Good golly, Miss Molly! A look si the velopment of both gay culture and homosexual inty the 18th century.
Contents:
- BUT WERE THEY GAY? THE MYSTERY OF SAME-SEX LOVE THE 19TH CENTURY
- HOW GAY CULTURE BLOSSOMED DURG THE ROARG TWENTI
- THE GAY MARRIAG OF A NETEENTH-CENTURY PRISON SHIP
- GAY MEN LONDON, OM PERSECUTN TO PRI
- GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT
BUT WERE THEY GAY? THE MYSTERY OF SAME-SEX LOVE THE 19TH CENTURY
Durg Prohibn, gay nightlife and culture reached new heights—at least temporarily. * gay 19th century *
""The thg we don't know about any of the people, " says Peggy Wishart, "is the qutn most morn people have: Were they gay? " By 1911, there was enough awarens of homosexualy that when Fields pulled together a posthumo volume of Jewett's letters, edor Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe urged her to censor out the pet nam.
By the mid-1920s, at the height of the Prohibn era, they were attractg as many as 7, 000 people of var rac and social class—gay, lbian, bisexual, transgenr and straight alike. The Begngs of a New Gay World“In the late 19th century, there was an creasgly visible prence of genr-non-nformg men who were engaged sexual relatnships wh other men major Amerin ci, ” says Chad Heap, a profsor of Amerin Studi at Gee Washgton Universy and the thor of Slummg: Sexual and Racial Enunters Amerin Nightlife, 1885-1940. By the 1920s, gay men had tablished a prence Harlem and the bohemian mec of Greenwich Village (as well as the seedier environs of Tim Square), and the cy’s first lbian enclav had appeared Harlem and the Village.
Each gay enclave, wrote Gee Chncey his book Gay New York: Genr, Urban Culture, and the Makg of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, had a different class and ethnic character, cultural style and public reputatn. Gay Life the Jazz AgeAs the Uned Stat entered an era of unprecented enomic growth and prospery the years after World War I, cultural mor loosened and a new spir of sexual eedom reigned.
HOW GAY CULTURE BLOSSOMED DURG THE ROARG TWENTI
LGBTQ Lerature is a Rears and Book Lovers seri dited to discsg lerature that has ma an impact on the liv of lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr, and queer people. From fictn to ntemporary nonfictn to history and everythg ... * gay 19th century *
Though New York Cy may have been the epicenter of the so-lled "Pansy Craze, " gay, lbian and transgenr performers graced the stag of nightspots ci all over the untry. ”At the same time, lbian and gay characters were beg featured a slew of popular “pulp” novels, songs and on Broadway stag (cludg the ntroversial 1926 play The Captive) and Hollywood—at least prr to 1934, when the motn picture dtry began enforcg censorship guil, known as the Hays Co.
” The sale of liquor was legal aga, but newly enforced laws and regulatns prohibed rtrants and bars om hirg gay employe or even servg gay patrons. In the mid- to late ‘30s, Heap pots out, a wave of sensatnalized sex crim “provoked hysteria about sex crimals, who were often— the md of the public and the md of thori—equated wh gay men.
” This not only disuraged gay men om participatg public life, but also “ma homosexualy seem more dangero to the average Amerin. ” By the post-World War II era, a larger cultural shift toward earlier marriage and suburban livg, the advent of TV and the anti-homosexualy csas champned by Joseph McCarthy would help ph the flowerg of gay culture reprented by the Pansy Craze firmly to the natn’s rear-view mirror. ” In his tellg, at least a hundred men aboard the prison ships Bermuda had same-sex partners whom they nsired, the official archive of gay marriage is still s fancy: the Uned Stat, June marked the fifth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s lg Obergefell v.
THE GAY MARRIAG OF A NETEENTH-CENTURY PRISON SHIP
* gay 19th century *
(It wasn’t until the end of the neteenth century, when “homosexual” and “heterosexual” were vented as medil tegori, that more wrten evince of the existence of what we might ll gay muni emerged. Chevalier d'Eon by Thomas Stewart, 1792Would shock you to learn that homosexualy was not illegal the 18th century? He is the go-to on this subject and has voted his reer to studyg the historil, cultural, and lerary prence of gay culture and homosexualy and around the Geian era.
This source scrib well: "The act of sodomy, on which homosexualy was predited, changed om somethg one did, to somethg one was. The late 17th century saw a rise not jt journal entri on the subject, but other mediums, such as entire plays voted to homosexualy, newspaper articl on the raids of male brothels, sculptur and drawgs showg same-sex affectn, letters between lovers or letters referencg gentlemen pubs, and more. As a brief asi, know that my referenc to homosexualy are not exclive to men, but 's important to realize that male sexualy was far better documented than that of female sexualy.
Self-intified homosexuals weren't typilly the on beg blackmailed, rather victims who found themselv the wrong place at the wrong time.
GAY MEN LONDON, OM PERSECUTN TO PRI
Ben Gazur’s whistle-stop tour of the history of gay men London tak om 14th-century persecutn to morn Pri events. * gay 19th century *
A "Molly" at Cheapsi Pillory, 1762The sodomy law beme notor as not a law that persecuted homosexuals, but as a blackmail threat, pecially to pub equenters.
Intertgly, much of the documentatn we have on the gay culture of the 18th century om that group, for their sire to brg more awarens to sodome ss and showse their victori brought attentn to what many outsi of London and even those outsi of the subculture London did not know about, turng this (advertently) to a known and talked about topic. There is ample documentatn via letters, journals, newspapers, and lerature of aristocrats who were openly bisexual or homosexual. While we won't get to the different subsets of the gay culture durg the 18th century, I will add briefly that there is evince of subcultur wh the larger cultural nstct, jt as we might expect there to be.
Here li the difference between sodomy beg illegal (although nigh impossible to nvict) and homosexualy not beg illegal. A homosexual is not synonymo wh a sodome (I'll leave that for you to unpack), nor a sodome synonymo wh a homosexual, as much as might seem at first glance, and th open homosexualy did not put one at jeopardy for beg tried for sodomy, and certaly not if one was a social or polil ele.
GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT
It's somethg tertg to mull over, specifilly relatn to act (sodomy) vs inty (homosexualy) Ho or Molly Clubs--meetg tablishments for those intifyg as homosexual--prospered durg the 18th century. The most sired rake would be (nearly) distguishable om the most flamboyant homosexual, as effemacy behavr, drs, and mannerism was popular. The were the s of the fops and maronis, an era of the most fashnable gents and the precsors to Be Bmmel (let's save Bmmel's sexual appete for another nvo) d'ye like me [A Maroni] by Cargton Bowl, 1772Let's be clear that not all persons who engaged risqué behavr wh a member of the same sex intified themselv as beg homosexual.
Regnn and acceptance of this as an inty rather than a sexual act veloped the 18th century, as we've discsed, but there were variatns of this inty: suatnal homosexualy, bisexualy, homo-Platonic, heteroromantic, etc; for example, a person fdg romantic love wh someone of the same sex but sexual love wh the oppose or vice versa. As acknowledgement of all thgs homosexual (pecially mentns and ritur of Molly Ho and associated behavrs and events newspapers) spread, so did awarens.