Week 5 questions

91 ()p MIDDLE-CLASS SAME-SEX AFFAIRS

As the so-called YMCA scandal ran its course over several months, it I-ook on many dimensions, some of which part 2 of this study considers in detail. Chapter 4 examines how the largely middle-class attributes of Portland's gay subculture, along witl1 the sensationalism of the 1912 scan­ dal, helped alter some notions of male same-sex sexuality dominant in tl1e Nortl1west since the internationally reported Oscar Wilde affair. But first, the present chapter considers the various characteristics of the early gay commW1ity that the scandal for the first time brought to btOad pub­ lic awareness. Along with tl1e relatively ablmdant records generated ftOm this affair, chapter 3 also employs more fragmentary sources available from the 1890S through the 1920S, including the documents resulting from a 1928 crackdown on homosexuals in Portland. Using all these sources, I first establish that the "modern" gay community in the Rose City originated in the middle classes. I then investigate why this was so, arguing for direct links between the emergence of corporate capitalism, the creation of white-collar work, and the formation of a gay subrulture in turn-of-the-twentieth-century America. In the final section I scrutinize various contours of Portland's early gay community and identity, examin­ ing tl1e nature of that col11mW1ity and identity, exploring the limited role of youths in this subculture, mapping the physical geography of tlus sub­ rulture, and analyzing the gay middle-class male's sexual activities. The W1derlying tl1eme here, as throughout the chapter, is that significant so­ cial, racial, geographic, and sexual differences separated the middle-class gay subrulture of the Northwest's urban center from the transient and working-class same-sex sexual subrulture that could also be found there.

Class, Homosexuality, and the Men of Portland's 1912 Scandal

One newspaper declared that at least one hW1dred men were involved in Portland's 1912 scandal, and legal documents confirm the identities of fifty-nine. These men were remarkable in two ways. First, by and large they were white (whether foreign- or native-born). Of the forty-eight for whom nativity can be verified, tlurty-nine were American-born and white, seven were northern European or Canadian in origin, one was Mrican American, and one was eastern European. Records are some­ what less conclusive about the otl1ers: one may have been black, but tile others were white and all probably American-born.

Second, they were overwhelmingly "middle class;' according to the categories set forth in Alfred Kinsey's class anJlysi,~ of' IUlIll ()sl: \llaliry presenred in his monulllental 194,1) stlldy Srx Ntlllk/lill dtlJ In IIII III/II/If "

GAY IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY

Male: nearly 80 percent of the men implicated in the 1912 scandal had occupations associated witl1 Kinsey's lower and upper white-collar and professional groups. It is especially notewortl1Y that more than two­ thirds of those implicated in 1912 had lower white-collar occupations. Like H . L. Rowe, they were primarily clerks, bookkeepers, and office workers. In Portland's 1928 same-sex vice crackdown, ten of tile tllirteen men arrested also fell within Kinsey's lower-middle-class occupational groups: they were salesmen, clerks, teachers, and owners of small shops.3 That middle-class men, and specifically white-collar workers, should have made up the core of Portland's early homosexual commu­ nity as exposed in the 1912 scandal correlates closely with Kinsey's find­ ings regarding homosexuality in the United States as a whole for tl1e first half of the twentieth century. Kinsey discovered that those most likely to engage in same-sex activities and most likely to spend a signifi­ cant portion of their lives exclusively homosexual in behavior were men from the lower white-collar socio-occupational group.4

The question of why homosexuals were largely middle class remains open. Possibly, the location of white-collar jobs in the quickly growing urban centers played a role. Although scholars disagree slightly as to the exact connections between homosexuality, gay community, and urban life, they do recognize, as John D'Emilio first pointed out in the early 1980s, that a direct historical relationship exists. 5 Some scholars propose that urban centers, in contrast to small towns, allowed for the high de­ gree of secrecy as well as anonymous social relations that homosexually inclined individuals needed to pursue their desires without risking legal prosecution. Others have demonstrated that "anonymity" is relative and that the term should be applied carefully to enCoW1ters of protOtypical gays within the urban context. The large city might indeed provide mi­ grants from rural areas-not to mention those already living in the city­ freedom to construct their own lives with a certain degree ofliberty ftOm their families. Furtl1ermore, the large size of the city made it possible to lead a dual life in which leisure activities could very easily be separated li'om tl10se of the workplace. But more important, tile vast l1lill1bers of people witl1 similar sexual feelings congregating in the urban center al­ lowed for tile construction of a homosexual subculture that simultane­ ()\lsly enjoyed a certain anonymous relationship to tile dominant society :lI1d provided ~l milieu whose participants were hardly unknown to one :lI1orIH.: r. As rhe histori ,ln George Chauncey has remarked, "tl1e complex­ il y of' rlt~· ~' iry\ sorial alld spatial organization made it possible for gay 111 1: 11 I() COll sll'lll;I' Illl i1t'i pic pllhl ic id i.' llI'i I irs," cll:,hl i ng them to participate vi~j l)l y ill Ih l' Wl y wl lf'ld )'l' l :11 II I(' 'I;IIll l' lillf\" 10 k!.T pl"iKir pcr,mll~lllivcs

116 MIDD L E· CLASS S AME·SEX AFFA IR S

their private rather than public lives. The development of privacy helped the middle class increasingly distinguish itself from the working class.66

The Portland Vice Commission, which the mayor had appointed in 19II, concluded its work in late I912 in the midst of the homosexual scandal and unwittingly noted the role played by privacy in the city's gay subcul­ ture. ''The greater number of. .. instances wherein two or more men were involved in groups;' it reported , "were localized in hotels[-J" Only weeks earlier, the Oregon Journal had similarly recOlillted that "the mem­ bers of the brotl1erhood" most often "carried on their acts in . .. apart­ ment houses , hotels, [and] rooming houses."67

During the last years of the nineteenth and first years of the twenti­ eth century, young single men looking for white-collar work crowded into Portland's central business district and the adjacent residential neighborhood. They helped make this area the whitest, the most male, the best educated, and among the least family-oriented in the ci ty. The spatial and social configuration of this part of the city appealed to young middle-class homosexual m en. Here they constructed their own community and carried on social lives within private residences and offices. At the same time, because so many others in the district were like themselves-white, male, clerical workers of the corporate world , often living in local hotels or tl1e YMCA-they also blended easily into the district's public spaces; it was thus possible to meet others with same-sex desires in very popular venues while at the same time retain­ ing a level of anonymity. Of course, those desires differentiated them from many other young men in this area. At the same time, the specific nature of their desires and activities also differentiated them from the working-class men who engaged in same-sex affairs in the geographi­ cally near but sexually distant North End.

During the most sensational trial of the I928 vice scandal, one profit­ seeking newspaper carried portions of a witness's testimony regarding the drunken "orgies" in which some of the indicted men allegedly par­ ticipated. His "was a filth y story;' the paper trumpeted, "a tale the state's attorneys had difficulty in dragging oue' At moments, and apparently because of the scandalous nature of its details, the informant "hesitated a full minute between words ."68 The forced confessions of shocking sexual tidbits simultaneously horrified and titillated the larger citizenry of Port­ land. They also offered for public scrutiny some of the most intim:1t" and private moments between tl1e men co mpelled to rcco unt th c m. These specific sexual details, aired like so illllCh liil I )' LlIlI1<lI'Y (lUIl Y

G AY ID EN TIT Y AN D CO M M UNIT Y II7

decades ago, are worth rummaging through again. They disclose much about the meaning of gender and sex acts to the men who participated in the Rose City's early middle-class homosexual community. Moreover, they reveal some of the limits to working-class influences on the chang­ ing sexuality and culture of early-twentietl1-century America.

In addition to noting the vast economic transformation undergirding the sexual revolution tl1at swept America at the turn of the twentieth century, scholars also have commented on the contributions made to tl1at revolution by the relatively sexually liberated working classes. Dur­ ing the Victorian era, the middle classes had adhered to fairly strict social customs that separated males and females into their respective spheres, limiting their social and tlms sexual interaction. In contrast, by the end of the nineteenth century the working classes had developed heteroso­ cial forms of public entertainment, including a broad range of nightlife activities and commercialized amusements. Such activities and amuse­ ments often focused on the sexual, facilitating and encouraging attrac­ tion and relations. The middle classes were not protected from these de­ velopments, whose effects spread quickly; according to John D'Emilio :lnd Estelle B. Freedman, around 1900 "working-class forms of sexual interaction previously beyond the ken of the middle class were projected outward into society." As a result, as the historian Kevin VVhite descri bes, hy tl1e I920S working-class " patterns of behavior and se:>-'1lal norms spread to the white middle class :'69 Yet the working class was not alone ill influencing America's "first sexual revolution." In fact middle-class l)J'actices and attitudes also pushed open the boundaries of sexual expe­ ri ence and expression, as becomes apparent when we examine the nas­ ,'L' llt homosexual community - particularly the ways in which men of I iJis subculture engaged in sex with each other.

As chapters I and' 2 have noted, a wide array of sexual acts and part- 11t'1'ships are discernible in tl1e Northwest's working-class same-sex sexual ';JillCulture. Nonetheless , the most common form of sex, whether be­ I IVC Cll adult males or between men and YOUtl1S, was anal and interfemoral I"·llcrr;ltion. While oral eroticism did occur, working-class men tended to ,I I' I)i( 1it, Middle-class Noel W found this to be the case in late 1920S Port­ I, II J( I. I Ie ass erted that altl10ugh some of his marine and soldier partners III IIw city wOllld fellate him, "They were usually not interested in using ill l' ir 1l101l1' il s ." 70 The lower ti'cgllcncy of oral sex among the working , I , ,, ~l' \ i,\ ,'olllil'l11Cd ill Alli't'd Killsey's research on males ofthe "lower so­ ild kwl ~" d\ll'il1 /4 liI(' lirsl 11 :11'- o'-I'IH' rW('J]\'i e rh cemury. Kinsey found

,I il il d ll ,~ gn 1l11) 1',I ·II I.' J.d1 v (,"l 'llI'lVc ' d IlI :d U )Jl(;H':ls w/H'rllcr l1lolltll­