Chauncy Reading

Something I found interesting in chapter three of Chauncy was the part with in the bachelor subculture section where it talks about manliness and being a man something that was acted out and earned. With all the focus on performance within wrestling matches and dominating women, it is commented that “they regarded their manliness as a king of ongoing performance.” I think this ties in really nicely with how a man could have sex with another man and, as long as he was the one penetrating, he was still seen as straight and sexually normal. It is the choice to take on that “womanly” part of sex that made a man homosexual and lesser in their eyes.

The fact that these “fairies” were able to be tolerated so much because they “confirm[ed] rather than question[ed]” a man’s manliness seems utterly outrageous in today’s standards. However, we do not draw a sexuality line between who is penetrating who so much when it comes to two males having sex. We simply see that as a homosexual act all around, and we seem to be finally coming around to the idea that both parties in that sexual act can be considered male despite their sexuality. This was clearly not the case with in turn-of-the-century America. Someone was always needed to be seen as subordinate because God forbid sex be between two equals.

I also thought it was interesting that when a middle-class man’s homosexuality was questioned even though they were performing the penetration, they did not seem immediately to stop but to defend until the stigma became too great. It was also interesting that the “fairies” tended to go after working-class men over the middle-class men because they were “more responsive to [ ] advances than ‘normal’ middle-class men would have been,” but then it is the middle-class men, who were still having sexual encounters with “fairies,” have their sexuality questioned more than working-class men. This seems to have been though because the working-class men were constantly working and proving their manliness, where middle-class men would have less labor intensive jobs. However, the difference is still really interesting.