Gay New York Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940

by Chauncey, George

• ISBN13: 9780465026210
• ISBN10: 0465026214
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-05-19
• Publisher: Basic Books

Summary

Gay New Yorkbrilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet, where gay men were isolated, invisible, and self-hating. Based on years of research and access to a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, this book is a fascinating portrait of a gay world that is not supposed to have existed.

Author Biography

George Chauncey is professor of American history at the University of Chicago and the author of Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, which won the distinguished Turner and Curti Awards from the Organization of American Historians, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award. He testified as an expert witness on the history of antigay discrimination at the 1993 trial of Colorado's Amendment Two, which resulted in the Supreme Court's Romer v. Evans decision that antigay rights referenda were unconstitutional, and he was the principal author of the Historians' Amicus Brief, which weighed heavily in the Supreme Court's landmark decision overturning sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas (2003). The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives and works in Chicago.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction	p. 1
Male (Homo)Sexual Practices and Identities in the Early Twentieth Century
The Bowery as Haven and Spectacle	p. 33
The Fairy as an Intermediate Sex	p. 47
Trade, Wolves, and the Boundaries of Normal Manhood	p. 65
The Forging of Queer Identities and the Emergence of Heterosexuality in Middle-Class Culture	p. 99
The Making of the Gay Male World
Urban Culture and the Policing of the "City of Bachelors"	p. 131
Lots of Friends at the YMCA: Rooming Houses, Cafeterias, and Other Gay Social Centers	p. 151
"Privacy Could Only Be Had in Public": Forging a Gay World in the Streets	p. 179
The Social World of the Baths	p. 207
Building Gay Neighborhood Enclaves: The Village and Harlem	p. 227
The Politics of Gay Culture
The Double Life, Camp Culture, and the Making of a Collective Identity	p. 271
"Pansies on Parade": Prohibition and the Spectacle of the Pansy	p. 301
The Exclusion of Homosexuality from the Public Sphere in the 1930s	p. 331
Epilogue: The Strange Career of the Closet	p. 355
Note on Sources	p. 365
Notes	p. 373
Index	p. 459
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