A Queer History of the United States Read Online Free PDF

from Great Britain, it was clear they would have to establish a new, distinct culture that would reflect their own political ideology. One of the ways they did this was to consciously invent a new “American man” who represented all of the new virtues of the Republic and had little connection to the traditional Englishman. This new American man was bold, rugged, aggressive, unafraid of fighting, and comfortable asserting himself. This model was in complete contrast to the Englishman, who was stereotyped as refined, overly polite, ineffectual, and often effeminate. The new American man was personified in popular myth-making by rural colonists such as Ethan Allen, who fought the British in Vermont and New York State, and John Paul Jones, the Scottish-born naval mastermind who famously said in battle, “I have not yet begun to fight.”
    This new action-oriented American man already existed in some form, due to the conditions of survival on the frontier. The Revolution was well fought by the colonists because they were an armed society and “just about every white man had a gun and could shoot.” 4 The new American man, a mythic prototype defined by his heroic actions in the colonial militia, was also a prototype of the citizen. Not only were slaves unable to join a militia, but so were friendly native Americans, free Africans, white servants, and white men without homes. These restrictions ensured that the prototypical American man was of a certain class, ethnicity, property, and citizenship status.
    A prime example of this fabrication of American manhood is Royall Tyler’s 1787 The Contrast, the first American-written play produced in the United States. A traditional comedy of manners, the play pitted the foolish, duplicitous, American-born but British-identified Mr. Billy Dimple—a “flippant, pallid, polite beau, who devotes the morning to his toilet . . . and then minces out”—against the play’s hero, the very American Colonel Manly, who is all that his names implies. The Contrast is insistently didactic and aimed at creating a new American citizen-based culture. The play’s prologue states its political purpose: “Exult, each patriot heart!—this night is shewn / A piece, which we may fairly call our own; / Where the proud titles of ‘My Lord! Your Grace!’ / To humble Mr. and plain Sir give place.”
    At the play’s end, as he is called a coward for refusing to fight with Dimple, Manly explains:
    Yes, Sir. This sword was presented to me by that brave Gallic hero, the Marquis De la Fayette. I have drawn it in the service of my country, and in private life, on the only occasion where a man is justified in drawing his sword, in defence of a lady’s honour. I have fought too many battles in the service of my country to dread the imputation of cowardice. Death from a man of honour would be a glory you do not merit; you shall live to bear the insult of man and the contempt of that sex whose general smiles afforded you all your happiness. 5
    In one grand speech, Tyler connects the colonial revolution to American manhood, national pride, personal honor, and different-sex desire.
    This is, in part, why the United States did not abolish its sodomy laws. Highly gendered societies reinforce traditional ideas about gender through regulating sexual behavior. In the fervor of those revolutionary years and the promotion of a national masculinity, the idea that sodomy laws might be abolished might have been understood, even by Enlightenment men, as counterproductive.
    But the creation of a prototype American man presented a host of broader questions and problems. If there was a new American man, did there also have to be a new American woman? Would she be as bold and adventurous as her male counterpart? There is no question that colonial and Revolution-era women worked hard and exhibited enormous physical and psychological strengths; they often ran homes and businesses when men were off fighting. Life was filled with