Take the Young Stranger by the Hand: Same-Sex Relations and the YMCA (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society) [Hardcover]

John Donald Gustav-Wrathall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0226907848 | ISBN-13: 978-0226907840 | Edition: 1

Now associated with family health clubs, the YMCA's bland image is the result of relentless outreach and the studied avoidance of controversy. But, as John Gustav-Wrathall shows in his revealing social history of the organization, the life of the YMCA has been filled with strife, tragedy, and irony, a life that itself reflects the struggle over the shifting societal mores regarding masculine friendship and intimacy. Take the Young Stranger by the Hand presents the YMCA as an institution of profound contradictions, reflective of society's views of same-sex love and sexuality.

"Gustav-Wrathall's book offers an in-depth history of the origins and purposes of the Young Men's Christian Association and how it evolved into—and out of—a gay playland."—Arnie Kantrowitz, Lambda Book Report

"The book's absorbing exploration of the sometimes schismatic, sometimes synergistic relationship between spirituality and sexuality is a fascinating addition to the growing body of social history."—Jim Van Buskirk, San Francisco Bay Guardian

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There are two decidedly different images of the YMCA and its contributions to the lives of young men alone in the city, set adrift from hearth and home. Although it positions itself as a stabilizing moral force, it also has a reputation for housing unregulated gay male sexual activity. In Take the Young Stranger by the Hand, John Donald Gustav-Wrathall performs a fascinating and entertaining analysis that reveals these contradictory traditions as so intertwined historically and socially as to be inevitable.

Founded in the mid-19th century, the YMCA fostered close, spiritually sustaining relationships between young men. By the century's end the "Y," as it became known, had implemented a wide-scale program of physical exercise and sex education, in part to combat the increasingly visible specter of physical intimacy between men. But this emphasis on the perfected male body only increased the institution's reputation as a haven for homosexuality. Drawing upon diverse sources, including YMCA records, social histories, urban and economic studies, "physical culture" physique magazines, and gay memoirs, Gustav-Wrathall explicates not only the hidden sexual subtexts of the Y's social history but examines how changing attitudes about sexuality, male friendship, gender, marriage, and privacy all contributed to shaping the nature and both the overt and covert purpose of the organization. Take the Young Stranger by the Hand is a highly readable addition to the ever-growing body of gay history and theory. --Michael Bronski

From Publishers Weekly

The early history of a peculiarly American institutionAthe YMCAAhere serves as a paradigm of late 19th- and early 20th-century American culture at large, at least as far as sexuality and Protestantism are concerned. Scholar Gustav-Wrathhall's history of the pre-WWII Y confirms what Jonathan Dollimore and others have demonstratedAthat the homosocial and homosexual are unstable categories that are constantly being redefined and are inextricable from definitions of the heterosexual. From the beginning, the author reports, passion and piety at the Y were closely linked. Passion came in the form of intense male friendships that may or may not have included an erotic component; piety was expressed in Christian brotherhood. Soon, he contends, such close relations became suspect, and the Y hierarchy attempted to develop new, less intimate models for masculine relations and for masculine identity itself, which, he contends, ironically fostered the image (and documented the reality) of the Y as an easily accessible site for male-to-male sexual "cruising." Originally written as a doctoral dissertation, the book retains some of its Ph.D.-like feel but is thankfully free of the academic terminology that mars so much work in the field of gender and sexuality.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (October 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226907848
• ISBN-13: 978-0226907840
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,343,366 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Gustav-Wrathall lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his husband of eighteen years, works as a paralegal at a Minneapolis Patent Law Firm, and teaches American Religious History as adjunct faculty at United Theological Seminary in New Brighton, Minnesota. A fifth generation Latter-day Saint, John grew up close to the birthplace of Mormonism, in the suburbs of Rochester, New York. He served a mission for the LDS Church in the Swiss, Geneva Mission, and was a Kimball Scholar at Brigham Young University for almost three years, until inner conflicts about his homosexuality almost led him to commit suicide. In 1986, he left BYU, asked to have his name removed from the records of the LDS Church and was formally excommunicated. During graduate school at the University of Minnesota, he began to come to terms with being gay, and eventually met his husband, Göran. In 2005, John began attending the LDS Church again in his ward in south Minneapolis. He describes himself as having a testimony of the Restored Gospel, and as being a Latter-day Saint by conviction, though his commitment to his husband prevents him from being reaccepted as a full member of the Church.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars YMCA, It 's More Than Just A Song, February 10, 2001

By 

Ricky Hunter (New York City, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Take the Young Stranger by the Hand: Same-Sex Relations and the YMCA (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society) (Paperback)

John Donald Gustav-Wrathall's study of same-sex relations and the YMCA, Take the Young Stranger by the Hand, is a very focused study taking the reader from the origins of the YMCA, with its plethora of bachelor secretaries and intense friendships through the early decades of the twentienth century and its fear of deviancy and into the cruising of later decades. To be sure, the bulk of the book is on the earlier and middle periods. Two of the chapters also focus on women to some extent. It is interesting to see how the YMCA came into being and how its development echoed the social development of the society it was a part of and, even more fascinating, the ways in which it tried to influence society. This book fits into homosexual history but is broader in contexst than that as it is truly the history of same-sex relations, including sexual, but also including friendship and mentoring and sometimes comibinations of all three. It is the story of the changing homosocial environment all people of a certain class (middle) lived within.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's much more than 'swim and gym', October 10, 2005

By 

Robin Orlowski "political activist" (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Take the Young Stranger by the Hand: Same-Sex Relations and the YMCA (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society) (Paperback)

Because I have grown up in a heterosocial era, John Donald Gustav-Wrathall's study of the Young Men's Christian Association was especially fascinating. Sure I've heard the Village People's infamous song many times over, but I had not previously imagined how complex these relationships were---or explored all reasons for the "Y"'s comparative decline as a homosocial/homosexual cruising site.

Allegedly to avoid clogging the swimming pools with their cotton swim suits, many men at the "Y" simply elected to swim nude. Not attaching anything sexual to the action, both the men and the organization accepted it as a matter of fact that men would see each other naked at the "Y".

The tension between people who wanted to keep things as they were and those who wanted the organization to project a 'family image' (hence the designation of "Family Y's" in post-war America) rivals any dramatic work which I've seen thus far. Considering the 'intense relationships' which they formed as consequence of working in the 'Y' movement, I also found it odd that some people in the YMCA would accuse their counterparts in the Young Women's Christian Association of being lesbians. These men had apparently absorbed the double-standards of their own day which negated women's public sphere influence.

The admission of women as members into the previously all-male realm of the Y was also interesting. This move was another tactic to convince people---inside and outside the organization---nothing improper was happening. During it's history, the organization also faced criticisms of it's program.

In 1912, the Portland, Oregon YMCA, with the ninth largest membership in North America, became the center of a sex scandal. A Portland newspaper charged many of the city's most prominent men with sodomy and delinquency of minors. A few of the implicated men lived at the YMCA and others used the sports facilities. This was the first time that a connection between the YMCA and homosexuality was publicly made.

The organization continued struggling with the issue of homosexuality, but their 'front lines'--the desk clerks allegedly supposed to guard against homosexuality---looked the other way. In this closeted era, the YMCA was a critical meeting space for 'queer' young men.

For all of the critical perspective, the book does praise it's subject. The "Y" pioneered racial unity AND sex education in an era when even many secular organizations lacked courage to even consider taking on the issue. I was especially heartened by the advocay of factually-based sex education, myself living in an era when so many other organizations with 'Christian' in their name actually advocate that people not have access to any of this information. How refreshing to read of an alternative---and in a much earlier era too!

This book is part of the Chicago series on Sexuality, History and Society, but people wanting to read about YMCA history would also find it interesting because the authors have used very inclusive and broad 19th century framework to explore intimate relationships among men. Finally, it would be a good acquisition for people who are just interested in American history period, however altered from it's founding, the "Y" still exists as an institution and continues to promote racial justice and sex education. This is one of the scholarly works which professionals and the general public will both readily enjoy.

8 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Narrow focus keeps things dull, November 20, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Take the Young Stranger by the Hand: Same-Sex Relations and the YMCA (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society) (Hardcover)

The story of the YMCA is an interesting one, but unfortuantely this book focuses in on tiny bits of facts that render the whole thing much less interesting than might be expected. But this is really more an exercize in documenting than anything else. Still, it is informative about how mutable and powerful our theories of of sexuality are.