10 - Transgressive sexuality and the literature of the Harlem Renaissance

Summary

Elaborately costumed crossdressers at Harlem drag balls, public wedding ceremonies for black lesbian couples, speakeasies entertaining racially and sexually mixed crowds with illicit drinks and sexually explicit performances - transgressive sexuality clearly represented a visible facet of life during the Harlem Renaissance. This glossy and racy image of Harlem fits the sexualized cliché of the “roaring twenties” as a decade of abandon and sexual revolution. Dramatic changes in the urban sexual and racial landscapes indeed occurred in the early twentieth century: thousands of African Americans migrated to the northern urban centers, the “New Woman” emerged, and same-sex desire was reconceptualized. Until then explained by the phenomenon of gender inversion - effeminate men desire other men and “mannish” women desire other women - and represented by easily identifiable “inverts,” types such as “fairies”/“pansies” or “mannish-acting” women, same-sex desire was now increasingly linked to a discrete and less visible category: homosexuality. Older theories of same-sex interest as inextricably linked to gender inversion, however, persisted. While the police and urban anti-vice societies attempted to suppress “immoral” sexual activities, New York's freshly emerged metropolis Harlem was largely exempt from policing efforts and consequently developed into a popular vice district. Striving for racial uplift, the black bourgeoisie tried to counteract this development by exerting pressure on the black community, but they lacked the power to successfully police Harlem.