Eric Sanjuro: Eric Sanjuo is a Ph.D student in political science at the University of Southern California. His areas of specialty are in American Government and Political Communication.
GAY BY THE BAY: A HISTORY OF QUEER CULTURE IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA more than accomplishes its goal of canvasing the entire history of the capital of the gay world. From the Native American cultures that existed in the region before the arrival of Europeans, up to the present, authors Susan Stryker and Jim Van Buskirk have created perhaps the most complete queer history of the San Francisco Bay Area. The book is also visually compelling. Filled with images of hundreds of photos, drawings, posters and other print materials, GAY BY THE BAY makes an excellent addition to any coffeetable.
The book is also very well researched. Stryker, who is a scholar at the University of California at Berkeley, and Van Buskirk, the director of the San Francisco Library's Gay and Lesbian Center, appear to have left no stone unturned in their exploration of queer life in “the gay Mecca.”
The book is strong in its coverage of most of San Francisco's history, especially the rise of gay and lesbian political activism, but sketchy in its treatment of the City before the mid-nineteenth century. The reason for this is that almost all of San Francisco's early public records were destroyed in the catostrophic earthquake and fire of 1906. These catastrophies wiped out such valuable research resources as police reports and court records. Such materials are potentially of extreme value to queer-studies researchers, as they are often the only source of information on men and women who deviated from the sexual and gender norms of the time.
Queer history in California apparently goes back at least to the 16th century. The state was named in 1542 after a Spanish legend about a race of Amazon women. Also, the native Ohlone Indians had “two-spirited people,” androgenous males who took on many of the roles and apparel of women.
Up until the early 19th century, San Francisco was by no means an open sexual environment. It was too immersed in the Victorian mores of its day. However, as new labor markets began to arise, men were able to obtain more freedom. This freed many of them to begin living a “gay” lifestyle. Women did not enjoy comparable levels of freedom until much later.
Stryker and Van Buskirk are careful to avoid using modern terms such as “gay” and “lesbian” when referring to people from prior periods. Instead, they use whatever words were popular at the time. They are particularly fond of the term ‘queer,' as it can be used to describe anyone who varies from the norm.
”'Queer' has come to stand for the wide range of marginalized sexual identities, practices and communities sometimes excluded by the words ‘lesbian' and ‘gay,' yet which also lie beyond the pale of normative society and share a rich history with homosexuality as it is currently understood” (125).
Early San Francisco was predominately male, and up to ninety percent during the 1850s. This led to such curious practices as all-male square dancing. In these gatherings, the man taking the woman's part wore a red hankerchief around his arm. This was the precursor for the modern hankerchief code among gay men. GAY BY THE BAY is filled with dozens of such tales, all of which help explain how queer culture has been handed down from one generation to the next.
As far back as the 1800s San Francisco was known as “Sodom by the Sea.” Stryker and Van Buskirk reason that same-sex involvement must have occured during this period, primarily between men. They base their assumption upon modern research that has been done on all, or mostly-male communities. While it would be preferable to prove such hypotheses with research data, it is necessary to use a bit of imagination in attempting to recreate what life must have been like during these times. Surely an entire book could be written on the topic, as Stryker and Van Buskirk suggest in their introduction.
Another pleasant aspect of GAY BY THE BAY is its exemplary job of including the history of queer women and minorities. While there is little surviving evidence from the 1800s of women who maintained same-sex relationships, there do exist a few stories such as that of early female-to-male Jack Bee Garland. Born Elvira Virginia Margarietta in San Francisco in 1869, Garland went on to enlist as a man in the U.S. Army and later work as a journalist. In all, Garland spent over 40 years living as a man.
The first gay bar opened in San Francisco in 1908. After the repeal of prohibition, several more gay and lesbian bars opened during the late 1920s and 1930s. The bath houses began around this time as well.
It was not until the 1930s that any sort of activism existed within the queer community. The San Francisco General Strike of 1933 helped to revolutionize many gays and lesbians, including a young Harry Hay. After coming out and leaving Stanford, Hay became a member of the Communist Party and went on to create the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles after World War II.
The war swelled San Francisco's navy population, which only added to the city's burgeoning gay culture. The government sought to close down the gay bars to prevent sailors from frequenting them. One of these bars, the Black Cat Cafe, filed suit and won an important Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled that it was illegal for government officials to infiltrate the bars. The Alcoholic Beverage Commission had been shutting down all bars that served to self-professed homosexuals.
Another landmark court case arose out of the obscenity trial for Allen Ginsberg's poem “Howl.” City Lights publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti was arrested in 1955 for selling the banned book, leading to the trial. As a result of this court decision, queer subject matters could be included in works of art and literature.
The 1950s also saw the rise of the “butch”/”fem” roles among lesbians. Women were becoming freer to live their own lives, which included being in same-sex relationships. In 1955 the Daughters of Bilitis organization was founded in San Francisco. One of this organization's main goals was to get women to give up their butch/fem roles, which the Daughters viewed as an aproximation of man/woman roles.
This was also the period in which homophile organizations began to spread from Los Angeles into the Bay Area, in response to McCarthyism and the accompanying Puritanical persecution of gays and lesbians. These groups were discreet at first, but by the 1960s had become more direct and confrontational. This was a direct result of the influence of the Black Panthers.
By the 1960s fissures had erupted in many of these organizations between men and women, as well as between whites and minorities. The 1970s saw an avalance of new splinter groups that catered to more and more specific groups. One of the largest new groups emerging was the lesbian separatist movement, which advocated the complete overthrow of the entire gender system.
The queer political movement reached its zenith in 1975 with the election of liberal Mayor George Moscone. Two years later Harvey Milk won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, becoming the first openly gay official in the city's history.
The first Gay Freedom Day Parade was held in 1973. By 1978 the annual celebration was drawing more than 350,000 people. That same year, the Rainbow Flag was developed. A little known fact is that it originally contained eight colors. It was later limited to six colors, to lower production costs.
The 1970s brought an array of firsts in queer history, many of which took place in San Francisco. 1972 saw the establishment of the first Gay and Lesbian Studies Program at San Francisco City College. In 1974 the JOURNAL OF HOMOSEXUALITY was established. The decade also marked the active recruitment of gays and lesbians by the San Francisco Police Department.
GAY BY THE BAY also chronicles the fight against the AIDS epidemic, which hit San Francsico especially beginning in the early 1980s. From Ken Horne to Anita Bryant, this important period is well summed up.
Many of the stories and historical figures contained in the book are important not only for the queer history of San Francisco, but for that of the entire nation as well. It is easy to forget how many times San Francisco has been at the forefront of promoting equality for gays and lesbians.
San Francisco has never been content with resting upon its laurels, however. It remains a hotbed of activism. In recent years it saw Mary Morgan become the nation's first openly lesbian judge when she was appointed to the San Francisco Municipal Court. In 1982 the first Gay Games were held in San Francisco, where 1,300 athletes competed in 16 sports.
Stryker and Van Buskirk not only expertly detail the past, they also provide some enlightened insight into what the zeitgeist of the present might be.
“Queer activism in the 1990s means paying attention to the ways various social issues like homelessness, substance abuse, immigration, and abortion intersect” (p.146).
GAY BY THE BAY is must reading for anyone at all interested in their queer history. While it is directed at uncovering the hidden past of gays and lesbians in San Francisco, the stories it tells are applicable to anywhere. The authors have succeeded in their goal of making the past come alive.
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