LGBTQ During World War 2

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Inquiry Proposal - LGBTQ in WWII

The essay will be graded on length, quality of answers, specific reference to the texts, and analytical thought. So please include short quotes from the book(s) and/or videos and other readings

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What was life like for homosexuals, in Germany, during WWII? How had it changed in Europe since the early 1920s and1930s? How did the US military react to homosexuality? What were the roles of females in the US military and how did they react to lesbianism? What was McCarthyism and what role did that play in the formation early LGBTQ movement?

I've attached a source (women's sexuality WWII). Please add 2 more sources and the book mentioned below!

Also, If you could access the book ''The Gay Revolution by Lillian Faderman'' you will find very useful information. The Gay Revolution pages 471-534 (Part 8: Demanding To Serve)

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Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13 – 30 www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif ‘‘Dykes’’ or ‘‘whores’’: Sexuality and the Women’s Army Corps in the United States during World War II M. Michaela Hampf Anglo-Amerikanische Abteilung des Historischen Seminars, Universität zu Köln, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, 50923, Cologne, Germany Synopsis When the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) was founded in the United States in 1943, utilizing American womanpower was a matter of military expediency. At the same time, military service provided many women with mobility, education, and greater economic and personal autonomy. Women soldiers were subject to rumors and hostility by the public and media that found the stereotypical ‘feminine’ to be irreconcilable with the stereotypically masculine ‘soldier’ and considered both lesbian and heterosexual women’s sexual agency a threat to military masculinity and established gender roles. Archival records of the US Army show that women’s sexuality was controlled by discourses of desexualization and/or hypersexualization, by policies denying their sexual agency and of their victimization. The WAC leadership created an image of the ‘‘respectable’’ female soldier based on assumptions about the class and race nature of sexual morality. During the Second World War (WWII), military psychiatrists’ focus on homosexuality shifted from criminal to medical concepts. Concerns over lesbianism in the Corps, which was the apotheosis of cultural anxieties over women’s entrance into the military, highlight the performative nature and the close connections between the categories gender and sexuality. D 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction A women’s Army to defend the United States of America! Think of the humiliation. What has become of the manhood in America, that we have to call on our women to do what has ever been the duty of men?1 In more and more Western societies, women play increasingly important roles in the armed forces. More than 60 years after the above quoted statement was made in the congressional debate over the establishment of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), the conflicts expressed in it still strike a 0277-5395/$ - see front matter D 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2003.12.007 familiar tone. Present debates on women soldiers in combat or multinational peace operations and on those killed, wounded or taken prisoner in war zones show that military masculinities and femininities are a highly contested terrain. Whether women soldiers are perceived as threatening military efficiency or whether, on the contrary, their presence is hoped to ‘‘civilize’’ peacekeeping forces and to promote the success of nation-building and conflict-resolving tasks—these debates highlight the close links between the categories gender and sexuality (Elshtain, 1987). This contribution attempts to shed light on the discursive construction of women soldiers’ sexuality during World War II (WWII). As the categories 14 M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 ‘woman’ and ‘soldier’ in the United States of the 1940s were thought to be immensely difficult, if not impossible to reconcile, lesbian soldiers were doubly othered. They were silenced and rendered invisible in order not to challenge society’s and the military’s established androcentric, heterosexist order. ‘The military closet comes in ‘‘White’’ and ‘‘Colored’’, ‘‘His’’ and ‘‘Hers’’ versions [. . .]’ (D’Amico, 1996, p. 3). The different forms of women’s identity and agency examined in this article are situated in the larger historical context of gender and sexuality in the military in order to avoid what Penn (1991, p. 190) calls ‘‘a gendered history that is desexualized or a sexual history that is degendered’’. My aim is to understand how military culture and military power operate to construct and legitimate the asymmetrical social positions that produce intelligible bodies and the fiction of binary categorical identities. While I am not arguing that the inclusion of women in a military that depends on their exclusion, is per se subversive, understanding the dispositif of sexuality at work in the military could be a first step in thinking a nongendered, civil/ized concept of citizenship.2 I will first examine a few examples of the military, political and cultural discourses and representations that surrounded the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) and show how they are structured by the category gender.3 The category sexuality and its implications for the concept of the citizen –soldier is the focus of the second part. With the inclusion of women in the army, there appeared lesbian soldiers who seemed to threaten both the carefully constructed ‘‘respectability’’ of the women’s corps as well as the ‘‘genderedness’’ of the established military order. A major shift occurred in the way the military organization encompassed and subordinated its members’ sexualities when physicians and psychiatrists introduced the concept of homosexuality as a mental illness that came to replace the concept of sodomy as a criminal act before and during World War II (Duberman, Vicinus, & Chauncey, 1989; Greenberg, 1988). The third part will focus on this shift and on the specific problems the Women’s Army Corps faced in applying the new psychiatric categories of homosexuality to women. In the fourth part, I consider the effects of the newly implemented policy of medicalization on women soldiers by looking at US Army records from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), other military and civilian archives and manuscripts from the Library of Congress. Two case histories of formal investigations against women indicted as lesbians at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia frame the terrain in which Wacs negotiated their identities through practices of subjection (Butler, 1997, p. 2).4 The construction of the woman soldier The construction of the woman soldier in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II was based on the intersection of gender, race, sexuality and class. The military is a gendered and hierarchical institution in which ‘‘widely disseminated cultural images of gender are invented and reproduced’’ (Acker, 1992, p. 565; Shaw, 1991). Within the military institution, gender is present in different, but interdependent and overlapping processes, practices, images, ideologies, and distributions of power. Historically, the emergence of nation states was closely linked to the professionalization of the armed forces. In the process, the military came to be seen as a symbol for the sovereignty of the state—the concepts of citizen, soldier and man fused and the figure of the male warrior had to be legitimized through the necessity to protect ‘‘womenandchildren’’ (Eifler, 1999 cited in Enloe, 1999, p. 157; Eifler & Seifert, 1999). Military institutions utilize ‘‘gender technologies’’ (De Lauretis, 1987) in order to foster an ideology of heterosexual masculinity that transgresses the boundary of the military and permeates civilian discourses.5 In the tradition of late 18th century, bourgeois revolutions as well as in the American republican tradition of the citizen – soldier, military service and citizenship are closely linked. Participation in the military has served and continues to serve as a determinant of the rights of citizens. Kerber (1998) has traced the link between citizenship and the right and obligation, respectively, of bearing arms from pre-Revolutionary times on. She shows how the concept of citizenship became tightly linked to race and manhood, which was sharply and ritually contrasted with effeminacy. The construction of a hegemonic military masculinity is centered on combat, its mythical core, and has depended on the exclusion of the ‘‘other’’, the ‘‘overt homosexual’’, the ‘‘feminine’’, the ‘‘ethnic other’’. M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 In World War II, the military occupational structure changed significantly. Due to technological factors, its emphasis shifted from the combat arms to a much larger administrative and technical support apparatus. The military required a growing number of skills that resembled those needed in the civilian workplace (Moore, 1996, p. 25). Thus, the military could employ women and ethnic minority personnel to work in communications and clerical functions without changing the organization’s stratified structure. The officer elite was still made up of white men while African American men and all women were excluded from leadership positions in combat. Although only 12% of all male soldiers saw combat during World War II, the status as ‘‘warrior’’ and ‘‘protector’’ was reserved for white men, reinforcing white women’s role as the ‘‘protected’’ and, in turn, African American women’s role as ‘‘unprotected’’ (Meyer, 1996, p. 85). African American women thus found themselves in a double minority position. They were confronted with racial constructions of gender and gendered constructions of race that influenced every aspect of their service. Most Army posts were segregated even in states that had no segregation laws, although the Army claimed it was merely following local laws and practices (Meyer, 1996, p. 90). In contrast to the assignment of traditional ‘‘women’s work’’ to Wacs, the WAC leadership had no intention to undermine the Army’s system of racial segregation. African American servicewomen also faced specific resentment by African American male soldiers. Charity Adams Early, commander of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion in Europe, remembered that ‘‘the presence of successfully performing Negro women on the scene increased their resentment. [. . .] The efforts of the women to be supportive of the men was [sic] mistaken for competition and patronage’’(Early, 1989, p. 187). Many African American Wacs, as well as their supporters in the African American community, saw their service as part of a larger struggle for racial justice. In several instances, their resistance against discrimination, segregation and malassignment foreshadowed the protests of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960 (Meyer, 1996, p. 5). Although not formally incorporated before the 20th century, women had long been part of military forces 15 of the United States. The first permanent women’s military branch to be established, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was created by act of Congress on May 15, 1942.6 Oveta Culp Hobby, formerly chief of the Women’s Interest Section of the Bureau of Public Relations of the War Department, became the first director of the WAAC. Hobby, a Texan involved in various ‘‘women’s activities’’, the wife of the former Texan governor and a former state legislator herself, stated that she was ‘‘about as unmilitary a person as ever existed’’. When Hobby, ‘‘[a] slender, quietly pretty, very feminine woman, a Southern lady with an aura of breeding and gentility, wearing a straw sailor hat and a stylishly plain suit [. . .]’’ took her oath of office on May 14, 1942, her appearance certainly posed no threat (Hock, 1995; Pogue, 1973, p. 107). Although the Auxiliary Corps Act gave women only partial military status, fears were voiced that a situation would result in which ‘‘women generals would rush about the country dictating orders to male personnel and telling the commanding officers of posts how to run their business’’ (Meyer, 1996, p. 44). On July 1, 1943, Congress converted the Auxiliary Corps into the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) which was part of the Army and thus assigned the women soldiers full military status. The WAC provided women ranks and pay comparable to those of their male counterparts but at the same time limited their options and made them subject to the Army’s disciplinary code.7 In total, 140,000 women served in the Women’s Corps during WWII (Treadwell, 1954). Women’s entrance into the Army was accepted by male officers and political leaders under the banner of expediency. In mobilizing for WWII, the creation of the women’s corps allowed the Army to fill the increasing number of clerical tasks or ‘‘women’s jobs’’ with semimilitary personnel in order to free male soldiers for combat positions. In general, areas of deployment of female soldiers were similar to their job opportunities in the civil labor force. As a labor resource for military planning, auxiliaries were more reliable than civilian employees because only personnel with (some) military status could be controlled 24 h per day. What was most important for military planners was that the military, not civilian legislators, could control and discipline these women. 16 M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 A number of civilian and military groups had dramatically conflicting visions about the concept of ‘Female Soldiers’. During WWII, the influence of white women’s rights organizations was rather limited. Most of them did not stress the connections between military service and citizenship, but saw in women’s service a temporary sacrifice and contribution to the war effort which was not expected to take part in the reorganization of gender roles in a postwar society. African American press and women’s organizations, such as the National Council of Negro Women, and socialist women did, in contrast, point out the importance of military service, not only for the advancement of African American women but, generally, for the progress of the equal rights cause and greater justice in the postwar society (Erenberg & Hirsch, 1996; Litoff & Smith, 1997; Moore, 1996).8 Mobilization and the massive wartime migration offered many women increasing access to jobs, wages, the possibility of economic autonomy and a decrease in parental control. Along with more than 16 million men who became soldiers, nearly as many civilians—most of them women—left their homes.9 In the civil work force as well as in the military, participation of women as breadwinners or soldiers was seen as deviant from existing gender roles, but nevertheless necessary to win the war (D’Emilio & Freedman, 1988, p. 260). Opponents to even a temporary participation of women felt that not only the efficiency of the military was threatened, but also the traditional system of male dominance and the roles of female homemaker and male breadwinner were challenged. Increasing economic and sexual independence of women subverted the roles of the ‘‘protector’’ and the mythical spaces of ‘‘front’’ and ‘‘home’’ (YuvalDavis, 1999). The WAC bill was also vigorously opposed by women’s peace organizations, in part in an uneasy alliance with right-wing organizations: Mildred Scott Olmsted of the Women’s Committee to Oppose Conscription (WCOC), declared in a radio broadcast ‘‘Women are naturally and rightly the homemakers [. . .] They play their part during the war by ‘keeping the home fires burning’’’ (Kerber, 1998, p. 249). The far-right group Mothers of Sons warned, ‘‘this bill would nationalize our women and complete the sovietization of our country.’’10 Mainstream media were extraordinarily concerned with a development of masculine appearance and a potentially more aggressive and assertive sexuality in Army women, which was thought to challenge male dominance. While some were supportive of the WAAC, others urged women not to join the corps. ‘‘Stay as feminine as possible. Who wants to go out with an ersatz man?’’ warned a commentator.11 Women’s sexual agency became a symbol for gender deviance, as became clear in the stereotype of the ‘‘mannish woman’’ (Meyer, 1996, p. 6). The perceived masculinization of women by the military posed the threat of feminization to the military as a whole. Likewise, concerns about sexual deviance were articulated in the media through the stereotypes of the cross-dresser and camp follower, which in popular usage was synonymous with ‘‘prostitute’’ and usually implied a woman of ‘‘loose sexual morals’’.12 Accusations of promiscuity among Wacs in connection with the segregated nature of the Women’s Corps even led to the allegation that the WAC was a prostitution cadre designed to fulfill the sexual needs of male soldiers.13 Thus, during this slander campaign, the furnishing of birth control information and contraceptives was taken as a ‘‘proof’’ by some columnists that the Army indeed encouraged and enticed heterosexual promiscuity, perhaps even specifically with servicemen (O’Donnell, 1943; Newsweek articles in 1943, cited in Meyer, 1996, p. 33).14 ‘‘If my daughter is a member of an organized group of whores’’, wrote one father of a Waac, ‘‘I want to know it and get her out of the WAAC.’’15 Limited and transgressed by domestic and foreign policy issues, these discourses created a fundamental dilemma for the leaders of the women’s corps. In order to protect them from sexual exploitation, discrimination and violence by the military, its members had to be presented to the public and the military as full-fledged soldiers with equal rights and a publicly acceptable, i.e., feminine, image. To counter public controversy, the WAC leadership presented the public an image of the corps that resembled a boarding school for white middle class daughters.16 Director Hobby, who as a former newspaper publisher knew how to employ the media in her public relations efforts, emphasized an image of respectability and countered the potential sexual autonomy of Wacs by a display of asexuality. Sexual respectability was determined by race as well as class. Working class M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 women were stereotypically assumed to be more sexually active than middle-class women, and African American women were portrayed as promiscuous by nature (Meyer, 1996, p. 36). Women’s sexuality was policed by regulations such as the higher enlistment requirements and the WAAC’s separate Code of Conduct. According to these regulations, women who had transgressed the limits of respectability in displaying a ‘‘conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the WAAC,’’ meaning public drunkenness and extramarital sex or, in the case of the WAAC, any form of sexual intercourse, were to be discharged immediately. In contrast to the Army, there was no room for rehabilitation by means of punishment or disciplinary measures. When an attempt was made by the Surgeon General to introduce a venereal disease control program for Wacs similar to that for male soldiers in the Army, it met strong resistance by Director Hobby and the Director of the Army Nurse Corps. Both believed in higher moral standards for women and feared that even the term venereal disease control would affect recruiting adversely. Throughout the war, venereal disease was a cause for rejection of women, although the Surgeon General argued that from a public health standpoint it would be best to treat them, as was done with men (Treadwell, 1954, pp. 615 – 616). Civilian scientists of the National Research Council advocated that all Waacs be educated in matters of sexual health and that contraceptives be issued or dispensed from slot machines in WAAC latrines (Treadwell, 1954, p. 616). This approach was out of the question for Director Hobby, who was convinced that because of the ‘‘high type of woman expected in the Corps’’ (ibid.) no such measures would be needed and that Army regulations concerning these matters intended for male personnel were not applicable to female personnel.17 This policy reaffirmed the military’s sexual paradigm that men were not to be held responsible for the consequences of their heterosexual encounters, as were ‘‘the others’’—their partners, who were assumed to be civilians and females. The corps only contained ‘‘honorable’’ women, and honor in the case of the WAC was defined as heterosexual orientation, white middle-class background, modesty and chastity (Meyer, 1996, p. 64; Peiss et al., 1989, pp. 4– 6). A WAC pamphlet assured parents that ‘‘[your daugh- 17 ters will] make the kind of associations you want them to have at home’’.18 ‘‘Sodomists’’ and ‘‘cross-dressers’’ Before the peacetime mobilization of 1940– 1941, homosexuality had never been an issue for the Army or the Navy. Instead, they had targeted as criminal the act of sodomy, defined as anal and sometimes oral sex between men, not homosexual persons. The Articles of War, Article 93, first codified ‘‘consensual sodomy’’ as a dischargeable offense in 1920. Samegender sexual relationships in the Armed Forces have a long tradition in the United States Armed Forces. General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who trained the Continental Army at Valley Forge, is believed to have had male lovers, and Lieutenant Gotthold Frederick Enslin was drummed out of the Continental Army for sodomy on 11 March 1778. The military’s first lesbian soldiers fought, disguised as men, in the 15th Missouri regiment during the Civil War (Chambers, 1999, p. 287). Thus soldiers and officers who engaged in same sex relations were court-martialed, usually imprisoned and dishonorably discharged on the grounds of their behavior, not their sexual identity per se.19 In World War II, a dramatic change occurred. In October 1940, several million men had registered for the draft and the Selective Service System was now in a position to exclude certain groups of citizens.20 The second reason for the fundamental reorganization of the management of homosexuals was the psychiatric profession’s growing authority to define homosexuality and its influence on military personnel policy. In 1942, the revised regulations for the disposition of homosexual personnel reflected a shift in the interpretation from a criminal offense to a psychological illness. The varying policies of the different services were at the end of WWII replaced by the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Article 125 prohibited sodomy, defined as anal or oral penetration, whether consensual or coerced and regardless of whether it occurred between heterosexual, homosexual or married couples. For the first time, assaults with the intent to commit sodomy, indecent assault and indecent acts were also covered (Article 134 UCMJ; D’Amico, 1996, p. 6). Persons who engaged in oral or anal same-gender sex were sub- 18 M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 jected to court-martial and 5 years of incarceration, while sodomy between heterosexual men and women has rarely invited court-martial or incarceration. Military investigators detained suspects and forced them to disclose their peers’ sexual orientation. Confessions were not uncommonly extracted by threatening incarceration during interrogations. Prison sentences for same-gender sodomy were common until the late 1980s. The new policies allowed greater discretion, while at the same time vastly expanding the military’s administrative apparatus for disposing of homosexual personnel that relied on hospitalization, diagnosis, surveillance, interrogation, discharge, courts-martial and mass indoctrination (Bérubé, 1990). Bérubé (1990) and others have concluded that the fact that sodomy laws were rarely applied to lesbians was due to a ‘‘history of invisibility’’ of lesbians in general and in the military. While the remnants of the Victorian ideal of ‘‘passionlessness’’ might account for part of this invisibility, I suggest that the emergence of a lesbian subculture in the WAC as well as the administrative apparatus to manage lesbianism in the corps have to be examined also against the background of performativity: discursive categories for lesbianism in the 1940s were not sodomy but gender disguise and cross-dressing.21 Within the WAC, the management of homosexuality was based on educational rather than on military traditions: educational lectures, guidance, supervision, reassignment of personnel; criminal prosecution, courts-martial and discharge only as last resorts against the most overt, disruptive and ‘‘unreformable’’ homosexuals (Bérubé, 1990, p. 46).22 Many WAC officers had been recruited from women’s colleges for their administrative experience and as a reassurance to parents and the public. Their in loco parentis approach addressed lesbianism primarily as an environmental problem due to ‘‘conditions of group living unnatural to the majority of mature women.’’ Lesbian relationships were considered inappropriate ‘‘crushes’’ that should be countered by giving trainees ‘‘opportunities of wholesome and natural companionship with men’’, creating living conditions more ‘‘unfavorable to the development of homosexuality’’ and minimizing curiosity by avoiding ‘‘as much as possible any talk regarding homosexuality.’’23 The psychological redefinition went as far as instructing officers that ‘‘every person is born with a bisexual nature’’ and that ‘‘every woman possesses some traits that are usually regarded as masculine.’’ Any Wac could ‘‘gravitate’’ toward homosexual practices and ‘‘turn to homosexual relationship [sic] as a means to satisfy [. . .] the universal desire for affection’’ (ibid., pp. 24 –29; Bérubé, 1990, p. 46; Treadwell, 1954, pp. 616 – 17, 625). Interestingly, homosexual tendencies in women could be channeled into qualities that made them better soldiers. Psychiatrists sought to apply their concepts of transference and sublimation to the women soldiers. Trainees who had ‘‘potential homosexual tendencies’’, they advised, could be ‘‘deterred from active participation’’ in sexual relations and should be encouraged to sublimate their desires into a ‘‘hero-worship’’ type of reaction or into ‘‘a definite type of leadership’’ (ibid.). This attempt to desexualize women’s relationships by redirecting their sexual energy to military purposes stood in stark contrast to the military’s traditional and official position that (male) homosexuality threatened morale and discipline and was incompatible with military service. While effeminate men challenged the very core of military masculinity, lesbians, as women, were already excluded from this core. Thus, their sexuality, when sublimated or properly channeled, could be put to service to slot them into the military structure of rank and command. A hangover from adolescence? Three physicians and psychiatrists have had an enormous influence on the perception of homosexuality in the medical and psychiatric community. When in World War II psychiatrists greatly expanded their authority in the armed forces, their reforms, which dramatically altered the way military leaders dealt with homosexual personnel, were based on the theories of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis, and Sigmund Freud. Richard von KrafftEbing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, first published in 1886 and revised many times, had an enormous impact on the scientific study of homosexuality as a mental illness that would remain the dominant paradigm for the following decades. In hundreds of case histories, Krafft-Ebing (1965) discussed varied M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 ‘‘perversions,’’ such as sadism and masochism as well as ‘‘antipathic sexual instinct,’’ his term for congenital homosexuality in the earlier editions (cited in Greenberg, 1988, p. 414). Although he endorsed the repeal of Paragraph 175 in the German criminal code and called for tolerance towards homosexuals, Krafft-Ebing (1965) insisted on homosexuality, like ‘‘alcoholism,’’ ‘‘insanity,’’ and ‘‘idiocy,’’ being manifestations of hereditary degeneration (Mondimore, 1996, p. 37). Homosexuality was closely associated with cross-dressing: ‘‘[F]eeling, thought, will, and the whole character [. . .] correspond with the peculiar sexual instinct, but not with the sex which the individual represents anatomically and physiologically’’ (ibid.). As to the question of whether homosexuality was inherited or acquired, Krafft-Ebing (1965) suggested that it was not homosexuality, but degeneracy, ‘‘neuroses, psychoses, degenerative signs, etc. that have been found in the families’’ (ibid.). Thus, homosexuality could be caused by masturbation: ‘‘Perverse sexuality is developed under the influence of neurasthenia induced by masturbation.’’ (Krafft-Ebing, 1965, p. 190). Havelock Ellis, a British physician, dismissed the theory of homosexuality resulting from hereditary degeneration as well as Krafft-Ebing’s idea that it could be induced by masturbation. Ellis believed that most cases of sexual inversion were inborn and involved an anomaly of gender, an incomplete differentiation that was not in itself pathological. He acknowledged that some cases of inversion might be acquired but thought them rare and involving a congenital predisposition. According to his theory, developmental factors led to a ‘‘modification of the organism [so] that it becomes more adapted than the normal or average organism to experience sexual attraction to the same sex.’’ (Ellis & Symonds, 1897, pp. 132, 134). He advocated abolishing criminal statutes punishing homosexuality and was opposed to ‘‘treatments’’. While he thought it impossible to ‘‘cure’’ homosexuality, he believed in and advocated coeducation in order to prevent ‘‘schoolboy homosexuality’’ (Mondimore, 1996, p. 51). Anticipating Freud’s theory, Ellis believed that tendencies of homosexuality appeared before puberty but questioned the idea that it is ever entirely acquired: ‘‘The seed of suggestion can only develop when it falls on a suitable soil’’ (Ellis & Symonds, 1897, p. 110). 19 Most important for WAC psychiatrists was Ellis’s hypothesis that ‘‘the principal character of the sexually inverted women is a certain degree of masculinity’’ (Greenberg, 1988, p. 381). Gender stereotypes could define homosexuality even in the absence of romantic or erotic relations or desires. Browne (1923), a student of Havelock Ellis’s, described the case of a woman she called homosexual because she had ‘‘a decided turn for carpentry, mechanics and executive manual work. Not tall; slim, boyish figure; very hard, strong muscles, singularly impassive face, with big magnetic eyes. The dominating tendency is very strong here’’ (cited in Greenberg, 1988, p. 382). While masculinity posed a social or sexual threat to males, ‘‘the passive agent’’ in a lesbian relationship was sometimes denied a sexuality altogether. Havelock Ellis called them ‘‘pseudohomosexuals’’ and Hamilton (1896) described them as ‘‘decidedly feminine, with little power of resistance, usually sentimental or unnecessarily prudish. . .[T]he weak victim can be made the tool of the designing companion’’ (cited in Greenberg, 1988, p. 382). A dramatic departure from the somatic roots in most nineteenth century physicians’ explanations of homosexuality came with the Viennese psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, who explained homosexuality in purely psychological terms. Building on Ernst Haeckel’s proposal that the individual’s development (ontogeny) retraces the evolution of the species (phylogeny), Freud concluded that homosexuality was a developmental disorder. In his model, the newborn infant is assumed to be ‘‘polymorphously perverse’’ or ‘‘ambisexual’’. In subsequent development, the sexual drive is invested first in the mouth, then in the anus and finally in the genitals, each stage involving the choice of a new sexual object: first the self, then the mother, the father, and ultimately someone of the opposite sex. Hence, homosexuality is an element of everyone’s psychological history and never fully eradicated as the heterosexual adult preserves elements of homosexual attraction in the form of same-sex friendship (Freud, 1953, pp. 125 – 243). If this maturation process is disturbed, an individual can become fixated at one of the intermediate stages and regress to it later as the result of a traumatic event, such as the Oedipus complex (Freud, 1958, pp. 59 – 79). 20 M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 Freud also introduced the notion of ‘‘latent homosexuality’’; impulses that remain repressed so that they never come to consciousness but continue to exercise an influence on the individual’s mental processes. If heterosexuality is just as much a product of family interaction as homosexuality, the latter can no longer be seen as pathological. Indeed, Freud told a newspaper in 1905 that ‘‘homosexuals must not be treated as sick people, for a perverse orientation is far from being a sickness’’ (Greenberg, 1988, p. 426). Although the evaluation of homosexuality as an immature sexuality was implicitly pejorative, he vigorously opposed the persecution of homosexuality in criminal courts, which to him was an ‘‘extreme violation of human rights’’ (Greenberg, 1988, p. 426). The psychiatric profession had been promoting psychiatric as well as physical screening with the Selective Service System since the summer of 1940 when Congress had authorized the expanded defense budgets and passed the Selective Training and Service Act. Psychiatrists, most notably Harry Stack Sullivan, Winfred Overholser and Harry A. Steckel, were eager to show the War Department how psychiatry could contribute to the war effort.24 One of the lessons from the First World War (WWI) was the necessity for the armed forces to reduce the number of returning soldiers who had displayed symptoms that came to be subsumed under the term ‘‘shell shock’’ (also called ‘‘war neurosis’’, ‘‘battle fatigue’’ in WWII and now recognized as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD). By 1942, WWI shell shock cases accounted for 58% of all Veterans’ Administration’s patients (Feudtner, 1993; Leed, 1979; Salmon, 1917; Showalter, 1997). These psychiatric casualties had cost the federal government over US$1 billion. Screening, the psychiatrists argued, could greatly reduce these costs by weeding out potential psychiatric cases before they became military responsibilities (Menninger, 1948, p. 267). Despite the fact that Sullivan’s (1945) initial plan for psychiatric screening contained no references to homosexuality, the military bureaucracy did not follow his belief that ‘‘sexual aberrations’’ played only a minimal role in causing mental disorders. The massive mobilization was expected to include ‘‘many homosexual persons’’ and it became clear that the military would no longer be able to handle its homosexual discipline problems by charging offenders with sodomy and sending them to prison. By mid-1941, an administrative apparatus for screening inductees at local draft boards was in place to eliminate those ‘‘neuropsychiatrically unfit’’ or those with ‘‘psychopathic personality disorders,’’ including homosexuals (Bérubé, 1990, p. 12). After Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall had warned commanding officers in November 1942 that the increasing number of courts-martial was unacceptable and indicated a lack of leadership and enforcement of discipline, officials from the Judge Advocate General’s Office relaxed their hard-line position. They considered alternative approaches to ‘‘the sodomist problem’’ that did not require courts-martial in all cases.25 An alliance of reform-minded military officials and psychiatrists proposed what they described as a more ‘‘enlightened’’ and efficient system for handling homosexual offenders. To prevent additional strain on the already overburdened military prisons, the new system provided for the discharge without trial of certain homosexual personnel, while allowing the retention of those whose services were deemed essential. Slowly, the clinical term homosexual began to replace the legal term sodomist as jurisdiction over homosexuals was transferred from the criminal justice system to an expanded system of hospitalization, diagnosis and discharge. The psychiatric consultants started implementing their theories by educating administrative officials on their developmental model of human sexuality based on Freudian psychoanalysis. They described the normal development as one passing through the homosexual stage and then on to heterosexual maturity. All individuals retained a ‘‘homosexual residual’’ as a component of their sexuality that when ‘‘adequately sublimated’’ became the ‘‘foundation of social solidarity’’. Some people never reached that stage and remained homosexuals. But even ‘‘normal individuals’’, when placed under unusual circumstances such as prison or the military might ‘‘revert’’ to their homosexual stage of development and engage in homosexual practices. Three psychosexual categories emerged from this developmental model: the mature ‘normal’ heterosexual, the immature ‘deviant’ homosexual, sometimes referred to as a ‘‘true’’ or ‘‘confirmed’’ homosexual, and the regressive homosexual who M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 ‘‘reverts’’ to homosexuality due to environmental factors. Because ‘‘true’’ homosexuals could not be cured, there was no need to imprison them (Bérubé, 1990, pp. 136 – 137; Greenberg, 1988, pp. 421 – 430; Meyer, 1996, pp. 150, 153; Mondimore, 1996, pp. 69 –77). Three administrative categories were developed to dispose of homosexual personnel that corresponded with the psychiatrists’ psychosexual categories as follows. The ‘‘true pervert’’ who had sex with consenting adults was to be administratively discharged as mentally ill. The criminal ‘‘sodomist’’ category was narrowed to include only those offenders, whether they were regressive heterosexuals or homosexuals, who raped or had sex with minors. The third category, who were not ‘‘by nature homosexuals’’ but ‘‘submit[ted] to practice’’ through ‘‘intoxication or curiosity’’ were to be ‘‘rehabilitated and retained in the service’’ without trial or discharge.26 In January 1943, the new policy was in place. Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson issued a new Army directive, conservatively titled ‘‘Sodomists’’, that codified the new compromise between the reformers and the hard-liners. It stated that sodomy was a serious crime and that all offenders should be tried by court-martial. However, exceptions were applicable to the ‘‘confirmed pervert’’ who did not use force or violence to be examined by a board of officers and discharged under the provision of Section Eight of Army Regulation 615 –360. This category of undesirable discharge, often nicknamed ‘‘blue discharges’’ or ‘‘section eights,’’ which permitted the discharge of personnel with ‘‘undesirable habits or traits of character’’ had to be broadened to include those whom psychiatrists now defined as ‘‘sexual psychopaths’’. The other exception was the soldier who engaged in homosexual activity but was not a ‘‘confirmed pervert’’. He or she was to be examined by a psychiatrist and if the individual ‘‘otherwise possesses a salvage value,’’ he or she could be disciplined and returned to duty by an officer exercising general court-martial jurisdiction.27 It was not necessarily expensive training or special skills that constituted the ‘‘salvage value’’ of a soldier. Rather, the Army’s need for personnel had never been more urgent during the war than in 1943. WAC recruiting suffered from the conversion as well as from bad publicity during the slander campaign. The Adjutant General estimated that 21 2,000,000 more men had to be drafted within the next year and that more than 600,000 of the jobs could more efficiently be done by Wacs, thus preventing the controversial drafting of fathers of families.28 The new procedure was finalized in January 1944 when the War Department issued WD Circular No. 3, a revision of the 1943 policy that was followed by similar directives for the Navy and would remain in effect for the rest of the war.29 Suspected homosexuals, which for the first time included ‘‘latent homosexuals’’ who were reported or declared themselves without having committed any offence, were placed on sick call or sent to sick bay to be hospitalized. He or she was interviewed by a psychiatrist to determine the diagnostic and administrative category; medical staff then observed his or her behavior, compiled a life history and contacted the family. Intelligence officers frequently interrogated suspects to obtain the names of other homosexual personnel. An administrative board of commissioned officers that was required whenever possible to include a psychiatrist finally determined whether the patient remained in the hospital, returned to duty, or would be discharged or forced to resign as an officer. Enlisted personnel was subject to the decision of the board without benefit of counsel and with neither the right to present or crossexamine witnesses nor to obtain a copy of the proceedings (Bérubé, 1990, p. 143). Although the new discharge system saved some men from prison, it vastly expanded the military’s antihomosexual apparatus, creating new forms of surveillance and punishment. Gay men and women would now be regarded with suspicion and could be punished even if they were sexually abstinent. If military officials determined that they belonged to a class of people that were deemed ‘‘undesirable,’’ they would be subject to the decision of an administrative board of officers, psychiatrists and medical officers. They were not granted the benefit of counsel or the right to be present, cross-examine witnesses or obtain a copy of the proceedings—rights to which they would have been entitled had they been defendants formally charged with a criminal act (Bérubé, 1990, pp. 143 – 144; Rimmerman, 1996, pp. 5 –6). Based on these guidelines, formulating a policy on lesbian relationships in the corps proved difficult for WAC officers and their medical staff. Due to the 22 M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 pressure to fill personnel quotas and the absence of specific criteria, until 1945 most women were accepted into the Army ‘‘without even a semblance of a psychiatric exam’’, as William Menniger, the Army’s chief psychiatric consultant, complained (Menninger, 1948, p. 112). However, Oveta Culp Hobby and WAAC personnel officers began lobbying for more thorough screening procedures of applicants as early as November 1942. The adjutant general then issued a confidential letter to all commands ordering recruiters to look into ‘‘the applicants’ local reputation’’ and to consider ‘‘homosexual tendencies’’ among nine categories of ‘‘undesirable habits and traits of character’’ when interviewing applicants.30 In May 1943, responding to Hobby’s pressure, the Surgeon General appointed Major Margaret D. Craighill as his first consultant for Women’s Health and Welfare. In late September 1943, Major Craighill succeeded in convincing the War Department to order gynecological and psychiatric examinations for every applicant to the WAC and to establish standards of acceptance and disqualification specifically for women (Treadwell, 1954, p. 602). Policies aimed at identifying and rejecting lesbian applicants to the corps were gradually developed over the course of the war. This screening process of black as well as white women was based on class, education, behavior and family background. Recruiters selecting women for officer training were advised to look out for candidates with ‘‘rough or coarse’’ manners, ‘‘stocky or shapeless’’ build and ‘‘masculine’’ demeanor or ‘‘voice type’’ (Meyer, 1996, p. 156). ‘‘Emotional demonstrativeness’’ according to the WAC’s official historian Mattie Treadwell, ‘‘was an accepted trait among women, who thought nothing of kissing or embracing female friends or walking arm-in-arm with them.’’ (Treadwell, 1954, p. 625). But the authorities knew what to look out for: ‘‘There is always one who acts, walks, and pays attention to the other, the same as a devoted male’’ reported the assistant chief of the military police at Fort Oglethorpe, ‘‘for instance, a girl spills a little bit of water on her skirt, and the other is patting her knees, and so forth; lighting her cigarette, [. . .] just acting like a man.’’31 ‘‘Straightforward, scientific education’’ such as the sex hygiene courses implemented by Major Craighill was designed to instruct officers in the proper ways of handling cases of venereal disease, pregnancy and homosexuality under their command.32 Officers were advised to deal with these cases with ‘‘fairness and tolerance,’’ not because of the Army’s tolerant attitude toward women’s sexuality but because of concerns with the image of the corps. In the WAC where personnel shortages were pressing and where officials were acutely aware of the detrimental effects of ‘‘smear campaigns’’, officers were warned not to ‘‘indulge’’ in ‘‘witch hunting or speculating’’ and threatened with punishment if they did.33 WAC corporal ‘‘Johnnie’’ Phelps found: ‘‘[T]here was a tolerance for lesbianism if they needed you. [. . .] If you had specialist kind of job [to do] or if you were in a theatre of operations [. . .] were bodies were needed, they tolerated anything, just about’’ (Bérubé, 1990, p. 180).34 WAC officials believed that rumor spreading and false accusations were more serious threats to the Corps than were lesbian relationships (Craighill, 1947, p. 228; Menninger, 1948, p. 106; Treadwell, 1954, p. 625). WAC psychiatrist Captain Alice E. Rost, one of the Army’s sixteen female psychiatrists, adhered to a liberal position based on the Freudian developmental model and, accordingly, considered lesbian sexuality a ‘‘hangover from adolescence’’, caused by factors in the ‘‘home [which] does not permit such normal development’’ so that the woman ‘‘remain[s] arrested at an immature level.’’35 Her task was to assess according to the new psychosexual and administrative categories whether an individual before the Board of Inquiry had been involved in ‘‘accidental’’ homosexual relationships and thus could be rehabilitated through psychiatric treatment or whether she was a ‘‘true homosexual or addict’’ and should be discharged.36 How would these categories be determined and distinguished in the WAC? The ‘‘hierarchy of perversions’’ as Leisa Meyer has termed it, was organized along class as well as cultural and racial divisions. As the varying degrees to which fraternization policies were enforced in different theaters of the war indicate, the Army often encouraged intraracial heterosexual relationships and sometimes tolerated homosexual relationships when the alternative was thought to be interracial heterosexual relationships. For WAC officials however, intraracial lesbian relationships constituted a greater threat to the legitimacy of the corps than intraracial heterosexual involvement with servicemen (Meyer, 1996, pp. M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 162 –163). In targeting women’s sexual agency, the Army focused on masculine women, who had been visible and identifiable as sexual agents even before the war. In the civilian as well as the military world, butch/girlfriend dyadic couples, consisting of a ‘‘dyke’’, ‘‘lesbian’’ or ‘‘butch’’ courting her ‘‘lady’’, ‘‘girl’’ or ‘‘girlfriend’’ were a way especially for working class lesbians to affirm their autonomy by ‘‘creating a romantic and sexual unit within which women were not under male control [. . .], a prepolitical form of resistance’’ (Kennedy & Davis, 1993, p. 6). Lesbian slang was widespread even among women who did not have sexual relationships with other women. At the same time, there was the continuing tradition of ‘‘romantic friendships’’ and ‘‘Boston marriages’’ among middle-class and upperclass women that deemphasized visible erotic and sexual components (Rupp, 1990, p. 398). Although common psychiatric wisdom was changing, many medical specialists such as the WAC psychiatrist Major Albert Preston still adhered to the theory of gender inversion being one of the major criteria to identify lesbians.37 Cross-gender behavior, such as the desire to enter the WAC itself, and/or adoption of male dress was linked to what was called ‘‘sexual confusion’’, the rejection of femininity and heterosexuality (Meyer, 1996, pp. 153 –155). The classification of ‘‘masculine’’ women as the most threatening to contemporary standards of white, middle-class sexual morality was again based on older theoretical frameworks, namely, the degeneration theory taught by Havelock Ellis who had developed a continuum, marking female ‘‘romantic friendships’’ as the least degenerative form of homosexuality (Meyer, 1996, p. 151). ‘‘The masculine woman was the homosexual. [. . .] Butch and fem identities were significantly different during the 1940s. Butch identity was deeply felt internally, something that marked the person as different, while fem identity was rooted in socializing with and having relationships with gays. Fems did not experience themselves as basically different from heterosexual women except to the extent that they were part of gay life’’ (Kennedy & Davis, 1993, pp. 324, 326). Because the WAC regulatory system was based primarily on the attempt to protect public legitimacy of the corps and thus targeted women’s sexual agency 23 as such, the ‘‘mannish’’ lesbian, who was by definition a sexual agent, came to embody the ‘‘undesirable habits and traits of character.’’38 The association of ‘‘mannishness’’ with homosexuality in women was not only imposed upon them but also embraced and recreated by lesbian members of the WAC in order to establish and make visible their sexual identity to others in the corps. Within this framework, butch or ‘‘mannish’’ women, particularly when engaged in butch/girlfriend dyadic relationships, became the most visible and targeted victims of hostility, accusations and sanctions such as discharge while often forming the nucleus of emerging lesbian communities within the corps (Meyer, 1996, p. 151).39 Besides education, ethnic and class background, and appearance, it was also the type of sexual activity that determined whether a woman could be characterized as a victim of seduction or ‘‘an addict of such practices.’’40 While kissing and embracing could be tolerated, it was ‘‘oral practices’’ that marked the ‘‘true pervert.’’41 If no other offenses were present, the typical procedure was a ‘‘psychiatric’’ or ‘‘Section VIII’’ discharge, which eliminated the danger of adverse publicity that could have been the result of an extensive purge of lesbians at the training center. In the course of the Fort Oglethorpe investigation, witnesses were coerced into identifying other lesbians who by the time of the hearings were already stationed at other posts across the nation. Colonel Hobby followed the advice of the Board of Inquiry and directed the WAC staff directors in each service command to ‘‘quietly inquire’’ into the ‘‘present conduct’’ of the individuals a list of whose names she provided them.42 As Bérubé (1990) has argued, the procedures developed by the WAC administration for identifying and eliminating ‘‘suspected’’ lesbians during the war were used extensively after the war, when personnel needs were no longer as pressing as before. The investigation at Fort Oglethorpe in 1944 Lesbians’ agency was exercised in a wide range of responses to the Army’s investigations from denial to accusing others to self-indictment to protect their 24 M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 partner, as is apparent from the investigation at Fort Oglethorpe, 1944. In May 1944, Mrs. Josephine Churchill from Westby, Wisconsin, wrote a letter to the Judge Advocate General: I am writing to you to inform you of some of the things at Ft. Oglethorpe that are a disgrace to the U.S. Army. It is no wonder women are afraid to enlist. It is full of homosexuals and sex maniacs.43 When her daughter, 20-year-old Private Virginia Churchill was home on furlough ‘‘she received some of the most shocking letters I have ever read in my life from a woman of thirty yrs. [sic]’’ The Sergeant who wrote those letters had ‘‘ruined other girls and will continue to use her spell over other innocent girls who join up with the W.A.C., because of their patriotic spirit’’. Mrs. Churchill went on to name not only Sergeant Mildred Loos but also ‘‘many others who are practicing this terrible vice,’’ Her daughter, however, had ‘‘repented and says she will never make friends with another strange girl again.’’ The Deputy Inspector General immediately ordered an investigation. A number of letters of the two women was secured as evidence and the investigating officer’s report speaks of ‘‘professions of passionate love, of jealousy, of longings for each other and suggestive references.’’ Apart from passionate love, the letters also testify to that the women knew what to expect from the military institution: ‘‘I can’t stand Oglethorpe anymore without you. [. . .] Oh! God if you don’t come to me soon so help me, this Damn Army is going to look for Loos and when they find her, she will be in Virginia’s arms somewhere.’’44 In their testimonies, both women chose to deny ‘‘having engaged in homosexual practices’’ and downplayed their role in the relationship. ‘‘All those letters, of course, are fictitious,’’ as Private Churchill testified. Sergeant Loos testified that although she ‘‘used to let [all of] the girls go up in my room’’, Private Churchill ‘‘made it a habit of coming up to my room’’ and that she frequently found her in her bed late at night and would have to chase her out. Private Churchill ‘‘tagged around me like a little dog’’ and ‘‘acted like a sick pup’’. The letters she wrote to Churchill were ‘‘written in an attempt to discourage her’’, as her father had advised her to ‘‘give her her way and play her game’’. Private Churchill in turn testified that she liked Sergeant Loos, but that it had been the Sergeant who had made the initial pass at her. She had felt sorry for the ‘‘rather grim aspects of her life history’’ but it was Loos who approached her in her bunk with ‘‘actions that were anything but discreet.’’ On the letters she had written, she commented: ‘‘I feared this girl and very often said things to her and wrote things to her to calm her down, and I used to think if I could just make her wait, until I could get out of her reach [. . .].’’ The ‘‘kisses to Rosemary’’, according to Churchill’s testimony, referred to ‘‘things that she herself did. I had no part in them. I mean, I didn’t return those things.’’45 Captain Alice Rost, who conducted a neuropsychiatric examination and testified before the Board, found that both had indeed engaged in ‘‘a homosexual love affair’’, that ‘‘physically Sergeant Loos [was] normal’’. The psychiatrist then testified that ‘‘Sergeant Loos does not present a medical problem such as is involved when a case is presented involving women who are real perverts, those who engage in oral practices with other women; persons in the latter category being definitely abnormal. [. . .] This particular girl has high moral ideals.’’ ‘‘It is entirely possible that she will never engage in any other homosexual practice.’’46 The psychiatrist managed to draw the Board away from the language of religious sin that Mrs. Churchill used when she spoke of the ‘‘terrible vice’’ that ‘‘ruins innocent girls’’ unless they ‘‘repent.’’ Instead, Captain Rost employs military and medical discourses when she states that Loos’s ‘‘usefulness as a member of the WAC’’ could be restored by psychiatric treatment, that not only she ‘‘has been a very good soldier’’ but one with particularly ‘‘high moral ideas.’’ The report concludes accordingly: ‘‘Clearly the language and references in the letters are vulgar and obscene. However, it should be noted that under all the facts and circumstances developed by this investigation, questions are raised as to the extent to which the letters furnish evidence that in fact they engaged in homosexual practices. In part, the language used is considered to be expression of grotesque and fanciful M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 imagination. The fact [. . .] that Sergeant Loos does not have dual sex organs demonstrates that the references [. . .] are only fanciful. However, it is considered that the letters do furnish strong evidence in support of the allegation that they did engage in homosexual embraces.’’ This example illustrates the desexualization of lesbian relationships. Lesbian sexuality in the eyes of the psychiatrist was either modeled after male sexuality or not physically possible and merely a product of ‘‘fanciful imagination’’. The second example shows a different response to the charges. Although the women in both cases were victims of the military’s systemic homophobia, they exercised agency in a variety of ways and managed to negotiate a range of lesbian identities. Thirty-one years old Lieutenant Patricia Warren had been practicing law for 8 years and had been married and divorced before she became Company Commander at Fort Oglethorpe. When Corporal Ruth Kellog was made Platoon Sergeant of her Company, the two became acquainted and soon developed an intimate friendship. Kellog was at the time 36 years of age and unhappily married. She confided to her friend and commanding officers her worries about her brother, a Japanese prisoner. The two women appeared to have truly found each other and seemed to have made no attempts to hide their intimacy from others. Witnesses testified the two ‘‘always paired off at social gatherings and were constantly together’’. Occasionally, they managed to spend a few days of furlough with each other. Of the ‘‘voluminous correspondence’’ between the two women, the Board obtained two letters, both of which were ‘‘full of love impressions and denote longings’’:47 Kelly, I love you. I love you so much that I get mad at myself for not being able to find words to express what I am feeling—God, sweetheart, I never would have believed that people could feel what you and I feel for each other. Even though we live the rest of our lives together I will never be able to show you or tell you how very much you mean to me.’’48 When Corporal Kellog was told by the investigating officers of the ‘‘allegations that indicated an abnormal relationship between her and Lieutenant Warren’’ she answered, ‘‘I admit them, sir.’’49 In her 25 testimony, Kellog stated that ‘‘she and Lieut. Warren love each other and enjoy each other’s company more than that of men.’’ The night before Kellog was due to testify for the second time, she and Lieutenant Warren met in Chattanooga, TN, some 14 miles from Fort Oglethorpe. On the next morning, the officer voluntarily appeared before the Investigation Board. When asked whether she cared to make any statement regarding the charge that ‘‘she had engaged in an abnormal love affair, such as would normally be expected to occur between a man and a woman, and that she had promiscuously associated with an enlisted woman,’’ she answered: ‘‘About the only thing I want to do is take all the blame for [sic] and clear the kid.’’50 She denied none of ‘‘the implications of the language used in the two letters’’ and stated ‘‘It would be utterly impossible to deny it, sir, and as far as I know, I do not think even doctors can explain.’’51 Here Warren invoked the psychiatric discourse herself, suggesting that it was she, the commanding officer, who ‘‘seduced’’ the ‘‘kid’’. She knew that the enlisted woman’s best chance not to be dishonorably discharged was if the Board reached the conclusion that Kellog was a ‘‘first-time offender’’. Thus she concluded her appearance (and ended her career in the Army) by convincing the Board that ‘‘this was an initial experience for Cpl. Kellog.’’ Second Lieutenant Patricia L. Warren was ‘‘offered the opportunity to resign for the good of the Service.’’52 Private Virginia Churchill, Sergeant Mildred Loos and Corporal Ruth Kellog were ordered ‘‘to be hospitalized for psychiatric treatment [. . .] with a view to being either restored to duty or separated from the service, depending upon the results of such treatment.’’ The fact that the issue of fraternization that would otherwise have inevitably played a role where a Commanding Officer and a Platoon Sergeant were involved was totally absent in the inquiries of the Board, makes it clear that female sexuality carried a very different set of meanings than did male sexuality in the armed forces. Conclusion The two examples show that women’s gender and sexual identity, agency and experience in World War 26 M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 II were shaped by a complex dispositif of discourses, practices, laws, regulations and truths. Women’s sexuality was controlled by discourses of desexualization and/or hypersexualization, by fear of their sexual agency and fear of their victimization. While the WAAC leadership created an image of the ‘‘respectable’’ female soldier for white, heterosexual middleclass women, their sexuality was contained by policies premised on a double standard. This left lesbian soldiers doubly othered, as lesbianism in the Corps was the epitome of cultural anxieties over women’s entrance into the military. Because it was women’s sexual agency that was most threatening to existing gender norms, the most visibly sexual and stereotypically working class ‘‘butch’’ lesbian was targeted far more strongly than the stereotypically white middle-class lesbian who was part of a ‘‘romantic friendship’’ among women. Nevertheless, over the course of the war, women soldiers gradually but decidedly expanded their presence in the military and moved from serving as nurses and clerks to serving as aviation mechanics, weapon instructors and air traffic controllers, deploying to all arenas of the war. Entrance into the WAC provided the opportunity to explore their sexual identity and to socialize with women in a way that would hardly have been possible in civilian society during the 1940s. Regardless of whether the WAC was indeed ‘‘the quintessential lesbian institution’’ as D’Emilio (1983, p. 27) has called it, or what their actual numbers were, lesbian soldiers certainly explored new strategies, established networks and formed communities inside the military as well as in many major cities where a by now established bar culture provided some safety and support in public (D’Emilio, 1983; D’Emilio & Freedman, 1988, pp. 288 – 295; Kennedy & Davis, 1993, pp. 38 – 54). Many lesbians who had received ‘‘blue’’ discharges returned to port cities where they formed the nuclei of emerging gay communities. Lesbian and heterosexual women’s experiences in the WAC highlight the conflicting meanings of women’s sexualities and call for further research that places them in the context of the performative and discursive construction of the woman soldier during and after World War II. Over 50 years after women became part of the armed forces, the following statement uttered by a drill sergeant may illustrate the ongoing relevance of such research: ‘‘Welcome to the fleet. In the Navy’s eyes, you’re either dykes or whores—get used to it.’’53 Endnotes 1 Congressional Record, 77th Congress, 1st Sess. (March 17, 1941), 88, pt 55:2682. File: Congressional Record, Box 217, Series 55, Record Group 165, National Archives and Records Administration. 2 Foucault’s (1994, p. 299) concept of the dispositif is particularly useful in this context because it refers not only to the elements of an apparatus of power, but primarily to the complex relations between them. ‘‘Un ensemble résolument hétérogène, comportant des discours, des institutions, des aménagements architecturaux, des décisions réglementaires, des lois, des mesures administratives, des énoncés scientifiques, des propositions philosophiques, morales, philanthropiques, bref: du dit, aussi bien que du non-dit. Le dispositif lui-même, c’est le réseau qu’on peut établir entre ces éléments.’’ 3 The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was created on May 15, 1942 and replaced by the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) on July 1, 1943. 4 I use the capitalized abbreviations for the organizations while the terms ‘Waac’ and ‘Wac’ refer to members of the respective women’s corps. 5 Barrett (1999) shows how male officers of the US Navy produce an ideal masculinity through various discourses of difference and normality that serve to differentiate this ideal from other concepts of masculinity (e.g., homosexual) and femininity. Because none of these categories is static, masculinity has to be produced and maintained by drill, a ‘‘culture of tests’’, permanent surveillance and a differentiated system of awards. 6 Public Law 77-554, subsequently quoted as PL. 7 Despite providing Army status the bill proved a mixed blessing to Wacs: The corps was to exist only for the duration plus 6 months; it was limited to women aged 20 – 50 years; ranks were limited to that of colonel for the commanding officer and lieutenant colonel for all other officers; WAC officers were never to command any men unless specifically ordered to do so and black officers could not command white Wacs, although white officers were to command black enlisted women when no black officers were available (HR Report 595, 78th Congress, 1st session, 24 June 1943, sub: Establishing a WAC for Service in the Army of the United States, Report to accompany S 495, SPWA 314.7 (1-7-43)(1) sec1. 8 For the self-mobilization of women see the following documents, all of which are reprinted in Litoff and Smith (1997). Banning (1942, pp. 3 – 10), a well-known writer, urged women to contribute their share in the total war against fascism. Flynn (1941, pp. 11 – 23), who played an active role in the American Communist Party during the 1940s, emphasized that the war could not be won without women substituting male soldiers in the civil labor force, defense industries and ‘‘as trained auxiliaries to the armed forces’’. In 1941, the National Council of Negro Women, during a M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 convention of 43 national African – American women’s organizations at Howard University in Washington, DC, issued a call for a conference to discuss ‘‘ways and means of improving the social, economic, and political status of the Negro woman through her participation in the program of national defense.’’ (Sawyer, 1943, pp. 24 – 34). Likewise, the ‘‘Double V’’ campaign, adopted by the Black press in March 1942, called for victory over both totalitarianism abroad and racism at home. 9 A total of 16.34 million men and women served during WWII (U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1989, 1140). 10 US Senate, Committee on Military Affairs, Hearings on Manpower, March 25, 1943, 88 – 91, Ibid. 11 File: Clippings, Box 3, Hobby Papers, Library of Congress, q.f. Meyer, Creating G.I. Jane, 26. 12 In the 18th and 19th century, the term ‘‘camp follower’’ denoted civilian women who followed the units and rendered services such as cooking or laundry which would later be subsumed under the Army’s quartermaster corps. Implicitly, this could include sexual services. ‘‘Cross-Dressers’’ were women who donned uniforms and performed a male identity to participate in combat. The term acquired a connotation of ‘‘invertedness’’ at the beginning of the 20th century, a combination of a masculine identity with a lesbian orientation (Holm, 1982, pp. 3 – 9; Stallard, 1978). 13 Such accusations were frequently implied and sometimes raised quite explicitly. ‘‘The main need for WAACs overseas is to provide them [officers] with women’’, wrote a male corporal to a Waac friend. Letter, Corporal Badgett to Corporal Helen Stroude, August 11, 1943. NARA, RG 165, Series 55, Box 192, File: Rumors. 14 There was no factual basis for these charges (Treadwell, 1954, p. 203). They were immediately denied by the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, WAC Director Hobby, President Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt and an investigation of the origins of the rumors and of possible Axis influence was conducted by the Army’s military Intelligence Service (Ibid.). The average discharge rate for WAC personnel discharged because of pregnancy was 1.4 per thousand per month in 1943 and did not vary much over the course of the war (US Department of the Army, Administrative Services Division, AGO, cited in Treadwell, 1954, p. 775). 15 Letter from John Warren to Comdr. Neil B. Wolcott, June 11, 1943; NARA, RG 165, Series 55, Box 192, File: Rumors. 16 The actual percentage of African American Wacs varied between 3.9% and 5.9% between 1943 and 1945 (US Dept. Of the Army, AGO, Strength Accounting Branch, Strength of the Army (STM-30), 1 January 1949, cited in Treadwell, 1954, p. 777). According to the War Department policy, the strength of African American personnel was to be proportionate to the black population of the country, which was 10.6% (Moore, 1996, p. 29). Due to the discriminating assignment policies for black Wacs, the Corps never filled the authorized quotas. 17 War Department Circular 172, 2 May 44, sec. IV cited in Treadwell (1954, p. 618). 18 ‘‘Life in the WAC, the Women’s Army Corps’’, Pamphlet: A Word to Parents, Box 12, Hobby Papers, Library of Congress. 19 27 Of 18 million men examined during the war, the military rejected 4000 – 5000 for homosexuality. After the war, 9000 gay men and lesbians who had served but received ‘‘section eight’’ or ‘‘blue’’ discharges for undesirable habits or character traits, were disqualified from obtaining benefits under the G.I Bill (Bérubé, 1990, p. 33). 20 In total, of the 36,677,000 draftees who were classified 17,955,000 were examined, 6,420,000 were rejected, and 10,022,000 were inducted. The average duration of service was 33 months for enlisted personnel, 39 months for officers (U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census 1989, 1140). 21 The importance of issues of ‘‘mannishness’’ in the WAC is further underlined by the debates on the proper design of the uniform. Stereotypes linking Sapphic relations or lesbianism to masculinity in women’s anatomy, dress or comportment date back to the Romans and have been reproduced in numerous works of fiction and poetry such as Radclyffe Hall’s best-selling novel The Well of Loneliness which was published in 1928. For a discussion of cross-dressing and passing see Garber, 1992; The San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project, 1990; Robson, 1992. 22 Whether such educational lectures on homosexuality should be extended to trainees was highly controversial. The investigative team at Fort Oglethorpe outlined in a secret testimony both sides of the debate, but was inclined to support the existing regulation that prohibited ‘‘any instruction or even any reference to the subject of homosexuality.’’ (Ft. Oglethorpe testimony, pp. 225, 228). 23 WD Pamphlet No. 35-1, Sex Hygiene Course, Officers and Officer Candidates, Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, May 27, 1943, pp. 26 – 28. 24 Sullivan had broken off from traditional psychiatry and created a theory and practice of ‘‘interpersonal psychiatry’’. As coeditor of the journal Psychiatry and president of The William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation (1940), he was determined to apply the principles of psychiatry to society as a whole. Overholser had already studied psychiatric therapy for soldiers during the First World War while working in the neuropsychiatric section of the US Army Medical Corps in France. After the war, he helped enact the Briggs Law which provided for the mental evaluation of any person convicted of a serious crime and taught at Boston University and George Washington School of Medicine in Washington D.C. In 1937, Overholser was nominated by the American Psychiatric Association to be the superintendent of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, a government run institution in Washington, DC and chairman of the National Research Council’s Committee on Neuropsychiatry. Steckel was chairman of the American Psychiatric Association’s military Mobilization Committee, of which Sullivan and Overholser were members (Evans, 1996). 25 Memorandum, Chief of Staff to Commanding Generals, November 10, 1942, Su: Discipline and Courts-martial, NARA, RG 407, Decimal File 250-4. Memorandum, from. Col. John M. Weir, Executive, JAG, to The Assistant Chief of Staff, G-1, December 6, 1942, in AGO ‘‘Sodomists’’ File. 26 Memorandum, from. Col. John M. Weir, Executive, JAG, to Director of Military Personnel, Headquarters Services of Supply, December 17, 1942, in AGO ‘‘Sodomists’’ File. 28 M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 27 ‘‘Sodomists’’, Memorandum No. W615-4-43, January 10, 1943. 28 (1) Min, Conf. with Chief, Classif. and Repl. Br AGO. SPWA 337.2, incl. Tables A. B. (2) WDBPR Press Release, 5 Jul 43, cited in Treadwell, 1954, p. 231. 29 ‘‘Homosexuals’’, WD Circular No. 3, January 3, 1944. Circular Letter No. C-44-12, from BuPers. to All Ships and Stations, Su: Procedure for the Disposition of Homosexuals Among Personnel of the United States Naval Service, January 28, 1944. 30 Memoranda to Adjutant General from Director of Personnel, WAAC, su: Enrollment of Auxiliaries with Psychical Defects or Doubtful Reputation, November 19, 1942; from Chief, Appointment and Induction Branch to DWAAC, November 23, 1942; and from DWAAC to Adjutant General, Appointment and Induction Branch, December 5, 1942 NARA, RG 165, Entry 54, Box 111, Army G-1 WAC Decimal File 1942-46. 31 Investigation at Fort Oglethorpe, GA. Data WAAC Officers RG 165, Entry 55, Box 201, report, pp. 113, 115. 32 Lecture Series on Sex Hygiene for Officers and Officer Candidates, WAAC, pp. 45 – 55, NARA, RG 165, Entry 54, Box 145. Margaret Craighill was appointed by the surgeon general to oversee matters of health and welfare in the WAC. The new screening procedures agreed upon at a WAC Selection Conference held July 27 – 29, 1944 were of particular importance to Col. Hobby in the wake of the ‘‘Slander campaign’’ of 1943. 33 ‘‘Sex Hygiene Course’’, May 27, 1943 and May 1945, War Department Pamphlet No. 35-1, Lecture 5, ‘‘Homosexuality’’. 34 Although Bérubé (1990) quotes Nell (‘‘Johnnie’’) Phelps’s as sergeant, she was in fact a corporal, as a Freedom of Information Request submitted to the National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, MO by another WAC veteran reveals. Phelps memories have been included in numerous books and films, but appear to be largely fabricated (Pat Jernigan, posting To: HMINERVA@H-NET.MSU.EDU (H-NET List for Discussion of Women and the Military and Women in War), Subj: Re: Women in World War II for Teachers, Date: 11/16/99, 10:43:24 AM EST, http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~minerva/). 35 War Department, WD Pamphlet 35-2, The WAC Officer—A Guide to Successful Leadership, Washington DC, 1 February 1945, p. 51; NARA RG 165, Entry 55, Box 222, Folder 3. 36 Tab A and B, Investigation at Fort Oglethorpe, GA. Data WAAC Officers RG 165, Entry 55, Box 201. 37 Preston, Albert (1946). History of Psychiatry in the Women’s Army Corps, NARA RG 165, Entry 54, Box 143, File 700. 38 Tab A, Memo to the adjutant general, Appointment and Induction Branch, Attn: Col Sumner, from 3rd Officer Virginia Beeler Bock, executive officer, Personnel Division, WAAC, For the Director, December 5, 1942; Su: Enrollment of WAAC Auxiliaries with Doubtful Moral Standards, Dec 15, 1942, NARA RG 165, Entry 54, Box 111. 39 Other WAC veterans deny the existence of large lesbian cliques within the WAC. See Margaret Salm, posting to H-MINERVA@h-net.msu.edu, Date: 97-04-03, 14:28:31 EST, Subj: Book Publishing & the Truth. The official WAC historian Treadwell (1954, pp. 625 – 626) also states ‘‘the problem of homosexuality occurred [. . .] rarely in the WAC.’’ 40 Investigation at 3rd WAC Training Center Fort Oglethorpe, Draft of suggested letter to Commanding Officers at the stations of certain WAC personnel suspected of homosexuality RG 159, Entry 26F, Box 17A, File 333.9. June and July 1944. 41 Oglethorpe Report, p. 14. 42 Investigation at 3rd WAC Training Center Fort Oglethorpe, Draft of suggested letter to Commanding Officers at the stations of certain WAC personnel suspected of homosexuality RG 159, Entry 26F, Box 17A, File 333.9. 43 Investigation at Fort Oglethorpe, GA. Data WAAC Officers RG 165, Entry 55, Box 201. 44 Letter from Sergeant Mildred Loos to Private Virginia Churchill, 30 April 1944, Ft. Oglethorpe (Exhibit C, Incl. 2) NARA RG 159, Entry 26F, Box 17A, File 333.9. Records of the Inspector General; 3rd WAC Training Center Fort Oglethorpe, GA. 45 Ft. Oglethorpe, (Exhibit B, p. 10, L. 7 – 8). Gay male and lesbian authors of love letters faced the problem of wartime censorship and frequently used abbreviations, slang and ‘‘guarded terms that only our kind can understand’’ as one G.I advised his friend in 1943, q.f. Bérubé 1990, p. 120. 46 Exhibit B, p. 104, L.1 – 2. 47 Investigation at Fort Oglethorpe, GA. Data WAAC Officers RG 165, Entry 55, Box 201. 48 Exhibit F. 49 Exhibit B, p. 63, L.4. 50 Exhibit B, p. 318, L. 32 – 33. 51 Exhibit B, p. 318, L. 35 – 38. 52 Lieutenant Warren was offered resignation for the good of the service under provisions of paragraph 2a (1), WD Circular No. 5, 3 January 1944. This is an administrative discharge for officers in lieu of court-martial, which does not entitle the individual to veterans’ benefits and in most cases made finding civilian employment very difficult. 53 This ‘‘greeting’’ was given to a noncommissioned officer on the second day of basic training. The NCO chose not to give her name (Herbert, 1998, p. 55). References Acker, Joan (1992). Gendered institutions. Contemporary Sociology, 21, 565 – 569. Banning, Margaret Culkin (1942, 1997). Women for defense. In J. B. Litoff, & D. C. Smith (Eds.), American women in a world at war: Contemporary accounts from World War II ( pp. 3 – 10). Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources. Barrett, Frank (1999). Die Konstruktion hegemonialer Männlichkeit in Organisationen: Das Beispiel der US-Marine. In Christine Eifler, & Ruth Seifert (Eds.), Soziale Konstruktionen: Militär und Geschlechterverhältnis ( pp. 71 – 93). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Bérubé, Allan (1990). Coming out under fire: The history of gay men and women in World War Two. New York: Free Press. Browne, F. W. Stella (1923). Studies in feminine inversion. Journal of Sexology and Psychoanalysis, 1, 51 – 58. M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 Butler, Judith (1997). The psychic life of power. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Chambers, John Whiteclay (1999). The Oxford companion to American military history. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Craighill, Margaret D. (1947). Psychiatric aspects of women serving in the army. American Journal of Psychiatry, 104, 228. D’Amico, Francine (1996). Race-ing and gendering the military closet. In Craig A. Rimmerman (Ed.), Gay rights, military wrongs: Political perspectives on lesbians and gays in the military ( pp. 3 – 46). New York: Garland. D’Emilio, John (1983). Sexual politics, sexual communities: The making of a homosexual minority in the United States, 1940 – 1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. D’Emilio, John, & Freedman, Estelle B. (1988). Intimate matters: A history of sexuality in America. New York: Harper & Row. De Lauretis, Teresa (1987). Technologies of gender: Essays on theory, film and fiction. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Duberman, Martin, Vicinus, Martha, & Chauncey, George (1989). Hidden from history: Reclaiming the gay and lesbian past. New York: Meridian. Early, Charity Adams (1989). One woman’s army: A black officer remembers the WAC. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press. Eifler, Christine (1999). Nachkrieg und weibliche Verletzbarkeit. Zur Rolle von Kriegen für die Konstruktion von Geschlecht. In Christine Eifler, & Ruth Seifert (Eds.), Soziale Konstruktionen: Militär und Geschlechterverhältnis ( pp. 155 – 186). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Eifler, Christine, & Seifert, Ruth (Eds.) (1999). Soziale Konstruktionen-Militär und Geschlechterverhältnis. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Ellis, Havelock, & Symonds, John Addington (1897, 1975). Sexual inversion. New York: Arno Press. Elshtain, Jean Bethke (1987). Women and war. New York: Basic Books. Enloe, Cynthia (1999). Die Konstruktion der amerikanischen Soldatin als Staatsbürgerin erster Klasse. In C. Eifler, & R. Seifert (Eds.), Soziale Konstruktionen-Militär und Geschlechterverhältnis ( pp. 248 – 264). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Erenberg, Lewis A., & Hirsch, Susan E. (1996). The war in American culture: Society and consciousness during World War II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Evans, F. Barton (1996). Harry Stack Sullivan: Interpersonal theory and psychotherapy. London: Routledge. Feudtner, Chris (1993). Minds the dead have ravished: Shell shock, history, and the ecology of disease-systems. History of Science, 31, 377 – 420. Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley (1941, 1997). Women in the war. In J. B. Litoff, & D. C. Smith (Eds.), American women in a World at war: Contemporary accounts from World War II ( pp. 11 – 23). Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources. Foucault, Michel (1994). Le Jeu de Michel Foucault. In Michel Foucault (Ed.), Dits et Écrits 1954 – 1988, vol. 3 ( pp. 298 – 329). Paris: Galimard (1976 – 1979). Freud, Sigmund (1905, 1953). Three essays on the theory of sexuality (7th ed., Standard edition) (pp. 125 – 243). London: Hogarth. 29 Freud, Sigmund (1913, 1958). The predisposition to obsessional neurosis: A contribution to the problem of choice of neurosis. (12th ed., Standard edition). London: Hogarth. Garber, Marjorie B. (1992). Vested interests: Cross-dressing and cultural anxiety. New York: Routledge. Greenberg, David F. (1988). The construction of homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hamilton, Allan McLane (1896). The civil responsibility of sexual perverts. American Journal of Insanity, 52, 503 – 509. Herbert, Melissa S. (1998). Camouflage isn’t only for combat: Gender, sexuality, and women in the military. New York: New York University Press. Hock, Cecilia (1995). Creation of WAC image and perception of army women, 1942 – 1944. Minerva, 13(1), 40 – 62. Holm, Jeanne (1982). Women in the military: An unfinished revolution. Novato, CA: Presidio Press. Kennedy, Elizabeth Lapovsky, & Davis, Madeline D. (1993). Boots of leather, slippers of gold: The history of a lesbian community. New York: Routledge. Kerber, Linda K. (1998). No constitutional right to be ladies: Women and the obligations of citizenship. New York: Hill and Wang. Krafft-Ebing, Richard v. (1965). Psychopathia sexualis: With especial reference to the antipathic sexual instinct; a Medico-Forensic Study, trans. Franklin Klaf. New York: Bell. Leed, Eric J. (1979). No man’s land: Combat and identity in World War I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Litoff, Judy B., & Smith, David C. (Eds.) (1997). American women in a World at War: Contemporary accounts from World War II. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources. Menninger, William Claire (1948). Psychiatry in a troubled world: Yesterday’s war and today’s challenge. New York: Macmillan. Meyer, Leisa D. (1996). Creating GI Jane: Sexuality and power in the women’s army corps during World War II. New York: Columbia University Press. Mondimore, Francis Mark (1996). A natural history of homosexuality. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Moore, Brenda (1996). To serve my country, to serve my race: The story of the only African American WACs stationed overseas during World War II. New York: New York University Press. O’Donnell, John (1943). New York Daily News, Washington Times-Herald and Chicago Tribune, June 8, 1943. See also subsequent articles discussing the column: ‘‘Waac Whispers,’’ Newsweek, June 24, 1943, 34 – 35; ‘‘Waac Rumors,’’ Newsweek, June 21, 1943, 46. Peiss, Kathy, Simmons, Christina, & Padgug, Robert (1989). Passion and power: Sexuality in history. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Penn, Donna (1991). The meanings of lesbianism in Post War America. Gender & History (2), 190 – 203. Pogue, Forrest C. (1973). George C. Marshall: Organizer of victory. New York: Viking Press. Rimmerman, Craig A. (Ed.) (1996). Gay rights, military wrongs: Political perspectives on lesbians and gays in the military. New York: Garland. Robson, Rutham (1992). Lesbian (out)law: Survival under the rule of law. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand. 30 M.M. Hampf / Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 13–30 Rupp, Leila (1990). Imagine my surprise: Women’s relationships in the 20th century. In M. Duberman, M. Vicinus, & G. Chauncey (Eds.), Hidden from history: Reclaiming the gay and lesbian past ( pp. 395 – 410). New York: Meridian. Salmon, Thomas W. (1917). The care and treatment of mental diseases and war neuroses (‘‘shell shock’’) in the British Army. New York: War Work Committee of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene. Sawyer, A. (1943). The Negro Woman in National Defense, originally published as The Negro Woman Serves America in Aframerican Woman’s Journal, Summer 1943. In J. B. Litoff, & D. C. Smith (Eds.), American Women in a World at War: Contemporary Accounts From World War II (pp. 24 – 34). Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources. Shaw, Martin (1991). Post-military society: Militarism, demilitarization, and war at the end of the twentieth century. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Showalter, Elaine (1997). Hystories: Hysterical epidemics and modern media. New York: Columbia University Press. Stallard, Patricia Y. (1978). Glittering misery: Dependents of the Indian fighting army. San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press. Sullivan, Harry Stack (1940, 1945). Conceptions of Modern Psy- chiatry. The First William Alanson White Memorial Lectures. Reprinted from Psychiatry: Journal of the Biology and Pathology of Interpersonal Relations Volume Three, Number One, February 1940 and Volume Eight, Number Two, May 1945. Washington, DC: The William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation. The San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project (1990). She even chewed tobacco: A pictorial narrative of passing women in America. In Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus, George Chauncey Jr. (Eds.), Hidden from history: Reclaiming the gay and lesbian past (pp. 183 – 194). New York: Meridian. The William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation, George (1940). A minimum psychiatric inspection of registrants. Psychiatry, 3, 625 – 627. Treadwell, Mattie E. (1954). The Women’s Army Corps. Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, Dept. of the Army. U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census (1989). Historical statistics of the United States: Colonial times to 1970. White Plains, NY: Kraus International Publications. Yuval-Davis, Nira (1999). Militär, Krieg und Geschlechterverhältnisse. In C. Eifler, & R. Seifert (Eds.), Soziale Konstruktionen: Militär und Geschlechterverhältnis ( pp. 18 – 43). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot.
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LGBTQ during World War 2
Life for the LGBTQ community greatly changed in Europe since the early 1920s
and1930s. By the start of the 1920s, to the 1930s, a city such as Berlin was home to an
approximate 85,000 lesbians, about 100 LGBT clubs and taverns, a blossoming gay-media
display, and, where authors and artists intermingled with cross-dressing call girls who apparently
inspired their works, such as the movie director Billy Wilder. The Magnus Hirschfeld’s
revolutionary Institute for Sexual Science had even overtly appealed for the legalization of
homosexuality and assisted transgender men to submit applications to the government agencies
to live lawfully under. Audiences, both gay and straight, waited in line up at Eldorado, a Jewishowned club where drag queens and trans women always performed, with visitors paying for
dances, patrons watching the bisexual, ever drug-addled Anita Berber star in naked performances
Upon the rise of Adolf Hitler to power Germany which precedented the world war, gay
men and, to a slighter degree, lesbians, were among of the several fa...


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