The Bar Scene: A Place for Homosexual Culture and Identity Essay

Through the 1940s-50s, gay bars were a crucial time for the gay community. Gay bars were not just a place for gays and lesbians to go to but it also was a “safe haven” for them because they were be able to be comfortable in their own skin. Homosexual men had more “freedom” to express themselves in public (such as parks, and bars) than homosexual women. The only places that homosexual women could express themselves were at lesbian bars. Lesbian bars enabled them to form their identity, including black lesbians. According to Elizabeth Kennedy and Madeline Davis, in their article “I Could Hardly Wait to Get Back to that Bar,” they define a lesbian bar as “a place where patrons felt relatively safe,” (33). This quote demonstrates the fact that

“At the beginning of the twentieth century, a homosexual subculture, uniquely Afro-American in substance, began to take shape in New York’s Harlem. Throughout the so- called Harlem Renaissance period, roughly 1920 to 1935, black lesbians and gay men were meeting each other [on] street corners, socializing in cabarets and rent parties, and worshiping in church on Sundays, creating a language, a social structure, and a complex network of institutions.” Richard Bruce Nugent, who was considered the “perfumed orchid of the New Negro Movement” said, “You did what you wanted to. Nobody was in the closet. There wasn’t any closet.”

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, society wasn’t the most accepting of places for people who were different from the “social norms”. Now I know, people today still struggle with trying to fit in and be “normal” but it was different. Being a gay man living in San Fransisco at the time, which had a large gay population, Richard Rodriguez had a hard time dealing with the discrimination he faced. Richard Rodriguez was an American journalist who wrote and published a memoir about his life as a gay man. In October of 1990, Rodriguez published his memoir “Late Victorians” in Harper’s Magazine, a critically acclaimed publication of the time. In his memoir, Rodriguez describes what it was like to realize he was gay and watch as the country changed to become a more accepting place. He does this by setting up how things can change and then explaining the actual ways things change for the gay population.

Throughout the 1950’s, the United States belonged to the Leave It To Beaver era. Families were structured around a strong, hard working father and a wonderful homemaker mother. Children were brought up with solid ideologies on what society expects from them and were warned about living a different and dangerous life. Only one-year separates Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room from there publishing dates during this decade of unwavering beliefs. These texts were seen as extremely controversial during their time due to their themes of homosexuality. Sexual orientation was an awkward topic during such a “to the book” time period and these texts pushed the limits, making them remarkable and memorable works. Both Tennessee Williams and James Baldwin explore the panic men experience while trying to comprehend what sexual orientation they belong to and highlight the masculine gay man. These texts also examine the woman’s role in the mist of it all.

During the late twentieth century, the AIDS epidemic became one of the biggest issues to plague the gay community and is often referred to as an event that helped the community come together as a whole, but in Ceremonies Essex Hemphill writes about the community as fractured and divided. Discussions of race, as well as sexuality, are common topics he discusses in the essays and poetry that make up the book. In one of the essays in the book, “Does your Mama Know?”, Hemphill writes about the gay black man’s role, or lack of a subjective role, in the gay community and discusses the idea of what “home” is for someone that doesn’t quite seem to have a place in any community. It is a topic that

Two Diaries, Donald Vining’s A Gay Diary Vol. Two and Martin Duberman’s Gay in the Fifties look into the everyday life of gay males in the post-World War II Era. While World War II increased freedom for men to sexually explore within the male community, post-World War II extended the freedom of exploration but also created a subsequent backlash against homosexual practices. Vining and Duberman’s diaries document an extension of gay freedoms in the post-World War II period. Although Vining and Duberman give contrasting accounts of their lives as gay males in the postwar period, common themes could be drawn in the form of friendships, sexual activity, relationships, and backlash by heteronormative society.

“[W]orking-classes people in the capital of black America were stunningly open about their homosexuality” as it was “evident in urban blues lyrics of the time,” but it was not accepted in the middle-class and upper-class communities (Russell 103, 105). Some influential, elite/upper- or middle-class people during the Harlem Renaissance, such as Claude McKay, George Chauncey, Alain Locke, and others were “extraordinarily open about homosexuality and about the repressive nature of heterosexual norms” (103). Even James Baldwin was open about his sexuality and “claimed to have felt accepted as a homosexual” in Harlem (108). However, this did not stop the elitists, middle- and upper-class individuals, and the media from having their say. Under government policy, “President Eisenhower banned homosexuals from federal jobs, prospective employees were required to undergo screenings of their sexual histories,

George Chauncey’s Gay New York Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940, goes where no other historian had gone before, and that is into the world of homosexuality before World War II. Chauncey’s 1994 critically acclaimed book was a gender history breakthrough that gave light to a homosexual subculture in New York City. The author argues against the idea that homosexual men lived hidden away from the world. Chauncey’s book exposes an abundant culture throughout the United States, especially in New York. In this book Chauncey not only shows how the gay population existed, but “uncovers three widespread myths about the history of gay life before the rise of the gay movement which was isolation, invisibility, and internalization.” Chauncey argues against these theories that in the years 1890-1940, America had in fact a large gay culture. Chauncey book is impactful in the uncovering of a lost culture, but also works as an urban pre-World War II history giving an inside view of life in the city through sexuality and class.

By 1969 there were roughly fifty Homophile organizations in the United States with memberships of a few thousand each. Around this same time, groups of prominent gays and lesbians in the United States began to advocate openly for equal rights. Among these were the Mattachine Society, an advocacy group for gay men, and the Daughters of Bilitis, which, like its male counterpart, “served as a support network for homosexuals who felt maltreated by or secluded from mainstream society” (“Gay Rights Movement”). Both establishments hoped to present a picture of gays and lesbians as no different from heterosexual citizens. However, these organizations were forced to operate largely in secret and under ambiguous names to conceal their purpose. Neither of these groups attracted more than a few hundred members. Therefore, while there was some organized activity for gay rights, the gay community throughout the United States was still essentially underground in the late 1960s. Its bars were only open as long as the police allowed them to stay open and it wasn’t unusual for the police to close down certain gay bars for weeks as a time. In June 1969, the NYPD shut down a number of clubs and bars, but the Stonewall Inn remained open.

Two Diaries, Donald Vining’s A Gay Diary Vol. Two and Martin Duberman’s Gay in the Fifties look into the everyday life of gay males in the post-World War II Era. While World War II increased freedom to explore sexually within the male community, post-World War II extended the freedom of exploration but also created a backlash against homosexual practices. Nevertheless, during and after World War II gay men were fully able to develop social circles and create a sense of community for the first time. Although Vining and Duberman encountered different forms of backlash in response to the extension of gay freedoms in the post-World War II period, they still shared the freedom to explore friendships, relationships, and sexual activity.

A trip to 42nd street circa 1990 was certainly no destination fit for a family. Walls of graffiti adorn the peeling awnings of storefronts and theatres promise private dances and live nude women. Porn shops dotted the city block with colorful invitations to sex hotlines and signs prohibiting entry to anyone under the age of eighteen (Wollman 445). Decades earlier, during the Prohibition era, speakeasies and brothels lined the city, creating New York’s red light district. Today’s Times Square, however, bares no hint of resemblance to its former image of sleaze and mystery. Neon lights that once illustrated silhouettes of burlesque dancers have since been fashioned into the welcoming faces of cartoon characters. Signs visible

Gay male culture is by far the most talked about among the LGBTQI community — it has been talked about greatly by the media. And, arguably, it is the most influential. In politics, social values, and peoples’ perceptions, the gay male culture has changed the way many think of the gay community, and the LGBTQI community as a whole. Queer, fag, bear, twink: gay men promptly made their voices heard. After Massachusetts become the first state to legalize gay marriage, and the entire United Sates following nearly 10 years later, gays have instantly became a “sensation” of sorts.

Within modern-day America, there are certain societal standards based on sexual relationships. Within the poem, the narrator, a young woman, questions why she has to “wear the brand of shame; /whilst he amid the gay and proud/still bears an honored name” (Harper 26-28). Within her poem, Harper exposes the hypocrisy of the

The dance club is no longer an exclusive venue drawing together people with similar musical interests. Instead, it has become the commercialized superclub, where profit rather than music is the bottom line. As a space traditionally influenced by homosexuals becomes a major business opportunity, this commercialization has led to the inclusion of gay subcultures within mainstream American society. However, this process has served to reinforce social stigma and stereotypes. The advertising and club environment designed to “sell” the experience to the gay customer is founded on the overtly sexual club culture of the 1970s and early 80s. On the dance floor the constructed image of the club combines with the inherent sexual and mind-altering

Queer theory questions creations of normal and divergent, insider, and outsider.2 Queer theorists analyse a situation or a text to determine the relationship between sexuality, power and gender. Queer theory challenges basic tropes used to organize our society and our language: even words are gendered, and through that gendering an elliptical view of the hierarchy of society, and presumption of what is male and what is female, shines through. Queer theory rejects such binary distinctions as arbitrarily determined and defined by those with social power. It works to deconstruct these binaries, particularly the homosexual/heterosexual binary.4