"This book aims to explore these themes... through storytelling: by retelling the stories of a set of queer lives that are individually fascinating and horrifying and that collectively communicate a version of the story of the evolution and failure of white, male, homosexual, identities."

I've read a few of the reviews that are floating about for this and I think the thesis for this book clears some things up. As said in this quote and other points in the introduction, the thesis of the book is to look at "gay", white, men in Western history and what decisions they made to help or hinder gay people and communities, how they spread colonial, capitalist and classist ideals and how they encouraged harm against others.

Their goal is narrow, so they reach for a specific set of people. Any thesis needs to be specific or it becomes pointless. Part of the reason this book has only one non-white focus is that they are heavily investigating colonial projects. By its nature colonisation centres the white man and disavows anything other as wrong, dangerous and in need of censure. They are not focusing on bad BIPOC gays or lesbians often because they are the core victims of colonisation and a tool used to further whiteness. They are not looking for which gays across the world are the most evil, they are looking at how white gays have created the current climate. If you want to learn about lesbians or BIPOC gays then please go after a book about those people, this one isn't it.

I think this book has done a good job at approaching its thesis; they don't want to walk you through their own opinions and tell you what to think, instead they provide you with personal stories and commentary from peoples critics, biographers & contemporaries so you can come to your own conclusions and see how white gay men have been participators in aggression as much as victims particularly in the last 200 years.

"His reluctance to be seen as a low-class thuggish reactionary was a key part of his political appeal - he could whitewash and repackage ideas for an audience that thought of itself as enlightened and progressive."

I am stealing this phrasing to talk about right wing assholes!! Any kind of phobia can be repackaged to sit with the right audience, it just takes the right person to do the packaging.

I immediately thought of the NSN when I first read this quote but I think it's important to think about across the board especially since appealing to everyday people seems to be the more important tactic nowadays. And everyday people are always the white ones.