Jan Gay(1902-1960)
- Writer
In her youth, she had some success as a writer of children's books ["Tom Cats," "The Mutt Book," "Pancho and his Burro"], which were illustrated by her partner Eleanor Byrnes, but that likely ended with the 1932 publication of her book on nudism in Germany, "On Going Naked."
The success of the book enabled Gay to start her own nudist club in Highlands, New York called the Out-of-Doors Club. With Gay interviewing all prospective members prior to admission it became the most exclusive and famous of the nudists clubs of the time. The Out of Doors Club, Gay's book and Gay's nudist documentary This Naked Age (1932), which played as a "Road Show" throughout the 1930s, were the start of the nudist movement in the USA.
In 1935, Gay helped to establish the New York Commission for the Study of Sex Variants, for which she served as both a subject of study and a researcher, but she split with the Commission as the study they conducted increasingly treated homosexuality as a pathology -- while it was Gay's belief that greater knowledge would lead to greater acceptance.
After Gay's departure, the study devolved into an ever-greater exercise in homophobia, even including an attempt to find the defining physical characteristics of the homosexual, in order to better protect society from their deviance.
The success of the book enabled Gay to start her own nudist club in Highlands, New York called the Out-of-Doors Club. With Gay interviewing all prospective members prior to admission it became the most exclusive and famous of the nudists clubs of the time. The Out of Doors Club, Gay's book and Gay's nudist documentary This Naked Age (1932), which played as a "Road Show" throughout the 1930s, were the start of the nudist movement in the USA.
In 1935, Gay helped to establish the New York Commission for the Study of Sex Variants, for which she served as both a subject of study and a researcher, but she split with the Commission as the study they conducted increasingly treated homosexuality as a pathology -- while it was Gay's belief that greater knowledge would lead to greater acceptance.
After Gay's departure, the study devolved into an ever-greater exercise in homophobia, even including an attempt to find the defining physical characteristics of the homosexual, in order to better protect society from their deviance.