"That's So Gay": Exhibit highlights early America's attitudes about gender norms and sexuality
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
The exhibit proves how suprisingly accepting or appallingly damning decades-ago humanity could be toward homosexuals.
You might think those Americans with homosexual or non-gender normative inclinations would have kept them particularly hidden or repressed in the 19th and early 20th-century, given rigid societal norms and attitudes.
Not exactly — the Library Company of Philadelphia has compiled for viewing dozens of documented instances of homosexuality (or suggestions of it) in history and literature that would have been quite visible to the general public. For example (from exhibit notes and placards):
- Walt Whitman, in the third edition of Leaves of Grass, wrote in his "Calamus" poems about the love of "comrades," and the exhibit notes point out how the works "stress the value of same-sex love."
- In the explanation for Bayard Taylor's 1870 book Joseph and His Friend, the exhibit explains: "It is addressed to those 'who believe in the truth and tenderness of man's love for man,' and 'The elevation of same-sex affection as pure and noble was common, especially in early American literature.' Taylor wrote of his time living on a boat with a middle-aged German businessman, that they were 'happy and care-free as two Adams in a Paradise without Eves.'"
- "Nineteenth-century novelists frequently presented male-male relationships as noble, significant and potentially purer than male-female relationships."
However, many materials on display discuss the shaming of those individuals who had gay relationships or behaved differently than society dictated.
- From a footnote in a book: "I know two gentlemen whose attachment to each other was so excessive, as to amount to a disease...they slept in the same bed...spoke in affectionate whispers, and were, in short, miserable when separated...Such attachments are, however, much more common among females...on account of the energy of this feeling in women, seduction should be punished with great severity."
- An example of the cover-up of gay scenes in text: When Abilgail Mott (1766-1851) abridged Olaudah Equiano's text, The Life and Adventures of Olaudah Equiano; or Gustavus Vassa, the African, she changed the relationship between two boys, omitting the reference to them sleeping together. She changed it instead to one teaching the other English.
Many items on display also trash-talk women of the era:
- "[Harriet Hosmer is] too independent of conventionalities, too masculine in her habits. She is not feminine." -Anonymous writer in the Lady's Home Magazine, January 1858.
- One placard reads: "Nineteenth-century novelists and poets frequently presented relationships between women as adventurous and intense, but difficult to sustain."
- An author, of a woman playing the part of Romeo in a theatre production: "Miss Cushman in Romeo was just man enough to be a boy. No man that was not a born idiot would feel or whine his love out in such a lackadaisical way."
Others show examples of ballsy women subverting the patriarchy:
- The 1876, Civil War version of Mulan, Loreta Janeta Velazquez: "In order to serve in the Confederate army during the Civil War, [she] masqueraded as 'Lieutenant Harry J. Burford.' She had clothes made to effectively disguise her gender, and said: 'So many men have weak and feminine voice that...a woman with even a very high-pitched voice need have very little fear on that score.'"
- Bloomers...sent shock waves through American culture when women started wearing them in 1851...wearing bloomers became a symbol of uppity women challenging male authority.
The most in-your-face affront to those who were gay or "different," however, came in the form of 19th and early-20th century "comic valentines," which "provided a not-so-subtle way to ridicule people for their personal traits and behaviors...sent anonymously, [the cards] poke fun at people's failure to conform to gender norms."
Take a look at the photo gallery above for more examples, but these are the most egregious, perhaps, to ladies:
"Wearing the breeches, wearing the breeches!
Know that all our experience teaches
A woman, forgetting what's due her sex, is
Ready for vice and all it annexes."
And:
"You're all aflame with women's rights
And hope thereby to see strange sights;
No place too bold for such a trump—
You'd even go so far as mount the stump
If you thus cast all social laws aside
You'll never be a happy bride."
Decades ago Americans: some, surprisingly accepting of homosexuality and gender nonconformity — others, just as unfortunately narrow-minded as many in present day.
The exhibit is on view Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., at 1314 Locust St., through Oct. 17. For more, visit gayatlcp.org.
