Full Description
Gay New York brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet, where gay men were isolated, invisible, and self-hating. Based on years of research and access to a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, this book is a fascinating portrait of a gay world that is not supposed to have existed.
Contents
* Introduction Male (Homo)Sexual Practices and Indentities in the Early Twentieth Century * The Bowery as Haven and Spectacle * The Fairy as an Intermediate Sex * Trade, Wolves, and the Boundaries of Normal Manhood * The Forging of Queer Identities and the Emergence of Heterosexuality in Middle-Class Culture The Making of the Gay Male World * Urban Culture and the Policing of the City of Bachelors * Lots of Friends at the YMCA: Rooming Houses, Cafeterias, and Other Gay Social Centers * Privacy Could Only Be Had in Public: Forging a Gay World in the Streets * The Social World of the Baths * Building Gay Neighborhood Enclaves: The Village and Harlem The Politics of Gay Culture * The Double Life, Camp Culture, and the Making of a Collective Identity * Pansies on Parade: Prohibition and the Spectacle of the Pansy * The Exclusion of Homosexuality from the Public Sphere in the 1930s * Epilogue: The Strange Career of the Closet
