Peter Gay obuary | History books | The Guardian

Contents:

• PETER GAY
• FAY GAY
• INSI THE WORLD OF PETER BERL, GROUNDBREAKG PHOTOGRAPHER AND GAY IN
• THE LBIAN WRER AND HER FLAMBOYANT GAY HBAND
• PETER GAY (1923–2015)
• PETER GAY OBUARY
• 13 CLASSIC DISNEY CHARACTERS WHO WERE PROBABLY GAY
• PETER GAY, HISTORIAN WHO EXPLORED SOCIAL HISTORY OF IAS, DI AT 91
• GAY MEN AND THE “PETER PAN COMPLEX”

PETER GAY

Memorabily MetricsPage views of Peter Gays by languageAmong HISTORIANSContemporariIn GermanyAmong HISTORIANS In Germany Peter GayPeter Joachim Gay (né Fröhlich; June 20, 1923 – May 12, 2015) was a German-Amerin historian, tor, and thor. Lois is ially upset that Peter is now gay, but she warms up to the change when he begs exhibg stereotypil gay behavrs like shoppg for cloth and okg muffs, only to rensir her stance when Peter rejects her sexual advanc. Seeg Lois heartbroken and prsed, Stewie and Brian (who is reluctant due to his support of gay rights) attempt to brg Peter back to his normal self by kidnappg him and sendg him to a "straight mp" for nversn therapy.

FAY GAY

He’s an trovert known for his exhibnism; a gifted photographer whose only subject is himself; a porn star who don’t much re for sex; and a man who rpond to the artific that so many gay men nstcted to hi their te selv by creatg an even more exaggerated sexual and stylistic persona. ”Copyright of Peter work, llected for the first time hardver format Peter Berl: In, Artist, Photosexual (Damiani), pil highlights om the thoands of erotic self-portras that Berl has taken over the urse of his life, many of which origally appeared on the vers of gay magaz and ma him an ternatnal cult in. And the ubiquy of digal platforms has ma photographg onelf a fact of life: On rtls nights, many a young gay man this si of Pete Buttigieg has unwtgly paid homage to Berl wh an iPhone, an ASOS jockstrap, and a bathroom mirror.

Copyright of Peter, if RuPl matas that every man, gay or straight, should drs up drag to appreciate the powers of femy, Berl might argue that every man should fashn himself as an unrepentant object of rnal sire, at least once a while. We often lled each other to remisce about Peter, to reunt the sorcery of him, to bask the shared memory of his, when I beme antic wh the sire to start a fay — chasg gay men at hoe parti, beggg sperm om strangers on plan — I broke down and wept for what felt like the too-early ath of my hband. I wanted to be the badass lbian wrer, wh the flamboyant gay hband, raisg four children a ramblg old hoe that ed to be a church, two blocks om the beach Far one nversatn wh CJ, he terpted to ask if there was a way he uld stand for Peter, by givg me his sperm.

When Nights Black Leather was released, was embraced by an ternatnal dience of gay men sperately needg a role mol to help them shed stiflg patriarchal standards of mascule reprentatn; and for Peter Berl, the act of makg the film was jt as much of a gui as was for his dience, helpg him to sharpen his own unpromised libido impuls. Now that technology has allowed the mastream to tch up wh his project, thoands of gay men on Instagram are workg toward achievg what Berl already acplished the ’70s g only analog tools—his mera and the postal service. Unr Peter Gay’s stctn that semter, I learned that I had a surprisg number of thgs mon wh Dora, the Wolf Man, and the Rat Man—I was nrotic, showed signs of obssive pulsive disorr, and had some light symptoms of hysteria.

INSI THE WORLD OF PETER BERL, GROUNDBREAKG PHOTOGRAPHER AND GAY IN

How I ever managed to make through my bourgeois New York childhood, let alone through my first few years at Yale, seemed to me nearly miraculo, but Peter Gay, his urtly, avuncular way, also disabed me of the ia that I was any way special. Peter Gay was an expert of the social history of the European bourgeoisie—his magisterial five-volume history, The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Frd, appeared between the years 1984 and 1998—and he tght his stunts to nsir Frd not only as a great geni, but also as a Vienne Jew astutely observg the world which he lived. What was so utterly enlighteng, then, to e a very Gayian term, about Peter Gay’s lectur on Frd was precisely his abily to suate Frd his late 19th- and early 20th-century world whout any way dimishg his acplishment; what was thrillg, that is, was his abily to nvey how Frd’s historil circumstanc did not exclively create, but certaly ma possible his set of perceptns about seemgly universal aspects of human psychology.

Gay tght me—and to this I believe I owe my own trajectory as a scholar—that to separate the fields of history, psychology, lerature, relign, and polics om one another was to produce a drastilly rced unrstandg of the past. Gay and his parents emigrated 1941 om Cuba to the Uned Stat, where they settled Denver orr for his mother to nvalce at a Jewish sanarium for tuberculosis treatment—an episo that sounds like a zany ncurrence of Mann’s Magic Mounta, Frd’s Dora, and the Wild Wt.

Over the urse of Peter Gay’s long and immensely productive reer, he shared wh a large Amerin public the grand narrativ of European tellectual and social thought, pturg for this new world the pleasur and idsyncrasi of the old world that his fay had left behd. Footnote 5 In the meantime, Gay explored the entertaments of Havana and worked on his English, polishg his prose at the Havana Bs Amy (to which he received a scholarship) and vourg Amerin perdils like Time, Collier's, and the Saturday Eveng Post.

THE LBIAN WRER AND HER FLAMBOYANT GAY HBAND

This was ma possible by the terventn of Gay's former high school English teacher, Helen Hunter, who worked out a plan to allow Gay to fish his high school gree by pletg a private urse wh her on William Shakpeare.

Lookg back years later, Gay nsired fortuo that he had spent the early years “Middle Ameri, ” a place where was possible to pe the ncerns of the German immigrant muny and bee fully (or at least mostly) “Amerinized. In Gay's study, Bernste is very much the hero, the reformer who sought to ee the ethil re of Marxism om s encstatn Hegelian metaphysics and rencile socialism's visn of equaly wh the polil stutns of parliamentarism and mocracy.

PETER GAY (1923–2015)

The choice of Bernste reflected Gay's rejectn of both the Stalist left and the McCarthye right; was also a rebuff to those of his lleagu and acquatanc who had migrated om one polil extreme to the other—typilly om the far left to the far right: “I felt fortunate beg immune om what I took to be an often willful polil bldns of two warrg groups who disputed their ground at New York cktail parti and on the Wellfleet beach. ”Footnote 7 Gay remaed fundamentally optimistic regardg Amerin polil stutns, even if his worldview was shaped ccially by tellectuals—many of them also German-Jewish émigrés—whose views of Ameri were hardly naïve or uncril.

”Footnote 8 Marce not only helped persua Gay to take Frd serly, but also to see his view of human nature as fundamentally psimistic, such that s unpleasant featur were unlikely to disappear a postpalist society. Although she never earned a doctorate, Ruth Gay would go on to wre a seri of well-received works on Jewish history, cludg The Jews of Germany: A Historil Portra (1992), Unfished People: Eastern European Jews Enunter Ameri (1997), and Safe Among the Germans: Liberated Jews After World War II (2002).

”Footnote 15 In a siar manner, Gay sought to vdite the Enlightenment's attu toward history, argug that s notns of historil atn and culture were far richer than prevly acknowledged, and s nceptns of progrs far more tentative, particularly given the philosoph’ ls-than-rosy timate of human nature. Gay sisted, agast this le of thought, that the philosoph had sought a tly scientific view of the world, ground not ratnalist philosophy but rather a skeptil empiricism whose rults uld be revised light of new evince and new rmatn.

PETER GAY OBUARY

In Voltaire's Polics: The Poet as Realist (1959), Gay attempted to monstrate that almost all Voltaire's wrgs, cludg his plays and histori, were rmed by a sire to tervene ntemporary polil affairs, but that the threat of censorship or even imprisonment had forced him to hi his tentns behd “vague, allive generali. ”Footnote 19 Gay's approach to Voltaire—lotg his wrgs their ntemporary polil environment—formed the basis for what he me to ll the “social history of ias, ” which he envisned as an alternative to, on the one hand, Arthur Lovejoy's form of tellectual history, which ma ias the un of analysis and traced them across time as they passed om one great thker to the next, and, on the other hand, the type of tellectual history that foced on cultural trop and clichés—what he lled “the reer of send-class ias send-class mds.

”Footnote 20 Gay's form of tellectual history, by ntrast, was guid by the prciple that “ias have many dimensns”: “They are exprsed by dividuals, but they are social products; they are nceived, elaborated and modified amid a specific set of historil circumstanc… Therefore, the social historian of ias nnot rt ntent wh analyzg their formal logil stcture. ”Footnote 21 For Gay, the advantage of this approach was that helped unravel some of the more problematic aspects of the Enlightenment, such as Denis Dirot's sexual libertism (which uld be seen as a way of attackg the Catholic Church), Jean-Jacqu Rose's Social Contract (not jt a work of polil theory, but a proposal to reform the Genevan cy-state), and Voltaire's antisemism, which Gay explaed (away) as both a product of his day and as an direct means of attackg the te famy, i.

Gay argued that the philosoph were “morn pagans, ” not jt the sense that they had sought to rever the herage of classicism but also (and pecially) bee they had been irreemably hostile to anized relign—and Christiany particular. ”Footnote 25 This was a readg of the Enlightenment that placed Voltaire and his mpaign to “csh the famy” ont and center, while margalizg the German Aufklärer, whom Gay emed “isolated, impotent, and almost wholly unpolil.

13 CLASSIC DISNEY CHARACTERS WHO WERE PROBABLY GAY

”Footnote 31 Gay embedd his terpretatn of Weimar culture as the creatn of “outsirs” thst to the “si” wh a narrative of Oedipal revolt that, typil Frdian manner, risted any clear intifitn wh the sons or the fathers. ”Footnote 33 In fact, Gay wrote most affectnately about those few stutns that seemed to be bastns of vigoro cricism and reasoned quiry, such as the German Amy for Polics, the Psychoanalytil Instute Berl, and the Warburg Instute, the tellectual home of Gay's idol Ernst Cassirer. Objective or not, the says this volume are among the most powerful and personal that Gay ever wrote, particularly three set piec that pict enunters between artists and crics, masters and discipl, Jews and “Aryans” that unfold the shadow of mil Wagnerism.

PETER GAY, HISTORIAN WHO EXPLORED SOCIAL HISTORY OF IAS, DI AT 91

Footnote 40 Jt as Gay had nstcted his image of the philosoph, to some gree, on the mol of Frd, he now ma the se for Frd as the “last philosophe, ” the vtigator who had broken through to that science of the human that had been the goal of the Enlightenment. As a more or ls orthodox Frdian, Gay had ltle e for branch of psychoanalysis that viated om Frdian ego psychology, much ls for those (like Jacqu Lan) who fed wh stcturalist lguistics and Hegelian philosophy. Gay's sistence on Frd's stat as an empirilly ground scientist put him at odds wh those scholars who sought the roots of psychoanalysis the artistic and polil climate of Vienna, notably Carl Schorske, whose celebrated terpretatn of Frd he dismissed as “eccentric.

GAY MEN AND THE “PETER PAN COMPLEX”

”Footnote 43 If there was a cultural ntext for Frd's thought, Gay suggted, was not fed by his physil surroundgs but rather by the books he had read (Goethe, Shakpeare) and the art he llected (notably reproductns of classil sculptur), all of which reflected tablished nons of German bourgeois taste, as well as by his ntacts wh scientists and tellectuals at home and abroad: “Frd, ” Gay sisted, “lived far ls Atrian Vienna than his own md. Gay had taken note of the rise of social history the 1970s and the proliferatn of tailed studi of peasant and workg-class life, and he was nvced that the middle class were need of siar attentn, particularly given what he saw as misnceptns about the bourgeoisie as narrow, reprsed, and philiste. Footnote 49) Another way which Gay's Bourgeois Experience parted om siar studi was s verage of not only Bra, France, and Germany, but also the Uned Stat, which offered evince of bourgeois life “at s purt or, perhaps better, at the edge of s sted future.

”Footnote 50 Ined, the mancripts divisn of the Yale Library provid Gay wh one of his crown piec of evince: the diary of Mabel Loomis Todd, which reunted her sexual experienc (and evint pleasure them) nsirable tail. For Gay, this and siar ttimony showed that the Victorian middle class—not jt men but also women—took pleasure sex, givg the lie to claims to the ntrary by the Victorians themselv and by later generatns of historians. In particular, was claimed, Gay's project suffered om parison wh the work of Michel Fouult, whose fluence the amy was reachg an apex and who had traversed some of the same historil terra as Gay, notably his attentn to issu of sexualy and his impatience wh received pieti about reprsed Victorians.