Chapter 2: Reading Genital Love: Scientific Heterosexism and Same-Sex Eroticism
And he who entertains and realizes the dream of achieving peace in equilibrium, of overcoming the pain of living and of insoluble tragic dilemmas, also reveals himself to be the master of duels in which no violence breaks out, because one of the terms has been removed. 1
-- Luce Irigaray
The medically constructed category "homosexual" was increasingly used to police, pathologize, and disrupt same-sex desire in early twentieth-century America. Previously homosexuality was seen in terms of vice and moral weakness; physicians and sexologists were seeking to change that view. Many, who believed homosexuality was a criminal act, subscribed to the idea that same-sex eroticism was an immoral choice that deserved punishment. Yet, voices in the medical community challenged the criminality of homosexual acts and wanted to intervene for the "social good" on their own terms. Within the medical discourse of toleration that emerged was a proliferation of theories of cause, etiology, and cure for homosexuality. The "homosexual" emerged in the late nineteenth century as a specified individual that could be located by the medical gaze. Doctors sought to transfer the management of sexual deviance, which was under the jurisdiction of the state, to the medical profession through advocating the decriminalization of homosexuality. Leaving the juridical sphere, homosexuality gradually became a disease to be treated or possibly eliminated by the medical profession.2
Even though American doctors began their inquiry into "sexual perversion" in the late nineteenth century, the acceptance of the medical model of homosexuality by the wider culture took time and was not without dispute.3 The medical discourse penetrated middle-class and upper-class culture first in the early twentieth century. Only later on did sexology significantly penetrate the structures of working class sexuality. Although some involved in same-sex relationships saw their lives in terms of pathological taxonomies, many did not. Others choose not to define their sexual experiences at all, they simply "did it".4 Sexological discourse was also drawn upon as a means of self-identification for those who had same-sex desires. This identification participated in the growth of the homosexual community.5 The growing pathologization of same-sex desire still functioned to suppress sexual deviance in order to promote marital sexuality.
The normativisation of sexuality relied on the construction of a distinct boundary between heterosexuality and "perversion". The term "perversion" encompassed a continuum of non-heterosexual forms of eroticism that were considered culturally deviant. Homosexuality, sadism, bestiality, masochism, and autoeroticism emerged as distinct medical entities that were all linked within the category of "perversion". Richard von Krafft-Ebing, one of the earliest sexologists, started a tradition of separately demarcating the multiplicity of deviant sexual acts while grouping them together as "morbid," as "perverse".6 The linkage of sexual acts in the polymorphous category of perversion was continued by Havelock Ellis and Robert Dickinson.
Among the perversions, homosexuality was the most discussed and investigated by the sexologists. Homosexuality was used by medical experts and later mass culture to delineate the boundaries of this norm. Homosexuals came to represent what heterosexuality was not. In this way, homosexuality defined heterosexuality.7 Robert Dickinson's research into the nature of same-sex desire had a similar effect. By investigating "abnormal sex," he could understand the limits of "normal" sexuality. Dickinson wanted to produce his own nosography of perversion. "Autoerotics" and "homosexuals" existed in his texts to warn doctors of the "damaging" effects of perversion. Dickinson wanted to convince other physicians that not only was non-heterosexual sex pathological in and of itself, but that it could also lead to further health problems.8
By understanding what was abnormal, Dickinson was finding ways to correct or prevent such perversions. Dickinson could then apply this knowledge to promoting sexual pleasure and fidelity between a man and a woman in marital union. Those who enjoyed same-sex eroticism were important for Dickinson's investigations only in so far as they could lead to new medical ways of eliminating sexual deviance. They were studied so that in the future such forms of desire could be removed from American society. A multiplicity of sexual behaviors were talked about in Dickinson's works, but inevitably only to ensure that marital sexuality would become the single most important form of sexual expression.9
Dickinson employed this new medical categorization of "perverted" individuals and sought to bring them under American medical surveillance. In the spirit of sexological research of Ellis and Krafft-Ebing, he started to explore the lives of "homosexuals" and began publishing on the topic in the 1920s. His foremost analytical tool was the case study. The case study had been used by the sexologists that came before Dickinson. In such studies the patient was given a voice, but only in terms of the observer's near absolute diagnostic authority. Dickinson drew on case material of his own gynecological practice and that which was obtained from other members of his Committee on Maternal Health and later by another group he formed the Committee for the Study of Sex Variants.10 All of these case studies were interpreted according to a medical paradigm based on scientific heterosexism. Homosexuality was never legitimated in his work; heterosexuality was always promoted.
The subject of same-sex desire was a politically charged one within the medical community during this period. Medical and sexological discussions of what constituted homosexuality denigrated same-sex desire in favor of an idealized vision of heterosexual monogamy. Homosexuality was constructed as a disease, but its cause was disputed by the sexological experts of the time. Debate oscillated around whether homosexuality was a product of heredity or whether it was an acquired through social development. The latter theory of causality dealt with issues of pathology in familial relations bringing about "maladjustment" in children or with seduction. The former theory of cause was constructed as a physical sign of degeneracy by many medical experts.11
The foremost authority on sexuality in the early twentieth-century medical discussions was Havelock Ellis. His ideas were influential on both sides of the Atlantic. American medical professionals drew on his work when they confronted "sexual pathology". Without Ellis' studies of sexuality, Dickinson's investigations would not have been possible. Ellis codified scientific heterosexism by turning his own interpretation of case studies into the basis for a wide-ranging sexological theory. Infused with eugenic fervor, Ellis wanted to scientifically manage desire to produce what he believed would be a stronger race and a (hetero)sexual utopia. He believed above all that the "marriage relationship is [sexuality's] most important social manifestation."12 The case studies presented in his multi-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex stood testament to this view.13
Ellis' use of first-third person split narration style in his case studies allowed him the scientific license to analyze the statements of his study subjects in a fashion that would support his theory. Selected statements of the subject were surrounded by Ellis' authoritative analytical text written in the third person. The subject's first person speech was usually limited and removed from its context. This narrative style limited the possibilities of a dialogue between the research subject and the sexologist in the text. The reader could not make judgments about the subject themselves. The analysis was always already mediated by Ellis. The weight of textual authority was firmly rested on Ellis, not the study subject. The first person speech in the case studies served only to illustrate a point or as an anecdotal evidence. What the subjects actually experienced is nearly impossible to discern.14
The science of Ellis' sexology was rooted in a theory of libidinal economy. Sex was the result of the vascular congestion and decongestion that he saw accompanying sexual excitation and ending in orgasmic release. He labeled the process of congestion, the physical accumulation of desire, as tumescence. The release of desire in orgasm was labeled detumescence. Ellis employed these two concepts to understand the basis of all sexual arousal and release. It was not only this hydraulic metaphor that permeated his sexological theory; he also drew upon the dialectics of bourgeois production. Varying degrees of sexual capital led to different sexual practices; perversity was simply an improper balance deviating by degree from commonplace sexual behavior.15
Only overshadowed by Sigmund Freud, Ellis was one of the foremost sexological authorities on the subject of different-sex desire as well as same-sex desire in the English speaking world. For Ellis, the difference between the two "sexualities" was based on the inborn differential operations of tumescence and detumescence.16 As with much of his other sexological ideas, this position on homosexuality was linked with eugenic notions of heredity. He did not see homosexuals as a result of racial degeneration as had Richard von Krafft-Ebing.17 In fact, he tended to see them as biological anomalies which should be accepted by society but same-sex desire was still seen as a product of heredity.18 Regardless of this tolerant treatment of homosexuality, Ellis believed it was primarily an inborn misdirection of sexual aim. Heterosexuality was the basis by which all other forms of sexual pleasure were to be judged.19
Ellis introduced his own term for same-sex love, "sexual inversion." He located the cause of people loving someone of the same-sex as a function of gender inversion. Ellis saw it as a form of psychic hermaphroditism that was usually fixed at birth. A feminine desire was inside the homosexual male; masculine desire existed in the homosexual woman. Ellis argued that sexual inversion was beyond the "invert's" control and therefore he or she should receive social acceptance. Ellis constructed a medical apology for same-sex desire but did not take many steps to show that it was a legitimate alternative to heterosexuality.20
On the subject of female sexual inversion, Ellis believed that abstinence should be the primary treatment goal. He connected nervous disorders such as exhaustion, hysteria, and epilepsy with female same-sex desire; all were tied to an imbalance in libidinal economy.21 Ellis may have distanced himself from pathologizing homosexuality in and of itself, but he associated other pathological states with it. In this instance, he was connecting images of female hysteria with sex between women. For a successful medical treatment to be accomplished, both the sexuality and the "neurosis" of the patient needed to be discontinued. Abstinence or psychiatric intervention apparently would accomplish similar goals in Ellis' formulation of the etiology of female homosexuality; they could return the patient to a state of "health."22
In 1895, Ellis suggested in an American medical journal that women with homosexual desires should not be encouraged to marry men because of the disastrous results to themselves, their future husbands, and her necessarily neurotic offspring.23 He advised the medical reader that for such a woman, "the normal instinct is just as unnatural and vicious as homosexuality is to the normal man or woman; so that in a truly congenital case "cure" may simply mean perversion, involving the general demoralization that usually accompanies perversion."24
Although Ellis has long been known for his tolerance of homosexuality, it was only within certain bounds.25 Homosexuality, as shown in the above statement, was still defined for him as abnormal and as an example of perversion. Furthermore, it was clear to Ellis that those men or women who experienced a same-sex desire, which could not be demonstrated as congenital, should not receive the same amount of tolerance. Blame could apparently be made in these instances. How Ellis made the distinction between acquired and congenital homosexual was not demonstratively clear in his work, but it was inferred that such acquired sexual inverts could be "cured."26
For congenital female homosexuals, Ellis recommended abstinence because it would be quite difficult to normalize them to a heterosexual lifestyle. Apparently, abstinence would restore the balance in these women's sexual economies and therefore remove their neurotic symptoms. Ellis' final analysis was that "inversion will not thus be removed but it may be rendered comparatively harmless, both to the patient herself and to those who surround her."27 His remedy was the suppression of female sexuality to avoid the harm that her deviance would presumably cause. In this formulation, feminine same-sex desire was apparently dangerous and needed to be controlled by a physician for "her own good."28
Greatly indebted to Ellis' pioneering work, Dickinson undertook his own studies into the nature of homosexuality. Dickinson drew upon much of Ellis' sexological theory, but often made a conservative interpretation of it. He was more interested in deciphering pathology, than in promoting tolerance of those who were sexually marginalized. The sexological texts Dickinson produced followed a similar organizational structure to that of Ellis' own works; like Ellis, Dickinson used the case study split first/third person narrative style. Yet, he extended the scope of the case study to include items that Ellis was unable to include. Ellis did not have the same access to women's bodies that Dickinson had; Ellis was not a gynecologist. Using his gynecological expertise, Dickinson studied the anatomy and physiology of his research subjects and integrated that information into his case studies.29
Ellis believed Dickinson's work was an important extension of sexology. The combination of sexology with gynecology made Dickinson's work stand out in Ellis' mind. Ellis commented on Dickinson's work in 1931 in the Committee for Maternal Health's first major sexological study, A Thousand Marriages: A Medical Study of Sex Adjustment.
Sex is first of all a physical fact, and the relationship of sex is primarily and fundamentally a physical relationship. The report of a gynecologist... becomes, therefore, essential if we are to have an all-around picture of the sexual situation to-day. It is here that Dr. Dickinson comes before us.30
This link between soma and sexuality in Ellis' work was furthered by Dickinson. Dickinson combined a medical examination of the patient with an interview. They both felt this new approach would extend sexological knowledge. Ellis went on to point out that Dickinson was not as narrowly focused as previous gynecologists investigating these matters. Dickinson avoided being overly reductionistic, in Ellis' view, unlike other gynecologists who had "less broadly envisaged the woman's whole sexual relationship in life as a member of a civilized community."31 Dickinson was aware of social and psychological forces which could effect female sexuality. He tried to take them into account when exploring the sexual aspects of a patient's or research subject's life.
-- Luce Irigaray
The medically constructed category "homosexual" was increasingly used to police, pathologize, and disrupt same-sex desire in early twentieth-century America. Previously homosexuality was seen in terms of vice and moral weakness; physicians and sexologists were seeking to change that view. Many, who believed homosexuality was a criminal act, subscribed to the idea that same-sex eroticism was an immoral choice that deserved punishment. Yet, voices in the medical community challenged the criminality of homosexual acts and wanted to intervene for the "social good" on their own terms. Within the medical discourse of toleration that emerged was a proliferation of theories of cause, etiology, and cure for homosexuality. The "homosexual" emerged in the late nineteenth century as a specified individual that could be located by the medical gaze. Doctors sought to transfer the management of sexual deviance, which was under the jurisdiction of the state, to the medical profession through advocating the decriminalization of homosexuality. Leaving the juridical sphere, homosexuality gradually became a disease to be treated or possibly eliminated by the medical profession.2
Even though American doctors began their inquiry into "sexual perversion" in the late nineteenth century, the acceptance of the medical model of homosexuality by the wider culture took time and was not without dispute.3 The medical discourse penetrated middle-class and upper-class culture first in the early twentieth century. Only later on did sexology significantly penetrate the structures of working class sexuality. Although some involved in same-sex relationships saw their lives in terms of pathological taxonomies, many did not. Others choose not to define their sexual experiences at all, they simply "did it".4 Sexological discourse was also drawn upon as a means of self-identification for those who had same-sex desires. This identification participated in the growth of the homosexual community.5 The growing pathologization of same-sex desire still functioned to suppress sexual deviance in order to promote marital sexuality.
The normativisation of sexuality relied on the construction of a distinct boundary between heterosexuality and "perversion". The term "perversion" encompassed a continuum of non-heterosexual forms of eroticism that were considered culturally deviant. Homosexuality, sadism, bestiality, masochism, and autoeroticism emerged as distinct medical entities that were all linked within the category of "perversion". Richard von Krafft-Ebing, one of the earliest sexologists, started a tradition of separately demarcating the multiplicity of deviant sexual acts while grouping them together as "morbid," as "perverse".6 The linkage of sexual acts in the polymorphous category of perversion was continued by Havelock Ellis and Robert Dickinson.
Among the perversions, homosexuality was the most discussed and investigated by the sexologists. Homosexuality was used by medical experts and later mass culture to delineate the boundaries of this norm. Homosexuals came to represent what heterosexuality was not. In this way, homosexuality defined heterosexuality.7 Robert Dickinson's research into the nature of same-sex desire had a similar effect. By investigating "abnormal sex," he could understand the limits of "normal" sexuality. Dickinson wanted to produce his own nosography of perversion. "Autoerotics" and "homosexuals" existed in his texts to warn doctors of the "damaging" effects of perversion. Dickinson wanted to convince other physicians that not only was non-heterosexual sex pathological in and of itself, but that it could also lead to further health problems.8
By understanding what was abnormal, Dickinson was finding ways to correct or prevent such perversions. Dickinson could then apply this knowledge to promoting sexual pleasure and fidelity between a man and a woman in marital union. Those who enjoyed same-sex eroticism were important for Dickinson's investigations only in so far as they could lead to new medical ways of eliminating sexual deviance. They were studied so that in the future such forms of desire could be removed from American society. A multiplicity of sexual behaviors were talked about in Dickinson's works, but inevitably only to ensure that marital sexuality would become the single most important form of sexual expression.9
Dickinson employed this new medical categorization of "perverted" individuals and sought to bring them under American medical surveillance. In the spirit of sexological research of Ellis and Krafft-Ebing, he started to explore the lives of "homosexuals" and began publishing on the topic in the 1920s. His foremost analytical tool was the case study. The case study had been used by the sexologists that came before Dickinson. In such studies the patient was given a voice, but only in terms of the observer's near absolute diagnostic authority. Dickinson drew on case material of his own gynecological practice and that which was obtained from other members of his Committee on Maternal Health and later by another group he formed the Committee for the Study of Sex Variants.10 All of these case studies were interpreted according to a medical paradigm based on scientific heterosexism. Homosexuality was never legitimated in his work; heterosexuality was always promoted.
The subject of same-sex desire was a politically charged one within the medical community during this period. Medical and sexological discussions of what constituted homosexuality denigrated same-sex desire in favor of an idealized vision of heterosexual monogamy. Homosexuality was constructed as a disease, but its cause was disputed by the sexological experts of the time. Debate oscillated around whether homosexuality was a product of heredity or whether it was an acquired through social development. The latter theory of causality dealt with issues of pathology in familial relations bringing about "maladjustment" in children or with seduction. The former theory of cause was constructed as a physical sign of degeneracy by many medical experts.11
The foremost authority on sexuality in the early twentieth-century medical discussions was Havelock Ellis. His ideas were influential on both sides of the Atlantic. American medical professionals drew on his work when they confronted "sexual pathology". Without Ellis' studies of sexuality, Dickinson's investigations would not have been possible. Ellis codified scientific heterosexism by turning his own interpretation of case studies into the basis for a wide-ranging sexological theory. Infused with eugenic fervor, Ellis wanted to scientifically manage desire to produce what he believed would be a stronger race and a (hetero)sexual utopia. He believed above all that the "marriage relationship is [sexuality's] most important social manifestation."12 The case studies presented in his multi-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex stood testament to this view.13
Ellis' use of first-third person split narration style in his case studies allowed him the scientific license to analyze the statements of his study subjects in a fashion that would support his theory. Selected statements of the subject were surrounded by Ellis' authoritative analytical text written in the third person. The subject's first person speech was usually limited and removed from its context. This narrative style limited the possibilities of a dialogue between the research subject and the sexologist in the text. The reader could not make judgments about the subject themselves. The analysis was always already mediated by Ellis. The weight of textual authority was firmly rested on Ellis, not the study subject. The first person speech in the case studies served only to illustrate a point or as an anecdotal evidence. What the subjects actually experienced is nearly impossible to discern.14
The science of Ellis' sexology was rooted in a theory of libidinal economy. Sex was the result of the vascular congestion and decongestion that he saw accompanying sexual excitation and ending in orgasmic release. He labeled the process of congestion, the physical accumulation of desire, as tumescence. The release of desire in orgasm was labeled detumescence. Ellis employed these two concepts to understand the basis of all sexual arousal and release. It was not only this hydraulic metaphor that permeated his sexological theory; he also drew upon the dialectics of bourgeois production. Varying degrees of sexual capital led to different sexual practices; perversity was simply an improper balance deviating by degree from commonplace sexual behavior.15
Only overshadowed by Sigmund Freud, Ellis was one of the foremost sexological authorities on the subject of different-sex desire as well as same-sex desire in the English speaking world. For Ellis, the difference between the two "sexualities" was based on the inborn differential operations of tumescence and detumescence.16 As with much of his other sexological ideas, this position on homosexuality was linked with eugenic notions of heredity. He did not see homosexuals as a result of racial degeneration as had Richard von Krafft-Ebing.17 In fact, he tended to see them as biological anomalies which should be accepted by society but same-sex desire was still seen as a product of heredity.18 Regardless of this tolerant treatment of homosexuality, Ellis believed it was primarily an inborn misdirection of sexual aim. Heterosexuality was the basis by which all other forms of sexual pleasure were to be judged.19
Ellis introduced his own term for same-sex love, "sexual inversion." He located the cause of people loving someone of the same-sex as a function of gender inversion. Ellis saw it as a form of psychic hermaphroditism that was usually fixed at birth. A feminine desire was inside the homosexual male; masculine desire existed in the homosexual woman. Ellis argued that sexual inversion was beyond the "invert's" control and therefore he or she should receive social acceptance. Ellis constructed a medical apology for same-sex desire but did not take many steps to show that it was a legitimate alternative to heterosexuality.20
On the subject of female sexual inversion, Ellis believed that abstinence should be the primary treatment goal. He connected nervous disorders such as exhaustion, hysteria, and epilepsy with female same-sex desire; all were tied to an imbalance in libidinal economy.21 Ellis may have distanced himself from pathologizing homosexuality in and of itself, but he associated other pathological states with it. In this instance, he was connecting images of female hysteria with sex between women. For a successful medical treatment to be accomplished, both the sexuality and the "neurosis" of the patient needed to be discontinued. Abstinence or psychiatric intervention apparently would accomplish similar goals in Ellis' formulation of the etiology of female homosexuality; they could return the patient to a state of "health."22
In 1895, Ellis suggested in an American medical journal that women with homosexual desires should not be encouraged to marry men because of the disastrous results to themselves, their future husbands, and her necessarily neurotic offspring.23 He advised the medical reader that for such a woman, "the normal instinct is just as unnatural and vicious as homosexuality is to the normal man or woman; so that in a truly congenital case "cure" may simply mean perversion, involving the general demoralization that usually accompanies perversion."24
Although Ellis has long been known for his tolerance of homosexuality, it was only within certain bounds.25 Homosexuality, as shown in the above statement, was still defined for him as abnormal and as an example of perversion. Furthermore, it was clear to Ellis that those men or women who experienced a same-sex desire, which could not be demonstrated as congenital, should not receive the same amount of tolerance. Blame could apparently be made in these instances. How Ellis made the distinction between acquired and congenital homosexual was not demonstratively clear in his work, but it was inferred that such acquired sexual inverts could be "cured."26
For congenital female homosexuals, Ellis recommended abstinence because it would be quite difficult to normalize them to a heterosexual lifestyle. Apparently, abstinence would restore the balance in these women's sexual economies and therefore remove their neurotic symptoms. Ellis' final analysis was that "inversion will not thus be removed but it may be rendered comparatively harmless, both to the patient herself and to those who surround her."27 His remedy was the suppression of female sexuality to avoid the harm that her deviance would presumably cause. In this formulation, feminine same-sex desire was apparently dangerous and needed to be controlled by a physician for "her own good."28
Greatly indebted to Ellis' pioneering work, Dickinson undertook his own studies into the nature of homosexuality. Dickinson drew upon much of Ellis' sexological theory, but often made a conservative interpretation of it. He was more interested in deciphering pathology, than in promoting tolerance of those who were sexually marginalized. The sexological texts Dickinson produced followed a similar organizational structure to that of Ellis' own works; like Ellis, Dickinson used the case study split first/third person narrative style. Yet, he extended the scope of the case study to include items that Ellis was unable to include. Ellis did not have the same access to women's bodies that Dickinson had; Ellis was not a gynecologist. Using his gynecological expertise, Dickinson studied the anatomy and physiology of his research subjects and integrated that information into his case studies.29
Ellis believed Dickinson's work was an important extension of sexology. The combination of sexology with gynecology made Dickinson's work stand out in Ellis' mind. Ellis commented on Dickinson's work in 1931 in the Committee for Maternal Health's first major sexological study, A Thousand Marriages: A Medical Study of Sex Adjustment.
Sex is first of all a physical fact, and the relationship of sex is primarily and fundamentally a physical relationship. The report of a gynecologist... becomes, therefore, essential if we are to have an all-around picture of the sexual situation to-day. It is here that Dr. Dickinson comes before us.30
This link between soma and sexuality in Ellis' work was furthered by Dickinson. Dickinson combined a medical examination of the patient with an interview. They both felt this new approach would extend sexological knowledge. Ellis went on to point out that Dickinson was not as narrowly focused as previous gynecologists investigating these matters. Dickinson avoided being overly reductionistic, in Ellis' view, unlike other gynecologists who had "less broadly envisaged the woman's whole sexual relationship in life as a member of a civilized community."31 Dickinson was aware of social and psychological forces which could effect female sexuality. He tried to take them into account when exploring the sexual aspects of a patient's or research subject's life.
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