George Chauncey presents a vivid portrait of New York gay
male culture in the years between 1890 and 1940. It is a rich, highly
documented study that relies on evidence ranging from interviews and
biographical accounts by gay men, to the less friendly testimony of police
spies and citizen vigilantes attempting to contain this milieu. The result is a
panorama of gay neighborhoods and meeting places that thrived during this
period.
The book begins with scenes of an active 1890s “subculture
of the flamboyantly effeminate ‘fairies’…who gathered at Paresis Hall and other
Bowery resorts.” Many of these men are described as prostitutes directly
employed by the owners, or passively encouraged because they enticed customers.
While Chauncey is quick to point-out that this “was not the only gay subculture
in the city,” it does begin the book on a sensationalist note (Chauncey, p.
34). It might have been more useful to progress from interviews and biographies
showing private gay home life, relationships and friendships, which would have
illustrated the solid foundation of gay community, but the beginning would have
been less exciting.
From this unfortunate start, Chauncey progresses improvingly
by depicting the attitudes of men who defined themselves positively as “queers”
and “fairies.” This counters the myth that all gay men at the time had
internalized the dominant culture’s negative image of them. Self-esteem existed
prior to the activism of our current period. The book progresses from the Gay
Nineties through the 1930s, when a number of proudly gay entertainers headlined
Greenwich Village and Harlem night spots widely attended by the straight
community. Chauncey does not pretend that the 1890s through the 1930s were free
of harassment and prejudice. He spends a great deal of time highlighting
assaults upon the gay male community during this period. But one cannot deny
the evidence of a thriving public and private gay culture before World War Two.
While the elaboration of life from home to street is
fascinating and opens the reader to a world presumed invisible if non-existent,
Chauncey is a historian with a wider purpose. A common assumption is that US gay
culture progressed, in a linear trajectory, from concealment to free
expression; from oppression to acceptance. “The Whiggish notion that change is
always ‘progressive’ and that gay history in particular consists of a steady
movement toward freedom continues to have appeal” to the LGBT community and its
optimistic allies (Chauncey, p. 9). Chauncey offers evidence that gay male
culture was more visible, tolerated and permeable to outsiders between 1890 and
1930 than it was between 1945 and 1960. He claims that a “post-war reaction has
tended to blind us to the relative tolerance of the pre-war years” (Chauncey,
p. 9). Our lack of knowledge about this early 20th Century flourishing
oasis is largely due to the success of post-war repression.
Despite the eye-opening, socially progressive purpose of the
author’s work, his relative exclusion of lesbians will rankle with some
readers. Chauncey self-consciously explains that “the book focuses on men
because the differences between gay male and lesbian history and the complexity
of each made it seem virtually impossible to write a book about both that did
justice to each” (Chauncey, p. 27). This justification rings a bit hollow,
since lesbians and gay men lived in the same neighborhoods and frequented many
of the same social spaces.
Chauncey should be congratulated on his extensive coverage
of African American life. Unlike his justification for excluding lesbians,
Chauncey does not argue that the
differences between Caucasian and African American history “made it seem
virtually impossible to write a book about both.” While many white gay clubs
excluded African American men, Harlem of the early 20th Century has
a bountiful history of gay neighborhood cohesion, clubs and drag balls, which
the author portrays in enthusiastic detail.
Gay New York may have its flaws and blind spots, but
it is a significant adjunct to LGBT history. The myths of invisibility,
isolation and self-abnegation are aptly countered by its testimony. It depicts
a strong, vibrant and cohesive community that thrived for a period before being
driven underground by prejudice. While the author’s coverage of post-war
suppression is difficult to read, it is an important episode to face. The
chronology from a more open and tolerated gay culture to one that was
repressed, warns us that the forces of intolerance are persistent. We must be
vigilant in order to retain recent LGBT gains.
Chauncey, George. Gay New York. Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books, 1994.
For review of a LGBT book on anarchist support for LGBT rights during this time in US history, see:
http://greatnonfictionbooks.blogspot.com/2014/01/free-comrades-anarchism-and.html
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