Queer America
Vicki L. Eaklor
One of the book’s most teachable features is its highlighting of debates in each chapter on everything from queer histiographies to outing and the ‘gay gene.’ In the introduction, for example, Eaklor sketches the basic parameters of GLBT historiography, framed around the recent dust up regarding Abraham Lincoln’s supposed gayness. She describes the stakes in using various terms transhistorically, challenges of homophobia in the profession and the past, the merits and perils of ‘spot the queer’ as historical method, and the essentialist/constructionist throwdown. Each of these sections could generate discussion in general US history, queer studies, or gender studies courses.
In the trim thirty-odd pages she allots to each chapter, Eaklor situates GLBT history in contexts familiar to US surveys. The chapter ‘Queers in Cold War America,’ for example, places her narrative within postwar historiography on the aggressive enforcement of a liberal consensus against anything marked as deviant or subversive. She also highlights queer resistance through this lens, underscoring how the queerness of the Beats and lesbian pulp fiction might be juxtaposed with mainstream media representations of sexuality, gender, domesticity, and nationalism.
In this chapter and the one titled ‘The Sixties,’ she discusses how social movements and regional contexts informed developing public and private queer cultures and how the policing of queer spaces provoked early GLBT political and legal victories about free association and expression. Helping to usher in the homophile movement were civil rights movements, the middle-class ethos of individualism and privacy, and the enduring Lavender Scare that both accompanied and surpassed the Red Scare. She highlights tensions between assimilation and liberation familiar to anyone studying mid century social movements. Through making links to political, economic, social, and cultural history, Queer America could serve instructors seeking to teach a GLBT history-centered course as a general education US survey. It is also ideal for those looking to punch up queer inclusion in US history courses beyond the tokenism of the Stonewall Riots or the AIDS epidemic.
Queer America’s substantial coverage of recent history stands out from either John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman’s Intimate Matters or Leila Rupp’s A Desired Past. Eaklor’s last four (of nine) chapters are devoted to this recent period, broken down generally by decade. Chapter 6 testifies to the growth in GLBT subcultures, institutions, organizations, and electoral politics in the 1970s. In one of the strongest chapters, Eaklor conveys the powerful fusion of lifestyle with liberation many GLBT people experienced. She underscores, too, how organizing by nonwhite, bisexual, and transgender queer peoples happened in part because of the failings of white- and middle-class-dominated gay and lesbian liberation movements to envision more expansive and complex possibilities for belonging.
Her coverage of lesbian feminism unpacks this tension. Chapter 7 characterizes a community reeling from loss in the late 1970s only to be hit by the AIDS crisis just as the New Right began its ascendancy. Eaklor organizes the GLBT fight against these challenges into four categories. The first describes the national marches and stepped-up federal lobbying. The second explores how confronting AIDS required addressing interlocking issues in ways that productively strained narrow minoritarian and assimilationist models. The third outlines the efforts toward accurate and affirming visibility in mainstream and independent media. And the fourth shows how lesbian and gay studies grew substantially, linking academics with authors, filmmakers, and activists. While Eaklor mentions the role of people of color here, she might have showcased more the dialogues they provoked, given their ongoing importance in the field.
The next chapter frames the 1990s as a mixed bag of victories and set backs. Even while President Bill Clinton made an unprecedented number of appointments of open lesbians and gay men to federal posts, for example, he oversaw the institution of the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ military policy. Eaklor’s sketch here of military policy and activism from the 1970s through the 1990s complements her discussion earlier in the book of gays in the military from the early twentieth century through the 1960s.
She describes the trickle of media celebrities who came out, culminating in the high-stakes, internationally visible television episode with Ellen DeGeneres in 1997. Although Eaklor mentions the films Go Fish (1994) and Watermelon Woman (1995), she gives no space to the concept of ‘m = new queer cinema’ and how it helped to shape and contest the growing ‘positive’ representation by both mainstream and independent media throughout the decade. She gestures to the use of the Internet in GLBT organizing but not its revolutionary function as a medium for sex, relationships, and erotica. Such an inclusion could well have fit into Eaklor’s discussion of the debates and divisions throughout the 1990s around normativity and possibility. She documents the growing power of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and its equality-focused strategy, coupling inside-the-Beltway tactics and mainstream marketing.
Other voices found strength through Third Wave feminism, queer people of color organizations, and bisexual activism. Eaklor notes how the push to bring the ‘T’ into ‘GLB’ came through conscious struggle for legal, political, and cultural space inclusive of trans and intersex concerns. Even HRC, Eaklor notes, added some transgender issues to its agenda in 1998. One can always find something to quibble with in a textbook. Her emphasis on political history and on the growth of national organizations in the later chapters would seem to set her up for a more substantive reading of the 2000s. She only hints at the critique that has been made of the last decade’s consumer-driven, nationalist, and narrow homonormativity–a regrettable omission. Nonetheless, a synthetic work cannot be comprehensive. Rather, it should give its readers frameworks with which to begin to understand its subject matter and tantalizing details that leave us wanting more. Eaklor’s book succeeds ably and will be a substantial aid to students and teachers alike. ~ Don Romesburg, Sonoma State, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 22, No. 1 (January 2013)
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Details
| ISBN | 9780313337499 |
| Genre | LGBT Studies/Social Sciences; History |
| Publication Date | 2008 |
| Publisher | Greenwood Press |
| Format | Hardcover |
| No. of Pages | 274 |
| Language | English |
| Rating | NotRated |
| Subject | Bisexuals – History – United States; Gay Liberation Movement – United States; Gay Men – History – United States; Gay Rights – United State; Homosexuality – History – United States; Lesbians – History – United States; Transgender People – History – United States |
| BookID | 10275 |
