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A review by donasbooks
A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski
4.0
Certain themes arise in this compact history of Queerness in America. One of the most important is: How prejudice thrives within community(society); and how distinctivity (my term for the state or act of existing outside of the socially acceptable) survives despite society, in order to access community.
The reality of the persecuting society never completely vanishes from U.S. history. It becomes increasingly refined. In the colonies, social and political persecution of certain groups was relatively indiscriminate, making few distinctions among individuals within a minority group. Gradually, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, we see a growing cultural schism occurring between the private and the public, which was largely the reason people were able to explore nontraditional gender roles. p39
Full citizenship was, and to a large degree still is, predicated on keeping unacceptable behavior private. p39
Also like: When Distinctivity is defined by its own existence and not by the socially acceptable, Distinctivity gains more nuanced access to community and thus society.
Because of harsh living conditions, the absence of strict legal policing, and relaxed demands of accepted propriety, gender norms in the West were markedly different from those in the East. p42
San Francisco’s Jeanne Bonnet was repeatedly arrested for cross- dressing and petty theft; at the end of her short life, she organized prostitutes to leave their work and make a living shoplifting. p42
This is a central paradox of U.S. masculinity. Masculinity has been increasingly defined by active heterosexual desire and relationships, yet is also defined by participation in an all- male homosocial world that has the potential for sexual interaction. p44
“The cowboy is queer; he is odd; he doesn’t fit in; he resists community.” p44
And like: For moralists, demands that sexual expression and desire conform to a uniform social standard is less about maintaining sexual similarness, and more about containing Distinctivity, or rather the countless possibilities of its iteration.
For public moralists, the problem was not just that theaters bred immorality and crime, but that they let the imagination flourish. The theater was a central form of entertainment in urban areas and provided titillating alternatives to traditional ideas about gender and sexuality. This had been true for decades. In the early 1860s, poet and actor Adah Isaacs Menken, a Jewish convert of African American and Creole parentage who was a close friend of Walt Whitman’s and had both female and male lovers, became internationally infamous when shetook the lead role in Mazeppa. At the show’s climax, Menken, playing a young man, appeared mostly undressed and rode a live horse across the stage. Menken was a prototype of the socially dangerous “unruly woman” who refused to conform to accepted norms of gender and sexuality. p104-5
I like that this book treats the subject as a history of queerness, rather than a history of a collection of queer identities, and that I could formulate a reading of it from that unified place. I am slightly frustrated with what feels to me like a lack of bisexual perspective. But this book is such a concise work, I feel this could explain my complaint. We hear mainly from the expected bisexual voices-- Walt Whitman and Andy Warhol-- but I wanted to hear from Eleanor Roosevelt, Josephine Baker, and Virginia Woolf.
This is an excellent, tight history, but it makes me realize I need to read many more books on the subject. Perhaps it is the job of a good history book to leave a reader with more questions than it answers.
The reality of the persecuting society never completely vanishes from U.S. history. It becomes increasingly refined. In the colonies, social and political persecution of certain groups was relatively indiscriminate, making few distinctions among individuals within a minority group. Gradually, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, we see a growing cultural schism occurring between the private and the public, which was largely the reason people were able to explore nontraditional gender roles. p39
Full citizenship was, and to a large degree still is, predicated on keeping unacceptable behavior private. p39
Also like: When Distinctivity is defined by its own existence and not by the socially acceptable, Distinctivity gains more nuanced access to community and thus society.
Because of harsh living conditions, the absence of strict legal policing, and relaxed demands of accepted propriety, gender norms in the West were markedly different from those in the East. p42
San Francisco’s Jeanne Bonnet was repeatedly arrested for cross- dressing and petty theft; at the end of her short life, she organized prostitutes to leave their work and make a living shoplifting. p42
This is a central paradox of U.S. masculinity. Masculinity has been increasingly defined by active heterosexual desire and relationships, yet is also defined by participation in an all- male homosocial world that has the potential for sexual interaction. p44
“The cowboy is queer; he is odd; he doesn’t fit in; he resists community.” p44
And like: For moralists, demands that sexual expression and desire conform to a uniform social standard is less about maintaining sexual similarness, and more about containing Distinctivity, or rather the countless possibilities of its iteration.
For public moralists, the problem was not just that theaters bred immorality and crime, but that they let the imagination flourish. The theater was a central form of entertainment in urban areas and provided titillating alternatives to traditional ideas about gender and sexuality. This had been true for decades. In the early 1860s, poet and actor Adah Isaacs Menken, a Jewish convert of African American and Creole parentage who was a close friend of Walt Whitman’s and had both female and male lovers, became internationally infamous when shetook the lead role in Mazeppa. At the show’s climax, Menken, playing a young man, appeared mostly undressed and rode a live horse across the stage. Menken was a prototype of the socially dangerous “unruly woman” who refused to conform to accepted norms of gender and sexuality. p104-5
I like that this book treats the subject as a history of queerness, rather than a history of a collection of queer identities, and that I could formulate a reading of it from that unified place. I am slightly frustrated with what feels to me like a lack of bisexual perspective. But this book is such a concise work, I feel this could explain my complaint. We hear mainly from the expected bisexual voices-- Walt Whitman and Andy Warhol-- but I wanted to hear from Eleanor Roosevelt, Josephine Baker, and Virginia Woolf.
This is an excellent, tight history, but it makes me realize I need to read many more books on the subject. Perhaps it is the job of a good history book to leave a reader with more questions than it answers.