Spring 2016  Vol. 30:1  http://www.clgbthistory.org

months that followed; Cookie will be IN THIS ISSUE matching up new pairs in the months leading up to the AHA next January so stay tuned for Co-Chairs’ Column 1 details on that front. Call for Papers 2 Prize Winners 3 The AHA in Atlanta was a great Members’ Announcements 4 Book Reviews 5 success, if we do say so ourselves. We sponsored or co-sponsored ten sessions, Reviews in this issue many within our special “Queer Migrations” Robert Beachy, Gay Berlin 5 track, which echoed the overall theme of the Rachel Hope Cleves, Charity & Sylvia 7 conference. Amanda also chaired an Jim Downs, Stand by Me 9 informative session on publishing in queer Michael Helquist, Marie Equi 11 history (featuring book and journal editors) Mary Louise Roberts, What Soldiers Do 13 and Nick participated in one exploring the Clare Sears, Arresting Dress 14 outcome of the report by the Task Force on Victor Uribe-Uran, Fatal Love 17 the status of LGBTQ historians. That report

outlined a number of areas of concern among Committee on LGBT History Co-chairs: Amanda Littauer and Nick Syrett queer historians, the most significant of Book Review Editor: Dan Royles which was that jobs for those focusing on Newsletter Editor: April Haynes queer history are few and far between. Secondarily respondents reported on a variety of others issues: discrimination on CO-CHAIRS’ COLUMN campus and among colleagues; lack of Spring 2016 support for queer history classes and/or expectations that simply being queer It is now halfway into our term as co- qualified one to teach such a course; as well chairs, and the time has already flown by. As as difficulties with negative/prejudiced ever, CLGBTH board members continue to student evaluations and their effect upon help us in all that we do on behalf of the tenure cases. The session was profiled in Committee, and members have recently Perspectives, the AHA magazine. spearheaded a number of efforts themselves. Chief among these was the new mentoring The first and most significant outcome program begun by Cookie Woolner and now of that report is that the AHA has now former board member Alex Warner. Many appointed a Committee on LGBTQ History pairs of mentors and mentees met up at the and Historians. This committee, like the most recent AHA or got in touch in the Committee on Minority Historians or the

CLBTH Spring 2016 1 Committee on Women Historians, will FAIR Act, which mandates the teaching of the advocate for LGBTQ-identified historians LGBT past in history and social science within the AHA and the profession. It can also curricula. Don once again testified alongside work alongside the CLGBTH to cosponsor other LGBT advocates before the panels and events at the AHA. The new Instructional Quality Commission in committee’s membership will be appointed Sacramento, which itself will advise the state by the AHA itself and is currently composed board of education this month. While the of Susan Ferentinos (public history final decision will not be announced until consultant) as chair, Wallace Best July, the IQC approved nearly all of the (Princeton), Leah DeVun (Rutgers), James recommendations made by the coalition Green (Brown), and Leisa D. Meyer (William advocating for LGBT history/social science and Mary). We are excited that the AHA has inclusion. listened to the recommendations of the Task Force (itself established partially at the We are now hard at work finalizing urging of the CLGBTH) and we look forward the program for the AHA in Denver next year to working with the new committee to better (which will include a tour of Colorado’s LGBT the climate for queer historians in our Archives at the Denver Public Library), profession and queer history on our planning for mentoring at that meeting, and campuses. maintaining our newly revamped website. Board members have also been developing Also at the AHA, we were delighted to an online database of queer history archives; award a number of prizes, details of which working to solidify relationships with other can be found in the next column and on our scholarly organizations in the hope that we website. In brief, Emily Skidmore was might co-sponsor sessions at their annual awarded the Audre Lorde Prize for best meetings; and there is now talk about a article, with honorable mentions going to possible CLGBTH conference unto itself. Stay Alison Lefkovitz and Christopher Phelps. The tuned for details in the months to come. In Gregory Sprague Prize for best the meantime, enjoy your summer! article/chapter/paper by a graduate student was awarded to Abram Lewis, with Nick & Amanda honorable mention going to Alessio Ponzio. Finally, the Allan Bérubé Prize for best public history project was awarded to Jennifer Call for Papers Tyburczy, and honorable mention to Joshua Burford. Thanks to prize committee members James Green, Stephen Vider, and Chelsea del Long Beach Indie Film, Media and Music Rio (Lorde and Sprague) and Amy Sueyoshi, Conference Mark Bowman, and Victor Salvo (Bérubé) for www.longbeachindie.com their hard work. We will announce calls for August 31-September 4, 2016 the 2017 John Boswell (book) and Joan (Deadline May 6, 2016) Nestle (undergraduate paper) prizes later this summer. The Long Beach Indie International Film, Media, and Music Festival is looking for In other news, former CLGBTH Co- scholars, to bring their intellect and energy to Chair Don Romesburg continued work begun our 2016 Film, Media, and Music Conference. during his tenure as co-chair on California’s

CLBTH Spring 2016 2 We invite individual papers and full panels took Kerwineo’s supposed sexual and social representing any topic (e.g. theory, deviance for granted. The essay, which production, history, criticism, preservation, appeared in a special GLQ issue on the etc.) related to film, television, music, mass Midwest, makes a major contribution in communication, digital media, and/or the queer and trans history, not only in revealing entertainment industry broadly defined. stories and lives beyond big cities, but in encouraging scholars to reconsider how the We are also issuing a special call for papers geography of ideas shapes what Regina interrogating and/or celebrating the theme: Kunzel has called the “uneven” history of “Gender, Race and the Entertainment sexuality and gender in the twentieth century Industry.” U.S.

HONORABLE MENTION: Alison Lefkovitz, Prize winners “‘The Peculiar Anomaly’: Same-Sex Infidelity in Postwar Divorce Courts.” Law and History Review. Audre Lorde Prize (for best article in LGBTQ History in 2014 or 2015): HONORABLE MENTION: Christopher Phelps, “The Closet in the Party: The Young Socialist WINNER: Emily Skidmore, "Ralph Kerwineo's Alliance, the Socialist Workers Party, and Queer Body: Narrating the Scales of Social Homosexuality, 1962 – 1970” Labor: Studies Membership in the Early Twentieth Century." in Working-Class History of the Americas. GLQ: A Journal of and Gay Studies 20, no. 1-2 (2014): 141-166. Gregory Sprague Prize (for best article/ dissertation chapter/book chapter/paper Emily Skidmore’s highly original, well- written by a graduate student in 2014 or written, and nuanced article examines the life 2015): and media portrayal of Ralph Kerwineo, a Wisconsin man (named Cora Anderson at WINNER: Abram Lewis, “We Are Certain of birth) who was put on trial for disorderly Our Own Insanity”: Anti-psychiatry and the conduct when his “true sex” was discovered Gay Liberation Movement, 1968–1980.” in the 1910s. Skidmore sensitively examines Journal of the History of Sexuality, 25, No. 1 the intertwined stakes of Kerwineo’s queer (January 2016): 83-113. embodiment, his marriage, and his racial identification (although of African American This essay examines LGBT activism and Native American descent, he claimed surrounding the American Psychiatric alternately to be Spanish or Bolivian) Association’s declassification of exploring more broadly how conceptions of homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973. citizenship shaped perceptions and practices While this decision has been celebrated as a of masculinity and the possibilities of critical victory for LGBT rights, Lewis details everyday life. Most uniquely, Skidmore a significantly more complex narrative. The carefully compares discussion of Kerwineo in declassification movement, strongly rooted in both the local and national press—revealing homophile politics, found opposition among how local discourses stressing Kerwineo’s progressive gays and who productivity clashed with coverage in larger celebrated madness instead. Linking newspapers like the Washington Post, which deviance and insanity with non-normative

CLBTH Spring 2016 3 sexualities empowered a rejection of knowledge rather than silencing queer minority identity politics and a profession creativity, in its bold display of how queer encouraging assimilation into an oppressive art, despite tremendous opposition, has society. Reading gay liberationist, lesbian refused to remain in the closet. feminist, and French intellectual texts, the author reveals this parallel movement as a HONORABLE MENTION: Publicly Identified: significant moment of coalitional politics. Coming Out Activist in the Queen City LGBT activists built upon and joined with Levine Museum of the New South | 2014 to feminist, antiracist, anticapitalist, and 2015 disability rights activists to celebrate Curated by Joshua Burford disorder as a site of political possibility. Lewis supports this intervention in queer Publicly Identified chronicles the history of history with insightful analysis of the the LGBT community of Charlotte, NC from implications of the declassification campaign, the late 1940s to the 2010s. Joshua Burford arguing that the subsequent revision of the involved community organizations and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental initiated an oral history project to create an Disorders aided the psychiatric profession in interactive timeline with an accompanying reasserting their scientific authority and online presence. The exhibit boosted expanding diagnoses of gender and sexual museum attendance by 16% and initiated the deviance. The committee was impressed by King-Henry-Brockington Collection of queer the article’s contribution to queer history and material at University of North Carolina at the history of medicine as well as to feminist Charlotte as well as a regional historical and disability studies. preservation project called OutSouth. HONORABLE MENTION: Alessio Ponzio, “Uomini to Omosessuali. The Homosexualization of the Marchettari in the Announcements from our members Italian Popular Discourse (1952-65).”

Allan Bérubé Prize (for best work in public New in LGBT Public History history in 2014 or 2015): Susan Ferentinos, WINNER: Irreverent: A Celebration of Interpreting LGBT History Censorship at Museums and Historic Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Sites (Rowman & Littlefield, Art | February 19 to May 3, 2015 2015). Part of the American Curated by Jennifer Tyburczy Association for State and Local History's series on While the art world has increasingly Interpreting History, recognized the value of queer works, major Ferentinos's book offers museums continue to exclude queer artists. museum professionals and public historians In this powerful exhibit Jennifer Tyburczy a starting point for understanding LGBT positions sex – queer, dissident, and explicit – history in the . The book as central in her celebration of artists such as includes an overview of gender-crossing and Alma López, Zanele Muholi, David same-sex love and desire from European Wojnarowicz, Robert Mapplethorpe. The contact to the present; case studies of exhibit frames censorship as producing museums who are already working in this

CLBTH Spring 2016 4 field; and guidance for organizations just an essential identity. After the First World beginning to think about LGBT interpretive War, foreign visitors to Berlin’s queer issues. nightlife, such as Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden, helped spread the concept to Dr. Ferentinos is a member of CLGBTH and England and the United States. currently serves as the chair of the AHA's Committee on LGBTQ History and Historians. Gay Berlin proceeds through roughly We are pleased to announce that Interpreting chronological chapters that demonstrate a LGBT History has received the 2016 Book “feedback loop” between the lived experience Award from the National Council on Public of same sex-desiring men and the medical History, which recognizes outstanding and legal discourse produced about them by contributions to the field of public history. sexologists and other experts. Beachy begins with Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, who coined the term urning to describe his sexual makeup. BOOK REVIEWS The concept of urning presaged Book review editor: Dan Royles homosexualität in that it described an essential identity, but differed from the latter Robert Beachy, Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a term in that it described a “third sex” Modern Identity (New York: Knopf, 2014). comprising a “feminine” nature in a male body. In contrast, Karl Kertbeny coined Historians of sexuality know that the homosexualität as a rejection of Ulrich’s modern categories of “homosexual” and “psychological hermaphroditism.” Despite “heterosexual” have their roots in 19th- their disagreement, the two men century Germany. Karl-Maria Kertbeny, a sex corresponded frequently before their deaths reformer who published pamphlets calling and, before German unification in 1871, were for the repeal of a Prussian anti-sodomy law, part of the first public campaign waged coined the term homosexualität in 1868. against Prussia’s anti-sodomy statute. In the Three decades later, sexologist Magnus campaign, Ulrichs and Kertbeny relied on Hirschfield advocated for similar legal reform print media to spread their ideas to doctors, in the German Empire. In Gay Berlin: jurists, and the public. That literature would Birthplace of a Modern Identity, Robert later inspire Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Beachy considers the ways that queer social pioneering work on the scientific study of life in Berlin, which was home to both sexuality. Kertbeny and Hirschfield, shaped modern categories of sexual identity in the English- As Beachy makes clear, Germans speaking world. Drawing from an array of articulated the notion of homosexualität in a sources, including queer periodicals, diaries, variety of ways during the period between correspondence, and medical texts, Beachy unification and the end of the Weimar argues that the modern conception of sexual Republic. Through the Scientific- orientation as an inherent identity resulted Humanitarian Committee (SHC) in Berlin, from interactions between Berlin’s medical which focused on scientific research, Magnus scientists and sexual minorities. He locates Hirschfield helped to further refine and Germany as the center of a discursive shift popularize theories on homosexuality and from gendered notions of “inverts” and sexual orientation. Hirschfield’s Institute for “pansies” to the use of “homosexual,” and the Sexual Science would later pioneer more colloquial German schwul, to describe progressive education on a variety of sexual

CLBTH Spring 2016 5 topics in the Weimar period. A gay sex prostitution in Berlin increased, as men sold scandal at the highest levels of imperial sex to foreign visitors in exchange for dollars government, and ensuing high-profile libel and pounds sterling. Amid the political and suits, seemed to be a setback for rights social chaos of Weimar Berlin, queer culture activists, but made homosexualität a also thrived through the proliferation of household word in Germany. Outside of the films, publications, and music by and for gay courtroom, the nationalistic and masculine men. Male tourists from abroad who visited Männerbund, or male club, movement Berlin seeking sex with other men accepted presented a new paradigm of homosocial and the idea of an essential homosexual identity homoerotic behavior. However, Beachy that they found in Germany. For example, cautions that this openness should not Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden necessarily be read as acceptance of described themselves in halting, colloquial homosexuality. The rise of the Nazi Party in German as part of a “tribe” of schwulen, or the 1930s brought with it a sharp turn gay men, rather than using the English terms against homosexual rights and the “pansy” and “invert.” Men like Isherwood and destruction of Hirschfield’s institute. Auden then carried this newfound sense of sexual self home to England and elsewhere. Chapters two and seven provide the clearest illustration of Berlin as a crucible for Beachy begins Gay Berlin with an gay male identity. The lax enforcement of anecdote about Auden understanding himself Paragraph 175, the provision of the German as schwul, and ends with what he sees as a Criminal Code that outlawed sodomy, helped historical irony: revelers at German gay pride to create a visible gay community in Berlin. parades celebrating New York’s Stonewall The law criminalized homosexual acts, but Inn as the birthplace of modern gay identity. not homosexual persons. However, since In between, he takes the reader from the most homosexual acts took place either in dusty courtrooms where legislators private or in the shadows of Berlin’s public discussed laws regulating sex between men, spaces, enforcement of Paragraph 175 to the smoky cabarets and bars where those proved difficult. According to Beachy, Berlin’s men found one another. Altogether, he moves police chief realized that it would be easier to deftly from the stories of individual men such monitor gay social spaces for illegal activity as Hirschfield and Isherwood to the national than to prosecute the sex between men that and international print culture in which they took place in homes and at cruising sites. By disseminated modern ideas about allowing bars and nightclubs that catered to homosexuality, demonstrating that the gay men, police helped to foster a visible notion of gay identity as we know it today homosexual community, which in turn gave was forged in Berlin between German writers and medical professionals a place to national unification and the rise of Nazism. study homosexualität. This visibility gave Berlin its unique queer subculture. According Although he focuses primarily on to Beachy, every major European capitol and Berlin, Beachy makes an important most major American cities had subcultures transnational intervention in the history of of men who desired men, but only Berlin let sexuality by uncovering the German roots of them exist so openly. the gay identity that spread through the English-speaking world and, later, around the With the economic insecurity that globe. Like George Chauncey’s Gay New York, followed the First World War, male John Howard’s Men Like That, and John

CLBTH Spring 2016 6 D’Emilio’s Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, Sylvia were lovers as well as intimate friends. Beachy thus invites us to think about the For this evidence Cleves turns to a careful contingency of modern categories of sexual reading of Charity and Sylvia’s letters and identity. poems for expressions of sexual desire and intimacy. Cleves concludes that since the Jerry Watkins women regarded themselves as married and Georgia State University shared a bed, they were likely engaged in a sexual relationship. Rachel Hope Cleves, Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America (New Yet Cleves is not simply trying to York: Oxford, 2014). demonstrate the existence of same sex relationships in early America. She also seeks “‘On the 3rd day of July 1807,…Sylvia to understand the social and cultural Drake consented to be my help-meet and conditions that made their relationship came to be my companion,’” wrote Charity possible, and even acceptable, at the time. In Bryant in her 1844 memoir (101). So begins the book’s most compelling chapters, Cleves the central chapter in Rachel Hope Cleves’ argues that Sylvia and Charity’s “marriage” remarkable reconstruction of Charity and was intelligible to their community because Sylvia’s decades-long “marriage” in early they conformed to the gender roles nineteenth-century Weybridge, Vermont. associated with a husband and wife. Charity, Cleves’ monograph is a remarkable with her dominating personality and achievement not only because of the author’s masculine carriage, acted as the household’s painstaking research, but for the way she head, a role akin to the archetypal female uses microhistory to tease out broader husband in Anglo-American culture. At the historical trends in women’s economic roles, same time, Cleves emphasizes that Charity the social meaning of marriage, same-sex and Sylvia rejected the patriarchal model of relationships, and community-building in the coverture. Sylvia retained her legal status as rural Northeastern United States. Through a an unmarried woman, and her role as careful reading of Charity and Sylvia’s letters, Charity’s “help-meet” resembled earlier New journals, and poems, Cleves portrays the England models of marriage that recognized couple’s relationship as a complex both partners’ economic role in the negotiation that enabled them to live as an household. influential same-sex couple in their community. At the same time, Cleves makes While Charity and Sylvia’s household clear that cultural understandings of sexual roles conformed to those expected of a relationships between women as deviant and married couple, their roles in the Weyfield sinful exacted an emotional toll on the couple. community as business owners and participants in church life afforded them high According to Cleves, Sylvia and status and social acceptance. However, this Charity’s relationship demonstrates that acceptance was predicated on keeping their “there was more opportunity for the relationship an open secret. The emotional expression of erotic love between women in cost of that secret was most apparent upon early America than has previously been Charity’s death, as Sylvia searched for the believed” (1). To prove her thesis Cleves words to describe her loss and the nature of must find that which has eluded historians of their love. The deeply religious couple never same sex relations: evidence that Charity and reconciled their intimacy and sexual desire

CLBTH Spring 2016 7 with Christian proscriptions against Charity and Sylvia offered advice on marriage lesbianism. Cleves notes that “as ‘sisters in and courtship, and trained their nieces in Christ’ they loved each other deeply, but as tailoring in order to afford them lovers they violated their faith” (165). Unable opportunities for economic independence. In to undergo confession, both grieved deeply return, their nieces and nephews regarded for their own souls and firmly believed in the both as “beloved aunts.” However, Charity sinfulness of their desire. and Sylvia’s status as a couple caused conflict with other family members. In particular, Cleves also situates Charity and Charity’s relationship with her father was Sylvia’s relationship within the larger especially strained, and his rejection haunted dimensions of women’s experience in the her throughout her adult life. rural United States during the early nineteenth century. In this way, her work Cleves leaves the reader with both a joins recent studies exploring how women sense of possibility and sadness. Cleves navigated the economic changes that shows that same-sex couples could find attended industrialization and the Market success, and fulfillment, and belonging within Revolution. In the midst of these changes, rural communities in early America. At the many single women became dependent on same time, the traumatic effects of family family members. However, Charity and Sylvia rejection and religious proscriptions against avoided this fate. Charity’s skilled labor as a same-sex desire are apparent in Charity and tailor and business acumen enabled them to Sylvia’s story. Cleves’ meticulous maintain a successful business altering microhistory alerts us to important nuances clothing throughout their adult lives. During in history that are only visible when viewed economic downturns, the pair’s willingness from the bottom up. Her study is a first-rate to be paid in kind and in labor preserved narrative that should serve as a model of how their business. As a result of their success, to situate individual life stories within larger young women sought apprenticeships with historical trends. the couple. Charity and Sylvia developed strong attachments to some of these young The detail with which Cleves presents women, informally adopting them as Charity and Sylvia’s story is one of the book’s stepdaughters. Cleves argues that these great strengths. However, general and relationships, along with those that Charity undergraduate readers may have trouble and Sylvia formed with their nieces and sorting through family connections and nephews, satisfied their desire to mother technical discussions of marriage and without tying them to the constant care of coverture. This point aside, Cleves work children that so many nineteenth-century illuminates the limits and possibilities of American women found emotionally and rural white women’s lives in the early physically draining. nineteenth-century United States.

In this way, Cleves illuminates Charity Kathleen Kennedy and Sylvia’s family ties, along with their Missouri State University economic relationships. Cleves argues that Sylvia’s Vermont family accepted Charity and Sylvia as a married couple and that most of their nieces and nephews relied on the couple for nurturance and occasional funds.

CLBTH Spring 2016 8 Jim Downs, Stand by Me: The Forgotten conservative spaces. While Downs presents a History of Gay Liberation (New York: Basic useful corrective to depictions of the 1970s Books, 2016). as a decade of sexual excess, his analysis of gay religion only captures the cultural In his new book Stand by Me: The development of a narrow band of religious Forgotten History of Gay Liberation, Jim communities. Downs rebuts the popular view of gay life in the 1970s as one of hedonistic sexual excess. After religious advocacy, Downs Instead, Downs describes the decade as one delves into the vibrant world of gay literature of community building among mostly white and newspapers. From homophile Craig gay men who organized religious affinity Rodwell’s Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore groups, published newspapers, and in Greenwich Village to Jonathan Ned Katz’s advocated for gay prisoners. He argues that early play Coming Out! and seminal book Gay gay men from New Orleans to Philadelphia, American History, Downs shows the New York, and Los Angeles created a gay centrality of letters to gay culture in the identity rooted in moral reasoning that 1970s. Still, Downs notes that these spaces “theorized, explored, and investigated the remained few and far between compared to meaning of sex,” as “many gay people sought gay bars, bathhouses, and pornographic community and their own culture over legal theaters. Despite their overlapping interests, rights and political recognition” (5, 14). Rodwell and Katz “rarely found themselves in the same room because there were still few Downs begins with the gay religious rooms where they could meet” (112). movement. The Metropolitan Community Church, for example, often used gay Gay newspapers also offered gay nightclubs to hold community services in the people a way to connect with one another. daytime. Congregating in public, however, One of the most far-reaching of these, The exposed the group to hostilities. Downs uses Body Politic, was founded in 1971 with police records, memoirs, and oral history to distribution in the United States, Canada, and recount the June 1973 arson attack on New parts of Europe. Together with figures like Orleans’ Up Stairs Lounge, which killed Rodwell and Katz, the gay newspapers sought thirty-two and injured fifteen. The apathy a “useable past” to “provide legitimacy, that followed the attack showed widespread meaning, and, most of all, a genealogy to their disregard for the lives of gay people and their plight” (116). For example, in 1974 The Body families. Still, reformist groups in the 1970s Politic ran a series of essays on the history of sought inclusion into mainstream religious homosexuality and the Holocaust. While institutions. Religious advocates such as white gay intellectual historians, playwrights, Father Robert Clement “encouraged their and essayists often gestured towards the congregations to openly and publicly Civil Rights Movement as a model for gay embrace their sexual orientation” and to see liberation, they also looked to Black history it not as “antithetical to their faith but as as a model for understanding gay oppression. central to it” (45). Here Downs challenges the As Downs writes, Katz “interspersed current view of gay liberation as a rejection of events” about racism and sexism in Coming organized religion. However, he might have Out! “to force the majority-white audience— buttressed or complicated his analysis by and the majority-white movement—to think investigating the experiences of Black gay about racism” (103). It remains unclear men, who likely organized in more whether Katz achieved his intended effect.

CLBTH Spring 2016 9 The penultimate chapter of Stand by a “forgotten history” of white gay men. Me most clearly demonstrates how some Nevertheless, Downs’ argument is a useful built coalitions across lines of race and class departure from the hypersexualized to offer a more inclusive vision of liberation. depiction of gay life in the decade before Downs finds evidence of solidarity between AIDS. But whose culture was it, anyway? gay men of different communities in his analysis of prisoners’ letters (150-151). In reconstructing the social life of the According to Downs, “gay inmates reminded gay Left and its religious reformers, Stand by the gay community that discrimination and Me ignores the contributions of gay men prejudice prevailed inside prisons despite the situated in more conservative settings who many changes occurring outside of them” lacked the capital to archive their social lives. (146). The Metropolitan Community Church The fact remains that fewer records exist for published inmates’ letters and poetry, Black and working class groups. In a footnote, including those that described experiences of Downs writes that the book “focuses on the sexual violence. Downs asserts that poetic experience of gay white men and does not by exchange “functioned as the ‘hidden any means purport to chart the diverse transcript’ of the gay liberation movement” experiences of the LGBTQ community,” (148). Men victimized by the policing of gay continuing, “the preponderance of white men sexuality bonded with others who affirmed throughout the historical record reflected a their desire for love. shift in how the gay community defined itself at the end of the decade” (n5, 206). Despite Downs’ most novel contribution the sudden emergence of the homogenized comes in the concluding chapter. Here, he white “macho clone” that Downs blames for asserts that the “macho clone” stereotype— declining solidarity between masculine and clad in Levi’s and a flannel shirt, with “broad feminine gay men, the reader is left with little shoulders, chiseled forearms, biceps the size evidence of other social worlds. It is of cannonballs, and a flat stomach,” and unfortunate that this historical problematic is always white—led to a masculine vision of squirreled away rather than confronted gayness that excluded people of color, the within the analysis. Left in the shadows, anti- feminine, and the gender non-conforming racist action on the part of white gay activists (169). For Downs, the rise of this body type and their use of and participation in the Black facilitated the decline of anti-racist and freedom struggle feels tangential, even intersectional organizing during gay though groups like the Gay Activists Alliance liberation. Evidence for this kind of solidarity and the Black Panther Party frequently between Black and white activists is scant, debated and collaborated. 1 but perhaps because it was already so short- lived. For this reason, the causal importance Stand by Me’s core argument, Downs assigns to the macho clone seems however, remains unassailable. The trauma misplaced. The story of Stand by Me’s central that persists from the AIDS epidemic has protagonists and their social worlds remains flattened the historical view of gay culture in

1 Black Panthers in Oakland were in close contact D.C., see Downs, Stand by Me, 235n28; Kevin with the gay liberation movement in San Mumford, Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Francisco and invited gay men and lesbians to the Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS 1970 Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Crisis (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Conventions in Philadelphia and Washington, Carolina Press, 2016), 89-91.

CLBTH Spring 2016 10 the 1970s. In his research, Downs “saw not make such behavior explicit. Equi did, countless examples of gay people however, cohabitate for long periods with a sidestepping activism and putting more effort few different women during her adult life. into creating gay culture” (234, n5). Cultural These included Bessie Holcomb, whom Equi production and agitation for change remain met in Massachusetts and shared a home intertwined. This work raises important with in Oregon beginning in 1892. While questions for future research about how Helquist refers to Equi as a lesbian, it is clergy weighed demands for gay inclusion unclear whether she described herself using and recognition, how white gay social circles that term. Equi did describe herself as racialized masculinity, and the extent—or “queer,” although Helquist is careful to point limits—of anti-racist organizing during gay out that “queer” at the time still commonly liberation. Downs’ book has given historians connoted “the unusual or peculiar” in a rich cultural history, which deserves addition to sexual non-normativity (199). further, holistic inquiry. Helquist suggests that she may have used the term to describe her radical politics or her George Aumoithe sexuality but draws no definitive conclusion Columbia University on the subject.

Michael Helquist, Marie Equi: Radical In detailing Equi’s relationships with Politics and Outlaw Passions (Corvallis: other women, Helquist makes an important Oregon State University Press, 2015). contribution to scholarship on female-female sexuality in the . Most Michael Helquist’s biography Marie histories of homosexuality during this period Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions focus on relationships between men. tells the compelling life story of Marie Equi, a Although authorities cracked down on male female physician who pursued both intimate homosexuality in Progressive-era Portland, relationships with other women and radical Equi carried on relationships with other political causes during the early twentieth- women with relative ease. She did, however, century. Equi participated in a wide range of face scrutiny for her private affairs, including social justice movements, including those for in two cases before the Ninth Circuit Court of labor rights, women’s suffrage, access to Appeals. Equi’s life story suggests that birth control, and against war. While much of Western communities may have provided Equi’s activism was confined to the Pacific more opportunities for intimate relationships Northwest and Northern California, she between women than other parts of the maintained connections to other activists country, although these relationships were across the United States. It is fitting, then, still subject to judgment and repression. that Helquist weaves together the personal and the political in an intimate telling of Marie Equi is not merely a biography, Equi’s life that situates her in regional and but a chronicle of the Progressive Era, both in national histories of the Progressive Era. the Pacific Northwest and across the United States. Helquist contextualizes every aspect Marie Equi’s intimate relationships of Equi’s life, connecting her story to the were exclusively with women. Like historians history of settlement in Oregon, the of nineteenth-century “romantic friendships,” professionalization of medicine, Progressive- Helquist is careful not to read sexual intimacy era political debates, and public attitudes into these relationships, since his sources do regarding sexuality. For example, Helquist

CLBTH Spring 2016 11 describes the restriction of abortion access Quentin, to which Equi protested, “I shrink during the early Progressive Era in order to from no fellow prisoners of mine, no matter frame the stakes of Equi’s willingness to what the color of her skin may be” (201). perform abortions. He also situates Equi’s Helquist’s failure to tease out Equi’s views on birth control politics alongside those of race, and to place her in the context of , with whom Equi exchanged Progressive-era racial politics, represents a intimate personal letters. Helquist aims to missed opportunity for the book. demonstrate the role of women in early twentieth-century movements, as well as the While Marie Equi lacks a central role of lesbians in Progressive-era politics in argument, Helquist nonetheless opens up the Pacific Northwest and Northern important questions for historians. How did California. While the extent to which lesbians class shape sexual identities and practices as a group effected political change is unclear, during Progressive Era? Did the relationship Helquist shows that Equi and other women between class and sex vary from region to activists played a critical role in leftist politics region? Were opportunities for same-sex during the Progressive Era. intimacy between women more plentiful in the Northwest? How might a better While Helquist engages much of the understanding of female-female relationships political context of the early twentieth change what we know about Progressive-era century, he fails to directly address the racial sexuality? Helquist leaves open these politics of the period. For example, Helquist questions, and the story of Marie Equi will portrays Margaret Sanger’s perspective on hopefully inspire new research on women’s birth control for the sexual liberation of activism and sexuality in the Progressive Era. white women with no mention of her role in the population control movement for The biggest strength of Marie Equi is working-class women of color. He also makes its accessibility to a public audience. The no mention of Oregon’s ban on African- writing is clear and Equi’s connection to American settlement, which remained in larger historical processes is easy to follow. effect until 1926. With respect to Equi’s racial Helquist’s telling of Equi’s life also conveys politics, Helquist includes only sparse the importance of activism in the face of evidence of her beliefs. Piecing together the repression. This book could be an effective few moments where Helquist does address reading in undergraduate courses on the race, Equi seems to evolve on racial issues. In history of gender and sexuality, the the two years before she served time at San Progressive Era, American radicalism, labor Quentin under the Espionage and Sedition history, and the history of the Pacific Acts for her anti-war activism, Equi described Northwest. While Helquist lacks both a Ireland as “the Only White Nation in Slavery” specific argument and an assessment of (158), appealing to the whiteness of the Irish Equi’s legacy, these absences provide an as a reason to support Irish independence. opportunity for students to develop original She also requested a public apology “When a arguments based on Helquist’s evidence. Russian Jew comes to this country to sit in Altogether, Marie Equi is an enjoyable read judgment of an American woman” (177). that provides much fodder for discussion. While in prison, however, she lived alongside several black women and a Native American Kevin McKenna woman. Equi’s cousin cited racial integration University of Washington as evidence of poor conditions at San

CLBTH Spring 2016 12 Mary Louise Roberts, What Soldiers Do: your parents home?” (66) Here the paper Sex and the American GI in World War II told U.S. soldiers that they could—and France (Chicago: University of Chicago should—charm French women. The soldiers Press, 2013). thus came to see themselves in mythic terms, as young heroes rescuing a helpless nation. Few historians dispute that when the Stars and Stripes also reinforced the idea of Americans landed in Normandy in the France as a sexual outlet for American summer of 1944, the French greeted them soldiers through images of the liberating with open arms. In What Soldiers Do: Sex and army. Roberts describes the photographic the American GI in World War II France, Mary motif of the “manly GI,” a smiling American Louise Roberts uncovers how American soldier surrounded by adoring French girls. soldiers took advantage of those open arms. Such images mythologized the “heterosexual Roberts, a professor at the University of romance” that awaited GIs, and helped them Wisconsin-Madison, complicates the myth of imagine themselves as the masculine the “Greatest Generation” in examining how rescuers of a feminized France. In this vein, the United States and France used the sexual Stars and Stripes portrayed the liberation of body in the struggle for power during the Paris as an erotically charged event, complete liberation and occupation of French soil by with pictures of French women kissing American troops. By focusing on three types “manly” American GIs. of sex—romance, prostitution, and rape— Roberts argues that sexual relationships If romance characterized the fantasy between American GIs and French women that American GIs had of French women, then embodied larger issues of political Roberts’ chapters on prostitution reveal a dominance. Power struggles between different reality. American soldiers desired American and French officials laid bare the sex just as much as French citizens craved “unresolved question of who exactly was in commodities lost during the war, and the two charge,” as the allies worked out their parties could make an exchange for what postwar relationship in part through the they wanted. After the war, prostitution conflicts over gender and sexuality that became more widespread in France, and marked the American occupation (7). sexual commerce became a tool of political power as U.S. and French officials disagreed Many American GIs held an eroticized as to how commercial sex should be handled. vision of France. Roberts shows how the Before the Nazi invasion, prostitution had military newspaper Stars and Stripes been regulated. However, its move to the represented French women as young, black market after the war meant that the promiscuous, and, perhaps most importantly, prostitute became an undefined commodity, desirous of American soldiers. In her most as women of all classes began selling sex. compelling—and humorous—analysis, Roberts shows that U.S. opposition to legal Roberts compares the German and French sex work further helped to create new forms phrases that readers could learn from the of prostitution that were chaotic and paper. The German phrases emphasized unregulated. French authorities were furious, commands and authority: “No cigarettes!”; and wanted to regulate commercial sex, but “Throw down your arms!”; and “Line up! American officers, in a demonstration of Forward!” In contrast, the French version power and arrogance, balked at the idea. The leaned towards romance and sex: “You have U.S. officials’ stubbornness to work with the charming eyes”; “I am not married”; and “Are French on the regulation of prostitution

CLBTH Spring 2016 13 served as the blueprint for continued power American and French officials over efforts to struggles in post-war France. regulate sexuality, and particularly venereal disease and prostitution, stood in for the In the final third of the book, Roberts larger struggle to restore French national uses rape as a lens for examining power sovereignty. dynamics, both within the U.S. military, and between the American occupiers and French Roberts is not the first historian to civilians. Roberts explores why African show that the “good war” may not have been American soldiers were disproportionately that good, nor is she the first to examine the charged with rape, and contends that the sexual relations of American soldiers abroad issue stemmed from both racial prejudice in during and after WWII. Nevertheless, What the segregated U.S. military and the attitudes Soldiers Do raises new questions in this vein. of French civilians. White GIs often framed How did the intertwined struggles over their black counterparts for crimes, including sexuality and national sovereignty in postwar rape, since they knew that white officers France compare to the experience of other would not view black soldiers as credible. At nations? Furthermore, does France’s postwar the same time, French civilians accused black position as a colonial power complicate GIs of sexual violence. In this way, black Roberts’ argument about a “damaged” French soldiers “quickly became a projection of masculinity? In opening up these questions, civilian fears concerning the chaos of war” Roberts challenges her readers to reconsider and of strains with military occupation (197). historical global power relations in terms of The U.S. military proceeded swiftly against gender and sexuality. Diplomatic and military soldiers accused of rape, precisely to combat historians as well as scholars of women’s, such “civilian fears.” Sexual violence had the gender, and sexuality studies will appreciate power to cause substantial damage to U.S. Roberts’ sophistication. She has written a and French relations. By incriminating black military history through the lens of gender soldiers, the U.S. military could at once and sexuality, and in so doing, made an preserve the myth of the American GI as a important contribution to both areas of white, masculine hero, and displace the study. blame for the problems of occupation onto Saniya Lee Ghanoui black soldiers. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Roberts scrutinizes issues of Stars and Clare Sears, Arresting Dress: Cross- Stripes alongside French sources to Dressing, Law, and Fascination in demonstrate a widespread sense of “gender Nineteenth-Century damage” in postwar France (86). More than a (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015). “crisis of masculinity,” she argues that during the German invasion and occupation French Clare Sears’ latest book, Arresting men felt they had both failed their duties as Dress, offers a groundbreaking study of cross- men, and been stripped of their masculine dressing laws in nineteenth-century San privilege. This deep sense of emasculation Francisco. Sears reveals the prevalence of continued after liberation, as French men felt gender non-normative dress in gold rush that American GIs had taken control of California prior to the passage, by the San French women’s sexuality, just as invading Francisco Board of Supervisors, of an 1863 German forces had taken control of French law that banned cross-dressing. The new territory. Similarly, the struggle between statute marked cross-dressers as public

CLBTH Spring 2016 14 nuisances, similar to drunks, vagrants, and space” (10). Thus, boundary-crossing prostitutes. Thus when John Roberts was individuals were labeled as public nuisances; arrested in 1874 in San Francisco’s Barbary objectified; and reclassified as non-human Coast for dressing like a “pretty waiter girl,” others subject to relocation, concealment or in a striped dress and flowery straw hat, he confinement. The removal of these non- appeared in court next to individuals conforming individuals from the public arrested for begging, vulgarity, drunkenness, sphere banished divergent forms of gender and assault and battery (8). By defining expression to the private realm. cross-dressing as aberrant behavior, the law empowered police to harass gay men, Sears begins by considering how the lesbians, and transgender people, along with laissez-faire years of the California gold rush others who violated norms of gender opened a space for the development of presentation. Officials continued to enforce femininities and masculinities that included public gender and sexual boundaries in this cross-dressing practices. These included men way until the Board of Supervisors repealed who dressed as women at gold rush balls, the law in 1974. Sears concludes that the cross-dressing sex workers, and women who cross-dressing law, along with similar donned men’s clothing and pursued statutes in twenty-one states, created “new exclusively male careers. Sears explains that presumptions of cross-gender criminality some of these practices carried non- and a gender-normative public that continue transgressive meanings and actually to haunt us today” (147). reinforced existing gender norms. Still, the lawless atmosphere of the gold rush years In the book’s introduction, Sears permitted diverse cross-dressing practices. proposes combining elements of transgender and queer studies to create “trans-ing By the early 1850s, concern about analysis,” a new theoretical approach for regulating public decency gave rise to laws examining the history of cross-dressing. This designed to enforce the social and moral mode of analysis examines a broad range of order as defined by an elite class of cross-dressing practices, and allows a deeper landowning European-American men. Laws examination of the boundaries between against cross-dressing were passed alongside normative and non-normative gender those regulating the visibility of prostitution, identities and representations. Sears also since female prostitutes sometimes dressed introduces the concept of “problem bodies” in male attire to attract customers. The 1863 to describe the ways that individuals were law against cross-dressing empowered law identified as threats to the existing social enforcement to mark those who violated structure. Prostitutes; Chinese immigrants; gender boundaries as “problem bodies.” and deformed, diseased, and cross-dressing Officials used the laws to prosecute a wide individuals were frequently identified as range of gender transgressions by sex problematic because of their gender, race, workers, female impersonators, feminist sex, disability, or citizenship status. By dress-reformers, and individuals whose juxtaposing these “problem bodies” in her gender identity deviated from their legal sex. analysis, Sears “shows that cross-dressing This coincided with similar local efforts to laws were not an isolated or idiosyncratic act regulate, remove, and conceal other “problem of government but one part of a broader legal bodies,” such as Chinese immigrants, matrix that was centrally concerned with prostitutes, and maimed or diseased persons. boundaries of sex, race, citizenship, and city

CLBTH Spring 2016 15 In one of the book’s most interesting gender practices were represented as chapters, Sears examines how vaudeville “foreign and pathological,” clearly falling theaters, freak shows, dime museums, and outside the bounds of acceptable behavior. slumming tours took advantage of the This logic helped to fuel the passage of the public’s fascination with cross-dressing 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which limited individuals and people with physical Chinese immigration to the United States in deformities. While cross-dressing laws part on the grounds that Chinese immigrants regulated “problem bodies” and prohibited represented a moral threat. In turn, their visibility, these spectacles put such subsequent exclusion laws permitted bodies on public display. Here audiences immigration officials to exclude or deport any could safely satisfy their curiosity, glimpsing immigrant perceived as a threat to the moral these peculiar bodies while maintaining a order. For example, when Geraldine Portica, a strict separation between themselves and the male immigrant from Mexico, was arrested in performers. By containing the public 1917 for living and dressing as a woman, appearance of “problem bodies,” such immigration authorities were legally justified spectacles rendered inert any transgressive in deporting her for violating San Francisco’s potential of the cross-gender practices, and cross-dressing law. Cross-dressing laws, instead reinforced gender norms. combined with immigration restrictions, thus established gender normativity as a Sears also argues that the 1863 cross- requirement for citizenship. dressing law rendered some cross-dressing practices more visible by encouraging law Sears brings nuanced analysis to bear enforcement and the public to look for and on an impressive range of sources, including look at white cross-dressing individuals as newspaper reports, police records, public nuisances and freaks. Humiliating government reports and freak-show public displays and investigations of ephemera. She highlights contradictory offenders’ bodies in jails, police records, figures, such as Police Chief Jesse Brown courtrooms, and newspaper reports Cook, who was fascinated by theatrical drag reinforced this view of cross-dressing whites’ shows while also rigorously enforcing cross- otherness. Sears notes that newspaper dressing laws. Through trans-ing analysis reporters ironically looked past Chinese and and the concept of “problem bodies,” Sears Mexican cross-dressing individuals as they advises scholars to consider the diversity of focused on policing gender boundaries cross-dressing practices and their varied among whites. This was partly due to limited meanings in historical context. Arresting enforcement of the law, the omission of race Dress is most interesting when Sears details as a category in arrest statistics, and selective the stories of the individuals who were reporting by the white press. In this way, impacted by the cross-dressing laws. white journalists writing for a white audience Through accounts of people like John Roberts and reporting on cases involving white cross- and Geraldine Portica, Sears gives voice to dressers marked normative gender as the those who defied gender norms in gold rush “exclusive property of whites” (94). Whereas California. In the process, Sears frees them whites arrested for cross-dressing were from their confinement to the private sphere, represented as outsiders and isolated liberating them from their marginal status in deviants, anti-Chinese exclusionists depicted historical scholarship. Chinese immigrants in general as innately Wendy L. Rouse deceitful, immoral, and deviant. Chinese San Jose State University

CLBTH Spring 2016 16 Victor Uribe-Uran, Fatal Love: Spousal tensions escalated when “women Killers, Law, and Punishment in the Late transcended the circumscribed space of the Colonial Spanish Atlantic (Stanford household” (207). University Press, 2015). Uribe-Uran also challenges the notion In his new book, Fatal Love, Victor that early modern Spain functioned as an Uribe-Uran combines quantitative social honor-based society where women’s history, legal history, and historical sociology reputations rested on chastity and men to examine cases of spousal murder in the defended their honor by killing adulterous late colonial Spanish Atlantic. He wives. Spousal murder cases suggest instead demonstrates that “spousal murders [were] that women rejected the norms of female not random and deviant outbursts of purity and monogamy. Men also frequently aggression but rather systematic gender turned to the law, rather than murder, to disputes over autonomy and obedience, punish adulterous wives, while women deference, sex, [and] money” (5). These cases plotted with lovers to kill their cuckolded provide insight into the ways that husbands husbands. In this way, such cases suggest and wives negotiated the “reciprocal that honor culture may have been less expectations of the privileges and duties of pervasive in late colonial Spain than has been married life,” as well as how Spanish civil and assumed. Nevertheless, Uribe-Uran concludes ecclesiastical law upheld patriarchal gender that such murders highlight the patriarchal and sexual norms (272). nature of marital relations in the Spanish Empire, where men enjoyed greater freedom Uribe-Uran examines over two than women to carry on sexual affairs, thus hundred cases of spousal murder, from three limiting the need for husbands to rid parts of the Spanish Atlantic: Spain, New themselves of wives, whereas adulterous Spain (modern-day Mexico), and New women saw few options beyond killing their Granada (modern-day Colombia). He devotes husbands for ending an unhappy marriage. a separate chapter to the quantitative analysis of such cases in each location, In Uribe-Uran’s analysis, spousal allowing for a comparison of multiple aspects murders also illuminate the intersection of of the cases across the Spanish Empire. racial ideology and the law in the Spanish Uribe-Uran argues that infidelity and Empire. While killers of mixed ancestry often disagreements over patriarchal control of the faced the harshest sentences, Uribe-Uran household were common reasons for spousal makes clear that Amerindians in New Spain killings. His findings challenge received frequently received lesser punishments, even wisdom about gender in the Spanish Empire, though they existed near the bottom of the which generally depicts women as cloistered Empire’s racial hierarchy. The legal system within the private sphere. Instead, Uribe- considered them miserabiles personae, Uran makes clear that at least some women “vulnerable and inferior people . . . in need of enjoyed active social lives, carried on constant help,” such as judicial mercy, in adulterous relationships, and participated in order “to become civilized” (84). While economic activity, all of which placed them in Amerindian men who killed their wives contact with others. Uribe-Uran concludes might be understood as similar to “civilized” that women murderers overwhelmingly Spanish “patriarchs in control of their killed family members not because they were households,” Spaniards instead interpreted insulated in the home, but because martial such crimes as evidence that natives were

CLBTH Spring 2016 17 “brutes, barbarians, and perpetual from “public and physically painful drunkards” (84). chastisement of bodies . . . to the private repression of minds” (210). Instead, Uribe- Uribe-Uran also examines spousal Uran finds evidence that “body-centered, murder within the broader history of Spanish painful, and visible punishment, full of ritual” civil and ecclesiastical law. Previous scholars in the Spanish Empire continued into the have depicted the Spanish Empire’s judicial nineteenth century (238). Convicted non- bureaucracy, procedures, and legal codes as whites in the New World found that their ineffective and incomprehensible. In contrast, options for clemency—royal pardons, Church Uribe-Uran finds that, by the late eighteenth asylum, and the status of miserabiles century, colonial subjects on both sides of the personae—vanished after independence, Atlantic understood themselves as part of the suggesting that punishment became more same habitual legal world. Indeed, Spanish severe with the end of colonial rule. subjects worked within the legal system Convicted women also continued to suffer because they saw it as upholding social order, under a patriarchal system that denied them including the ideal of monogamous lifelong sympathy from judges and left them marriage, and felt it was fair. Uribe-Uran vulnerable to sexual violence at the hands of asserts this perception of fairness came from jailers and male prisoners. At the same time, the legal system’s constant pull between a shift to more “civilized” punishments did terror and clemency. The law prescribed take place, as evidenced by the change from death for anyone convicted of killing a family the noose to the garrote, a device that killed member, but judges consistently reduced by strangulation. sentences because defendants claimed insanity or drunkenness, and the King Uribe-Uran’s impressive breadth of sometimes issued pardons around the time of knowledge shines through every chapter of religious or state holidays. The Catholic Fatal Love, even if the wealth of information Church also offered asylum to convicted or contained therein renders the book suspected criminals. Some leaders fretted overwhelming at times. Spousal murder that subjects would commit crimes without cases also make clear that the past is full of worry because they expected to be pardoned. brutal and unhappy realities, and the However, Uribe-Uran argues that while a squeamish may find some descriptions in the convicted murderer might go free, the book off-putting. However, these cautions community felt that the defendant had should not deter readers from Uribe-Uran’s received a fair trial, and their public shame at commendable examination of how men and being the subject of prosecution would deter women negotiated marriage and gender roles others from committing the same crime. through the law in the late colonial Spanish Historians of sexuality may find Uribe- Atlantic. Uran’s final chapters particularly intriguing, as here he challenges Michel Foucault’s Kent Peacock argument that in the eighteenth and Florida State University nineteenth centuries punishment shifted

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