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LGBT History Midterm - Coggle Diagram
LGBT History Midterm
Early 1900s
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Men
"Flamboyantly effeminate 'fairies' ... established the dominant public images of male sexual abnormality" (Chauncey 34)
"They assimilated into the gay world men just beginning to identify themselves as fairies, teaching them subcultural styles of dress, speech, and behavior" (Chauncey 43)
"It was only the men who assumed the sexual and other cultural roles ascribed to women who identified themselves--and were identified by others--as fairies" (Chauncey 48)
"One had a gender identity rather than a sexual identity or even a 'sexuality'; one's sexual behavior was thought to be necessarily determined by one's gender identity" (Chauncey 48)
"Claiming that they were best characterized as a 'third sex' or an 'intermediate sex'" (Chauncey 49)
"Many men deliberately used such markers in order to signal their sexual character to other gay men and to straight men in public contexts" (Chauncey 56)
"The men who became fairies did so at the cost of forfeiting their privileged status as men" (Chauncey 59)
"Earlier culture permitted men to engage in sexual relations with other men ... without requiring them to regard themselves ... as gay" (Chauncey 66)
"So long as they maintained a masculine demeanor and played ... only the 'masculine' ... role in the sexual encounter ... neither they, the fairies, nor the working-class public considered them to be queer" (Chauncey 66)
"To be called a 'man' or a 'regular guy' was both the highest compliment in this world and the most common" (Chauncey 80)
"A man who allowed himself to be used sexually as a woman, then, risked forfeiting his masculine status, even if he were otherwise conventionally masculine" (Chauncey 81)
"Some men involved in marriages with fairies were so confident of their status as 'normal' men that they readiliy acknowledged their relationships to others" (Chauncey 87)
"I don't object to being known as homosexual. But I detest the obvious, blatant, made-up boys whose public appearance and behavior provoke onerous criticism" (Chauncey 103)
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We start seeing pushback against gender roles, but there were negative social consequences
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Masculinity was an important, sought-after trait
Women
"Subculture ... divided the world into 'pure women,' with whom men did not expect sexual contact until after marriage, and 'impure women' ... whom men felt free to pursue aggressively for sexual purposes" (Chauncey 83)
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1950s
As women gained individuality, media began focusing on children as victims, creating the "sexual psychopath"
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Beginnings of organizations like the Mattachine society, which mostly served gay men
Women
"The new affirmation of eroticism in male/female relationships implicitly devalued all-female networks. Lesbians lost the protection that came from a distinct culture of women ... . Moreover, ... Freudian theory ... cast suspicion upon female couples. Paired intimacies between women became morbidified, a sign of sexual pathology" (D'Emilio 96)
"Victorian notions of separate spheres for men and women and of female passionlessness exerted less influence ... . Working-class women more frequently engaged in paid labor" (D'Emilio 96)
"The butch-femme dichotomy. Many gay women took on polarized roles. ... 'I never desired or approved of [role playing] ... but we had to live with it'" (D'Emilio 99)
"Women objected strongly to the advice that they conform to conventional standards of female apparel" (D'Emilio 114)
Men
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"Writers also tackled what they saw as the most controversial features of the gay world--male and female transvestism, stereotypical behavior, role-playing in relationships, marriages of convenience, and bar life" (D'Emilio 113)
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WWII
As women gained rights, people started freaking out about gender roles being bent
Crackdown on (mostly male) sexuality as a result of medicine, media, law, and fear of men losing masculinity
Gay people enjoyed a brief period of new freedoms, both overseas and on the home front, until they cracked down on lesbians
In all-male settings, men felt comfortable acting effeminate as a sign of their masculinity
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As a result, more people became aware of sexuality and started questioning
"A relentless push toward the liberation of human sexuality from the constraining morality of a Victorian past" (D'Emilio 34)
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1800s
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Men
"The century's custom of bed sharing did provide an important site ... of erotic opportunity" (Katz 6)
"The smutty and filthy were linked then with manhood, the pure and asexual with womanhood" (Katz 8)
"'Mate' was a common nineteenth-century name for same-sex intimates, suggesting an intimacy less than marriage and more than ordinary friendship" (Katz 18)
"In these teenage letters and diaries, however, boys appear distant and warded off" (Smith-Rosenberg 20)
"Men appear as an other or out group, segregated into different schools, supported by their own male network of friends and kin" (Smith-Rosenberg 20)
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Women
"Within their separate spheres, men and women sometimes formed opposed, warring armies" (Katz 24)
"A specifically female world did indeed develop, a world built around ... homosocial networks" (Smith-Rosenberg 9)
"Young women permitted themselves to express a great deal of hostility toward peer-group men" (Smith-Rosenberg 20)
"In the twentieth century a number of cultural taboos evolved to cut short the homosocial ties of girlhood and to impel the emerging women ... toward heterosexual relationships. In contrast, nineteenth-century American society did not taboo close female relationships but rather recognized them as a socially viable form of human contact" (Smith-Rosenberg 27)
"If men and women grew up as they did in relatively homogenous and segregated sexual groups, then marriage represented a major problem in adjustment" (Smith-Rosenberg 28)
"Although the doctrine of separate male and female spheres helped to rationalize the confinement of women to the role of wife and mother, it also affirmed women's moral superiority and implicitly endorsed close relationships between them" (D'Emilio 94)
Very separate spheres of men vs. women allowed (or perhaps brought about) intimate same-sex friendships
Women basically had sex with women, but little evidence of men having sex with men
Women were seen as pure creatures, different from men (pretty misogynstic)
Thesis ideas
1800s SEEMS different from early 1900s (homosexuality/perversion didn't exist vs. fairies being persecuted, strict gender roles vs. pushback on gender roles), but ACTUALLY they were similar (people being defined by gender instead of intimacy, women seen as weaker than men)
1800s SEEMS different from WWII era (homosexuality didn't exist vs. crackdowns on deviants, sex was taboo vs. liberation of sexuality, no women's rights vs. some women's rights), but ACTUALLY they were similar (separate spheres of men vs. women, gender norms allowing same-sex intimacy in some cases)
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Early 1900s SEEMS different from 1950s (standing out vs. trying to fit in, defined by gender vs. defined by sexuality), but ACTUALLY they were similar (finding community in bars and media, negative consequences for breaking gender roles)