On the Science of Changing Sex

In the very late 1970s, I knew a couple of siblings who like me were in their college years and were very supportive of LGBT people. They shared a family secret with me, showing me a family photo album and telling me about their “Aunt Bob & Uncle Jane”. There was a photo of an obviously swishy gay man draped on a couch and a butch lesbian standing closer to the camera, holding a purse by its shoulder strap in her fist, away from her body, as though holding a dead animal by its tail, not wishing it to touch her body. Another photo was of their foster/adopted son, then about ten years old.

Their history is very much an indictment of mid-20th Century homophobia. Bob, their maternal uncle, had been arrested and charged as a younger man with receiving and possessing homosexual pornography in the mail. Today, no one would have batted an eye, as it was soft core. But in the 1960s, things were very different in the United States. This would have ruined his career as he was an elementary school teacher. His family literally bribed the prosecutor to drop the charges and expunge the records. But the rumors were likely to remain and that would be enough. So, like many gay people in those days, he entered a “Lavender Marriage” with a butch lesbian, who was also a school teacher. This served to allow both to pretend to be a heterosexual couple. Later, they adopted a boy from the foster care system.

Their story brought to mind a “case study” in one of my mother’s college text books on psychology that I had read. Starting at the age of 13, I began reading my parents university textbooks, cover to cover. My mother’s psychology texts were my first and favorite. I wish I could recall the name of the textbook with the case study, so that I could properly cite it here, today, but a bit over five decades have passed since then.

The case study dealt with the story of a young woman taking a new job working in a business office. The author(s) tell how the girlfriends of her male co-workers were jealous of her until actually meeting her, upon which all their concerns evaporated. The story then goes into greater detail about how “mannish” she was, how none of the men found her attractive. The case study concludes with the author(s) expert opinion that this young woman would never be happy romantically until she met and married a man who was as “effeminate” as she was masculine, making the explicit pronunciation that gender complimentary attraction was available and necessary, but only if it was between a man and a woman.

To this day, looking back, I still don’t know if the authors were that clueless and naïve, perhaps having seen examples of lavender marriages. Or if perhaps, they were quite aware and trying to give hints to any potential homosexual readers of their textbook what they needed to do to succeed in a homophobic society. Or the third option, that they were both aware and homophobic, insisting that homosexuals live a lie, to live as close as possible to a heteronormative lifestyle trying to “cure” their “maladjusted” sexuality.

This textbook, likely written in the late 1940s or early ’50s, was what my mother had studied and informed her view of homosexuality and what they should do. Thus, it was no wonder that she should be so homophobic and hateful to me as I grew up as that “effeminate” person that was only good for marrying that “mannish” woman.

With the way political winds are blowing lately… I have to wonder if stories like that above will be with us again?

Further Reading:

Psychology: Science vs. Pseudoscience

Who Gets To Decide?