Was Walt Whman 'gay'? New textbook l spark LGBTQ history bate

He lived om 1819 to 1892, a time when “gay” meant ltle more than “happy. A study of poet Walt Whman, seen this undated fileAs California looks to implement the untry’s first LGBTQ-clive curriculum, state tn officials and textbook publishers are grapplg wh how to refer to figur like Whman, who were believed to have been gay, bisexual or transgenr but never me out: Should we label them as such?

9, 1977 fileHMH materials intify Harvey Milk, one of the untry’s first openly gay elected official, as gay, bee Milk publicly labeled himself as such.

”Nurse Florence NightgalePA / PA Wire via APAcrdg to scholars, the term “homosexual” did not enter mon age until the early 20th century, while “gay” beme popular the 1930s and ’40s, and “lbian” emerged the 1970s. "Polly Pagenhart, Our Fay CoalnMcGraw Hill also rejected the California missn’s remendatn to list the poet and Harlem Renaissance lear Langston Hugh as gay, sayg there is no evince to support the claim. “On some level, many of would argue that there were no gay people or lbians before the terms existed.

WAS WALT WHMAN 'GAY'?

But for the award-wng gay poet Doty, textual analysis of the great Amerin bard required a personal analysis, which necsated this kd of spirual ntact. "Labels like gay, queer, or bisexual were nonexistent Whman's era. And works like the "Calam" poems his "Leav of Grass" llectn, Whman discs romantic and sexual relatnships between California looks to implement the untry’s first LGBTQ-clive curriculum, state tn officials and textbook publishers are grapplg wh how to refer to figur like Whman, who were believed to have been gay, bisexual or transgenr but never me out: Should we label them as such?

HOW GAY WAS WALT WHMAN?

” Gay liberatnist Charl Shively—not one to mce words—wrote this Calam Lovers: Walt Whman’s Workg Class Camerados (1987), his revelatory, if sometim risible, acunt of the poet’s queer egalarianism.

Whether cksuckg is central to Whman’s book, or even uniquely Amerin, is batable; more pertent is the implied nnectn between Whman’s homosexualy and his patrtic fervor. ” Jerome Lovg suggted that Whman was a “latent homosexual” who didn’t act on his sir. David Reynolds dismissed gay readgs of Whman and even floated the ia that the poet’s obssively phallocentric verse reads like that of a womanizer.

John Hollanr omted Whman’s queerns—asi om a mannered reference to the poetry’s “homoerotic realm”—om his troductn to the Library of Ameri’s 1992 edn of Leav of Grass. Gary Schmidgall’s Walt Whman: A Gay Life (1997), om which the aforementned ventory is taken, stands as a lonely but monumental rebuttal to s of ntered cricism. But the reluctance was also sktishns around the ia of the untry’s greatt poet—“the Amerin bard, ” as Harold Bloom lls him—beg gay.

WALT WHMAN IS OUR NATNAL POET, AND A GAY IN

And not only gay, but gay the most physil, promiscuo, and subversive sense. In unterpot to the general pdishns around Whman’s sexualy, the queer muny, and gay men particular, embraced Whman as their poet lreate.

In Boston, the now-funct gay bookstore Calam was named homage to Whman’s queer magnum op, first published the 1860 edn of Leav of Grass.

That shop was owned by John Mzel, a member of the queer anarchist llective that published Fag Rag, a gay liberatn newspaper that ran om 1971 to 1987, and whose tersectnal mix of ee sex and polics was Whmanic spir. In later gay parlance, Whman is a chickenhawk—his paeans to teenage boys and young men are extrible om his exaltatn of mocracy and the spirual lure of the open road. But intifyg Whman straightforwardly as a gay man the way we now unrstand is ght, not least of all bee his sexual terts were ls adult men than adolcents.

WALT WHMAN, OUR GREAT GAY POET?

Mart went further: “Prr to Whman there were homosexual acts but no homosexuals.

WALT WHMAN, BOHEMIAN DANDY: THE STORY OF AMERI’S FIRST GAY BAR AND ITS CREATIVE COTERIE

” And 1890, when the English poet and cric John Addgton Symonds (also queer) asked Whman about homoerotic them, the latter ncted a ridiculo yarn about havg fathered six illegimate children.

“Adhive, ” a term borrowed om phrenology, was Whman’s synonym for homosexualy.

WALT WHMAN MA NO SECRET OF BEG GAY

Acrdg to gay studi pneer William A. Percy, “the term beme part of the special vobulary of the emergg homosexual subculture of the neteenth century, ” which Whman and his terie would have unrstood. After the third edn of Leav of Grass, he cut much of his ecstatic gay language, renovatg the book to a sober thedral.

ARNIE KANTROWZ, PNEER OF GAY LIBERATN, DI AT 81

” (The say don’t mentn Whman’s homosexualy. After the third edn of Leav of Grass 1860, Whman softened or cut much of his ecstatic gay language.

In his say, “How Gay Was Walt Whman?, ” Arnie Kantrowz analyz the multu of evince brought forth both Whman’s wrg and that of gay crics to terme if the grey poet was a homosexual. Kantrowz wr how “ is difficult for mom gay rears to image Whman as anythg other than one of sce his voice seems so clearly to ronate wh our own feelgs and terts, ” as seen poems such as “Startg om Pmanok” or “Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice”. Although Whman’s era was not as progrsive as our own now, Kantrowz mirrors Whman wh that of Osr Wil, claimg that “Whman seems the prototype of the morn gay man.

Even durg the 19th century, gay crics were “[stg Whman] their own ialized image.

How Gay Was Walt Whman? |

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