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

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (1994)
By George Chauncey

Synopsis: This book seeks to challenge the idea that a vibrant gay culture did not exist prior to WWII by refuting three myths: 1) the myth of isolation, 2) the myth of invisibility, 3) the myth of internalization. Chuancey does an amazingly thorough social history which reconstructs the gay subculture of 1890-1940 New York City by drawing from vice society records, police records, newspapers, and all variety of media in order to provide a rich ethnographic description of gay life. The book is divided into three parts: I: Male (Homo) Sexual Practices and Identities in the Early Twentieth Century; II: The Making of the Gay Male World; III: The Politics of Gay Culture. Chauncey provides both a portrait and analysis of the geography and symbolism of the gay male world in order to show that it was more restricted/hidden in the second third of the century. Basically, the hetero/homo binary and way of defining personhood as based on sexual object preference did not really happen until the 1930s-50s, when it replaced the then-dominant system of "fairie" vs. "normal men" which used gender behavior/identification as the main categorizer (fairies were effeminate, queers were not but liked men, "trade" were masculine and "normal" but would fuck men if approached). This shows a much more fluid range of sexual activity that was allowed to "normal"men then versus now. The book also maps the "sexual topography of the gay world," and shows the way gay culture flourished within urban spaces like streets, parks, bathhouses, boarding houses, and nightclubs. Urban space was thus essential to the development of this culture. Argues that the thriving of this culture was an act of resistance, and that gay and straight culture were defined dialectically. Gays especially flourished among the working class and ethnic/immigrant communities. Seems to show that a sort of utopia emerged during prohibition in which all classes/sexualities were thrown together in search of booze/revelry, and that the repeal of prohibition ultimately led to a rise in anti-gay policing. "Privacy could only be had in public" (198).

Interacts With:

All books that deal with public life/public space:
Sidewalk, Rudeness and Civility, Urban Masses and Moral Order, Land of Desire, Confidence Man and Painted Women, Horrible Prettiness (urban life and the particularities of urban spaces like the theatre),
Maybe de Certeau (transgressive power of small everyday acts, use of space),
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (not on lists, but connects on urban space and sex culture, and both have a sort of utopian bent to them), Cities on a Hill,
Could maybe contrast with books that focus more on private life, like Behind the Gates, Building Suburbia, The Levittowners, Middletown, Country of Exiles, etc
For books that focus on a different, mobility-based form of public life/space:
Learning from Las Vegas, Neon Metropolis,
Flourishing of gay culture as act of resistance (there's the pop culture list tie-ine!!)
Connects with Foucault, for idea that middle class tries to control sexuality by naming it and defining it.

**Still one of the best!** Tons of good info - See full notes for more details.

The History of Sexuality: An Introduction

The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1 (1990 [1978])
By Michel Foucault

Synopsis: Asks: Why have Westerners so obsessively talked about sex since the 17th century? Also wants to know "why we burden ourselves today with so much guilt for having once made sex a sin" (9). "The object, in short, is to define the regime of power-knowledge-pleasure that sustains the discourse on human sexuality in our part of the world" (11). Says that all of the repression and endless discourse surrounding sexuality has been motivated by one major concern: "to ensure population, to reproduce labor capacity, to perpetuate the form of social relations: in short, to constitute a sexuality that is economically useful and politically conservative" (37). [I love that line! Conspiracy!] Foucault basically lays out the various ways sexuality came to be talked about and the ways it came to be controlled via its relegation to certain spheres and certain "pathologized" definitions (i.e. how it came to be cornered and contained and used as an element of power and weapon of control). Argues that in the 17th century, with an increased influence of Christianity and with the rise of the bourgeois, sex was pushed into a constant discourse and through an endless process of speech. It was not that we all became "repressed," but rather, sex was taken up and "owned" by the bourgeois and forced into very specific categories which they could then control - i.e. sex was "supposed" to be for married couples. Other types of sexuality which did not fit this category were pathologized and made deviant - and we see a rise in these "other" sexualities because of attempts to control them. The bourgeois control of sexuality focused on four categories: 1) the hysterical woman; 2) the masturbating child; 3) the Malthusian couple; 4) the perverse adult. Childhood sexuality was especially suspect and squelched, providing proof of the way sexuality was "discoursed" as a tool of power and control. Power is embedded in everything.

Interesting Specifics:

"...power is tolerable only on condition that is mask a substantial part of itself" (86).

It was in the bourgeois family that sexuality of kids and adolescents was first problematized and feminine sexuality medicalized (120).

Sex became a tool through which the body was disciplined and the population was regulated; the discussion of sex thus became a supreme form of power and control.

Interacts With:
Refutes books that deal with Victorian repression hypothesis. Foucault says it wasn't repression, it was obsession - but obsession forced into a very specific and controlled discourse.

Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture

Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (1991)
By Robert C. Allen

Synopsis: Asks how burlesque moved from a movement of bold female transgression to one of mere spectacle. This book traces the history of burlesque in the U.S. via a history of theatre in the 1820s-30s, the wild chaos of the "lower class" crowds with their participatory nature, to the bourgeois-ification of burlesque in the 1850-60s, to the relegation of burlesque back to the working classes 1880-1920s, to its last-ditch efforts by taking over failed legit theatres in Times Square which only brought it increased public scrutiny and the moral outrage that led to its demise in the 1930s. Burlesque is complicated and complex, and its "decline" into pure female sexual spectacle at the end partly silenced the transgressive nature it had earlier when female performers actually talked and joked too. In those days, burlesque was largely about the bottom-up inversion of social order, with a focus on the grotesque and on the mockery of the power system in place.

Interesting Specifics:

Burlesque in the U.S. was tied to the "spectacular female performer" and raised "questions about how a woman should be 'allowed' to act on state, about how femininity should and could be represented, and about the relationship of women on stage to women in the outside, 'real' world" (21).

Burlesque as monstrous, grounded in the "aesthetics of transgression, inversion, and the grotesque" (26) - in "the low other."

Ordination = "the exercise of power bound by the limits of discourse;" Insubordination = "resistance contained by discourse" (35).
Argues that struggles over burlesque are about ordination and insubordination rather than domination and resistance (35).

In the late 18th-early 19-century there were many anti-theatrical laws because theatricality was said to "disrupt" the natural order of things; that to disguise oneself and act as something else was seen as mocking nature and God's order of things (47).

The third tier of the theatre was always reserved for prostitutes and their clients.

1820s-30s, theatre gets popular in the U.S.; 1850s marked huge shift in theatre - it became increasingly "feminized" and respectable and less rowdy.

Lydia Thompson Troupe huge.

Dyed blonde hair very popular, and became popular with middle class by 1860s.

Burlesque paralleled and/or joined minstrelsy a bit in the 1870s.

Vaudeville combined most of the other show types one one stage and was appealing to the middle class (tried not to offend); 1890s. Became first place women really attended alone.

Benjamin Franklin Keith largely responsible for creating this brand of clean, family-friendly egalitarian vaudeville, and vaudeville banned any kind of humor that relied on difference (i.e. that caricatured or drew attention to otherness in any way - was the opposite of burlesque).

Burlesque was mostly an East Coast, Midwest, and San Francisco urban phenomenon.

Burlesque posters depicted huge, all-powerful women "playing" wealthy men (i.e. "gold-diggers" riding huge lobsters in mockery of the fancy lobster palaces of the day). This prob didn't offend its mostly working-class audience because the men being lampooned were wealthy men.

Cooch dance merges in 1890s (with the Chicago Expo), a direct precursor to striptease. Runways were invented in 1917, and stripping didn't become standard part until 1920s.

By the 1890s, female burlesque dancers were silent on stage, and was now just about the sexual display of their bodies.

Depression of the 1930s caused many "legit" theatres to close, allowing burlesque to move into those spaces. This however hastened its demise as those in power didn't like them and sought to shut them down.

Interacts With:
Bakhtin; Manliness and Civilization; Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man;