Let's just say, we've come a long way in being gay

“Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene lived together then. Georgine liked travelling. Helen Furr did not care about travelling, she liked to stay in one place and be gay there. They were together then and travelled to another place and stayed there and were gay there. They stayed there and were gay there, just gay there. […]
They were in a way both gay there where there were many cultivating something. They were both regular in being gay there. Helen Furr was gay there, she was gayer and gayer there and really she was just gay there, she was gayer and gayer there, that is to say she found ways of being gay there that she was using in being gay there. She was gay there, not gayer and gayer, just gay there,that is to say she was not gayer by using the things she found there that were gay things, she was gay there, always she was gay there. […]“

I bet you are asking yourself right about now if the she-author of this was a) seriously demented, b) totally wasted or c) had a date with some “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” while composing this, aren’t you? Admittedly, this text is kind of ‘different’ but, above all, it is pretty unique once you consider its (historical) context.
Would you be surprised, if I told you that this piece of art work was written by one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century? Does the name Gertrude Stein ring a bell? Surely, anyone who has ever stumbled across one of her writings before will recognize her typical, repetitive style immediately: a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose...

Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, as a daughter of educated German-Jewish immigrants in 1874 and received her education at what is now Radcliffe College. In 1903, she moved to Paris and her home at 27 rue de Fleurus quickly became a meeting place for the literay and artistic avant-garde of that time. In 1907, she met Alice B. Toklas who was to become her lifelong partner until Stein died in Paris in 1946.

What makes her especially interesting for eurOut, I think, is that she produced all of her literary work in Europe where she found herself at the beginning of the twentieth century in the midst of an experimental climate in the arts movement. Only Europe, more precisely Paris, back then offered an open-minded atmosphere for many artists from all around the globe to gather there regularly to experiment and be inspired.

In any case, what can be read here is just a brief excerpt from the whole short story…but, believe me, you get a pretty good idea what it is about! After all, she goes on using the word ‘gay’ more than one hundred times throughout the whole narrative. This story was actually published in the magazine Vanity Fair as early as 1923. Are you wondering now how it was at all possible to publish a (bold) story like that?! I mean considering that the 1920s, even though a relatively tolerant time compared to most others in recent history, were still a homophobic era and homosexuality was officially considered a (mental) illness. In general, everyone had to communicate “their little secret” through codes and coded language. Writers for example used metaphors so recurrently in their texts that people who “knew” were able to understand the allusions right away.

Now I bet you are thinking: “Allusions? Codes? Whatever! This text is a f…ing punch in the face!” Well no, it isn’t - or at least it wasn’t. Understanding this text correctly, and with it the implicit derision, is to know that the word ‘gay’ underwent a radical change in meaning within only a couple of decades. While it meant exclusively “happy” and “merry” until the end of the nineteenth and a few years into the twentieth century, this original meaning slowly turned into the meaning of ‘gay’ as we know it today. During the 1920s then, this change was in full swing: for the homosexual subculture it was a code-word for being ‘gay’ and for the oblivious rest, aka “heterosexual mainstream society,” it still simply meant “happy.” Consequently, homosexuals could easily decipher the ironic, even cynical, message this text ubiquitously transmitted: while ‘the gays,’ here especially women, learned about a very ‘gay’…ummm “happy” couple and their very ‘gay,’ that is “happy” existence, those who where oblivious of this double meaning of the word read about the (apparently) “happy,” that is ‘gay’ spinsterhood of two unmarried women. Now…I am confused ;-)

Anyway, logically “unmarried” couldn’t possibly have meant “happy” for mainstream culture since everyone knew true happiness for women lay in marriage... (yeah!) But with this in mind, this great text was full of irony and mocked those living in oblivion while supplying the ‘gays’ with a reassurance of their existence.