BijouBlog

If you ever took Psychology 101, you may have learned about the“bystander effect,” a psychosocial dynamic that often occurs when multiple witnesses view a traumatic (but not always) event happening to an individual. 

Essentially, because of social inhibitions, The more witnesses to an event, the less people are willing to become involved. 
 

Why the inhibition? There's many factors that feed into it, but think if it this way as a diffusion of responsibility: how many times you were in situations where you assume others are either more able or just automatically will take care of a problem? Oh, I thought so and so should do it, because it is his job. Or, I just assumed someone else called the police. 

Now, much of the effect does depend on the context, especially if the environment is different or the the group isn't cohesive, but it's not just apathy, as many still believe, based on the supposed reaction of supposed to witnesses to the now infamous Kitty Genovese murder. 
 

The usual story, based on the New York Times story we have heard is that 37 or 38 people saw Kitty Genovese's brutal stabbing outside her apartment building on March 13, 1964, and did nothing, that is, no one called the police. The apathy of the world. The urban jungle. Being lonely in a crowd. People don't know their neighbors anymore in the big city. It all fits, all those social changes are destroying our sense of community. 
 

But I found out that what's really going on here is akin, but not completely, because something happened and there were witnesses, to those urban legends. In fact, my current “brain candy” television viewing (which, it turns out, in this case, ended up far from being that sweet), Investigation Discovery, basing their show on more recent research, pretty much establishes that the usual narrative we have grown up with is not an accurate depiction of what actually happened. 

Here's the rub: no one witnesses the actual stabbing. People heard screams but saw nothing. They saw nothing. Does hearing a scream make you a witness? 

One neighbor saw something and shouted out the window for Kitty's murderer, Winston Moseley, to leave her alone. He could not tell she was stabbed in the darkness. Moseley fled. The neighbor did see her stagger to the door of her apartment building across the street, but he assumed she was probably drunk and/or the victim of a domestic spat. 

It turns out another woman picked up the phone to call the police. She panicked and put the phone down. In those days, there was no 911 emergency service. You dialed the precinct directly. And in some cases, the person answering the phone might tell you to, basing his judgment (based on extensive experience) solely on your speech, to not get involved. Or, perhaps, the person at the precinct might even be led to believe that you were directly involved in the incident. Thus, calling the police during that period actually could be a risky venture. And also, because police departments had not developed the technologies of surveillance and tracking we now take for granted, you could expect to be questioned extensively and even be deemed a suspect just because you made a call. 

Someone else called the police: a female friend of Kitty's neighbor, Karl Ross. Kitty collapsed in the hallway of her apartment building and screamed Karl's name, crying out she had been stabbed. At first Karl did nothing. Winston by then had caught up with her in the hallway and finished killing his prey, inside. (There was no third attack, as the newspaper article claims). Karl by that point had opened the door and saw the attack, but shut the door in horror and fear. Moseley ran off, but soon after, Kitty's neighbor, and, it turns out, good friend, Sophie, had heard the commotion and ran toward the scene, yes, toward a murder (not exactly apathy). Sophie screamed for Karl to call the police. Karl was not there. He had fled the building via a window to his friend's house. 

But why did Karl do nothing, even after he saw the horror? 

Here's the rub, and it could show that the real issue is not apathy, but fear, and not a fear of “getting involved.” Karl Ross was gay. That night, he had also been drinking, alone. In 1964, gays were routinely harassed by the police, even in their own social spaces, which at that point were limited pretty much to gay bars. His fear about calling the police lost precious minutes. 

And Kitty Genovese was a closeted lesbian (well, pretty much anyone gay or lesbian during that period has to be closeted). Her roommate, Mary Ann, was questioned for six hours by the police after the murder, at one point focusing on why there was only one bed in the apartment for two women. Again, anyone considered to be sexually deviant was a target for police harassment. A grief-stricken Mary Ann moved out of the neighborhood soon after, understandably so. 
 

Kitty herself, as far as we know at this point, was not persecuted for being a lesbian. In fact, she was popular with everyone. Her best friend, Sophie, a straight married woman, apparently knew Kitty was a lesbian, but respected Kitty's privacy in that matter. (Kitty also had dated men, not just because it was the norm, but because she worked as a bar manager, and dating men would be pretty much a required “social” dynamic of the job.) 

There's another issue going on here, and I think it could tie into sexism. One of the neighbors assumed the screams were the result of a domestic dispute, and they thus thought it best to not get involved. According to psychologist Frances Cherry, people during that time period were unlikely to intervene if they assumed a man was attacking his wife and girlfriend. 

And there's something else going on here. The values (or lack thereof) that the article was trying to read into the incident, that is, we live an urban jungle where neighbors don't know each other and everyone is a potential enemy, and this distrust and isolation results in apathy, don't really seem to apply on a literal level in this situation. Kitty knew many of her neighbors. She knew Karl, at least enough to call him by name while she was being murdered. And she died in the arms of her best friend, also a neighbor. In this day and age, how many people can even claim they know even the name of a neighbor? 

What's really a shame is that she had to keep the most basic part of her identity a secret. But that didn't prevent her from loving and being loved by her neighbors. And this loving person was brutally murdered by a psychopathic killer who to this day shows no remorse for his action. 
 

 

Kitty should be remembered for her love, not as a victim of apathy. You could say, though, if she's a victim of anything, it's of the sexism and homophobia of the culture at that time. But I don't think Kitty ever saw herself as a victim of anything while she lived, because she loved her neighbor as herself.

 

In 1984, the wingnuts under the auspices of the Reagan administration were consolidating their positions and essentially loaded well their guns in fighting what would become the culture wars of today. 

August seems to have been a rather active month on their part, according to The Gay Decades by Leigh W. Rutledge: 

“August 13 – Jimmy Swaggart, Phyllis Schlafly, James Robinson and Jerry Falwell all testify before the Republican Party platform committee in Dallas, pressing for (and getting) a strongly pro-family, antigay, antiabortion platform. “There were no moderate religious folks who testified,” notes one delegate. 
 

August 19 – On the eve of the Republican National Convention in Dallas, President Reagan issues a statement reaffirming his support for “traditional” family values, and adds that his administration “will resist the efforts of some to obtain government endorsement of homosexuality.” 

August 22 – Jerry Falwell delivers the benediction at the Republican National Convention."

It's obvious that LGBT Americans have made great strides since this era, but note that the leaders of what became known as the Religious Right actually began to consolidate their power base in the Republican Party in the late 1960s. That was a time of both frightening violence and exhilarating freedom, but also a time when many, on both extremes of the political spectrum, were dissatisfied with the way the country was governed.

I am wondering if we are also experiencing a similar threshold time. Can those who would scapegoat LGBT persons for not conforming to their system of social and cultural order regroup somehow? Those justices who interpret the laws of this country give hope that this dynamic will not come to pass. I'm not so hopeful about those elected officials who make the laws, or rather, in this day and age, try to prevent just laws from being passed and executed. 
 

What I am hopeful about is the changing attitude of millenials, even those who identify as Evangelical Christians, toward LGBT issues, especially marriage equality. They've got the technological means to bring about change; I hope that apathy, narcissism, and economic problems won't deter them from making a difference in a future which will belong to them. 
 

 

In 1907, Mcfadden was arrested again for publishing a story in Physical Culture Magazine which was judged to be "obscene material." This time, Mcfadden was convicted. He attempted to have the case heard before the Supreme Court, but was denied on the grounds that the case did not involve constitutional questions. He campaigned nationally to have his conviction overturned, and finally in 1909, received a presidential pardon from President Taft. 

Mcfadden's philosophy was essentially a combination of the naturalistic and self-reliance New Thought (much of it watered down Ralph Waldo Emerson) philosophies: any type of physical weakness took on practically criminal proportions, but one could, though much self-reliance and both physical and mental discipline, overcome such weakness (like he did; he was considered a weak and sickly child and not expected to live long) and improve not only the body (including the sexual organs), but the mind as well.

The mind exerts a tremendous influence over the body. According to Macfadden, one can improve through structured exercise and nutrition programs.

In 1906, he wrote and published a book titled Muscular Power and Beauty, in which explains how to use tension and resistance exercises to develop muscles. A couple decades later the iconic muscleman Charles Atlas would successfully market a course based on these exercises. 
 

One of his more revolutionary ideas was his emphasis on women being physically healthy. Mcfadden encouraged women to exercise and even show more of their bodies than was considered respectable; he campaigned against corsets and high-heeled shoes (which items later became prominent in the fetish-oriented sexuality as early as the 1920s; see description of Bizarre Magazine to appear later on this blog).

Mcfadden was a proponent of "natural movement" in both sexes, which hardly meant sexual indulgence, but rather a disciplining the body so it functioned at full capacity, not only so it could compete in, but also enjoy the benefits of, living. Living of course includes sex, which was natural and wholesome; prudery only encouraged unhealthy shame and guilt. 
 

 

This publication lasted until 1941, after several lawsuits against Mcfadden Publishing Company (he used company assets to finance his own ventures). Macfadden relinquished his interests in the corporation.

After retiring, Macfadden bought the rights to publish the magazine, but he was unsuccessful. The magazine died with him in 1955. 

 

Of course, the Olympics is a major turn-on for gay men, but you should also remember that the Greeks who originated the games approved of homosexuality (and they played the games naked).

And don't forget all those statues of muscular gods like Apollo and Hercules. 

Much later, after millennia of social repression, gays in the 1950s started to gingerly make their presence known through homoerotic muscle magazines like Grecian Guild Pictorial. 
 

 

"I seek a sound mind in a sound body," was the Grecian Guild Pictorial's credo or mission statement. The word "Grecian," however, could easily be read as an underground code for "gay." Grecian became a coded word for gay during the time period of this magazine (1950's-1960's): those guys who like the male body, the "body beautiful," resembling the "Grecian ideal in its muscularity, symmetry, and grace." The association with the more openly homoerotic and bisexual culture of ancient Greece (and not just the physical aspects, but the emphasis on art and health as well as physical strength) was intentional. 

In fact, several issues of Grecian Guild in late 1960 and early 1961 devoted contained articles specifically on the history and culture of the Olympics.

 Perhaps it's time for me to explore my Grecian identity. I'll start with those athletic bulges.   

Bernarr Macfadden founded Physical Culture in March of 1899.

It was the forerunner of health/muscle/fitness magazines, many of which since the 1950s eventually morphed into today's gay pornographic magazines. Macfadden's ideas about health, nutrition, and even sexuality, though themselves not that revolutionary because they were rooted in the New Thought and naturalistic/Darwinian movements of the late nineteenth century, were expressed in a way that many readers considered obscene, especially the photos of both men and women (including Macfadden himself) wearing minimal or even no clothing. 
 

The first issues of the magazine focused on bodybuilding, but he soon added articles about nutrition and natural foods and homeopathic methods of medical treatment. The magazine became a bestseller, unlike the fourteen books he had written on health before. He also published a magazine for women called Beauty and Health. 
 

In 1904, Macfadden began to organize and promote bodybuilding competitions in which men and women competed.

 

In 1905, Anthony Comstock, the self-appointed smut exterminator and originator of the later to be controversial Comstock Laws against obscenity in the media, brought legal action against Macfadden to have him arrested and a second exhibition scheduled in Madison Square Garden cancelled on the grounds that it was lewd and obscene.

 

Macfadden was given only a suspended sentence, and because of the publicity, the crowds filled the arena and people had to be turned away. People (men, presumably) who came to the show hoping to see a display of female flesh were disappointed. 

All the female participants were modestly attired in union suits. But I wonder about those male participants and the mostly male audience that paid their good money to also admire the men. Apparently overt female sexuality wasn't the only show on the menu.

What about the unspeakable taboo of homosexuality? It must have been an obscene sight for Mr. Morality himself, Comstock, to behold all those male hunks parading their masculinity before the lust-filled raw of the crowd.