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New York Hustlers: Masculinity and Sex in Modern America. By Barry Reay. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. xiv, 279 pp. Cloth, $90.00, isbn 978-0-7190-8007-4. Paper, $35.00, isbn 978-0-7190-8008-1.)
"Sex is complex," wrote Thomas Painter, the most important chronicler of midcentury male prostitution, and Barry Reay readily agrees in New York Hustlers (p. 140). By examining rhe figure of the husder, Reay shows that earlier constructions of sexuality based on sexual performance rather than object choice persisted well past midcentury. The historian George Chauncey has established that at the turn of the century males could retain their sense of masculinity if they played the inserter role regardless of rhe sex of the insertee. The question is when did that réjame end. By looking at the husder, Reay argues that this way of classifying sexuality persisted at least into the 1...