| D'Emilio, John. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities. (gutting) |
[Oct. 9th, 2006|04:53 pm] |
D'Emilio, John. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States 1940-1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.
Thesis: Gay activism developed from the emergence of an urban gay subculture post-World War II and its response to institutionalized oppression. This response, the homophile movement, was often fragmented, somewhat conservative, and incapable of mobilizing the gay masses. However, the movement evolved through the 1960s as opportunities and political space shifted in the Northeast and San Francisco, culminating in Stonewall and the emergence of a viable mass movement.
Motive: D'Emilio is trying to understand how the radical gay liberation movement of the early 1970s developed from the timid homophile movement of the 1950s. Significantly, D'Emilio wrote this at a time when academic scholarship on gay history was virtually non-existent.
Methods: D'Emilio makes extensive use of gay-oriented publications and personal papers of activists from the time period as well as interviews and correspondence with a couple dozen leading figures in the movement.
Summary/Argument: The emergence of gay identity resulted from changes in U.S. society that began with industrialization and urbanization in the late 1800s. The segregation of the sexes and disruption of traditional family life that occurred during the world wars offered further opportunities to develop contacts and construct communities based on gay identity.
Responding to the nearly universal condemnation of homosexuality as deviant and perverse, the early Mattachine Society leadership conceived of homosexuals as an oppressed minority that needed greater political consciousness to challenge their demeaned status. However, fear of Marxism in the 1950s resulted in the radicals departing the homophile movement. MS became increasingly reluctant to defend positive assertions of gay identity, DOB focused on providing social services rather than activism, and both criticized ONE magazine's overt challenges to the persecution of the status quo.
D'Emilio emphasizes the impact of the sexual revolution in shifting attitudes toward representation of homosexuality in books and films. Representation was generally lurid and condemnatory, but they were no longer invisible. Inspiration from the black civil rights movement provided east coast activists with a model for how to engage in direct action to challenge legal and social inequality. A series of incidents in San Francisco resulted in the fusing of bar culture and more assertive homophile activism. While results were generally modest, gays were no longer looking at a world where the best case scenario was survival. Combined with the broader radicalization of the New Left, the stage was set for the Stonewall riots and the gay liberation movement.
Criticism: D'Emilio struggles to build a national narrative out of very different contexts in the major cities. Developments in second-tier cities beg for their own chapter and at least a couple in-depth case studies (Denver in the '50s and KC in the '60s are both underexplored). He extrapolates broadly based on incidents that he relates in only a few paragraphs.
D'Emilio does not really explore the personalities and creativity that defined the communities from which movements emerged and which shine through vibrantly in Chauncey and Boyd. Part of this is because he is not looking at primary sources involving bar culture, but I think part of it is a function of writing style and fidelity to a tight narrative framework focused on identity and politics. Still, the procession of biographical paragraphs followed by curt summaries of political activities did not make for compelling history.
That said, the book provides a lucid historical narrative that has served as the springboard for a lot of research, and the basic dynamic laid out in the thesis continues to have powerful explanatory value. |
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