Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- chauncey_gay_new_york [2026/04/15 22:56] – [Chapter 4 - The Forging of Queer Identities and the Emergence of Heterosexuality in Middle-Class Culture] nkotkov
+++ chauncey_gay_new_york [2026/04/17 15:34] (current) – added my three changes rcarper
@@ Line 25: / Line 25: @@
 In the introduction, George Chauncy counters the myth of the queer community's invisibility or nonexistence before the late twentieth century. This myth of invisibility supposes that before the Stonewall riot of 1996, queer and gay people lived in fear and repression of their sexuality due to anti-gay sentiment and lawmaking. While the Red Scare of the Cold War and the tragedy of the Aids crisis did a lot to repress queer communities in the post-WWII era, this does not speak to the lives of queer people in the early twenty-first century. In the pre-WWII era, anti-gay laws and thoughts on queer people were often more varied than what might be thought of in this myth. (Tanner Gilikin)
+====== Part I: Male (Homo)sexual Practices and Identities in the Early Twentieth Century ======
 ===== Chapter 1  - The Bowery as Haven and Spectacle =====
@@ Line 54: / Line 55: @@
-==================Chapter 2================================================================================
+===== Chapter 2 - The Fairy as an Intermediate Sex =====
 Fairies, rather than being understood as men who were attracted to men, were understood to be somewhat of a "third sex". The prominence of fairies in the public conception of the gay world meant that queer desire was associated with the femininity of queer men. In this understanding, it wasn't a sexual preference that made a fairy desire men, but instead that desire was a natural consequence of their feminine character. Queerness was a gender identity, not a sexuality. This association with femininity wasn't necessarily inaccurate. Many fairies understood their own desires as resulting from their feminine self, and the social expression of this femininity was a key part of fairies' participation in the gay world. They used women's names, adopted more feminine dress, and performed femininity not only to participate in a gay world that was centered around "the fairy", but also to identify other gay men. Femininity might have been understood as the root of a fairy's desire for men, but it was also a tool that he used to identify other gay men, socialize with them, and create relationships. (Cameron Spivy)
@@ Line 93: / Line 94: @@
 GOT TO HERE --WBM
+====== Part II: The Making of the Gay Male World ======
+===== Chapter 5 - Urban Culture and the Policing of the “City of Bachelors” =====
-**Chapter 5 - Urban Culture and the Policing of the “City of Bachelors”**
 In a way, the anonymity of the city for gay men allowing same-sex relations in a way mirrors the allowance of same-sex female relations in rural and low populated areas except that city instead provided shelter from being discovered by the sheer amount of people in cities. Gay men would in order to enjoy the benefits of both being apart of the gay scene in NYC and having a straight identity would sustain separate identities at work, near his gay friends, and his children. Additionally, sociologists of the time feared that this increasing gay scene in NYC and "disorganization" would lead to the weakening of the family. (Henry Prior)
@@ Line 111: / Line 112: @@
 Chauncey discusses how New York became known as the "capital" of the American homosexual world, particularly for new migrants to the area. These migrants were both native-born American citizens from rural areas as well as immigrants from Europe. Most of these migrants were young, unmarried men, many of whom were able to find both work and a place in the homosexual world in the city. Gay male enclaves formed in areas like the Bowery, Greenwich Village, Times Square, and Harlem, which were attractive areas because they provided furnished housing for single men. (Noah Rutkowski)
-**Chapter 10**
+Chauncey argues against the popular sociological opinion that the anonymity of New York City was the primary reason it became a center of homosexual behavior. Chauncey claims that focusing on this supposed anonymity makes it seem like the gay men there were isolated from one another, which wasn't true, and instead argues that the complex world of the city allowed gay men to construct "multiple public identities", which let them behave in different ways with different people/groups. (Ezra C.)
+===== Chapter 7 - "Privacy Could Only Be Had in Public": Forging a Gay World in the Streets =====
+Chauncey situates the practice of gay sex and socialization in "public" places within the broader context of working class New York. Many men lived in crowded tenements or with their families; these "private" places were not private, so they had to find privacy within the public sphere if they wanted to have sex. This was true for both straight and gay men, but the practices often took on a cultural significance for gay men as a part of their connection to the gay world. An example of this is the "tearooms" in various subway stations. The areas were certainly used for sex, but they also were a place to socialize and meet people. Parks were places for cruising, but gay men also met up in parks to hang out with other queer people. This mixed use of "public" spaces certainly mirrors that of straight people at the time, but it was used covertly to strengthen queer identity and community. (Cameron Spivy)
+Parks were an example of a place that gay men would go to solicit sex as well as social interaction with other gay men, but it was also a place that heterosexual men would go to do the same, usually with prostitutes. These parks were known to be a hotbed of illicit activity, leading them to be heavily patrolled by police. Despite this, they remained a space for frequent sexual and social behavior, because despite the patrols and arrests, police found them much more challenging to regulate. (Ezra C.)
+When it came to what men arrested for homosexual or effeminate behavior were actually charged with, it didn't tend to be actual sodomy. This is because that felony charge would require the men to actually be caught in the act of gay sex. Instead, most of the men were charged with disorderly conduct, which was a misdemeanor that was much easier to prove and didn't require the men to be tried in a trial with jury. (Ezra C.)
+===== Chapter 8 - The Social World of the Baths =====
+In New York, bathhouses acted as a pseudo-private space for men to have sex, socialize, find jobs, and drop the double life act they were forced to keep up in society. This was a space where it was expected that everybody who attended was gay, making it a safer evironment for these men. It was also a space where the business wouldn't raise any red flags by being exclusively gay because of the nature of exclusivity within private businesses before the 1960's. They were a very common place where men could enjoy the pleasure of other men, but also sometimes find themselves and learn about their sexuality in the process. Unfortunately, these public spaces went out of fashion with the introduction of indoor plumbing and, as these businesses went out of fashion, it made them more conspicuous to the police and to the public. -Caroline Cochran
+The bathhouses in New York, had two different types of clientele, one mixed with both straight and gay men, and the second being strictly gay clients. Having a private bathhouse led to more homosexual behaviors and different areas being used for sexual interactions; i.e., steam rooms, cubicles, or dressing rooms. After WWII the police started to target more gay bathhouses and trying to catch gay men actively having or starting to have sex. (Sage Milton)
+===== Chapter 9 - Building Gay Neighborhood Enclaves - The Village and Harlem =====
+Gay men and lesbians alike are forming a strong community in neighborhoods where they can have more freedom and visibility in harden and places like greenwich village. They made visible subcultures even though they were facing widespread discrimination from others. (Tea Aliu)
+Bohemian lifestyles created an intersection of nonconformity and homosexuality where bohemian men and gay men were being labeled as queer even if that term wasn't necessarily accurate. Anything nontraditional was basically labeled or stereotyped as being homosexual and people faced tensions even in more progressive communities. (Tea Aliu)
+The prohibition and tourism made the village more visible helping the community become larger and strengthen itself but it also brought in a lot of outside attention which could have possible endangered these groups. (Tea Aliu)
+====== Part III: The Politics of Gay Culture ======
+===== Chapter 10 - The Double Life, Camp Culture, and the Making of a Collective Identity =====
+Analyzing various queer intellectual trends, G. Chauncey views the historiographical construction of a shared past as a major cultural strategy of gay men in New York. In particular, he emphasizes that some gay scholars attempted to demonstrate that homosexuality was not a phenomenon of cultural degradation, but rather a noble, natural, and historically traceable category. For example, the classicist scholar John Addington Symonds argued that homosexuality flourished in ancient Greece, suggesting that the discourse of homosexual “degeneracy” is, to an extent, itself a degeneration from the pinnacle of Western civilization. Another scholar, Edward Carpenter, sought to historicize homosexuality by constructing a gay genealogy that included Shakespeare, Whitman, Goethe, Byron, and many other canonical figures. Overall, these historiographical constructions appear to have served as a crucial mechanism for the formation of a distinct group identity. - Nikolai Kotkov
+Chauncey discusses the concept of "chain migration," in which gay men's migration into New York City was often facilitated by the encouragement of fellow gay friends who had already moved to the city. Men like Gene Harwood and George Sardi first moved to the city after being informed about its expansive gay world by a friend, and were able to be incorporated into that world through many different social events and gatherings such as apartment parties. Some of these young men who moved into NYC from elsewhere in the country managed to develop nearly exclusively gay circles of friends, indicating that it was very possible (though likely dangerous in many ways) for gay men in the city to operate almost entirely within the gay world. However, there were many more gay men who instead lived a double life, moving between the gay and straight worlds. (Noah Rutkowski)
+Chauncey discusses how gay people in New York were able to form their own culture and community. One way they were able to do this was through using code words and double entendres. They were able to ask questions alluding to sexuality by saying something mundane like "do you have the time", without drawing attention to their sexuality. These code words grew so much popularity that police officers started catching on and arresting people for using them. This secret language fostered a sense of besting the law, which drew this community closer to each other. -Caroline Cochran
+Similar to code words, prohibition also added to this sense of besting the law. By outlawing alcohol, the government got rid of any kind of legitate night life. This, however, does not mean that night life came to and end-- infact, the complete opposite. During prohibition, there was general unlawful behavior among everybody, straight and people alike. This changed the relationship between gay and straight people. Straight people were no longer seen as superior for following the law while partying. Instead, it made straight people blur the lines between the acceptance for different communities because, at the end of the day, everybody was breaking the law anyways. However, at the end of prohibition and with the creation of the liquer lisence, bar owners had to decide what to do about gay customers. Knowing that by allowing them in they could lose their lisence, they would have to decide whether to exclude them completely, or lean into the illegality of it and exclusively allow gay customers until they were caught. -Caroline Cochran
+Prohibition policy counterintuitively causes a rise in the visibility of homosexuality. By delegitimizing alcohol in all forms, the prohibitionists put any form of nightlife on the same level as that of queer people. This in turn makes the queer scene more visible, sparking the so-called “pansy craze.” (Tanner Gillikin)
+===== Chapter 11 - "Pansies on Parade": Prohibition and the Spectacle of the Pansy =====
+{{ https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/files/2021/09/Clj8xSK-asset-mezzanine-16x9-dOruOU2.jpg? 350|Jean Malin}}
+The Prohibition era, contrary to its goals of eliminating "vice," actually led the gay world to gain incredible, unprecedented visibility in NYC. Chauncey explains this phenomenon as a "pansy craze" that overtook the city, earning gay men a new place in newspapers, plays, films, and other media. Because Prohibition created many economic pressures for businesses that previously relied on alcohol sales, several hotels decided to allow prostitutes and speakeasies on their grounds. Since the more "middle class" areas of NYC's nightlife had been criminalized, the majority of nightlife activities were transferred to the "coarse," lower class forms of it, thus introducing the middle class to different forms of night entertainment. This changing social landscape, in part, is what allowed for the "pansy craze" to happen. (Noah Rutkowski)
+Chauncey also connects this "pansy craze" with similar trends that brought Black performers to white neighborhoods for jazz performances framed as insights into "the plantation" and Black culture. Both of these versions of exposure were curated. Viewers didn't have to leave their nicer neighborhoods to venture to Harlem, the Village, or even Times Square. Instead they could watch this "other" and experience it as an affirmation of their own identity. Watching Black performers affirmed their own whiteness, and watching pansies affirmed their masculinity and heterosexuality. What's interesting about some of the performance of the pansies, however, is that there was direct interaction with the audience. Rather than "normal people" simply gawking from afar, as was often the case with straight attendees of drag balls, the performers, such as Jean Malin, directly interacted with the audience. Malin would flirt with and heckle the audience in performances, venturing into the crowd in order to talk to people. This ability for personal interactions differentiates this integrated nightlife from the segregated nightlife (based on sexuality) that would emerge after the end of Prohibition. (Cameron Spivy)
+===== Chapter 12 - The Exclusion of Homosexuality from the Public Sphere in the 1930s =====
+When authorities decided to end Prohibition, it wasn't because they stopped wanting to regulate nightlife. Rather than taking a step back from the regulation of alcohol, the end of Prohibition allowed the government, specifically state governments, to assert more control over who was allowed to sell alcohol and who was allowed to consume it in public. The creation of licenses that were needed to sell liquor meant that new regulatory bodies like the State Liquor Authority (SLA) could //take away// these licenses. Abiding by the policies of the SLA was necessary, because if you didn't, they could remove your ability to sell alcohol in the first place. The SLA specifically used this to prevent gay people from congregating in bars. Bars that were locations of "disorderly conduct" could have their licenses revoked, and the practice of acting gay in public was considered "disorderly" to the SLA. This created incentives for bar owners, rather than facing the wrath of the SLA, to instead preemptively police the behavior of, or actively kick out, their gay clientele. (Cameron Spivy)
-Analyzing various queer intellectual trends, G. Chauncey views the historiographical construction of a shared past as a major cultural strategy of gay men in New York. In particular, he emphasizes that some gay scholars attempted to demonstrate that homosexuality was not a phenomenon of cultural degradation, but rather a noble, natural, and historically traceable category. For example, the classicist scholar John Addington Symonds argued that homosexuality flourished in ancient Greece, suggesting that the discourse of homosexual “degeneracy” is, to an extent, itself a degeneration from the pinnacle of Western civilization. Another scholar, Edward Carpenter, sought to historicize homosexuality by constructing a gay genealogy that included Shakespeare, Whitman, Goethe, Byron, and many other canonical figures. Overall, these historiographical constructions appear to have served as a crucial mechanism for the formation of a distinct group identity.
+Chauncey makes light of how the police would target specific individuals who are in the police's opinion "obvious" gay men, in order to take them out of the Time Square clubs that have drag shows or other pansy acts. The harassment and targeting of these specific clubs because of the "moral evil" the gay culture and events being held were amassing a more social elite attendees. (Sage Milton)
+===== Epilogue: The Strange Career of the Clost =====