Gay New York by Gee Chncey | Open Library

Contents:

• GAY NEW YORK: GENR, URBAN CULTURE, AND THE MAKG OF THE GAY MALE WORLD 1890-1940
• GAY NEW YORK
• GAY NEW YORK : GENR, URBAN CULTURE, AND THE MAKGS OF THE GAY MALE WORLD, 1890-1940
• BOOKS FOR LGBTQ PRI MONTH: GAY LIFE AND HISTORY NEW YORK CY
• GAY NYC BOOKS
• GAY NEW YORK
• GAY NEW YORK SUMMARY

GAY NEW YORK: GENR, URBAN CULTURE, AND THE MAKG OF THE GAY MALE WORLD 1890-1940

By the 1890s, genr non-nformg people had ma the Bowery a center of queer life, and “by the 1920s they had created three distct gay neighborhood enclav Greenwich Village, Harlem, and Tim Square, each wh a different class and ethnic character, gay cultural style, and public reputatn” (3). Lgbtq-history655 reviews964 followersApril 20, 2020Wrten rponse to the notn that the 'closet' always has existed for Amerin gay men and lbians, as well as the ncept that genr and sexualy always have been distct domas of personhood, Chncey's Gay New York argu that gay people were not isolated, visible, and self-hatg durg the first s of the twentieth century. Only after WWII, when what Chncey lls "homo-heterosexual barism" beme hegemonic across the natn, were they forced to hidg si of a closet newly nstcted by the state, until the advent of the morn gay rights movement 1969 ma possible liberatn and re-entrance to the public sphere.

Chncey brilliantly tails how a diverse range of genr/sexual inti -existed wh each other wh New York durg the perd, all the while trackg how "homosexual" and "heterosexual"—the two sexual inti that would overpower and erase the rt after the war—rose to promence whe middle-class society. Chncey has jt fished discsg the many ruals by which the sailors, dockworkers, hobo/seasonal laborers and homosocial immigrants of early 1900s New York affirmed manls and male stat (you're physilly strong; you do hard and dangero work; you domate sexual partners, be they female prostut or the pated rent boys loungg every saloon; you drk a lot, and buy drks for your pals); he's about to lnch his argument that our ironclad hetero-homosexual barism evolved as the only way for the skbound, domtited middle class men to fe manls. ”Homosexuals occupied a visible niche the street life of immigrant neighborhoods, the wateront saloon i of the “bachelor subculture, ” the Storyvill of the Sportg Life—While a few words ed by gay men were ma-up terms that had no meang standard English or slang, most gave standard terms a send, gay meang.

GAY NEW YORK

Gay self referred to female prostut before referred to gay men; tra and trick referred to prostut’ ctomers before they referred to gay men’s partners; and cisg referred to a streetwalker’s search for partners before referred to a gay man’s—and were policed, surveilled and supprsed alongsi the other forms of rough mascule amement—prostutn, drkg, gamblg, burlque shows—gredient to that world. [“Condns about the Brooklyn Navy Yard, June 6, 1917, ” box 25, Commtee of Fourteen papers, New York Public Library:]The story of one black gay man who lived the basement of a roomg hoe on Wt Fiftieth Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenu, 1919 suggts the latu—and limatns—of roomg hoe life.

GAY NEW YORK : GENR, URBAN CULTURE, AND THE MAKGS OF THE GAY MALE WORLD, 1890-1940

” The mastreamg of workg-class sociabily meant the heightened visibily of gay men, long faiar figur on the streets and vville stag of rougher neighborhoods (and on the park bench and rooftops where workg-class upl, straight and gay, sought a ltle darkened privacy away om their crowd fay tenements); and wh the wang of the Harlem craze, the “Negro vogue” for elaborate plantatn- and jungle-themed floor shows, nightspots began phg a new transgrsive novelty, the “pansy show. Prohibn spread rather than eradited saloon culture, mgled rather than separated gay and straight, bourgeois and prole; the post-repeal New York State Liquor Authory was more effective regulatg social life, and led the charge excludg homosexualy om the mastream entertament world which had bee so visible durg the 1920s. My outle of this first volume is muddled and skimpy, and n’t possibly suggt the vast human edy Chncey has unearthed—Harlem’s popular and highly veloped drag circu, or the bold pickup subculture worshipfully voted to policemen, or the eply discreet gay middle class worlds; the subway washrooms, the social world of the baths, the hundreds of heartbreakg arrts, jailgs, beatgs and bashgs, the hilar rrponnce of Parker Tyler—Jul, beg dnk, mped wh them [a bunch of “straight” men:] too, and they tried to date him—even after feelg his mcle: he uld have laid them all low: really ’s as wi as this paper.

BOOKS FOR LGBTQ PRI MONTH: GAY LIFE AND HISTORY NEW YORK CY

Armed wh a mounta of rearch drawn om urt dockets, arrt rerds, vice society rerds, journals, scrapbooks, newspapers, tabloids, and terviews, he unearths a lorful history smoothed-over by post-WWII cultural retaliatn, makg clear that New York Cy was home to a plex and sophistited gay world the first half of the 20th past is a funhoe mirror, filled wh thgs at once faiar and strange.

From drag balls to hoe parti, saloons to bathho, Chncey’s history explor the ups and downs of gay life across class boundari, cludg the reful double-life kept by many middle-class gay ’s too much ntent to easily summarize, but the drag balls were a particularly tertg highlight.

So stead of 1940-1960 beg jt an extensn of an eterny of secrecy, was actually a perd of backlash and revigorated is why, when people tell me not to worry, history is on my si, gay marriage will eventually be legal bee we jt keep gettg more and more progrsive all the time, I snap at them. I regret nothgso this review is jt gog to be random quot, thgs i found tertg, and some mentaryntent/trigger warngs; queerphobia, homophobia, lbophobia, anti-gay vlence, misogyny, anti-sex work, uncensored e of anti-gay slurs/rogatory terms, uncensored e of racist slurs, racism, scriptns of queerphobia om police/doctors/legal profsnals, ableist language, g out/the closet— “g out” like a lot of mpy gay termology was a play on the language of women’s culture; referrg to butante balls where girls are troduced, or e out, to society.

GAY NYC BOOKS

“the cril dience to which one me out had shifted om the gay world to the straight world”— “gay people the prewar years did not speak of g out of what we ll the ‘gay closet’ but rather of g out to what they lled ‘homosexual society’ or the ‘gay world, ’ a world neher so small, nor so isolated, nor, often, so hidn as ‘closet’ impli. We should pay attentn to the different terms people ed to scribe themselv and their social worlds; gay men scribed livg a double life, puttg on/takg off a mask, wearg their hair up/lettg their hair down; movg between different personas and liv pendg on the type of people they were around. Gay origally referred to thgs pleasurable, then by the seventeenth century me to refer more specifilly to a life of “immoral pleasure and dissipatn, ” by the neteenth century; sex work, gay also referred to somethg brightly lored or someone showily drsed; th s adoptn by fairi and the associatn wh mp.

To classify their behavr and inti g the simple polari of ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’ would be to misunrstand the plexy of their sexual system, the reali of their lived experienc”queer— the queer folk of the gay subculture fed themselv by their difference om the domant culture.

GAY NEW YORK

” one man who moved om germany to new york 1927 remembered fairy and queer beg the most mon terms ed for and by gay new yokers— queer men’s efforts to fe an inty and cultural stance that distguish them om fairi and “normal” men alike marked the growg differentiatn and isolatn of sexualy om genr middle-class amerin culture. ?— self-intified queer men were so good at velopg s that only fellow queer men wh the subculture were telligible to that doctors at the turn of the century were baffled by their abily to intify each other and talked about like was a sixth 1900s “gaydar” rise— the late 1800s and early 1900s, terms for gay men om anti-gay folks cludg law enforcement and doctors were “generate, ” “pervert, ” “sexual pervert, ” and “vert.

GAY NEW YORK SUMMARY

— effemate gay men were “tolerated bee they were regard as women, ” which meant they were “subjected to the same ntempt, vlence, and sexual exploatn regularly directed agast women” so “participatg the llective sexualizatn and objectifitn of women was one of the ruals by which they tablished themselv as men” women, amiright? — gotta acknowledge how the homophobia scribed throughout the book is so pletely tied up misogyny/hatred for female sex work— misogynistic queerphob dismissed any woman who wanted to be treated equal to men as hairy, unattractive, man-like lbian weak— so what i’ve gathered is that heterosexualy basilly beme a ncept and inty bee straight men were so threatened by the existence of gay men and also women standg up for ’ve always been the weakt lk— “moral reformers” and police were so termed to ntrol female sex workers that they threatened hotels to banng women, only to be like “wa what” when those hotels started to bee hotspots for gay men lmaorandom— the stonewall rebelln was “wily and accurately regard as the begng of the lgbt movement, ” as opposed to the “talyst for a new wave of radil ancy gay polics. — “gay men turned many rtrants to plac where they uld gather wh gay iends, gossip, ridicule the domant culture that ridiculed them, and nstct an alternative culture” so makg fun of heteros has always been gay culture— “greenwich village’s reputatn as a gay mec eclipsed harlem's only bee was a whe, middle-class world”— the thor says straight actors mimickg and ridiculg gay men by puttg on shows where they do drag or stereotypil thgs is the “gay equivalent to blackface” i— tailg queerbag and lack of (good) reprentatn the early we’re still alg wh that sh over a century ol ol olgenre-nonfictn physilly-own queer-as--fuck-you Author 1 book143 followersFebary 12, 2015This is one of the more remarkable history books I've read a while.