Excerpt of SO FAMOUS AND SO GAY by Jeff Solomon appearg The Seattle Lbian.
Contents:
- SO FAMO AND SO GAY
- PARIS AND GAY LOVE THROUGH THE EY OF GERT STE AND ALICE B. TOKLAS
- SO FAMO AND SO GAY: THE FABULO POTENCY OF TMAN CAPOTE AND GERT STE
SO FAMO AND SO GAY
How and why, a time of homophobia and closeted homosexualy, did two openly gay wrers bee mass-market celebri? * gertrude stein gay *
Subtled “The Tale of Two Young Ladi Who Were Gay Together and How One Left the Other Behd, ” Ste’s story is que possibly the first published work to e the word “gay” to scribe same-sex relatnships; the word appears over 100 tim the brief story, a particularly strikg and signifint example of Ste’s equent e of extreme repetn her wrg. HOW DID Gert Ste, a Jew who was also a homosexual Paris durg the Nazi occupatn of 1940–1945, manage to survive—both physilly and psychologilly—durg the Send World War?
Like many transgenred dividuals, Ste intified wh lbianism, bee, as Gay Wachman suggts, wrg of lbian stereotypg Lbian Empire (2001), “a negative image n be preferable to a blank when one is stgglg wh inty. For all the ary surveillance and persecutn of both Jews and homosexuals this era, Ste and Toklas seem to have remaed beyond the pale of the Vichy ernment’s lens. Dpe Ste’s Judaism, homosexualy, and tellectual standg wh the muny, as a transgenred person she remaed ultimately untegorizable.
PARIS AND GAY LOVE THROUGH THE EY OF GERT STE AND ALICE B. TOKLAS
” This, of urse, would entail bondg wh a woman, ensurg that she would have to endure all of the negative nsequenc of beg an ostensibly homosexual relatnship. ” Acrdg to Benstock, Ste’s day “[t]he term ‘versn, ’ ed by the women to scribe their own sexual clatns, meant for them not only the sire for someone of the same sex, but the more pervasive need to duplite heterosexualy wh the homosexual relatnship.
Curator Tirza Te Latimer and Stanford profsor, thor & artist Terry Castle discs Ste’s bonds wh young gay artists the 1920s-30s and her legacy ntemporary queer culture.
SO FAMO AND SO GAY: THE FABULO POTENCY OF TMAN CAPOTE AND GERT STE
Durg her lifetime, Gert Ste’s gay followers and fans were spired by the openns wh which she lived as a lbian and by the way her work upled homoeroticism wh mornist athetics.
Her scholarly terts clu eighteenth-century Brish fictn, the Gothic novel, Jane Aten, the First World War, English art and culture of the 1920s and 1930s, tobgraphy and bgraphy, and gay and lbian wrg.
California tors cidg how to meet the state's new requirement to clu lbian and gay Amerins history curricula uld strike gold by diggg to Wanda Corn's magnum op on Gert Ste's life and tim. Sometime 1934 Ste wrote: "We are surround by homosexuals, they do all the good thgs all the arts.