Editing Walt Whitman (section)

===Sexuality===
[[File:Whitman, Walt (1819-1892) and Doyle.JPG|thumb|upright=1|Whitman and [[Peter Doyle (transit worker)|Peter Doyle]], one of the men with whom Whitman is speculated to have had an [[intimate relationship]]]]
Though biographers continue to debate Whitman's sexuality, he is usually described as either [[homosexual]] or [[bisexuality|bisexual]] in his feelings and attractions. Whitman's sexual orientation is generally assumed on the basis of his poetry, though this assumption has been disputed. His poetry depicts love and sexuality in a more earthy, individualistic way common in American culture before the [[medicalization of sexuality]] in the late 19th century.<ref>D'Emilio, John and Estelle B. Freeman, ''Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America''. University of Chicago Press, 1997. {{ISBN|0-226-14264-7}}</ref><ref name="Fone">{{cite book |last1=Fone |first1=Byrne R. S. |title=Masculine Landscapes: Walt Whitman and the Homoerotic Text |date=1992 |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |location=Carbondale, IL}}</ref> Though ''Leaves of Grass'' was often labeled pornographic or obscene, only one critic remarked on its author's presumed sexual activity: in a November 1855 review, [[Rufus Wilmot Griswold]] suggested Whitman was guilty of "that horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians".<ref>Loving, 184–185.</ref> The manuscript of his love poem "Once I Pass'd Through A Populous City", written when Whitman was 29, indicates it was originally about a man.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Norton |first=Rictor |date=November 1974 |title=The Homophobic Imagination: An Editorial |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/374839 |journal=College English |volume=36 |issue=3 |page=274 |doi=10.2307/374839 |jstor=374839 |access-date=March 10, 2024 |archive-date=September 30, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240930055530/https://www.jstor.org/stable/374839 |url-status=live }}</ref> Late in his life, when Whitman was asked outright whether his "[[Calamus (poems)|Calamus]]" poems were homosexual—[[John Addington Symonds]] inquired about "athletic friendship", "the love of man for man", or "the Love of Friends"<ref>{{Cite web |title=John Addington Symonds to Walt Whitman, 7 February 1872 (Correspondence) – The Walt Whitman Archive |url=https://whitmanarchive.org/biography/correspondence/tei/loc.01961.html |access-date=April 24, 2021 |website=whitmanarchive.org}}</ref>—he chose not to respond.<ref>Reynolds, 527.</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Reynolds |first=David S. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WY2UFkNTR0EC&q=john+addington+symonds |title=Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography |date=1996 |publisher=Vintage Books |isbn=978-0-679-76709-1 |pages=198, 396, 577 |language=en}}</ref>

Whitman had intense friendships with many men and boys throughout his life. Some biographers have suggested that he did not actually engage in sexual relationships with males,<ref name="Loving19">Loving, 19.</ref> while others cite letters, journal entries, and other sources that they claim as proof of the sexual nature of some of his relationships.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Walt Whitman, Prophet of Gay Liberation|url=http://rictornorton.co.uk/whitman.htm|access-date=January 9, 2022|website=rictornorton.co.uk|archive-date=July 20, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190720141818/http://rictornorton.co.uk/whitman.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> English poet and critic John Addington Symonds spent 20 years in correspondence trying to pry the answer from him.<ref name="robinson">Robinson, Michael. ''Worshipping Walt''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010: 142–143. {{ISBN|0691146314}}</ref> In 1890, Symonds wrote to Whitman: "In your conception of Comradeship, do you contemplate the possible intrusion of those semi-sexual emotions and actions which no doubt do occur between men?" In reply, Whitman denied that his work had any such implication, asserting "[T]hat the calamus part has even allow'd the possibility of such construction as mention'd is terrible—I am fain to hope the pages themselves are not to be even mention'd for such gratuitous and quite at this time entirely undream'd & unreck'd possibility of morbid inferences—wh' are disavow'd by me and seem damnable", and insisting that he had fathered six illegitimate children. Some contemporary scholars are skeptical of the veracity of Whitman's denial or the existence of the children he claimed.<ref name="Higgins">{{cite book |last1=Higgins |first1=Andrew C. |chapter=Symonds, John Addington [1840–1893] |editor-last1=LeMaster |editor-first1=J. R. |editor-last2=Kummings |editor-first2=Donald D. |title=Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia| date=1998 |publisher=Garland Publishing |location=New York |url=http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_56.html |access-date=October 10, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Miller |first1=James E. Jr. |chapter=Sex and Sexuality |editor-last1=LeMaster |editor-first1=J. R. |editor-last2=Kummings |editor-first2=Donald D. |title=Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia| date=1998 |publisher=Garland Publishing |location=New York |url=http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_49.html |access-date=October 10, 2020}}</ref><ref name="Tayson">{{cite journal |last1=Tayson |first1=Richard |title=The Casualties of Walt Whitman |url=https://www.vqronline.org/essay/casualties-walt-whitman |journal=VQR: A National Journal of Literature and Discussion |issue=Spring |date=2005 |access-date=October 11, 2020 |archive-date=October 13, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201013085644/https://www.vqronline.org/essay/casualties-walt-whitman |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name="Gritz">{{cite news |last1=Rothenberg Gritz |first1=Jennie |title=But Were They Gay? The Mystery of Same-Sex Love in the 19th Century |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/09/but-were-they-gay-the-mystery-of-same-sex-love-in-the-19th-century/262117/ |access-date=October 11, 2020 |work=The Atlantic |date=September 7, 2012 |archive-date=September 30, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200930222331/https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/09/but-were-they-gay-the-mystery-of-same-sex-love-in-the-19th-century/262117/ |url-status=live }}</ref> In a letter dated August 21, 1890, Whitman claimed: "I have had six children—two are dead." This claim has never been corroborated.<ref>Loving, 123.</ref>

[[Peter Doyle (transit worker)|Peter Doyle]] may be the most likely candidate for the love of Whitman's life.<ref name="Kaplan">{{cite book |last1=Kaplan |first1=Justin |title=Walt Whitman: A Life |date=2003 |publisher=Harper Perennial Modern Classics |location=New York |page=287}}</ref><ref name="Shively" /><ref>Reynolds, 487.</ref> Doyle was a bus conductor whom Whitman met around 1866, and the two were inseparable for several years. Interviewed in 1895, Doyle said: "We were familiar at once—I put my hand on his knee—we understood. He did not get out at the end of the trip—in fact went all the way back with me."<ref>Kaplan, 311–312.</ref> In his notebooks, Whitman disguised Doyle's initials using the code "16.4" (P.D. being the 16th and 4th letters of the alphabet).<ref name="Shively">{{cite book |last1=Shively |first1=Charley |title=Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working Class Camerados |date=1987 |publisher=Gay Sunshine Press |location=San Francisco|page=25 |isbn=978-0-917342-18-9}}</ref> [[Oscar Wilde]] met Whitman in the United States in 1882 and later told the homosexual-rights activist [[George Cecil Ives]] that "I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips."<ref>Stokes, John, ''Oscar Wilde: Myths, Miracles and Imitations'', Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 194, n.7.</ref> The only explicit description of Whitman's sexual activities is secondhand. In 1924, [[Edward Carpenter]] told [[Gavin Arthur]] of a sexual encounter in his youth with Whitman, the details of which Arthur recorded in his journal.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Gay Sunshine|url=http://www.leylandpublications.com/exc_gaysuccess.html|access-date=January 9, 2022|website=www.leylandpublications.com|archive-date=April 12, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200412213114/http://www.leylandpublications.com/exc_gaysuccess.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Kantrowitz">{{cite book |last1=Kantrowitz |first1=Arnie |chapter=Carpenter, Edward [1844–1929] |editor-last1=LeMaster |editor-first1=J. R. |editor-last2=Kummings |editor-first2=Donald D. |title=Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia| date=1998 |publisher=Garland Publishing |location=New York |url=http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_12.html |access-date=October 10, 2020}}</ref><ref>Arthur, Gavin ''The Circle of Sex'', University Books, New York 1966.</ref>[[File:Walt Whitman and Bill Duckett.jpg|thumb|upright=1|Whitman and Bill Duckett]]Another possible lover was Bill Duckett. As a teenager, he lived on the same street in Camden and moved in with Whitman, living with him a number of years and serving him in various roles. Duckett was 15 when Whitman bought his house at 328 Mickle Street. From at least 1880, Duckett and his grandmother, Lydia Watson, were boarders, subletting space from another family at 334 Mickle Street. Because of this proximity, Duckett and Whitman met as neighbors. Their relationship was close, with the youth sharing Whitman's money when he had it. Whitman described their friendship as "thick". Though some biographers describe Duckett as a boarder, others identify him as a lover.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Adams |first1=Henry  |title=Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist |date=2005 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |isbn=978-0190288877 |page=289}}</ref> Their photograph together is described as "modeled on the conventions of a marriage portrait", part of a series of portraits of the poet with his young male friends, and encrypting male–male desire.<ref name="Bohan">{{cite book |last1=Bohan |first1=Ruth L. |title=Looking into Walt Whitman: American Art, 1850–1920 |date=April 26, 2006 |publisher=Penn State University Press |location=University Park|page=136 |edition=1st}}</ref> Another young man with whom Whitman had an intense relationship was Harry Stafford, with whose family Whitman stayed when at Timber Creek, and whom he first met in 1876, when Stafford was 18. Whitman gave Stafford a ring, which was returned and re-given over the course of a stormy relationship lasting several years. Of that ring, Stafford wrote to Whitman: "You know when you put it on there was but one thing to part it from me, and that was death."<ref name="Folsom">{{cite journal |last1=Folsom |first1=Ed |title=An Unknown Photograph of Whitman and Harry Stafford |journal=Walt Whitman Quarterly Review |date=April 1, 1986 |volume=3 |issue=4 |pages=51–52 |doi=10.13008/2153-3695.1125 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

There is also some evidence that Whitman had sexual relationships with women. He had a romantic friendship with a New York actress, Ellen Grey, in the spring of 1862, but it is not known whether it was also sexual. He still had a photograph of her decades later, when he moved to Camden, and he called her "an old sweetheart of mine".<ref>Callow, 278.</ref> Toward the end of his life, he often told stories of previous girlfriends and sweethearts and denied an allegation from the ''[[New York Herald]]'' that he had "never had a love affair".<ref>Reynolds, 490.</ref> As Whitman biographer Jerome Loving wrote, "the discussion of Whitman's sexual orientation will probably continue in spite of whatever evidence emerges."<ref name=Loving19/>