Homo History
March 20, 2015 4:17 PM Subscribe
A remarkably balanced, for 1964, Life Magazine feature article on homosexuality in America. “A secret world grows open and bolder. Society is forced to look at it—and try to understand it.”
“Do the homosexuals, like the communists, intend to bury us? Yes, indeed, suggested a startling front-page story in the New York Times and other newspapers last month.” —from the following article, same issue.
posted by migurski at 5:13 PM on March 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by migurski at 5:13 PM on March 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
The casual way lesbians are dismissed as not worthy of discussion is astonishing.
posted by nev at 5:13 PM on March 20, 2015
posted by nev at 5:13 PM on March 20, 2015
...though nothing is as offensive as that ad for "instant ham omelets."
posted by nev at 5:15 PM on March 20, 2015 [8 favorites]
posted by nev at 5:15 PM on March 20, 2015 [8 favorites]
Holy crap, the leather/kink bar in that article. "If one is going to be homosexual, why have anything to do with women of either sex?" Between that and the "we were into chains, but now we're into keys" thing, I was thinking less "scary bar of toughs" and more "spiky Mean Girls."
Christ, what a bunch of assholes.
posted by sciatrix at 5:21 PM on March 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
Christ, what a bunch of assholes.
posted by sciatrix at 5:21 PM on March 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
Great find! Though the balance is odd - it starts off being outright vicious, even though the bulk of the article is more understanding.
My current fave takeaway quote:
Many optimistic students of our society believe that we may some day eliminate poverty, slums, and even the common cold - but the problem of homosexuality seems to be more akin to death and taxes.
I'm struck by how similar the gay male sub-tribes have remained the same, right down to the divisions between them. The only group missing were the club kids and circuit boys.
Also: those San Francisco leather boys were hot, though the owner of the bar sounds disgusting. I still hear variations of his words all the time: This is the antifeminine side of homosexuality. If one is going to be homosexual, why have anything to do with women of either sex? We don't go for the giddy kids.
Sometimes I think we've made more progress on changing society as a whole than we have on changing ourselves.
posted by kanewai at 5:28 PM on March 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
My current fave takeaway quote:
Many optimistic students of our society believe that we may some day eliminate poverty, slums, and even the common cold - but the problem of homosexuality seems to be more akin to death and taxes.
I'm struck by how similar the gay male sub-tribes have remained the same, right down to the divisions between them. The only group missing were the club kids and circuit boys.
Also: those San Francisco leather boys were hot, though the owner of the bar sounds disgusting. I still hear variations of his words all the time: This is the antifeminine side of homosexuality. If one is going to be homosexual, why have anything to do with women of either sex? We don't go for the giddy kids.
Sometimes I think we've made more progress on changing society as a whole than we have on changing ourselves.
posted by kanewai at 5:28 PM on March 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
My new band name: Practicing Homosexuals.
Edit: there we go!
posted by malapropist at 5:38 PM on March 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Edit: there we go!
posted by malapropist at 5:38 PM on March 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Great find! Though the balance is odd - it starts off being outright vicious, even though the bulk of the article is more understanding.
It reads like the viciousness is more or less pro forma - like you could not possibly publish this kind of thing without at least ostensibly treating the subject matter as pathology, no matter how sympathetic your intentions. Which I suppose in 1964 was true in a venue like Life, but it sure is jarring to read this stuff now. I have to wonder how many people caught the humanizing intentions of this material at all, with such an easy psychological escape route into disgust/contempt.
posted by brennen at 5:41 PM on March 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
It reads like the viciousness is more or less pro forma - like you could not possibly publish this kind of thing without at least ostensibly treating the subject matter as pathology, no matter how sympathetic your intentions. Which I suppose in 1964 was true in a venue like Life, but it sure is jarring to read this stuff now. I have to wonder how many people caught the humanizing intentions of this material at all, with such an easy psychological escape route into disgust/contempt.
posted by brennen at 5:41 PM on March 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
I think I probably read this when it was published - remember vaguely (oh so vaguely) something similar anyway. I'd have been 13. I knew it applied to me at once and was at once appalled at how awful my life was going to be as a homosexual and very turned on to know that there were more like me out there.
posted by Death and Gravity at 5:49 PM on March 20, 2015 [25 favorites]
posted by Death and Gravity at 5:49 PM on March 20, 2015 [25 favorites]
Old issues of Life Magazine are fascinating. When I was little, the articles on epic films, Hippy culture, and what-is-LSD? were just mind-boggling. I was also obsessed by the stacks of old Time Magazines at my aunt's house. But in the end, the old Nat-Geo's were the best.
posted by ovvl at 6:31 PM on March 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by ovvl at 6:31 PM on March 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
And now remembering...
Five years later I was in college and it was 1969 and the Stonewall riots had happened. I helped start a gay group on campus and we quickly had meetings with dozens of people (and sometimes lots more) and I met lots of men like myself and life wasn't so appalling after all.
posted by Death and Gravity at 6:38 PM on March 20, 2015 [15 favorites]
Five years later I was in college and it was 1969 and the Stonewall riots had happened. I helped start a gay group on campus and we quickly had meetings with dozens of people (and sometimes lots more) and I met lots of men like myself and life wasn't so appalling after all.
posted by Death and Gravity at 6:38 PM on March 20, 2015 [15 favorites]
I miss copy-heavy advertising, too: it not only knew what it was, it was out and proud. Native advertising is double-plus ungood on that front. Reverse dynamic to homosexuality - not that I'd wish to in any way equate such disparate things, but cultural change is fascinating.
posted by Devonian at 6:38 PM on March 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Devonian at 6:38 PM on March 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
My wife and I went and saw the touring LGBT exhibit near us over the holidays, and they had a lot of blown up photos and text from that Life article, and it was sobering to read, walking around and holding hands with her from the comfort of 2015. I am so, so glad to be living now.
posted by joycehealy at 6:53 PM on March 20, 2015 [13 favorites]
posted by joycehealy at 6:53 PM on March 20, 2015 [13 favorites]
My new band name: Practicing Homosexuals.
How else are you going to get it right?
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:15 PM on March 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
How else are you going to get it right?
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:15 PM on March 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
“Do the homosexuals, like the communists, intend to bury us? Yes, indeed, suggested a startling front-page story in the New York Times and other newspapers last month.” —from the following article, same issue.
Yes, an eye-popping quote, but the article goes on to say that no, that's not true at all, they just want to live their homosexual lifestyle in peace...then the article continues to tell us that most homosexuals have no interest in pedophilia--except for a few married homosexuals! All in all, more pro-homo than anything else published in the mainstream media at the time. 1964 was light years away from 1969 and Stonewall. The times were a-changing at an incredible rate of speed back then. Every year, something new. And Life was there! (OK, mostly to titallate the public, but the conversation had to start somewhere.)
posted by kozad at 7:44 PM on March 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
Yes, an eye-popping quote, but the article goes on to say that no, that's not true at all, they just want to live their homosexual lifestyle in peace...then the article continues to tell us that most homosexuals have no interest in pedophilia--except for a few married homosexuals! All in all, more pro-homo than anything else published in the mainstream media at the time. 1964 was light years away from 1969 and Stonewall. The times were a-changing at an incredible rate of speed back then. Every year, something new. And Life was there! (OK, mostly to titallate the public, but the conversation had to start somewhere.)
posted by kozad at 7:44 PM on March 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
The most important and subversive message of that article, to adolescents in 1964, was undoubtably the one D&G heard, there are other people like you. In those days there were no publications, there were no support groups. It might mean giving up everything and making a choice. New York? San Francisco? New Orleans? But that article at least let you know that you might do that with some hope that you would find something other than the Wizard of Oz behind a curtain at the end of your journey. It would take another decade before the idea of actual respect was spoken aloud, and more years before the gay girls would demand their share. It would take the AIDS crisis to but the B and T in.
I think it's probably as hard for a young modern gay person to understand what 1964 was like as it is for a young modern black person to understand what it was like in 1964, when the water coolers were segregated and in an era without apps and cell phones if you wanted to take a long trip you had to pre-plan where you would be allowed to use the bathroom.
I do not remember 1964, because that was the year I was born. But I do know a fair number of people who do remember it. In 1964 there was no protest against our nascent "police action" in Vietnam, they were still doing duck and cover drills in the public schools as if you could defend against thermonuclear war, and lynchings were still common and generally uninvestigated. To identify yourself as gay in that society was dangerous and isolating in ways that are scarcely imaginable today.
posted by localroger at 8:25 PM on March 20, 2015 [8 favorites]
I think it's probably as hard for a young modern gay person to understand what 1964 was like as it is for a young modern black person to understand what it was like in 1964, when the water coolers were segregated and in an era without apps and cell phones if you wanted to take a long trip you had to pre-plan where you would be allowed to use the bathroom.
I do not remember 1964, because that was the year I was born. But I do know a fair number of people who do remember it. In 1964 there was no protest against our nascent "police action" in Vietnam, they were still doing duck and cover drills in the public schools as if you could defend against thermonuclear war, and lynchings were still common and generally uninvestigated. To identify yourself as gay in that society was dangerous and isolating in ways that are scarcely imaginable today.
posted by localroger at 8:25 PM on March 20, 2015 [8 favorites]
My new band name: Practicing Homosexuals.
How else are you going to get it right?
My parents are Quakers, and sometimes I go along with them to their little rural meeting where 90% of the people are pretty liberal, but there are a few people who go because they fell out with the more fundamentalist church nearby.
Anyway, one day I was lucky enough to witness one of the fundamentalists finding out that a wonderfully sweet old woman in the meeting was gay.
'But are you a practicing lesbian' she spluttered. The look on her face was priceless when the arch rejoinder came back:
'I think I've rather got the hang of it by now'.
posted by Ned G at 1:50 AM on March 21, 2015 [59 favorites]
How else are you going to get it right?
My parents are Quakers, and sometimes I go along with them to their little rural meeting where 90% of the people are pretty liberal, but there are a few people who go because they fell out with the more fundamentalist church nearby.
Anyway, one day I was lucky enough to witness one of the fundamentalists finding out that a wonderfully sweet old woman in the meeting was gay.
'But are you a practicing lesbian' she spluttered. The look on her face was priceless when the arch rejoinder came back:
'I think I've rather got the hang of it by now'.
posted by Ned G at 1:50 AM on March 21, 2015 [59 favorites]
The article is such a useful instructional article on Places To Find Your People that I wonder if that was a goal of the author.
posted by tchemgrrl at 5:25 AM on March 21, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by tchemgrrl at 5:25 AM on March 21, 2015 [6 favorites]
Ned G, I want to hang out with that lady.
posted by Songdog at 7:09 AM on March 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Songdog at 7:09 AM on March 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
Basically all the ads are strange, but there is one for a home cooling system that prompts you to guess if it costs $700, $800, $900 or $1,000 and then reveals the cost is $989. Whaaaaat?
posted by snofoam at 6:55 AM on March 22, 2015
posted by snofoam at 6:55 AM on March 22, 2015
The pro-forma disgust was indeed pretty odious, but I'm still laughing at how many times the word "sweater" appeared in that main article. Oh, transgressive fashion!
posted by psoas at 12:14 PM on March 24, 2015
posted by psoas at 12:14 PM on March 24, 2015
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posted by photoslob at 4:43 PM on March 20, 2015