Washgton, D.C.'s hidn gay history is unvered 'Secret Cy'

Contents:

• A PEEK UNR THE TOWEL: INSI THE 500-YEAR HISTORY OF GAY BATHHO
• WASHGTON, D.C.'S HIDN GAY HISTORY IS UNVERED 'SECRET CY'
• GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT

A PEEK UNR THE TOWEL: INSI THE 500-YEAR HISTORY OF GAY BATHHO

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. “They didn’t see a nflict between not beg openly gay at work and sort of only beg gay durg their leisure time, ” says Heap, addg that a person’s class was likely ditive of how you might participate gay and lbian culture at the time.

WASHGTON, D.C.'S HIDN GAY HISTORY IS UNVERED 'SECRET CY'

“The were moments when workg class gay men and women uld more eely explore their sexualy, sir, and terts cross drsg, but probably no doctor or lawyer is gog to drs up drag at the events, out of risk of beg exposed. ” In the mid ‘30s, productn s were put to effect that rtricted and prevented performanc of openly gay characters film or theater, and the followg s, thoands of LGBTQ people were arrted post WWII for equentg their own clubs. “It was the specter of homosexualy that provoked the first and only suici by a member of Congrs his Capol Hill office, ed Lyndon Johnson to et that his historil lead would evaporate, and seized the paranoid md of Richard Nixon send only to the plots of his ever-expandg enemi list, ” Kirchick wr.

“To asss the full sle of the damage that the fear of homosexualy wrought on the Amerin polil landspe, one mt take to acunt not only the reers ed and the liv cut short, but somethg vaster and unquantifiable: the possibili thwarted, ” Kirchick wr. Although openly LGBTQ people have ma their way to the hight ranks of ernment today, was not long ago that spected homosexuals workg for the feral ernment were hunted down, publicly huiated and termated wh the full force of the ernment. Yet queerns exerts a set of disfortg thematic and semantic prsur on the story the novel wants to tell about the place of the hipster unterculture postwar Ameri In this rpect, Darkns exemplifi Eve Sedgwick's celebrated argument that the supposedly margal issue of homosexual/heterosexual fn fact stctur, and ed actur, virtually all morn Wtern cultural exprsn.

GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Darkns mak no explic reference to gay life as an unrground, but blatantly featur the then-new trope of the cultural unrground, this blatancy existg oddly wh diffens: the novel ploys the term unrground sistently and unsubtly, but also uncertaly and even quarrelsomely. Like the hipster, the midcentury homosexual may also be thought of as posssg a kd of secret knowledge, if only about his own sexualy; and, as we'll see, he too was equently acced of actg, if not actually beg, "superr.

"23 Yet the followg discsn of Darkns and other reprentatns of bohemia, I want to turn om this faiar ncern wh the obscure or only partially visible aspect of the gay unrground to nsir the difference to culture that visible homosexualy mak. Darkns do not explicly clu gay life s pac unrstandg of the unrground, but like most other pictns of the bohemian world of the postwar perd, treats gay people as an lible feature of that world, and, so dog, suggts the shapg force of the gay llectivy on nomally heterosexual dividuals and a nomally heteronormative cultural settg. While many queer crics followg Sedgwick have strsed the universalizg aspect of queerns and disunted the importance of morized subcultural forms, Darkns's rendn of a bohemian unrground that is part-gay enabl to see how morizatn and universalism work dialectilly.