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7/27/2020 Week 6: Inventing and Controlling Sexual Identities and Expressions - WS-370U-001: HISTORY OF SEXUALITIES (Summer 2020)

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Week 6: Inventing and Controlling Sexual Identities and Expressions

Update Monday morning, 7:40 -- I've added a chapter to the 2 originally posted by Leila Rupp, and updated the quiz accordingly. (As posted, the quiz included questions about readings which I had already deleted from our readings.) I apologize for the inconvenience; please let me know via email if I can be helpful- -all best--BH

The Progressive movement at the turn of the 20th century was an ambitious effort to address numerous social ills, including those associated with urbanization, political corruption, unregulated industrialization. Many of the accomplishments of individuals aligned with the movement were positive: improved public systems for hygiene; non-partisan control of voting and a crackdown on overt bribery of public officials; the first movements toward increased protections for worker safety in factories.

Another Progressive development was a new conversation about sex education based (for the most part) on facts rather than fear. Alexandra Lord summarizes some highlights in "Keeping Fit: The Origins of American Sex Education" (4 page PDF) also available at http://ultimatehistoryproject.com/early-sex-education.html

However, many influential politicians and leading citizens aligned with the Progressive movement also participated in the general hysteria toward the growing number of immigrants and other people seen as deviant on a country long accustomed to valuing only the values, language, and customs of white middle-and-upper class people. As we saw in Week 5, there was widespread agreement among such "respectable" people that any deviation from reproductive heteronormative romantic/sexual behavior was unique to those who were not like themselves.

The two chapters from Leila Rupp's book A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America begin with an overlap with the time period from last week, but continue into the 1930s.

For the quiz and discussion, please read the chapter by Clement & Velocci and at least one of Rupp's chapters:

Elizabeth Clement (she/her) and Beans Velocci (they/them), "Modern

WS-370U-001: HISTORY OF SEXUALITIES (Sum…

7/27/2020 Week 6: Inventing and Controlling Sexual Identities and Expressions - WS-370U-001: HISTORY OF SEXUALITIES (Summer 2020)

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Sexuality in Modern Times (1880s-1930s)" from Romesburg, ed., The Routledge History of Queer America

Rupp, Chapter 4 “Definitions and Deviance: Sexual Transformations at the Turn of the Century,” (73-100) Discusses how new sexual habits and a new awareness about same-sex sexuality affected public policy and cast new suspicion on the romantic friendships that had been relatively normalized in the 19th century. It's interesting to compare her examples with what we've seen happening in Portland in about the same time period.

Rupp, Chapter 5 "Coming Together: Contested Identities and the Emergence of Communities" (101-129) Surveys a range of newly identifiable sexual identities/behaviors and related gender expressions in a variety of locales including Deadwood, South Dakota; Salt Lake City; Chicago; and New York City's Greenwich Village and Harlem neighborhoods.

OPTIONAL but of interest:

Inspired by German sexologist Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Henry Gerber organized this country's first, if short-lived, homosexual rights organization in the early 1920s. His Chicago residence is the second National Historic Landmark, after the Stonewall Inn, to receive that recognition for its importance to LBGTQ+ history. Henry Gerber video; 8-minute excerpt from Out of the Past (not subtitled)

There's some overlap in the two sources which follow, but together I think they provide the most comprehensive information available about Gerber in short form:

Henry Gerber House National Historic Landmark from the National Parks Service

Henry Gerber, Wikipedia

Havelock Ellis, “Two Case Histories” from his 1897 book, Sexual Inversion; these provide a sense of how socially gendered characteristics were linked to binaristic ideas about sexuality. (e.g., Do women whistle? Or, if female-bodied people whistle, are they lesbians?)

Sigmund Freud, "Letter to an American Mother" (April 9, 1935). The original copy of Freud's letter (in English!) was mailed to Alfred Kinsey in the 1950s by the woman to whom it was addressed, and it is retained in the Kinsey Institute archives. You can see it here: A_Letter from Freud (to a mother of a homosexual) On page two is a typewritten addition: "Dear Dr. Kinsey: Herewith I enclose a letter from a Great and Good man which you may retain. From a Grateful Mother."

Excerpt re the Newport Scandal from The Straight State by Margot Canaday (4 pages).

Vito Russo, "Who's a Sissy: Homosexuality According to Tinseltown" (4-59; especially 4-31 on depictions of gender non-normative and/or folks of ambiguous sexuality or supposed homosexuality in the silent film era) This is the first chapter of his pioneering book The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, which inspired the documentary of the same name.)

C.M. Hughes, "Erotopathia" 1893 (2-page PDF; primary source)

If you're interested in the history of word usage in English (e.g., when did "homosexual" in English start appearing in print--and did it have the same meaning as the way we use it

7/27/2020 Week 6: Inventing and Controlling Sexual Identities and Expressions - WS-370U-001: HISTORY OF SEXUALITIES (Summer 2020)

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today?), the Oxford English Dictionary is a prime source. The link will take you to the pdx.edu online entry for the OED; click on the "available online" link and (after making sure you're logged in), you'll be at the search page. You can type in any word and see earliest and variant uses and meanings over time: Oxford English Dictionary (online)

The map below of Harlem nightspots and personalities was created by E. Simms Campbell, a path-breaking African American commercial artist who was, among other things, the lead artist at Esquire during the 1930s. This map published in 1933 in a weekly Manhattan newspaper mostly read by middle-upper class white adults who lived in mid-town, perhaps 80 blocks south of Harlem and is packed with in-jokes and popular Harlem entertainers, including tuxedo-wearing Gladys Bentley. (The orientation of the map has North in the lower right hand side of the map; the traffic jam depicts would-be patrons arriving from midtown, to the South).

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