Any scholar who studies queer history realizes that there is a wide, varied, and nuanced history of the LGBTQ+ community and that the Stonewall Riots were not the beginning of queer history as we know it. Not only have societal expectations of gender and sexuality changed drastically over time, but so too has the interplay between gender, sexuality, race, and socioeconomic class, and more. One such interplay is that of life in the public sphere and the private sphere: life lived out on the streets, performed for others, and life lived within the home, quietly, unknown to others. This essay will focus on one of the most well-documented and blatant forms of public sexuality: drag culture. An examination of the queer community during the late 19th and early 20th centuries reveals that transgressing societal norms in the public sphere was easier for men than for women because gender norms dictated that women stick to the private sphere, thus liberating male but not female sexuality by opening up public spaces to which women had no access and apportioning acts of performative sexuality just to men.

Societal gender norms first dictated that all women stick to the private sphere and that any and all aspects of female sexuality—especially overt signs of lesbianism—also stick to the private sphere, thus constraining lesbians and the measures they were able to take the express themselves openly within queer spaces. Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, author of the article The Female World of Love and Ritual, explains that “American society was characterized in large part by rigid gender-role differentiation within the family and within society as a whole, leading to the emotional segregation of women and men” (Smith-Rosenberg 9). These rules basically placed women within the private sphere and the household. Not only that, but they would form all of their social circles and friendships within the private sphere too, with the girls they met at boarding schools, friends of their mothers, and women in the household (Smith-Rosenberg 12). Men also stayed with one another and formed friendships within their own circles, but they formed these friendships within both the private and public sphere; men were not constrained to private spaces as women were. 

Gay men could thus transgress social norms easier than lesbians in the public sphere since sexuality was an accepted quality for men to display in society, including queer spaces. Norms had been different for men and women since far before the Victorian era, as stated by a resident of one of New York’s queer neighborhoods, the Village: “Boys must be boys. But girls mustn’t” (Chauncey 241). Men could be sexual creatures, both in the private and public spheres, because it was expected of them. Society considered sexuality in men to be inherent, and as such, it was not out of the norm (Scientific Text on Sexuality). This reflected into queer spaces in the early 20th century, where gay men had opportunities to carry “themselves openly as fairies” at events such as the Hamilton Lodge Ball, also known as “the F*ggot’s Ball,” a famous Harlem drag ball from the early 20th century (Chauncey 249). Even at these events, women were unable to publicly flout societal gender norms regarding sexuality in the same way as gay men. This is most clearly seen through George Chauncey’s Gay New York, which only minimally features lesbians due to the lack of documentation of lesbian presence in arrest records and documentations of drag performances. It is in the lack of evidence that the existence of lesbians in history can be examined, and ultimately, the strict gender norms reflected into queer public spaces and closed certain aspects off to lesbians.

As a result, while both men and women had opportunities to transgress societies constraining roles around sexuality, these societal norms permeated even queer spaces and bound women to the private sphere. This was specifically because “attacks on homosexuals were usually but part of a wider attack on men and women who threatened the social order by standing outside the family system” (Chauncey 254). Gay men, having much more leeway, would better be able to escape the binds of the family system, while lesbians, many of whom were just getting jobs for the first time and gaining opportunities in life outside of marriage, were still strictly bound by society to conventional family roles, and any transgressions reflected harsher upon them than on men. While lesbians did exist and have queer spaces for themselves, such as lesbian bars, these were private spaces in which any acts of female sexuality or overt floutings of societal norms were kept on the down-low, certainly not with a large audience (Chauncey 240). Gender norms ultimately trapped lesbians and any expressions of sexuality within the private sphere, leading to the lack of documentation there is today on the role of early 20th century lesbians in drag culture or cross-dressing.

The strict societal norms in America meant that the only way for performative female sexuality to be liberated, seen in a public sphere, and recognized as queer was if a man was bringing it to the forefront. This can most clearly be seen through the vivid drag culture that flourished in the early 20th century and continued to this day. For many drag queens, especially Black drag queens, adorning themselves in flamboyant outfits and playing pretend for one night was the dream for them. In director Jennie Livingston’s film Paris is Burning, about the lives of Black drag queens in the 1980s, one queen exclaims, “I want to be a spoiled white girl!” (Livingston). This drag queen explains one of the biggest rationales behind drag that existed regardless of the time period: they could be whomever they wanted to be, however famous or beautiful or outstanding they wanted to be, and be recognized and applauded for it by the queer public. In a society that told them that they were wrong and perverted, this was the opportunity to prove them wrong and be proud of who they were. For them, crossdressing as a woman, specifically white women, was “to symbolically cross from the world of powerlessness to the world of privilege” (hooks 145). Drag was, to be blunt, wish fulfillment. However, women did not have the same opportunities for this public acceptance and wish fulfillment in the early 20th century, as is evident in Paris is Burning. It is a documentary looking at a very focused aspect of the queer community, Black drag culture, rather than the community as a whole, done through interviews that the audience must unpack on their own. As such, much of the analysis around the documentary and the role of women must be done in conjunction with the other sources. The experiential format of the film, paired with Chauncey’s Gay New York, makes drag culture feel more personal and real while also highlighting the missing pieces from both sources. Specifically, the lack of documentation regarding lesbian spaces, even within Smith-Rosenberg’s female-centric article (though it does focus on female homosociality within the private sphere rather than female homosexuality) becomes obvious. In summary, the very lack of evidence in certain, focused aspects aligns to prove why there is a lack of female sexuality in mainstream queer history and many studies of it: societal gender norms excluded it from the most well-documented, publicly queer spaces.

The way in which gay men used drag as an art for self-expression further twisted mainstream society’s expectations regarding gender roles around. To many men, even within the queer community, choosing “to choose to appear as “female” when one is “male” is always constructed in the patriarchal mindset as a loss, as a choice worthy only of ridicule” (hooks 146). Drag was, in other words, seen by many as moving from a realm of power to a realm of powerlessness, and by using the art as a method of gaining power, many Black drag queens subverted this societal expectation and made it their own. However, regardless of the freedom they found in cross-dressing, this expression of female sexuality, this act of flaunting their bodies and acting stereotypically feminine and wearing skirts and blouses in public, for entertainment, was only popularized in public by men (Livingston). While women did have some opportunities to participate in the drag scene publicly later in the century as drag kings, these spaces were never popularized the same way drag queens were, and even in the 21st century, there are hardly any well-known drag kings or spaces for drag kings the way there are for drag queens. RuPaul’s Drag Race is only one example of a widely publicized space for men to be publicly sexual and flout gender norms to which there is no popular counterpart for drag kings on television. Most likely, this is because while mainstream society sees the art of transforming from a man to a woman as that of losing power, in assuming male characteristics women would “deny the patriarchy what they see as their traditional roles” and temporarily take up male space—a scary thought for men who are used to being on top of the cultural food chain (Phelps). Ultimately, gender norms regarding the public and private spheres in the early 20th century meant that performative female sexuality could only be expressed by queer men, further discouraging lesbians from making overt expressions of sexuality in public and closing off public spaces to them.

A study of performative sexuality within the queer community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries reveals that men could transgress gender norms around sexuality in the public sphere, but women could not, opening up public spaces to which women had no access and apportioning acts of performative female sexuality to men. The biggest issue is that this sets a double standard that we see in almost any area of life even in the 21st century—men can be sexual and be praised for it, but women cannot. And even within the queer community, men can be feminine and performative and do drag, but there are very few spaces for women to act similarly or be applauded for dramatic cross-dressing and revel in her sexuality; it is seen as taboo. This double-standard within the queer community is not unique, but just a symptom of society’s double standard towards women throughout history, that we are only just starting to dismantle.

Works Cited

Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. Basic Books, 1994.

Hooks, Bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press, 2015.

Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston, performances by Dorian Corey, Pepper LaBeija, and Venus Xtravaganza, 1990.

Phelps, Nicole. “Drag Has Gone Mainstream-But Where Are the Kings?” Vogue, Vogue, 8 Mar. 2018, http://www.vogue.com/projects/13541679/drag-kings.

Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America.” Sexuality and Sexual Behavior, 1993, pp. 55–83., doi:10.1515/9783110976342.55.