GAY HOW to be D AV I D M . H A L P E R I N HOW GAY to be THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts * London, Eng land 2012 HOW to be GAY DAVID M. HALPERIN Copyright © 2012 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College all rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data Halperin, David M., 1952– How to be gay / David M. Halperin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-06679-3 (alk. paper) 1. Gay men. I. Title. HQ76.H2795 2012 306.76′62—dc23 2012009043 ƒor Myra and Marie, Damon and Pier, Linda and Steven, Jill and Toby, Jean and Isabelle, Valerie and Gayle, Mark and Neil, Esther and Stephen, Gay and Randy, Rostom and Matthieu, Ume and Aaron, Peter and Andy, Jesse and Emily and Sarah, Nadine and Patsy, Michael and Martha, Paul and Zachary, Logan and Aric, David and Brent, and ƒor John CONTENTS Part One: B+ Could Try Harder 1 Diary of a Scandal 3 2 His tory of an Error 33 Part Two: American Falsettos 3 Gay Identity and Its Discontents 69 4 Ho mo sex u al ity’s Closet 82 5 What’s Gayer Than Gay? 88 6 The Queen Is Not Dead 109 Part Three: Why Are the Drag Queens Laughing? 7 Culture and Genre 129 8 The Passion of the Crawford 149 9 Suf fering in Quotation Marks 186 10 The Beauty and the Camp 201 Part Four: Mommie Queerest 11 Gay Family Romance 223 12 Men Act, Women Appear 242 13 The Sexual Politics of Genre 260 14 Tragedy into Melodrama 282 Part Five: Bitch Baskets 15 Gay Femininity 301 16 Gender and Genre 322 17 The Meaning of Style 355 18 Irony and Misogyny 376 viii CONTENTS Part Six: What Is Gay Culture? 19 Judy Garland versus Identity Art 401 20 Culture versus Subculture 421 21 Queer Forever 432 Notes 459 Acknowledgments 527 Index 535 et the pagans beget L and the Christians baptize.
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