3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
inspiring chapters despite unmet goals, May 13, 2005
This review is from: Creating a Place For Ourselves: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Histories (Paperback)
This anthology has multiple purposes. They want to continue George Chauncey's assertion that pre-Stonewall life was not terrible across the board. They have two further projects. First, the contributors want to show that gay and lesbian culture existed and flourished outside of just NYC and CA. Additionally, they want to show that the intersections of race, class, and gender played a powerful role in setting the parameters for this historic gay life.
This book is well-written. I felt more and more empowered as a gay person as I finished each chapter. Though no author quotes Michel Foucault here (as most gay and lesbian studies authors do), his idea that powerlessness is never absolute plays itself out here. This book documents gay and lesbian craftiness. If you want to make private gay space at a time when homosexuality is illegal, place straight patrons at the front of clubs and gay patrons at the back. Hire door managers and bartenders that have no problems excluding or kicking out homophobes. If you can't have openly gay dancing, let customers know about private after-parties where such dancing will be allowed. If you can't be openly gay at home, split an apartment with other gay guys where you all agree that you can bring guys for action.
As necessary and idealistic as Beemyn's goals are, this book fails to meet those goals in several ways. This book starts by saying, "We need to go beyond canonical gay historians like Chauncey, Newton, and Davis/Kennedy." However, all those authors have chapters in this book. Further, other authors quote from their famous books consistently. It is surprising that John D'Emilio does not have a contribution here. However, he was working on Bayard Rustin's autobiography at the time.
The chapters move beyond NYC and SF. As a Chicagoan and a person who knows about Illinois' strong history in gay rights, I was pleased to see two chapters about my hometown. Still, though Beemyn asserts that gay men and lesbians live everywhere, the action in these chapters usually point to big cities. Maybe all gay people do not move to NYC and SF. However, if they move to Chicago, Detroit, Philly, and Washington, D.C., they are finding the next best things. Chauncey's and D'Emilio's ideas about seeking more gays and more anonymity still ring true.
This book has more information on gay men than on lesbians. However, lesbians are represented, admirably. There are also wonderful coverage of black gay men and lesbians. Beemyn states that race, class, and gender cannot be dropped from this analysis. Still, I wish he would point out that many advocates of "race, class, and gender" coverage purposely exclude "sexuality" and are very heterosexist, if not blatantly homophobic. Beemyn could have mentioned that the contributors are taking the higher road when others have not. Most of the authors acknowledge that white, middle-class, gay men had options and choices that people of color, women, and the poor could never have. Still, this book often focuses on rich, gay, white men in bringing up race, class, and gender. If "race, class, and gender" promotions don't encourage cover diversity, then what is the point?
Beemyn is a well-known bisexual activist. Thus, while his own chapter mentions an interviewee that sought male and female partners, other contributors do not mention actual bisexuals. Thus, while the word bisexual comes up in this book often, it doesn't really alter the focus on monosexual gay men and lesbians. This is well-meaning inclusion, but still superficial.
Some readers may not like the focus on bars and drag performances, but hey, that's the way it was. This book gives scant mention to cruisy areas and John Boswell and others would say those are important sites of gay contact. This book may be trying to be more respectable than the actual history makers were themselves.
Lord Alfred Douglas said homosexuality is "the love that dare not speak its name." However, the authors prove here that gay men and lesbians have been speaking up and enjoying themselves for decades and all over the United States. While the book does have its limitations, I applaud the editor for amassing those scant academic studies out there in this area.
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