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

Although the “fairy” was a subgroup in the dominant gay subculture, Chauncey argues that the image of the “fairy” “influenced the culture and self-understanding of all sexually active men” (47). Fairies were defined by not only their sexual interest in men but also by their femininity. They were seen as part of a “‘third sex’ that combined elements of the male and female” (48). Medical experts at the time described gay men as experiencing “sexual inversion,” theorizing that gay men or “inverts […] had male bodies” but “female brains” (49). Intellectuals who wrote about inversion, like German writer Karl Ulrichs in the 1860s and British intellectual Edward Carpenter, used terms like the “third sex” to describe gay men. The term “bisexual” was likewise in use at the time, not to mean people attracted to women and men but to mean someone who was “both male and female” (49). Some gay men took on the identity of “fairy” since it “allowed them to reject the kind of masculinity prescribed for them by the dominant culture […] without rejecting the hegemonic tenets of their culture concerning the gender order” (50). However, some gay men rejected the role of “fairy” since it clashed with their own masculine identities or because it was socially risky for them.

Fairies called themselves by feminine titles and nicknames and assumed feminine mannerisms. When film became a major medium by the 1910s, some adopted the names of famous actresses like Gloria Swanson and Theda Bara, “who portrayed erotically aggressive women capable of enervating the strongest of men” (51). Although they refrained from dressing in drag, which was illegal anyway, these gay men wore articles of clothing that signaled who they were, such as high-heeled shoes, green suits, and red ties. (Over time, such clothing became fashionable among straight, working-class young men and was adopted among people like artists.) Fairies also plucked their eyebrows, wore lipstick and other makeup, and dyed their hair blond. While not all adopted this style, Chauncey argues that more gay men did so during this era “because they were so central to the dominant role model available to them as they formed a gay identity” and that it “was a way to declare a gay identity publicly and to negotiate their relationship with other men” (56).

Working-class people tolerated the fairies in their midst, but only “so long as he abided by the conventions of this cultural script” (57). Fairies even mingled with working-class people outside gay locales at dance halls and other public places. However, fairies’ status was “highly contested,” and thieves and street gangs sometimes mugged or harassed them. Some fairies only took on the role when they were away from their own neighborhoods. The identity of “fairy” served different purposes for gay men. Some avoided it completely, some thought it was a “way to express their ‘true’ feminine natures” (62), and others only adopted the mannerisms and appearance of fairies to announce their identities to other men.

Chauncey characterizes what distinguished the gay culture in the early 20th century:

The most striking difference between the dominant sexual culture of the early 20th century and that of our own era is the degree to which the earlier culture permitted men to engage in sexual relations with other men, often on a regular basis, without requiring them to regard themselves—or to be regarded by others—as gay (65).

Chauncey argues that men who did not consider themselves gay in any way were common customers of “fairies” who were sex workers. The term “trade” described “the customer of a fairy prostitute” (69), but it eventually came to refer to any “normal” man who had sexual relations with a gay man or, more broadly, to such relationships. Later in the 20th century, it evolved to mean “straight” male sex workers who had gay clientele.

Research in psychologist Alfred Kinsey’s book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male suggests that 37% of men considered themselves “normal” but had sex with another man at least once. Chauncey adds that this was not the only way that men understood themselves and conducted their relationships with other men. It varied according to culture and class. However, the “fairy-trade interpretive schema […] was, above all, a working-class way of making sense of sexual relations” (72). Particularly, Chauncey suggests that “fairy-trade relations” were more common among African Americans and the Italian and Irish immigrant communities than among Jewish immigrants. In fact, police records indicate that Jewish men were much less likely to be arrested on sex work charges. Chauncey attributes this to cultural factors, the “different circumstances of their immigration” (73), and the way their communities understood gender. For example, Italian men may have considered gay sexuality as less of a sin than illicit relations with women; many such immigrants were critical of the moral teachings of the Catholic Church, and many immigrated to the US without wives. In contrast, Jewish immigrants typically came with their families. Men from Sicily and southern Italy especially were open to gay sexuality “as long as they took the ‘manly part’” (74). Likewise, Italian culture segregated women from men more than Jewish-American cultures usually did.

Some young male immigrants belonged to a “bachelor subculture.” Some wanted to only work in New York City a while before returning to Europe, and some remained bachelors for life. Many were laborers, transient workers, and sailors or merchant marines who could not or did not settle down. Consequently, they often “forged an alternative definition of manliness that was predicated on a rejection of family obligations” (79). Also, manliness was something they had to constantly prove or could lose. Because “fairies” were effeminate, they “could actually provide some of the same enhancement of social status that mastering a woman did” (81). As long as these men were the dominant partner, they were still seen as men, but men who took a subservient role in sex risked being seen as a “fairy.” Authorities did not assume that all such men would substitute sex with a woman with sex with a “fairy”; however, “it was not considered remarkable when any man did” (82). For the bachelors, any woman who was “impure” because she frequented saloons, any “fairy,” or any young boy was fair game. In addition, “fairy” sex workers assured their clients that they did not have venereal disease, a mistaken belief that anti-STD campaigns conducted under the US government, focusing on female sex workers, inadvertently encouraged.

Nonetheless, some men sexually preferred “fairies,” and sometimes they formed romantic relationships and even marriages. Such men were in gay slang called “jockers,” “husbands,” and “wolves.” Nonetheless, they considered themselves “normal” and openly talked about their relationships with other men. These relationships were not always between such men and “fairies”; sometimes they were between an older, dominant “wolf” and a younger, subordinate man, sometimes called a “punk,” “kid,” or “lamb.” The “punks” were usually not effeminate, but because of their sexual subordination they were still seen as like women. The system of wolves and punks was common among transient people, sailors, and prisoners. At times, transient people considered wolves married to punks to teach and financially support them, though the relationships were not always sexual.

In the New York City Jail, authorities segregated gay men from other men in the South Annex. However, they determined who was gay not only by their sexual activity but by whether they “exhibited the typical markers of effeminacy” (91). They were even assigned what was considered women’s work, such as the prison laundry. The belief was that men isolated from women would not have sex with each other but would be interested in “fairies,” generating fear that men would cause violence and disorder by fighting over “fairies.” In 1934, reformist prison administrator Austin H. MacCormick and the New York Herald Tribune decried the prison’s separate gay wing as an example of the corruption of the old prison administration. News emerged that the authorities did not try to segregate “wolves” from the prison population, finding them indistinguishable from “normal” men.

In that era, some men who were sexually interested in men not only rejected “fairies” but were repulsed by them. Some thought of themselves as “queer” or did not take on any label. They were “unwilling to become virtual women,” so “they sought to remain men who nonetheless loved other men” (100). Especially among the middle class, gay men began to define themselves by their sexual orientation. Likewise, straight men started to define themselves by their lack of gay sexual attraction. Thus, “heterosexual” and “homosexual” became the dominant ways of categorizing sexual relationships and practices.

Men who were only or primarily only interested in other men called themselves “queer,” finding slang like “fairies” or “faggots” offensive. While they were less visibly gay, queer men made up most of New York’s gay community in the early 20th century. Some young “queers” adopted the identity of a “fairy” to express their femininity, because they believed it was the only way to be gay, or because it allowed them to announce their new life as a gay men. Some always rejected the image of “fairy,” while others were former “fairies” who found it just an introduction into the gay world. Middle-class men especially were hostile or ambivalent about the identity of “fairy,” since it could harm their reputation much more than it would a working-class man. Some such men were even hostile to “fairies” as giving a “negative impression of all homosexuals” and blamed them for provoking persecution by not following middle-class ideas of propriety (103). Nonetheless, “queers” did often show an interest in the arts and fashion and English upper-class culture that might also be seen as effeminate. In addition, “in secure settings” they adopted mannerisms like “using feminine pronouns, and burlesquing gender conventions with a sharp and often sardonic camp wit” (105). Still, they could dismiss anyone challenging their masculinity as exhibiting “lower-class brutishness” (107).

Even so, middle-class queers were often attracted to working-class men for their masculine traits. Further, working-class men were often more open to their advances, as evident in the journal of composer Louis Tomlinson Griffes, who had relationships with policemen and train conductors. Chauncey argues that the middle class as a whole was more hostile than the working class to male gay sexuality because “the social patterns and cultural expectations that had formed middle-class men’s sense of themselves as men were being challenged or undermined” (111). One reason for this was that as corporations became more common, work was changing, leaving more middle-class men dependent on an employer rather than working independently or running a business. Also, the working class, especially those in labor unions, and the growing number of immigrants challenged the white middle class’s claims to masculinity. National leaders and intellectuals, especially President Theodore Roosevelt, emphasized the importance of manhood and the risk of modern life making middle-class men too soft. As a result, activities like college sports, prizefighting, and bodybuilding became popular.

In such an environment, the “fairy” began to embody everything the middle-class man should not be. The “fairy’s” sexual interest in men undermined the positive view of muscular male bodies and solidarity between men that the dominant culture encouraged: “Given the crisis in middle-class masculinity, many middle-class men felt compelled to insist—in a way that working-class men did not—that there was no sexual element in their relations with other men” (116). For example, bodybuilder Bernarr Macfadden decried gay sexuality. Likewise, anxiety existed over late-19th-century women’s trends: Women were becoming politically active, taking on causes such as women’s right to vote; in addition, they were earning college degrees and prioritizing professional careers over marriage and children, often becoming teachers. The middle-class emphasis on heterosexuality also had an impact, according to Kinsey. His surveys found that middle-class professionals like lawyers, college professors, and doctors were the least likely to engage in LGBTQ sexual relationships.

This had two effects between the mid-19th century and the early 20th century. It discouraged intimate friendships between men, since they raised the suspicion of gay sexuality. Medical writers, struggling to deal with evidence of “manly men who had sex with other men” (122), began to describe masculine men who had sex with men, even “fairies,” as “perverts” because they “perverted their normal sex drive when they responded to the advances of someone who appeared anatomically to be another man” (122-23). Until the middle of the 20th century, such medical writings had a “limited effect” on public views.