Timothy Willem Jones
I am a cultural historian with research interests in the intersections of gender, sexuality and religion. I studied at the University of Western Australia and the University of Melbourne. My PhD was published as, Sexual Politics in the Church of England, 1857-1957, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
I am Associate Professor of History at La Trobe University in Melbourne. From 208-2012 I was Lecturer in History at the University of South Wales and am co-director of the Centre for Gender Studies there. From 2012-2015 I held an Australian Research Council DECRA fellowship at La Trobe University jointly in History and at the Australian Research Center in Sex, Health and Society.
I am a currently working on a book on the rise of the New Christian Right in Australian Politics, a biography of the English theologian and historian, D.S. Bailey, am a member of the ARC funded Faith on the Goldfields project, and lead an ARC Linkage Project researching the scope and nature of LGBT conversion ideology and practices in Australia, in partnership with the Victorian Government, Brave, and AGMC. I am editor of H-Histsex, serve as president of the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives, and am on the advisory board of the US LGBTQ Religious Archives Network.
I no longer update this page regularly, but can be contacted at [email protected].
Phone: +613 9479 2366
Address: History Program
Department of Archaeology and History
La Trobe University
Bundoora, VIC, 3086
I am Associate Professor of History at La Trobe University in Melbourne. From 208-2012 I was Lecturer in History at the University of South Wales and am co-director of the Centre for Gender Studies there. From 2012-2015 I held an Australian Research Council DECRA fellowship at La Trobe University jointly in History and at the Australian Research Center in Sex, Health and Society.
I am a currently working on a book on the rise of the New Christian Right in Australian Politics, a biography of the English theologian and historian, D.S. Bailey, am a member of the ARC funded Faith on the Goldfields project, and lead an ARC Linkage Project researching the scope and nature of LGBT conversion ideology and practices in Australia, in partnership with the Victorian Government, Brave, and AGMC. I am editor of H-Histsex, serve as president of the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives, and am on the advisory board of the US LGBTQ Religious Archives Network.
I no longer update this page regularly, but can be contacted at [email protected].
Phone: +613 9479 2366
Address: History Program
Department of Archaeology and History
La Trobe University
Bundoora, VIC, 3086
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Books by Timothy Willem Jones
Multicultural Council (AGMC) and the Victorian Government on recovery support needs of survivors of LGBTQA+ change and suppression (conversion) practices. This study investigated survivors’ experiences
of recovery through interviews with survivors and with mental health practitioners. It is the first such study internationally to include
research with mental health practitioners and has a significantly more diverse cohort of survivor participants than previous studies.
ISBN: (ebook) 978-0-6487469-4-2
Cover Art—Jake Alexander Cruz.
Acknowledgment—3 ... Contents—4
Foreword—Tiffany Jones, Gordon Thompson—5
Introduction—Jennifer Power, Henry von Doussa, Timothy W. Jones—7
INTERVIEWS
Intimacy and Unexpected Technologies—Suzanne Fraser—12 Intimacy,
Technology and Emojis—Amanda Gesselman—17 Digital Intimacy,
Gender and Sexuality—Jamie Hakim—21
ESSAYS
My Queer Sex Bot—Jennifer Power—29
A Public Feeling—Marcus O’Donnell—41
Digital Intimacy: An End to the Tyranny of Distance—Gary Dowsett—53
Intimacy in Online Spaces for Bi+ People—Emiel Maliepaard—62
Out in the Outer Worlds—Nessie Smith—70
D/s in the Everyday—Rainicorn—81
Life, But Not As We Know It—Geoff Allshorn—89
Viral Lesbians—Tiffany Jones—101
FIRST PERSON
Not so Distant—Dennis Altman—115
Body in Retrograde—Samuel Luke Beatty—121
Architecture at Night—Michelle Dicinoski—130
Tiny Essential Victories—Guy James Whitworth—137
Dark POMO—Jean Taylor—142
Pro-Po: Policing Productivity in the Midst of Pandemic—Jake Cruz—155
Loose Threads—Max Hayward—159
Overhead—Elijah El Kahale—162
POETRY
Couch scene—Cat Cotsell—166
About Me—Georgia Banks—167
Touch—Tina Healy—172
Offline—Casey Scanlon—174
King Root—Brigitte Lewis—176
asleep in my arms—Rob Wallis—179
FICTION
A Box of Unused Masks—Holly Zwalf—181
Nick’s Story Mode—Ava Redman—184
Patchouli—Heath John Ramsay—188
Papers by Timothy Willem Jones
Australians are vulnerable to religion-based attempts to change or
suppress their sexuality and/or gender identity, including conversion ideology messaging in school-based sex education.
Conversion bans are currently being debated across the country.
This paper reports on a critical survivor-driven study which retrospectively explored Australian LGBTQA+ youth exposure to conversion practices both within and outside of education settings. It
privileges the perspectives of self-titled ‘survivors’ of conversion
ideology and practices through the use of a reference group and
constructivist grounded theory. Qualitative data were collected 20
from Australian LGBTQA+ conversion ideology and/or practice survivors aged 18 years and over, using focus groups and 35 individual
interviews between 2016 and 2020. In conversion-promoting religious contexts including education institutions and groups, messages concerning sexuality and gender changed as individuals grew
older and were drawn into more/enclosed settings in which core
conversion messages of LGBTQA+ ‘brokenness’ were prevalent.
While individuals progressed through the conversion experience
in different ways, their experience was characterised by the absence
of any form of affirming LGBTQA+ education – enabling conversion
itself to become their LGBTQA+ (mis)information source. School
policy addressing conversion, alongside enhanced provision of
affirmative age-appropriate gender and sexuality education, may
mediate this issue.
Multicultural Council (AGMC) and the Victorian Government on recovery support needs of survivors of LGBTQA+ change and suppression (conversion) practices. This study investigated survivors’ experiences
of recovery through interviews with survivors and with mental health practitioners. It is the first such study internationally to include
research with mental health practitioners and has a significantly more diverse cohort of survivor participants than previous studies.
ISBN: (ebook) 978-0-6487469-4-2
Cover Art—Jake Alexander Cruz.
Acknowledgment—3 ... Contents—4
Foreword—Tiffany Jones, Gordon Thompson—5
Introduction—Jennifer Power, Henry von Doussa, Timothy W. Jones—7
INTERVIEWS
Intimacy and Unexpected Technologies—Suzanne Fraser—12 Intimacy,
Technology and Emojis—Amanda Gesselman—17 Digital Intimacy,
Gender and Sexuality—Jamie Hakim—21
ESSAYS
My Queer Sex Bot—Jennifer Power—29
A Public Feeling—Marcus O’Donnell—41
Digital Intimacy: An End to the Tyranny of Distance—Gary Dowsett—53
Intimacy in Online Spaces for Bi+ People—Emiel Maliepaard—62
Out in the Outer Worlds—Nessie Smith—70
D/s in the Everyday—Rainicorn—81
Life, But Not As We Know It—Geoff Allshorn—89
Viral Lesbians—Tiffany Jones—101
FIRST PERSON
Not so Distant—Dennis Altman—115
Body in Retrograde—Samuel Luke Beatty—121
Architecture at Night—Michelle Dicinoski—130
Tiny Essential Victories—Guy James Whitworth—137
Dark POMO—Jean Taylor—142
Pro-Po: Policing Productivity in the Midst of Pandemic—Jake Cruz—155
Loose Threads—Max Hayward—159
Overhead—Elijah El Kahale—162
POETRY
Couch scene—Cat Cotsell—166
About Me—Georgia Banks—167
Touch—Tina Healy—172
Offline—Casey Scanlon—174
King Root—Brigitte Lewis—176
asleep in my arms—Rob Wallis—179
FICTION
A Box of Unused Masks—Holly Zwalf—181
Nick’s Story Mode—Ava Redman—184
Patchouli—Heath John Ramsay—188
Australians are vulnerable to religion-based attempts to change or
suppress their sexuality and/or gender identity, including conversion ideology messaging in school-based sex education.
Conversion bans are currently being debated across the country.
This paper reports on a critical survivor-driven study which retrospectively explored Australian LGBTQA+ youth exposure to conversion practices both within and outside of education settings. It
privileges the perspectives of self-titled ‘survivors’ of conversion
ideology and practices through the use of a reference group and
constructivist grounded theory. Qualitative data were collected 20
from Australian LGBTQA+ conversion ideology and/or practice survivors aged 18 years and over, using focus groups and 35 individual
interviews between 2016 and 2020. In conversion-promoting religious contexts including education institutions and groups, messages concerning sexuality and gender changed as individuals grew
older and were drawn into more/enclosed settings in which core
conversion messages of LGBTQA+ ‘brokenness’ were prevalent.
While individuals progressed through the conversion experience
in different ways, their experience was characterised by the absence
of any form of affirming LGBTQA+ education – enabling conversion
itself to become their LGBTQA+ (mis)information source. School
policy addressing conversion, alongside enhanced provision of
affirmative age-appropriate gender and sexuality education, may
mediate this issue.
Chris Brickell's award winning Mates and Lovers is a charming and thoughtful account of male homosexual life in Aotearoa/New Zealand from colonisation to gay liberation. Brickell guides the reader into a world of hidden homoerotic encounters, furtive romances between men and, over time, into the burgeoning mid-twentieth century social networks that gay men forged to meet their social and sexual needs. The book fills a significant gap in New Zealand history and also contributes to wider interventions in the global history of sexuality.
One of the great strengths of the work is the deftness with which Brickell has combined oral history, criminal records and visual sources to suggest a widespread history of male affection and eroticism that was often intentionally hidden from history. Accessing details about illicit erotic and intimate lives in the past is a considerable challenge. For the early period, where oral testimony is not available, Brickell has found rich epistolary and photographic material that reveal a history of remarkably quotidian homoerotic experience.
At a talk commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots, participants in the riots and the Gay Liberation Front were asked what they thought were the most significant social changes flowing from Stonewall. Their answers were remarkably similar. Before 1969 men had ‘tricks’ and ‘encounters’, afterwards, they had lovers, partners, even husbands. It was a change from a furtive to a proud sexuality. One of the more surprising themes of this book is Brickell's finding that pre-gay liberation New Zealand was not as closeted nor oppressive for gay men as we might commonly think. Brickell demonstrates how police largely ignored consensual homosexual sex, and how relatively easy it was for homoerotically inclined men to meet other men for sex. Even more affecting are the records of homosexual partnerships, men who carved out domestic spaces for themselves, their lovers and their friends. This long history of relative tolerance of homosexuality in New Zealand contributes to a burgeoning literature that is beginning to challenge the repressive/liberated dichotomy in homosexual history (see, for example, Julian Jackson's excellent work in the French context: Julian Jackson, Living in Arcadia: Homosexuality, Politics, and Morality in France from the Liberation to AIDS (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009)), and should lead scholars to re-examine other established narratives of repression and liberation in the history of sexuality.
Brickell's book is impressive in the ease with which it introduces a rigorous critical framework and yet maintains a warm, engaging tone. He provides a way of understanding sexuality historically that should satisfy the academic and will yet not alienate a general reader (no mean feat for a sociologist writing a major historical monograph). This framework remains largely submerged throughout the rest of the book until a final theoretical reflection in the afterword. This strategy makes sense for the obvious mixed audience for which the book is intended, although as a gender historian at times I wanted a more explicitly theoretical analysis of changing homosexual identities, particularly in relation to evolving codes of New Zealand masculinity. Also, given the historiographic and theoretical sophistication of the book, I was surprised that biblical texts referencing sexuality (Romans 1:27, the Sodom and Gomorrah story) were cited uncritically, belying the significant scholarly attention they have received over the past fifty years.
There are a couple of notable silences in the work. Maori and Pacific Island gay histories are largely confined to the introduction and epilogue. The fascinating and significant identities takataapui and fa'afafine, while described with admirable sensitivity, only emerge at the end of the work. I wanted to know more of the history of the modern development of these older queer categories of sexual identity and interaction.
The book is also unapologetically about gay male history. While gay and lesbian experiences should not be conflated, lesbian lives do enter the narrative periodically. At the end of the work I was curious about New Zealand's lesbian history. How much did it follow a similar path to gay male history? Were women's homosocial friendships and romances parallel to men's? Did women establish social networks and underground parties in similar ways to their gay friends? When did a separate lesbian bar culture develop? Brickell does not set out to answer these questions. But it would be a shame if New Zealand's lesbian history remains hidden long after such an excellent gay history has emerged.
Scholarly, compassionate, arch and wry, Mates and Lovers sits comfortably on both the coffee table and in the research library.
TIMOTHY JONES 11 Glamorgan University, UK
Although the current Royal Commission is focused on cases within living memory in a wide range of institutions, the hearings reveal that Australian churches have a long and sad history of abuse and cover-up. Religious interpretations, changing legal definitions and evolving societal attitudes have all influenced the way child sexual abuse has been handled within churches and in the wider community.
Tamson Pietsch speaks to Tim Jones about child sexual abuse within Australian religious institutions, and how the current debate has been framed by past events.
Despite these headlines, no changes to the church’s position on sex, marriage and the family were announced. In contrast, the document actually reveals Pope Francis’ strategy to convert homosexuals, unmarried couples and divorcees to the true Catholic faith.
But contrary to the report’s explanation, homophobia in the Commonwealth isn’t just a relic of colonialism.
The announcement was made at Exodus’s annual conference in Irvine, California. It came a day after Exodus issued a formal apology to the gay community for years of undue judgement and for the pain, hurt and shame it has caused.
Alan Chambers, Exodus president, apologised for promoting “sexual orientation change efforts and reparative therapies”.
But are they representative of a sector of the Australian public’s views? Who thinks this kind of thing? And where does the slippery slope argument come from?