Emergence of the early gay rights movement (1 gen 1951 anni – 31 dic 1955 anni)

Descrizione:

American ideas about marriage, family, and gender roles had all shifted significantly since the turn of the twentieth century (see “Women, Men, and the Solitude of Self” in Chapter 17). By 1900, middle-class Americans had begun to understand marriage as “companionate,” that is, based on romantic love and a lifetime of shared friendship. But companionate did not mean equal. Even in the mid-twentieth century, family life rested on a foundation of gender inequality: men were breadwinners and decision makers, while women cared for children and took a secondary position in public life.

The booming middle class subscribed to this paternalist, even patriarchal, vision of family life. Everyone from professional psychologists to advertisers and every organization from schools to the popular press celebrated the nuclear family. Children were prized, and women’s caregiving work valorized. This ideal, especially its emphasis on female “domesticity,” was bolstered by Cold War politics. Americans who deviated from prevailing gender and familial norms were viewed with suspicion, and sometimes even deemed subversive and politically dangerous.

Even as staid norms held sway, new ideas were gradually remaking marriage, gender, feminism, and sexuality. To comprehend the postwar decades, we have to keep in mind that while domesticity remained the ideal, in people’s daily lives a different reality often held true.


Kinsey’s work also suggested that homosexuality was more common than Americans thought. His research found that 37 percent of men and 13 percent of women had engaged in some form of homosexual activity by early adulthood. Even more shockingly, Kinsey claimed that 10 percent of American men were exclusively homosexual. These claims came as little surprise, but great encouragement, to a group of lesbian and gay activists who called themselves “homophiles.” Organized primarily in the Mattachine Society (the first gay rights organization in the country, founded in 1951) and the Daughters of Bilitis (a lesbian organization founded in 1955), homophiles were a small but determined collection of activists who sought equal rights for lesbians and gay men at a time when the American Psychiatric Association still defined homosexuality as a mental illness. “The lesbian is a woman endowed with all the attributes of any other woman,” wrote the pioneer lesbian activist Del Martin in 1956. “The salvation of the lesbian lies in her acceptance of herself without guilt or anxiety.”

Building on the urban lesbian and gay communities that had coalesced during World War II, homophiles sought to change American attitudes about same-sex love. They faced daunting obstacles, since same-sex sexual relations were illegal in every state and condemned, as well as feared, by most Americans. To combat a widespread idea of gay people as marginal, homophile organizations cultivated a respectable, middle-class image. Members were encouraged to avoid bars and nightclubs, to dress in conservative shirts and ties (for men) and modest skirts and blouses (for women), and to seek out psychologists who would attest to their “normalcy.” Nevertheless, the homophile movement remained invisible to most Americans, and it was not until the 1960s that homophiles began to talk about their “rights as citizens,” laying the groundwork for the gay rights movement of the 1970s.

Aggiunto al nastro di tempo:

Data: