to recover these voices and make a really simple argument that LGBTQ history is everywhere." And that's really what we're trying to do here. "But it also has the potential to recover lost voices.
"One of the things that we talk about in the field is the way digital history has the potential to democratize history," Regan said. There are hundreds of thousands of entries that Regan, Gonzaba, and their team are trying to map (and that's just up to the 2005 guides, with help from a National Endowment for the Humanities grant), in a simple effort to increase this knowledge pool for scholars and the general public alike.
"I wanted people to have a communal resource that's forever changing and growing and evolving. "He thinks of himself a businessman at heart." But the guides uniquely show how physical spaces among the LGBTQ community have evolved over time the beautiful complexity in queer activity and pastimes and how this history is more universal than we have been led to believe. "Damron did not think of himself as an activist," he explained.
#Trans man gay fucking machine free#
Credit: Mapping the Gay GuidesÄamron's weren't the only resources of their kind, with others like the Gayellow Pages and Spartacus Guides offering similar information, and the Damron Guides aren't free of problems, as early guides were limited by the mainly white male audience, Gonzaba explained. Search by year, location, or amenities on Mapping the Gay Guides to learn more about historic queer spaces.
#Trans man gay fucking machine software#
Gonzaba was using Damron's guides in his research into gay male nightlife post-Stonewall Regan, a digital historian who created software for fellow scholars, agreed there was potential to do more with the guides, as well as preserve a kind of oral history that is easily forgotten or erased. The idea to transition Damron's guides into a digital resource came as they were both defending their dissertations, one with a focus on queer history in the 20th century and the other on women and gender in the 20th century, at George Mason University. The Mapping Gay Guides website was created by Eric Gonzaba, assistant professor of American studies at CSU Fullerton, and Amanda Regan, a lecturer in the department of history and geography at Clemson University. But the internet may be able to give the guides a new, slightly different use. In an interview with Los Angeles Magazine ahead of the 52nd (and possibly last) edition of the guide, Gatta mourned a slow decline in interest, saying she understood the books no longer appealed to young LGBTQ people, especially those in big, urban cities. You can still purchase some of the original copies online, or find versions in digital libraries. In the 1980s, Damron sold his solo idea to Dan Delbex to start the Damron Company, and updated Damron Guides, led by writer, president, and editor in chief Gina Gatta, were still in circulation as recently as 2020. Damron decided to systematize and sell his observations, similar to the historic " Green Book" created to help Black travelers find safe spaces around the United States, and in doing so compiled one of the largest and longest studies of this facet of queer culture from 1965 to 1980. Mapping the Gay Guides is a historical database and mapping of LGBTQ spaces based on the midcentury gay-friendly travel guides created by Bob Damron, a businessman who kept track of his experiences as a gay man traveling around the United States from the 1960s on. Free, online shops for gender-affirming clothing can offer a safe space for all