On Ken Plummer

I first met Ken at a job interview. It was one of those old school ones where all the candidates had to mingle with staff during a break between the morning presentations and the afternoon interviews, surely one of the most excruciating ways of ascertaining if someone is right for the post. I should have been very intimidated, but Ken was so friendly, kind and twinkly that he put me at ease. He wore his gravitas lightly, with the confidence of someone who had nothing to prove. Ken was remarkably democratic, uncaring about status and much more interested in whether someone had a curious, enquiring mind and a good sense of humour. It was easy to warm to him.

He loved teaching, and students. His lectures were legendary and for many years after his retirement (indeed still to this day) I continued to hear stories from students whose faces would light up at the memory of being taught by him. For many years, he gave a guest lecture for a module I taught on ‘Sociology of Sexualities’. Students would respond enthusiastically about what a great teacher he was and how much they enjoyed the session. I asked him once what he liked so much about teaching. He paused for a moment and then said ‘well at first they don’t know about something…and then they do.’ Ken always had time for students and genuinely enjoyed hearing their thoughts and ideas. He loved to see them learning and was always open to learning from them himself. That mutual respect and openness made him a brilliant teacher.

Ken was funny, generous and kind. Innately sociable, he loved meeting up with friends and discussing ideas over a meal. He and Everard, his beloved partner of decades, were wonderful hosts. Their home was always welcoming and they loved company, as well as being each other’s dearest companion.

He was great fun and could have an unexpectedly naughty sense of humour. Ken loved people and loved laughing. I vividly remember his suggestion that we compare stomachs when I was 6 months pregnant and his consternation when his was bigger. We must have looked pretty comical standing side by side making the comparison in the midst of a café.

I knew Ken first through his work. Much has been written about how pioneering and brilliant it was. But perhaps less remarked upon is how brave it was for him to write as an openly gay man in the period that he did. Yes he was white and male and that helped him in academia. Nonetheless, he was courageous and expanded the field for so many. Setting up the journal Sexualities took guts. Generations of scholars ever since owe him a debt. Since Ken passed, I have been thinking a lot about how much we owe our LGBTQ elders. Someone like Ken opened up a path that made it easier for subsequent generations.

Ken commented more than once that his life reflected the trajectory of enormous change regarding sexual equality that has taken place in recent decades. He remembered being referred to a psychiatrist when he came out who raised the possibility of electroshock therapy (which he thankfully avoided). In his later years, he and Everard were able to have their relationship officially recognised, something that would have seemed unimaginable to his younger self. Although I knew Ken for 20 years, I didn’t know him in his younger years. He already looked ‘like a Roman emperor’ – as a gay friend once memorably described him – when I met him. He continued to look exactly the same to me over the years. When I see photos of him as a young man with brown, curly hair, that is not the Ken I knew. But since he passed, whenever I see photos of young men at the heart of the early days of the gay revolution, I think of him and his warm heart, pushing for change. How brave they were, I think. How young they were.