Talk:Mattachine Society
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Origin of the Name
in London South Bank University Webpage I've found Its name was given by the pioneer activist Harry Hay in commemoration of the French medieval and Renaissance Société Mattachine, a musical masque group which he had studied while preparing a course on the history of popular music for a workers' education project. The name was meant to symbolise the fact that "gays were a masked people, unknown and anonymous", and the word, also spelled matachin or matachine, has been derived from the Arabic of Moorish Spain, in which mutawajjihin, relates to masking oneself. Such an opaque name is typical of the homophile movement of the time in which open proclamation of the purposes of the group through a revealing name was regarded as imprudent. Can anyone comment on the origin of the name? I can't say myself who is right.--Dia^ 15:17, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
- Well spotted. An article from the Boston Phoenix writes: "Hay took the name Mattachine from a secret medieval French society of unmarried men who wore masks during their rituals as forms of social protest. They, in turn, took their names from the Italian mattaccino, a court jester who was able to tell the truth to the king while wearing a mask." So both accounts may be accurate. I will merge the additional information from your source into the article. ntennis 01:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
- OK, found the source: In a 1976 interview with Jonathan Ned Katz, Hay was asked the origin of the name Mattachine. Hay mentioned the medieval-Renaissance French Sociétés Joyeux:
"One was known as the Société Mattachine. These societies, lifelong secret fraternities of unmarried townsmen who never performed in public unmasked, were dedicated to going out into the countryside and conducting dances and rituals during the Feast of Fools, at the Vernal Equinox. Sometimes these dance rituals, or masques, were peasant protests against oppression—with the maskers, in the people’s name, receiving the brunt of a given lord’s vicious retaliation. So we took the name Mattachine because we felt that we 1950s Gays were also a masked people, unknown and anonymous, who might become engaged in morale building and helping ourselves and others, through struggle, to move toward total redress and change." (Katz, Jonathan. 1976. Gay American history: Lesbians and gay men in the U.S.A. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.)