Becoming Queer in the 20 Th Century: an Analysis of Print Literature and Changing Queer Identity Keith Plummer College of the Holy Cross, [email protected]
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College of the Holy Cross CrossWorks Sociology Student Scholarship Sociology & Anthropology Department 5-2017 Becoming Queer in the 20 th Century: An Analysis of Print Literature and Changing Queer Identity Keith Plummer College of the Holy Cross, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://crossworks.holycross.edu/soc_student_scholarship Part of the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Plummer, Keith, "Becoming Queer in the 20 th Century: An Analysis of Print Literature and Changing Queer Identity" (2017). Sociology Student Scholarship. 2. http://crossworks.holycross.edu/soc_student_scholarship/2 This Department Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Sociology & Anthropology Department at CrossWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sociology Student Scholarship by an authorized administrator of CrossWorks. Becoming Queer in the 20th Century: An Analysis of Print Literature and Changing Queer Identity By Keith Plummer College of the Holy Cross Sociology Departmental Honors Thesis May 2017 1 Table of Contents Historical Overview ....................................................................................... 3 The Late 1800’s and the Creation of the Homosexual Subject ...................... 4 Turn of the Century and the Queer Underground ......................................... 11 Post-WW2 and Homophile Organizations: Coming Out and Conformity ... 16 The Beginnings of Gay Liberation and the Stonewall Riots ........................ 22 1980’s and 1990’s: AIDS Crisis, New Queer Visibility, and Backlash ....... 26 The 2000’s: Queer Integration ...................................................................... 30 Conclusion .................................................................................................... 33 Literature Review ......................................................................................... 36 Social Construction of Actors and Life Worlds ........................................... 39 Discourse, Avowal, and Identity .................................................................. 45 Coming Out and Social Change ................................................................... 53 Methods and Data ......................................................................................... 60 Historical Process Tracing ............................................................................ 60 Identity and Typologies ................................................................................ 65 Data and Analysis ......................................................................................... 68 Findings ............................................................................................................. 73 Becoming Queer in the Twentieth Century .................................................. 73 Before Categorization ................................................................................... 75 Sexual Inversion............................................................................................ 77 Homosexual .................................................................................................. 80 Homophile ..................................................................................................... 88 Gay ................................................................................................................ 91 Lesbian .......................................................................................................... 94 Transvestite and Transsexual ........................................................................ 97 Transgender ................................................................................................... 99 LGBT+ ........................................................................................................ 101 Queer ........................................................................................................... 104 Discussion........................................................................................................ 107 Actorhood: Opportunity, Malleability, and Reconstitution ........................ 107 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 115 2 Becoming Queer in the Twentieth Century: Historical Overview Historical Overview Queer history is a project in tracing both the cultural and cognitive dimensions of a salient social identity. Locating the queer subject necessitates a thorough sociohistorical examination of the identity discourses operative in a changing historical context in addition to the multiple institutions—juridical, medical, religious, etc—defining and regulating gender and sexuality (Foucault 1980; Bronski 2011). In the process of rendering certain sexual behaviors and gender expressions intelligible within particular paradigms of knowledge (legal, psychological, moral), these institutions create normalized and defined categories of human existence that we then take as ‘real.’ These identities both unite and distinguish us from each other. The identity of difference in fact provides a map to the organization of social relationships. Although gender and sexual identity has itself become so challenged as to mix into an alphabet soup of increasingly elaborate and overlapping configurations (LGBTQIAP+), it is hardly the singular mode by which we have understood sexual and gender variance historically (Faderman 2015; Eaklor 2008; Bronski 2011). The idea that proclivities to certain same-sex sexual activities or gender nonconforming behaviors manifest from a native interiority (one’s innate being) that then constitutes one’s self- identity (and, in turn, belonging into a distinctive human group) is a relatively recent concept (Foucault 1978; Bronski 2011; Eaklor 2008; Faderman 2015). There has been noted extensive variations in systems of sexual and gender classification across time, geography, and culture. These epistemologies are far from static and rely on an 3 Becoming Queer in the Twentieth Century: Historical Overview unremitting reification in the social world to maintain legitimacy as the means by which we ultimately determine what is real and what is truth (Foucault 1980). My queer historical analysis will begin with the institutionalization of the term, “homosexual,” in the United States occurring around the late nineteenth century and progress from there. I will use the term “queer,” not necessarily to refer to a specific formulation of LGBTQ—or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer—identity as we understand it today. Rather, “queer” will signify a subject position against dominant discourses of gender and sexuality in a given cultural and historical location, an orientation vis-à-vis what was considered natural and normative (Seidman 1996). Furthermore, in addition to the employment of the term queer throughout this study, I will make an effort to utilize the language particular to specific epochs –namely homosexual, gay, lesbian, transgender, LGBT, and so on—to honor the historically- specific framing of fluctuating U.S. queer identities and to reflect how persons local to these times likely understood themselves and were understood by various institutions and communities (Faderman 2015). In the following pages, I will endeavor to lay out a history of developments in queer identity in the United States as it intersects with various medical, cultural, political, and legal practices. This investigation will allow me to ascertain how sociological forces have shaped both constraints and opportunities for queer identity and entitlements. The Late 1800’s and the Creation of the Homosexual Subject There were a constellation of forces that turned sexuality into the now locus of self-understanding, connoting one’s sexual being- and indeed the early emphasis was on 4 Becoming Queer in the Twentieth Century: Historical Overview the sexual dimension of the homosexual self- and, by extension, one’s social essence as a distinctive “species” of humanity: a heterosexual or homosexual, a gay or lesbian, a member of the LGBTQ community, a queer person, the list goes on as history takes twists and turns (Foucault 1980; Faderman 2015). Same-sex sexual relationships had experienced various sorts of temporally and culturally specific normalization before the creation of the “homosexual” such as the institution of pederasty in ancient Athenian Greek society in which older men were able to engage in socially sanctioned sexual relationships with pubescent and adolescent boys (Meem et al 2010). This same sort of pederastic behavior occurred in Rome with lesser toleration as fines accompanied discovered sexual conduct with free boys, but these fines did not exist with slave boys. Nevertheless, pederasty is far different than the adult liaisons and partnerships that tend to characterize American same-sex behaviors and these disparate attitudes and social rules pertaining to same-sex activities attest to the vacillating constructions of sexuality throughout history. The homosexual coming into being in the late nineteenth century is but one of many other constructions. Categories of identity as well as the practices that constitute them live in distinctive social worlds such that the terminology we use to label people and the terms these people use to understand themselves are all contingent on social context. The distinction between gender and sexuality is very salient today, however a history of “homosexuality”