Gay New York
Salma Ali
Post 4 of 5
George Chauncey writes a book about the compelling world of urban gay life before World War II. The gay world that blossomed before the war has been forgotten by historians, however this book restores this history through the opposition of the common myths of the movement. Chauncey calls them the myths of isolation, invisibility and internalization. The myth of isolation disputes the idea that gay men had to live solitary lives and hide themselves from creating a gay subculture. The myth of invisibility discusses that even if men were gay, they remained excluded and invisible. However, this was proven to be untrue because they were highly visible figures and boldly expressed their homosexuality with the way they dressed. The myth of internalization stated that gay men allowed the stereotypes to be said and allowed it to take over their lives rather than resist it, however homosexuals have resisted these ideas and rather celebrated their uniqueness from the norm. These men were very strong in the sense that they built their community to reject the ideas that society has placed upon them and instead counteracted them by preaching that they only differ from the norm in their preferences consisting of their love life, but are in fact still normal human beings.
Chauncey also discusses the gay enclaves that were formed and the neighborhoods in which consisted of gay subculture. Greenwich Village in the 1920s was known to be a popular gay enclave and was the first to really shape gay centers. Harlem was also a very exciting center for gay life in the early 1900s.
Chauncey elaborates more on the fact that lesbians and gays were forming individual enclaves and were separate in the social world, but got together during meetings and gatherings at speakeasies. They both developed enclaves around the same time and some of the drag balls were predominantly lesbian performers and attendees. He also discusses men who had long hair and dressed in feminine-like attire or even those who were interested in art, they were often looked at as unmanly and queer by outsiders and the name used to describe gay men was “artistic”.
Reading all this information about gay enclaves is a new perspective that we have not yet spoken of in class yet and it is definitely one that I had forgotten about when discussing People of New York City. It is incredible that disregarding culture and immigrants, these gay enclaves were also taking form and shape in the 1900s in New York City. In addition, these enclaves were formed even through the fear of hatred and crime that people would try to destroy it because of the sexuality choices of these human beings. Laws were not passed to accept homosexuals to get married and so being gay in that time period was extremely difficult in the lives of these men and women. It is extremely interesting to learn that enclaves not just of individual nationalities were being formed, but also of different sexualities where people stayed to feel welcome around people just like themselves. This also interests me to know the different nationalities of the gay men and women who lived in these enclaves and if they got along with one another because they shared similar ideas in their sexualities.
Question: Did the different nationalities within each gay enclave affect the relationship amongst the people living around each other?
