Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940

George Chauncey

BasicBooks, 1994 - Social Science - 478 pages

"Above all, Gay New York shows that our most intimate sexual identities are stunningly recent creations. It depicts a complex prewar sexual culture in which men were not divided into homosexuals and heterosexuals but into fairies, wolves, queers, and "normal" men. Many of those "normal" men frequently engaged in sexual relations with other men, because sexual normality was not defined by exclusive heterosexuality." "This book will change forever the way we think about the gay past - and the American past."--Jacket.

What people are saying

Review: Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940

User Review - Goodreads

I totally recognize this as a great piece of scholarship, in depth, well researched. But for me personally, it was a bit too scholarly, and I lost interest about half way through. I wish I could take ...

Review: Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940

User Review  - Aja - Goodreads

The most surprising thing about this book for me was how well it informs some of the gender performance and behaviors of today. I especially like the part of the book that discussed manliness and the ...

About the author

George Chauncey is professor of American history at the University of Chicago and the author of Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, which won the distinguished Turner and Curti Awards from the Organization of American Historians, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award. He testified as an expert witness on the history of antigay discrimination at the 1993 trial of Colorado's Amendment Two, which resulted in the Supreme Court's Romer v. Evans decision that antigay rights referenda were unconstitutional, and he was the principal author of the Historians' Amicus Brief, which weighed heavily in the Supreme Court's landmark decision overturning sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas (2003). The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives and works in Chicago.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940
• Author: George Chauncey
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: BasicBooks, 1994
• ISBN: 0465026214, 9780465026210
• Length: 478 pages
• Subjects: History / General; Social Science / Gay Studies; Social Science / Women's Studies