Martin Duberman’s Stonewall has been a very interesting book to read thus far and has broadened my awareness of the LGBT experience (not to suggest that it is an exclusively collective experience, but rather, at times, a very individual experience). There are a couple of issues regarding the book that my group discussed and I have been thinking about that I am interested in further exploring.

My initial reaction to the book, after reading sections 1 and 2, was that it high action and fairly sexually charged. This made it hard to put down, but also somewhat hard to believe. The stories of people having sex at the age of 7 or going to jazz clubs before they were old enough to drive seemed quite unrealistic. The stories that Duberman chose to portray are, I would guess, some of the more extreme stories of sexual awakening. At first I didn’t understand why he would choose to pick extreme cases and no “average” ones, and although his motivation is not entirely clear to me, I think I am beginning to understand. It seems to me that this was a time of sexual repression, for both heterosexuals and homosexuals (but especially the ladder), so those gays and lesbians who did come out at that time were exceptional and had to be visible to participate in the LGBT movement. Many of them had such confidence in their sexuality as young people that it just carried over and intensified as they grew older. This confidence is what brought their stories together and brought them to the attention of the author, making them interesting and active subjects for such a book, even if they do not express the “average” LGBT experience.

My other main question about the book was, why Foster? At first he seemed quite boring to me, especially after reading the narratives of the others, but he seems to add a very interesting dynamic. Foster is an example of many things in this book. First, he presents a conflict with social class. He came from a wealthy upbringing and was always expected to be a member of the upper class. The others did not have this particular social pressure to deal with during their upbringing. Also, probably because of this upper class upbringing, he grew up internalizing heteronormativity and, maybe more so, homophobia. Many of the others had some specific moment in their life where they realized that homosexuality was “wrong”, but Foster was raised knowing that it wasn’t socially accepted and that played a major role in his own sexual identity. Finally, he is the only character in the book that exemplifies being gay without having sex. It is common in society to directly link being gay with having a lot of sex, even though one doesn’t have to have sex to be considered heterosexual. Foster’s character shows that he can identify as gay without the need to define that sexuality with sex. Overall, he seems to be one of the more complex characters in the book, even though he initially comes off as uninteresting.