Public vs. Private

This dichotomy refers to the idea that things such as sexual expression belonged within the private realm of the home and proper people did not discuss such things within the public sphere of politics and day to day life. There was a problematization of this idea in the late 1920s where explicit forms of sexuality and gender expression in theater such as Burlesque and Vaudeville challenged the idea that sexual expression was a matter for the private sphere. However, these infiltrations of sexual expression in the public sphere also led to more crackdowns and persecution in the public sphere as a consequence of heightened visibility as seen as with the Hayes Code which effectively banned sexual explicitness in films until the 1950s and increased incarceration and institutionalization of homosexual men because of their association as the “sexual psychopath” with the circulation of sexology theory (Bronski).  [Satveer]