Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century ParisExamine how a community of support in Nineteenth-Century Paris became a blueprint for modern sexual identity! A unique social history, Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris is a valuable addition to the growing field of gay and lesbian studies. The book examines the interaction between the city's male homosexual subculture and Parisian authority figures who attempted to maintain political and social order during the early years of the French Third Republic by using laws against public indecency and sexual assault to treat same-sex sexuality as a crime. Faced with a constant cycle of surveillance, harassment, and arrest, the city's gay men survived the hostile urban environment by forming a community of support that had a widespread and lasting influence on the development of modern sexual identities. Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris is based on a statistical analysis of more than 800 working-class and middle-class men who were arrested or investigated by Parisian police between 1873 and 1879. Their stories, presented through long and short case studies, represent nearly 2,000 names recorded by police in “Pederasts and Others,” a ledger detailing the arrests of male homosexuals for public offenses against decency and other minor offenses. (The term “pederast” identified those suspected of same-sex sexual activity, not the modern definition that indicates homosexual relations with a minor.) The ledger entries reveal specific habits, attitudes, values, and characteristics about these men that set them apart—the same traits that identified them as part of a community based on their behavior and relationships. Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris examines:
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accused adult Archives arrested or investigated Arrondissement bathhouses blackmail boys Canler Carlier Champs Elysées charged Chouard clerks clients convicted courts crime criminal justice Culture December 24 Dechatillon Dominique Fernandez edited eighteenth Eighteenth-Century elites female prostitution France French friends Gazette des Tribunaux Gender George Chauncey Germiny Harrington Park Press History Ibid involved Jeffrey Merrick Jeffrey Weeks Journeux Le Figaro Le Petit Journal living male homosexual subculture male prostitution masturbating men’s Michel Rey months in prison Mourgues Mourgues’s Nevertheless nicknames nineteenth century offenses against decency Parisian passive Pédérastes pederasts percent Petit Journal police arrested police ledger Préfecture Princeton prosecutors provincials public offenses relationships role same-sex sexual activity same-sex sexual behavior Second Empire servants Sexual Identity sexual underground siècle social Sodomy surveillance Tardieu Third Republic thirties tion trial Trumbach twenties University Press urinal usually Voyer women workers working-class year-old York young