America Only Gets Queerer
Michael Bronski's sweeping, nuanced historical investigation yields striking new insights
Published: Wednesday, October 12, 2011 12:59 PM CDT
BY DOUG IRELAND
http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2011/10/12/gay_city_news/community/doc4e95cc1f64f44960834861.txtIf you're one of those people who think history is dull, boring, and irrelevant to your life today, Michael Bronski's brilliant new "Queer History of the United States," just published by Beacon Press, should disabuse you of such blinkered notions.
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And in the "Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expeditions," written by Nicholas Biddle between 1804 and 1810, the explorers detail how, among the Mamitarees, "if a boy shows any symptoms of effeminacy or girlish inclinations he is put among the girls, dressed in their way, brought up with them, & sometimes married to men."
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And there was the combative evangelist Jemima Wilkinson, who in 1775 "believed that Christ entered her body and that she was now neither female nor male... She renamed herself 'Publick Universal Friend,' refused to use the pronouns 'she' or 'he,' and dressed in gender-neutral garments that made her sex unreadable." In the mid-1780s "the popular press and pamphlet culture covered her sermons in detail and placed particular emphasis on her sexually ambiguous persona. She had a huge following that verged on a cult..."
