A Queer History of the United States Read Online Free PDF Page B

everyday hardships as the country grew and the Revolutionary War continued for eight years. Yet in the traditional Puritan equation of different-sex relationships in a family, a man’s strength was defined, enhanced, and complemented by a compliant woman. At this point the myth of the new American man—and the nation’s new gender roles—become less coherent. Like all strictly delineated systems of gender, the new American models could not represent the diverse lives of actual people.
    The evolving American culture was filled with enormous anxiety over the meaning of gender roles. First, many of the men who conceptualized this new country were not good examples of the new American man. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton, with their fine manners, powdered wigs, large estates, and voluminous libraries, were far closer to the image of the wealthy, aristocratic, educated Englishman from which the country was distancing itself. Second, the women in this circle were also well educated and frequently spoke their minds, contrary to the subordinate role women were thought to hold in society. During the 1776 Continental Congress, Adams and his wife, Abigail, wrote one another frequently, and she was direct in her concerns:
    I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. . . . If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.
    That your sex are naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute; but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of master for the more tender and endearing one of friend. 6
    John Adams dismisses her concerns with a joke: “We dare not exert our power in its full latitude. We are obliged to go fair and softly, and, in practice, you know we are the subjects. We have only the name of masters, and rather than give up this, which would completely subject us to the despotism of the petticoat . . .” But it is clear that the new American nation and the new American man valued free white men above women and all other men. 7
    Abigail Adams was not the only woman with these ideas. Over the next decade, women lobbied for suffrage, only to be consistently denied the right to have a voice in their government. While some states allowed female suffrage for a short while, this quickly changed. Women were denied suffrage in New York in 1777, in Massachusetts in 1780, and in New Hampshire in 1784. In 1787 a constitutional convention allowed the states to decide on suffrage; all states but New Jersey denied women the right to vote. New Jersey revoked female suffrage in 1807. In 1867 the Fourteenth Amendment stipulated specifically that suffrage is the right of male citizens alone.
    Just Friends
    In societies in which gender and power are inexplicably intertwined, often little respect is given to people who desire their own sex or who do not conform to accepted gender expectations. Same-sex relationships and desires, however, manifest themselves in various, often more socially acceptable, ways. This is especially true in the complicated interplay between companionship, community, and eroticism in people’s lives. The clearly defined separate social spheres for women and men—both the public and the private for men, and most often the domestic for women—give rise to clearly defined same-sex cultures, usually referred to as “homosocial.” This term does not necessarily imply an erotic or sexual component—although those could, and often do, exist—but rather describes a social construct that emerged in specific ways during the eighteenth century.
    Homosocial space at