Sometimes looking at the past tells us how far we've come and how far we've yet to go
by JORDAN CRUCCHIOLA
photo by TREVOR ATKINS
The month of June is many things. It’s Father’s Day, the NBA playoffs, the first solstice; it is even referred to as the month of rebirth. And contrary to spring’s claim over such hallowed phenomena as mating season and floral blooming, June is a month that has seen great new beginnings.
But June is also the month during which one persecuted faction of society decided to fight for its rights. On June 27, 1969, New York City police forcefully raided a popular Greenwich Village gay bar called the Stonewall Inn. Unexpected raids on gay bars were conducted regularly and with little resistance during that time, but that night at Stonewall was a watershed moment in the outing of gay and lesbian life in America. It was the first time the gay community responded with violent retaliations of its own. The several days and nights of hostile protests and demonstrations that followed the raid have become known as the Stonewall Riots and are widely considered the beginning of the gay liberation movement.
Each year, throughout the month of June, gay pride festivals commemorating the Riots are held across America and the world, signifying the day the silence was broken and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community decided it would no longer be a skeleton in the closet, but a public force to be respected. This June will be the thirty-eighth anniversary of Stonewall, and in order to appreciate how far we have come as a nation — and how far we have yet to go — in regards to achieving social equality, it is important to remember where we have been.
Every once in a great while, the literary world provides us lay-folk with a taste of genius. In 1939, The Grapes of Wrath became a national anthem as John Steinbeck took the tumultuous tale of Dust Bowl America and wove it into an intricate narrative summarizing the can-do, survivalist attitude this country is renowned for.
In 1957, Ayn Rand graced the world with Atlas Shrugged. Widely considered her magnum opus, Rand’s final work of fiction surpassed 1,000 pages and explored many philosophical themes that would eventually contribute to her theory of objectivism.
Reuben’s book was published on the heels of America’s
sexual coming-out party.
Then, in 1969, sex expert Dr. David Reuben wrote his own earth-quaking epic: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). Although it was a work of “non-fiction,” Reuben deserves a star in the constellation of Mailers, Steinbecks, Hemingways, and Hawkings. If Atlas was an opus, Sex is most certainly a work par excellence in the arena of scientific research — a reference worthy of being published in pocket-size format for all those seeking answers to life’s most pressing sexual quandaries. “Why exactly do men want prostitutes to have orgasms?” for example. It’s like The Communist Manifesto — but with less bourgeoisie and more erections.
Twenty-one years after Alfred Kinsey’s groundbreaking report, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male — and two years after San Francisco’s famous Summer of Love — Reuben’s book was published on the heels of America’s sexual coming-out party. It was the sixties and sure, everyone was having sex, but they needed guidance. They needed direction. They needed Dr. Reuben.
