Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past

by Martin Duberman (Editor), Martha Vicinus (Editor), George Chauncey (Editor)

This richly revealing anthology brings together for the first time the vital new scholarly studies now lifting the veil from the gay and lesbian past. Such notable researchers as John Boswell, Shari Benstock, Jeffrey Weeks and John D'Emilio illuminate gay and lesbian life as it evolved in places as diverse as the Athens of Plato, Renaissance Italy, Victorian London, Jazz Age Harlem, Revolutionary Russia, Nazi Germany, Castro's Cuba - and peoples as varied as South African black miners, American Indians, Chinese courtiers, Japanese samurai, English schoolboys and girls, and urban working women. Gender and sexuality, repression and resistance, deviance and acceptance, identity and community - all are given a context in this fascinating work.

Genres: History, Queer, Nonfiction, LGBT, Lesbian, Gay, Historical

579 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Martin Bauml Duberman is a scholar and playwright. He graduated from Yale in 1952 and earned a Ph.D. in American history from Harvard in 1957. Duberman left his tenured position at Princeton University in 1971 to become Distinguished Professor of History at Lehman College in New York City.

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this several years ago and it's been sitting on my shelf unread since then. I was a bit dubious because it was so huge and rather old. When I started this book I found it really annoying. The queer theory just seemed SO dated. It was all about lesbians and gay men and used a very black and white approach to history. Gay men and Lesbians were either a "new" invention or were seen as part of a duality of hetero/homo sexualities. There was SO much that got missed in the discussion of history because they refused to include bisexuals and trans people in the work. There were SO many examples of bisexuals being described as homosexuals it was almost funny. One of the worst examples was when talking about Japanese sexuality, "male homosexual relations occurred almost entirely within the context of bisexuality" (119) and then goes on to talk about all the "homosexuality" ignoring the bisexual aspect totally. Another example was in the article about the Harlem subculture where there was a quote that said, "He loved them both... there.. he had thought it ... actually dared to think it.. one can love TWO [sexes] at the same time..." (emphasis mine) which was given as an example of HOMOsexual love not BIsexual love! Last time I checked what the definition of two meant...

The books itself is very weak on theory to the points at times it's almost offensive. But when it just focuses on history it is very good. I can imagine when it came out it was really exciting to have SO many stories of queer people and see them as a huge part of history where they had mostly been ignored. That said it was nearly all European and American history. With only 2 out of the 30 articles being on Asia and one on Colonial South Africa, needless to say this lead to a HUGE bias in the presentation of history. The Chinese article focused on Ming Qing Chinese male sexual relations and was a much earlier look than the more recent book I've read. The problem with the articles were they were only a few pages long and so couldn't give much detail.

Some highlights of the things that I thought were intresting included:
In Italy in the 16th century a woman would be more heavily punished in court if she had been caught having sex with a woman using a dildo rather than "merely rubbing". (73)
The description of the male homosexuals in City of Vice was exactly the way described in the essay by of Randolph Trumbach which made me pleased to see.
Though that article also had a problem in ignoring trans behavior and labeling it excursively homosexual. Showing a "new development" of the "effeminate gay". No where was the increased role of urbanization considered that maybe it wasn't a new type of person that was being created but rather the increased population density which allowed people to find others of their kind and express themselves in ways they wouldn't have been able to as the only gay in the village.
A great quote from a Native American woman who dressed in men's clothing and lived as a man, "Do you blame me for wanting to be a man, free to live life in a man-made world?... In the future centuries, it is probable that women will be the owner of her body and the custodian of her own soul [But] the well-cared for woman [now] is a parasite, and the woman who must work is a slave... Do you blame me for hating to again resume a woman's clothing and just belong? Is it any wonder that I am determined to become a member of the privileged sex, if possible?" (186)


I am glad I finally read this and I did learn a lot. I think the best thing I discovered was a 1935 blues song all about Bull Dykes! I totally loved this!



There were some hidden treasures in this volume but I'm not sure if I'd recommend it or not as it was quite problematic in places.

[Jayme · Rating 2 out of 5]

The topics were interesting, but it was basically a bunch of scholarly articles, which do get boring after a while.

[John Ferreira · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book helped to rearrange a few of my braincells. Which is always a plus.

This is one of those books that I love, and hate. I love because I find out things that I didn't previously know, or contemplated. I hate because I think of incidents in my life, and how the world was then and how much has not changed.

One of the things that has not changed is that sexual identity comes down to sexual practices and preferences. In other words, who is putting what into whom. What does that make people who are celibate?

As I was reading the essays, I got to thinking that bisexuality as we know has been the prominent sexuality throughout the ages. If there was a theme song, the song "Girls & Boys" by Blur comes to mind.

Also as I was reading the essays, I got to thinking about the title. Is it really classified as "Hidden" if documentation can be found? I think the book was published, in part, to let moms and dads and government people know that there have been queer people forever. Which is not a bad thing to point out. And would blow chucks on any supposed scientific study that claims that some outside force causes homosexuality. Like the study that claimed that disco music causes homosexuality. Then what would explain how some men got it on together in the early decades of the 20th Century? Where once they blamed the mother, now they can claim Donna Summer.

Always a plus when reading a book, is that it makes me aware of other books that would interest me. I jotted down a few that I will look into buying or getting at the library.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely fascinating collection of essays/papers covering a variety of locations, times, and aspects of gay history. Not shying away from controversial views, this collection attempts to answer the questions of is there a gay history, if so, when does it start, and how do we uncover it, when there are differing views on what it is and the difficulty of looking at our past with modern sensibility and the past was VASTLY different. I'm telling you, this is one great collection and will make you think and re-think! I was enthralled!

[Grub Street Hack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hidden from History is a collection of essays written by numerous historians on homosexual history and historiography. The topics stretch from Ancient Greece to post World War II San Francisco, but focuses largely on western history, with brief stops in in pre-modern China, indigenous American society, early modern Japan, modern South Africa, and revolutionary Cuba. Both male and female homosexuals are represented, with males receiving the larger share of the attention. The initial chapters also provide an informative account on the development of gay history.

[Lucy · Rating 1 out of 5]

lack of furry representation

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great big anthology of essays by various writers on a wide range of historical time, place, and people (for example the table of contents is divided into main headings - The Ancient World, Preindustrial Societies, The Nineteenth Century, Early Twentieth Century, World War II and Postwar Era). My favorites were

"She Even Chewed Tobacco" A Pictorial Narrative of Passing Women In America (San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project)
A Spectacle in Color: The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem (Eric Garber)
Homosexuality, Homophobia, and Revolution: Notes Toward an Understanding of the Cuban Lesbian and Gay Male Experience (Lourdes Arguelles and B. Ruby Rich)

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Duberman's essay, Writhing Bedfellows, incidentally tells of the lengths an academic manuscripts library / archive went to in the 1980s to suppress description of a gay dalliance discovered by a researcher (Martin Duberman) within one of their collections, supposedly on behalf of the descendants of two long-dead somewhat prominent 19th Century men.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fairly large book and contains a huge context of historical information related to the gay and lesbian community. It's a must read for every LGBT activist who would like to connect the LGBT community of yesterday to today.

[HeavyReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for a queer history class that I sat in on a few years ago. It was very informative.

[Corinne Blackmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

read

[Zelah Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some fascinating historical stuff that you don't get taught about in school.

[Scott Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The essays are dated now, but when the collection came out it included some groundbreaking stuff. It gets 4 stars from me for that reason.

[KT]

I'm writing a novel based on one of the chapters - so engaging and interesting!

[David Rutland · Rating 4 out of 5]

nice collection of essays on gay history