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

Content Warning: This section of the study guide contains descriptions of anti-gay bias. In addition, the source text contains sexually explicit descriptions and outdated and offensive language, which is replicated only in direct quotes

This term described gay men who were openly and strongly effeminate. As the book points out, “fairies” were sometimes sex workers who catered to straight men engaging in “trade” sex between effeminate men and men who still identified as masculine and “normal.”

A popular medical term in the late 1800s and early 1900s, “invert” described individuals we would today call gay. As the book describes, the term referred to the belief among doctors and psychologists that an individual’s gender was “inverted” in the sense that a biological man had effeminate traits and vice versa.

An early 20th-century political and social reform movement in the US, the Progressive Era sought to address the social, economic, and environmental problems emerging out of industrialization, such as labor rights, public education, corporate regulations, environmental laws, and the establishment of nature parks, among other reforms. The time period the book focuses on coincides with this era.