He posited that this subculture was more fully and publicly integrated into working-class than middle-class New York.Ĭhauncey explains the definition of a fairy in this specific 19th-century context:
In his book Gay New York, George Chauncey identified the 1890s as one of the earliest periods in the city when one very specific, and “notorious,” aspect of the emerging gay male community – the subculture of flamboyantly effeminate “fairies” – became noticed by a wider public.
