Studying the Intersection of Queer History and Feminism
As we exit Pride Month, let’s take the time to look back on queer history and reflect on what it truly means and how it has impacted us today. Pride isn’t just about one month of acceptance; it’s a constant, ongoing process of understanding queer identity and history, with one of the better-documented aspects of queer history being World War II.
The Second World War, which took place from 1939–1945, uniquely allowed the LGBTQ+ community to begin to develop and gain prominence for the first time in United States history. WWII not only inducted the largest number of people into the military to date, but was also the first time the U.S. government chose to focus on homosexuality in the military, bringing attention to a previously ignored aspect of society. These characteristics made WWII unique in its treatment of LGBTQ+ soldiers in the military, not only impacting gay people in the short term but setting the stage for both long-term positive and negative impacts. WWII was ultimately a catalyst for the development of an LGBTQ+ culture and community, but the differences in how men and women were treated due to societal pressures created long-term splits in the LGBTQ+ community.
WWII uniquely incited the LGBTQ+ movement by bringing millions of gay men and women into close quarters at a time when they had more visibility, creating a sense of community as they struggled against oppressive government regulations. Before WWII, gay men and women were able to find small, private social circles and gay clubs to attend, but the clubs were often disreputable or illegal, attracting only a small minority of the LGBTQ+ population. The war shifted the U.S. landscape dramatically by putting LGBTQ+ people from across the U.S. in close contact with one another. Furthermore, the military draft meant that the army was not composed of a small number of soldiers from similar backgrounds but instead of millions of soldiers from all walks of life — different cities, levels of education, towns, families, sexualities, and more. As such, the Second World War singlehandedly helped loosen the constraints that locked so many gay people in silence, isolation, and self-contempt by bringing together and empowering millions of gay and lesbian soldiers. Veterans returned from the war having undergone an internal sexual revolution and emerged with a stronger identity as a gay person. They learned that they were not alone and that they had a place in the U.S. It was ultimately the sheer enormity of the draft and the negative attention the military bestowed upon homosexuality that allowed for LGBTQ+ soldiers to form a community for the first time.
However, the communities for gay men and women developed differently because the strict structure of the military enhanced gender stereotypes, dividing gay men and lesbians in ways that still resonate today. These stereotypes can be traced back to the nineteenth century, where a fixed gender binary first emerged instead of the more fluid, relaxed one that was prominent in the U.S.As a result, men and women were set apart from each other in a more permanent fashion, impacting how they identified one another. Before the western colonization of the U.S., it was well known that many Native-American tribes had looser restrictions on the gender binary, and even after settling down, men and women were better able to get away with being gay if they kept it private. In the army during WWII, lesbians would identify others by searching for women with a mannish haircut and demeanor, and men would find others like them by searching for the men with high voices, swishing palms, and flamboyant, feminine nature. This created dichotomies such as “the lesbian butch and her girlfriend” — the manly women who would work on tanks and the delicate secretary — or “the student with a crush on her teacher” — the new recruit for the WAAC and the more experienced soldier. These boxes were uniquely created and normalized by military guidelines, since the dichotomies did not exist outside of the military until after the war. This allowed the military to fit gay men and lesbians into clean, heterosexual boxes in which one party would be the “man” and one the “woman”, regardless of the fact that both parties were of the same biological sex, and when the war ended, the stereotypes spread to the general population. This impacted how society saw the gay community, changing the military’s responses to gays and lesbians specific to their biological sex, creating fractures in the community since the differences in how they were treated created diverging experiences that they could not relate to.
In the army, drag shows were repopularized and provided a social space for gay men, but lesbians were not able to enjoy the side-effects of the shows due to societal concerns about women in the army, creating rifts within the gay community. In the U.S., drag was popular in the early 1900s, but during prohibition in the 1920s, moral crusaders banned a wide variety of other activities seen as vices including drag, because it was seen as homosexual content. During the war, though, boredom in-between fights led to American GIs (soldiers) putting together drag performances for one another, bringing the art back into popular culture. The military even sponsored these shows, hiring publicists to report positively on the shows. These drag shows opened up a social space in which gay men expanded their own secret culture, connecting gay GIs with the knowledge that they were putting on a performance laced with homosexual undertones in plain sight. On the other hand, when the female GIs attempted to put on shows for the bored, male soldiers, the shows generated controversy rather than acceptance. Officials became concerned about the impact the shows were having on men and discontinued them; women had worked too hard for acceptance in the workplace to jeopardize their standing in frivolous performances. Gay men were thus able to let loose their inner femininity if they so desired because serving in the military provided a confirmation of their masculinity, but women were unable to do the same because expressing themselves publicly in the same manner as men got them sexualized instead. As a result, lesbians were unable to create a community in the same manner as gay men because society’s double standard on acceptable expressions of homosexuality meant that in men, it was acknowledged and policed, but in women, it could only exist if it was marketable to men, an idea that still exists in the 21st century. This delegitimized the concept of a lesbian community and proved that while gay men were acting as entertainment, lesbians were being spectated simply for existing, splitting apart the LGBTQ+ community because they did not have similar experiences to relate to. As such, not only was there no theatrical outlet for lesbians like there was for gay men, but the disparity in how the military treated them created rifts in the gay community.
Because society viewed women as inferior and more delicate in comparison to men, legal prosecution against gay men was harsher for the crime of being homosexual than it was for lesbians, irreversibly putting lesbians and gay men on different paths. During the war, psychology became a more prominent science as studies on homosexuality and how to treat it gained attention. Researchers wrongly concluded that the very desires and behaviors that exemplified their identities made them sick and abnormal, and the law was changed so that it was no longer a crime to commit sodomy, but simply to be gay. The government rebranded homosexuals as sexual psychopaths who needed to be locked up and treated for the benefit of both themselves and society. If gay men in the military were convicted of homosexuality, they would face jail time, forfeiture of their army salary, and a dishonorable discharge that would go on their permanent record and be visible to domestic employers. Women, however, were simply given guidance and a discharge rather than a court-martial and imprisonment because officers were reluctant to prosecute lesbians for the same crime they viciously arrested men for. This difference in treatment was because during WWII, national survival depended on the strength and masculinity of the army, and being a gay man was seen as a sign of effeminacy, which would supposedly weaken the military because women themselves were seen as weaker in comparison to men. However, lesbians were associated with increased masculinity, making it harder for the army to devote as much attention to them when masculinity was seen as a positive attribute. Not only did lesbians have an easier time evading the military police, but women at the time were seen as model U.S. citizens in need of protection, and jailing too many female soldiers would bring into question the supposed inferiority and delicacy of women. As such, with a few notable exceptions, lesbianism in the service did not receive the same attention as male homosexuality. In this way, gender stereotypes worked in the favor of women, because regardless of the ideology that they were “inferior” to men, they were provided with more protection from legal prosecution for being homosexual than gay men. However, these differences in treatment split the LGBTQ+ community even further, because men were forced to leave the army and fend for themselves, devoid of the benefits that came from serving in the army due to being blue-carded (discharged for being homosexual), while women did not have to deal with the same withdrawals of their basic rights as soldiers. Gay men and lesbians could not relate to one another after leaving the military since they departed in drastically different manners. The sexist presumption that women were inferior to men ultimately took root even within the LGBTQ+ community, creating long-term damage.
After the war was over, men were able to use the gay community that had developed to kickstart the LGBTQ+ rights movement, while women were not afforded the same opportunities due to inequalities that developed during WWII. As the LGBTQ+ rights movement started — commenced by the Stonewall Riots of 1969 — gay men and women began using the pink triangle, the Nazi brand for homosexual men in concentration camps, as a means of galvanizing political support. However, many lesbians felt as though they weren’t included in the rallying around the pink triangle and felt overlooked or ignored by the men in the movement, choosing instead to rally around the symbol of the black triangle instead. In concentration camps, the Nazis used the black triangle to denote ‘asocials’, many of whom were said to be lesbians. While this symbol did not take off, it was indicative of a larger trend within the gay community of men ignoring or suppressing the voices of the women in the movement simply because they either consciously or unconsciously bought into the gendered stereotypes of a woman’s opinion being worth less than a man’s. Even further, there was little incentive to change their tune and pay attention to the opinions of lesbian activists because their experiences were dissimilar, a divergence created by the military’s treatment of gay men and women during WWII. As such, as the gay rights movement grew louder and more prominent in the public sphere, societal norms simultaneously worked to suppress lesbian expression and promote male expression. Even in the 21st century, the divisions in the gay community are still healing, and lesbian activists still do not receive the same recognition as male activists.
The Second World War was ultimately a catalyst for the development of an LGBTQ+ culture and community, but social pressures within the military created divisions between gay men and women, the impacts of which resonate even now. Stereotypes that boxed gay relationships into heterosexual lines, the fetishization of lesbians, and the lack of recognition for lesbian activists were but a few of the negative side effects to come out of WWII. Nevertheless, the war uniquely allowed for an LGBTQ+ community to develop thanks to the draft and the new public awareness of homosexuality, ultimately allowing for gay men and women to come together as a people, find a community, and through this community, fight for their freedom.
Many times, queer history isn’t just about gay men and women, but about how regular, everyday people dealt with horrible stereotypes, many of which were gendered. Much of 21st-century homophobia is still rooted in sexism, like the idea that men can’t wear makeup because it is feminine, and being feminine is somehow wrong. To dismantle homophobia we must start at the root cause: plain, old prejudice.
References
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Martin, James (2020) “A Different Kind of Closet: Queer Censorship in U.S. LGBTQ+ Movements since World War II,” History in the Making: Vol. 13, Article 6. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1136&context=history-in-the-making
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