How Commercialization and Assimilation Shook the Queer Community

A retrospective on Daniel Harris’ The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture

Photo of the book The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture, taken by author.

I picked up a copy of Daniel Harris’ 1997 book The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture at an estate sale a few summers ago. Nestled on a shelf alongside self-published gay locker room erotica, original edition Beanie Babies, Robert Mapplethorpe photobooks, and dusty mosaic glass knickknacks, the book instantly pulled me into a world that I only got to inhabit with the dullest of proto-queer consciousness.

I learned something completely new about the history of queer culture within the very first page, a fun little factoid combined with analysis from Harris that would forever turn my understanding of my own career on its head: Did you know there was an entire cottage industry of queer-positive self-help books released in the 1970s and 1980s, which were designed to help shame-ridden gay men, bisexuals, and lesbians feel more confident in their queerness, and more comfortable being openly queer?

These “glad-to-be-gay” books, as Harris refers to them, became a mini-phenomenon following the release of George Weinberg’s Society and the Healthy Homosexual in 1972, which introduced many readers to the possibility that a person could be openly gay and thrive, and could seek psychological…