Take the Young Stranger by the Hand : Same-Sex Relations and the YMCA (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society)

Rating:
Summary: YMCA, It 's More Than Just A Song
Review: John Donald Gustav-Wrathall's study of same-sex relations and the YMCA, Take the Young Stranger by the Hand, is a very focused study taking the reader from the origins of the YMCA, with its plethora of bachelor secretaries and intense friendships through the early decades of the twentienth century and its fear of deviancy and into the cruising of later decades. To be sure, the bulk of the book is on the earlier and middle periods. Two of the chapters also focus on women to some extent. It is interesting to see how the YMCA came into being and how its development echoed the social development of the society it was a part of and, even more fascinating, the ways in which it tried to influence society. This book fits into homosexual history but is broader in contexst than that as it is truly the history of same-sex relations, including sexual, but also including friendship and mentoring and sometimes comibinations of all three. It is the story of the changing homosocial environment all people of a certain class (middle) lived within.

Rating:
Summary: Narrow focus keeps things dull
Review: The story of the YMCA is an interesting one, but unfortuantely this book focuses in on tiny bits of facts that render the whole thing much less interesting than might be expected. But this is really more an exercize in documenting than anything else. Still, it is informative about how mutable and powerful our theories of of sexuality are.