I have read autobiographical accounts of people living during that time, seen documentaries and also novels of the time that involved homosexuality.
It seems to me that for some, who could pass and were able to keep an extremely low profile, some people could “live as they wished.” If you didn’t stand out, and could keep a secret, and no one was out to ruin you, that could work.
But you couldn’t live as you wished if that involved being honest and open about who you were.
And it’s a very different story for people who were gender nonconforming, so that they couldn’t live under the radar. People got arrested for wearing the wrong clothing, or being “indecent” by, say, kissing in public.
Before my time, but wow! I’ve never seen anything like that. Can you remember anything more about it?
That’s a new one for me. All those gay people in Boise plus the Idaho senator with the wide stance leads me to believe Idaho is secretly a gay enclave and all the libertarian gun nut stuff is just a cover.
Shagnasty, but he had a lot of bullshit stories he told.
I don’t know about numbers, but homes for unwed mothers showed there were quite a few having sex. Not to mention all the young girls and women who “went to live with their grandparents” for a year.
I’ve never had anyone tell me they were in a circle jerk, but I have personally talked people into cow tipping. They don’t succeed of course, but you can talk drunk people into a lot of stupid stunts.
I had my first fantasy about another boy at the age of 5. Like you, I knew that this was something I should never reveal to anyone.
This was VERY common in Hollywood. Not just girlfriends but wives.
I know about this first-hand. And the victims often lost their jobs, their families, and often their lives.
Back in the 50s, my mom had a cousin who was a FTM transexual. I don’t think he ever had surgery. He was totally outcast from the family, and couldn’t ever attend his own mother’s funeral.
This is an inaccurately rosy picture. If they were doing anything “wrong,” like homosexual activity, they made bloody sure no-one found out about it. Consequences were dire. Living a life where a very important part of your personality must always remain deeply hidden is not living as one wished.
Yes, people acted differently in public. There was government censorship of media - Hayes Commission. MM associations were not portrayed in movies or acted out in public. But, it was a more modest time generally. “The Outlaw” was banned in Boston. Anyone watching it today would not be able to figure out why.
Also the ‘God made me this way’ identity had not been invented yet. Same gender sex was just sex. Joe McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, Cohn, Shriver and Shine formed a cabal that was as much homosexual as it was political. They flew under the radar because it was something you did not talk about. And, they did not consider themselves to be homosexuals. That was a label you attached to others as a weapon. Like Communist.
On some level perhaps. But, MM sex was engaged in by those who wished to do so. Not being able to kiss in public wasn’t the greatest oppression of the 50s. For most people, gender identity is not an obsession.
Nope, I was born in the 60s, and it wasn’t true then either. But I know plenty of gay people who lived through the 50s and I can state without hesitation that you are objectively wrong. Have you read anything posted in this thread?
Sigh, lured into a degrading men’s room encounter yet again. Another thread were we offer good-faith scholarship and personal experience to what is only a rhetorical challenge, to the derisive laughter of the long-neckers watching through the peepholes.
I like to think I’m giving and accommodating to whatever devices my partner brings to the playtime, but I don’t think I should, when it’s so obviously coming from their place of shame.
Or with the recollections of others, and well documented accounts of gay life in the 1950s. You can reject the data, but it still makes you objectively wrong.
We’ve gathered evidence that this wasn’t universal, or even common. Certainly some gay sex happened in the 1950s in the US but it was actively criminalized and prosecuted. Many people who wished to do so were arrested, put in prisons or mental institutions, beaten up, or killed.
Clearly, if you read it then it must be true. But, that does not my match with my personal recollection. Some gay sex was criminalized in the 50s, but not all. I knew an Anglican minister who was high up in the church hierarchy. He did not serve a congregation because he was homosexual. He was very wealthy and lived on the 17 mile drive in Monterey. Hardly life underground. Perhaps your reading is selective.
Are you saying that J. Edgar Hoover spent his life in jail?
Again, irrelevant sophistry. The problems had nothing to do with not being able to kiss in public. They had to do with being blackmailed, with at a minimum losing your job and at worst being jailed, not for kissing in public but just for being in the same place where other men might be kissing. All of this is well-documented in historical records. In spite of claims that you “were there” if you were not yourself in that life, how can you know what those men (and maybe women) were going through, what they feared, how they lived? The whole point is that it was hidden, by universal consent.
And that’s it for me, I’m finished being wound up by you.
