Women and Sexuality Discussion

Question: How is sexuality socially constructed? What are some of the stereotypes surrounding homosexuality/heterosexuality/bisexuality/asexuality, etc. that inform our understanding of sexuality? What happens when someone does not fit these norms?

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5
Anxious Slippages between “Us” and “Them”
A Brief History of the Scientific Search for Homosexual Bodies
Jennifer Terry
Since the late nineteenth century, the body has been central to both scientific and popular constructions of the origins of homosexuality. As homosexuality came to be
associated with pathology, questions about the causes and distinguishing features of same­sex desire propelled physicians, biologists, anthropologists, and forensic
scientists to identify and measure characterological features of suspect individuals, and to classify them according to an array of sexual typologies. Over the past
century, a melange of scientific studies has emerged that postulates in one way or another a vital link between the body and homosexual desire. This chapter offers an
abbreviated historical sketch of this century of scientific attempts to correlate corporeal attributes with homosexuality, tracing some of the more significant ways that
bodies have been scrutinized for proof of innate constitutional deficiency as well as for evidence of abnormal proclivities and unusual sexual practices.
What counts as a body? What can it reveal about the causes and manifestations of perverse desire? Is it a reliable source for determining who is a “homosexual”? If
homosexuality can be found on or in the body, what are its signs? What parts or territories of the body reveal it? If homosexuality is signified through the body, are its
marks the source or the consequence of experiences and desires? These questions frame my inquiry into the larger historical effort to name and police homosexuality,
which persists even to this day. To undertake a comprehensive analysis of this complex history is too great a task to accomplish here, so I have chosen to focus on the
earlier half of this history, beginning around 1869, when the homosexual was singled out by science as a distinct type
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of person with unique psychical and somatic characteristics, and ending with the publication of Kinsey’s reports on human sexual behavior in the period just following
World War II. This framing device allows us to chart scientific curiosity and trepidation about homosexuality as it moved from being understood in terms of an innate
biological condition afflicting certain individuals to being considered one of many possible forms of sexual behavior practiced by all kinds of people. This shift from a
clinical understanding of the homosexual as a distinct type of being toward a statistical variance model that mapped all manner of sexual behaviors is illustrated, in part,
by the increasingly contorted and contradictory ways in which homosexuality was conceptualized in relation to the body. As we shall see, in this shift the body became
not only a troublesome source of evidence, but disappeared altogether as Kinsey’s methods obliterated, at least momentarily, the notion of a distinct homosexual type.
By surveying the work of several prominent sexologists and focusing specifically on an American study from the 1930s that straddles the boundary between hereditary
and environmental explanations for homosexuality, this chapter analyzes changes in the status of the body as a source of scientific evidence about “abnormal” sexual
tendencies and desires. I focus on two distinct but overlapping constructions of bodies that circulated through scientific studies during this historically tumultuous
period. The first assumed that homosexuality was the symptom of an innate and inherited constitutional predisposition, and the second assumed that the body was a
surface upon which the signs of homosexuality appeared as consequences, rather than causes, of certain practices and characterological tendencies. I examine the
contrast between these two ways of conceptualizing the embodiment of homosexuality, noting how scientists and physicians deployed different kinds of diagnostic
techniques for determining who was inclined toward homosexuality, and what was to be done to contain their abnormal desires. I then turn to a discussion of research
on human sexual variance in the late 1940s that actually made the homosexual body disappear, if only for a brief, anxiety­ridden moment. The chapter ends with an
epilogue on the implications of this history for current interests in “gay biology.”
Constitutional Deviance
The medico­scientific discourse from 1869 to around 1920 presented a complex and contradictory set of explanations for homosexuality, all of which understood this
“contrary sexual instinct” to be somehow rooted in the body. Here I want to highlight several main ideas that structured this discourse, focusing on how psychiatric
ideas from the nineteenth century set the stage for twentieth­
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century studies of homosexuality and the body. Before beginning, it is important to signal the difference between the way early sexologists conceptualized the body in
terms of its “constitution” and the way we understand it today. We are quite accustomed today to thinking of the biological domain of the body as nominally distinct
from the psyche, as well as the larger social context in which both are situated. However early sexologists did not understand these to be clearly differentiated
domains. Instead, an individual’s constitution encompassed biological attributes as well as moral, intellectual, and psychical qualities, all of which were seen to be
deeply reflective of each other and embedded in an individual’s body. In the case of homosexuality, an individual’s tendency toward perverse acts was seen as
evidence of innate moral inferiority as well as biological deficiency. Conversely, those who were robust and free of perverse temptations were seen to be biologically
sound and morally upright.
Two key ideas shaped the way homosexuality was seen to be embodied within this constitutional framework. The first regarded it in terms of constitutional degeneracy
and deemed homosexuals to be suffering from an innate pathological condition of the body linked to disorders of the brain and nervous system. The second construed
homosexuality in terms of sexual inversion and imagined that homosexuals belonged to a third sex, situated between male and female. These two models, while
analytically distinct, overlapped in the writings of prominent sexologists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as we shall see.
Homosexuality and Nervousness
The idea that homosexuality was a matter of constitutional degeneracy emerged at a time when European science supported a prevailing belief that certain socially
disadvantaged classes of people were intellectually inferior by nature. Thus, the bodies­­and particularly the brains and nervous systems­­of the poor, of women, of
criminals and of nonwhite peoples were assumed to be primitive, fundamentally degenerate, or neurotically diseased. The homosexual joined their ranks around 1869,
in the midst of a great deal of speculation about the body’s role in expressing deviant sexual desires, when German physician Karl Westphal wrote that contrary
sexual feeling was rooted in the body’s constitution. 1
For many of the earlier sexologists, including, notably, Viennese psychiatrist Richard von Krafft­Ebing2 and, later, British essayist Havelock Ellis, the homosexual
invert was a living sign of modern degeneracy who suffered from an underlying nervous disorder that could manifest in certain kinds of physical stigmata as well as in
sexually inverted personality traits.3 This creature’s
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tainted body was not only a necessary precondition for the expression of homosexuality; it also inclined the individual toward even more degenerate acts and moral
dissipation. Homosexuality was only one of an array of signs, albeit among the strongest, of defective development. Those who expressed it inherited some degree of
neuropathic taint that could manifest in a number of other biologically based deviations, including neurasthenia, eccentricity, imbecility, and even artistic brilliance.
In general, this way of conceptualizing homosexuality as a form of constitutional degeneracy generated two different frameworks. The first of these considered
homosexuality as a sign of the loss of adaptive ability. 4 Privileging the nervous system, this framework posited that degeneration, of which homosexuals were both
signifiers and sufferers, was caused by an exhaustion of the nervous system due to inordinate cultural constraints and stress. Since the nervous functions were seen as
constitutive of the highest and most complex system, when they were broken down by stress the individual and, by implication, the culture underwent a process of
simplification. This debilitation of the nervous system allowed primitive instincts to run free, manifesting in insatiable sexual appetites and promiscuity. It also led to
devolution and decreased sexual differentiation that manifested in the emergence of a third, anatomically primitive class of defective individuals who were between man
and woman.
The second framework linking homosexuality with constitutional degeneracy involved the Spencerian notion of overspecialization. According to this framework, as the
human species became more complex­­and those of European origin were seen to be the most complex­­less energy was available to be spent on reproduction.
Homosexuals, whose numbers were said to be increasing, represented a pathological response to the demands of modern civilization, which manifested in their
presumed refusal to procreate. They signified cultural complexity taken to the point of biological sterility.5 The alleged preponderance of homosexuality among
intelligent women and artistic men of the upper classes was supporting evidence that this contrary sexual instinct was a troublesome side effect of European cultural
refinement.
Homosexuals came to symbolize sterility, madness, and decadence in the late Victorian period. Psychiatric texts of the time combined conservative sexual mores with
scientific opinion in the exaltation of heterosexual marriage and reproduction. By contrast, masturbation and homosexuality were condemned for contaminating and
exhausting the source of noble sentiments that would otherwise develop as a part of normal sexual instincts. Krafft­Ebing believed that masturbation could induce
neurasthenia, which, in tainted individuals, could deteriorate further into homosexual perversion. As compulsive nonreproductive practices, both forms of self­pollution
drained the male body of its vitality and
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left no offspring to show for it. Ultimately, the ongoing practice of both perversions led to a point of no return, leaving the “youthful sinner” with an excessive sex drive
but in a state of “psychical impotence” that made an adjustment to heterosexual relations impossible. 6
Like Krafft­Ebing, Ellis also understood masturbation to be both a symptom of organic weakness and an aggravating factor that could lead to further perversion.
Together with homosexuality, it loomed as a menacing outcome associated with sexually precocious children. Like savages and criminals, they suffered from arrested
development because they were inherently tainted.7 In Ellis’s view, inverted sexual instinct grew out of a predisposition developed in an individual’s early embryonic
life, similar to the conditions under which other congenital defects originated, for example, idiocy, criminality, and genius. Those with such a congenital predisposition
were susceptible to becoming inverts in adulthood, but some could be spared this fate if, in childhood, they were subjected to healthy routines that fostered
heterosexuality and proper gender identification.
How, then, did sexually precocious children grow up to be homosexuals? Ellis explained that human sexual instinct initially was specialized in neither a homosexual nor
a heterosexual direction, but could be steered down the wrong path if a constitutionally predisposed child was subjected to unhygienic circumstances, such as
attending sex­segregated schools or being exposed to sexually aggressive adult inverts. Sexually precocious children were especially vulnerable to becoming
homosexuals in adulthood because, as a result of expending sexual energy at a young age, their development would be arrested. If the body’s development was
stalled, its sexual energy remained feeble and was more likely to go either toward masturbation or toward homosexual relationships because in these situations “there is
no definite act to be accomplished.”8
One of the apparent paradoxes that sexologists had to explain was why, if homosexuals suffered from constitutional weakness, they also appeared to have such strong
sexual drives. Ellis reconciled this by classifying a hardy sexual impulse as yet another sign of overall weakness and nervousness. In his view, many inverts tended to
have irritable “sexual centers,” which disturbed the interlocking system of the brain, nerves, reproductive organs, and genitals. Irritations of this sort manifested in
promiscuity as well as in patterns of self­sacrifice and affection. Thus, the problem was neither impotence nor indifference, but an abnormally directed libido.
While sexological ideas about homosexuality and nervous degeneration tended to be based on the male body’s spermatic economy, lesbians also were assumed to be
constitutionally tainted. In fact, lesbianism was construed by many sexologists as merely a form of female masturbation, not even worthy of
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the status of counterfeit intercourse. Like other perversions, it was seen as part of an overall destructive process. But while lesbians were often subsumed in
discussions of male homosexuality, occasionally they were distinguished on the basis of being innately less passionate and sensual, by virtue of being women. For
example, Krafft­Ebing granted that women had strong friendships, but, like many men of his time, he believed that sex between them was neither as powerful nor as
threatening to the social order as male homosexuality. And in his view, because women lacked penises they did not suffer from impotency and so were spared the
temptation to take relief in homosexuality, as many neurotic men felt they must.
Writing at length about lesbianism, Ellis warned that homosexuality among women was increasing with the march of modern progress and feminism. Women’s growing
independence from men and marriage was as likely to foster homosexuality as was the nervous strain men experienced in the face of intensifying business competition.
Ellis explained that most women tended to be heterosexual because they were generally passive. Their bodies and personalities lacked the variations common among
men, making them naturally susceptible to sexual advances and normally unlikely to initiate any sexual encounters. But those with abnormal instincts had predatory
tendencies, along with an array of other masculine physical characteristics. These mannish women tended to exploit more impressionable young women, seeking
affection from those toward whom men felt indifference because they were cold and unattractive. The unfortunate recipients of such attention were ”womanly women”
who had some good qualities but were neither robust nor fit for childbearing. Like “normal” women, these women were naturally seduced by masculine people,
whether these seducers be “normal” men or sexually inverted women. Were it not for being constitutionally tainted, these womanly women would be spared the
temptation to succumb to an invert’s advances. 9
The Third Sex Model
The idea that the homosexual belonged to an intermediate sex dominated nineteenthand early twentieth­century constructions of homosexuality. 10 In 1898, Karl
Ulrichs, a German lawyer, elaborated on existing discussions of sexual inversion by introducing the notion of the “urning” as the congenital outcome of an
undifferentiated human embryo that resulted in a female mind in a male body. 11 A decade later, Edward Carpenter would use Ulrichs’s ideas to popularize his notion
of the homosexual as an intermediate sex. 12 German physician Magnus Hirschfeld, whose ideas deeply influenced subsequent research
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on homosexuality, characterized the homosexual as a third sex 13 These writers generally assumed that homosexuality was an innate anomaly manifesting in the
tendency for constitutionally predisposed men to behave and appear feminine and thus, like women, to be inclined toward relations with men. Conversely, lesbian
tendencies in women were seen to be linked to some fundamental masculine instinct that made them act like men. Homosexual desire was thus a symptom of sexual
inversion, or the tendency to embody physical and behavioral characteristics associated with the opposite sex. Naturally, this model had great difficulty explaining
cases of “masculine” or “active” homosexual men and “feminine” or “passive” lesbians.
Krafft­Ebing believed sexual inversion was evidence that homosexuals were stuck at a more primitive stage of evolutionary development than normal (heterosexual)
people. To support this, he first asserted that those inclined toward homosexual perversion would have what he called bisexual or hermaphroditic traits, noting that
hermaphroditism existed in lower life forms with which humans shared a primordial past. Then he reasoned that, since it was from these forms that we have evolved,
humans still carried the potential for the reemergence of anatomical or psychological hermaphroditism. Hermaphroditism in an individual was the sign of a lagging
evolutionary process because the lesser the distinction between masculine and feminine traits in any one person, the lower the individual on the evolutionary scale.
Thus, individuals who displayed what were taken to be sexually ambiguous traits­­whether these be anatomical or behavioral­­were interpreted to be primitive and,
most likely, degenerate. Conversely, progress was signified by a greater degree of sexual difference, or dimorphism, as well as procreative heterosexuality.
Homosexual inverts, because they were seen as blurring the boundaries of gender­­either as masculine women or as effeminate men­­were regarded as “unfinished”
specimens of stunted evolutionary growth, a status they shared with “savages” and certain types of criminals. 14
The idea that homosexuals were in some sense constitutional hermaphrodites or belonged to a third sex was eventually undermined as Freud’s theories of sexuality
achieved greater notoriety and influence in the scientific community. 15 His ideas shifted the question of origins away from the body’s sex to the individual’s psyche,
arguing that the defining feature of homosexuality was not a person’s gender characteristics, but his or her choice of sexual object. 16 Nevertheless, as we will see,
homosexuality and gender inversion were not to be so easily disentangled; the idea that those who engaged in homosexuality had psychological and somatic qualities
common to the opposite sex continued to crop up in scientific thought­­and certainly in popular assumptions. 17
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Constitutional Pathology or Benign Difference?
Not all physicians and scientists who believed homosexuality was a matter of constitutional predisposition assumed that it was necessarily pathological. Ellis, alternately
expressing pity and disdain toward inverts, vacillated on the issue of whether inversion was related to degeneration or was simply a natural variation. 18 Hirschfeld, one
of the first advocates of homosexual rights, believed that homosexuals should be tolerated as rare but natural variants, rather than being punished for what he believed
to be their biologically driven desires. 19
This view placed him at odds with many of his contemporaries who associated homosexuality with pathology and morbid degeneracy. Like Hirschfeld, Freud
emphasized the random and even benign biological and psychical variations among people, in contrast to Krafft­Ebing’s concept of homosexuality as a sign of innate
constitutional defectiveness. From his own observations, Freud believed that many who showed homosexual tendencies contributed a great deal to society and, far
from being degenerate, were of high moral and intellectual standing.
Although most physicians and scientists at the turn of the century agreed that homosexuality was a condition of a biologically distinct body, some began to question
biological explanations altogether. Psychoanalysts Sandor Ferenczi and A. Brill rejected the idea that homosexuality was related to any innate biological factors. 20
Freud is remembered as one of the most influential proponents of the psychogenic origins of homosexuality, which eventually supplanted most constitutional theories,
but his own opinions on the matter were actually contradictory. While he refuted common assumptions that homosexuality was primarily a manifestation of hereditary
degeneration, he acknowledged that biological factors might play a role in some cases of homosexuality. 21 But more than anyone else of his time, he emphasized the
influence of psychogenic or environmental factors in shaping sexual orientation, appropriating the term constitutional disposition from his contemporaries to refer to a
complicated array of tendencies and vulnerabilities that inclined an individual toward various kinds of neuroses. 22
In most of Freud’s writings, homosexuality represented a form of arrested psychosexual development resulting from a vague underlying biological component that
predisposed certain individuals toward it. But he stressed that this biological component was neither clear nor sufficient for separating out homosexuals as a group with
a special nature. 23 In fact, as early as 1905, Freud questioned whether one could reasonably group together the vastly different types of people who had homosexual
desire on the basis of either their biology or their
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psychology. He argued that same­sex object choice was the result of many complex factors and manifested in a variety of ways, some more troublesome than others.
In fact, he stressed that homosexual object choice was no more or less complicated than heterosexual object choice and should not be the grounds for establishing a
distinct category into which all those preferring homosexuality could fit. 24 His critical stance against constructing a singular typology of the homosexual presaged
subsequent scientific research that called the entire idea of a distinctly homosexual body into question.
On the whole, early sexologists believed that homosexuality was an innate constitutional condition, but not all of them saw it as pathological. Their most pronounced
scientific legacy was the idea that the homosexual was an inherently different type of person, endowed with somatic and characterological features that distinguished
this creature from normal people. But Freud’s thinking opened up the possibility of an alternative approach to the question of the etiology and embodiment of
homosexuality that would rival, if not entirely displace, the study of the body. Nonetheless, early scientific attempts to identify, measure and classify homosexuals
established a set of assumptions and standard methods that were deployed again, in more sophisticated ways, during the first half of the twentieth century. As we shall
see, the results were increasingly contradictory and unstable.
Between Constitutional Homosexuality and Sexual Variation
Despite the challenges to biological determinism posed by psychoanalysis, most scientists and physicians continued to perceive the body as a central piece in the
puzzle of homosexuality well into the twentieth century. 25 Early debates about the defining features of homosexuality provided an impetus to probe bodies in search of
reliable evidence that might distinguish homosexuals from normal people. Krafft­Ebing claimed to find typical skull dimensions, postures, gestures and mannerisms, and
concluded that homosexual degeneration originated in the brain and nervous system, where he believed the damage was most pronounced. 26 Ellis noted that defects
in “sexual glands,” or hormone­producing organs, could lead to sexually inverted characteristics, and regarded traits such as brusqueness, aggressiveness, and timidity
as matters of both heredity and hormones. 27 By the 1930s the continued quest to define homosexuality as an inherited bodily attribute was abetted by new
technological devices and methodological approaches that enabled further penetration and more minute clinical surveillance of suspect bodies. These techniques were
to help determine with greater precision whether homosexuality resulted from psychological conditions or constitutional factors, which had increasingly come to be
synonymous
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with biological factors 28 Debates on the matter from this period illustrate, on the one hand, a growing skepticism about whether homosexuals had distinct somatic
features and, on the other, a tenacious desire to find homosexuality in the body. 29
From 1935 through 1941, an ambitious study was conducted in New York City to gain more information about both the psychogenic and constitutional factors giving
rise to homosexuality. Sponsored by the Committee for the Study of Sex Variants (CSSV), this research combined aspects of earlier notions about innate
homosexuality with more recent psychogenic explanations. 30 Thus, as we shall see, the study reveals a transition from the nineteenth­century constitutional framework
to a model of sexual variance that came to the fore with the publication of the Kinsey studies on human sexual behavior. It also offers a very rich picture of the
changing status of the body as scientific proof of homosexuality; while other American research from the period combined psychological and physical examinations, the
Sex Variant study is perhaps the most thorough in its attention to the body. 31 Every inch was scrutinized, including the texture of hair, the complexion of skin, the
structure of the pelvis, and even the size and shape of the genitals, in order to determine the unique physical characteristics of “sex variants,” the study’s synonym for
homosexuals. By focusing on the physical examinations, we will be able to see how the body changed as a source of evidence about deviance.
The investigation aimed to learn as much as possible about homosexuality, which was perceived to pose a growing threat to mental and urban hygiene. By amassing
comprehensive knowledge on the subject, the study was to assist physicians in identifying and treating individuals who suffered from “sexual maladjustment” and to
help prevent the spread of sex variance through the “general population.” It took place within a larger social context of eugenic efforts to encourage hygienic
reproduction and discourage “inappropriate” sexual couplings among people of the same sex or across racial boundaries. Indeed, the Committee’s founder and several
of its more prominent members were formally associated with eugenics institutions. 32
Eugenic doctrine of the first half of the twentieth century placed both racial and sexual purity at the top of its agenda. Its adherents from all points along the political
spectrum were especially concerned with promoting hygienic reproduction among whomever was seen as stalwart and worthy. 33 During the 1920s and 1930s, white
phobia about miscegenation and racial passing paralleled a growing sex panic that inverts and perverts were everywhere, but difficult to detect visually. Hence, an
apparatus for identifying and isolating them could be justified as a matter of social hygiene. In the larger social context, some of the same logic applied to homosexuals
that applied to those whose relation
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ships crossed racial and class boundaries: sexual contact of an “unnatural” sort would corrupt the population and lead to further social disorder. Panic about
miscegenation was deeply tied to eugenic fears about ensuring proper rates of reproduction among the desirable (i.e., white) members of society. 34
It is not surprising that in this context the scientific making of the homosexual type was integrally connected to campaigns for encouraging hygienic heterosexuality
primarily among white people. In these campaigns, the creature called the heterosexual was fashioned as a positive and civilized counterpart to both the menacing
pervert and the atavistic savage. At a time of great anxiety over drawing and maintaining differences within the human population, the sex variant, like the passing
Negro, became a confusing border creature, who existed between man and woman, who traversed class and racial boundaries, and whose masquerade was
treacherous. This was the general social context in which the Sex Variant study was launched.
Gynecologist Robert Latou Dickinson, of the National Maternal Health Committee, proposed the research and secured the support of IQ specialist Lewis Terman,
psychiatrist Adolf Meyer, and physical anthropologist Earnest Hooton. A panoply of experts then assembled to carry out the investigation; they included psychiatrists,
child psychologists, surgeons, neurologists, urban sociologists, and a former commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction. Many committee
members maintained an affinity for hereditary arguments and perceived social problems as closely related to biological factors, which fueled their interest in carefully
studying the body.
As founder of the CSSV, Dickinson’s particular interest in studying homosexuality, and especially lesbianism, grew out of his extensive research on female sexual
satisfaction, marital adjustment, and maternal health, which he began in the 1890s. 35 Just as he believed that frigidity and female sexual frustration would ruin a
marriage, Dickinson was concerned that a history of lesbian relations could indicate that a woman would never be happy in her marriage to a man. His interest in
detecting the signs of homosexuality thus was linked to his larger eugenic concerns about fostering marriage and reproduction among the “fit.” 36 In pursuing the Sex
Variant study, he hoped to be able to devise a checklist of visible characteristics that could assist physicians in identifying homosexuals and dissuading them from
getting married.
Scientific Scopophilia
Forty men and forty women from various backgrounds volunteered to be examined. Among them were writers, artists, musicians, and theater performers, living
bohemian lives in New York City. Most were white, but two of the
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men and four of the women were African American or had at least one black parent. The only thing they all had in common was a history of homosexual relations,
although very few were exclusively homosexual. Because they all admitted to having such a history, researchers felt assured that any unusual characteristics they found
could be attributed to homosexuality.
The search for signs of homosexuality took the subjects through an assembly line of expert examinations aimed at locating and measuring “masculinity” and “femininity”
as well as the markers of homosexual sex practices. The sequence of data­gathering, then, followed a uniform pattern: first, each was given an extensive psychiatric
interview, which also functioned as an ethnographic interview revealing unique cultural practices of what researchers assumed was a nascent urban demimonde.
Second, standardized attitudinal tests were administered for measuring degrees of femininity and masculinity. 37 Third, each individual was subjected to a series of
general physical exams; and, finally, the women were given thorough genital examinations, which were depicted in minutely detailed sketches, appearing in a graphic
appendix entitled “The Gynecology of Homosexuality.” In several cases, male subjects’ genitals were measured and the viscosity of their semen observed, but not
nearly as much attention was paid to them as to the women in this regard, and no visual representations were made of their genitals. 38
Drawing on both psychiatric interviews and physical examinations, the study was based on correlating the subjects’ narrative accounts of their lives with their body
measurements, in order to get a comprehensive picture of sex variance and to single out those who were prone to it. Therefore, techniques to produce visible
differences through anthropometric measurements, drawings, photographs, or x­rays constituted the scopic regime against which the psychiatric interviews of subjects
would be read. According to the logic of the physical examinations, that which could be seen was understood to be the objective and quantifiable truth. Thus, the
imperative to survey bodies was fueled by a kind of scientific scopophilia; the pleasures of viewing were deeply tied to both a positivist quest for the truth in physical
evidence and a desire to read the body for indications of sexual practice. But the importance given to the psychiatric interviews depicting the subjects’ own stories
indicates that researchers believed the body alone could not provide enough information about the causes and defining characteristics of homosexuality. Nevertheless,
they doggedly examined bodies for any evidence of unusual characteristics.
One­third of the subjects allowed photographs to be taken of them in the nude, as a means for supplementing other physical data and to act as diagnostic instruments
for correlating body form with behavior. But since no note was made of which individual was being photographed, such a correlation was concerned
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with constructing a typical or generic sex variant body, rather than linking an individual subject’s personality characteristics with his or her body form. This effort to
homogenize the subjects was obvious in the special treatment of the photos: throughout the study, subjects’ identities were protected under pseudonyms, and in the
photographs their identities were concealed through a process that intentionally wiped out that most distinct characteristic, the face (Figure 5.1). This technique further
rendered the photographed individual as a specimen or object, incapable of returning the spectator’s gaze. Moreover, the photographs were encoded as morbid by
their stark presentation at the end of the published findings, where they recall the images of diseased bodies commonly featured in medical textbooks. Thus, their very
composition, as well as their presentation in the scopic regime, invites the viewer to look for and find pathology in much the same way that photographs of prostitutes
analyzed by Cesare Lombroso and Pauline Tarnowsky were read for criminality and sexual deviance. 39
Stories Genitals Tell
One of the most remarkable aspects of the Sex Variant study is that it included graphic material on female genitalia. Septuagenarian doctor Robert Dickinson believed
that this was a crucial aspect of the investigation because women’s genitals offered evidence not only of innate deviance, but also of deviant sexual experiences. In his
earlier clinical studies, Dickinson believed genitals offered clues for detecting a woman’s proclivity toward lesbianism, masturbation, frigidity, and promiscuity. Her
conscious mind alone could not reveal all the important aspects leading to either her sexual satisfaction or discontent. Instead, a woman’s body must be studied first,
since it provided an index of emotional or psychological conditions that the modest or repressed patient could not describe. In this way, for Dickinson, the female
body functioned as a master text, revealing what was otherwise hidden in the mind.
In view of his prior experience in preventive gynecology, Dickinson wanted to examine sex variant women to see what their genitals might reveal. 40 He was aided by
Dr. L. Mary Moench, who conducted the gynecological examinations of “all but the most vigorous, assertive women,” who refused to be examined. All traces of
modesty fell by the wayside in the pursuit of accuracy and exact representations. Dickinson encouraged Moench to measure genital parts using a small ruler and her
fingers. Vaginal penetration was measured in terms of the number of fingers the examiner could fit into the subject, thus making the doctor’s own body a crucial part of
the research. Moench then placed a small glass plate on the vulva, outlining the external genitals upon it in soft crayon, which
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Figure 5. 1. Photograph of two female sex variants.
(From George W. Henry, Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns
[N.Y.: Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., 1941].)
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she then traced on the subject’s record sheet. These line tracings were later annotated and enhanced by Dickinson, who noted remarkable or distinguishing features.
Dickinson was obsessed with accuracy and exactitude in his measurements and graphic sketches. In earlier work on human sex anatomy, he had produced laborious
and highly detailed sketches of female genitals, which he drew while his patients were prone on the examining table. 41 He called his style “medical natural history”
because of its graphic realism and exactly proportioned dimensions. Fancying himself both artist and scientist, he signed and dated every sketch, which led one
commentator to call him a cross between Havelock Ellis and Leonardo da Vinci. 42 Dickinson’s sketches illustrate how scientific practices of close observation and
detailed recording bolstered the authority of the study’s scopic regime. One drawing included Dickinson’s careful notation of specific measurements and his recording
of the duration of one subject’s nipple erection at 70 seconds (Figure 5.2). Part of his obsession with detail involved the segmenting of the subject into component
parts or zones that could be deciphered. This reconfiguration of the body into territories highlighting breasts, vaginas, clitorises, and labia was itself a powerful act of
signification and interpretation on Dickinson’s part. He and Dr. Moench assumed that markings in these highly scrutinized areas would reveal what distinguished sex
variant women, and thus genitals became indices of moral character.
The gynecological exams gave rise to the wildest speculation about lesbian anatomy and experiences. Regardless of the absence of a heterosexual control group, ten
typical characteristics of lesbians were established that supposedly distinguished their genitals from those of “normal women.” The typical female sex variant had a
larger than average vulva, longer labia majora, protruding labia minora, a large and wrinkled prepuce, a “notably erectile” clitoris, an elastic and insensitive hymen, a
distensible vagina, a small uterus, and erectile nipples. The list bore a remarkable resemblance to that assembled by Havelock Ellis several decades earlier, suggesting
that a standard had been set for what counted as a lesbian body. 43
Dickinson drew a composite sketch of a “normal” woman’s vulva, contrasting it to a typical sex variant vulva, placing emphasis on the presumed excesses caused by
lesbian sex. Almost all terms used to describe lesbians’ genitals connoted extraordinary size and hypersexuality. Pejorative adjectives, such as “wrinkled,” “thickened,”
and “protruding,” connoted excess and literally marked the subjects as pathological, while the normal unmarked female was represented in unmodified terms (Figure
5.3). Sketches isolating particular genital parts featured the unusual characteristics of particular subjects, and images were captioned with subjects’ names and any
significant qualities. In one sketch, the anxious doctor attempted to represent the action of the clitoris in its
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Figure 5.2. Dr. Rocapbert Latou Dickinson’s sketch
of a female sex variant’s breast structure and duration
of nipple erection. (From George W. Henry, Sex
Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns
[N.Y.: Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., 1941].)
so­called excursions up and down. Elongated clitorises were noted in several of the African American lesbians, perhaps because a few of them boasted about how
their lovers liked them for that attribute. Some gynecological sketches noted the race of the subject (”negress”) next to what was seen to be an unusually long clitoris
(Figure 5.4), recalling the lesbian counterpart to the stereotypical savage with an unusually long penis. Here, as in other representations combining racial difference and
sexual deviance, we find a link in the white medical imagination between blackness and hypersexuality, this time through a clinical reading of lesbian masculinity in
female genitals.
Dickinson was quite convinced that, like nymphomaniacs, sex variant women on the whole showed evidence of greater sexual excitability, especially when being
examined by a female gynecologist. He suggested that an examining doctor might be able to detect a woman’s perversion by watching the way
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Figure 5.3. Dr. Robert Latou Dickinson’s composite sketch
of a “normal” woman’s vulva and a typical sex variant’s vulva.
(From George W. Henry, Sex Variants: A Study of
Homosexual Patterns [N.Y.: Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., 1941].)
she conducted herself during the examination. A habitual rhythmic swing of the hips, unnecessary exposure or exhibitionism, and restless behavior on the examining
table could tell the doctor plenty about his patient, even before he had a chance to examine her genitals. Other more minute indications included “marked vulvar
hypertrophies,” clitoral erections, free mucous discharge, or general signs of vaginal congestion. He warned practitioners to be especially on the lookout for signs of
arousal that could “serve to check up on the statements of the patient, being important chiefly where sexual excitability or response is flatly denied.” 44
In his final report, Dickinson asserted that, for the gynecological exam, the most clear indications of female sex variance were not constitutional or innate hereditary
deficiencies, but instead those characteristics resulting from what he called “female­to­female sex play” (Figure 5.5). Thus, Dickinson clinically decoded the genital
zones of the female body as evidence of a subject’s behavior,
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Figure 5.4. Dr. Robert Latou Dickinson’s sketch
of female sex variant genitalia. (From George W. Henry,
Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns
[N.Y.: Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., 1941].)
experiences, and sexual desires, and not necessarily her genetic or congenital makeup. He paid special attention to what he called the “hypertrophy” of the prepuce
and the size of the clitoris, characteristics that he asserted were primarily produced by masturbation or homosexuality. Meticulously measuring clitorises and labia, he
surmised that variant “sex play” was typically focused on “digital and oral caresses.” This opinion was supported by his earlier assertion that the clearest correlation
between genital characteristics and experience occurred in cases where he suspected the patient masturbated or engaged in “traction, pressure, or friction.” 45
Dickinson concluded that all of the gynecological findings could be the result of a strong sex urge plus anything from “self­friction” to homosexual or heterosexual sex
play. In other words, all of the typical characteristics of female sex variants could result, in fact, from any sex practices other than exclusive heterosexual intercourse in
the “missionary” position. And this is precisely where
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Figure 5.5. Dr. Robert Latou Dickinson’s composite sketches
noting the effects of vaginal sex play on female sex variants’
genitalia. (From George W. Henry, Sex Variants:
A Study of Homosexual Patterns
[N.Y.: Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., 1941].)
the logic of the gynecological examinations began to unravel: elsewhere in his earlier writing, Dickinson had encouraged men to stimulate their partner’s clitoris as a
remedy for frigidity or sexual frustration. 46 But later in the Sex Variant study, he regarded evidence of clitoral stimulation to be a reliable sign of lesbianism. To make
matters more complicated, many of the sex variant subjects Dickinson examined had extensive sexual experiences with men, making it even more difficult for him to
delineate physical features that were definitively attributable to lesbian relations. Thus, what he thought were remarkable characteristics distinguishing lesbians from
heterosexual women could actually have been put there by a male partner, a female partner, or the woman herself through masturbation. There was no way to confirm
that certain visible characteristics resulted from specific sexual encounters, nor could a subject’s sexual orientation be determined from these physical marks.
Although Dickinson did not admit it, the body had become even less reliable
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as evidence of lesbianism, since these marks by themselves were not absolute evidence of the crucial distinguishing factor of lesbianism­­that is, the sexual object
choice of a woman for another woman. However, through rendering lesbians’ genitals as pathological, the doctor’s findings implicitly posited a normal woman who
was not only heterosexual, but also masturbated in respectable moderation and whose sexuality revolved around intercourse with her husband, primarily for the
purposes of reproduction. Clearly, the normal woman was no less a scientific construct than was the lesbian.
A Body of Mixed Evidence
The Sex Variant study reiterated many aspects of the earlier constitutional framework prominent in the nineteenth century. First and foremost, it viewed homosexuality
primarily in terms of sexual inversion. Thus, sex variants were thought to fall in the middle of a continuum between the two poles of masculinity and femininity, exhibiting
physical and psychosexual characteristics normally found in the opposite sex. Too much masculinity in women and too much femininity in men were telling signs of
variance and homosexual behavior was seen to be a product, not a cause of this anomalous distribution of gender characteristics. Researchers concluded that, as a
group, both male and female subjects displayed physical characteristics of sexual inversion. For the women this meant the common deficiency of fat in the shoulders
and abdomen, dense skulls, firm muscles, excess hair on the face, chest, back, and lower extremities, a tendency toward “masculine” distribution of pubic hair, a low­
pitched voice, and either excessively developed or underdeveloped breasts. The women’s muscles were described as small and firm, but angular, with “masculine
contours.” 47 The male subjects showed the inverse pattern, with higher­pitched voices and a general lack of muscle tone. In addition, aspects of general
comportment, such as a tendency to swagger or to walk with a mincing gait, were regarded as innate constitutional features found among female and male sex variants,
respectively. Researchers claimed that these characteristics were observed when all the subjects were taken statistically as a group, but in many cases they strained to
find more than one or two of these qualities in individual subjects. Therefore, in an attempt to draw a generic or composite sex variant body, variations among subjects
were homogenized in favor of a stereotypical construction of sexual inversion.
The very problem of the complex and multiple types of sex variants drove the inquiry in its ambitious undertakings to interpret the bodies and experiences of subjects
in terms of the binary system of masculinity and femininity. Yet, the sexual inversion framework not only posed significant obstacles for ex
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plaining contradictory empirical evidence; it had embedded within it theoretical limitations that placed a whole range of homosexual practices outside the researchers’
comprehension. This was most obvious in the tortured attempts by doctors to comprehend lesbians who did not appear to be masculine, and homosexual men who
were not effeminate. Lacking an analysis of homosexual desire separate from gender, the researchers searched minds and bodies for signs of what they assumed
distinguished masculine from feminine.
The nineteenth­century idea that homosexuals suffered from constitutional nervousness and arrested development lived on in the Sex Variant study’s methods and
conclusions. In summarizing the vast interview and examination data, psychiatrist George Henry, who authored the published report, concluded that the sex variant
was indeed a distinct type and a “by­product of civilization” who was unable to adjust to modern society’s high standards requiring adults to establish and maintain a
home for the proper rearing of children. 48 Echoing a long­standing stereotype, Henry referred to the sex variant as immature in sexual adjustment, and noted that this
was obvious in both the psychological and somatic domains. All sex variants had inherited constitutional deficiencies, troubled family relations and a lack of social
opportunities for heterosexual development. By stating this conclusion, Henry clearly acknowledged that both constitutional and environmental factors contributed to
homosexuality.
Aggressiveness, independence, sympathies to feminism (also referred to as “sex bitterness”), and the rejection of wifely and motherly duties were listed as attitudinal
signs of masculinity common among lesbians. Promiscuity, compulsiveness, and petulance were recognized as typical qualities of sex variant men. In addition, certain
character weaknesses among ancestors and family members were interpreted as factors contributing to homosexuality, and were charted in classical pedigree
diagrams (Figure 5.6). Effeminate uncles, domineering grandmothers, spinster aunts, alcoholic mothers, suicidal siblings, tubercular fathers, and even artistic cousins
were taken to be indicators that the germ of homosexuality could, like other manifestations of degeneracy, be inherited. Henry credited the family with a dual, if
ambiguous, function of passing down hereditary traits that could contribute to sex variance and producing the environment where patterns of deviant gender behavior
could be replicated by offspring who became sex variants. In sum, the family served as a setting or apparatus for producing sex variants, due to either hereditary or
socioenvironmental conditions of improper gender identification. By defining the family’s contribution in this dual way, the study simultaneously recapitulated
nineteenth­century constitutional explanations for homosexuality, while equally stressing the significance of environmental and psychogenic factors.
At the level of the body, many other indicators of sex variance were discovered.
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Figure 5.6 Pedigree diagram of Nora M., a female sex variant.
(From George W. Henry, Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns
[N.Y.: Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., 1941].)
While acknowledging that the physical examinations yielded no conclusive evidence for determining whether a person was a sex variant, Drs. Dickinson and Henry
noted certain recognizable morphological patterns common to both male and female sex variants. The common presence of broad shoulders and narrow hips in both
the female and male subjects was described as “an immature form of skeletal development” and presented as evidence that sex variants were at a lower stage of
evolutionary development due to a lesser degree of sexual dimorphism. Noting the accompanying condition of psychosexual immaturity among subjects, the
researchers combined anthropological theories of evolutionary primitivism with the psychoanalytic notion that homosexuality was a condition of arrested development
resulting from an unresolved oedipal crisis. In this formulation, civilization and heterosexuality were coupled as desirable outcomes requiring some degree of expert
scientific intervention in the biological realm of reproduction and the social or psychological realm of parenting.
Purported evidence of immaturity was gleaned from the gynecological examinations as well. On the one hand, Dickinson remarked that the common presence of an
“infantile vulva” and the small uterus were signs of constitutional immaturity or arrested evolution in many lesbians. But while coital pain
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reported by many sex variant women was seen as a sign of arrested sexual development, Dickinson suggested that this could just as well be a sign of psychological
immaturity as an indication of constitutional defects. Thus, a finding of infantilism in the somatic realm was again coupled with a psychoanalytic construction of
lesbianism as a stage of arrested sexual development, characterized by a fixation on clitoral pleasure and not fully matured to vaginal intercourse, childbearing, and
motherhood.
How Reliable Was the Body?
After summarizing the vast data from the physical examinations and noting that there were significant exceptions to general somatic patterns, Drs. Henry and Dickinson
concluded that the more “pronounced deficiencies” of the sex variant were psychological rather than physical, and thus the psyche offered better information
concerning who had the potential for sex variance, compared to the contradictory and complex evidence of individuals’ bodies. Thus, even though Henry continued to
endorse the project of looking for signs of sex variance on and in the body, he emphasized that a doctor should conduct careful interviews with each patient in order to
locate and interpret the possible indications of sex variance. Bodies alone would not always reveal innate or distinct features. But, after talking with a patient, the body
might be approached in a new way and interpreted to correlate certain characteristics with the patient’s own narrative. While the examiner could search for physical
patterns connoting innate sexual inversion or constitutional immaturity, he should be advised to look carefully for any indications of perverse practices. In other words,
the body no longer merely revealed innate features, but was capable of disclosing the marks of its environment and its practices. Even then, it would not speak entirely
for itself, but could be a grounding point for the narratives of the person to which it belonged.
By the end of the study, both Dickinson and Henry realized that one could not determine whether an individual was a sex variant or, at least, not by merely looking at
his or her body. Over the course of the research, the goal of establishing a typical or composite homosexual body had been compromised, if not altogether thwarted,
by contradictory evidence and exceptions to the study’s assumptions. Furthermore, Henry asserted that a great many heterosexuals had constitutional deficiencies, so
it was impossible to discern sexual orientation on this basis alone. Since human beings mated “irrationally”­­that is, on the basis of desire rather than eugenic efficacy­­
there were many kinds of constitutional weaknesses throughout the population, and not all of them were concentrated among sex variants, Henry warned.
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However, even as the notion of constitutional deficiency remained very vague, the body became anything but extraneous or obsolete in the clinical study of
homosexuality. Instead, as the gynecological examinations show, it became a source of scientific knowledge about deviant practices, if not defective constitutions or
degenerate genes. Rather than revealing distinct congenital or hereditary signs, it came to be seen in terms of surfaces or zones where experiences and behaviors left
their marks. Having exhausted the possibility of determining a distinctly sex­variant skeleton, pelvis, complexion, or pattern of hair distribution, experts were urged to
turn to the body instead for stories about behavior and desire.
The Variance Model and the Decline of the Deviant Type
From the outset of the Sex Variant study, its subjects were to function as specimens for determining any specifically sex variant patterns. In turn, clinical techniques
were used to probe their bodies with the goal of constructing a composite or typical sex variant body. Paradoxically, this composite body would represent statistical
norms or common features observed among these presumably abnormal bodies. By attempting to draw this homosexual body, researchers simultaneously sought to
trace a cordon sanitaire around the “normal” or unmarked heterosexual body, even in the absence of a control group against which the subjects could be compared.
But the study ran into serious trouble in its effort to construct a coherent and recognizable homosexual typology, especially once the typical sex variant body proved to
be elusive.
Henry continued to believe it a worthy undertaking to survey the general population in order to identify statistical patterns of sexual variance, in spite of the apparent
impossibility of establishing a distinct somatic and psychical type. At best, however, the typical sex variant could be little more than a statistical construct. The regime
of examinations made it apparent that about the only thing sex variants had in common was what Henry called a lack of adjustment to adult heterosexual modes of
sexuality. There was so much variety among these people that Henry recommended doctors study each case of sex variance for its particular form and content. But
diversity among the subjects was neither the only nor even the initial force undermining the goal of establishing a distinct homosexual typology. Instead, this fictional
creature’s elusiveness was actually caused by the very model of sexual variance that informed the entire research project from its beginning. According to this model,
the Sex Variant committee had assumed human beings were distributed across a spectrum, with masculinity concentrated at one pole and femininity at the other.
Naturally, most normal men, by virtue of their masculine characteristics, were clus
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tered around the former and most normal women were clustered around the latter. But in addressing the issue of how to categorize people, Henry declared in his
conclusion that it was “scientifically inaccurate” to classify any individual­­regardless of sexual preference­­as fully male or fully female. 49 Instead, elements of each
individual should be studied for their relative degrees of masculinity and femininity. An individual’s placement on the variance spectrum depended on statistical
calculations for each element, which were then regarded as indexes of that person’s overall constitutional development and sexual preference. For example, a man’s
firm muscles and forceful enunciation were taken as signs not only of his masculinity but also his presumed heterosexuality. The same traits in a woman were signs of
her masculinity, which implied she was a lesbian.
The variance model thus led experts to inspect subjects for the markers of “masculinity” and “femininity” as if these were signs of sexual orientation. But clearly, some
subjects had contradictory qualities, with shoulders that might place them in a normal range for their sex, but vocal intonations or hair distribution that placed them
closer to the average for the opposite sex and thus closer to homosexuality. Contradictions of this sort made it difficult to draw any clear lines between individuals or
between groups of people. Clearly, the broader implication of this variance model for all men and women was that the line between the sexes could no longer be
drawn sharply, nor, by logical extension, could the line between heterosexuals and homosexuals. An important consequence of this was the growing fear in the late
1930s and 1940s that people with homosexual desires may be everywhere; it was not entirely possible to determine who was who.
It is important to understand that the Sex Variant study was as much an effort to construct and maintain hygienic heterosexuality as it was to investigate homosexuality.
Its conclusions implied that heterosexuality was neither a natural nor guaranteed system, but an endangered cultural institution requiring the commitment and effort of
individuals and families and the ongoing intervention of scientific experts. Since their research had indicated that there may not be an innately distinct homosexual body,
experts shifted their focus to thinking about sex variance as a product of one’s environment and conditioning. Not surprisingly, the family became the site for
engineering social hygiene, and Dr. Henry recommended a new science of parenting, in which adults would provide proper gender roles for their children by behaving
in a fashion appropriate to their sex. As an instrument of social intervention, the study itself contributed to the construction and stabilization of a system for guaranteeing
social order and proper reproduction of the race. In the American urban context of the 1930s, eugenicists warned that white, middle­class heterosexuality was
threatened by
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various “unhygienic” trends­­miscegenation, homosexuality, prostitution, and overpopulation among the poor. According to this vision, the crucial unit of civilized
adulthood was specifically the affluent, white, companionate, heterosexual marriage, which took account of the virtues of pleasure but guided them toward patriotic
reproduction, with the assistance of psychiatrists like George Henry himself.
Alfred Kinsey and the Momentary Disappearance of the Homosexual Body
In the years surrounding the Sex Variant study, the effort among scientists to describe the homosexual as a particular type of person with recognizable physical features
came under severe criticism by Alfred Kinsey, a younger colleague and friend of Robert Latou Dickinson. As early as 1941, the same year the Sex Variant study was
published, Kinsey presented a critique of research on androgen and estrogen levels in the urine of male homosexuals, noting a number of methodological problems,
including the small size of the subject sample and inconsistencies in obtaining and measuring hormones among subjects. 50 But Kinsey saved his greatest criticism for
the study’s unqualified use of the categories “homosexual” and its putative opposite, “normal,” to describe subjects:
More basic than any error brought out in the analysis of the above data is the assumption that homosexuality and heterosexuality are two mutually exclusive phenomena
emanating from fundamentally and, at least in some cases, inherently different types of individuals. Any classification of individuals as “homosexuals” or
“normals” (=heterosexuals) carries that implication. It is the popular assumption and the current psychiatric assumption, and the basis for such attempts as have been made to find
hormonal explanations for these divergences in human behavior. 51
Kinsey was most critical of the vague and simplistic definitions given to homosexuality in scientific research and took issue with the “long­standing and widespread
popular opinion that homosexual behavior depends on some inherent abnormality which, since the time of the discovery of the sex hormones, is often supposed to be
glandular in origin.” 52 His methodological rigor led him to reiterate that no causal relationship between anatomy and sexual history could be demonstrated without a
knowledge, first, of the full range of human sexual variation, and second, of the frequency with which each kind of sexual variation occurs in the population. Indeed,
these were the two premises upon
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which his famous studies of human sexual behavior were based. 53 “Until we know the nature of the gross behavior [of homosexuality] itself, no hormonal or other
explanation is likely to fit the actuality.” 54
In his own research on human sexual behavior, which commenced in the mid­1930s, Kinsey emphasized that questions about homosexuality ought to be interpreted in
the context of the “total experience” of each person, not just the selective acts of those who were self­identified homosexuals. He believed that separating out the study
of homosexuality from all sexual possibilities skewed the conclusions of most scientific studies because any particular sexual behavior “always involves an adjustment in
which each item is affected by all of the others in the complex.” 55 Kinsey advocated mass survey methods including large numbers of participating subjects who
would be asked hundreds of different questions in personal interviews. In his view, surveying randomly selected individuals was the only sound way to draw any
general conclusions about sexual behavior­­and homosexuality in particular. This method also did away with the distorting practice of choosing subjects on the basis of
their own sexual selfidentification as homosexuals. Instead, Kinsey polled all kinds of people about their sexual behavior, defining male homosexual behavior as when
“one or both parties in the relation have come to ejaculation as a result of stimulation provided by another male.” 56
In preliminary research on male sexuality, Kinsey found that about thirtyfive percent of the sample had been “involved in homosexual behavior” to the point of “full
climax.” He thus estimated that between a quarter and a third of all males in any mixed­aged group had some homosexual experience. Over the course of an individual
lifetime, an estimated fifty percent of the male population would engage in homosexuality. To many who believed that homosexuals were fundamentally pathological
and belonged to a separate and small group, this news was rather shocking.
Kinsey used this data to argue that scientists should study what humans actually do, rather than be concerned with dividing up the population into reified and mutually
exclusive categories of heterosexuals and homosexuals:
In brief, homosexuality is not the rare phenomenon which it is ordinarily considered to be, but a type of behavior which ultimately may involve as much as half of the whole male
population. Any hormonal or other explanation of the phenomenon must take this into account. Any use of socalled normals as controls . . . should allow for the possibility that a
quarter to a half of these “normals” may in actuality have had homosexual experience at some time in their lives; and . . . it must similarly be recognized
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that there are very few ”homosexuals” who have not had at least some, and in many cases a great deal, of heterosexual experience.
57
His research showed that some individuals had single or accidental experiences, and others confined their relations to a single male partner, while still others had
contact with up to 15,000 males in the course of a lifetime. Some began their history of homosexual behavior early in life, others later; some had breaks in their
homosexual activity of up to thirty­five years, and others had homosexual relations daily. Some were primarily homosexual in one period of their lives and heterosexual
in another. Thus, he argued, this carefully acquired data did not warrant the separation of those who engaged in homosexual behavior into a discrete group.
Based on this great degree of variation, Kinsey refuted the popular and clinical concepts of physical stigmata that associated male homosexuality with effeminacy.
“There are, in short, intergradations between all of these types, whatever the items by which they are classified.” 58 Moreover, Kinsey’s research showed that the
heterosexual category was no more clear­cut; he found that some people engaged in both heterosexual and homosexual activity, sometimes successively but more
often simultaneously in a single period of their lives. Sexual orientation for some people might even vary over the course of a few hours.
Although Kinsey, being a careful and respectful scientist himself, did not insist that biological studies of homosexuality cease altogether, his critique of categorizing
people as either homosexual or heterosexual issued a damning blow to scientific projects such as the Sex Variant study. At the same time, his research, like that of the
Sex Variant study, made use of a variance model, albeit focused on variability in actual sexual behavior among interviewed subjects, rather than on their degrees of
masculinity and femininity. The variations he found among people led him to conclude that humans were scattered across a continuum based on their frequency of
homosexual and heterosexual encounters. To chart the variations, he devised a seven­point scale for mapping sexual orientation, placing those who had no homosexual
experiences at the zero degree, those who engaged in homosexual relations exclusively at the sixth degree, and those who had a mixture of homosexual and
heterosexual encounters at the degrees in between.
Just as Kinsey’s work obliterated the idea of a clear­cut homosexual type, it effectively erased the possibility of such a thing as a distinct homosexual body. His use of
statistical survey methods, rather than the medical case history format, further undermined the typologizing method so endemic to constitutional studies of
homosexuality, including those of the recently conducted Sex Variant study.
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In spite of their apparent differences, both the Sex Variant study and Kinsey’s research represented a shift from an earlier focus on classifying binary oppositions (male
versus female and heterosexual versus homosexual) to a statistically based model of variance. The former mode of organizing difference privileged the body as a main
source of truth, using techniques of physical examination in order to divide people into distinct categories based on certain features. The variance model was based on
quantifying and standardizing all kinds of elements, using statistical analyses for understanding the distribution of a population across a continuum, not necessarily in
clearly demarcated categories. Given the findings of the Sex Variant research, it was no longer possible to assume that the sex variant was a single and discrete type.
The variance model, albeit deployed in different ways by the CSSV and by Kinsey, had punctured the cordon sanitaire of taxonomic difference, allowing for the
possibility that aspects of variance were dispersed throughout the population.
Containing the Ubiquitous Menace
On the heels of the Sex Variant study, Kinsey’s empirical method for determining variations of experience and sexual behavior gave rise to a new picture of
homosexuality as a pervasive and multifaceted phenomenon. Although Kinsey argued that his data showed homosexuality to be a natural manifestation of human sexual
desire, others believed that its widespread occurrence among those who seemed “normal” was cause for alarm. In the 1940s and 1950s, Kinsey’s research unleashed
fears that homosexual behavior was not necessarily confined to a particular population, but could be rampant and difficult to detect. The 1948 publication of his
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male inadvertently inspired anxiety and hysteria about the invisible menace of homosexuality many believed had insinuated its way
into every part of the population. The finding that about one third of all men had homosexual relations to orgasm as adults astounded the American public, especially
when the mass media used these statistics to warn citizens that their priests, their bankers, their children’s schoolteachers, and perhaps even their spouses or parents
may be engaging in these unspeakable activities. Kinsey’s subsequent volume on female sexual behavior reported similar findings of lesbianism among women, raising
even greater ire among Kinsey’s critics and the public who followed them. Kinsey was accused of sullying the portrait of the happy and hygienic suburban housewife
by insinuating that Tupperware parties could be fronts for clandestine lesbian relationships. 59
A great deal of hysteria among government officials was kindled unintentionally by statistical evidence that homosexuality was widespread and that homosexuals
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were imperceptible, even as their numbers seemed to be increasing in the population. Beginning as early as 1946, homosexuality became associated with nothing less
than treason, sparking a ten­year campaign of official purges of so­called sex perverts from federal and local governments all across the United States. Within the
homophobic terms of these Cold War purges, the threat of homosexuality was seen to have infected not only the family, the neighborhood, and the city streets, but
also the State Department and the military, where it threatened the nation’s security and strength. 60
A growing number of American psychiatrists and psychoanalysts added to the official homophobia of the Cold War period by arguing that homosexuality was a
neurotic condition that should be treated and cured. 61 They were especially eager to criticize Kinsey’s methods, mainly on the grounds that he failed to take into
account how subjects’ psychological motivations influenced their responses to interview questions, and that he neglected to consider the role of the unconscious in
shaping sexual desire and behavior. 62 Their contention was that a person’s conscious admission of sexual desire was anything but the transparent truth of sexuality,
and thus should not be taken at face value. Kinsey’s psychoanalytic critics insisted that to understand homosexual behavior one must understand the underlying
personality and neuroses that gave rise to this behavior. For the most part, they remained convinced that homosexuality was associated with a fundamentally neurotic
type of personality.
Clearly, the domain of psychiatry was profoundly altered by Kinsey’s shocking reports of human sexual variation. Although it was not his goal or intention, Kinsey’s
critique of studies linking homosexual behavior with constitutional or biological qualities actually opened up a space for the articulation of psychogenic explanations.
But Kinsey himself insisted that questions about the origins of homosexuality were of little significance, and he was especially dismayed when psychogenic explanations
took an increasingly homophobic tone. Indeed, much of American psychoanalytic writing from the 1940s through the 1970s shared a common goal of not merely
preventing homosexuality, but of curing individuals afflicted by this deviant desire. While they otherwise lambasted Kinsey for his refusal to categorize people into
heterosexual and homosexual, many homophobic psychiatrists from this period were keen to do away with the idea of a distinctly homosexual body. If homosexuality
was not a matter of biology, then the chances for curing it were greater, psychoanalysts reasoned. They saw themselves as best situated to intervene therapeutically.
Thus, even though by 1950 the body became increasingly problematic as a source of evidence about deviance, scientific hope to contain or abolish this sexual
pathology, once advanced by early constitutional studies, came to be promoted by homophobic psychoanalysts. And even though they abandoned the idea of the
homosexual
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body in order to institute their own therapeutic interventions, these psychoanalysts wanted to hang onto the idea that the homosexual was a psychopathological type of
person. 63
In the history of scientific research on homosexuality, Kinsey’s two copious reports appeared at first to punctuate the end of biological studies through voluminous
evidence that human sexual activities varied widely throughout the population. But during the postwar decade, the cultural fear and anxiety provoked by the dissolution
of boundaries between homosexuality and heterosexuality overpowered the possibility that sexual variation could be accepted just because seemingly “normal” people
experienced it. The perceived threat that homosexuality, like communism, was everywhere, inspired a reaction formation of widespread cultural disavowal and
repulsion, headed up by government officials and psychiatric experts. Not surprisingly, great efforts were made to contain this threat through a resuscitated insistence
that homosexuals were somehow a distinct group­­either psychologically or biologically. What better way to allay fears about the dissolution of cherished boundaries
than by refuting the variance model and thus denying the complexity of human gender and sexual relations?
Epilogue: How Big Is Your Hypothalamus?
As we have seen, scientific assumptions about the physical signs of homosexuality changed significantly from the early constitutional studies of the nineteenth century to
the statistical research of Alfred Kinsey in the mid­twentieth century. Earlier models that understood homosexuality to be related to hereditary degeneration and
constitutional defects were eventually supplanted by models of the body as a surface upon which perverse practices left their marks and by psychoanalytic theories
focused on psychosexual development and social relations. Mid­twentieth­century developments in the history of the homosexual body reveal a significant shift away
from assuming homosexuality to be the result of innate and immutable defects toward seeing it as a result of certain circumstantial, social, and psychological factors.
Kinsey’s statistical studies went one step further, by discrediting the whole idea that homosexuality was an attribute of a psychologically discrete or physically distinct
group of people. Historically, the notion that homosexuals were in some way distinct was central to efforts of policing deviance. The greatest contribution of Kinsey’s
work­and, indeed, its most threatening quality­­is that it made the border between homosexuality and heterosexuality permeable and highly contingent. By placing all
sexual behavior on a continuum, his research brought to light the pervasive nature of homosexuality and, paradoxically, rendered it invisible, at least
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within the terms of the earlier constitutional framework. Thus it is possible to read the popular and professional backlash against Kinsey as a desire to make
homosexuality visible again as an aberration to be contained rather than accepted as a common sexual practice.
Looking back over this history, we can say that, for an anxious moment, the homosexual body vanished not only because of methodological contradictions in such
projects as the Sex Variant study, but also because rigorously conducted empirical science revealed that perhaps homosexuality was in every body. Indeed, following
the Sex Variant study and Kinsey’s research, constitutional studies were for the most part discontinued; but the quest for finding homosexuality in the body was far
from exhausted, taking new forms which focused on the vicissitudes of the hormonal system and on patterns of sexual response. 64 Since the 1950s, the desire to
resurrect clear boundaries between the nominal categories of heterosexual and homosexual has invited, if not required, the body to be a site for grounding some
mythical essential difference.
Indeed, the question of whether homosexuality results from a rare biological trait or is a widespread cultural practice has animated scientific studies on the subject since
1869. Neither the Sex Variant researchers nor Kinsey resolved this question, and yet its answer has very large political implications for how those who engage in
homosexuality are treated in the larger society. The issue has emerged once again in the twilight of the twentieth century, as banner headlines announce scientific
evidence establishing the “biology of homosexuality.” Alas, contemporary arguments on the subject repeat a familiar dichotomous structure, following two main
directions: If homosexuality is an acquired or socially produced condition, presumably it could be curable or preventable, whereas if it is innate or due to biological
factors, it should be tolerated as a natural variation. Historically, the body has been approached as an important source of evidence for debating this issue, just as it
continues to be in recent controversies over whether there is a biological basis for sexual orientation. Then and now, arguments about whether or not sexual orientation
is governed by biological factors generate a variety of agendas, not only about the definition of homosexuality, but also about whether those who practice it should be
criminally prosecuted, medically treated, or legally protected as a minority.
The progressive position in the first half of the twentieth century was very much like a gay rights position articulated today: If biology determines homosexuality, those
who engage in it should neither be punished nor be forced to change, because nature dictates their desires, and therefore homosexuality is not their fault. It is interesting
to note that a new wave of “gay science,” practiced and supported to a great degree by liberal gay­rights advocates, echoes this position by seeking to prove that
sexual orientation can be correlated to the body. 65
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The key players in this new wave of “gay­positive” biology are mainly political liberals, and many are gay and lesbian scientists who defend their research by stating
that scientific data can be used to argue that those who have homosexual desires should be tolerated because they are “hardwired” to do so. 66 An even more
optimistic claim made by some supporters of this recent research is that proving the biological basis of homosexuality could protect lesbians and gay men against
discrimination. In this construction, biology is presumed to be the strongest grounds for making equal protection claims under the law; lesbians and gay men are
considered analogous to women and to racial minorities who are purportedly protected by law from discrimination on the basis of their biological race or sex.
It is curious that making a case through biology is being proposed again as a strategy for winning equal protection arguments, given that biologically based arguments
historically have been used to support the elimination of whole groups of people under the rubric of social hygiene. 67 Many who are skeptical about making
arguments of this sort but who support gay and lesbian rights prefer instead to make their arguments by drawing analogies from constitutional case law that protects the
rights of individuals to form associations and to practice the religion of their choice. 68 In their view, one’s sacred beliefs are not a matter of biological difference and
yet they ought to be protected by the Bill of Rights. This latter approach stresses cultural affiliation, not biological destiny, and in so doing offers a much broader set of
possibilities for appreciating and respecting differences among and within people.
Of course, the motives of those who advocate this new wave of scientific research reflect particular cultural and political circumstances of the present, and we must
take into account what distinguishes their interests from apparently similar perspectives in the 1890s, the 1930s, and the 1950s. “Gay biology” today in many ways
defies the popular critique of biological determinism from the 1960s and 1970s, and occurs in the context of several major historical developments: (1) a resurgence of
right­wing political power in the United States during the 1980s, coupled with the reemergence of biological explanations for such culturally complex issues as crime,
intelligence, unemployment, and oppression (to name just a few); (2) the elaboration of a far­reaching political movement based on the assertion of gay and lesbian
identity and rights that has been fighting for rights to bodily self­determination; and (3) the emergence of a deadly epidemic that was originally named Gay Related
Immune Deficiency and thus linked homosexuality with the body and disease in new and very urgent ways. These profoundly transformational developments in U.S.
culture contribute to the recent trend in which homosexual bodies have taken on a mysterious, magical promise of identity, authenticity, and liberation for self­
identifying
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gays and lesbians, who at the same time face escalating conflict, violence, and mortality. In this moment, bodies have become a means for both denouncing and
affirming sexual difference in highly politicized terms.
Indeed, the AIDS epidemic shapes the cultural appropriation of rather tentative scientific findings about the biology of sexual orientation. For while gay rights
advocates see scientific p…