A Forum: Coming of Age in the Age of Coming Out; The Transformation of Queer Youth Experiences in the United States, 1953–1983

Abstract: When scholars complain of the problem of sources in the history of childhood and of sexuality, they typically have in mind the paucity of written materials. In this forum, four historians explore the problems presented by very much existent sources that combine the histories of sexuality and childhood in US history between 1953 and 1980. The forum begins with my introduction, addressing some of the commonalities in the essays, including the theme of intergenerational sex between children or youth and adults. The introduction also calls attention to how audience may have shaped each of the sources under discussion. Leslie Paris explores a set of structured interviews with a young gay man from the ages of seventeen to twenty-seven, between 1969 and 1979, and explores how changing attitudes and discourse around homosexuality affected his self-identification over time. Amanda Littauer presents case studies of life writing by queer girls and gender-nonconforming youth and applies both ordinary and speculative readings to the complex evidence. Nikita Shepard discusses letters by youth to ONE magazine, which reveal the experience of gay youth in the 1950s and 60s to be more complex than standard narratives of isolation. Lauren Jae Gutterman discusses testimonies included in the 1980 collection One Teenager in Ten , about queer youth’s experiences of sexual abuse by adults, and explores the problem of how to interpret the youth’s positive feelings about their encounters. The four essays aspire to provide an example for historians hoping to tackle the challenging history of childhood sexuality, a brave choice in the context of contemporary anti-groomer hysteria directed at queer scholars.