A Silent and Invisible History: Queer Experiences and Heterosexism at the Downtown Portland YWCA

The history of gender and sexual minorities in the United States is a still a relatively young area of academic research. Much of the intellectual and political effort in local queer communities has been dedicated to the fight for basic civil rights in a country that is still largely hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and intersex people, as well as others. ² As a member of the queer community and a student of history, information about gender and sexual minorities is very important to me. It lets me know that I am not the first person in history to be queer; it ends the isolation, silence, and shame about who I am. ³ After researching the Portland, Oregon, downtown YWCA, I have found only a few examples of queer history. Although recent scholarship and local lore has foregrounded same-sex bonding and sexual alliances in urban Y's, the story of queer experiences at Portland's YWCA—even in contrast to its neighboring YMCA—is one of silence and invisibility. ⁴ This contribution to the symposium explores why.

The Portland YWCA, founded in 1901, stood in a tradition of middle-class evangelical women's club and voluntary organizations. The YWCA extended nineteenth-century gender norms and expectations, in which middle-class men and women were separated into distinct social spheres in a primarily homosocial atmosphere. ⁵ This sex-segregated, woman-centered environment created enormous opportunities for social and political organizing around gender. Just as John Wrathall and others have argued that the YMCA was a place where gay and bisexual men could meet, the YWCA's "single-sex environment [may have] offered an ideal setting for . . . [women] interested in experimenting with new relationships." ⁶ As scholars have shown for the women's colleges of the period, the YWCA facilitated what lesbian historiography terms "romantic friendships" and other forms of same-sex intimate relationships in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. ⁷ In the years after World War II, mainstream social acceptance of same-sex sexuality and gender variation remained limited, though the war did open up some additional spaces for same-sex sociability. ⁸ The late 1960s proved pivotal, with the birth of "gay liberation." Since then, the silence around queer lives and history in the United States has begun to lift, although it remains very challenging to uncover in environments of intense homophobia, ignorance, and even violence.

Silences in the record around queer women's history at the Portland YWCA dominated my main findings. My research also showed ample evidence of this silencing similar to that found by noted scholars of queer history. While I found head shots from the late 1960s and 1970s that show executive directors and other staff wearing very short hair and little make-up, revealing that some staff members did cross traditional gender lines at least in their appearances, I found almost no record in the archive of lesbian and bisexual women's experiences. ⁹ Institutionalized heterosexuality was a part of social norms at the local YWCA and proms, "man-catching" advice, and homophobic statements by leaders were recorded in YWCA board meeting minutes and other parts of the archive. As a researcher and student, I came away from our project with the words of former executive director Marsha Mulvey ringing in my ears: "The Y continues to be . . . one of the most homophobic organizations around." ¹⁰

Yet one woman in particular stood out as a possible example of queer history and its silences. Essie L. Maguire (1894?-1979), the "powerhouse" executive director from 1949 to 1960, was a well-known, well-loved woman who "put in endless hours of her life" working as a professional YWCA woman during her forty-year career. ¹¹ An educated, white, native-born Protestant Oregonian whose father was a prominent figure in the labor movement, she...