2001/01/01 by Leslie A. Taylor · 13 citations
Arts and Humanities · Business, Management and Accounting · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Aesthetics #American History and Culture #American Sports and Literature #Art #European history and politics #Gender studies #Gossip #Identity (music) #Law #Lesbian #Loneliness #Media studies #Normative #Political science #Psychology #Sexual orientation #Social psychology #Sociology #Theme (computing)
paper · doi:10.1353/sex.2001.0042
published in Journal of the History of Sexuality 10(2), 250-286 (University of Texas Press)
openalex publication_date 2001/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
From December 1928 to April 1929, New York City attorneys, courts, and the public pondered "sex matters," "a delicate social problem," and "one woman's fight for social adjustment despite abnormality." 1 When writers for the New York Times used these descriptions to convey the lesbian theme of Radclyffe Hall's novel The Well of Loneliness, they were participating in a scandal in which normative values about "sexual explicitness" and the causes of sexual identity and gender were being contested. The scandal forced publishing houses, vice societies, attorneys, and the courts to articulate the manner in which a lesbian novel could--and could not--corrupt.