Gay New York

George Chauncey

Was gay life in early twentieth century New York really isolated and hidden, or a visible world with its own places, language and traditions?

At a glance

You will see that an open, busy gay world existed in New York long before the gay movement began
You will question the belief that hostility and hiding were always how things were
You will learn how rules and enforcement, not only attitudes, can push a group out of public life

INTRODUCTION
Part I: Male (Homo)sexual Practices and Identities in the Early Twentieth Century
Chapter 1. The Bowery as Haven and Spectacle
Chapter 2. The Fairy as an Intermediate Sex
Chapter 3. Trade, Wolves, and the Boundaries of Normal Manhood
Chapter 4. The Forging of Queer Identities and the Emergence of Heterosexuality in Middle-Class Culture
Part II: The Making of the Gay Male World
Chapter 5. Urban Culture and the Policing of the “City of Bachelors”
Chapter 6. Lots of Friends at the YMCA: Rooming Houses, Cafeterias, and Other Gay Social Centers
Chapter 7. “Privacy Could Only Be Had in Public”: Forging a Gay World in the Streets
Chapter 8. The Social World of the Baths
Chapter 9. Building Gay Neighborhood Enclaves: The Village and Harlem
Part III: The Politics of Gay Culture
Chapter 10. The Double Life, Camp Culture, and the Making of a Collective Identity
Chapter 11. “Pansies on Parade”: Prohibition and the Spectacle of the Pansy
Chapter 12. The Exclusion of Homosexuality from the Public Sphere in the 1930s
Epilogue: The Strange Career of the Closet
NOTE ON SOURCES