The author is trying to say there's some gay aspect to this, but it's really just a country vs. city thing. That goes back a long way, at least to the Roman Empire. There's also the Britain vs. the rest of the world thing, which was a big deal during the days of the British Empire.
The "macaroni" outfits shown are only a slight exaggeration of 18th century European male formal dress. The 20th century equivalent would be a zoot suit vs. a business suit.
The author quotes numerous original sources from the time that commented on the 'gay aspect' of macaronis.
They make the argument that this commentary, in particular caricatures, were a driving force behind the macaroni's change in perception in the public eye.
Perhaps these caricatures were motivated by a city vs country thing, but seeing as there were caricatures created in the cities this seems unlikely.
English commentators... variously referred to macaronis as "that doubtful gender," "hermaphrodites," and "amphibious creatures."
One song described a macaroni as thus: "His taper waist, so strait and long, / His spindle shanks, like pitchfork prong, / To what sex does the thing belong? / ’Tis call’d a Macaroni."
The Oxford Magazine similarly described the macaroni as not belonging to the gender binary: "There is indeed a kind of animal, neither male, nor female, a thing of neuter gender, lately started up among us. It is called a Macaroni. It talks without meaning, it smiles without pleasure, it eats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion."
in the early 1770s, Mary Darly, a cartoonist by trade, devoted so much energy to caricaturing macaronis that her store in London became known as "The Macaroni Print Shop." Darly’s ridicule of macaronis became the first widespread use of the caricature as a means of social commentary.
What would be comments on a "gay aspect" today aren't necessarily so 200 years ago, even if the wording is the same. The past is a foreign country.
Your third quote is especially unpersuasive; it lists "neither male nor female" side by side with many other obviously hyperbolic insults, all of which are to the effect "they're unnatural". And one of them specifically says that macaronis are given to womanizing.
The word "gay" may have changed in meaning from "cheerful to homosexual", but being referred to as "that doubtful gender," "hermaphrodites," and "amphibious creatures," or having questions asked about "to what sex [the thing belongs]?" or being described as "a kind of animal, neither male, nor female, a thing of neuter gender" leaves very little to the imagination.
The fact that it was noteworthy and the main focus of commentary also implies that it deviated from the norms of the time.
You are conflating gender with sexuality. It may be a recent thing to explicitly differentiate between them in discourse, but gender was still distinct at the time - to insult a man's masculinity would clearly not in all contexts imply you were calling him a homosexual. In fact I'm sure in a majority of cases it would not imply that, since insults to masculinity were and still are quite commonplace.
More specifically, hermaphroditism does not have any clear implication of homosexuality, and a neuter gender has an implication of no sexuality. That doubtful gender is the strongest possible insinuation, but still weak given it clearly targets gender.
These all seem to be immasculating insults, and much more convincing arguments would need to be made to infer the implication of homosexuality. In fact, even the article points to masculinity being the overriding theme.
If there were clearer contemporaneous examples of these phrases more unambiguously implying homosexuality, that would be more convincing.
> gender was still distinct at the time - to insult a man's masculinity would clearly not in all contexts imply you were calling him a homosexual
To the classical Romans, a man having sex with men was considered to be demonstrating greater masculinity (if he was topping) than one having sex with women; women were soft targets (as a Latin teacher of mine put it, "anatomically passive" and therefore not so much of an accomplishment).
Surely you know the difference between a fop and a homosexual. There could be some crossover, or not.
Men have commonly been called foppish or effeminate as a way to insult them. It has absolutely zero to do with homosexuality. I guess the closest we have is the metrosexual, or lumbersexual, but our society is heterogeneous. Back then there was just one way to look rich, urbane, and sharp -- and country, colonial fobs in the hinterlands didn't like it so much. The feelings were mutual.
I should have been more clear - I don't think the article was saying there was a 'gay aspect' (insomuch as a definite homosexual aspect) at all, I was just using the parent comment's language to contrast what was claimed and what was actually in the article. In fact, the article only makes passing reference to homosexuality, saying
Whether these critiques of macaronis insinuated homosexuality is debated. Certainly it is difficult to generalize one way or other: though some commentators appeared to frame macaronis in terms of same-sex attraction, not all did.
My main point was that the article was citing actual discourse from the time, and that was not at all consistent with a city vs country narrative.
Read the whoile thing, the word changed over time, started out to mean a elegant rich person, over time it became more of an effeminate thing - the song start out with one meaning which changed out from underneath it, eventually people forgot what the word had meant at all and the song switched around from being one making fun of americans to a patriotic anthem as the meaning changed yet again.
The "macaroni" outfits shown are only a slight exaggeration of 18th century European male formal dress. The 20th century equivalent would be a zoot suit vs. a business suit.