i'm currently researching butch identity in mid-century america! here's a fact about post-WWII LGBT communities in port cities that blew my mind today. from lillian faderman's odd girls and twilight lovers: a history of lesbian life in 20th century america
[Image ID: a picture of a paragraph in a book, which reads
Ironically, the military also contributed to the establishment of a larger lesbian subculture when it became less lenient in its policy toward homosexuals once the war was over. Thousands of homosexual personnel were loaded onto “queer ships” and sent with “undesirable” discharges to the nearest U. S. port. Many of them believed that they could not go home again. They simply stayed where they were disembarked, and their numbers helped to form large homosexual enclaves that were beginning to develop in port cities such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Boston. Historian Allan Bérubé wryly remarks: “The government sponsored a migration of the gay community.”
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