Courage in the LGBTQ+ Community
“Privacy could only be had in public,” George Chauncey titles the 7th chapter of his book Gay New York, a book about queer life during the late 1800s and early 1900s that focuses primarily on queer male communities in New York. At a time when homosexuality was being increasingly policed, and the authorities were slowly closing in on gay bars and hangouts as places of “degeneracy” and “disorderly conduct”, the idea seems like something of a paradox. Nevertheless, it makes sense. In response to increased scrutiny, gay men realized that to truly have time to themselves, they couldn’t hide in the back of a bar and be an easy target for cops. They needed to craft an invisible world for themselves in public — one of careful hand gestures, eye contact, and loaded speech and body language. Through certain mannerisms of speaking, dressing, and more, gay men crafted an entire world for themselves in plain sight, so much so that doctors used to believe that gay men had some sort of mental bond or method of connecting. This not only challenged conceptions of public order but made it harder for the police to discover who was “gay” because a vast majority of these men could easily pass for straight.
Cruising parks (like Central Park), were places in which gay men would congregate to find one another and unassumingly spend time together, gossip, and make new friends. Chauncey even mentions that at the turn of the century, Belvedere Castle in Central Park was the most common spot for gay men to meet up. The quote I found particularly interesting was from a gay man who mentioned that the parks would be so packed that just walking through with a handsome male friend would lead to dozens of whispers and looks, almost like a nightclub. Other men would congregate on beaches. Interestingly, gay men would still split up based on race or ethnicity, and while some would hide their homosexuality in public, others would flaunt it, even on a public beach, doing their best to defy social norms as they did in nightclubs. Everyone had a different level of bravery when it came to their act in the public sphere.
All of this was done through social contact. There was no social media for them to connect or hide through; they all simply knew one another and divided the city amongst themselves into safe zones and streets to hang out through word of mouth. These maps were not just for hanging out, but also for having sex, since it was a lot harder to find Raines hotels (hotels that rented our trooms on an hourly basis to gay men and prostitutes) as the police crackdowns tightened. They realized that certain street corners were easiest for such an act. This defied social norms in a lot of ways, mainly in that sexuality was generally kept in the private sphere. By bringing it into the public sphere, gay men were able to get away with much “degeneracy” simply because no one expected to see it in public, and thus, had a harder time recognizing it unless it was blatantly in their face.
This was not only important for later fights for queer rights but also reassured men that they were not alone. Even if they entered these places anonymously, they could be reassured that they weren’t a freak and that plenty of regular-looking men were gay and didn’t have to look the stereotype. This social contact empowered them, which was incredibly important for later gay rights movements.
While the police did attempt to crack down on public “degeneracy”, they realized that it was a lot harder to regulate simply because this wasn’t thirty men drinking and dancing in a nightclub; they were just at the park, and it was hard to find a good justification for arresting them. It wasn’t as if the police could recognize the gay subculture that had developed over time. Thus, gay men realized what Chauncey titled his chapter: that true privacy for themselves could most easily be found in public, where they could hide in plain sight. This paradox is not only incredibly interesting but incredibly courageous. Gay men had to go out every day and find others like them the only way they could: in plain sight, no matter the risks, just because they had to. They had to risk going into a straight space or making the signals at someone who might not recognize them because there was a chance that they could find someone like them. There was no other choice.
