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| | "The Great Prevalence of Sexual Inversion": Havelock Ellis on Gay Life in the American City |
 | | From the Civil War through the 1920s, in New York and other American cities, there were numerous clubs, saloons, and dance halls known for transvestism (men or women dressing as the opposite sex), for male prostitution, or as places that catered to a “gay crowd”—meaning men and women interested in a less conventional evening’s entertainment. |
 | | At the same time, psychologists, physicians, and social reformers had been at work attempting to study, classify, categorize, and label human sexual behavior. |
 | | In an excerpt from his 1915 book, British physician and psychologist Havelock Ellis, a pioneer in the emerging field of human sexuality, mapped out for his readers the culture of “sexual inversion” in American cities, reflecting how practices that had long been common, or at least tolerated, were suddenly viewed as problematic. |
| historymatters.gmu.edu /d/5114 (611 words) |
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