Margaret Mead Made Me Gay

Personal Essays, Public Ideas

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by Esther Newton,

Foreword by Judith Halberstam and William L. Leap

Duke University Press

Due/Published November 2000, 360 pages, paper

ISBN 0822326124

This is the intellectual autobiography of cultural anthropologist Esther Newton, a pioneer in gay and lesbian studies. Chronicling the development of her ideas from the excitement of early feminism in the 1960s to friendly critiques of queer theory in the 1990s, this collection covers a range of topics such as why we need more precise sexual vocabularies, why there have been fewer women doing drag than men, and how academia can make itself more hospitable to queers. It brings together such classics as "The Mythic Mannish Lesbian" and "Dick(less) Tracy and the Homecoming Queen" with entirely new work such as "Theater: Gay Anti-Church."

Newton's essays detail a queer academic career while offering a behind-the-scenes view of academic homophobia. In four sections that correspond to major periods and interests in her life--"Drag and Camp," "Lesbian-Feminism," "Butch," and "Queer Anthropology"--the volume reflects her successful struggle to create a body of work that uses cultural anthropology to better understand gender oppression, early feminism, theatricality and performance, and the sexual and erotic dimensions of fieldwork. Combining personal, theoretical, and ethnographic perspectives, Margaret Mead Made Me Gay also includes photographs from Newton's personal and professional life.

Series: Series Q

"Esther Newton's work . . . has changed anthropology, feminist studies, and queer studies in remarkable ways. . . . Newton's methodological innovation has less to do with crafting new empirical tools and more to do with a creative and inspired mode of listening and participating in the cultures she studies. Newton performs an anthropology of self which is neither narcissistic nor alienated."--Judith Halberstam, from the foreword

Contents

Introduction by Judith Halberstam
Introduction by Bill Leap
AuthorŐs Introduction

Part I: Drag and Camp
Mother Camp Appendix: Field Methods (1972)
Role Models (1972)
Preface to the Phoenix Edition of Mother Camp (1979)
Theater: Gay Anti Church--More notes on Camp (unpublished, 1992/1998)
Dick(less) Tracy and the Homecoming Queen: Lesbian Power and Representation in Gay Male Cherry Grove (1996)

Part II: Lesbian/Feminism
High School Crack-up (1973)
Marginal Woman/Marginal Academic (1973)
The Personal is Political: Consciousness Raising and Personal Change in the Women's Liberation Movement, with Shirley Walton (unpublished, 1971)
Excerpt from Womanfriends, with Shirley Walton (1976)
Will the Real Lesbian Community Please Stand Up? (1982/1998)

Part III: Butch
The Misunderstanding: Toward a More Precise Sexual Vocabulary (with Shirley Walton, 1984)
The Mythic Mannish Lesbian:Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman (1984)
Beyond Freud, Ken, and Barbie (1986)
My Butch Career: A Memoir (unpublished, 1996)

Part IV: Queer Anthropology
DMS: The Outsider's Insider (1995)
Too Queer for College: Notes on Homophobia (from Chronicle of Higher Education, 1987)
An Open Letter to "Manda Cesara" (1984)
Of Yams, Grinders, and Gays: The Anthropology of Homosexuality (1988)
Lesbian and Gay Issues in Anthropology: Some Remarks to the Chairs of Anthropology Departments (1993)
My Best Informant's Dress: The Erotic Equation in Fieldwork (1992)

Notes, Bibliography, Index