The term sexuality did not begin to exist until the last century, yet this distinction is still muddled in today's society, with people associating gay men with female interests by default. Sexuality as a term sprang out of the conflict between feminine and masculine men in the 1930s, a battle that continues today in various forms and an educational campaign still needed for many people today.
In the early twentieth century labels began to be applied to the lifestyle of gay men and women, shifting classification of homosexuals to include not just a single behavior but patterns of behavior, ways of being, and identity. Gay men known as “fairies” have been described as an intermediate sex, possessing male biology but the movement of females. This was a prominent and public gay image, yet it was by no means the full image of the gay community, since in fact most gay men of the time were more private about their sexual behavior and saw their actions as masculine, not feminine. These men did not see gay sex as assuming the role of the opposite gender as many fairies, and the society who saw fairies, came to assume. Because of this gay majority’s discontent with the public image of fairies, a new culture of “queer” men formed, which was notable for not being public and rejecting feminine classification. This ultimately lead to the creation of “sexuality” which became “a distinct domain of personality independent of gender” (Chauncey, 100). In separating sexuality and gender, the gay community created more outlets for expressing one’s identity due to the creation of the masculine image of the queer, sophisticated man.
Men with same-sex attractions who did not identify as fairies could not find a niche between “normal men” and gay men, whose image was dominated by fairies. To address this dissatisfaction with the image of gay men while simultaneously not lying about their sexual preferences, the radical division between gender and sexuality occurred—separating sexual behavior from the genders they have long been prescribed to (even historically to the Greek love which defined power and status, including gender, through the subject’s role in acts of penetration). Thus, the division allowed men to practice same-sex sexual activity, while not assuming a label they did not entirely agree with.
Yet, despite these attempts, the nature of these masculine “queer” men was to be more private, which perpetuated the image of the fairies as the reigning image for “gay man.” The public face of gay men was this image, which lead many queers to blame “anti-gay hostility on the failure of fairies to abide by straight middle-class conventions of decorum in their dress and style” (Chauncey, 105). This antagonism was set along class lines—fairies were predominantly from working class contexts versus the more middle-class queer subgroup—which interestingly created two public cultures. While queer men would act in more feminine ways in private, gay settings, they would not publicly act in this way as fairies would (Chauncey, 105). Thus, behavior at gay scenes was more homogenized, but the public attitudes and behavior of gay men became increasingly heterogeneous after the division of sexuality from gender allowed for the maintenance of masculinity despite gay love and sexual acts.
Middle-class values were more clearly espoused in the queer movement, including the “middle-class preference for privacy, self-restraint, and lack of appeal” (Chauncey, 106). This explanation suggests that the values of this queer movement were closer aligned to the public sphere and public advancement, since fairy displays were seen as brash, silly, and some deemed that it “automatically preempted social advancement” (Chauncey, 106). For advancement in early twentieth century America, feminine demeanor would have been inappropriate in the work place, thus queer preference for subtlety may be a response and interest in individual social advancement. Given that working-class individuals have a greater emphasis on community and relationships, the public, gay life they lead would have been seen as a way to foster ties within their (gay) community, while the middle-class often espouses values that separate one’s personal life from one’s public or work life, thus by hiding actions and behaviors that were deemed gay (i.e. effeminate in this point in time, due to the prevalence of the fairy image), queers were able to maintain one’s public image in its best shape for eventual social advancement. Looking at Professor Hazel Markus’s research, we see years of findings that suggests that middle-class individuals often look out for themselves more than they would their community or family, thus the preference for comparative social isolation and self-restraint in exchange for greater potential of individual success would be outweighed against the interdependent desire to do good by belonging to and strengthening the gay community.
The queer movement also eventually included shifting effeminate behavior to mannered and ambiguous behavior which passed as sophistication. Anglophilia in the style of Wilde became widespread, which deflected suspicions of gender nonconformity to style differences. This shift towards this elite, sophisticated behavior may have been one that further entrenched the class divides between the groups, because only middle-class gay men would have had the background (and possibly financial means) to feel comfortable in these predominantly middle-class or upper-class cultural institutions of theater and literature.
Consequences of these reclassifications of the gay community continue today—with both the clear separation of gender from sexuality and the tie between “effete styles and effeminacy” (Chauncey, 107). Interestingly, the groups of gay men exist today in fairly similar forms and still the image of effeminate men dominates the public perception of gay culture. The separation of gender from sexuality was crucial in allowing masculine gay men and feminine gay men to exist freely and publicly, providing an all encompassing label of “gay” or “homosexual” to both of these instead of separating them along behavioral gender-affiliations. By creating these two spheres of identity—gender and sexuality—larger swathes of the population can be put under fewer, and overlapping, terms, but it also allows for discussion of the intersectionality of gender and sexuality and class to a degree that would not have existed before the twentieth century when same-sex relations and what they meant were tied only to gender-affiliations.
Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. New York: Basic, 1994. Print.
