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

Content Warning: This section of the study guide contains descriptions of anti-gay bias. In addition, the source text contains sexually explicit descriptions and outdated and offensive language, which is replicated only in direct quotes.

Chauncey describes the historical circumstances in which he wrote the book in 1994. The US gay community was still in the grip the AIDS pandemic that began in the 1980s. Religious conservatism held tremendous sway over politics, and the new Democratic president, Bill Clinton, had enacted “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which allowed gay people in the military but only if they concealed their sexuality. Historians of LGBTQ sexuality at the time the book was written viewed the 1969 Stonewall riots as a major turning point, believing that “the LGBT people who lived before Stonewall faced unrelenting policing and social hostility, which left all queer people feeling isolated, invisible, and ashamed” (ix). That narrative was already being questioned in 1994, but Chauncey himself was amazed at the “vibrancy, complexity, and visibility of queer life” before Stonewall (xiii).

He notes that when he wrote the Preface in 2016, 25 years later, it was hard to “imagine a time when lesbians and gay men were not highly visible, widely accepted, and included in many domains of life” (xiii).