cities, as described by Michael Bronski in his book, A Queer History of the United States. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an extensive underground gay world developed in major U.S. The personal autonomy and privacy afforded by city life allowed for exploration of non-heterosexual desires and greater gender expression, and the development of a community based on those shared interests in a way that was generally not possible under previous “household-family based” modes of production. As D'Emilio argues in his groundbreaking 1993 essay, Capitalism and Gay Identity, it was only through the development of capitalist industrialization, the accompanying expansion of large urban centers, and the transformative effect this process had on social life that the material conditions for the development of LGBTQ identities and communities became possible.
