Gay New York Essay

In the book named Gay New York, the author yet a historian, George Chauncey, brought to the world audience a vibrant yet astoundingly transparent cultural history of gay men in the New York City between 1890 and 1940. In the book, Chauncey unearths a hidden gay male world that was not thought to exist before the World War II in New York City because of the myths of isolation, invisibility, and self-hatred or internalization of gay men in the past history. In the 1920s, gay men had their secured yet semi-public space such as local YMCAs, boarding houses, and cafeterias within the New York City’s urban world to socialize, search for jobs, and network with other gay men. Until the 1930s, authorities – for example: policemen and politicians – would often neglect the existence of gay men unless the gay spectacle threatened the dominant and heterosexual mainstream culture. Nonetheless, gay men were frequently forced out of the public sphere and marginalized at the edge of the dominant culture. Gay men thus had to create their belonged space within the urban world dominated by heterosexual mainstream. In Gay New York, Chauncey argues that “the gay male world of the prewar years was remarkably visible and integrated into the straight world” in the 1910s. (Chauncey 12) This clearly proves that gay men had a double life, in …show more content…
At that time, surprisingly the heterosexual men could have sex with gay men identified as “fairies” and “queers” with effeminate characteristics and still not be considered homosexual. Due to this social constructionism – the only acknowledged concept of masculinity and femininity, masculine men especially working-class males like sailors and laborers could have sex with “fairies” and “queers” yet not be thought as gay provided that they were the ones penetrating but