Chauncey and Waldstreicher Responses Richards

Waldstreicher response

Waldstreicher’s piece is a creative use of primary sources to advance a particular characterization of some of the dynamics between people escaped from enslavement and those who enslaved them. His piece tackles a large topic, and does interpret a great deal from primary sources, but is mostly engaging.

This article uses various advertisements to show the tenuous conceptions of race that informed the racist, supremacist vocabulary of the class of people who willingly used enslaved laborers. As the author points out, the role of race in society was not sufficiently clear for any one shade of skin to be clearly synonymous with enslaved or non-enslaved life. Despite what Waldstreicher describes as a strong “desire to identify unfree laborers as phenotypically different”, racism often relied on concepts much less tangible than any shared physical characteristic – this was in part because people with varying color of skin were enslaved or indentured (257).

Waldstreicher’s article highlights the ways in which people could manipulate their appearance or officiate their identity using written document to escape from enslavement. To that end, this writing feels particularly pertinent after last week’s discussion in class in which we addressed the many facets of any one person’s identity and how “identity” describes multiple perspectives: that of the person themselves, and those of the people who perceive them in certain ways. The trading of documents described on page 263 offers one example of identity (as perceived by others) to be highly mutable, based simply on a piece of paper. A strength of the piece is when Waldstreicher describes the ways in which people were able to save their own documents, forged or real, to share with others, voicing agency among those whose agency is underrepresented in historical record.

Chauncey response

The Chauncey piece demonstrates immediately that an essay does not necessarily require a flashy draw-in story; having a clear claim and interesting subject matter is sufficient in the piece to immediately make it compelling.

Chauncey writes that although most literature on the subject would disagree, he thinks that the binaric categories of “homosexual” and “heterosexual” are recent developments. His analysis is intersectional in nature, and sheds light on the way that stereotypical gendered identities lent certain privileges to some gay men. This argument is really interesting, and well-substantiated by his analysis of the varying terms assigned to describing gay men that were not “homosexual”. The role of ‘masculinity’ in American society is certainly not to be underestimated, and this passage of the piece demonstrates the powerful potential of gender norms for protecting oneself from being ostracized.

Another strength of the piece is Chauncey’s accounts of the slight (or major) inversion of gender norms that allowed homosexual men to signify that they were interested in finding other homosexual men. He describes various coding methods – from using the term “artistic” as a descriptor to intentionally rouging one’s cheeks, that allowed many men to communicate in non-explicit ways. However, like most of the subject Chauncey handles, there is nuance to this mutability: while the ability to “manipulate such symbols” as aforementioned was empowering to some men, he writes that many experienced passing as traumatic or deeply troubling.

Chauncey’s piece excels in clarity and use of sources to support his deconstruction of the three theories he begins with. His use of diction is done very precisely, which allows him to accessibly explain complicated conflations and divergences between of sexual identity and gender identity. Ultimately, his piece elucidates stories from a “gay world” in which men found community, difficulty, identity, sexual opportunity, empowerment and many other experiences not otherwise represented by the image of the closet door.