Need help writing an Abstract on Gay New York from the turn of late 19 century

...to 1940 , to be exact. From George Chaunceys book "Gay New York" .
How is this:
This book examines the re-discovered side of queer life from the late 1890s to year 1940 in the Tenderloin and Bowery districts of NYC. The lower classes occupied themselves with the orgies and the like that was associated with the "notorious" districts of NYC. Working-class immigrants only gave added headaches to the "slumming" as in slum bashing upper-class , yet the rich still managed to be tempted by the shocks and thrills to be had in these "red-light" districts. Vigilantes took it upon themselves to attack the thickly populated , poor districts.

I know its not structured but its due in a couple of days. Help

Haven't read the book, so you're on your own with content, unless someone else on the forums happens to have perused it.


Um. You might need a little more detail here (about the setting, not about the orgies). I'm sure that even the most notorious districts of New York didn't have orgies in the streets in 1890s.


This doesn't make much sense to me. Revise.


Again, more details are needed. Vigilantes imply people protecting the streets against dangerous criminals. Were the people in these neighborhoods dangerous to anyone? Were the attacks against gay people, or against poor people generally living in areas known for vice crime? etc.

Be careful with "queer" -- If you are LGBTQ yourself and this is for an LGBT or women's studies course where "queer theory" and other uses of the term are common, groovy. But, of course, "queer" was and remains a term used to denigrate people believed not to be heterosexual. Its use by LGBT people is what is called "name reclaiming" and is considered slang outside of LGBT or women's studies courses. Its use by heterosexuals is dubious.

I am familiar with that book but I, like Sean, find your "abstract" confusing. Your first sentence is fine. Your second sentence is wobbly. You stop making sense in the third. Try to say what you mean more simply.

Or, of course, if the book itself uses that terminology. After all, if you are writing an abstract about a book that repeatedly refers to "queer life," then using the term in your description of it is merely accurate. I wouldn't worry too much about "name reclaiming," btw. That sort of foolishness should be ignored on general principle.

Sean, you seem stuck in the culture wars of the 1990s. For the record, I was harassed incessantly as a teen by thugs who used a common denigrating term for an aspect of my identity. It's not "foolishness" for me to ask people who don't share that identity feature to avoid the use of such terms, nor is it "foolishness" for anybody who has been so victimized to do whatever they need to do -- including using the slur among themselves so as to defuse it -- to maintain or regain feelings of self-worth in the wake of such social shaming.