Durg Prohibn, gay nightlife and culture reached new heights—at least temporarily.
Contents:
- HOW GAY CULTURE BLOSSOMED DURG THE ROARG TWENTI
- PANSY CRAZE: THE WILD 1930S DRAG PARTI THAT KICKSTARTED GAY NIGHTLIFE
HOW GAY CULTURE BLOSSOMED DURG THE ROARG TWENTI
* pansy gay *
A pre-Stonewall gay bar at the rner of Christopher Street and Gay Street was lled The Flower Pot. Notably, a group of seven gay male wrers who met up regularly New York Cy 1980 and 1981 named themselv “The Vlet Quill.
As Looby not Flowers of Manhood, “daisy, ” “buttercup, ” and pecially “pansy, ” as well as the generalized “horticultural lad” were early twentieth century terms for “flamboyant gay men. The police eventually shut them all down, cludg a 1939 one Harlem that end a 70-year annual tradn (for more, see Gaylaw: Challengg the Apartheid of the Closet by William N. “Chncey pots out that while the pansy craze often drew on or reproduced the most meang stereotyp of male homosexuals, did, at tim, provi a space for some gay performers to speak about, to rist, and even to unter heterosexist prumptns about fairi and other queers, ” the film scholar Mark Lynn Anrson wr his 2011 book Twilight of the Idols: Hollywood and the Human Scienc 1920s Ameri.
” This phrase, “the love that dare not speak s name, ” was later brought to promence as reference to homosexualy Wil’s gross cency trial 1895.
PANSY CRAZE: THE WILD 1930S DRAG PARTI THAT KICKSTARTED GAY NIGHTLIFE
The Lavenr Sre was a 1950s wch hunt for homosexual feral employe, much like the Red Sre was one for munists, as tailed “The Lavenr Sre and Empire: Rethkg Cold War Antigay Polics” by the historian Naoko Shibawa. Durg the “Pansy Craze” om the 1920s until 1933, people the lbian, gay, bi, trans and queer (LGBTQ) muny were performg on stag ci around the world, and New York Cy’s Greenwich Village, Tim Square and Harlem held some of the most world-renowned drag performanc of the time.
All of this activy existed durg cultural time that, as historian Gee Chncey wr his book Gay New York, many people believe “is not supposed to have existed. Sudnly, when everyone was on the search for newly illegal alhol, black and whe gay and lbian life me to ntact wh one another and domant society. The drag balls, some form, may have e om masquera balls bed wh gay nightlife of the late 1800s.