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Behind the Mask of the Mattachine: The Hal Call Chronicles and the Early Movement for Homosexual Emancipation (Haworth Gay and Lesbian Studies)
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.766092
EAN: 9781560231875
Edition: 1
ISBN: 1560231874
Label: Routledge
Manufacturer: Routledge
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 586
Publication Date: October 30, 2006
Publisher: Routledge
Studio: Routledge
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Editorial Review:
A 19th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Finalist!
Take a revealing look at gay history--and the man who helped kickstart gay activism in today's society
The Mattachine is the origin of the contemporary American gay movement. One of the major players in this movement was Hal Call, America's first openly gay journalist and the man most responsible for the end of government censorship of frontal male nude photography through the mail. Behind the Mask of the Mattachine: The Early Movement for Homosexual Emancipation, the Hal Call Chronicles travels back to the times before Stonewall and its aftermath, to the beginnings of the modern homosexual movement and the lesser-known individuals who started it. This stunning chronicle gives the unexpurgated history of the activists who organized homosexuals--using the biography of the controversial Hal Call as its springboard.
Behind the Mask of the Mattachine provides a revealing illustration of gay life in the past through an intergenerational history of the early gay men's movement. Noted author James T. Sears generously weaves oral history, seldom seen historical documents, and rare photographs to provide a rich behind-the-scenes look at the first wave of Mattachine activists and the emerging gay pornography industry. This historical chronicle of a previously neglected era is packed with details of Call's personal struggles, his celebration of the phallus, and his assertion linking homophobia and heteronormativity to our culture's sex-negative tradition. The reader is transported to the underworld of youthful hustlers, porno kingpins, spurned lovers, sex clubs, cruising grounds, secretive societies, and personal in-fighting over the direction of gay activism. This enthralling narrative is impeccably referenced.
Behind the Mask of the Mattachine examines:
The origins of the Mattachine Society
The Mattachine Foundation of Harry Hay and others of the "Fifth Order"
The Weimar Republic in Germany--the roots of the modern homosexual movement
Networking of homosexuals through correspondence clubs and speakeasies in Depression-era America
The intense rivalries between San Francisco and New York City Mattachine groups
Censorship of books, magazines, and films
And much more!
The book explores the lives of three generations of pre-Stonewall gay activists:
Magnus Hirschfeld and Benedikt Friedländer
Henry Gerber and Manual boyFrank
Harry Hay and Hal Call
Behind the Mask of the Mattachine puts a needed spotlight on a time in lesser-known gay history, and makes illuminating reading for historians and gay persons interested in the history of the gay men's movement.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Sex, Politics and Desire
Sears, James. "Behind the Mask of the Mattachine: The Hal Call Chronicles and the Early Movement for Homosexual Emancipation", The Haworth Press, 2007.
Sex, Politics and Desire
Amos Lassen
The Mattachine Society is what began the movement for gay rights long before Stonewall. James Sears takes us back to the beginnings of the modern homosexual movement and to those unfamiliar names that were the early heroes of our movement. This is the first history of the ... Read More
Rating: - Behind the Mattachine Mask
I'm not sure what Sears thinks he is doing but lumping together profiles of three generations of gay rights activists into his enormous, authoritative study, but if you ask me, I could have done without those heaping helpings of Hirshfield and Manuel Boy Frank.
Be that as it may, nothing will prepare you for the depth of research Sears has performed on the most interesting and still controversial years of gay liberation, the Mattachine Society and its series of constitutional conventions ... Read More
Rating:  - A vast compendium
Of an early British historian it was said that "he makes a heap of all he knows." So too James T. Spears in this vast, sprawling volume. However, much of what is in the heap is intensely interesting. The detailed quotations, revealed by Spears' archival research, help us to realize what it was like to be a gay man in the forties and fifties, an era that now seems almost prehistoric.
The blurb says that Hal Call saved the gay movement. I don't think that that is the story this book tells. ... Read More
Rating: - The REAL Story--Finally!
This is a GREAT book! Full of behind the scenes stories of the early gay movement that other historians have been too timid or lazy to uncover. Sears does a terrific job in not only writing the biography of Hal Call, one of the key leaders of the Mattachine Society, but of integrating that story with the real story of 70 years of gay organizing before Stonewall. To top it off he does a brilliant job documenting the connection between gay activism and gay sexuality. This book belongs on the bookshelf of any ... Read More
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