LGBTQ America

Gerard Koskovich
when the topic was not addressed in public or family settings. Before the
emergence of print media produced by and for LGBTQ people in the United
States, stories of the queer past no doubt circulated confidentially
between individuals and within local queer social networks. 6 For those
who gained access to such networks, conversations among the members
could include individuals who experienced same-sex desires or whose
sense of gender did not match social expectations recounting their own
memories, as well as recollections shared by others whose stories
extended further back in time. Such folk interest in queer history is
difficult to trace before the late nineteenth century, both because
evidence is scarce and because the shifting meanings, forms, and
interrelations of gender, same-sex desire, and homosexual acts over a
longer period make the task increasingly complex.
Figure 1: The final home of Ruth Fuller Field in the 1930s was in the Gailmore Apartments at 500 N.
Glendale Boulevard in Glendale, California. The site is now the location of a Chase Bank building
constructed in 1965 (pictured). Photo courtesy of photographer Chris Reilly, 2015.
6
On the shift from oral and confidential networks of communication to wider and more public
communication via print media, see Martin Meeker, Contacts Desired: Gay and Lesbian
Communications and Community, 1940s–1970s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
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