|
|
|
Reviews
Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest
|
By Peter Boag
|
University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 335 pages. $24.95 paper.
|
Reviewed by Lawrence M. Lipin
Pacific University, Forest Grove, Oregon
|
|
|
| There was a time when the deployment of the term gender meant women's history, but this is no longer the case. Historians such as Joan Scott have long since called on other scholars to transform gender into an "important category of analysis" by paying attention to the ways in which language infused with gendered assumptions shapes our social and cultural lives. Increasingly, historians have explored the changing discourses about manhood during the Progressive era, when reformers struggled to come to terms with the transformed nature of work, family, and community brought on by the rise of a corporate economy. Peter Boag's well-researched investigation into the cultural construction of homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest is a welcome addition to this growing literature. Boag centers his discussion on the scandal that emerged in Portland, Oregon, in 1912 when it was discovered that middle- and upper-class men had been engaged in same-sex sexual affairs. Many of the men implicated in the scandal fled the city, but a good number were indicted and convicted for their vaguely termed "crimes against nature." Rather than provide us with a narrative of this event, Boag deftly uses it, returning to it time and time again, to explore the diverse and changing meanings held by male-male sexuality. |
1
|
|
Same-Sex Affairs begins with a very different community — the large numbers of transient laborers who worked in extractive industries and on railroads and farms in the early twentieth century — and uncovers the nature of their sexual liasons with each other and with urban youths. The intricacies of these relationships are very well told and the detail provided is fascinating, but the key matter is that these folks, often immigrant and nonwhite, were not perceived by others or by themselves to be homosexual. Instead, they were often seen as hyper-masculine. While their same-sex relationships, particularly those involving teenage boys, did often draw the attention of police and the courts, they drew little public comment in the newspapers and were understood to be within the bounds of expected sexual deviance and uncontrollability of inferior peoples. |
2
|
|
Boag then turns his attention to a more prosperous community, the largely white-collar men who were employed by emerging corporate structures and who either boarded at the YMCA or who were able to use their relatively high wages to establish themselves in private apartments. Here something more akin to a modern gay subculture arose, and in terms of sexual acts and sentiment these men forged relationships that were highly different from the hyper-masculine ones of the working-class, transient community. It was this white-collar community that the investigations of 1912 uncovered, and Boag argues that the nature of this subculture would have an important impact on the discursive and legal development and control of homosexuality. |
3
|
|
Because the men who participated in this homosexual middle-class culture did not belong to racial groups that were considered inferior and were not impoverished, such traditional ways of interpreting the nature of their sexual attachments would not do. In the wake of the trials, a new emphasis on the defining of sexual deviance as a thing in and of itself appeared. More talk about homosexuality, or "sexual perversion," led to more laws clarifying which acts came under the purview of the state's older and vaguer laws regarding "crimes against nature." Moreover, Boag points out that this attention came at the same time that laws criminalizing heterosexual relations outside of marriage were being loosened. Homosexuality came to be understood as the chief threat to local families, and it became a compelling interest of the state to protect society from gay men. In the immediate aftermath of the scandals, previously defeated eugenicist sterilization legislation was passed, and the successful bill deviated from its failed predecessors by adding "sexual perverts" to the list of those eligible for the state-mandated procedure. While this all began with the exposure of middle-class homosexuality to public scrutiny, this and other laws would bear most harshly on those transients who were now increasingly understood to be homosexual. |
4
|
|
Although some of the players — including Oswald West, William S. U'Ren, and Bethenia Owens-Adair — are familiar to the readers of this journal, Boag's work frames them in a somewhat different way, offering his readers a very different depiction of Progressive-era Portland and the surrounding Northwest. While this work centers on sexual matters (and the discussion can be frank), it also offers food for thought for readers interested in other kinds of issues. Those interested in the moral character of Progressivism will find much to intrigue them here, and the same can be said for readers interested in questions of race, eugenics, and the changing role of state authority over minority populations. Carefully researched, filled with representative stories regarding individuals, and broad in its historical imagination, Same-Sex Affairs is an important contribution to local history, to gay studies, and to the history of sexuality. |
5
|
|
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|