David T. Evans (14/02/1945 - 12/04/2020) was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow.[1] His research interests were in all aspects of human sexualities (especially homosexualities, prostitution, pornography, children's sexuality, paedophilia, transvestism and transsexualism), citizenship and class as both contextualise sexual and gender inequalities and relations, and the sociology of music (especially opera).[2]
Evans was born in London in 1945 and moved in 1969 to Glasgow, where he joined the Department of Sociology. He has written widely on contemporary sexual politics and theory. He has also provided insights into the framing of specific issues such as Section 28 (UK legislation passed by the Conservative Government in 1988 which effectively forbade the teaching of homosexuality in schools), its subsequent repeal in Scotland in 2000 and in the UK a year later.
Evans' most seminal text Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities (1993)[3] criticizes Foucauldian and Interactionist perspectives on sexuality for their lack of attention to the way notions of sexuality are formulated within, and shaped through, material relations governed by market relations. Evans sees the state as instrumental in packaging sexual identities as necessary purchases. The consumer is then persuaded that sexual identities (gay, female, pedophiliac, transgender, and child) are innate and natural, rather than commodified constructions.[4]
He was a personal friend of Ken Plummer, Jeffrey Weeks, and a PhD supervisor for Richard Yuill, with whom he co-authored the entry for pedophilia in “The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology” in 2007.[5]
