Queer Cowboys

Description:

Why do the earliest representations of cowboy-figures symbolizing the highest ideals of manhood in American culture exclude male-female desire while promoting homosocial and homoerotic bonds? Evidence from the best-known Western writers and artists of the post-Civil War period - Owen Wister, Mark Twain, Frederic Remington, George Catlin - as well as now-forgotten writers, illustrators, and photographers, suggest that in the period before the word 'homosexual' and its synonyms were invented, same-sex intimacy and erotic admiration were key aspects of a masculine code. These males-only clubs of journalists, cowboys, miners, Indian vaqueros defined themselves by excluding femininity and the cloying ills of domesticity, while embracing what Roosevelt called 'strenuous living' with other bachelors in the relative 'purity' of wilderness conditions. Queer Cowboys recovers this forgotten culture of exclusively masculine, sometimes erotic, and often intimate camaraderie in fiction, photographs, illustrations, song lyrics, historical ephemera, and theatrical performances.

subjects: Homosexuality, Male, in literature,  History and criticism,  American literature,  Gay men in literature,  Sexual orientation in literature,  Cowboys in literature,  Homosexuality and literature,  Male friendship in literature,  Sex in literature,  History,  Male homosexuality in literature,  American literature, history and criticism, 19th century,  Desire in literature,  Culture,  Study and teaching,  Motion pictures,  Civilization,  Social history,  Sociology,  Sex (Psychology),  Gender expression,  Gender identity