress in public domain.” All they wanted were the words “in private” to be removed from the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which would leave public displays of homosexuality illegal. Mirroring the class division of the late nineteenth century, the resulting Wolfenden Report released in 1957 proposed a fractured view on equality: the ‘respectable homosexual’ could legally carry on his personal business, but any sort of public culture would remain illegal.

The 1960s were ideal for these recommendations to be effected. A “new attitude” emerged: “the individual should be free from hindrances by external Law or internal guilt in his pursuit of pleasure so long as he does not impinge on any other.” Several new rights were made into law, including relaxation of censorship, legalization of abortion, and abolition of the death penalty. Before the 1960s, personal morality had been seen as the domain of the church and not the business of the state. The state instead, deferred to what it thought was the popular opinion. However, the shift towards an environment of freedom meant that new strains of thought began to emerge, no longer wanting deny anyone their personal freedom. The homosexuality issue brought up by the Wolfenden Report and the desire to turn the recommendations into law sparked the birth of the Homosexual Law Reform Society and its complementary body, the Albany Trust, in March 1958. In particular, the HLRS wanted to establish “well-run social center[s]” so that gay teenagers were no longer forced to go to clubs and associated with “dope pushers and other vicious types”, and discredit the stereotype of homosexuals as ‘corruptors of youth’.

It wasn’t until 1965 that anything was put seriously into motion to act on the Wolfenden Report. A bill was first introduced by Lord Arran as a private member’s bill in the House of Lord, Despite that, the bill passed the House of Lords in May 1965 by a 94-to-49 vote, and became law in July 1967 by a 101-16 vote in the House of Commons. Though the law only applied to England, the law was extended to Scotland in 1980 and to Northern Ireland, pressured by a ruling of the European Court, on October 25, 1982. However, this bill was not full equality. The age of consent was set at twenty-one, notably higher than the heterosexual age of consent at sixteen, and homosexuality remained illegal in the military. The perception of what is respectable in homosexuality and what is not, provided by the slanted view influenced by the Wolfenden Report, there was still wariness about the law, not wanting to completely deny freedom, but not ready to give it completely. Even Lord Arran did not desire the social centers spoken of by the HLRS, as “he anticipated demands for ‘similar clubs for lesbians and sadists’”, afraid of what were then less respectable forms of sexual dissidence.
Even the partial legality of homosexuality began a new period of confidence. Identities were proclaimed, creating a sense of unity and purpose in the gay community. The Campaign for Homosexual Equality took up the fight for gay clubs and the abolition of the ban on homosexuals in the military, but lost a lot of its membership for being non-confrontational and eventually, by 1982, useless as a social organization . The Gay Liberation Front had a short burst of activity from November 1970 and the summer of 1972, effecting a change in consciousness until its goals were achieved and its radical approach was no longer needed. Homophobia was no longer visible in any organization for fear of driving out potential supporters, but did not take up any activism. Though the appearance of a homosexual culture on a legal stage might have corrected some false notions the greater public had of homosexuality, but it was still difficult for gay men to be open. Arrests due to “indecency between men doubled between 1967 and 1977.” The boundaries between the safe private world and the still-policed public world were harsher than before.

The AIDS epidemic was a detriment to any previous progress. With such a high infection rate among gay men, it was used as an attacking point, showing that “a just society cannot, in fact, function if everyone does his own thing” and that the heterosexual family “should set the limits of human experience”. Because of the low numbers of heterosexuals with the disease, AIDS was portrayed as a “gay plague”, and the gay community was even blamed for conspiracy by trying to assert that AIDS might affect heterosexuals as well. The British media was, for no moral reason, trying to demonize homosexuality, likely to attempt to appeal to the widespread homophobia. These British tabloids were far less objective than those in America, and expressed doubt over the disease’s seriousness as late as 1993. They even went so far as to pay bribes to get medical records, and reveal who had HIV or AIDS. By 1988, a third of the British population “admitted that the disease had reduced their tolerance of gays.” But the resources and unity among the gay community established from 1967 meant that there was still a fight for survival.

The social tension of the 1980s culminated in the amendment known as Clause 28. First proposed in 1987, the amendment would make it illegal for municipal budgets to be spent in a way that would “intentionally promote homosexuality”. The current Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, made her position clear, saying in a speech that “[c]hildren who need to be taught to respect traditional values are being taught that they have an unalienable right to be gay.” Despite protest from gay and lesbian demonstrators and political leaders, Clause 28 passed both houses of parliament and became law on March 9, 1988, with a vote of 254-201 in the House of Commons and 202-122 in the House of Lords. Though municipalities were able to avoid the law by listing expenditures under categories like welfare, the law was still an important symbol of homosexuality’s status as inferior in British society. The ability of the gay community to spread openly was halted, which increased a sense of inferiority. Any assistance given to homosexuals couldn’t be associated with homosexuality. Despite this, the Clause did rally the gay community to proclaim their identities and unified the cause for repeal. The attempt in 1999 “was met with considerable resistance, […] provoking more dispute than the initial legislation.” It was not until June 2000 that it was repealed in Scotland, and November 2003 for the remainder of the UK.

The 1990s and onward saw a mixture of opinion. There were rampant displays of attacks of gay men: from approximately one per year in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s to four per year in the 1990s. In 1995, Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, stated that homosexuals “were lower than pigs and dogs and deserved to be attacked in the streets,” and was not met with any resistance from the international community. The newspaper The Sun used homosexuality for political purposes, headlining “Labour will allow gay sex at 18—Kinnock sparks AIDS fury’ on October 3, 1992 to attack the Labour Party. The unity among the gay community that is often mentioned often leaves out working class gay men who “face a continual struggle to find a sense of home, place and identity.” British gay men lacked the “collective interest” that the United States had, and also had no access to information about gay issues internationally “beyond what [was] available in the national dailies and on television.”

There was still progress, however. The British Social Attitudes Survey has shown that the attitudes towards personal relationships in the 1990s we even more liberal than they had been in the 1960s. This may have been what caused the minor gain in February 1994 when the age of consent for male homosexual acts was dropped to eighteen. An organization for the support of LGBT police officers in the UK was established in 1990, another to assist gay men discharged from the army appeared in 1993, and a network for gay and lesbian firefighters was slowly put into place from 1994 to 1997. More recently, in 2005, civil partnership became legal. At this point, homosexuals had defined their stance more readily, even arguing that homophobia was caused by “repressed and possibly unconscious homosexuality behind cultural bigotry.” Debates over homosexual canonical writers, like Wordsworth, were re-introduced to the horror of scholars, who attempted to normalise the writers despite the body of evidence.

The depiction of homosexual characters on television defined the image of homosexuality that was believed by many heterosexuals. Though these references were few, they were often negative or “mainstreamed,” leaving out anyone who was not young, urban and white. Some, like the sitcom Are You Being Served? “shamelessly peddled the image of effeminacy in gay men” to be humorous. Others were “asexual, morally upright characters whose mundane ‘normality’ prevented them from having much depth or life” so as not to be offensive to viewers. This began to change as the 1990s wore on, likely because of a “desire by the broadcasting authorities to take their commitments to equal opportunities seriously”. There was also a realisation by advertisers that gay men usually have no dependents and therefore have money to spend, so more realistic programs appeared that would appeal to a gay audience with a “colourful, poppy aesthetic” that might generate interest in purchase.

The fight for full toleration of homosexuality is certainly not over, despite recent social and legal gains in equality. Periods like the nineteenth century, and the 1960s and 1970s, when homosexuality were seen with a greater degree of toleration, have given way to suppression. These changes occurred because of shifts in social perception of homosexuality. Oscar Wilde’s effeminacy, the association of homosexuality with failure and the homosexual as the spreader of AIDS were all negative associations that brought periods of intolerance. At the same time, however, creating a positive image should not be done at the cost of idealizing homosexuality. Only portraying select parts of the gay community further divides it, and makes it even more difficult to get equality for all. There needs to be a balance between positive and fair representation if homosexuality is to be judged and tolerated for what it truly is.


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