No Place Like Home

Stephen Vider

No Place Like Home: A Cultural History of Gay Domesticity, 1948-1982, explores the development of gay male domestic spaces and their representation in American culture, from the publication of the first Kinsey Report to the AIDS epidemic. Through archival research, and analysis of periodicals, books, and film, it shows that gay men frequently experienced their homes as key sites in the construction of sexual identities, relationships, and communities. Social scientists, journalists, and filmmakers of the 1950s and 60s typically depicted gay men as outsiders, if not threats, to the ideal heterosexual household, either anti-domestic (lonely figures who lurked city streets, bathrooms, and bars in search of a one-night stand), or hyper-domestic (prissy interior decorators whose work alienated "real" men from their homes). Such images, however, overlooked the actual range of social and...