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

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 is a landmark work in LGBTQ history by George Chauncey. First published in 1994 by Basic Books, it was republished in 2019 in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Gay New York received the Lambda Literary Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Merle Curti Prize for the best book in social history, and the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for the best first book in history. In Gay New York, Chauncey reconstructs the forgotten world of gay life in New York City in the 1890s-1930s, long before the Stonewall riots of 1969, which are typically seen as the “real” start of gay history. Gay men shaped a subculture in New York in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, even in the face of an often hostile society, and doing so forced many of them to develop double social identities (or lead “double lives”).

This guide is based on the 2019 Basic Books edition, which added a new preface. However, it is also applicable to the original 1994 edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide discuss anti-gay bias. In addition, the source text contains sexually explicit descriptions and outdated and offensive language, which is replicated in this guide only in direct quotes.

Summary

A flourishing gay male subculture emerged in New York City around the start of the 20th century around working-class neighborhoods and establishments like the Bowery. Among the working class, gay sexuality was most visible in the forms of “fairies,” flamboyantly effeminate gay men, and “trade,” heterosexual men interested in sex with other men. However, such men were still considered “normal.” Thus, Chauncey argues that people generally associated gay sexuality with gender presentation and not choice in sexual partners. However, this view began to change among the middle class as gay men who called themselves “queers” began to define themselves by their choice in sexual partner, becoming “homosexuals.” Chauncey argues that these distinctions, made by people themselves, not the writings of doctors and scientists, shaped modern sexual categories and identities.

Despite the efforts of the police, authorities, and anti-vice societies like the Society for the Oppression of Vice, the visibility of gay subculture continued to grow as more single men migrated into the city from elsewhere in the US and from foreign countries. World War I especially boosted the number of gay men as soldiers from rural areas and small towns stationed in New York City embraced the gay subculture. Despite harassment, gay men met in public places such as parks and drag bars and at visible establishments for gay men like bathhouses, saloons, and bars. Gay culture became especially visible in certain neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, Harlem, and Times Square because of factors specific to these neighborhoods, and Prohibition “soon made it possible for the gay world to expand and become considerably more visible than it had been during the war” (148). Prohibition contributed to a climate of rebellion against traditional values and led to the founding of speakeasies and nightclubs (protected by organized crime) that attracted middle-class patrons interested in the seedier side of New York life. These trends culminated in the “pansy craze” of the early 1930s, where nightclubs hosted openly gay and drag performers.

All this came to an end along with the Great Depression in 1933. As the US economy collapsed and Prohibition ended, speakeasies and nightclubs shut down or lost much of their protection against police. The fact that the Great Depression left men unemployed and destitute stoked social anxieties about masculinity. Also, the new laws regulating alcohol sale and establishments serving alcohol were geared toward forcing such places to outright ban male patrons who were openly gay or even simply effeminate. American authorities “sought to prevent the public display of homosexual styles and identities from disrupting […] normative gender and sexual arrangements” (358). As a result, New York City’s gay subculture was largely driven underground, though this paved the way for the post-Stonewall gay rights movement.