Assignment 1 @ AUGUST 6th

NINE

VISIBLE COMMUNITIES/INVISIBLE LIVES

Gay men and lesbians had been forming community over the previ- ous century. After World War II, they began to methodically cre-

ate national organizations to address injustices against them. This incorporation of political concerns with a cultural community

was the beginning of today's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgen- der movement. America had long been a country of joiners, often

around nationalistic or patriotic associations and especially after wars. Combining the intents of organizations such as the Benevo-

lent and Protective Order of Elks, a social club founded in 1868;

the American Legion, a veterans' organization founded in 1919; and the Knights of Columbus, a benevolent society founded in 1881

for Irish immigrant men, homosexuals slowly formed their own

"homophile" groups. In 1945 a few homosexual men in New York formed the Veter-

ans Benevolent Association and sponsored Well-attended dances and

parties. In 1947, Edith Eyde, a secretary at Hollywood's RKO Pic- tures, wrote and typed each issue of the first American homosexual publication, Vice Versa-subtitled "America's Gayest Magazine"- using the pseudonym "Lisa Ben" (an anagram for "lesbian"). Her

purpose was to find and befriend other lesbians; she gave copies to friends to pass around. A year later in Los Angeles, Merton L. Bird,

an African American man, and his lover, W. Dorr Legg, started the Knights of the Clocks. ("Clocks" was an acronym for "Cloistered

Loyal Order of the Conclaved Knights of Sophisticracy.") One of

its purposes, as Legg noted in his 1956 book Homosexuals Today:

176

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Visible Communities/Invisible Lives 177

A Handbook of Organizations and Publications, was to "promote fellowship and understanding between hom?sexuals themselves, specifically between other races and the Negro, as well as to offer its

members aid in securing employment and suitable housing. Special

attention was given to the housing problems of interracial cou11Jes of which there were several in the group." 1 The Knights ex,isted for three or four years, hosting dinners, socials, and (according to some) the occasional sex party.

There is a commonly held belief that the 1950s were marked by national economic prosperity, traditional family life, sexual re-

straint, and a well-meaning conservatism, in clear contrast to the 1960s, a decade of radicalism and violent social change. Such sim-

plistic categorization is misleading. In 19 5 5, tranquilizers were rarely prescribed, but their "consumption reached 462,000 pounds in

1958 and soared to r.15 million pounds merely a year later."2 Mid-

decade, forty to fifty million peo)'le---;.25 percent of Americans-:- were poor, and 60 percent of those over age sixty-five had annual

incomes of less than one thousand dollars. 3 At the 19 60 Republi- can National Convention, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI and possibly a homosexual, warned the country that "the three most dangerous groups in America are communists, beatniks, and egg-

heads." The FBI, seeking to discredit Martin Luther King Jr., spent enormous amounts of time and money spying on his private life.

Cold War politics gave rise to reactionary policies, and the Kennedy administration drastically increased military spending-nine billion

dollars in the first fourteen months of the administration-danger-

ously ramping up the arms race. Throughout the 19 50s and early 1960s, homosexuality was far from being "unspoken," as popular thinking has it; America was increasingly obsessed with it.

SEX AND THE BEGINNINGS OF A MOVEMENT

Key to this obsession was the publication of Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in January 1948, permanently chang- ing how Americans discussed sexuality. The Kinsey Report, as it

was commonly known, was a detailed, scientific study of American

I J

178 A Queer History of the United States

male sexual activity. Kinsey, who had made his reputation study-

ing the anatomy, biology, and behavior of gall wasps, recruited a team of trained interviewers to gather data from twelve thousand

men, then used the data from 5,300 of them to produce prelim- inary conclusions about male sexual behavior. The findings were

nuanced by age, economic class, and education level. Kinsey was interested only in his informants' behavior, not in how they under-

stood their identity. In the report's "Historical Introduction," he ex- plained that his study was "an attempt to accumulate an objectively

determined body of fact about sex which strictly avoids social or moral interpretations of the fact." 4 Kinsey's statistics and in-depth analysis discussed multiple aspects of sexuality, including fantasy, ·

masturbation, premarital sex, and sexual contacts with animals. As

the United States attempted to readjust to an overtly heterosexual paradigm after World War II, Americans found Kinsey's findings

on homosexuality the most shocking. Not only were the find-

ings initially unbelievable, they demanded to be acknowledged as

scientific. The Kinsey Report was a media sensation, joked about in popular

songs, Broadway plays, and television shows. The mainstream press

carefully, and accurately, extracted some remarkable statistics: 3 7 percent of all males had some form of homosexual contact between

their teen years and old age; 50 percent of males who remained sin- gle until the age of thirty-five had overt homosexual experiences to

orgasm; IO percent of males were more or less exclusively homosex- ual for at least three years between the ages of sixteen and fifty-five;

4 percent of males were exclusively homosexual throughout their

lives. 5

Five years later, in I953, Kinsey released Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. This study received less attention, perhaps because Kinsey estimated that the incidence of homosexual behavior in

women was half of what he found in men. He did note, however, that the incidence of female orgasm was far higher in homosexual

than heterosexual contacts. 6

Americans now understood that homosexuals were everywhere, even if you could not see them. Kinsey devised a simple scale of sex-

ual experience, now called the Kinsey scale. The scale ranged from

Visible Communities/Invisible Lives 179

o, indicating exclusively heterosexual encounters, to 6, for a person who has experienced only homosexual encounters.

Kinsey's findings were vilified by clergy, conservative journal-

ists, and traditional psychoanalysts. Although some Americans were outraged, most were fascinated. This was why From Here to Eter- nity and The Naked and the Dead were best sellers. Along with"this fascination came questioning. Undoubtedly "the report g~ve rise to a culture of suspicion surrounding male identity and sexuality."7 This new atmosphere of doubt was hinted at, but also openly articu-

lated. Shortly after the Kinsey Report's publication, Life magazine reported that "new worlds of suspicion ... were opened to doubting wives by Kinsey's revelations on men." 8 In the old way of thinking, the "invert" was immediately identifiable by his effeminate affect;

but this new, hidden homosexual could be lurking anywhere, in any

male. And he was a direct threat to heterosexuality. It was in this I context that the homophile groups wei;e founded.

The emergence of political :iction from within a community predicated on finding sexual partners was not only logical but vi-

tal. Although elements of politicized community and sexuality are present in Edith Eyde's work and the Knights of the Clocks, it was

Harry Hay, a labor organizer with ties to the Communist Party, who brought those elements together. While circulating a peti-

tion for the Stockholm Peace Pledge in the late I94os, as well as looking for men with whom to discuss the Kinsey Report, Hay

connected with like-m~nded thinkers. Several months later, in No-

vember I9 50, the Mattachine Society was born. Hay's training in Communist Party ideology and his conceptualization of the Mat-

tachine Society were directly linked and had lasting influences on

LGBT organizing. (Hay resigned from the Communist Party in I9 5I because of its antihomosexual stance.)

Using Marxist cultural theory, Hay understood homosexuals to

be a distinct and oppressed class of people able to combat ignorance with education and organize against the prejudice of the dominant

culture. Rather than simply shared sexual desires, this new cohe- sive identity was based on common political concerns as well as a distinctive history and culture. The group's "missions and pur-

poses" stated in part: "The Mattachine Society holds it possible

180 A Queer History of the United States

and desirable that a highly ethical homosexual culture emerge, as a consequence of its work, paralleling the emerging cultures of our

fellow-minorities-the Negro, Mexican, and Jewish Peoples. The Society believes homosexuals can lead well-adjusted, wholesome,

and socially productive lives once ignorance and prejudice against them is successfully combated, and once homosexuals feel they have

a dignified and useful role to play in society." 9

The Mattachine Society-the name was derived from a French

Renaissance secret fraternity of unmarried men-was organized on a Communist Party model of individual cells and hierarchical mem-

bership. The society was made up mainly of gay men, but included

lesbians. To attract new members, the organization sponsored lec- tures, socials, and discussion groups. A few members started a pub-

lication, and the first issue of ONE came out in January 1953· Sold through subscription, and eventually on newsstands in large cities,

it was published until 1972. (Its highest circulation was five thou- sand in 1960.) One of Mattachine's first actions was to protest the

arrest of Dale Jennings, a member arrested for "lewd and dissolute

behavior" in 1952. This protest was indicative of the group's com- mitment to challenge police harassment and arrests of women and men in bars and cruising grounds. Given the institutionalized hos-

tility homosexuals faced, Mattachine's growth was rapid. By 1953

it had over two thousand members and sponsored over a hundred discussion groups.

Mattachine's growth brought political diversity. With a mem-

bership that entertained a wide range of opinions, the organization

found it difficult to maintain its radical vision, especially since Mat- tachine was clearly connected to the political left. This was a con-

cern because "McCarthyism," the communist witch hunt begun by

Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1947, was gripping Washington. The "red scare" of McCarthyism led directly to the "lavender scare," a

conflation of communism with homosexuality. David K. Johnson

notes that "over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, approximately l,ooo persons were dismissed from the Department of State for al- leged homosexuality. The highest profile cases may have involved

suspicion of communism, but the majority of those separated were alleged homosexuals." 10

Visible Communities/Invisible Lives 181

The Mattachine Society underwent a major ideological~ in 1953, when some members disagreed with Bay's concept of a dis- tinct homosexual culture. During the national convention, Marilyn Rieger and others argued that homosexual equality would happen

only "by declaring ourselves, by integrating ... not as homosex}.Jals

but as people, as men and women whose homosexuality is \rrelevant to our ideals, our principles, and our aspirations." 11 This split also

produced, in 1955, The Mattachine Review, which reflected Rieger's ideological stance. (It continued publication until 1966, with a cir-

culation never larger than 2,500.) This major distinction-between claiming an outsider status and demanding acceptance as part of the

"normal" majority-has remained, in various forms, the defining division in the LGBT movement.

This split did not affect the emergence of a lesbian movement in

1955, when Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin, and three other lesbian cou- ples, two of them interracial, for~ed the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). Unlike the Mattachine Society, ~hose founding was intentionally political, the DOB was conceptualized as a social group and a way

to meet other lesbians. Lyon and Martin chose "daughters" because it sounded respectable (like Daughters of the American Revolution),

adding Bilitis, a fictional lesbian in Pierre de Louys's nineteenth- century poetry cycle Songs of Bilitis. Like "Mattachine," the name remained obscure to the average person.

The Daughters of Bilitis quickly began social and political work. Within a year they wer~ sponsoring lectures and discussions, work- ing with Mattachine when it was beneficial to both groups. In 1956

the DOB began publishing The Ladder, similar to ONE and The Mattachine Review, but focused only on issues of interest to lesbi- ans. (The Ladder ceased publication in 1972.)

The formation of a lesbian homophile organization brought gen- der issues to the forefront. Many lesbians had been, or still were, married; exposure would mean losing custody of their children. As

single women in the workforce, lesbians also faced pressure to earn

a living while having fewer job opportunities, being paid less than men, and dealing with sexual harassment. Different sexual cultures also resulted in political disagreements. Marci Gallo quotes Billye

Talmadge, an early DOB member: "There was a lot of animosity

182 A Queer History of the United States

and resentment over the fact that it was the gay guys who were creat-

ing such havoc with the police-the raids, indiscriminate sex, their

bathroom habits ... "12

Ironically, in the 1950s and into the next decade, bars and public cruising areas were serving far larger communities of homosexual

women and men than any "respectable" homophile organization. Lesbian bar culture was fundamentally a working-class phenom-

enon often rooted in butch/femme culture. As D'Emilio points ' . out, "Women who went to the&s belonged to a group that was larger, more stable, and more familiar than what DOB offered." 13

For men who had no access to the privacy of a room and lived in areas where there were no bars, the sexual culture of public parks,

movie theaters, and men's rooms was one of the few options avail- able. A wide range of public venues frequented by men has been fully

documented across the country. Small Southern cites and towns had

them, including "Jackson, Hattiesburg, and even Vicksburg, where homosexuals, as early as the 1950s, dubbed ... hotels with active tearooms [men's rooms] as 'silver tray' establishments." 14 There

were other places homosexuals could meet. Men could often find one another at Mq.rlene Dietrich and Judy Garland concerts; Chris

Connor, a noted jazz singer widely known to be lesbian, always

had a large lesbian contingent in the audience. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, avant-garde and underground films and the the- aters that screened them were the building blocks of homosexual

communities. 15 ~ Lesbians claimed community in pub.1ic~~ace. The Legion of De-

cency, a Catholic film censorship grouw1complained to Paramount Pictures that Lewis Allen's coded lesbuin ghost story The Uninvited

was a problem because "in certa~~-!~.~!~P large audiences of ques- tionable type attended this film at unusual hours. The impression created was that they had been previously informed of certain erotic

and esoteric elements in this film." 16

Disagreements over the political efficacy of a distinct homosex-

ual culture, as well as the different concerns of lesbians and gay men, resulted in two distinct responses to legal issues faced by ho-

mosexuals. The first was to work toward securing sexual freedom for all women and men by repealing sodomy laws and ending po-

(

Visible Communities/Invisible Lives 183

lice harassment associated with homosexual socializing or activity.

This approach was predicated on the anarchist belief that the state had no business in citizens' personal lives. The second was to seek

equality under the law and end all forms of discrimination against lesbians and gay men, including workplace discrimination and is-

sues relating to child custody. This approach was similar to the bat-

tles being fought by African Americans and other disenfranchised groups.

BEING PUBLIC IN PRINT

Through the 19 50s and 1960s, there was an unparalleled outpouring of representation and discussion about homosexuals. Mainstream

publishing houses released hundreds of novels featuring homosexual

characters and themes. These i11cluded respected, popular literary works such as Carson McCullers's 1946 Member of the Wedding, Truman Capote's 1958 Breakfast at Tiffany's, and James Baldwin's 1962 Another Country. Popular literature by James Barr, Patricia Highsmith, Jay Little, Brigid Brophy, Lance Horner, and Jane Rule sold to a mainstream audience or, like Barr's Quatrefoil, a mostly gay male readership. Marguerite Yourcenar's 1955 The Memoirs of Hadrian and Mary Renault's books, such as the 1956 The Last of the Wine, set in a highly homoerotic ancient Greece, allowed homosexual readers to imaginatively construct a historical past.

Lakey, a lesbian character modeled on woman-loving poet Edna St.

Vincent Millay, was the most prescient and emotionally balanced central figure in Mary McCarthy's 1962 best seller The Group. The 1950 thriller by lesbian writer Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train, which would become a film by Alfred Hitchcock a year later, explored issues of guilt and innocence (and the fine distinction between being an outcast and a criminal) through a homoerotic re- lationship that included blackmail and_ murder.

Some of these books were overtly political. Willard Motley, a gay

African American writer from Chicago who was connected to the WPA Federal Writers' Project and helped start a literary magazine

at Hull House, wrote the best-selling Knock on Any Door in 1947·

184 A Queer History of the United States

It explores the nurturing relationship between a basically hetero- sexual hustler and his steady john, who loves and supports him to

his death. The novel is a devastating expose, in line with the ideas of earlier progressive reformers, of the effects of crime and poverty

on city dwellers. Knock on Any Door sold fifty thousand copies in one month, earning its author a six-page spread in Life. A surprising number of novels, such as John Horne Burns's 1949 Lucifer with a Book, Fritz Peters's 1951 Finistere, and Gerald Tesch's 1956 Never the Same Again, feature young male teens who have a clearly articu- lated homosexual identity, marking the first time that portraits of

gay youth were seen in literature. Homosexuals might see themselves reflected in these novels, but

other mainstream publications facilitated their meeting one another.

The 1952 Washington Confidential, a best-selling expose of politi- cal and sexual corruption written by journalists Jack Lait and Lee

Mortimer, contains a chapter, replete with inflammatory antiho- mosexual language, titled "Garden of Pansies." The chapter lists,

with addresses, over fifteen homosexual gathering places, including bars, hotel lobbies, public restrooms, and bathhouses. 17 Similarly,

the June 26, 1964,,issue of Life included photos of gay male cruising places such as New York's Washington Square, Los Angeles's Persh-

ing Square, and San Francisco's leather SIM scene. A double-page photo spread of men at the Tool Box, a gay biker bar, was captioned, "These brawny young men in their leather caps, shirts, jackets and

pants are practicing homosexuals, men who turn to other men for affection and sexual satisfaction. They are part of what they call the

'gay world,' which is actually a sad and often sordid world."

Such feature stories and exposes were manifestations of Ameri- cans' desire to grapple with the changes that happened after the

war. Part of this process was an intellectual reevaluation of the re- lationship between the individual and society. Harry Hay's idea of

a cultural minority fit neatly with liberal, contemporary trends in sociological and psychological analysis. Both of these approaches-

professionalized by "experts" -had a major role in shaping how Americans thought about the homosexual. Sociological works such

as the 1950 The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney and William H. Whyte's 1956 The Organization

Visible Communities/Invisible Lives 185

Man mapped a sociological portrait of the American character and were a template for works analyzing the homosexual.

Beginning with the publication of Donald Webster Cory's The Homosexual in America in 1951, numerous nonfiction works- books, journal articles, and magazine pieces-examined the place of the new homosexual in American society. Jess Stern's pop~lar, journalistic The Sixth Man, published in 1962, was fihed with pitiable images of homosexuals, as was his 1964 The Grapevine: A Report on the Secret World of the Lesbian. The "sociology of the homosexual" was frequently conflicted, and when presented through the lens and language of journalism, often exploitative. The

bias of these books was balanced by others. In the 1962 Strangers in Our Midst: Problems of the Homosexual in American Society, Alfred A. Gross stated that "it is high time to discard the view that the homosexual's conduct excludes him from the protection of the

community" and compared contemporary sex laws to the Spanish Inquisition and Nazi Germany. '

Psychology had risen in American culture to be an influential lens

through which people understood themselves and society. In 1956 Dr. Evelyn Hooker, a psychologist at UCLA, used funding from the

National Institute of Mental Health to administer three standard personality tests to thirty homosexuals and thirty heterosexuals.

The anonymous responses were read by three experts, who discov- ered absolutely no differences between the two groups. Hooker's

paper was published in_r957, but made little impact on the thinking of the professional community. Why was this?

Professional psychological thought in the 1950s and early 1960s was in direct reaction to the social and sexual freedoms claimed by

women and homosexuals. Because those freedoms were seen as fun- damentally threatening to how society was organized, it was virtu-

ally impossible to treat homosexuality with any neutrality. (Kinsey did, which is why his critics were so vehement in their attacks on

him.) The country was in a period of cultural panic and turned to psychologists for solutions to the "problem" of the homosexual.

Psychoanalysts such as Edmund Bergler, Irving Bieber, and Frank S. Caprio were conservative traditionalists who viewed homosex-

uality as a serious problem. In his 1956 Homosexuality: Disease

186 A Queer History of the United States

or a Way of Life, Bergler wrote that "homosexuality is a neurotic condition .... Specific neurotic defenses and personality traits that

are partly or entirely psychopathic are specifically and exclusively

characteristic of homosexuals, and ... these defenses and traits put the homosexual into a special psychiatric category." 18 Caprio was equally dismissive in his analysis: "Lesbianism is a symptom, and

not a disease entity. It is the result of a deep-seated neurosis which

involves narcissistic gratifications and sexual immaturity. It also represents a neurotic defense mechanism for feelings of insecurity." 19

Psychoanalysts believed that homosexuality, like most diseases, could be cured-a template that reinforced legal codes as well as ev-

eryday social bias. These psychoanalytic theories were predicated on

deeply conservative ideas about sexuality. Bergler was also against divorce, premarital sex, and all forms of sexual experimentation;

he supported traditional notions of sex, gender roles, and family arrangements and believed that women's sexuality was inseparable

from reproduction and motherhood. Bergler and Beiber received great public attention, but so did more

liberal theorists. Albert Ellis, whose voluminous, popular writings

on sex were published for a half century starting in the early 19 50s, spent his career fighting what he called "sex guilt." His radical ideas

were shocking. In the 1958 Sex Without Guilt he stated: "Some of us are able to benefit from adultery and some of us are not. Had we dare, then, make an invariant rule for all?" 20 He also claimed that

"female frigidity" did not exist; it was a male invention to control

women. And in complete repudiation of a century of conservative medical advice, he argued that it is "difficult to conceive of a more

beneficial, harmless, tension-releasing act than masturbation." 21 El-

lis's high popularity was undoubtedly due to the fact that he gave people professional permission to do what they were already doing.

It is telling that when he wrote his 1965 Homosexuality: Its Causes and Cures, Ellis, not unlike Bergler and other conservatives, under-

stood homosexual desire as a serious pathology: "Most fixed homo- sexuals, I am now convinced, are borderline psychotic or outrightly

psychotic."22 (By the early 1970s, Ellis had changed his views and become an active supporter of the gay rights movement.)

Bergler and Ellis were philosophically antithetical to one an-

Visible Communities/Invisible Lives 187

other on many issues, but agreed on the differentiations betwee_n

female and male homosexuality. Both argued that male and female homosexuals were pathological, but that it was easier for the les-

bian to be "cured" if she only accepted marriage and motherhood.

The male homosexual was viewed as a predatory, hypersexual 19per with few friends and no connection to a "civilizing" het~rosexual family. These widely disseminated archetypes-the lesbian wait-

ing to be fulfilled as a woman, the sexually rapacious homosexual male-were fantasies that emerged after World War II. Each served

a specific cultural function that was to play out in mass-market publications.

The large number of lesbian pulps written by heterosexuals con-

firmed the prejudices of the psychologists. Pulps-mass-market,

inexpensive paperback books-had a visibility, and an audience, far wider than the mainstream titles with lesbian or homosexual

themes. Pulps were sold on ne'":sstands, not in bookstores. With their lurid, eye-catching cover art, they were a major venue through

which heterosexuals and homosexuals discovered homosexual sub-

culture. In the 1950s, many of the gay male pulps were reprints of previously published literary novels. Almost all of the many hun- dreds of lesbian pulps were paperback originals, edited and pub-

lished by mainstream paperback houses run by heterosexual men.

Some pulps, written by lesbians such as Marijane Meaker (under the pen name Vin Packer), Ann Bannon, and Valerie Taylor, presented

a sympathetic view of lesbian life, although their exploitative pack- aging emphasized sordidness and loneliness. Valerie Taylor's 1960

Stranger on Lesbos was billed as "the searching novel of a lonely young wife faced with the temptations of unnatural love"; this was

a complete misrepresentation. In contrast, the majority of lesbian pulps, written by heterosexual men, were exploitative and unsym- pathetic.

For many lesbian readers, these novels performed the same func-

tion as the Life magazine article did for gay men: they were guide- books to lesbian life. Many of the pulps described Greenwich Village

bar life and how women dressed to be recognizably lesbian. For heterosexuals, the books were titillating; although they reinforced

stereotypes, they made lesbianism, and by extension homosexuality,

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188 A Queer History of the United States

visible. In her introduction to the anthology Lesbian Pulp Fiction, Katherine Forrest describes finding Ann Bannon's Odd Girl Out in

Detroit, Michigan, in 19 57:

I did not need to look at the title for clues; the cover leaped out at me from the drugstore rack: a young woman with sensu-

ous intent on her face seated on a bed, leaning over a prone woman, her hands on the other woman's shoulders.

... I found· it when I was eighteen years old. It opened the

door to my soul and told me who I was. It led me to other

books that told me who some of us were, and how some of us

lived. 23

Ann Bannon's novels, as did others, sold hundreds of thousands of

copies. It is safe to say that millions of these books were sold, reach-

ing an-audience far beyond the homophile publications. The psychologist's view of homosexual men was not reflected in

the gay male novels, but in a new genre: the physical culture maga-

zine for homosexual men. In 1945 Bob Mizer, a Los Angeles pho- tographer, took "bc;efcake" photos of men at Venice's Muscle Beach and started a small business catering to bodybuilders who needed

photographs for competitions. In 1951 he published Physique Pic- torial, the first physique magazine aimed at the male homosexual interested in appreciating, rather than becoming (as in Bernarr Mac- fadden's Physical Culture), the idealized male form. Mizer's photo- graphs drew on the images of von Gloeden, Day, and Eakins as well

as the photographs of the male body that were prevalent during the war. There was no frontal nudity (until censorship laws changed in

the late 1960s), but the eroticized male body was now more preva-

lent then ever in popular culture. Physique Pictorial's circulation increased dramatically with each

issue. It was sold on newsstands next to the pulp novels, hetero- sexual physique magazines, and heterosexual pinup magazines like

Playboy, which started in 19 5 5. Similar publications, such as Vim, Tomorrow's Man, Adonis, and Grecian Guild Quarterly, quickly emerged. Tomorrow's Man, one of the more conservative of the muscle magazines, may have had a circulation of up to one hundred

Visible Communities/Invisible Lives 189

thousand. Circulation estimates for other publications are lower,

but there were over a hundred such titles in English-speaking counc

tries between 1950 and 1970. 24 Clearly the lesbian pulps and the physique magazines were integral in building a national homosexual

community. f1 Physique Pictorial printed letters from readers attesting. to its im-

portance to them: "I know that I am not alone in my beliefs." "You are doing a truly wonderful job in uniting young men from all over

the world who share a common interest." "Without the Pictorial, those of us who share these common ideals, wherever we might be, would be isolated."25

The physique magazines also featured advertisements for films, paintings, photos of specific models, life-drawing instruction, and

erotic clothing. David K. Johnson argues that such advertising was

integral to the creation of a national homosexual consumer culture. The "mail order catalogues like, Vagabond out of Minneapolis or

Guild Press out of Washington ... [offered a] host of gay consumer goods ... including greeting cards, musical LPs, pulp novels, bar guides, lingerie, cologne, and jewelry." 26

Over the next five decades, the rise of an LGBT consumer culture increasingly defined the community, with complicated results. The

LGBT community became more acceptable, since its identity was predicated on consumption, not sexual behavior. But more progres-

sive political action was frequently impeded as acceptability in the marketplace became valued over core political values of justice and fairness.

The power of the physique magazines were in their reclamation of the sexualized male body as fundamental to homosexual com-

munity. Although they were novels, the potency of the pulps resided

in the beautifully designed, emotionally vivid, sexually lurid covers. Certainly the readership for the homophile magazines and for the

pulp and physique publications differed by hundreds of thousands. Many contemporary lesbians look to the pulps as prime examples of

butch/femme identities that have been central to the organization of lesbian culture in the United States for much of this century.

The images in Physique Pictorial had an enormous influence on American culture. A preponderance of images presented young white

190 A Queer History of the United States

men in a variety of hypermasculine outsider or rebel roles: cowboys,

motorcycle gang members, Native Americans, gladiators, soldiers, frontiersmen, and rakish sailors on leave. These images resonated on

multiple levels. Reminiscent of homoeroticized males in the works of Cooper, Melville, and Whitman, they also evoked the homoerotic

images that emerged from World War II. (Leslie Fiedler's 1948 essay "Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!" was as much about the homoeroticism of the. war as about nineteenth-century Ameri-

can literature.) And the Physique Pictorial images were an embodi- ment of the dangerous, rebellious homosexual man pathologized in

the writings of psychologists. The hyperheterosexuality of 1950s American culture contained

a deep distrust of the single man. This perspective was reinforced by the professional psychologists. Hendrik Ruitenbeek, a respected

psychoanalyst, noted in 1966 that "contemporary America seems to have no room for the mature bachelor .... A single man over thirty

is now regarded as a pervert, a person with severe emotional prob-

lems, or a poor creature fettered to mother." 27

This fear of the single man is seen most viscerally in Hollywood

films, with their images of dangerous, potentially violent men. The most famous of these were stars such as James Dean, Montgom-

ery Clift, Marlon Brando, and Anthony Perkins, each embodying a different type of moody, sensitive rebel. The murderous juvenile

delinquents in The Blackboard Jungle (1955) and the gangs of mo- torcyclists who invade and take over a town in The Wild Ones (1953) were scarier versions of the leather-jacketed men with chains

and leather caps in Physique Pictorial. Novels such as Irving Shulman's 1947 best seller The Amboy

Dukes and the 1955 paperback original The Thrill Kids by Vin Packer (the pen name of Marijane Meaker) hinted at homosexual longings in gang members. Women and girls connected to gangs

were always portrayed as sexually promiscuous, sometimes engag-

ing in sex with both men and women. The connection between the juvenile delinquent and the homo-

sexual was strong in the social sciences as well. Writing in 1947, psychoanalyst Kate Friedlander connected the similar "anti- social character formation" of the homosexual and the juvenile

Visible Communities/Invisible Lives 191

delinquent. 28 In 1959, the national notoriety surrounding the gang- related "Capeman" murders in Manhattan increased when the pres.s

reported that the sixteen-year-old, mentally unstable, mostly home- less, illiterate killer had sex with men and that the Vampires gang

with whom he was associated "was made up of individuals who

were actively and passively homosexual."29 Americans were so ~~n­ cerned about the juvenile delinquent-and the homosexu~lity im- plicit in the stereotype-that Congress formed two committees, the Children's Bureau and the Continuing Committee on the Prevention and Control of Delinquency, to combat it.

Rebel Without a Cause, the most famous of hundreds of delin- quent films, made the teen rebel into a national hero. Nicholas Ray

directed the 1955 film and also wrote the story, which was originally

adapted for the screen by Irving Shulman. James Dean was iconic as misunderstood teen Jim Stark. Jim's two relationships in the film

are with Judy, an unhappy young wornan played by Natalie Wood, and Plato, a troubled gay teen played by Sal Mineo. Ray was clear

in establishing Plato's sexuality: the teen keeps a photograph of ac- tor Alan Ladd in his school locker and is obviously in love with Jim.

In one unfilmed version of the script, Jim and Plato kiss. Mineo would later claim that he was "proud to play the first gay teenager

in films." 30 Ray consciously used sexually ambiguous images-all of

the young men in the film look like Hollywood versions of the Phy- sique models-to enhance the film's sexual and emotional appeal. Rebel and other films w,ere successfully mainstreaming an iconic ho- mosexual type, barely concealed, to a huge audience who remained unaware of its origins.

Rebel Without a Cause resonated with audiences then, and still does today, because it addresses questions of conformity. Histori-

cally, when faced with a cultural mandate of conformity, Ameri- cans have found escape by becoming enthralled with rebels such as

Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, and John Dillinger. The concerns of Rebel Without a Cause emerged from cultural ten- sions over conformity and rebellion that can be seen in some of the professional psychological and sociological literature. Psychoana-

lyst Robert J. Lindner wrote several best-selling books arguing that conformity, which he called "adjustment," is "a mendacious idea,

192 A Queer History of the United States

biologically false, philosophically untenable, and psychologically harmful."31 He claimed that rebellion against conformity is the only

salvation for the human race. He also made the radical case, in a forty-five-page argument, that homosexuality is a form of sexual

and cultural resistance to society's mandate to conform. Lindner admired the homophile groups and agreed that laws biased against

homosexuals had to be changed, but maintained that homosexual-

ity was a misguided and pathological response to America's culture of profound sexual repression. Lindner's work is emblematic of how

conflicted progressive ideas about conformity and rebellion in rela-

tionship to homosexuality were at this time. 32

In addition to the juvenile delinquent, Physique Pictorial pro- moted another nonconformist homosexual image that became a

prototype for American men. This was the image of the muscled, handsome, sexually active man who-although not the effeminate

homosexual-was softer-looking and less aggressively masculine than the traditional male image. Postwar American men-vulner-

able, and comfortable with being sexual objects-appreciated the rebel image, but could relate more to this softer, sexy masculine im-

age. Actors such as. Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue, Guy

Madison, George Nader, Tom Tryon, and Rory Calhoun embodied this new image: sexy but romantic, masculine but approachable.

This new prototype evolved into the sexually active "wolf" or lady-killer who, in a new plot twist for the Hollywood marriage

comedy, has to be tricked into getting married against his better

judgment. Films such as The Tender Trap (I955), starring Frank Sinatra, and Pillow Talk (I959), with Rock Hudson and Doris Day, revel in this conflict. These male characters are fully-even com- pulsively-heterosexual. However, they resist the traditional male

traits demanded by gender norms and consumer capitalism. Rather than being emotionally dependable, professionally secure, and so-

cially important, the men in these films are lying, vain, emotionally irresponsible pleasure seekers. They not only refuse to accept the

responsibilities of mature heterosexual relationships, but often in- vent false personas to fool people and society. (In Pillow Talk, Rock

Hudson's character even invents an overtly homosexual persona to

court Doris Day and highlight his own manliness.)

Visible Communities/Invisible Lives 193

This prototype and its more dangerous twin, the rebel, wer.e

part of a larger shift in American culture. Barbara Ehrenreich ex" plores the myriad ways in which men rebelled against postwar

culture's strict male gender roles. Men retired into their basement

workshop on a Saturday afternoon to avoid their wife and kids,, or they retreated into the sexual and consumer fantasies off lay boy. Homosexuality played an enormous role in shaping the lives of J heterosexual men in the I95os and early I96os. Ehrenreich notes that "the ultimate reason a man would not just 'walk out the

door' was the taint of homosexuality which was likely to follow

him. Homosexuality, as the psychiatrists saw it, was the ultimate escapism."33

The relationship of these images to American culture was com- plicated. The man featured in Physique Pictorial was the dangerous single man who was never burdened by the expectations of mar- riage, family, and children. He was the,object of social scorn, yet he

was the sheer embodiment of m~le pleasure-seeking without con- sequences. As such, he was both a threat and an object of envy. Homosexual males-and in a slightly different way, lesbians-were

culturally trapped in these years between the image of the perverted, psychopathic outcast and a beacon of possibility of some other way to live.

The new ideas about masculinity that emerged from homosex- ual culture were reinforced by the homosexual influence in the film industry. Actors such as Hudson, Nader, and Hunter "helped set

the style and tone of masculinity for a generation," even as their

homosexuality and relationships were open knowledge within the

industry. 34 Not coincidently, Rebel, a film with tremendous impact on American culture, had roots in nontraditional sexual cultures. Nicholas Ray, who was married four times, was sexually involved

with both women and men for most of his life. James Dean and Sal

Mineo were both primarily homosexual. Jack Simmons, allegedly Dean's boyfriend at the time, played one of the gang members. The

film industry was tolerant of nonheterosexual behaviors as long as they were not publicized, and most actors were able to be success-

fully closeted while having great influence on the popular, hetero- sexual imagination. This was true of Tryori, Perkins, Dean, and

194 A Queer History of the United States

Clift. Teen heartthrobs Guy Madison and Rory Calhoun had a long-

term affair. 35 Many homosexuals had marriages of convenience. Hudson was married to Phyllis Gates, who was his agent's secretary

and a lesbian, for a short period of time to please his fan base and

the studio executives. It would have been career suicide for a Hollywood star to be

openly homosexual, yet personal lives often become public. As early as 1948, movie magazines were hinting at Clift's private life with

headlines such as "Is It True What They Say about Monty?" and "He's Travelin' Light" (a veiled reference to the phrase "light in the

loafers," indicating male homosexuality). 36 James Dean's sexuality

was an open enough secret that in Walter Ross's 1958 best-selling novel The Immortal, the main character, who was clearly modeled on Dean, was a homosexual who also slept with women. Published just over two years after Dean's untimely death, the book, with cover

art by the young Andy Warhol, was advertised with a forty-foot by twenty-foot billboard in midtown Manhattan.

As much as bias against homosexuals existed, the cultural ob- session with homosexuality increasingly blurred the line between

heterosexual and homosexual. The buff, approachable, sexually vul- nerable young Hollywood male actor often appeared shirtless and in

revealing positions in publicity shots and fan magazines. Often the

only difference between these photographs and those in Physique Pictorial was the context. The December 1953 issue of Tomorrow's Man included an eight-page feature on Tab Hunter at home on his ranch, where "he leads an athletic life to keep in shape for the rig-

ors of theatrical life." Illustrated with twelve posed beefcake pho-

tos, ten of them shirtless, the article claimed that Hunter's "single greatest asset is his resemblance to the down-to-earth, wholesome,

'red blooded American boy."' With no mention of dating or girl- friends, Hunter's image as an emerging big star was shockingly

ambiguous.

As the 1950s evolved into the 1960s, the two types of Ameri- can masculinity appeared in different artistic forms and guises. The emotional power of rock and roll was in its sexual exuberance. Early

white rock-and-roll performers, such as Elvis Presley, Bill Haley,

and Buddy Holly, displayed a juvenile delinquent image that was

Visible Communities/Invisible Lives 195

overtly sexual, exhibitionistic, and flamboyant. They chose this im- age in part because they were drawing on the highly emotive African

American roots of rhythm and blues in the music of Fats Domino,

Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley. Social reformers, clergy, and conser- vative civic groups claimed that rock and roll caused juvenil~ de-

linquency and called for a boycott of record companies,and radio stations. In California, legislators banned certain records from pub-

lic play; in Memphis, Tennessee, local police confiscated jukeboxes that contained "offensive" records. Linda Martin and Kerry Segrave

note that in 1954, the industry was so worried about the backlash against risque lyrics that Billboard, the industry trade magazine, urged radio stations not to play some songs that were listed on the magazine's Top Ten charts. 37

To the moralist, the threat of rock's sexual content was often linked to homosexuality. Little Richard, whose flamboyant stage

presence and appearance was s1een by most audiences as an indi- cator of homosexuality, changed the lyrics of "Tutti Frutti" when

he cut the record in 19 5 5. His original version included the lines "Tutti Frutti, good booty I If it don't fit, don't force it I You can grease it, make it easy." W. T. Lhamon argues persuasively that Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally" is about the singer's Uncle

John's involvement with a transvestite, the "bald-headed Sally,"

who is "built for speed" and with whom he is sneaking into alleys. 38

If Elvis and Little Richard were the bad boys-the delinquents- of rock, the new wave of pretty, teen-boy crooners such as Frankie

Avalon, Fabian, Pat Boone, and Ricky Nelson were the musical ana- logues of the new, more gently masculine male stars. These young

men, almost all in their mid to late teens with crew cuts or pom- padours, resembled the young, preening, less muscled physique

models. Teen culture at times overtly acknowledged the influence of

male homosexual culture. In the 1964 film Muscle Beach Party with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, the wholesome teens' beach

fun is threatened by professional musclemen wearing hot pink and J' lavender trunks and capes. The film is filled with coded jokes about homosexual bodybuilders; for example, the men are being managed by a promoter named Jack Fanny.

196 A Queer History of the United States

In the postwar era, style and dress for heterosexual women and men evolved quickly as they began reacting to changes in gender

roles and gender presentation. Gay men and lesbians had created cultures that produced specific physical markers-clothing, speech,

imagery, affect, and deportment-crucial to identifying one another and creating group identity. Ironically, many of these styles and new

ways of displaying gender, which often made gay and lesbian people

more vulnerable, were ultimately adopted by mainstream culture. The changes for men were perhaps the most striking. Robert Wood

argues that mainstream male fashion trends in the r95os and early r96os were primarily influenced by trends that first surfaced in the

male homosexual community. Popular styles such as patterned and brightly colored shirts, strapped undershirts, black sports shirts,

tighter-fitting pants, chinos, loafers, and low-cut boots all began as homosexual fashions. The same was true of flashy watchbands,

ornate rings, pinky rings, wrist jewelry, and neck chains. All of these fashions were worn to eroticize the male body or to make it more

sexually attractive through ornamentation. 39

Styles for women had already begun to change during the war,

and women's dress and grooming were becoming increasingly more

casual. Women "bobbed" their hair in the r92os, shedding the Vic- torian style of long tresses, but short hair became far more com-

mon in the r94os and r9 50s. The idea of women wearing pants and men's shirts was popularized during the r93os by actors such as

Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, and Marlene Dietrich. The war made these once-bold fashion statements into everyday wear. By the

J r95os, heterosexual women took many presentational cues from les- bian's wardrobes, partly because they were in essence a rejection of older fashion that sexually highlighted the female body for the male

gaze. Even with fewer women having full-time jobs than during the war, the level of social engagement-caring for children, driving to

stores, running parent-teacher associations, participating in com- munity groups-was higher than before and demanded far more

casual clothing. These changes gave women the social permission

I to wear slacks at home or at informal events and to choose simpler blouses, blazers, and outerwear, such as car coats, that were practi- cal and not necessarily glamorous.

Visible Communities/Invisible Lives 197

"HIDING" IN PLAIN VIEW

The emerging gay culture was beginning to be acknowledged by heterosexuals as a major influence on mainstream culture. This was

especially true of the influence of gay males on the mainstream arJe. Censorship on the Broadway stage had loosened up enough,so that

homosexuality could be discussed-even if it occurred offstage- in plays such as A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams's

r948 Pulitzer Prize winner. John Van Druten's r950 Bell, Book and Candle, a comedy about witches who live in Greenwich Village and have their own hidden clubs and code words, was understood by

New York theatergoers as an obvious allegory about a homosex- ual community. Two years later, Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories-whose main character, based on its author, is clearly gay- was adapted for the stage by Van Druten as I Am a Camera. Robert Anderson's r953 Tea and Sympathy was a hard-hitting look at sus- pected homosexuality in a New England boys' school. That same year, Calder Willingham adapted his novel End as a Man, which examined homosexuality in a military school, for Broadway. Ten-

nessee Williams won a second Pulitzer in r955 for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, about a married man haunted by his love for his late best friend. In r956, Patrick Dennis's best-selling novel Auntie Mame be- came a stage hit by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. Although the play had no overt homosexual content, its sensibility, as in the

novel, drew enormously· from homosexual culture, and the main

character changed her elaborate outfits as often as a drag performer.

The popular revue New Faces of r956 featured T. C. Jones, a noted female impersonator who had already toured extensively with the

Jewel Box Revue. The following year Jones appeared in his own show, Mask and Gown, to great acclaim. Clearly, Broadway audi- ences were more than accepting of male homosexual themes and culture.

Hollywood was eager to film these plays; all of them, with the exception of the two Jones vehicles, were made into movies, with

adjustments to the homosexual content. Film censorship was finally breaking down as producers and directors dodged the Production

Code. Some Like It Hot, predicated on men dressed as women, and

198 A Queer History of the United States

Suddenly Last Summer, clearly about homosexuality, were released

in 1959· A film of Lillian Hellman's 1934 play The Children's Hour grappled with a lesbian scandal, and the 1961 British film A Taste of Honey portrayed a gentle homosexual man. At least three movies in 1962 featured gay themes: Advise and Consent, centered on a Wash- ington, D.C., political scandal; the British film Victim, which took a sympathetic look at homosexuals who were being blackmailed; and That Touch of Mink, a sex comedy. Lesbian characters offhandedly

appeared in All Fall Down and Walk on the Wild Side in 1962, and in The Balcony and The Haunting in 1963. The next year, Gore Vidal's The Best Man combined politics and sex; Goodbye Charlie tossed lesbian jokes into a sex comedy; and Black Like Me grappled with homosexuality and race. Open homosexuality was clearly now

a staple of mass entertainment. During this time, openly gay artists were writing and presenting

their work without the interference of mainstream producers, man- agers, or curators. This new wave of theater, film, and art emerged

in urban areas with thriving lesbian and gay communities. Caffe

Cino, a Greenwich Village coffee house founded by Joe Cino, was the first off-off-Broadway theater. Joe Cino began by producing

dramatic readings, but soon moved to presenting works by homo- sexual writers such as Oscar Wilde, Thornton Wilder, William Inge,

and Terence Rattigan in ways that brought out their coded subtext. The radicalism of Caffe Cino and other companies that followed-

Judson Poets' Theater, Ridiculous Theater Company in 1964, the

Cockettes in San Francisco in 1968, and New York's Hot Peaches in 1969-was in presenting plays with explicit gay content in an

openly gay environment. Major American playwrights such as Rob-

ert Patrick, Al Carmines, Lanford Wilson, Tom Eyen, Charles Lud- lam, Jean-Claude van Itallie, and William M. Hoffman all emerged

from this setting. Most of the people involved in these companies (with a few ex-

ceptions, such as the lesbian playwright and director Maria Irene Fornes} were white gay men, reflecting the fragmentation of both

communities and movements. African American companies were formed later; the New York-based New Lafayette Theater and the

Negro Ensemble Company were both founded in 1967. Lesbian the-

Visible Communities/Invisible Lives 199

ater thrived later as well, with the growth of women's and feminist theater companies. The alternative arts scene in New York culture

' including theater, fine arts, music, and literature, was intricately

tied to the continual growth of homosexual culture. Similar cultural

s~enes were evolving in Los Angeles's Silver Lake and San Fl)51n- c1sco's North Beach. The impact on national American culture was enormous.

Concurrent with theater, underground film culture was thriv-

ing during the 1950s and 1960s. As early as 1947, twenty-year-old Kenneth Anger, formerly a child actor in Hollywood films, made

the homosexual-themed Fireworks, a masturbatory dream film star-

ring himself. Fireworks became a touchstone for underground film culture. By the early 1960s, openly gay filmmakers such as James Broughton, Michael and George Kuchar, Andy Warhol, and Jack

Smith-whose 1964 Flaming Creatures was continually banned throughout the United States for decades-were in the forefront

of redefining the possibilities of American film. This was a pivotal cultural moment for homosexual artists. They now had the per-

mission to produce openly gay work without clear traditions and antecedents.

The filmmakers began drawing on past mass-produced popular

culture-193os films, classic film stars with exaggerated gender ex- pression, and vintage mass-produced artifacts such as lamps, jew-

elry, and clothing-to express their ideas. This reclaiming of past

popular culture, often making fun of it while simultaneously using it to comment on the present, was called "camp." Lesbian cultural

critic Susan Sontag states that "the essence of Camp is its love of the

unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And 'Camp' is esoteric- something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small

urban cliques."40 Sontag's "small urban cliques" were homosexuals, who had traditionally used codes as a way of identifying one another

and, ostracized from the mainstream, formed their own satiric take on "normal."

This transformative use of material entered the mainstream

imagination and became a predominant means of expression. Andy Warhol noted that "drag queens are ambulatory archives of ideal

movie-star womanhood." Considered the primary theoretician of

200 A Queer History of the United States

the pop art movement, Warhol specialized in taking the everyday

and the mundane-the familiar image of a Campbell's soup can-

and insisting that viewers adjust their reality to see them differently. As Warhol stripped away artifice by calling attention to it, an-

other artistic movement called attention to the radical potential of what was left after exposing themselves emotionally and psycho-

logically. The Beats were members of a small literary movement that

started in the homosexual and bohemian enclaves of San Francisco and New York in the early 1950s. The movement produced great works that changed American culture, such as Allen Ginsberg's

poem "Howl," Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road, and William Burroughs's Naked Lunch. The word "beat," with origins in drug and jazz culture, originally meant "robbed," and came to mean,

for these writers, "The world is against me."41 Ginsberg noted that "the point of beat is that you get beaten down to a certain naked-

ness where you are actually able to see the world in a visionary

way."42 The Beat movement and homosexual culture were inextricably

intertwined. The Beat writers' rejection of enforced gender roles and sexual behaviors, their reliance on self-expression through the arts and resistance to censorship, their antimilitarist and antistatist

stance, and their insistence on being true to their own vision were all qualities that had been manifested by homosexual communities.

Not all Beat writers were openly homosexual, but many were: Allen

Ginsberg, John Wieners, Robert Duncan, William Burroughs, Peter

Orlovsky, Jack Spicer, Steve Jonas, Herbert Hunke, Harold Norse. Some heterosexual Beats, such as Kerouac and Neal Cassady, also

had sex with men. The Beats' disaffected position was shared by many in America,

explaining why their mythos became an object of such fascination.

By the mid-195os, beatniks-a term coined by Herb Caen, a San Francisco columnist-appeared. Beatniks were "avant garde camp followers" and a "faddish commercialization" of the Beats, as well

as "a slightly more adult alternative to rock and roll." But the phe-

nomenon was indicative of how much average Americans longed for alternatives, even in their imaginations, to their lives. 43 The Beat

movement and beatnik culture were a conduit of homosexual cul-

Visible Communities/Invisible Lives 201

ture to a much wider audience. They were also a sign of how remark- ably omnipresent homosexuality was in mid-century America. In a 1982 essay, "A Definition of the Beat Generation," Ginsberg cred-

its the Beats with launching the radical women's liberation, Black

Power, and gay liberation movements; promoting sentiment ag~inst the war in Vietnam; igniting an interest in Eastern religions and

philosophy; and fostering the idea of free love-or as the 1960s hip- pies, the spiritual descendants of the Beats, called it, "do your own thing."44

The cultural valorization of the Beats coincided with the legal validation of homosexual representation in the media. In 195