Gay Skins

Book excerpt: Since their birth in the late 1960’s as a working class subcultural response to what was seen as a feminised, bourgeois-hippy parent culture, the skinhead has since held a semi-mythological status amongst the UK’s street tribes. But from the off, queer undercurrents inevitably ran through skinhead culture, as shaven heads, shiny DMs and tight Levis fed inevitably into fantasies and fetishes based around notions of ultra-masculinity. In this updated 1996 mini classic, Murray Healy looks into the myths and misapprehensions surrounding Gay Skins, exploring fascism, fetishism, class , sexuality and gender.