George ChaunceyGay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940

I read this book for a History of LGBTQ in America, and it was a very good book. The book is full of facts. Not theories. Not arguments. Not philosophies.Historical Facts.In short, it is a historical look at the first few decades of the 1900s in NYC, and how open the gay lifestyle became--and how popular it became to schmooze with.It also chronicles how much difficulty people had with the concept of people being gay or wearing the wrong clothes. There were actually laws against people wearing too many articles of clothes that were gender-inappropriate. Naturally, if you paid off the local cops your gay bar might get a faux raid, and a small fine for the owners.Or, for the wildly popular gay gala events, you could purchase a license from the police department to hold a "costume" ball--which meant now men could dress as women and women could dress as men. But this could lead to issues because the flatfoots would still try and enforce the "no inappropriate gay activities" by prohibiting people of the same gender form dancing together--even when they were not the same gender. One incident involved a man dressed as a woman dancing with an actual woman also dressed as a woman. A police officer at the gala informed them that the law still prohibited couples of the same sex from dancing together. They informed the officer that they were a man and a woman. The officer informed them that because the event was sanctioned by the police license, and the man (dressed as a woman) had purchased his ticket to attend, and came as woman, he was a woman for that evening, and thus could only dance with people dressed as men--even if they were real men, which was fine.Some of this stuff you just can't make up...Interestingly, gay bars got raided a lot, while the gay bath houses got raided once. The civic leagues were more focused on the gay bars because there was open "gayness" going on, and even though actual sodomy (a felony) was going on in the bathhouses, they were not as concerned with that because the bathhouses were discreet and you had to go on knowing what it was before you could see what was going on. In a gay bar, however, the homosexuality was open for anyone walking past to see--men wearing makeup and otherwise acting as sissies.There is a myth that gay culture is new in America. It is not. America has never been comfortable with the fact there are gay and transgender people, and tries to force them--via draconian laws--to go back and hide in the closet again.This book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the problem that America has with just accepting that gays exist...

I was intrigued by this essay since recently some of my preconceptions are starting to fall down and I wanted a book that helped me to rebuild my basis. If I think to a hypothetic "modern" past (more or less pre II World War) I had the idea the gay culture was more or less "underground", or better, completely hidden. My idea was that, if you were gay (and yes, I know at the time the word gay had a different meaning, but bear with me), you were also probably fated to be unhappily married, or completely alone; some exception were allowed to the very wealthy men that sheltered themselves in some isolated paradise, far from the society eyes and judgement. Then I started to read about John Gray (March 2, 1866 - June 14, 1934), the man who apparently inspired Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, and who, more or less, lived happily together with his lover Marc-André Raffalovich (September 11, 1864 - February 14, 1934): when John Gray, a catholic priest, went to Edinburgh Marc-André Raffalovich settled nearby; he then helped finance St Peter's Church in Morningside where Gray would serve as priest for the rest of his life. And is it a coincidence that John died barely 4 months after Marc-André?Or about Edward Carpenter (August 29, 1844 - June 28, 1929), the man who most used the term "intermediate sex", referring to those men who were not exactly men, not exactly women, men who were attracted by other men, but usually stronger and masculine men. Edward Carpenter was a strong advocate of sexual freedom, living in a gay community near Sheffield, and had a profound influence on both D. H. Lawrence and E. M. Forster, so much that they said Forster took inspiration from Carpenter for Maurice and D.H. Lawrence for Lady Chatterley's Lover: Edward Carpenter had a long-lasting relationship with George Merrill (1866-1928), a working class man also from Sheffield. Again, when Merrill suddenly died in January 1928, Carpenter was devastated and 13 months after, he himself died, on Friday 28 June 1929.And what about F.O. Matthiessen (February 19, 1902 - April 1, 1950), the noted Harward literary historian and critic, who wrote to his lover, the painter Russell Cheney (1881-1945), "we are complex - both of us - in that we are neither wholly man, woman, or child". In another letter he noted, "just as there are energetic active women and sensitive delicate men, so also there are... men, like us, who appear to be masculine but have a female sex element". Both Yale graduate and members of the Skull & Bones, Matthiessen was 20 years younger than Cheney, but they died at only 5 years of distance.And then there is the story of Glenway Wescott (April 11, 1901 - February 22, 1987) and his lover Monroe Wheeler (February 13, 1899 - August 14, 1988); despite apparently having an open relationship, and an on-off ménages a trois with fashion photographer and male nude artist George Platt Lynes (April 15, 1907 - December 6, 1955), they lived together until old age, hosting one of the most important intellectual saloon in their Greenwich Village apartment. Again, when Wescott dies in 1987, Monroe followed soon after 1 year and half later (on a sad note, it seems that to Monroe Wheeler was prohibited to live in the country house he had always shared with Glenway; truth be told, the house was not of Glenway, but of his brother who had married a wealthy heiress who apparently maintained for all her life both her husband than Glenway and Monroe).But other than tidbits about these men, you will read also about the Harlem's drag balls with the quintessentia of Harlem Renaissance poets like Langston Hughes and Richard Bruce Nugent, but also with, among the attendants, Broadway gay celebrities like Beatrice Lillie, Clifton Webb, Jay Brennan and Tallulah Bankhead (it's a coincidence that most of these names are almost forgotten? I loved black and white movies by Clifton Webb, but those other names were completely new to me). It was the chance for me to google about Beatrice Lillie and Tallulah Bankhead, and rediscover these fascinating women.On a closing note, even if today there seems to be more "freedom", popular culture still likes to erase the memory, like in the case of Charles Henri Ford (February 10, 1913 - September 27, 2002) whose lover Indra Tamang is still today identified as "the butler"; upon her death, Charles Henri Ford's sister, actress Ruth Ford (July 7, 1911 - August 12, 2009), according to the newspapers left 2 multimillionaire apartments in New York City plus an art collection (n.d.r. Charles Henri Ford was the partner of painter Pavel Tchelitchew, until his death in 1957) to her "butler"... who is no one else than Indra Tamang that already in the '70 and '80 was well known as to be Charles Henri Ford devoted partner. It's so hard to imagine that she was not leaving an unthinkable generous legacy to a simple partner, but was probably honouring the memory of her late brother?Gay New York is maybe a little more academic than my review is letting you believe, and that is a worth for the essay I suppose. But to me, romantic reader, it allowed to have a more solid basis to read about the above men and women, and their sometime hidden lives. It's a pity they are hidden, since apparently, these men and women were not afraid, at their time, to openly live their love.

I think this book is what being a historian is all about. Chauncey's research, writing, and analysis is amazing. He has opened our eyes to an entire subculture of American society that had been ignored or largely forgotten. This is the kind of real-world history that's extremely important but would never be taught in school.Chauncey uses rarely explored archives to bring to life a thriving yet changing male gay subculture in NY during the early part of the 20th century. He discusses some of the most popular gay spots around the city, yet the perils people faced in visiting these locations. He goes into the ways in which gays would have to pay close attention to where they could and could not go with their friends, and the consequences of getting caught. It's eye-opening to say the least. Who knew that Harlem was such a popular spot for gay expression? Who knew that Prohibition actually boosted gay life, while repeal helped to stifle that part of society? Or that there was a "pansy craze" in the 1920s? Or that some male soldiers were OK with seeking sexual gratification from effeminate males if women weren't available?It's all fascinating, probably the most interesting history book I've ever read in that I had absolutely NO idea about any of it. And while Chauncey does not make his book a sermon against homophobia, the simple facts he uses show that our society treated gays like dangerous pariahs in most cases. Sadly, that homophobia would intensify before it started to subside, and I can't wait for Chauncey's next book, which will pick up where Gay New York ended.

Item was as expected and arrived quickly and in good condition. Great read and a seminal work, but this book is starting to get a bit dated. Combining this with other, more recent queer history books is recommended. Thanks!

Fantastic read. So well researched it’s incredible.

I loved this book from the first page to the last :) It is incredibly well researched and even better reflected upon. It's so dense with information, but still such a delight to read!

A must!

This book uncovers the secret life of gay men in New York before Stone Wall.