Pansy Craze In The 1930s Summary

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In His Book “The Exclusion of Homosexuality from the Public Sphere in the 1930s” Author Chauncy George asserts anti-gay campaigns called the “pansy craze’ began in the early to mid-1930’s as gays and lesbians started to become more visible in nightclubs (p331). Newspapers started the pansy craze via news articles that featured stories about nightclubs Male MC’s wearing lavender makeup and accouterments and Men dressed as Female Impersonators. Newspaper accounts precipitated by a January 25th, 1931 gangland shooting at Club Abbey between gangster co-owner of the club Dutch Shultz and Charlie (Chink) Sherman over control of the “Broadway liquor trade.” Fear of a gangland war the prompted police to crack down on gangland clubs, specifically the “pansy clubs” that featured female …show more content…

George states this caused lesbian and gay men to see more dangerous, due to an upset in gender roles of men and women and the diminished role of men in their families (p.353). In her book “Faeries, Marimachas, Queens, and Lezzies: The Construction of Homosexuality Before the 1969 Stonewall Riots.” Author Elvia Arrioloa asserts The Stonewall Riots that erupted in June 1969 in New York City, when a group of, Black and Puerto Rican drag queens and butch lesbians, turned a bar raid into a street fight with the local police. A fight that ultimately came to symbolize and overthrow decades of State laws, Police harassment, segregation, repression, and public degradation as highlighted in the George reading. Arrioloa says a simple street fight that ensued on June 27th, 1969 changed the history of Gays, Lesbians, and Transgenderism, and “breathed life into a dormant and internally conflicted Gay