Soc 301 -S2018

Small Group Readings I

AL AN P RUDY
 CHAPTER 1

3.2a Epstein 1994 Anti-Communism,

Homophobia, and Masculinity
ABSTRACT: During the late forties and through the fifties the U.S. was swept by a number of panics, of
which anti-Communism and homophobia were prominent. This article examines these fears, and the parallels be-
tween them, in an effort to locate some sources of those anxieties. The article argues that the discourses about homo-
sexuality and Communism became vehicles for the expression of concerns that lay closer to home and were more diffi-
cult to talk about – in particular, for the expression of fears about the decline of masculinity in the U.S.

During the late 1940s and the 1950s the U.S. was swept by a variety of panics, most
of which, in retrospect, seem more or less irrational. The fear of Communist subver-
sion from within and attack from without was the most prominent of these panics, the
one that was most systematically promoted by political figures and the mainstream me-
dia. But the fear of Communism was accompanied by others: fears of homosexuality,
of juvenile delinquency (and, more broadly, of teenage culture), of invaders from outer
space. The postwar period in the U.S. was an extraordinary moment in which appar-
ent confidence – in American prosperity and strength, in “The American Way of Life”
generally – appears to have been accompanied by deep anxieties. Not all these anxie-
ties were unreasonable. Fear of the bomb hung over the postwar years and undoubt-
edly helped to create receptivity to other, less rational, fears. There were elements of
reason in the anti-Communism and the homophobia that prevailed in the post-war
U.S. The Communist Party, U.S.A. was small and powerless, but the Soviet Union was
a major world power, and in 1949 it acquired the atomic bomb. During World War II
many soldiers experienced or became aware of male homosexuality; in 1948 Alfred
Kinsey published his study, Sexuality in the Human Male, with its claim that one out
of three adult American males had had at least one homosexual experience. The fact
of Soviet power and the claim of widespread homosexual experience among American
men provided grounds for fears about Communists and homosexuals. It was true that
Communists meant to challenge the prevailing social order and that homosexuality pre-
sented an alternative to the prevailing sexual order. What was irrational was the dis-
torted view of the motives of each group and the degrees of power and influence attrib-
uted to them.

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 The purpose of this article is not to evaluate all the strains in the postwar culture of
fear and anxiety, or to try to find the sources of this culture as a whole, but to look at
two of those fears: anti-Communism and homophobia. Portrayals of Communists and
homosexuals in the mainstream and popular media showed a number of parallels.
Both were described as conspiracies and the conspirators in question were described as
having some strikingly similar qualities. Both literatures also inferred that these specific
problems were aspects of a broader crisis of masculinity in the U.S. I will describe
these two literatures, especially the parallels and connections between them, in an ef-
fort to uncover the concerns that lay behind them and thus to shed some light on the
culture of the postwar period in the U.S. – and its implications for American culture
since then.
Anti-Communism and homophobia were not expressed in the same places in the
postwar period. It is easy to find expressions of anti-Communism in this period; the
mainstream magazines were full of discussions of the evils of Communism, from the
relatively high-brow (such as the New York Times Magazine) to the relatively low-brow
(such as the Readers’ Digest), and also including those in between, such as women’s
magazines, Catholic magazines, and others with large but specific audiences. I have
looked not so much for discussions of the role of Communism in international affairs
but rather what kinds of values Communism represented, what American values or
qualities it was seen as threatening.
Expressions of homophobia do not appear in the mainstream magazines in which
anti-Communism is so widely expressed because it was considered improper to men-
tion homosexuality in respectable arenas. (Except for references to homosexuality as a
medical problem; such discussions were sanitized by their scientific stance, and by these
of a technical vocabulary.) Homosexuality was barely mentioned in the respectable
press, but it was discussed often and at length in the scandal magazines of the time. In
the late forties and through the fifties there was a proliferation of high-circulation maga-
zines that traded on popular interest in the lives of public figures, movie stars, entertain-
ers, politicians, and others. Many of these magazines also ran “theme” articles that ap-
pealed to interest in the scandalous or shocking.
The scandal magazines included such titles as Confidential, Whisper, Dare, Top Se-
cret, Lowdown, Exposed. The leading scandal magazine, Confidential, had a circula-
tion of 3.8 million in the mid-fifties, making it the most widely read magazine in the

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U.S. at the time. Uncensored, Top Secret, Inside Story, and Suppressed enjoyed circula-
tions of 300,000to 500,000 (Newsweek, 1955: 50). Homosexuality was also discussed in
the psychiatric literature of the late forties and fifties, including books addressed to the
public. From a different angle, Congressional hearings of the early fifties on homosexu-
ality and Communism provide a window into beliefs about these issues.
The mainstream magazines that I quote in this paper continue to be well known.
The scandal magazines no longer exist; they were destroyed by a wave of obscenity
cases in the late fifties and early sixties. In spite of their wide circulation in the late for-
ties and fifties, they are now difficult to find since libraries regarded them as trash and
declined to collect them. Because they have nearly disappeared, a few comments about
them may be helpful. Many made huge profits, but their publishers could never count
on their continued existence to the degree that publishers of successful mainstream
magazines were able to do. Writers for the mainstream magazines often aimed to
shape public opinion. Writers for the scandal magazines had to think first about appeal-
ing to public interests (or prurience) to sell issues.
Sensationalism took priority, often over what the writer actually believed. The titles
of articles routinely consisted of purple prose; often a title would announce some lurid
scandal or dire threat, while the text of the article, especially the last paragraph or so,
would point out that this was actually unfounded rumor. The scandal magazines were
directed toward men, especially men of the working and lower middle classes. The vast
majority of ads held out the promise of self-employment : a kit that would enable one
to begin a career as a shoe salesman, a course for those who wished to become account-
ants. Letter columns, however, made it clear that women also read these magazines,
even if not in the same numbers as men.
In their attempt to assure their market, the scandal magazines appealed to pruri-
ence, voyeurism, and fear, often mingled together. Articles dealt with threats from
many quarters: homosexuals, sex perverts and criminals, Communists, spies and for-
eign agents, dishonest politicians, corrupt trade union officials, blacks, Asians. In read-
ing these magazines I was struck by the absence of anti-Semitism or of any mention of
Jews (except in the short-lived and iconoclastic On the QT, which attempted a mixture
of scandal and social criticism; it published one article criticizing racism toward blacks,
and another urging that the crimes of the Nazis against Jews not be forgotten).
The one position put forward by many scandal magazine writers that seemed unre-
lated to the aim of expanding readership was a libertarianism that appeared sincerely

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held, if limited and inconsistent. Articles having to do with sexuality routinely argued
that legal restrictions on sex were outmoded, that if their behavior were judged by exist-
ing laws, most American adults were sex criminals. This critique of legal restraints on
sexuality overlapped with a view that American culture had become fearful of and re-
pressive towards sex (or at least towards heterosexual sex) to the point of causing seri-
ous problems for both the individual and society. Articles on politics expressed a mix-
ture of cynicism and anti-authoritarianism: a suspicion of politicians, government bu-
reaucracy, the state. This libertarianism, however, did not extend to outright challenges
to the systems in question. Homosexuality and communism were treated as dangerous
threats from which the social order must be defended.
Communism: The Threat to American Individualism
Stories about Communism in the mainstream press (and in the scandal magazines
when they dealt with Communism) tended to describe the appeal of Communism in
terms of a flight from individual autonomy and responsibility. In its January 5, 1948,
issue, Life ran a story entitled “Portrait of an American Communist” that described
how an intelligent young man was lured into the Communist party and gradually lost
all independent judgment and will. “Kelly,” not his real name but the name given him
by the Party, was drawn into party circles as a high school student through the allure of
its social activities, through his desire to emulate the intellectual sophistication of young
men slightly older than himself, and through the availability of attractive young
women who, according to the article, “went to bed in the same way they carried plac-
ards – as a service to the party.” Within a few years he was being groomed to be a party
functionary and was living with a woman he had met in the party, sharing an apart-
ment with another party couple. (The article noted that when Kelly’s partner left for a
few days, on Party business, he slept with the other woman.)
Rising in the party’s hierarchy, Kelly gradually became aware of how frequently its
actions were cynical and opportunist. According to the article, the party provoked the
Republic Steel massacre of 1934 in which ten striking workers were killed by police.
Kelly was aware of the Party’s responsibility but did nothing. Meanwhile, Kelly’s sister,
Sheila, had followed him into the Party, also drawn by the round of social activities
that it held out to young people. In the early thirties, Party policy was shaped by the be-
lief that capitalism was on the verge of collapse and socialist revolution was imminent.
This led the Party to focus on constituencies that seemed most receptive to militant poli-
cies, especially the unemployed and blacks. According to Life’s account, “party girls

4
were assigned to enfold likely Negroes.” Interracial marriages were encouraged; Kelly’s
sister married a black man.
In 1935 the line of the Communist Party changed. Socialist revolution no longer
seemed immediately on the agenda. With the rise of fascism, the priority was now to
unite popular forces for the defense of democracy. This meant muting the Party’s mili-
tancy, seeking broader acceptance among non-revolutionary progressives and liberals,
and placing less emphasis on the struggles of the dispossessed, including blacks and the
unemployed. According to the tale in Life, as a result of this change in policy interra-
cial marriages were now regarded as embarrassing to the party. Sheila and her hus-
band were expelled, and, without party activities to hold their marriage together, di-
vorced within a year. Sheila’s politics and interracial marriage had estranged her from
her parents; she was now entirely isolated. In the words of the article, Sheila gave her
brown baby to its Negro grandparents to be raised.
Kelly witnessed the frequent changes in the Party line; he saw the party destroy
members who were accused of holding views that had become unacceptable, by expel-
ling them or by branding them as ideologically deviant; he had seen the Party destroy
his sister’s marriage. But Kelly had become too cynical, too power-hungry, and too
weak to leave the Party. When the U.S. declared war on Germany, Kelly was drafted.
Kelly was a good soldier; he became a corporal, a sergeant, and was selected for officer
candidate school. When questioned about his political affiliations (Counter-Intelligence
had noted “known agitator” on his file), he said that he was a liberal, a Democrat, and
had never been a member of the Communist Party. On his return home his war record
enabled him to get a good job. He could have left the party at this point. As the Life
story put it, “The stronghold of [the Party on] every bit of his time, of dictating his
every acquaintance and his every action had been broken by the Army years. For the
first time in a decade he was a free man – but he did not want to be free.” Kelly could
not face independence. Furthermore, he believed that one day capitalism would enter
crisis and power would pass to the Communist Party – and thus to him (McPartland,
1948).
There are large grains of truth in this account of what life was like in the Commu-
nist Party. There was a vitality to the Party that drew people, especially young people.
Many people made friends and found lovers and spouses through their Party activity.
The Party did change its line repeatedly and abruptly; there were instances of people
being expelled, or otherwise victimized, for holding views that had been defined as un-
acceptable. Party leaders did behave cynically at times (though not in the extreme ways

5
the article described – there is no evidence that the Party provoked the Republic Steel
massacre, for instance). The Party was one of the few places in American society in
which blacks could attain something like equality with whites and in which interracial
relationships were possible. In spite of efforts to resist racism, blacks were at times used
by the Party. Though the party stood for a humane set of values, and fostered commu-
nities based on these values, political concerns were given precedence over what was re-
garded as “merely” personal, and in the process people could be badly hurt.
What is striking about Life’s account of life in the Communist Party is that the
Party is not portrayed as a group of people trying to achieve certain goals, but as a dis-
embodied, anonymous, and nearly irresistible force, capable of luring innocent young
people, destroying their characters if not their lives, and using them in the service of its
quest for power. Many of the themes in Life’s “Portrait of an American Communist”
recurred repeatedly in the anti-Communist literature of the next decade: the Party as
an alien force with powers out of proportion to its size; the Party’s seduction of inno-
cents; sexuality as a major element in this seduction; the loss of independent will as the
outcome of contact with the Party. In the anti-Communist popular literature of the
late forties and fifties, Americans are portrayed as a nation of innocents who are half-
asleep, oblivious to the agents of the Soviet Union creeping into the country or already
sheltered within its borders. These agents are acknowledged to be few in number; but
their unquestioning allegiance to a foreign enemy, and their alertness, in contrast to the
dormancy of the American population, gives them power out of proportion to their
numbers.
An article in The American Magazine of October, 1950, by Watson B. Miller, “We
Are Nursing a Red Fifth Column,” warned:
If the day ever comes – and it may – when Russian planes bomb our cities and Russian troops invade our
shores, attacking Communist forces will have a well-entrenched Fifth Column already established in our country,
ready and probably able to transmit the results of its espionage to the enemy high command. If this happens it will
be our own fault... because we have failed to insist on laws with enough teeth in them to expel or confine known sub-
versive aliens. We have been much too lenient, with the result that these hostile aliens today are roving freely through
the nation, instructing native Red cells in the vicious arts of sabotage, propaganda, espionage, and terror, which may
result in our ultimate doom as a free nation (Miller,1950:36-37).

Miller deplored the ease with which foreigners could enter the U.S. and become
American citizens. He acknowledged that the United States had been created by immi-
grants, but he argued that this had produced a generous and trusting attitude that was

6
now making it possible for a small number of immigrants to work toward the downfall
of the nation.
Miller described the U.S. as in imminent danger from immigrants with subversive
intentions:
Do you know that over 900 citizens of 7 Iron Curtain countries have entered the U.S. during the past fiscal
year, that thousands more were already here... and that they can and many do work with our home-bred subversives
to the end of ultimately destroying us? These people are the brains.... We may as well face it. Several years ago... a
trusted associate of Joseph Stalin informed the Red dictator that it was easy to become a naturalized citizen of the
United States. Stalin, it is reported, jumped to his feet and cried, “Well, good! Let’s send 25,000 men over as soon
as we can and get them naturalized!” (Miller, 1950:36).

Such fears were not confined to sensational writings. Allan Nevins, the respected his-
torian, expressed similar concerns in an article in The New York Times Magazine in
May, 1948. He compared the radical movement of the post World War II era to that
of the period following World War I. He described the movement of the earlier period
as a genuinely domestic one, misguided but nevertheless representing the views of
some Americans. The radical movement of his own era he described as a conspiracy
of foreign agents rather than a legitimate popular movement. He wrote, “We are not
concerned with a movement: we are concerned with a militant minority, alien in alle-
giance”(Nevins, 1948:9). The present movement, he argued, though considerably
smaller than its predecessor, was nevertheless more dangerous because of its connec-
tion to a foreign power, its secrecy, its orientation towards sabotage, subversion, terror-
ism.
It was not possible to portray the Communist Party as made up exclusively of sabo-
teurs and terrorists: large numbers of Americans had come in contact with the Party in
the thirties and early forties and had met people who appeared to be ordinary human
beings. This problem was addressed by the image of the dupe, which along with the im-
age of the foreign agent, recurs through the anti-Communist popular literature of the
late forties and fifties. Dupes were idealistic and naive. Their dreamy humanitarianism
led them to support the social causes that the Party espoused. Their naiveté (which in
these accounts seemed an inevitable accompaniment of idealism) made them oblivious
to the fact that they were being cynically manipulated by Party leaders who were inter-
ested only in power. Dupes were described as intelligent; they were likely to be profes-
sionals or artists.
Even intellectuals writing anti-Communist pieces were prone to implying that peo-
ple with intellectual or creative abilities were especially liable to be manipulated by

7
Communists – and therefore, presumably, their views should be regarded with suspi-
cion. The scandal magazine Inside Story made much of the fact that the Attorney Gen-
eral had listed a number of faculty at Harvard (“the plushiest... in the ultra-snooty Ivy
League”) as members of the Communist Party, of “Red front organizations,” or known
to be sympathetic to the aims of these organizations (Rushmore, 1954). Sidney Hook,
in an article entitled “The Fellow-Traveller: a Study in Psychology,” which appeared in
The New York Times Magazine on April 17, 1949, wrote that the fellow traveller “be-
gins as a high-minded dissenter, but is led to act as a tool of the Communist move-
ment.” Fellow travellers, he continued “are sincere men and women and in their own
specialized fields possess intelligence, not infrequently of a high order.” Fellow travel-
lers’ view of the Soviet Union as progressive, of the U.S. as a greater threat to world
peace than the U.S.SR, their belief that the Communist Party is a legitimate element
of the movement for social reform, and that it is acceptable to work with Communists
open them, Hook wrote, to manipulation by the Communist Party. “Party instructions
are explicit on how to ensnare the fellow traveller” (Hook,1949:9, 20).
The image of the Communist dupe was used as a way of answering the question: if
Communism is self-evidently evil, how is it that some people support it? The explana-
tion rested on the dupe’s gullibility. But once tainted with Communism, the dupe could
not remain innocent. Deception was a pervasive theme in popular anti-Communist lit-
erature. Innocent people were drawn into the Communist Party through deception;
once ensnared, they began to deceive others. The drama of deception, seduction and
betrayal, was often portrayed as being played out on the terrain of personal relations.
In 1949 Collier’s ran a story entitled “Crack-up of an American Communist Family.”
It was described as a true story about a couple named Marian and Gus. Marian was
the daughter of Polish immigrant parents, devout Catholics. She married a handsome,
intelligent young man named Gus, whom she had met in intellectual circles. They were
married in church, but once they were married Gus was never willing to step inside
again. Marian thought this odd but did not let it bother her. There were other things
too that seemed a bit odd to her: Gus ridiculed her as “bourgeois” when she talked
about the wedding with friends, and he forbade her to introduce him as her husband;
she was to refer to him only as “comrade.” Marian did not let these things bother her
either. One day Marian, Gus, and Marian’s sister and brother-in-law went to a picnic
together which was sponsored by a progressive organization. Marian’s brother-in-law
asked Gus if he was a member of the Communist Party, and he said yes, he had been
amember for several years. This was the first Marian had heard of this. She accepted it
because he was her husband.

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 Gus’ and Marian’s marriage went through ups and downs that followed the shifts in
Party policy. Gus’ absorption in politics led her to develop a friendship with a liberal
couple who helped her when she was sick; following the militant line of the early thir-
ties, Gus told Marian that she had to choose between him and them; they separated.
With the shift to the Popular Front in 1934, Gus and Marian were reconciled; the Party
now approved of families, so they had a child. With the end of World War II, the de-
feat of fascism, and the onset of the Cold War, the Party renounced the Popular Front
and returned to a policy of class struggle. Marian asked Gus to leave the Party. He re-
fused. “Believe me,” he said, “I’d have preferred to continue the policy of collabora-
tion. But I belong to a disciplined organization. I’m a soldier.” Marian once again left
him. “These four walls,” she wrote in her diary, “are America. At least I am back in my
own country. “She did not see Gus as a devil but as “the victim of a mysterious fascina-
tion : the emotional attraction of the Party Line.”
After a visit with Gus, the child reported to Marian that her father had told her that
Wallace was better than Truman and the Soviet Union better than the United States.
Marian assured the child that the United States was better; the child was relieved. “For
the moment,” the story ended, “the crisis had passed. But as far ahead as Marian could
see there would be a struggle between herself and Gus for the child’s mind. And this is
not a conflict involving just one young girl. It confronts our whole generation.” Marian
was left a single mother, but she had kept her soul. Gus had traded his independence
for membership in an organization, and his American identity for allegiance to a for-
eign nation (Lears, 1949:13, 68-70).
The attraction of the Communist Party, according to anti-Communist writers, was
its offer of a respite from the need to make one’s own decisions. In 1953 The New York
Times Magazine published an article by Elizabeth Janeway entitled “Why They Be-
come Communists.” “For the Communist Party member,” she wrote, “individual
choice and responsibility vanish, and a closed system of thinking takes their place.
Make one decision – to accept communism as truth and truth as what party authority
says it is – and the hard duty of decision is over forever.” This, she wrote, accounted for
the allure of communism and its power of mesmerism (Janeway, 1953). It is striking
how much of the crude anti-Communist literature of this period was written by pre-
sumably sophisticated people. Janeway was a respected journalist.
The Korean War intensified the idea that Communism meant the loss of individual
will (the power of Communism rested on brain-washing) and added a racist element
(this explained the success of Communism in Asia). In 1956, Suppressed published a

9
story entitled “Lobotomy: Commies’ Secret for World Domination,” by Peter Lamb.
The story referred back to an incident two years earlier, during the Korean War, in
which 21 U.S. soldiers had refused an offer to return to the U.S. and had chosen in-
stead to remain with their Chinese captors. The Pentagon, Lamb wrote, had attributed
this to brainwashing, “a tenuous label covering communist persuasion, interrogation,
torture and re-education.” Lamb suggested that there might be a more specific cause:
lobotomies. “Perhaps,” he wrote, “lobotomies are the answer to how the Reds have be-
come so expert at wringing ‘confessions’ and ’recantations’ from thousands of victims
of their blood purges. The purpose of the operation,” he concluded, “fitted in neatly
with the communist aim for world domination-to create amore docile society” (Lamb,
1956:34-35).
The racist connotations of Korean War anti-Communism were taken a step further
in an article published by Dare, written by the magazine’s editor and publisher, E.
Burke, entitled “Have Russians Created New Monster Race? Red Scientists Strive to
Create Half-Human Monsters!” The article reported that Soviet scientists were work-
ing to crossbreed apes with humans, that one Russian scientist had been able to im-
plant sperm “from a Polish male slave” into a gorilla, and that a baby had been born.
Though it was born dead, it had the torso and limbs of a gorilla and a head and brain
much like that of a human. The article noted that:
American authorities have pointed out that an army of “ape-men” would be of
great value to Russia in military maneuvers against this country. In addition to their
super-human strength, the abnormal monsters would have a tremendous resistance to
many of our weapons. In hand-to-hand combat, bayonets would be practically useless
against them. And since theoretically they would be endowed with the human gifts of
reason and strength, the “ape-men” could be given military orders! The possibility ex-
ists that the Reds may make a Frankenstein ... Ape-men won’t be mass produced until
the Soviets control their minds.... The reports may... mean that the U.S. will one day
have to fight a war against a race of Russian “apemen”! (Burke, 1955:53).
The anti-Communist literature of the post-war years described a world in which
things are often not what they seem, in which dangers were likely to lurk immediately
beneath an apparently innocent surface reality. The scandal magazine Whisper pub-
lished an article entitled “Why Your Neighbor Might Easily Be A Spy!” (Max-
well,1957), which argued that there were virtually no obstacles to the entry of sabo-
teurs into the United States and that such persons could establish American citizenship
and take up residence in anyone’s hometown with no difficulty at all. Immigrants apply-

10
ing for citizenship, traditionally an expression of admiration for the United States, are
actually intending to destroy the country. A young man rises in the ranks of the Army,
apparently an outstanding patriot; actually he is following orders that emanate ulti-
mately from a foreign country (and one that, by the time the story is written, is under-
stood as an enemy).
A young woman gets married; her husband turns out to be a Communist. In 1953,
Dorothy Thompson (a respected journalist and author) wrote a piece in the Saturday
Evening Review, entitled “How I Was Duped By a Communist.” For several years, she
wrote, during the war, she employed a German Jewish immigrant, Herman Budis-
lawski, as a research assistant. From the beginning she found Budislawski difficult.
Thompson lived in a rural community; Budislawki showed no interest in people he met
in settings such as Grange meetings, but associated only with his own family and
friends who came for visits. Thompson tried to introduce Budislawski to American cul-
ture: she offered, for instance, to lend him her copy of the Federalist Papers. He was
not interested. Nevertheless, she took him to be a loyal supporter of the United States.
She was shocked when she was told, after the war, of his having spoken at a Wallace
convention. She took this to be evidence that he was a Communist. She was enraged at
what she regarded as his deceit, regretted having employed him, and was chagrined at
her own willingness to take him to be a good American.
Thompson’s husband, who had noticed the internationalist proclivities of Budis-
lawski and his friends, berated Thompson for being “gullible, like all Americans.”
Thompson agreed: she had learned a lesson, not to trust so easily. She wrote:
I am not grateful for this education. I long for a world once again like the world in which I grew up, where one
could take for granted that one’s fellow creatures were what they claimed to be, and in which one could safely assume
fidelity and trust among friends.... Sometimes I wonder where I would be, with this record of coddling a communist,
if I had had a Government job and had to face the Committee on UnAmerican Activities. But if I were, I would do
what I have done here: I would tell the story. For if the American Age of Innocence does not emerge into adult reali-
zations, innocence no less than malice can prove our undoing (Thompson, 1949:85).

If Communism was, as its critics claimed, not a movement but a conspiracy, it nev-
ertheless seemed to have deep roots in American society. In the view of many popular
writers any expansion of the state’s apparatus and area of activity, in particular in its
involvement in social welfare, was subversive of free enterprise and likely to lead to
Communism. John T. Flynn, in an article in The American Mercury (Flynn, 1953:3-6)
traced “Twenty-Four Steps to Communism,” beginning with the creation of a power-
ful central state and proceeding through the extension of federal influence over the

11
courts, the educational system, and the economy. Frederic Nelson, in an article in The
Saturday Evening Post, “Is America Immune to the Communist Plague?” (Nelson,
1948:15) argued that Communism had triumphed in Czechoslovakia not because the
Czechs wanted it but because their free institutions had been weakened, undermining
their will to resist. The same, Nelson argued, could happen in the U.S. The income tax,
he claimed, had weakened the investing class; the inevitable end was government con-
trol of industry. Declining investments had weakened private control over education,
resulting in growing federal control.
New Deal propaganda in the colleges was continuing to undermine support for
capitalism. Communists, he argued, hardly needed to exert themselves; liberals were do-
ing their work for them. The dangers posed by the expansion of the state meshed with
another concern frequently raised in the popular press: the eclipse of the individual by
the pressures toward conformity produced by bureaucratic organizations and mass soci-
ety. In an article entitled “The School Can’t Take the Place of the Home,” Bernard
Tiddings Bell argued that with the disappearance of the rural household economy and
with increasing numbers of women working outside the home, children were in effect
being raised by the schools (Bell, 1948:11). Another article in the same issue, “Milk
Can Be Homogenized But Not Children, “was by an elementary school teacher who
described herself as “a well-greased cog in the machinery of a public school.” Out of
necessity, she wrote, she found herself encouraging children to “conform to the mode
which I must offer as a group pattern.” She lamented the “toll of individual Bills and
Marys that our assembly-line methods take”(Trimble, 1948:5, 24). In short, everything
was attributed to Communism, fellow-travellers, or openness to them.
Homosexuality: The Threat to American Manhood
While articles in the mainstream press were warning of the Communist threat to
American society, articles in the scandal magazines described a homosexual threat to
masculinity and therefore to the family. Articles in the scandal magazines described ho-
mosexuality, in particular male homosexuality, as increasing at an alarming rate. In
1956, for instance, Dare ran an unsigned article entitled “Will ‘Fruits’ Take Over?”
The article began:
A shocking and increasingly serious problem is facing draft boards across the nation. It is the alarming increase
in homosexuality among young men. One observer unofficially put the number of homosexuals at 7% of prospective
draftees. This is more than a 100% increase over the first draft figures in 1941.... Dare believes the people should
know the truth about homosexuality in the United States today, lest we become a nation of deviates tomorrow (Dare,
1956a:28).

12
 Other articles echoed this belief. In “Ten Ways to Spot a Homosexual,” Wally
Levine, a regular contributor to Whisper, wrote: “Homosexuals are on the increase.
Where they once flourished only in byways and backrooms, they now prance minc-
ingly down the mainstreets of the nation – from Manhattan to Peoria to San Francis-
co”(Levine, 1958:25).
Lesbianism was occasionally mentioned in these articles, but it was male homosexu-
ality that received most of the attention and that was portrayed as posing a growing
threat to the social fabric. Writers in the scandal magazines occasionally drew connec-
tions between homosexuals and communists. Homosexuals, like Communists, were
likely to be intelligent and intellectually or creatively oriented; they were likely to think
of themselves as better than other people. They were likely to be found in some of the
same places (Harvard, Greenwich Village, and the State Department). Homosexuals
employed in the State Department were security risks because they lacked will and
were therefore susceptible to pressure from the Soviet Union to divulge secrets. In spite
of these lurid suggestions, scandal magazine articles on homosexuality on the whole re-
frained from misrepresentation of measurable facts: they did not claim that Commu-
nists were especially likely to be homosexual, or that any large percentage of homosexu-
als were members of the Communist Party.
The connection between the Communist and the homosexual threats, as described
by the scandal magazines, lay primarily in the view that both spread through seduc-
tion, in particular the seduction of young men, and that the victims, once drawn in,
quickly lost the will to resist. Because gays did not reproduce, it was argued, they
placed particular importance on recruitment, which meant luring susceptible young
men into their ranks. Jerome Adams, in “Are Homosexuals a Hidden Menace?” de-
scribed a young sailor, on leave in San Francisco, who was picked up by a gay man,
taken to a bar, and found himself caught in a police raid. “Such scenes are common-
place today,” Adams wrote. He described
... floating queers recruiting novices for the fraternity only to be caught up in the dragnet.... Living in a world of
their own making, today’s militant homosexuals aim to become self-sufficient.... Today’s homosexual fraternity has
become a sort of missionary society in which practicing homos literally encourage their latent brethren to join the big
club. This was exactly what happened to the sailor in San Francisco. This is what is happening to innumerable
young men everywhere in the United States. The purpose of their recruiting campaign is the belief that the more peo-
ple there are who do as they do, the better off they themselves will be. Their hangouts now are, not only places where
they themselves can congregate, but breeding grounds for more and more homosexuality. They are out to infiltrate all-
male institutions like the Army and Navy, boy’s schools, and deliberately ensnare “candidates” to join the frater-
nity.... Decoys are widespread in these places, whose “mission” is to get a borderline case into the fraternity, by seduc-

13
ing him and forcing him to join once he has been compromised. The scouts even try to initiate “normal” people into
the rites of homosexuality. While formerly homosexual practices represented a scourge confined to those who hap-
pened to be afflicted by it, today it is far more than just a perversion. It is a veritable conspiracy
(Adams,1958:34-35,49).

Though writers for the scandal magazines described homosexuality as “abnormal”

and “perverted,” they argued that it was a serious danger because heterosexuality was
not innate but must be taught – and they warned that American men were not being
taught effectively, that growing numbers of them were demonstrating homosexual pro-
clivities. The growth of homosexuality, many writers argued, was a result of American
fears of sexuality: if expressions of sexuality between men and women were discour-
aged, then some people would turn to homosexuality. The scandal magazines fre-
quently ran articles describing the extent of homosexuality in prison and deploring the
sexual segregation that brought it about. An article in Expose for Men by Kurt Ranger-
son entitled “Why Homos Hate Elvis” pointed out that Elvis Presley made people nerv-
ous because of his openly sexual appeal. Parents, Rangerson argued, were often so
afraid of sex between teenage boys and girls that they overlooked the dangers of homo-
sexuality; they might send their children to single sex schools and overlook the sexually-
charged relationships that often developed there. “Let’s face up to it,” Rangerson
wrote, “Elvis is a lot more wholesome and human than the latent and subconscious ho-
mosexuality that underlies far too many of our feelings” (Rangerson, 1957:21).
Like the popular literature on Communism, the popular literature on homosexual-
ity described a world in which dangers were everywhere and suggested that these dan-
gers often lurked beneath apparently familiar exteriors. Wally Levine’s article, “Ten
Ways to Spot a Homosexual,” carried the following subheads: “In any large crowd, at
least a third of the men have had homosexual experiences.... This article is for your pro-
tection. Read it – and be better able to judge the men you THINK you know!” The ar-
ticle argued that while it might be easy to identify one type, “the effeminate male,”
many homosexuals disguised themselves successfully. “While it’s true that some fields
sprout pansies more profusely than others,” Levine wrote:
It’s important to remember that truck drivers, cowpokes, war heroes and prizefighters also have a fair percentage
of fairy princes in their ranks.... The percentage of writers, playwrights, musicians, painters, dancers and actors who
live in the twilight zone is appalling and no doubt easily exceeds the halfway mark.... The fact that a man is mar-
ried does not in itself clear him. Many a nance is married, at least in name. And many deliberately enter wedlock to
provide a screen for their true identities.... Beware of strange men who strike up conversations in bars, trains and
other public places.... Never go home with a stranger, for a drink or any other reason, unless you’re looking for trouble
(Levine, 1956:25).

14
 The sense that anyone might turn out to be a homosexual was also expressed in the
less frequent references to lesbians. In August, 1957, in an article directed toward
women, the unnamed author of “Is Your Friend a Lesbian?” wrote, “Does your best
friend insist on kissing you whenever she sees you? Does she constantly brush up
against you, even in the most intimate places, seemingly by accident? Does she love to
brush your hair, watch you undress and buy you presents? Then beware. She may be
trying to seduce you! Lesbians take a fiendish delight in trapping innocent girls. It
doesn’t matter if she looks perfectly normal. The homosexual woman no longer dresses
like a man. She hides behind a facade of womanly allure. She only steps back into her
perverted character when she knows she has you trapped” (Dare, 1957:55).
The lurid, derogatory language that the scandal magazines used to describe homo-
sexuality implied that homosexuals were very different from “normal” people. Never-
theless author after author expressed the view that the reason homosexuality was such
a danger was that heterosexuality was not innate; sexual orientation was a result of
training. An unsigned article in Dare argued that “Love between the sexes... is not in-
stinctive. A man has to be taught, mostly through the subconscious, to love a woman
and vice versa. Homosexuality is a disease that comes from misdirected sex impulses
during a person’s early years” (Dare, 1956b: 46). An article in Whisper attributed male
homosexuality to a boy’s excessive love for his mother (Whisper,1949:32). Jerome Ad-
ams, in “Are Homosexuals a Hidden Menace?” suggested that an early homosexual ex-
perience was likely to predispose a man to homosexuality for the rest of his life. Under
the subhead “Three Million Homos,” Adams wrote:
In most cases... the “experience” occurred only once. No pattern was established. But many of those one-timers
remain intrinsically homo nevertheless, forming a vast group of millions of so-called “repressed homosexuals.” If
one out of every three American men had had at least one homosexual experience, and such experience was likely to
result in an orientation toward homosexuality that was lasting, if never again acted upon, then the homosexual
threat must come not just from “them” but from “us” (Adams, 1956:34).

Like the literature on Communism, the literature on homosexuality suggested that

the external threat mirrored a threat from within. Adams named the danger: “The sud-
den boom in male perversion and the recent flaunting of the ’affliction’ raises the ques-
tion: ’Just how” many of us boys are homos?’ (Adams, 1958:34-5). And an article in He
entitled “Do You Have the Homosexual Urge?” asked a series of questions, intended
as clues to unconscious, repressed homosexuality.
In addition to the more obvious clues (“Do you feel a sexual attraction to men or
young boys? Does the female body repel you?”) there were others that many men who

15
believed themselves to be heterosexual might have found disturbing: “Do you steadily
prefer the company of men to women? Do you lean on another man for protection
from life? Does physical violence attract you? Do you hate your mother? Does effemi-
nacy in another man enrage you?” (He, 1956:8-9). The careful reader of the scandal
magazines might have noticed that according to this article hating one’s mother sug-
gested homosexuality; elsewhere, excessive love for one’s mother demonstrated the
same thing. According to this article (and many others) attraction to physical violence
implied actual or repressed homosexuality; fear or avoidance of physical conflict sug-
gested the same thing. Remaining clear of suspicions of homosexuality evidently re-
quired walking a very narrow line.
Articles on homosexuality conveyed a sense of things being out of kilter, a sense
that expectations and reality had become radically disjointed. An unsigned article in
Dare in April, 1956, entitled “Will Fruits Take Over?” described a homosexual party
the author had attended. “The ’swish party,’ also called a ’fruit bowl,’ is but one exam-
ple of the self-emancipation of homosexuals. It is a startling event to enter unpre-
pared.... Beings that look like effeminate men turn out to be masculine women and
vice-versa. The dainty girl that offers you a drink turns out to be a man. The two mus-
cular specimens testing their hairy-armed prowess at Indian wrestling are Lesbians. On
the wall hangs a very apt, framed motto: ’Things are not what they seem to be.’ “
(Dare, 1956a: 60).
The threat posed by homosexuality was described as part of the broader threat
posed by an explosion of sex crimes and sex perversion. Many pieces in the scandal
magazines argued that sex crimes were defined too broadly: what constituted a sex
crime, they pointed out, varied from state to state, and many of these laws were seri-
ously outdated. Nils Larsen, the editor of Whisper, in an article entitled “You’re Proba-
bly a Sex Criminal,” wrote:
As astounding as it seems, you should probably be in jail right now!... For according to that eminent authority on
sex, Doctor Kinsey, at least 95 out of every 100 males are, or have been, sex criminals. The gals aren’t much better
off, although the full report has not yet come in on them.... Under our laws, practically all sexual activity except rela-
tions between husbands and wives – relations with the procreation of children as their aim – are “perversions” or
“crimes against nature.”... So many, in fact, are the acts that come under the heading of “Sex Crimes “that one law-
yer, after studying all the laws, declared he wasn’t sure but what even the sex urge itself might be illegal in this coun-
try! (Larson, 1950:8-9).

The scandal magazines’ scorn for the prudishness of the sex laws was not a call for
dropping all limitations on sexuality; it was a protest against restrictions on consensual

16
heterosexuality (as seen from a male perspective). The laws that outraged these writers
were those forbidding sex with an underage female (they pointed out that the legal age
varied widely across the country), those forbidding extra- or pre-marital sex, and those
restricting forms of sexual expression between heterosexual couples. The sexual liber-
tarianism of these authors did not extend to asking what kinds of sex women might
want (or what they might not want) if free to choose. Nor did it extend to “perversions”
such as homosexuality or fetishism, or to what these writers regarded as genuine sex
crimes, by which they meant sex that was forced on its object, or at least non-
reciprocal. The scandal magazines ‘treatment of perversion and sex crimes followed
very much the same lines as their treatment of homosexuality (in their view, a category
of perversion), and their and the mainstream magazines’ treatment of communism.
Though scandal magazine writers argued for freedom of sexual activity between
heterosexual couples, they opposed what they considered abnormal or anti-social
forms of sex and argued that homosexuals, perverts, and sex criminals were every-
where. One had to be constantly on guard because these people seemed like everyone
else. There were articles arguing that sex crimes had soared in the forties and fifties; ac-
cording to one article written in 1957, such crimes had increased more than 30 percent
since 1950 (Pose, 1957:2-3). This article, like others, linked an increase in sex crimes or
sexual perversion in general to an increase in homosexuality in particular. There were
articles giving tips on how to recognize a sex criminal. Like the articles on how to iden-
tify a Communist or a homosexual, it turned out that no man was above suspicion: a
host of traits that seemed innocent might actually indicate perversion or criminal prac-
tices. In an article directed toward women, “Ten Ways to Spot a Sex Psycho,", Wally
Levine wrote that all sex offenders exhibit one or more of a series of recognizable, if
little known, characteristics. “Study them carefully,” he wrote. “Your honor – even your
life – may depend on it.” The first potential sex criminal was “the man on cloud nine.”
Not every daydreamer, he admitted, was a sex criminal.
But there’s a type of daydreamer who does practically nothing but that. He will not
accept reality. He runs from responsibilities.... Freud says daydreaming is the result of
unsatisfied wishes. And sometimes the energy one would normally spend in getting
things – rather than just wishing for them – becomes so pent up it has to explode. The
daydreamer flips his libido – and all hell breaks loose (Levine, 1957:49).
Levine mentioned the obvious categories: the obscene phone caller, the man who
brushes against women in public places, the Peeping Tom, the man who exposes him-

17
self in public, the writer of obscene letters, the old man who molests little girls. In addi-
tion he warned his readers to watch out for “the clean ones.”
Keeping one’s self neat and clean is not only an admirable trait but fairly normal,
as well. There are some persons, however, to whom cleanliness is practically a fetish....
They are constantly washing their hands, for one thing. This type of cleanliness, ac-
cording to psychoanalysts, is usually the manifestation of an adult complex. It is a com-
mon characteristic of rapists. So if anyone of your close friends is constantly running
to the washbowl, don’t panic – but don’t be a dam fool, either (Levine, 1957:49).
It is of course true that there were Peeping Toms, obscene callers, and so forth in
the United States in the postwar years. It is possible that there was more unwelcome
sexual behavior than there had been in the past: the growth of cities and the break-
down of traditional communities may have loosened restraints on such behavior. What
is extraordinary about the discussion of perversion and sex crimes is the level of fear
expressed about it, and also the juxtaposition of two seemingly contradictory attitudes
toward the “perverts” themselves.
On the one hand they were regarded as abnormal, almost inhuman; on the other
hand they were described as looking and acting like everyone else, hard to distinguish
from the crowd. Like Communists and homosexuals, perverts and sex criminals were
alien and monstrous, and at the same time all too familiar. A friend, a neighbor, a rela-
tive might turn out to be one of these; one might even discover that one harbored one
of these creatures within oneself.
It was not only writers for scandal magazines who nursed fantasies of the threats
posed by Communists, homosexuals, and perverts. Such beliefs prevailed in more re-
spectable arenas as well – in Congress, for example. In April of 1950, Under Secretary
of State John Peurifoy reported to a Senate committee that the State Department had
fired 91homosexual employees. In March, 1952, Under Secretary of State Carlisle Hu-
melstine told the House Appropriations Committee that the State Department had
fired 119 homosexuals during the past year. Both announcements were followed by ex-
tended discussions in Congress of the threat to national security, and national welfare
generally, posed by homosexuals inside and outside the government. In both cases the
discussion was as lurid as anything I found in the scandal magazines of the time, and
in one respect went further. Scandal magazine writers refrained from drawing direct
connections between the Communist and homosexual threats. Senators and members
of the House of Representatives were less inhibited on this issue.

18
 In the Senate discussion following the first disclosure, homosexuals were repeatedly
described as subversives and security risks by Senators Mundt, Brewster, and Wherry
(U.S. Congress, 1950a: 5569-5582). The debate, in this case, revolved not around the
question of whether homosexuals should be regarded as security risks (which was as-
sumed to be the case by all participants in the discussion) but whether or not the State
Department was now free of homosexuals. On May 15 Senator Miller of Nebraska
placed in the records a speech that he had given on May 3 before the Nebraska State
Medical Association, entitled “How Safe is America?,” in which he discussed the
threats of perversion and Communism. He mentioned the 91 homosexuals who had
been employed in the State Department. He stated that the Russians look upon homo-
sexuality “with favor.” He claimed that the Nazis had kept lists of homosexuals in the
U.S. government, and that the Russians undoubtedly had similar lists. “These espio-
nage agents have found it rather easy to send their homosexuals here and contact their
kind in sensitive departments of our Government. Blackmail and many other schemes
are used to gather secret information.” He recalled that as of two years earlier, when
he was chairman of the Committee on Public Health in the District of Columbia:
There were so many sex crimes in Washington, our parks and loafing places were
no longer safe for the citizen.... Seldom a week passes but what Washington and the sur-
rounding territory has several atrocious crimes related to the sex emotions. It is only re-
cently that the press has given some attention to the open discussion of the topic. The
subject is still taboo among family newspapers (U.S. Congress, 1950b: A3661).
In May of the same year a special report on homosexuals in government was pre-
pared by a subcommittee of the Senate Subcommittee on Appropriations for the Dis-
trict of Columbia. In the course of the hearings a Lieutenant Blick testified that homo-
sexuals were security risks because they could be blackmailed. “I would say,” Blick
stated, “that anything I would want from an individual who was a pervert, I could
get.... I could get it quicker by the approach of exposing him than I could by money, by
offering him money.” A Sergeant Hunter, having affirmed under questioning that ho-
mosexuals were “bad security risks,” was asked by Senator Furguson, “Is there any tie-
in between this and [Lieutenant Blick’s testimony] that was given hereabout the degen-
erates? Is there any tie-in between them and communism ?” Hunter replied, “I would
say that a pervert is very susceptible. You find quite a few perverts attending these meet-
ings [of Communist-front organizations]” (U.S. Congress, 1950c: 3).

19
 On May 1, 1952, Representative Katherine St. George of New York read an article
entitled “Homosexual International” by R.G. Waldeck into the minutes; the article ar-
gued that homosexuals had formed an international conspiracy parallel to that of Com-
munism and had joined forced with it (U.S. Congress, 1952:A2652-2654).l Waldeck ar-
gued that the extent of the homosexual threat to security was not fully appreciated by
those who simply described them as susceptible to blackmail. The more serious prob-
lem, she claimed, was that homosexuals, “by the very nature of their vice... belong to a
sinister, mysterious, and efficient international... a world-wide conspiracy against soci-
ety. This conspiracy has spread all over the globe.”
Waldeck’s article argued that the homosexual and Communist international con-
spiracies had similar aims, that the homosexual conspiracy reinforced the Communist
conspiracy.
Members of one conspiracy are prone to join another conspiracy... many homosexuals, from being enemies of soci-
ety in general, became enemies of capitalism in particular ... they serve the ends of the Communist international in
the name of their rebellion against the prejudices, standards, ideals of the ’bourgeois’ world. Another reason for the
homosexual-Communist alliance is the instability and passion for intrigue for intrigue’s sake, which is inherent in the
homosexual personality. A third reason is the social promiscuity within the homosexual minority and the fusion it ef-
fects between upper class and proletarian corruption(U.S. Congress, 1952:A2653)

Waldeck claimed that the homosexual international was useful to the Comintern be-
cause the international homosexual network was more extensive and hidden than its
Communist parallel, and also because homosexuals were natural secret agents and trai-
tors. Homosexuality, the article argued, was based on a fantasy of playing the role of
the opposite sex; this taste for playing their own opposite led homosexuals to enjoy play-
ing the role of spy or traitor.
Waldeck’s claim that there was an international homosexual conspiracy, poised,
along with the international Communist conspiracy, to launch an attack on the U.S.,
was extreme, even for the homophobic literature of the postwar years. But the image
highlights parallels between the image of the Communist and the homosexual in this
period, and it also suggests an unspoken analogy to anti-Semitism. The portraits of the
homosexual and of the Communist that emerge from these literatures resemble tradi-
tional stereotypes of the Jew in a number of ways. Like Jews, homosexuals and Com-
munists were seen as belonging to international conspiracies; given these allegiances,
their loyalty to the U.S. was seen as questionable at best. Furthermore, like Jews, homo-
sexuals and Communists were described as likely to be well educated, intellectual, artis-
tic, often in professional positions, clannish, likely to think of themselves as better than

20
other people. Jewish men, according to the traditional stereotype, are weak, effeminate.
The same stereotype was applied to male homosexuals; Communist men, though not
necessarily physically weak, were described as morally weak, lacking the strength to run
their own lives.
The association among Communists, homosexuals and Jews suggests a culture that
was deeply fearful of anyone who did not easily fit in and that saw nonconformity or
disagreement not as diversity, or part of a dialogue, but as a threat to social stability.
On one level the Communist and the homosexual (and perhaps, by association, the
Jew) was a disturbing figure in the popular literature of the postwar years because he
(more rarely she) appeared alien. On another level these figures were frightening pre-
cisely because they were not alien. Homosexuality represented the temptation to step
outside the restrictive bounds of masculinity (for men) or femininity (for women), the
temptation to try, or even think about, some alternative to the nuclear family. In the
postwar years Communism and homosexuality were defined, in the political arena and
in popular literatures, in very broad terms. Any political position to the left of govern-
ment policy was likely to be called Communism; the term “homosexual” (or, perhaps,
“repressed homosexual”) covered not only those who maintained same-sex sexual rela-
tionships, but also anyone who had ever had a homosexual experience, had thought
about having a homosexual experience, or displayed qualities thought to be characteris-
tic of those attracted to members of their own sex. To the extent that the Communist
and the homosexual represented alternatives to or discontent with the prevailing order,
anyone could be in danger of finding that he/she was a Communist and/or a homosex-
ual.
The popular literature on homosexuality reflected concerns not only about differ-
ence or deviance in general, but more specifically about deviance from accepted norms
of masculinity. This literature was primarily focused on male homosexuality. It was
men who were described as turning to homosexuality in large numbers. These articles
bemoaned the declining numbers of “real men;” there were no analogous discussions
of women turning to lesbianism, or of the disappearance of femininity. The scandal
magazines included some articles that addressed lesbianism, and it was occasionally ac-
knowledged that there might be nearly as many lesbians as male homosexuals in the
U.S., but the articles about lesbians appeared to have been written mostly to titillate
(men, mostly)2 or to warn women against trusting other women too easily. Stories
about lesbianism did not carry the implication of the looming threat to the social fabric
that was evident in the stories about male homosexuality.

21
 Postwar Anxieties and Mass Society
The theme of the fear of freedom that was put forward by anti-Communist litera-
ture as an explanation for the appeal and influence of Communism was also a com-
mentary on masculinity, though framed in different terms. The close association be-
tween masculinity and independence, ingrained in American culture, made claims
about a faltering of individualism that automatically raised questions about masculin-
ity. The belief that individualism was being undermined by pressures toward collectiv-
ity and conformity was expressed in many arenas in the late forties and fifties: the dan-
gers posed by “mass society” was a leading theme of journalists, sociologists, and oth-
ers who wrote about social issues. According to the mass society literature, the auton-
omy of the individual (assumed to be male) was threatened by the growing power of
large organizations (from corporations to trade unions), by the spread of bureaucracy.
The decline of individual autonomy, it was claimed, created the basis for spreading con-
formity. The implication of this argument, made explicit, for instance, in William
Whyte’s The Organization Man (Whyte, 1957) was that the U.S. was becoming a collec-
tive society, that it was on a slippery slope that might end in something like Soviet com-
munism.
Concerns about the decline of the individual, the growth of the influence of large
organizations, and the undermining of masculinity came together in a book by Philip
Wylie, Generation of Vipers, especially in the chapter on women for which the book
became famous, and which introduced the term “momism” into the American vocabu-
lary (Wylie, 1955). Wylie argued that mothers had become all-powerful in the U.S.,
partly through their control of the home and partly through volunteerism, the forma-
tion and control of large organizations. Moms, Wylie argued, had made a generation
of sons emotionally dependent upon them; tied to their mothers’ apron strings, they
were not capable of growing up to be real men. Wylie did not explicitly allude to the
danger of male homosexuality, but the idea that overbearing mothers were responsible
for producing homosexual sons, or sons whose masculinity was deficient, entered popu-
lar culture and appeared frequently in the homophobic literature of the late forties and
fifties.
It was not reasonable to believe, as was suggested in the anti-Communist and homo-
phobic literatures of the postwar years, that Communists and homosexuals posed a seri-
ous threat to the prevailing social and sexual order. But the suspicion that systems that
were in place were beginning to unravel had some foundation. Women’s increasing em-
ployment outside the home was creating the basis for female independence, undermin-

22
ing traditional conceptions of both masculinity and femininity. The vastly increased
size and influence of the state and the military from World War II on, and the growth
of large corporations during and after the war, destroyed any lingering belief in the in-
dependent, self-made individual. The large population shifts of the war and postwar
years – the migration of rural blacks and others to the cities during the war, the post-
war urban migration to the suburbs – reinforced the sense that the traditional bases of
social order had become fragile. This does not explain why the anxieties that held sway
in the postwar years settled on the particular figures that it did, or why they took the
culturally and politically conservative form that they did. But it does suggest that those
anxieties were responses to real processes of social and cultural change.

23
 CHAPTER 2

3.2b Messner 2000

Barbie Girls and Sea Monsters
In the past decade, studies of children and gender have moved toward greater levels
of depth and sophistication (e.g., Jordan and Cowan 1995; McGuffy and Rich 1999;
Thorne 1993). In her groundbreaking work on children and gender, Thorne (1993) ar-
gued that previous theoretical frameworks, although helpful, were limited: The top-
down (adult-to-child) approach of socialization theories tended to ignore the extent to
which children are active agents in the creation of their worlds—often in direct or par-
tial opposition to values or “roles” to which adult teachers or parents are attempting to
socialize them. Developmental theories also had their limits due to their tendency to ig-
nore group and contextual factors while overemphasizing “the constitution and unfold-
ing of individuals as boys or girls” (Thorne 1993, 4).
In her study of grade school children, Thorne demonstrated a dynamic approach
that examined the ways in which children actively construct gender in specific social
contexts of the classroom and the playground. Working from emergent theories of per-
formativity, Thorne developed the concept of “gender play” to analyze the social proc-
esses through which children construct gender. Her level of analysis was not the individ-
ual but “group life—with social relations, the organization and meanings of social situa-
tions, the collective practices through which children and adults create and recreate
gender in their daily interactions” (Thorne 1993, 4).
A key insight from Thorne’s research is the extent to which gender varies in salience
from situation to situation. Sometimes, children engage in “relaxed, cross sex play”;
other times—for instance, on the playground during boys’ ritual invasions of girls’
spaces and games—gender boundaries between boys and girls are activated in ways
that variously threaten or (more often) reinforce and clarify these boundaries. However,
these varying moments of gender salience are not free-floating; they occur in social con-
texts such as schools and in which gender is formally and informally built into the divi-
sion of labor, power structure, rules, and values (Connell 1987).

24
 The purpose of this article is to use an observation of a highly salient gendered mo-
ment of group life among four-and five-year-old children as a point of departure for ex-
ploring the conditions under which gender boundaries become activated and enforced.
I was privy to this moment as I observed my five-year-old son’s first season (including
weekly games and practices) in organized soccer. Unlike the long-term, systematic eth-
nographic studies of children conducted by Thorne (1993) or Adler and Adler (1998),
this article takes one moment as its point of departure. I do not present this moment as
somehow “representative” of what happened throughout the season; instead, I exam-
ine this as an example of what Hochschild (1994, 4) calls “magnified moments,” which
are “episodes of heightened importance, either epiphanies, moments of intense glee or
unusual insight, or moments in which things go intensely but meaningfully wrong.
In either case, the moment stands out; it is metaphorically rich, unusually elaborate
and often echoes [later].” A magnified moment in daily life offers a window into the so-
cial construction of reality. It presents researchers with an opportunity to excavate gen-
dered meanings and processes through an analysis of institutional and cultural con-
texts. The single empirical observation that serves as the point of departure for this arti-
cle was made during a morning. Immediately after the event, I recorded my observa-
tions with detailed notes. I later slightly revised the notes after developing the photo-
graphs that I took at the event.
I will first describe the observation—an incident that occurred as a boys’ four-and
five-year-old soccer team waited next to a girls’ four-and five-year-old soccer team for
the beginning of the community’s American Youth Soccer League (AYS0) season’s
opening ceremony. I will then examine this moment using three levels of analysis.
The interactional level: How do children “do gender,” and what are the contributions and limits of theories of
performativity in understanding these interactions?
The level of structural context: How does the gender regime, particularly the larger organizational level of for-
mal sex segregation of AYSO, and the concrete, momentary situation of the opening ceremony provide a context that
variously constrains and enables the children’s interactions?
The level of cultural symbol: How does the children’s shared immersion in popular culture (and their differently
gendered locations in this immersion) provide symbolic resources for the creation, in this situation, of apparently cate-
gorical differences between the boys and the girls?

Although I will discuss these three levels of analysis separately, I hope to demon-
strate that interaction, structural context, and culture are simultaneous and mutually
intertwined processes, none of which supersedes the others.

25
 BARBIE GIRLS VERSUS SEA MONSTERS
It is a warm, sunny Saturday morning. Summer is coming to a close, and schools
will soon reopen. As in many communities, this time of year in this small, middle-and
professional-class suburb of Los Angeles is marked by the beginning of another soccer
season. This morning, 156 teams, with approximately 1,850 players ranging from 4 to
17 years old, along with another 2,000 to 3,000 parents, siblings, friends, and commu-
nity dignitaries have gathered at the local high school football and track facility for the
annual AYSO opening ceremonies. Parents and children wander around the perimeter
of the track to find the assigned station for their respective teams. The coaches muster
their teams and chat with parents. Eventually, each team will march around the track,
behind their new team banner, as they are announced over the loudspeaker system and
are applauded by the crowd. For now though, and for the next 45 minutes to an hour,
the kids, coaches, and parents must stand, mill around, talk, and kill time as they await
the beginning of the ceremony.
The Sea Monsters is a team of four-and five-year-old boys. Later this day, they will
play their first-ever soccer game. A few of the boys already know each other from pre-
school, but most are still getting acquainted. They are wearing their new uniforms for
the first time. Like other teams, they were assigned team colors—in this case, green and
blue—and asked to choose their team name at their first team meeting, which occurred
a week ago. Although they preferred “Blue Sharks,” they found that the name was al-
ready taken by another team and settled on “Sea Monsters.” A grandmother of one of
the boys created the spiffy team banner, which was awarded a prize this morning. As
they wait for the ceremony to begin, the boys inspect and then proudly pose for pic-
tures in front of their new award-winning team banner. The parents stand a few feet
away—some taking pictures, some just watching. The parents are also getting to know
each other, and the common currency of topics is just how darned cute our kids look,
and will they start these ceremonies soon before another boy has to be escorted to the
bathroom?
Queued up one group away from the Sea Monsters is a team of four-and five-year-
old girls in green and white uniforms. They too will play their first game later today,
but for now, they are awaiting the beginning of the opening ceremony. They have cho-
sen the name “Barbie Girls,” and they also have a spiffy new team banner. But the girls
are pretty much ignoring their banner, for they have created another, more powerful
symbol around which to rally. In fact, they are the only team among the 156 marching
today with a team float—a red Radio Flyer wagon base, on which sits a Sony boom

26
box playing music, and a 3-foot-plus-tall Barbie doll on a rotating pedestal. Barbie is
dressed in the team colors—indeed, she sports a custom-made green-and-white
cheerleader-style outfit, with the Barbie Girls’ names written on the skirt. Her normally
all-blonde hair has been streaked with Barbie Girl green and features a green bow, with
white polka dots. Several of the girls on the team also have supplemented their uni-
forms with green bows in their hair.
The volume on the boom box nudges up and four or five girls begin to sing a Bar-
bie song. Barbie is now slowly rotating on her pedestal, and as the girls sing more glee-
fully and more loudly, some of them begin to hold hands and walk around the float, in
sync with Barbie’s rotation. Other same-aged girls from other teams are drawn to the
celebration and, eventually, perhaps a dozen girls are singing the Barbie song. The girls
are intensely focused on Barbie, on the music, and on their mutual pleasure.
As the Sea Monsters mill around their banner, some of them begin to notice, and
then begin to watch and listen as the Barbie Girls rally around their float. At first, the
boys are watching as individuals, seemingly unaware of each other’s shared interest.
Some of them stand with arms at their sides, slack-jawed, as though passively watching
a television show. I notice slight smiles on a couple of their faces, as though they are
drawn to the Barbie Girls’ celebratory fun. Then, with side-glances, some of the boys
begin to notice each other’s attention on the Barbie Girls. Their faces begin to show
signs of distaste. One of them yells out, “NO BARBIE!” Suddenly, they all begin to
move—jumping up and down, nudging and bumping one other—and join into a
group chant: “NO BARBIE! NO BARBIE! NO BARBIE!” They now appear to be
every bit as gleeful as the girls, as they laugh, yell, and chant against the Barbie Girls.
The parents watch the whole scene with rapt attention. Smiles light up the faces of
the adults, as our glances sweep back and forth, from the sweetly celebrating Barbie
Girls to the aggressively protesting Sea Monsters. “They are SO different!” exclaims
one smiling mother approvingly. A male coach offers a more in-depth analysis: “When
I was in college,” he says, “I took these classes from professors who showed us research
that showed that boys and girls are the same. I believed it, until I had my own kids and
saw how different they are.” “Yeah,” another dad responds, “Just look at them! They
are so different!”
The girls, meanwhile, show no evidence that they hear, see, or are even aware of
the presence of the boys who are now so loudly proclaiming their opposition to the Bar-
bie Girls’ songs and totem. They continue to sing, dance, laugh, and rally around the

27
Barbie for a few more minutes, before they are called to reassemble in their groups for
the beginning of the parade.
After the parade, the teams reassemble on the infield of the track but now in a less
organized manner. The Sea Monsters once again find themselves in the general vicin-
ity of the Barbie Girls and take up the “NO BARBIE!” chant again. Perhaps put out
by the lack of response to their chant, they begin to dash, in twos and threes, invading
the girls’ space, and yelling menacingly. With this, the Barbie Girls have little choice but
to recognize the presence of the boys—some look puzzled and shrink back, some en-
gage the boys and chase them off. The chasing seems only to incite more excitement
among the boys. Finally, parents intervene and defuse the situation, leading their chil-
dren off to their cars, homes, and eventually to their soccer games.
THE PERFORMANCE OF GENDER
In the past decade, especially since the publication of Judith Butler’s highly influen-
tial Gender Trouble (1990), it has become increasingly fashionable among academic
feminists to think of gender not as some “thing” that one “has” (or not) but rather as
situationally constructed through the performances of active agents. The idea of gen-
der as performance analytically foregrounds the agency of individuals in the construc-
tion of gender, thus highlighting the situational fluidity of gender: here, conservative
and reproductive, there, transgressive and disruptive. Surely, the Barbie Girls versus
Sea Monsters scene described above can be fruitfully analyzed as a moment of crosscut-
ting and mutually constitutive gender performances: The girls—at least at first
glance—appear to be performing (for each other?) a conventional four-to five-year-old
version of emphasized femininity. At least on the surface, there appears to be nothing
terribly transgressive here. They are just “being girls,” together. The boys initially are
unwittingly constituted as an audience for the girls’ performance but quickly begin to
perform (for each other?—for the girls, too?) a masculinity that constructs itself in oppo-
sition to Barbie, and to the girls, as not feminine. They aggressively confront—first
through loud verbal chanting, eventually through bodily invasions—the girls’ ritual
space of emphasized femininity, apparently with the intention of disrupting its upset-
ting influence. The adults are simultaneously constituted as an adoring audience for
their children’s performances and as parents who perform for each other by sharing
and mutually affirming their experience-based narratives concerning the natural differ-
ences between boys and girls.

28
 In this scene, we see children performing gender in ways that constitute themselves
as two separate, opposed groups (boys vs. girls) and parents performing gender in ways
that give the stamp of adult approval to the children’s performances of difference,
while constructing their own ideological narrative that naturalizes this categorical differ-
ence. In other words, the parents do not seem to read the children’s performances of
gender as social constructions of gender. Instead, they interpret them as the inevitable
unfolding of natural, internal differences between the sexes. That this moment oc-
curred when it did and where it did is explicable, but not entirely with a theory of per-
formativity. As Walters (1999, 250) argues,
The performance of gender is never a simple voluntary act.... Theories of gender as play and performance need
to be intimately and systematically connected with the power of gender (really, the power of male power) to con-
strain, control, violate, and configure. Too often, mere lip service is given to the specific historical, social, and political
configurations that make certain conditions possible and others constrained.

Indeed, feminist sociologists operating from the traditions of symbolic interaction-

ism and/or Goffmanian dramaturgical analysis have anticipated the recent interest in
looking at gender as a dynamic performance. As early as 1978, Kessler and McKenna
developed a sophisticated analysis of gender as an everyday, practical accomplishment
of people’s interactions. Nearly a decade later, West and Zimmerman (1987) argued
that in people’s everyday interactions, they were “doing gender” and, in so doing, they
were constructing masculine dominance and feminine deference. As these ideas have
been taken up in sociology, their tendencies toward a celebration of the “freedom” of
agents to transgress and reshape the fluid boundaries of gender have been put into
play with theories of social structure (e.g., Lorber 1994; Risman 1998). In these ac-
counts, gender is viewed as enacted or created through everyday interactions, but cru-
cially, as Walters suggested above, within “specific historical, social, and political con-
figurations” that constrain or enable certain interactions.
The parents’ response to the Barbie Girls versus Sea Monsters performance sug-
gests one of the main limits and dangers of theories of performativity. Lacking an
analysis of structural and cultural context, performances of gender can all too easily be
interpreted as free agents’ acting out the inevitable surface manifestations of a natural
inner essence of sex difference. An examination of structural and cultural contexts,
though, reveals that there was nothing inevitable about the girls’ choice of Barbie as
their totem, nor in the boys’ response to it.

29
 THE STRUCTURE OF GENDER
In the entire subsequent season of weekly games and practices, I never once saw
adults point to a moment in which boy and girl soccer players were doing the same
thing and exclaim to each other, “Look at them! They are so similar!” The actual simi-
larity of the boys and the girls, evidenced by nearly all of the kids’ routine actions
throughout a soccer season—playing the game, crying over a skinned knee, scrambling
enthusiastically for their snacks after the games, spacing out on a bird or a flower in-
stead of listening to the coach at practice—is a key to understanding the salience of
the Barbie Girls versus Sea Monsters moment for gender relations. In the face of a mul-
titude of moments that speak to similarity, it was this anomalous Barbie Girls versus
Sea Monsters moment—where the boundaries of gender were so clearly enact-
ed—that the adults seized to affirm their commitment to difference. It is the kind of
moment—to use Lorber’s (1994, 37) phrase—where “believing is seeing,” where we se-
lectively “see” aspects of social reality that tell us a truth that we prefer to believe, such
as the belief in categorical sex difference. No matter that our eyes do not see evidence
of this truth most of the rest of the time.
In fact, it was not so easy for adults to actually “see” the empirical reality of sex
similarity in everyday observations of soccer throughout the season. That is due to one
overdetermining factor: an institutional context that is characterized by informally
structured sex segregation among the parent coaches and team managers, and by for-
mally structured sex segregation among the children. The structural analysis developed
here is indebted to Acker’s (1990) observation that organizations, even while appearing
“gender neutral,” tend to reflect, re-create, and naturalize a hierarchical ordering of
gender. Following Connell’s (1987, 98-99) method of structural analysis, I will examine
the “gender regime”—that is, the current “state of play of sexual politics”—within the
local AYSO organization by conducting a “structural inventory” of the formal and in-
formal sexual divisions of labor and power.1
Adult Divisions of Labor and Power
There was a clear—although not absolute—sexual division of labor and power
among the adult volunteers in the AYSO organization. The Board of Directors con-
sisted of 21 men and 9 women, with the top two positions—commissioner and assis-
tant commissioner—held by men. Among the league’s head coaches, 133 were men
and 23 women. The division among the league’s assistant coaches was similarly
skewed. Each team also had a team manager who was responsible for organizing

30
snacks, making reminder calls about games and practices, organizing team parties and
the end-of-the-year present for the coach. The vast majority of team managers were
women. A common slippage in the language of coaches and parents revealed the ideo-
logical assumptions underlying this position: I often noticed people describe a team
manager as the “team mom.” In short, as Table 1 shows, the vast majority of the time,
the formal authority of the head coach and assistant coach was in the hands of a man,
while the backup, support role of team manager was in the hands of a woman.
These data illustrate Connell’s (1987, 97) assertion that sexual divisions of labor are
interwoven with, and mutually supportive of, divisions of power and authority among
women and men. They also suggest how people’s choices to volunteer for certain posi-
tions are shaped and constrained by previous institutional practices. There is no formal
AYSO rule that men must be the leaders, women the supportive followers. And there
are, after all, some women coaches and some men team managers.2 So, it may appear
that the division of labor among adult volunteers simply manifests an accumulation of
individual choices and preferences. When analyzed structurally, though, individual
men’s apparently free choices to volunteer disproportionately for coaching jobs,

along-
side individual women’s apparently free choices to volunteer disproportionately for
team manager jobs, can be seen as a logical collective result of the ways that the institu-
tional structure of sport has differentially constrained and enabled women’s and men’s
previous options and experiences (Messner 1992). Since boys and men have had far
more opportunities to play organized sports and thus to gain skills and knowledge, it
subsequently appears rational for adult men to serve in positions of knowledgeable
authority, with women serving in a support capacity (Boyle and McKay 1995). Struc-
ture—in this case, the historically constituted division of labor and power in sport—
constrains current practice. In turn, structure becomes an object of practice, as the
choices and actions of today’s parents re-create divisions of labor and power similar to
those that they experienced in their youth.

31
 The Children: Formal Sex Segregation
As adult authority patterns are informally structured along gendered lines, the chil-
dren’s leagues are formally segregated by AYSO along lines of age and sex. In each
age-group, there are separate boys’ and girls’ leagues. The AYSO in this community in-
cluded 87 boys’ teams and 69 girls’ teams. Although the four-to five-year-old boys often
played their games on a field that was contiguous with games being played by four-to
five-year-old girls, there was never a formal opportunity for cross-sex play. Thus, both
the girls’ and the boys’ teams could conceivably proceed through an entire season of
games and practices in entirely homosocial contexts.3 In the all-male contexts that I ob-
served throughout the season, gender never appeared to be overtly salient among the
children, coaches, or parents. It is against this backdrop that I might suggest a working
hypothesis about structure and the variable salience of gender: The formal sex segrega-
tion of children does not, in and of itself, make gender overtly salient. In fact, when
children are absolutely segregated, with no opportunity for cross-sex interactions, gen-
der may appear to disappear as an overtly salient organizing principle. However, when
formally sex-segregated children are placed into immediately contiguous locations,
such as during the opening ceremony, highly charged gendered interactions between
the groups (including invasions and other kinds of border work) become more possible.
Although it might appear to some that formal sex segregation in children’s sports is
a natural fact, it has not always been so for the youngest age-groups in AYSO. As re-
cently as 1995, when my older son signed up to play as a five-year-old, I had been told
that he would play in a coed league. But when he arrived to his first practice and I saw
that he was on an all-boys team, I was told by the coach that AYSO had decided this
year to begin sex segregating all age-groups, because “during half-times and practices,
the boys and girls tend to separate into separate groups. So the league thought it would
be better for team unity if we split the boys and girls into separate leagues.” I suggested
to some coaches that a similar dynamic among racial ethnic groups (say, Latino kids
and white kids clustering as separate groups during halftimes) would not similarly result
in a decision to create racially segregated leagues. That this comment appeared to fall
on deaf ears illustrates the extent to which many adults’ belief in the need for sex segre-
gation—at least in the context of sport—is grounded in a mutually agreed-upon notion
of boys’ and girls’ “separate worlds,” perhaps based in ideologies of natural sex differ-
ence.
The gender regime of AYSO, then, is structured by formal and informal sexual divi-
sions of labor and power. This social structure sets ranges, limits, and possibilities for

32
the children’s and parents’ interactions and performances of gender, but it does not de-
termine them. Put another way, the formal and informal gender regime of AYSO
made the Barbie Girls versus Sea Monsters moment possible, but it did not make it in-
evitable. It was the agency of the children and the parents within that structure that
made the moment happen. But why did this moment take on the symbolic forms that it
did? How and why do the girls, boys, and parents construct and derive meanings from
this moment, and how can we interpret these meanings? These questions are best grap-
pled within in the realm of cultural analysis.
THE CULTURE OF GENDER
The difference between what is “structural” and what is “cultural” is not clear-cut.
For instance, the AYSO assignment of team colors and choice of team names (cultural
symbols) seem to follow logically from, and in turn reinforce, the sex segregation of the
leagues (social structure). These cultural symbols such as team colors, uniforms, songs,
team names, and banners often carried encoded gendered meanings that were then
available to be taken up by the children in ways that constructed (or potentially con-
tested) gender divisions and boundaries.
Team Names
Each team was issued two team colors. It is notable that across the various age-
groups, several girls’ teams were issued pink uniforms—a color commonly recognized
as encoding feminine meanings—while no boys’ teams were issued pink uniforms. Chil-
dren, in consultation with their coaches, were asked to choose their own team names
and were encouraged to use their assigned team colors as cues to theme of the team
name (e.g., among the boys, the “Red Flashes,” the “Green Pythons,” and the blue-
and-green “Sea Monsters”). When I analyzed the team names of the 156 teams by
age-group and by sex, three categories emerged:
1. Sweet names: These are cutesy team names that communicate small stature, cuteness, and/
or vulnerability. These kinds of names would most likely be widely read as encoded with feminine mean-
ings (e.g., “Blue Butterflies,” “Beanie Babes,” “Sunflowers,” “Pink Flamingos,” and “Barbie
Girls”).
2. Neutral or paradoxical names: Neutral names are team names that carry no obvious gen-
dered meaning (e.g., “Blue and Green Lizards,” “Team Flubber,” “Galaxy,” “Blue Ice”). Paradoxical
names are girls’ team names that carry mixed (simultaneously vulnerable and powerful) messages (e.g.,
“Pink Panthers,” “Flower Power,” “Little Tigers”).

33
 3. Power names: These are team names that invoke images of unambiguous strength, aggres-
sion, and raw power (e.g., “Shooting Stars,” “Killer Whales,” “Shark Attack,” “Raptor Attack,” and
“Sea Monsters”).
As Table 2 (not included - APR) illustrates, across all age-groups of boys, there was
only one team name coded as a sweet name—“The Smurfs,” in the 10-to 11-year-old
league. Across all age categories, the boys were far more likely to choose a power name
than anything else, and this was nowhere more true than in the youngest age-groups,
where 35 of 40 (87 percent) of boys’ teams in the four-to-five and six-to-seven age-
groups took on power names. A different pattern appears in the girls’ team name
choices, especially among the youngest girls. Only 2 of the 12 four-to five-year-old
girls’ teams chose power names, while 5 chose sweet names and 5 chose neutral/
paradoxical names. At age six to seven, the numbers begin to tip toward the boys’ num-
bers but still remain different, with half of the girls’ teams now choosing power names.
In the middle and older girls’ groups, the sweet names all but disappear, with power
names dominating, but still a higher proportion of neutral/paradoxical names than
among boys in those age-groups.
Barbie Narrative versus Warrior Narrative
How do we make sense of the obviously powerful spark that Barbie provided in the
opening ceremony scene described above? Barbie is likely one of the most immediately
identifiable symbols of femininity in the world. More conservatively oriented parents
tend to happily buy Barbie dolls for their daughters, while perhaps deflecting their
sons’ interest in Barbie toward more sex-appropriate “action toys.” Feminist parents,
on the other hand, have often expressed open contempt—or at least uncomfortable am-
bivalence—toward Barbie. This is because both conservative and feminist parents see
dominant cultural meanings of emphasized femininity as condensed in Barbie and as-
sume that these meanings will be imitated by their daughters. Recent developments in
cultural studies, though, should warn us against simplistic readings of Barbie as simply
conveying hegemonic messages about gender to unwitting children (Attfield 1996;
Seiter 1995). In addition to critically analyzing the cultural values (or “preferred mean-
ings”) that may be encoded in Barbie or other children’s toys, feminist scholars of cul-
tural studies point to the necessity of examining “reception, pleasure, and agency,” and
especially “the fullness of reception contexts” (Walters 1999, 246). The Barbie Girls ver-
sus Sea Monsters moment can be analyzed as a “reception context,” in which differ-
ently situated boys, girls, and parents variously used Barbie to construct pleasurable in-
tergroup bonds, as well as boundaries between groups.

34
 Barbie is plastic both in form and in terms of cultural meanings children and adults
create around her (Rogers 1999). It is not that there are not hegemonic meanings en-
coded in Barbie: Since its introduction in 1959, Mattel has been successful in selling
millions4 of this doll that “was recognized as a model of ideal teenhood” (Rand 1998,
383) and “an icon—perhaps the icon—of true white womanhood and femininity” (Du-
Cille 1994, 50). However, Rand (1998) argues that “we condescend to children when
we analyze Barbie’s content and then presume that it passes untransformed into their
minds, where, dwelling beneath the control of consciousness or counterargument, it
generates self-image, feelings, and other ideological constructs.” In fact, people who are
situated differently (by age, gender, sexual orientation, social class, race/ethnicity, and
national origin) tend to consume and construct meanings around Barbie variously. For
instance, some adult women (including many feminists) tell retrospective stories of hav-
ing rejected (or even mutilated) their Barbies in favor of boys’ toys, and some adult les-
bians tell stories of transforming Barbie “into an object of dyke desire” (Rand 1998,
386).
Mattel, in fact, clearly strategizes its marketing of Barbie not around the imposition
of a singular notion of what a girl or woman should be but around “hegemonic dis-
course strategies” that attempt to incorporate consumers’ range of possible interpreta-
tions and criticisms of the limits of Barbie. For instance, the recent marketing of “multi-
cultural Barbie” features dolls with different skin colors and culturally coded wardrobes
(DuCille 1994). This strategy broadens the Barbie market, deflects potential criticism
of racism, but still “does not boot blond, white Barbie from center stage” (Rand 1998,
391). Similarly, Mattel’s marketing of Barbie (since the 1970s) as a career woman raises
issues concerning the feminist critique of Barbie’s supposedly negative effect on girls.
When the AAUW recently criticized Barbie, adult collectors defended Barbie, asserting
that “Barbie, in fact, is a wonderful role model for women. She has been a veterinar-
ian, an astronaut, and a soldier—and even before real women had a chance to enter
such occupations” (Spigel forthcoming). And when the magazine Barbie Bazaar ran a
cover photo of its new “Gulf War Barbie,” it served “as a reminder of Mattel’s market-
ing slogan: ‘We Girls Can Do Anything’” (Spigel forthcoming). The following year,
Mattel unveiled its “Presidential Candidate Barbie” with the statement “It is time for a
woman president, and Barbie had the credentials for the job.” Spigel observes that
these liberal feminist messages of empowerment for girls run—apparently unambigu-
ously—alongside a continued unspoken understanding that Barbie must be beautiful,
with an ultraskinny waist and long, thin legs that taper to feet that appear deformed so
that they may fit (only?) into high heels.5 “Mattel does not mind equating beauty with

35
intellect. In fact, so long as the 11½ inch Barbie body remains intact, Mattel is willing
to accessorize her with a number of fashionable perspectives—including feminism it-
self ” (Spigel forthcoming).
It is this apparently paradoxical encoding of the all-too-familiar oppressive bodily
requirements of feminine beauty alongside the career woman role modeling and em-
powering message that “we girls can do anything” that may inform how and why the
Barbie Girls appropriated Barbie as their team symbol. Emphasized femininity—Con-
nell’s (1987) term for the current form of femininity that articulates with hegemonic
masculinity—as many Second Wave feminists have experienced and criticized it, has
been characterized by girls’ and women’s embodiments of oppressive conceptions of
feminine beauty that symbolize and reify a thoroughly disempowered stance vis-à-vis
men. To many Second Wave feminists, Barbie seemed to symbolize all that was oppres-
sive about this femininity—the bodily self-surveillance, accompanying eating disorders,
slavery to the dictates of the fashion industry, and compulsory heterosexuality. But
Rogers (1999, 14) suggests that rather than representing an unambiguous image of em-
phasized femininity, perhaps Barbie represents a more paradoxical image of “emphatic
femininity” that takes feminine appearances and demeanor to unsustainable extremes.
Nothing about Barbie ever looks masculine, even when she is on the police force. . . .
Consistently, Barbie manages impressions so as to come across as a proper feminine
creature even when she crosses boundaries usually dividing women from men. Barbie
the firefighter is in no danger, then, of being seen as “one of the boys.” Kids know
that; parents and teachers know that; Mattel designers know that too.
Recent Third Wave feminist theory sheds light on the different sensibilities of
younger generations of girls and women concerning their willingness to display and
play with this apparently paradoxical relationship between bodily experience (including
“feminine” displays) and public empowerment. In Third Wave feminist texts, displays
of feminine physical attractiveness and empowerment are not viewed as mutually exclu-
sive or necessarily opposed realities, but as lived (if often paradoxical) aspects of the
same reality (Heywood and Drake 1997). This embracing of the paradoxes of post–
Second Wave femininity is manifested in many punk, or Riot Grrrl, subcultures (Klein
1997) and in popular culture in the resounding late 1990s’ success of the Spice Girls’
mantra of “Girl Power.” This generational expression of “girl power” may today be
part of “the pleasures of girl culture that Barbie stands for” (Spigel forthcoming). In-
deed, as the Barbie Girls rallied around Barbie, their obvious pleasure did not appear
to be based on a celebration of quiet passivity (as feminist parents might fear). Rather,

36
it was a statement that they—the Barbie Girls—were here in this public space. They
were not silenced by the boys’ oppositional chanting. To the contrary, they ignored the
boys, who seemed irrelevant to their celebration. And, when the boys later physically
invaded their space, some of the girls responded by chasing the boys off. In short, when
I pay attention to what the girls did (rather than imposing on the situation what I think
Barbie “should” mean to the girls), I see a public moment of celebratory “girl power.”
And this may give us better basis from which to analyze the boys’ oppositional re-
sponse. First, the boys may have been responding to the threat of displacement they
may have felt while viewing the girls’ moment of celebratory girl power. Second, the
boys may simultaneously have been responding to the fears of feminine pollution that
Barbie had come to symbolize to them. But why might Barbie symbolize feminine pol-
lution to little boys? A brief example from my older son is instructive. When he was
about three, following a fun day of play with the five-year-old girl next door, he enthusi-
astically asked me to buy him a Barbie like hers. He was gleeful when I took him to the
store and bought him one. When we arrived home, his feet had barely hit the pave-
ment getting out of the car before an eight-year-old neighbor boy laughed at and ridi-
culed him: “A Barbie? Don’t you know that Barbie is a girl’s toy?” No amount of paren-
tal intervention could counter this devastating peer-induced injunction against boys’
playing with Barbie. My son’s pleasurable desire for Barbie appeared almost overnight
to transform itself into shame and rejection. The doll ended up at the bottom of a
heap of toys in the closet, and my son soon became infatuated, along with other boys
in his preschool, with Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers.
Research indicates that there is widespread agreement as to which toys are appropri-
ate for one sex and polluting, dangerous, or inappropriate for the other sex. When
Campenni (1999) asked adults to rate the gender appropriateness of children’s toys, the
toys considered most appropriate to girls were those pertaining to domestic tasks,
beauty enhancement, or child rearing. Of the 206 toys rated, Barbie was rated second
only to Makeup Kit as a female-only toy. Toys considered most appropriate to boys
were those pertaining to sports gear (football gear was the most masculine-rated toy,
while boxing gloves were third), vehicles, action figures (G. I. Joe was rated second only
to football gear), and other war-related toys. This research on parents’ gender stereotyp-
ing of toys reflects similar findings in research on children’s toy preferences (Bradbard
1985; Robinson and Morris 1986). Children tend to avoid cross-sex toys, with boys’
avoidance of feminine-coded toys appearing to be stronger than girls’ avoidance of
masculine-coded toys (Etaugh and Liss 1992). Moreover, preschool-age boys who per-

37
ceive their fathers to be opposed to cross-gender-typed play are more likely than girls
or other boys to think that it is “bad” for boys to play with toys that are labeled as “for
girls” (Raag and Rackliff 1998).
By kindergarten, most boys appear to have learned—either through experiences
similar to my son’s, where other male persons police the boundaries of gender-
appropriate play and fantasy and/or by watching the clearly gendered messages of tele-
vision advertising—that Barbie dolls are not appropriate toys for boys (Rogers 1999,
30). To avoid ridicule, they learn to hide their desire for Barbie, either through denial
and oppositional/pollution discourse and/or through sublimation of their desire for
Barbie into play with male-appropriate “action figures” (Pope et al. 1999). In their
study of a kindergarten classroom, Jordan and Cowan (1995, 728) identified “warrior
narratives... that assume that violence is legitimate and justified when it occurs within a
struggle between good and evil” to be the most commonly agreed-upon currency for
boys’ fantasy play. They observe that the boys seem commonly to adapt story lines that
they have seen on television. Popular culture—film, video, computer games, television,
and comic books—provides boys with a seemingly endless stream of Good Guys versus
Bad Guys characters and stories—from cowboy movies, Superman and Spiderman to
Ninja Turtles, Star Wars, and Pokémon—that are available for the boys to appropriate
as the raw materials for the construction of their own warrior play.
In the kindergarten that Jordan and Cowan studied, the boys initially attempted to
import their warrior narratives into the domestic setting of the “Doll Corner.” Teach-
ers eventually drove the boys’ warrior play outdoors, while the Doll Corner was used
by the girls for the “appropriate” domestic play for which it was originally intended. Jor-
dan and Cowan argue that kindergarten teachers’ outlawing of boys’ warrior narra-
tives inside the classroom contributed to boys’ defining schools as a feminine environ-
ment, to which they responded with a resistant, underground continuation of mascu-
line warrior play. Eventually though, boys who acquiesce and successfully sublimate
warrior play into fantasy or sport are more successful in constructing what Connell
(1989, 291) calls “a masculinity organized around themes of rationality and responsibil-
ity [that is] closely connected with the ‘certification’ function of the upper levels of the
education system and to a key form of masculinity among professionals.”
In contrast to the “rational/professional” masculinity constructed in schools, the in-
stitution of sport historically constructs hegemonic masculinity as bodily superiority
over femininity and nonathletic masculinities (Messner 1992). Here, warrior narratives
are allowed to publicly thrive—indeed, are openly celebrated (witness, for instance, the

38
commentary of a televised NFL [National Football League] football game or especially
the spectacle of televised professional wrestling). Preschool boys and kindergartners
seem already to know this, easily adopting aggressively competitive team names and an
us-versus-them attitude. By contrast, many of the youngest girls appear to take two or
three years in organized soccer before they adopt, or partially accommodate them-
selves to, aggressively competitive discourse, indicated by the 10-year-old girls’ shifting
away from the use of sweet names toward more power names. In short, where the gen-
der regime of preschool and grade school may be experienced as an environment in
which mostly women leaders enforce rules that are hostile to masculine fantasy play
and physicality, the gender regime of sport is experienced as a place where masculine
styles and values of physicality, aggression, and competition are enforced and cele-
brated by mostly male coaches.
A cultural analysis suggests that the boys’ and the girls’ previous immersion in differ-
ently gendered cultural experiences shaped the likelihood that they would derive and
construct different meanings from Barbie—the girls through pleasurable and symboli-
cally empowering identification with “girl power” narratives; the boys through opposi-
tional fears of feminine pollution (and fears of displacement by girl power?) and with
aggressively verbal, and eventually physical, invasions of the girls’ ritual space. The
boys’ collective response thus constituted them differently, as boys, in opposition to the
girls’ constitution of themselves as girls. An individual girl or boy, in this moment, who
may have felt an inclination to dissent from the dominant feelings of the group (say, the
Latina Barbie Girl who, her mother later told me, did not want the group to be identi-
fied with Barbie, or a boy whose immediate inner response to the Barbie Girls’ joyful
celebration might be to join in) is most likely silenced into complicity in this powerful
moment of border work.
What meanings did this highly gendered moment carry for the boys’ and girls’
teams in the ensuing soccer season? Although I did not observe the Barbie Girls after
the opening ceremony, I did continue to observe the Sea Monsters’ weekly practices
and games. During the boys’ ensuing season, gender never reached this “magnified”
level of salience again—indeed, gender was rarely raised verbally or performed overtly
by the boys. On two occasions, though, I observed the coach jokingly chiding the boys
during practice that “if you don’t watch out, I’m going to get the Barbie Girls here to
play against you!” This warning was followed by gleeful screams of agony and fear,
and nervous hopping around and hugging by some of the boys. Normally, though, in
this sex-segregated, all-male context, if boundaries were invoked, they were not

39
boundaries between boys and girls but boundaries between the Sea Monsters and
other boys’ teams, or sometimes age boundaries between the Sea Monsters and a small
group of dads and older brothers who would engage them in a mock scrimmage dur-
ing practice. But it was also evident that when the coach was having trouble getting the
boys to act together, as a group, his strategic and humorous invocation of the dreaded
Barbie Girls once again served symbolically to affirm their group status. They were a
team. They were the boys.
CONCLUSION
The overarching goal of this article has been to take one empirical observation
from everyday life and demonstrate how a multilevel (interactionist, structural, cultural)
analysis might reveal various layers of meaning that give insight into the everyday so-
cial construction of gender. This article builds on observations made by Thorne (1993)
concerning ways to approach sociological analyses of children’s worlds. The most fruit-
ful approach is not to ask why boys and girls are so different but rather to ask how and
under what conditions boys and girls constitute themselves as separate, oppositional
groups. Sociologists need not debate whether gender is “there”—clearly, gender is al-
ways already there, built as it is into the structures, situations, culture, and conscious-
ness of children and adults. The key issue is under what conditions gender is activated
as a salient organizing principle in social life and under what conditions it may be less
salient. These are important questions, especially since the social organization of cate-
gorical gender difference has always been so clearly tied to gender hierarchy (Acker
1990; Lorber 1994). In the Barbie Girls versus Sea Monsters moment, the perform-
ance of gendered boundaries and the construction of boys’ and girls’ groups as cate-
gorically different occurred in the context of a situation systematically structured by
sex segregation, sparked by the imposing presence of a shared cultural symbol that is
saturated with gendered meanings, and actively supported and applauded by adults
who basked in the pleasure of difference, reaffirmed.6
I have suggested that a useful approach to the study of such “how” and “under
what conditions” questions is to employ multiple levels of analysis. At the most general
level, this project supports the following working propositions.
• Interactionist theoretical frameworks that emphasize the ways that social agents “perform” or
“do” gender are most useful in describing how groups of people actively create (or at times disrupt) the
boundaries that delineate seemingly categorical differences between male persons and female persons. In

40
this case, we saw how the children and the parents interactively performed gender in a way that con-
structed an apparently natural boundary between the two separate worlds of the girls and the boys.
• Structural theoretical frameworks that emphasize the ways that gender is built into institutions
through hierarchical sexual divisions of labor are most useful in explaining under what conditions so-
cial agents mobilize variously to disrupt or to affirm gender differences and inequalities. In this case, we
saw how the sexual division of labor among parent volunteers (grounded in their own histories in the
gender regime of sport), the formal sex segregation of the children’s leagues, and the structured context
of the opening ceremony created conditions for possible interactions between girls’ teams and boys’
teams.
• Cultural theoretical perspectives that examine how popular symbols that are injected into circula-
tion by the culture industry are variously taken up by differently situated people are most useful in ana-
lyzing how the meanings of cultural symbols, in a given institutional context, might trigger or be taken
up by social agents and used as resources to reproduce, disrupt, or contest binary conceptions of sex dif-
ference and gendered relations of power. In this case, we saw how a girls’ team appropriated a large
Barbie around which to construct a pleasurable and empowering sense of group identity and how the
boys’ team responded with aggressive denunciations of Barbie and invasions.
Utilizing any one of the above theoretical perspectives by itself will lead to a lim-
ited, even distorted, analysis of the social construction of gender. Together, they can il-
luminate the complex, multileveled architecture of the social construction of gender in
everyday life. For heuristic reasons, I have falsely separated structure, interaction, and
culture. In fact, we need to explore their constant interrelationships, continuities, and
contradictions. For instance, we cannot understand the boys’ aggressive denunciations
and invasions of the girls’ space and the eventual clarification of categorical bounda-
ries between the girls and the boys without first understanding how these boys and girls
have already internalized four or five years of “gendering” experiences that have
shaped their interactional tendencies and how they are already immersed in a culture
of gendered symbols, including Barbie and sports media imagery. Although “only” pre-
schoolers, they are already skilled in collectively taking up symbols from popular cul-
ture as resources to be used in their own group dynamics—building individual and
group identities, sharing the pleasures of play, clarifying boundaries between in-group
and out-group members, and constructing hierarchies in their worlds.
Furthermore, we cannot understand the reason that the girls first chose “Barbie
Girls” as their team name without first understanding the fact that a particular institu-
tional structure of AYSO soccer preexisted the girls’ entrée into the league. The infor-

41
mal sexual division of labor among adults, and the formal sex segregation of children’s
teams, is a preexisting gender regime that constrains and enables the ways that the chil-
dren enact gender relations and construct identities. One concrete manifestation of this
constraining nature of sex segregated teams is the choice of team names. It is reason-
able to speculate that if the four-and five-year-old children were still sex integrated, as
in the pre-1995 era, no team would have chosen “Barbie Girls” as its team name, with
Barbie as its symbol. In other words, the formal sex segregation created the conditions
under which the girls were enabled—perhaps encouraged—to choose a “sweet” team
name that is widely read as encoding feminine meanings. The eventual interactions be-
tween the boys and the girls were made possible—although by no means fully determin-
ed—by the structure of the gender regime and by the cultural resources that the chil-
dren variously drew on.
On the other hand, the gendered division of labor in youth soccer is not seamless,
static, or immune to resistance. One of the few woman head coaches, a very active ath-
lete in her own right, told me that she is “challenging the sexism” in AYSO by becom-
ing the head of her son’s league. As post–Title IX women increasingly become moth-
ers and as media images of competent, heroic female athletes become more a part of
the cultural landscape for children, the gender regimes of children’s sports may be in-
creasingly challenged (Dworkin and Messner 1999). Put another way, the dramatically
shifting opportunity structure and cultural imagery of post–Title IX sports have cre-
ated opportunities for new kinds of interactions, which will inevitably challenge and fur-
ther shift institutional structures. Social structures simultaneously constrain and enable,
while agency is simultaneously reproductive and resistant.

42
 CHAPTER 3

3.2c Loe 2001

Fixing Broken Masculinity
VIAGRA AS A TECHNOLOGY FOR
THE PRODUCTION OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY
In the twenty-first century, technology is not so easily divorced from the human
body. Viagra, the blockbuster drug hailed as the "magic erection pill," exemplifies the
increasingly accepted technologically-enhanced body. After a history of medical ex-
perts applying technology to women's bodies in times of weakness, male bodies are
now deemed in need of treatment. As male bodies digress from "normal" (erect and
penetrating) sexuality, techno-scien-tific advances promise to "fix" the problem, and
thus the patriarchal "machine." Thus, Viagra is both a material and cultural technol-
ogy producing and reshaping gender and sexuality under the guise of techno-scientific
progress. Drawing on my own ethnographic data, I explore the use and circulation of
techno-scientific advancement and inevitability discourses and the ways in which mas-
culinity and heterosexuality are reproduced, as well as contested, critiqued, and re-
shaped by those who prescribe, dispense, market, and/or use Viagra. Finally, I argue
that Viagra is currently being understood and employed as a "tool" to avert or treat
masculinity "in crisis" in the contemporary America.
Introduction
The surging popularity of the quick-fix erectile dysfunction drug Viagra' and the
now-regular proclamation in newspapers that close to one-half of all Americans are
"sexually dysfunctional"2 make clear that science, medicine, technology, gender, and
sexuality are inextricably linked in contemporary times. During this time of advancing
technology and unheard of pharmaceutical industry growth, especially in the realm of
"lifestyle drugs,"3 twenty-first century America is witnessing the rise of the pharmacol-
ogy of sex, where pharmaceutical companies exercise increasing authority over areas
of life, such as sexuality, not previously requiring prescription drugs.

43
 This article centers on the turn of the century heterosexual male body as a new site
for medicalization, technological enhancement, and cultural and personal crisis. Using
ethnographic data, I explore the ways in which masculinity and heterosexuality are con-
structed and problematized in light of the Viagra phenomenon. I expose the ways in
which consumers and practitioners actively make sense of Viagra in terms of "trouble"
and "repair." And I argue that Viagra is both a cultural and material tool used in the
production and achievement of gender and sexuality. For the first time in American his-
tory, biotechnology is being used to "fix" or enhance heterosexual male confidence and
power, and thus avert masculinity "in crisis."
Social science research in two arenas provides a social context from which to ex-
plore the production of gender and sexuality in the context of the Viagra phenome-
non. First, I argue that the growing field of social science research on technologically-
enhanced sexual bodies (Haraway, 1991; Martin, 1994; Irvine, 1990; Foucault, 1978)
leaves out the crucial role that pharmaceuticals play as biotechnologies with potential
to construct, shape, and enhance bodies. Furthermore, my research points to the male
heterosexual body as a new locus for technological innovation and enhancement. Sec-
ond, scholarship on late twentieth-century masculinities (Bordo, 1999; Connell, 1995;
Faludi, 1999; Kimmel, 1996; Messner, 1997) would benefit from considering the ways
in which pharmaceuticals such as Viagra play a role in the social and material construc-
tion of masculinity.
Before focusing on a particular turn of the century biotechnological phenomenon,
we must understand the context from which it came. Socio-historical insight into the
increasing use of technological apparatuses of control is a crucial starting-place. Only
then can we begin to understand the use of Viagra as a technology of gender and sexu-
ality in late capitalism.
A Brief History of Techno-Treatments
Biotechnology
Therapeutic, technological, and bio-technological4 efforts to define, construct, in-
hibit, and enhance sexual bodies have a long history.5 Such efforts—which evolved
from the nineteenth century into the late twentieth-century—represented a major mo-
bilization of empirical, medical, and technological tools to treat sexual problems, usu-
ally thought to be synonymous with social problems (Foucault, 1978; Irvine, 1990:
189).

44
 Foucault used the term "technologies of sex" to refer to institutions of the nine-
teenth century that medicalized and controlled deviant sexualities. For example, the
medicine of perversions and the programs of eugenics were two great innovations of
the technology of sex of the second half of the nineteenth century" (Foucault, 1978:
118). These institutions and "apparatuses of control" are constituent of modem "scien-
tific biopower' an era during which there was an explosion of numerous and diverse
techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations
(1978, 140).6
Foucault's theoretical models have been criticized as deterministic and lacking sig-
nificant depth relating to gender (de Lauretis, 1987; Basalmo, 1996). Gender theorists
have co-opted and developed Foucault's concepts of technologies and repressive tech-
niques and applied them to understanding how gender is produced, promoted, and
controlled through social technologies, institutionalized discourses, critical practices,
epistemologies, and daily practices (Basalmo, 1996; de Lauretis, 1987). This broad un-
derstanding of "technologies" and apparatuses is useful in conceptualizing sexual phar-
macology as producing and controlling sexuality.
Feminist scholars of science and medicine writing in the past three decades have
been particularly concerned about the relationship between women's bodies and
techno-scientific control. Feminist scholars of science have exposed the crucial role
women's bodies play and played as the ideal subjects and objects of medical and tech-
nological intervention in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Once female bodies
were investigated, medical scientists found them to be fundamentally different from the
male norm, and then grappled with how to control such "unknowable" bodies (Ba-
salmo, 26). Research at the intersections of science, technology, and sexuality reflects
this gender imbalance, focusing on technological forces as determining, "articulating,"
or controlling primarily female bodies beginning in the eighteenth century and persist-
ing through the twentieth century (Basalmo: 1996; Ehrenreich & English, 1973; Grone-
man, 1994; Hausman, 1995, 1978; Mumford, 1992; Maines, 1999; Raymond, 1979;
Reissman, 1983). This body of research reveals the historical construction of patholo-
gized male and female bodies in need of "fixing" as one of two extremes: nymphomani-
acal and/or hysterical, or frigid and/or impotent. "Technofixes" of the Victorian era
included citoridectomies and other surgeries, electrotherapy, hydrotherapy, vibrating
machines, tonics, harnesses, and others.

45
 A very limited cohort of scholars have written about how men's heterosexual bodies
have been normalized and naturalized, and in rare cases, pathologized (Bullough,
1987; Mumford, 1992). Kevin Mumford explores how male impotence was medical-
ized, constructed, and cured in the Victorian era. Starting from advertisements promis-
ing male virility and vigor, Mumford traces the "crisis of masculinity" along with mod-
ernization, and the changing American conceptions of male sexuality and masculinity
from the 1830s to the 1920s. In the colonial era, "techno-fixes" such as aphrodisiacs
and elixirs were sold and prescribed for males on a very limited basis as fertility-aids
(1992: 36-7). Such limited work reveals that male sexualities have clearly been shaped
by sexual science and technologies, social institutions, historical contexts, and sexual
politics over time.
The Forward March of Biotechnology in the Twentieth Century
By the twentieth century medical hegemony reached its peak: medicine, with its
models, metaphors, institutions, and distinctive ways of thinking had come to exercise
authority over areas of life not previously considered medical (Conrad & Schneider,
1980; Reissman, 1983). In the age of medical "progress," scientific knowledge and
medical answers to problems are generally unquestioned as the best, most efficient,
most legitimate solutions. Technology, as an applied science, is similarly constructed
and championed. Thus, the history of science, medicine, and technology is also a his-
tory of attempting to solve social problems and control populations (Davis, 1981;
Ehrenreich & English, 1973, 1979; Foucault, 1973, 1978; Jacobson, 1999; Maines,
1999; Terry, 1995). In twentieth century America, biotechnology is deployed to solve
social problems (deemed largescale sexual problems) such as poverty, fertility, adoles-
cent sexuality, teenage pregnancy, venereal disease, and AIDS.8
It is out of this context of medical and biotechnological hegemony, along with U.S.
government de-regulation of the phamrn-ceutical industry, that late twentieth century
American society witnessed the rapid expansion of pharmaceutical power, and the rise
of the pharmacology of sex.9 The development of reproductive technologies in the
mid-twentieth century was a clear precursor to the pharmacology of sex. The oral con-
traceptive pill was an early success in medical, technological, and social worlds. Wat-
kins tracks how the combination of media, medical researchers, physicians, and manu-
facturers seduced the public into seeing "the pill" as the ideal "techno-fix" to solve indi-
vidual and social problems related to fertility control without knowing the hazards of
the drug until the late 1960s. The new oral contraceptive also served as a barometer of
changes in social attitudes about science, technology, and medicine as well as illumi-

46
nated conceptions about sexuality, women's health and medicine, and science and tech-
nology as applied to women's lives (D'Emilio & Freedman, 1997:339; Watkins, 1998:
8). Most importantly, Watkins suggests that "although Americans expressed skepticism
toward medical science and its products, for example, the pill, they continued to em-
brace the culture of 'modern' medicine and technology after the 1960s"—a "culture"
that was rapidly expanding and changing (Watkins, 1998: 132).
In the past twenty years, there has been an increase in scholarship focused on the
merging of technology and medical science to construct "postmodern" or cyborgian
bodies, including the construction of sexual or gendered bodies through surgeries, im-
plants, hormones, drugs, appliances, and reproductive technologies in the twentieth-
century (Basalmo, 1996; Franklin & Ragone, 1998; Haraway, 1991, 1999; Hausman,
1995; Irvine, 1990; Raymond, 1994). This growing field of research on biotechnology
and sex explores the myriad ways in which gender, sexuality, and reproduction are natu-
ralized, reinforced, inhibited, inscribed, surveyed, and controlled through technology in
the twentieth-century. Postmodern techno-science scholarship suggests that transsexual,
reconstructive, and cosmetic surgeries as well as reproductive technologies provide a
window onto both social constructions and medico-technological interventions into gen-
dered and sexualized personhood. In late capitalism, Americans have a newly trans-
formed relationship with biotechnology; one that goes beyond "healing," to now "trans-
forming" bodies (Basalmo, 1996; Hausman, 1995; Jacobson, 1999; Raymond, 1994).
In the last twenty years, historians have outlined the convergence of markets and sci-
ence in the new, "totally replaceable body" (Irvine, 1990: 259). Thus, in a postmodern
world, where bodies are a collection of various parts, and sexuality is fractured and dis-
persed in and around the body, the surgeon's knife and hormonal treatments become
tools for sexual enabling, reinvention, and goal-attainment.
Twentieth century scholarship on biotechnology tends to overemphasize medical he-
gemony and domination and underemphasize the role of human agency and
resistance.10 Donna Haraway (1995) calls the convergence of socio-historical forces
and science and technology the "informatics of domination," (a concept similar to Fou-
cault's "biopower") referring to how bodies are produced, inscribed, replicated, and dis-
ciplined in postmodernity. Technology promises to be enhancing and lifesaving, while
obscuring the fact that it also acts as disciplinarian and surveillant (Basalmo, 1996: 5).
The individual is taught to "know her body" to the point of self-conscious self-
surveillance (Basalmo, 1996: 6; Foucault, 1977) and view her body as fractured, with

47
constantly improvable, fixable parts (Jacobson, 1999; Martin, 1994; Mead in Basalmo,
1996).1
Within cultural studies, sociology, sexology, queer studies, and feminist studies, the
question of agency as it relates to bio-techno-logical products and apparatuses remains
urgent. Scholars have warned about the general over-emphasis on the bio-
technological "impact" in such writings on sexuality and technology, to the point of los-
ing sight of human agency (Haraway, 1999; Sawicki, 1991). Sawicki suggests using a
Foucaultian analysis to view technology and medical science within a context of multi-
ple sites of power and resistance operating within a social field of struggle (Sawicki,
1991: 87).12 Technological developments are many-edged, Sawicki reminds us, for
who, today, would deny women the contraceptive technologies developed in this cen-
tury? (Sawicki, 1991: 89). This analysis attempts to balance agency and "impact" in
considering consumers and practitioners as subjects constructing and shaping medical
and biotechnological realities, bodies, and masculinities. Nonetheless, these agents
clearly operate within and against constraining social contexts.
Enter Viagra
The twenty-first century ushers in a new era of mass-marketed sexual bio-
technology. This is the era when the "magic bullet" for sexual energy, confidence, and
masculinity comes in the form of a pill. In the Viagra era, large numbers of primarily
heterosexual males join the ranks of those with bodies deemed in need of "fixing." To-
day, so-called lifestyle drugs of all types (such as Viagra) are available to anyone with ac-
cess to the internet and a credit card. At the beginning of a new sexual millennium,
"functioning normally" (or for some, hyper-potency) is still the goal for both the medi-
cal establishment and the public, and a new "widespread dysfunctionality" is the hur-
dle. But for whom? American medical, technological, and pharmaceutical industries
currently appear concerned about primarily one segment of the population: those with
money and penises.13 The gaze is now turned upon the symbolic organ that the medi-
cal establishment has worked for centuries to invest with power and privilege. This pro-
ject has intensified with news that more than 1 in 10 men struggle with impotence. In-
vestments into impotence treatments of all types continue to soar globally as more and
more males admit to their erectile dysfunction, and flock to urologists, male clinics, and
internet sites seeking treat-ment.14 American insurance providers have agreed, for the
most part, to subsidize Viagra, and consequently, to back mass efforts to normalize
male potency and confidence levels. In a patriarchal world, the traditional American
phallocentric sexual script is alive and well. And it looks like the tide has changed—the

48
West's twenty-first century sexually frigid and sick who deserve to be healed are primar-
ily white, middle class heterosexual males over forty.'5
Using a Foucauldian understanding of the micropolitics of power, I explore the
ways in which social theorists, medical practitioners, and consumers engage in an ongo-
ing dialogue about the construction of bodies, genders, and selves. These consumers
and medical professionals are attempting to make sense of biotechnology and masculin-
ity as they interact with Viagra. Through multiple and varied discourses of "trouble"
and "repair," consumers grapple with bodies, manhood, and medical diagnoses and ex-
pose as constructs that which we take for granted. In this context, I argue that Viagra is
imagined and utilized as a tool for "fixing" and producing masculinity, but what form
this takes and how this gets played out is varied and complex.
Methods
I use a grounded theory-based approach and ethnographic methods to explore and
analyze the Viagra phenomenon, which I define as a dynamic, tension-filled, ongoing
and varied cultural movement, centered around a blockbuster drug and biotechnologi-
cal product, which constructs and problematizes gender, sexuality, aging, and medicine.
By triangulating my data, I have integrated interviews with participant observation and
discourse analysis. FolioView analytic software was employed to analyze interview data,
my own media archives, and Pfizer promotional materials. Finally, as a participant ob-
server, I have attempted to spend time inside the institutions dedicated to legitimating,
defining, mapping, institutionalizing, diagnosing, and/or producing "experts" who will
speak on behalf of sexual dysfunctionality and the role of Viagra. 1 have logged over
four hundred hours at crucial medical sites dedicated to knowledge production and sex-
ual commodification, including three sexual dysfunction conferences, two "men's clin-
ics" run by urologists concerned primarily with penile enhancement, countless physi-
cians' offices, four sex therapy clinics, five herbal sex remedy outlets and specialized
sexuality businesses, and both "virtual" and "real" pharmacies.
In this article I draw from 49 interviews (25 male consumers, 24 medical profession-
als) conducted between 1999-2001. All names have been changed to insure confidenti-
ality. Male consumers (see Table 1) are a self-selected group who responded to my re-
quests for interviews through internet postings, newspaper advertisements, practitioner
referrals, senior citizens organizations, personal contacts, and prostate cancer support
group meetings. Those consumers who volunteered for an interview generally had ex-
perience with Viagra and had an interest in sharing this experience because it had af-

49
fected them in some way (good or bad). Others appeared to have time on their hands
(many were retired) and just wanted to help a graduate student with her project. Con-
sumers claim varied ethnicity and sexual orientation with ages ranging from 17-86
years old. Twenty-one of the twenty-six are older than forty years of age. The majority
are middle class. Semi-structured conversational consumer interviews were primarily
conducted over the phone or the internet (for anonymity reasons) with the in-person in-
terview as the exception.
I chose to focus my interview and participant observation efforts on two medically-
sophisticated urban areas with extremely different medical scenes: Boston and Beverly
Hills. I contacted a random sample of thirty medical professionals in the southern Cali-
fornia and Boston areas by phone or by mail to ask for an interview. After follow-up
calls, twenty-six responded and agreed to speak with me, and several referred their col-
leagues as potential interview subjects. Seven professionals either didn't respond or
claimed to have no time or too little expertise in the area of sexual medicine. Thus,
those who did speak with me were more likely to work in private practice and appeared
to be interested and invested (as I was) in the Viagra phenomenon. In the end, I con-
ducted twenty-four interviews with medical professionals through a mixture of snow-
ball and purposive sampling (see Table 2). The medical professionals I spoke with are a
mixed group of primarily white male pharmacists, therapists, urologists, general practi-
tioners, and sexual health experts. Six of the twenty-six medical professionals I spoke
with are female. The majority of these interviews were in-person, semi-structured con-
versations, with phone conversations as the exception.
Turn of the Century Troubled Masculinity
Problematic Package
In the age of Viagra, most practitioners and consumers agree that loss of erectile
function appears to be synonymous with loss of manhood. Early on, some medical pro-
fessionals learned that they could not treat the penis in isolation from the man. To treat
the penis on its own, one prominent psychiatrist commented, was not to see masculin-
ity as a whole package.
Certainly [the discovery of a chemical injection that could produce an erection]
started a new era in understanding sexual response. This really excited urologists who
thought they could isolate the erection from the man. Now they have learned they can't
detach the man from his penis. (Baker, psychiatrist)

50
 It quickly became clear to many practitioners that masculinity was intimately tied
to erectile functioning. A growing field of scholarship on male sexual bodies suggests
that sexuality is a proving ground for masculinity (Bordo, 1999; Connell, 1995; Fas-
teau, 1975; Fracher & Kimmel, 1995; Kimmel, 1996; Potts, 2000). Thus, for males,
gender and sexuality may be difficult to separate out. Masculinity requires sexuality
and vice versa.'6
This conversation between a doctor, his patient, and myself exposes this construc-
tion of a close relationship between masculinity and erectile function.
Doctor: You see, sexual dysfunction in males is peculiar. I'm sure if someone is a paraplegic and
can't walk they would feel psychologically deprived. But beyond the great obvious lack—people who
don't see or hear as well, they don't feel like they have lost their manhood, you see. I must tell you, and
I'm not a psychiatrist, but I think it is far more prevalent in males than it would be in females. The
fact that if women don't have sexual gratification, or don't have it [sex?J, it isn't that they don't miss
it, but they don't have the psychological burden that males seem to have. Maybe it's a throwback to the
time when the caveman went and dragged a woman out on his shoulder. [Bending, internist]
Me: So sexuality is integral to male identity?
Patient: Absolutely! [My wife and I] talked about it for a long time—well a couple of weeks before
the [prostatel operation itself. We talked about its possible we may not be able to have sex because the
apparatuses they had out didn't necessarily work. So you could go for the rest of your life without hav-
ing sex. And [the doctor] is so right. You feel part of your manhood is gone. (Gray, consumer)
Above, a practitioner and his patient agree that the "trouble" associated with erec-
tile dysfunction is a psychological burden and loss of manhood. Most of my interview
subjects were in agreement on this point; that if the penis is in trouble, so is the man.
You probably wouldn't understand it—it's a big part of manhood. Ever since you're a little boy
growing up that's a part of your masculinity. And whether its right or wrong, and however you deal
with it—that's, well, I'm dealing with it and I seem to be okay. If a man gets an erection, or the boys
in the shower compare each other, that's your masculinity. A lot of men don't like to admit it. (Phil, con-
sumer)
[Viagra] makes my penis larger, length and widthwise and that's inherent to the macho thing of
men. With impotence, I felt like part of my manhood has been lost. (Byron, consumer)
In this way sexuality, or "erectile health," is constructed as compulsory for men; inte-
gral to achieving manhood. "Every man must pump up for phallocracy" (Potts, 2000:
98).'

51
 While many men may not discuss their masculinity problems openly with a doctor,
the doctor-patient dialogue above and Viagra's recent blockbuster success are represen-
tative of a new global concern for the "broken' or impotent male. If gender is "accom-
plished" in daily life (West & Fenstermaker, 1995), then the accomplishment of mascu-
linity is situated, to some extent, in erectile achievement. Fixing the male machine and
ensuring erectile functioning, for the patients quoted earlier and countless others, is to
ensure masculinity. Viagra is a technology, or a tool, used to fix the broken machine.
The Poorly-Functioning Male Machine
Donna Haraway argues that the postmodern subject is a cyborg, a hybrid creature
composed of both organism and machine who populates a world ambiguously natural
and crafted (1991: 149). Medical language about the body reflects the overlap between
humans and machines as consumers and practitioners describe bodies using mechani-
cal terminology such as "functioning" and "maintenance." The metaphor of the body
as a smoothly-functioning machine is central to Viagra constructions. In her research
of 20th century understandings of health and the body, Emily Martin (1994) found
that the human body is commonly compared to a disciplined machine. Like a machine,
the body is made up of parts that can break down. Illness, then, refers to a broken
body part. To fix this part ensures the functioning of the machine. Drawing on inter-
views with consumers and practitioners, I argue in this section that the popularity of
Viagra has exposed and created a masculinity crisis of sorts. In this section, consumers
and practitioners employ industrial and technological metaphors to make sense of
body and gender trouble, or masculinity in crisis.
In this section, customers and practitioners make sense of "trouble" by attempting
to locate problems in the male body or machine. Such industrial metaphors are regu-
larly used by Dr. Irwin Goldstein, a media-friendly urologist and Pfizer funded re-
searcher, known for describing erectile functioning as "all hydraulics" and suggesting
that dysfunction requires "rebuilding the male machine."8 Following this metaphor,
common treatment protocols for "erectile dysfunction" center on treating the penis (bro-
ken part) separately from the body (machine). Physicians are encouraged (by Pfizer rep-
resentatives) to center their doctor/patient dialogue around the patient's erectile "per-
formance"—asking the patient to rate their erections in terms of penetrability, hard-
ness, maintenance, and satisfaction levels.'9 This construction of the penis as dysfunc-
tional and fixable is exemplified in the following quotes.

52
 What I do is say to patients complaining of erectile dyfunction], 'Tell me about the erections. When
you were 20 years old lets say they were a 10, rock hard. Where would they be now on a scale from 1-
10?' So I give them some objectible evidence that they can give me. They'll say, 'oh, now it's a 2.' A lot
of guys say its now a 7 or 8. I say 'Can you still perform with a 7 or 8?' They say, 'Yeah, but its not
as good as it was.' (Curt, urologist)
I'd say as far as functioning sexually, I'm probably at 70 percent. I just can't get hard enough to
penetrate. Everything works but the erection. If I were to rate my erectile functioning prior to surgery,
with now, I'd say its at 75 percent. It will never be back to 100 percent, I know that. So I'm some-
what satisfied. And the doctors always tell me that this is a long process, and that I need to be patient
about getting back to functioning. So I'm in a wait and see mode. (Chuck, consumer)
Many patients who are currently looking for treatment for erectile dysfunction in-
habit the gray area (in terms of performance rankings from 1 to 1O),20 and appear to
be concerned with restoring their "machine" to a "normal," or near-perfect level of
functioning. Optimal performance, or the ability to penetrate one's partner and sustain
an erection, is desired, as reflected in the earlier quotes.
Trouble with Normal
While rigidity is the goal, part of optimal penile performance is to appear flexible.2'
In a twentieth century postmodern world, flexibility is a trait cherished and cultivated
in all fields, including health (Martin, 1994). Thus, the healthiest bodies are disciplined
machines that also exhibit current cultural ideals such as flexibility, fitness, and elastic-
ity (Martin, 1994). Viagra is constructed as a tool used to achieve the ideal flexible
body—a body that is always "on call."
In some cases, Viagra is used by consumers who feel that normal penile functioning
is not good enough. While these consumers claim they do not "need" Viagra, they are
more satisfied with their performance when they do use it. In the later quotes, Bill and
Stan imply that the pre-Viagra penis is slow, unpredictable, and uncertain, and, thus,
problematic.
I was totally surprised in my ability to stay erect without effort and the ability to repeatedly snap to
attention. Amazing effect. Sorta magical in a way. (Will, consumer)
I noticed that if I get titillated, [after using Viagral then the penis springs to attention. Not atypi-
cally. But more facile. Its easier. I don't know if it takes less time. It's more convincing. Its not like
maybe I'll get hard and maybe I wont. Its like Okay, here I am! (Stanford, consumer)

53
 For these consumers, the Viagra-body may be preferable to the natural body, be-
cause it is consistent and predictable. The "on-call" Viagra penis will consistently re-
spond when it is needed, whereas the "natural" body is constructed as too unpredict-
able.
Erections are a lot more temperamental than people are willing to admit. But we have this image of
masculinity and expectations of male sexuality as being virile and always ready to go and being the con-
queror. And I think that this pill allows people to finally live out that myth (laughs). That was one of
the things I had to learn early on is that I had irrational expectations of sexuality. And that men don't
have big erections every time they want to, usually, and that to believe that one did was to set oneself up
for disappointment. (Stu, consumer)
As Stu points out, Viagra exposes the flawed "natural" body and enables a man to
achieve mythic masculinity. In this way, the Viagra story is one that slips between artifi-
cial and natural, and even beyond to super-natural levels. For many, the promise of Via-
gra is the fact that it can deliver "optimal" results, pushing the consumer beyond his
own conceptions of "normal" functioning. In this way, practitioners and customers con-
struct Viagra as a miracle cure because it not only "fixes" the problem, but makes
things "better." In the quotes that follow, Viagra is constructed as an enhancement
drug.
It's pretty amazing if you can take a pill and get a better erection. Or even an erection. Is this the
first time you've seen this type of medication?] Yeah, it's the first type of medication like this, and for it
to work, I mean, it is a wonder-drug. Well maybe some of the antibiotics or diabetes drugs—those are
wonderdrugs. But in the sexual area, you could say in terms of sexual activity and all of that, yeah,
it's a wonderdrug. (Tobin, urologist)
With Viagra we say it's for a medical condition, not for just anyone. However I know a fellow who
was fine who took a Viagra to get himself extra-normal. (Bastine, pschiatrist)
The entire world relies on drugs simply because they work, or solve (or help) physical conditions.
Why is Viagra any different if it is able to extend—excuse the pun—the full and most zestful part of
being human? (Will, consumer)
Practitioners and consumers collaborate in constructing Viagra as a magic bullet
that can "extend" the realm of "normal," and push people to the next level: extra-
normality, or superhuman-ness. By pushing the boundaries of erectile function, per-
formance, and sexuality, Viagra sets new standards and constructs countless male bod-
ies in need of repair. Consumers and practitioners use technological metaphors to con-
struct the ways in which Viagra can be used to repair the broken male machine.

54
 Repairing the Broken Male
There is no doubt that at the turn of the century, males may be feeling emascu-
lated, powerless, and lifeless for any number of reasons. For those who are feeling this
way, Viagra comes to the rescue, with the potential to avert or repair personal and/or
cultural troubles. Acknowledging that culture, the media, or relationships can be a
source of trouble is not part of the medical model, and these institutions seem too com-
plicated to fix. However, when the problem is located solely in the body (as in medical
discourse), individualized, and treated as a physiological dysfunction, it can be easier to
repair. Even clinical psychologists, who acknowledge that the trouble can be psychologi-
cal, social, or relational, may join medical practitioners in seeing Viagra as a tool for re-
gaining body function and repairing confidence, and masculinity.
In the face of troubled masculinity, Viagra is commonly constructed by consumers
and practitioners as a pill for masculinity-repair or construction, to be used either in ex-
treme erectile dysfunction cases where manhood appears to be "lost," to more common
"mild E.D." situations were manhood needs a "jump-start" or an extra boost.22 In this
way, Viagra itself is a technology for the production of gender and sexuality. Viagra
can be understood as a tool for the repair and/or production of hegemonic masculin-
ity and sexuality. Some consumers take Viagra hoping not only to restore or supple-
ment "natural" physiological function, but also "normal" masculinity and
heterosexuality.23 Others choose not to use Viagra, claiming that Viagra is more "trou-
ble" than solution by producing an artificial and "uncontrollable" body. This idea of
trouble will be developed further in a later section.
Techno-Fix and the Viagra "Tool"
'With the embrace of Viagra as a biotechnological "wonder," Viagra is invested
with myriad technological metaphors. As we have seen, Viagra can be understood as a
tool for fixing the broken male machine. The term, "jump-start," is used by many prac-
titioners and consumers to understand Viagra's effect on the body, and to symbolize an
energetic positive step forward, with biotechnology backing-up and assuring perform-
ance. Viagra can jump-start the body and the mind to produce a self-assured masculin-
ity.
Even the ones with psychological problems, they still try the Viagra to help convince them that every-
thing works okay. I'll give it to them. I say] You need this to jump-start your system. See how it works.
If it gives you the confidence that you can get an erection, it can work. Then you can taper off of it.
(Curt, urologist)

55
 Sometimes the question is do they really need it? I ask "What is the problem?" Sometimes they tell
you the truth, sometimes they don't, and there's no clear-cut way, short of the examination, to test and
differentiate. But you know the old saying—you don't have a second chance to make a first impression
with a woman, right? [Viagral can be a way to jump-start their relationship or security. (Pellis, urolo-
gist)
Viagra is employed by practitioners as a tool, similar to jumper cables, to "jump-
start" the male machine—to get the patient performing again. In the earlier first quote,
the urologist renders the whole body affected by erectile dysfunction as lifeless, like a
dead battery. The urologist and consumers quoted after him use the same metaphor (al-
though they don't know one another) and advocate a rapid return to normal erections,
normal performance, and, thus, normal masculinity. In the following quote, a con-
sumer uses the same terminology as practitioners to reveal how Viagra works in the
body.
Viagra is a miracle product for men with performance problems. And partners love it too. I've found
that it really jump-starts things, physiologically. I've talked to many people who say this. But where I'm
at right now, with my diet and tantra work, Viagra just doesn't suit me anymore. But I think for some
people it might be great to take once in a while to jump-start things. (Bradley, consumer)
Technology-based metaphors pervade practitioner and consumer explanations of
Viagra's relationship to the male body. Many medical professionals choose to use ma-
chine or automobile-related metaphors to construct the type of treatment now avail-
able with Viagra. Here, Viagra does optional repair work (on the male machine) and
erections are seen as enhancements or "attachments" to the basic body.
It's an accessory that wasn't available before, now it's an option. There's the basic package and
that's one of the options. I don't think its part of the basic package. The basic is four wheels, the steer-
ing wheel, windshield, the frame, and the doors. What you put on that package are extras. Erectile func-
tion is not part of the basic package. You may have a patient who disagrees, but most physicians will
probably say the same thing. I'm not sure about that analogy. It's an option. It's not required. (Bending,
urologist)
Viagra has a snap-on component to it. People want it now. It is a metaphor for our culture. (Red-
ding, psychotherapist)
Consumers use similar industrial metaphors to describe how penises are repaired,
transformed, and enhanced after using Viagra.

56
 It's like a ready-made hard-on. Again this whole thing about performance anxiety—yes, Viagra is
a very real help in the sense that it gives one a sturdy weapon. I hate these words, but you get the point.
Knowing you have that helps with the psychosocial aspect of it. which is fear you won't be as good as
the last guy. (Stanford, consumer)
[My friend] Jack, on the other hand, claimed victory that night and said the little blue confidence
pill helped him achieve "pink steel' which impressed his occasional girlfriend, at least that night. (Lue,
consumer)
Viagra's promise is one of corporeal technological enhancement—in the form of a
snap-on, an accessory, and a ready-made erection. By making such comparisons (car,
steel, weapon), consumers attribute masculine characteristics such as power, resilience,
hardness, and strength to the Viagra penis, essentially constructing Viagra as a tool for
producing masculinity, and enforcing social meanings. In this way, myth and tool mutu-
ally constitute each other (Haraway, 1991: 164).
Repair = Trouble
Not all consumers buy into the techno-fix model. Some consumers commented that
although Viagra may promise bodily repair it can actually cause more trouble than its
worth. In this section, Viagra constructs problems, not solutions. Later, Viagra is con-
structed as techno-trouble, constructing the male body as increasingly out of control.
I don't ever want to try [Viagra] again. The thing about it is, the side-effects could be very danger-
ous for someone a little older than I am. Because you do end up with palpitation. Your body is just not
your body. So if [your functioning is] not normal, I think it's better to just let it go at that. Or make
pills that are much much weaker. But I wouldn't recommend it for anybody. (Joel, consumer)
I have tried it. I went a long time and the bottom line is I don't like it. It hasn't done me any good
and it had a harmful side-effect—heartburn and indigestion. I'm a little fearful of it. I'm a healthy
guy and I don't take any maintenance medicines of any kind. My system seems to be functioning nicely.
I think I'll just leave it alone. (Don, consumer)
As we saw earlier, some men see Viagra as a tool to create the ideal flexible body.
For other consumers, Viagra may produce a body that is overly rigid and inflexible. At
this point, the Viagra-effect becomes "unnatural" and uncontrollable, and conse-
quently undesirable.
Well, I also didn't like it because it was unnatural. Like you were hard and you stayed hard. And I
also didn't like the fact that it guaranteed things would be sexual until you weren't hard. I didn't like

57
the idea of being forced into being sexual. You can't do anything nonsexual when you are on it. So basi-
cally it guarantees that entire period you are on it is going to be sexual. (Dusty, consumer)
The idea that I thought was hilarious at first—the erection that won't go away—is not hilarious at
all. In fact it happens and sometimes endangers one's life. (Stanford, consumer)
Rather than lose control of their bodies or experience trouble through repair, these
consumers construct alternatives to the pharmaceutical fix model, accepting their bod-
ies as they are or just "leaving it alone." Despite overwhelming evidence that Viagra is
associated with the production of normal and/or mythic masculinity, these men work
hard at reconstructing masculinity as separate from "erectile health." They insist that
masculinity can be achieved without the help of Viagra, or consideration of erectile po-
tential.
Oh no, if you don't feel like a man before you take the pill, you're not a man anyways. No, you have
to know where you're at. If you have a little mysfunction that's minor. But you have to be a man before
you go through that. Its not a macho pill. (Joel, consumer)
I've talked to a lot of different men about this. Some cannot live without sex. They feel their sex
makes them the man that they are. And I'm not sure how important that is to me. I'm a man anyways.
It's about self-esteem. What do you think about yourself to begin with? (0llie, consumer)
For many, Viagra fits perfectly in a society that is known for pushing the limits of
normal. Consumers may be critical of American culture and Viagra's role in perpetuat-
ing the endless pursuit of the quick-fix. Consumers warn of a hedonistic, money-
driven, artificial world, where there is a pill for everything. Viagra exists in this world as
a crutch or band-aid solution to larger social problems.
We are willing to take the latest thing that is fast and painless. Also, Americans seem to think happi-
ness is their birthright. They take Viagra to become better, happier. And supermen. All that stuff about
self-worth, image, and sex life, it's what people want.. .And maybe those guys who think they need Via-
gra just need to chill out and reduce stress in their lives. It's about lifestyle modification more than any-
thing, I think. Maybe we are too lazy and it just takes too long. We want something to work fast. (Han-
cock, consumer)
I think there is a gross overuse of drugs for "happiness & well-being." Feeling depressed, get a
script for a mood enhancer... feeling tired, get a pill for energy... want to have better sex, get some blue
magic. What about the age-proven solution of removing or reducing the problems or stress factors affect-
ing your life and then seeing if pharmacological agents are still needed? (Miles, consumer)

58
 Here, consumers construct society as pharmacologically-infused, producing indi-
viduals who are dependent upon pills for health and happiness. Consumers are critical
of capitalist and biotechnological attempts at constructing needs, desires, and easy mar-
kets for products.
I think everything we do nowadays is overblown. I just see that society is just driving us crazy, mak-
ing us jump through hoops and do things we really don't need to do. So a drug for everything—I think
they—or not they—but the way things are set up, is to make you want to do things. Even if you don't
want to do it, you are driven if you pay attention to what's going on. I'm not that kind of person. I
won't let you do me that way. You won't be able to drive me that way. I just don't believe in it. (011ie,
consumer)
In many ways, consumers are critical of Viagra's potential to enforce social and gen-
dered meanings and realities. Savvy consumers refuse to "buy into" mythic masculinity,
and see through problematic discourses of medical progress and widespread public
health crises. In this way consumers resist and reframe masculinity, biotechnology, and
medicalization in ways that make sense to them. Rather than construct their bodies
and masculinities as troubled, with Viagra as a techno-fix or magical solution, these
consumers construct Viagra as problematic, contributing to larger social troubles.
Conclusions: Masculinity, Technology, and Resistance
At the turn of the century, partly in reaction to the gains of women's liberation and
female sexual empowerment, at a time of self-help movements, great social change,
and personal crisis, the desire to "fix" and "erect" male sexuality and power in a patriar-
chal society appears to be strong. Feminist scholars, politicians, public intellectuals,
pharmaceutical companies, entrepreneurs, and reporters construct, comment on, and
capitalize upon American social problems such as "male betrayal," the "malaise among
men" and the "masculinity crisis." Just as Betty Friedan warned against women "buying
into" their own victimhood forty years ago, so now it is argued that men are buying
into commercially packaged manhood in many forms, including "amped-up virility'
and "technologically-enhanced supermanhood" (Faludi: 602). Today, a highly success-
ful masculine empowerment campaign is underway, centered around a new late twenti-
eth century tool, a magic blue pill, which promises to produce and enhance male
"magic wands." In late capitalism, then, the doctor's tools are turned back on the doc-
tor himself. The male body is constructed as in need of repair, and becomes a new site
for medical and biotechnological innovation and healing.

59
 Masculinities scholar Michael Kimmel suggests that the realms of health and fitness
(thus the body) have replaced the workplace as the next major testing ground for mascu-
linity, where body work inevitably becomes a "relentless test" (1997: 332). However, few
masculinity scholars have taken a critical perspective on current theories of the body as
machine or as a surface imprinted with so-c:ial symbolism. The Viagra campaign de-
pends on such constructions of masculinity and male health to sell its product. In this
context, Viagra enters practitioners and consumers' worlds, envisioned as a cutting
edge biotechnology, and used, I argue, as a cultural and material tool in the production
and achievement of hegemomic masculinity.
The implications of constructing the male body as sexually potent, or a
technologically-enhanced machine can be both hurtful and helpful, as practitioners,
male consumers, and their partners have discovered. Social theorists also express con-
cern with the state of manhood in America. Social scientist Susan Bordo bemoans,
"We live in a culture that encourages men to think of themselves as their penises, a cul-
ture that still conflates male sexuality with something we call 'potency'..." (1999: 36).
Tiefer (1994) writes, "Today, phallocentrism is perpetuated by a flourishing medical
construction that focuses exclusively on penile erections as the essence of men's sexual
function and satisfaction." Sex therapist Wendy Stock points out that to focus on male
bodies as Viagra-infused, finely-tuned, flexible machines, perpetuates a detached, une-
motional masculinity. She comments, "Although a common cultural male fantasy is to
be able to function like a machine, as the sexual equivalent of the Energizer Bunny,
both men and women may lose something if medical interventions allow us to function
without the necessity of emotional connection. Is the ability to perform like a sexual
machine desirable, individually or on a cultural scale?" (Stock, 2001: 27).
As my interview data reveals, Viagra can and is being used by consumers and practi-
tioners to enforce and perpetuate such ideal and corporeal masculinities. In this way
consumers collaborate with medical professionals and pharmaceutical companies in an
attempt to understand and fix "broken" bodies. Perhaps of more interest, my data also
reveals consumers and practitioners struggling with the necessity of the Viagra-
enhanced body, and what that represents. As they negotiate their relationship to this
product, mainstream ideas about sexuality, masculinity, and health are both reinforced
and redefined in important ways. For example, some insist that "doing" masculinity
does not require sexual performance. Others are critical of a society that increasingly
promotes and depends upon biotechnology for achieving health and happiness. This
article reveals men constructing their own ideas about manhood, medicalization, and

60
biotechnology, and creating "various and competing masculinities" in Viagra's midst
(Messner, 1997).

61
 CHAPTER 4

3.2d Lancaster 2003

Biological Beauty and the
Straight Arrow of Desire
Sociobiology elaborates a set of tales about men, women, and the “nature of desire.
In these tales and through their organizing heteronormative conceit, natural selection
slips from being what it is in the best Darwinian sense—contingency, the end result of
a random sorting, a series of accidental adaptations—to become what it is in the worst
Social Darwinian tradition: an active principle, a driving force, a divine design, a meta-
physical telos, the very embodiment of culture in nature. These stories have proved es-
pecially appealing in certain quarters of science in recent years. But sociobiology —
and perhaps especially its offspring, evolutionary psychology—is as much a phenome-
non of popular culture as it is any kind of quasi-scientific enterprise. Bioreductivist
claims and tactics circulate there, especially in the mass media.
In his 1950s classic, Mythologies, Roland Barthes showed that nothing exercises
more appeal in the middlebrow media than the premise that common sense—socially
shared prejudice—is deeply rooted in an irresistible, unchanging nature.1 Modern me-
dia, and the stories about desire that they underwrite, would seem to continually con-
firm the darkest possible version of Barthes’s observation. Recent science stories have
broadly disseminated scenarios eerily reminiscent of nineteenth-century ideas about hu-
man nature, whose discredited eugenics filters back into present-day discourse like the
return of the Spencerian repressed. Not to put too fine a point on the matter, but in
the reductivist vulgate defined by sociobiology and evolutionary psychology sex is
eugenics, directly and without mediation. Nowhere is this clearer than in much-
promulgated geneticist ideas about the biology of beauty, the subject of this chapter.
Such ideologies are haunted by the past, but they would not survive unless they pos-
sessed a kind of adaptability to changing cultural conditions, something that allows
their plotlines to be told and retold, despite – or better yet, in the face of – changing cir-
cumstances. This adaptability is apparent in recent appropriations of bioreductive

62
ideas about masculinity, femininity, and the “nature” of marriage. The heteronorma-
tive claims of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology have been taken up in differ-
ent ways, to different ends, by different interests, in response to ongoing changes in the
social and economic standing of men and women, as we’ll see at the end of this chap-
ter and in the three chapters to follow.
CARTESIAN MONADS AND GENETIC WONDERBRAS
June 3, 1996: With gushing fanfare and illustrated by prurient photographs of a
pair of young, white, scantily clad models posing in their underwear, a front-page
Newsweek article, “The Biology of Beauty: What Science Has Discovered about Sex
Appeal” summarizes some of the latest evolutionary just-so stories.2 Emphatically, the
author intones: “Studies have established that people everywhere – regardless of race,
class or age – share a sense of what’s attractive. Devendra Singh, a University of Texas
psychologist, matter-of-factly explicates: “Judging beauty involves looking at another
person... and figuring out whether you want your children to carry that person’s
genes.”3
After a brief reprise of “courtship rituals” in the animal kingdom, the Newsweek ar-
ticle puts forward two basic claims. First, various researchers purport to have discov-
ered a cross-cultural and universal norm of human beauty, a preference for left-right
symmetry in facial and physical characteristics. Since asymmetrical development might
reveal an underlying illness or developmental trauma, and since symmetry might indi-
cate health, then our conception of beauty – theoretically the basis for our sexual at-
traction to other human beings - is said to be governed by the sociobiological principle
of “inclusive fitness,” according to which we seek mates who are likely to serve as good
reproducers, good mixers with our own genes. Second, it is claimed that men find
women more attractive when they fall within the range of an “ideal” waist-to-hip ratio
of 7 (i.e., an “hourglass” shape, with the waist seven-tenths as large as hips). This ratio
is speculated to be the ideal proportion for conceiving and bearing children, as a “re-
productive fitness” model might predict, but to date the evidence is lacking that this ra-
tio is in any real sense “optimal.”5
Micaela di Leonardo, one of the dissenting scholars interviewed by a Newsweek re-
porter for the preparation of this article, provides a behind-the-scenes look into the
world of science journalism, particularly how mainstream reporters weigh evidence
and expertise in the production of a news story such as this one. She recounts her diffi-

63
culties getting across even basic points from introductory cultural anthropology and
from gender/sexuality studies:

Figure 10. The Biology of Beauty.

Newsweek cover, June 3, 1996.
I tried to explain to her (the interviewer] that human sexual attraction and mating patterns are extraordinarily
various, and connected to human social and political institutions layered-over – and not reducible to – biology I
noted that this nouveau sociobiology (unlike E.O. Wilson’s original, and embarrassingly silly, statements) makes no
allowance for ubiquitous human homosexuality. I pointed out that it reintroduces the sexist (and anthropologically
absurd) notion of a “bottom line” human nature in which men try to maximize their DNA reproduction through im-
pregnating as many young, nubile women as possible, and women attempt to capture” male parental support by en-
hancing their personal attractiveness. I argued that in most of human history we see instead very specific—and
widely varying—fertility goals, that we have abundant evidence of widespread desires for few, not many, children in
many sorts of societies, and that individuals do not make mating decisions as Cartesian monads but as social beings
embedded in webs of kin, friends, and neighbors who have enormous effects on sexual and marital choices. I pointed
Out that attempting to find some “essential” human attractiveness beneath skin and eye color, hair type, nose shape,
and body type denied both culturally varying aesthetic systems and the long historical effects of Western imperial-
ism... - I introduced her to the phrase “junk science.”
The reporter was sympathetic, identified herself as a feminist, but kept returning to two points: her editor
wanted a positive story on this “new science,” and didn’t contemporary American women’s desperate attempts to im-
prove their physical attractiveness through clothing, hair dye, makeup and surgery despite so many years of feminist

64
activism “prove” that there was a point here? I tried to lay out the contemporary American political economy of gen-
der, but she wasn’t really listening. In my frustration, I finally exclaimed, “Look, Wonderbras are not genetic!”6

THE RECTITUDE OF THE STRAIGHT

The Newsweek article tells a story about certain all-too-human foibles: ‘Boys will be
boys.” “That’s just the way men and women are.” “It’s in our genes.” “It’s natural.”
“It’s normal.’ In this narrative, cultural and historical variations—in ideal weight, in
proper vestments, in reproductive goals, in sexual practices, even in sometimes dra-
matic alterations of the body through scarring, piercing, stretching, reshaping, and tat-
tooing—all become the epiphenomenal expressions of a deeper, more abiding same-
ness. Alternative explanations for shared aesthetic judgments—linked histories—are
never considered. In this short history of the battle of the sexes, the Flintstones meet
the Jetsons and find each other equally at home in middle-class tastes and suburban co-
ziness.
It is not just that historical and cultural specificities are denied or that the contours
of global history are extinguished in media reportage of sociobiologically inspired re-
search. Contemporary variety, too, is suppressed. All those durable sentiments that plu-
ralize or problematize the perception of beauty—proverbs like “Beauty is in the eye of
the beholder,” “Beauty is as beauty does,” or even “Never make a beautiful woman
your wife” – receive scant treatment here. Needless to say, the fetishes – attractions to
this or that particular feature, whether symmetrical or not, to the exclusion of others –
are never mentioned, although it is by no means certain that fetishism, broadly con-
ceived, is a statistically rare form of sexual desire.7 To the extent that they come up at
all, social and individual variations serve only to foreground all the more clearly the
ideal norm of symmetry and proportion. A universal ideal is supposed to lie at the
heart of everyone’s conception of beauty because it radiates in a straight line from
ubiquitous, unchanging nature, expressing itself through essentially passive social me-
dia.
Such a norming of the norm is hardly a neutral description of objective reality.
Rather, this linear narrative of “straight desire” might well serve as an object lesson in
how one never simply “discovers” a norm. One actively crafts it through strategies of
inclusion, exclusion, cooptation. Writing on the role of scientific norms in social ‘Ideas
of Nature,” Raymond Williams put matters this way: “A singular name for a multiplic-
ity of things and living processes may be held, with an effort, to be neutral, but I am
sure it is very often the case that it offers, from the beginning, a dominant kind of inter-
pretation: idealist, metaphysical, or religious.”8

65
 Williams’s observation would seem to be borne out in the material at hand. The so-
called science of beauty is little more than the expression of a hetero-centric metaphys-
ics: natural man naturally desiring natural woman, and vice versa. Heterosexuality is
“exnominated” (to use one of Roland Barthes’s favorite terms) in the sense that its as-
sumptions are buried in the terms of description and the logic of the analysis. No-
where named, it is everywhere implied. So dissimulated in sex acts and reproduction,
so suffused in the self-evidence of the senses, the rectitude of the straight body is thus
made to appear natural, universal, and incontrovertible: a given, an unquestionable, a
biological, doxa. A fact of nature. With vicious circularity, the resulting research con-
stantly serves as a demonstration of the very heteronormativity it also secretly posits.
SHAPING THE WESTERN BODY IDEAL
For all the Madison Avenue PR, the “new’ findings of the “new” science trumpeted
in a host of popular and scientific journals hardly seem “new” at all. Without recourse
either to genetic biology or to polling techniques and guided only by a penchant for
mathematical formalization, the fifth-century B.C.E. Greek sculptor Polyklcitos not
only stated that beauty is symmetry and proportion, he actually developed formulae for
measuring beauty according to a general ideal, as exemplified in his prototypical stat-
ues, the (male) Doryphoros (Spear Bearer) arid the (female) Wounded Amazon. Accord-
ing to Polykleitos’s formulae, the well-apportioned arm, for example, is supposed to be
the length of exactly three hands, a proper face should be divisible into three horizon-
tal thirds, a well-shaped body should be the height of so many heads, and so on.
Polykleitos’s text on human beauty; the Canon, like his original bronze statues –
also known as the Canon – have been lost, but his aesthetic judgments have carried for-
ward in countless reproductions and imitations, and his ideas have been passed along
(with some variation) in quotations by Vitruvius and Galen, and in studies by da Vinci
and Michelangelo. Polykleitos established the Thody canon,” a set of general rules that
governed the production of art in the Greco-Roman world, a set of value judgments
that shaped Western ideas about human beauty during classical antiquity and the
Renaissance.9
But Polykleitos did not discover universal aesthetic norms good for all cultures at all
times. As art historian and evolutionary psychology enthusiast George Hersey admits,
preclassical art and sculpture display more varied forms of human bodies. The bodies
depicted in the Middle Ages don’t measure up to classical concepts, either – and
twentieth-century modern art has tended to abandon Polykleitan strictures.10

66
 Figure 11. Leonardo da Vinci, The Vitruvius-Polykleitan canon, c. 1485-1490.
\Venice, Accademia. © Bettman/CORBIS.

In view of the periodic waxing and waning of classical ideas about beauty; it is
good to remember the plural meanings of “canon.” The term refers to a reed that
might be used as a ruler to mark off an object. It also refers to a “cane” or braces that
might be used to force a leather shield into shape. “Canon’ thus conveys the idea of
“measurement,” but it also “stiffens that which would otherwise be without struc-
ture!”11 Perhaps more than anything, the term means “something straight.” Not sim-
ply descriptive, it is prescriptive: the term invokes both “rule” and “regulation.’ The his-
tory of Western art shows that the perpetuation of canonical ideal forms relies on a
regulatory institutional apparatus, on standardized instruction and disciplined produc-
tion.
On this point, it is good to remember how—and why—that other source of endur-
ing ideas from the fifth century BCE., Plato, conceived “form’: as an object blanched
of color and relieved of its material content, as an idea deprived of body, as a deeper,
more enduring truth beyond the tainted evidence of sense and appearances. In Pla-
tonic philosophy as in modern Western culture, in airy idealist as well as vulgar materi-
alist guise, “form” and “norm” serve as object lessons, as instructive ideals. As such,
and because they predicate the general over the particular, the abstract over the con-

67
crete, they are not only invested with ideology from without, they are also constituted
from within, as snapshots of, an ideological imperative.
THE DAPPLED DETAILS
Like one of those “fake universals” ridiculed by Alfred Kroeber – “shelter,” “relig-
ion,” “trade” – the idea of universal and timeless standards of beauty is something of
an empty category. It cannot help clarify our understanding of any particular beautifi-
cation practice in any real depth—indeed, it tends to distort them all.12 Upper-class
Victorian women ingested small amounts of arsenic to give their skin that much-
admired pallid appearance; antecedent Mesoamericans strapped boards to their in-
fants’ foreheads to reshape their malleable craniums into something more comical in
form; various body parts – lips, earlobes, necks, genitalia—are stretched to enormous
proportions in scattered cultures, while piercing and scarring techniques alter the
body’s look and feel in many societies, our own included. Around the world, people of-
fer similar rationales for these perplexingly varied practices. Most frequently, they are
said to enhance physical and sexual attractiveness. They are done in the name of
‘beauty. But on the cultural and historical ground, what is meant by “beauty’ and
which “enhancements” are affected vary widely. In practice, not only do people alter
and adorn their bodies according to aesthetic principles irreducible to some monoto-
nous universal norm (and clearly incompatible with utilitarian models of health”), but
many of these alterations have little apparent connection to “reproductive fitness,” and
they often outright interfere with reproduction—examples of male genital surgery
(sub-incision, or splitting the underside of the penis) in Aboriginal Australia and female
genital surgery (Pharaonic circumcision or infibulation—removal of the clitoris and la-
bia minora, with the labia majora sewn closed, leaving a small opening at the vulva for
urination and release of menstrual blood) in East Africa being among the more dra-
matic cases in point. Whatever ideals or goals these varied conceptions of beauty ex-
press, they do not embody the singular and monotonous yearning of genes to repro-
duce themselves.
When anthropologists have attempted to draft their descriptions of other cultures’
aesthetics in terms of supposedly universal conceptions of beauty, they have most fre-
quently staged unwittingly comic or parodical performances of their own descriptive
expertise. Bronislaw Malinowski, for example, claims that the “European observer soon
finds that his standard of personal charm does not essentially differ from that of the
natives.’-1- He then goes on to describe specific Trobriand standards of beauty that in
fact seem far removed from any European conceptions of personal charm:

68
 The outline of the face is very important; it should be full and well rounded... (like the full moon).... The fore-
head must be small and smooth.... Facial painting is done in black, red, and white.... Biting off the eyelashes, the
custom of mitakuk as it is called, plays an important part in love-making.... Eyes should be shining, but they should
be small. On this point the natives are quite decided. Large eyes, pynapuyn, are ugly. There is no special treatment
for the eyes, except, of course, shaving the eyebrows, which, together with the biting off of eyelashes, leaves them sin-
gularly naked to European taste.... The nose should be full and fleshy, but not too large.... A nose-stick used to be
considered aesthetically indispensable, but it is now gradually going out of fashion.... Every ear must be pierced at
the lobe and ornamented with ear-rings. The hole is made early in childhood by placing on the ear a turtle shell ring
which has been cut and the ends sharpened, so that the points gradually work their way through the gristle. The resul-
tant small hale is then gradually enlarged until a considerable opening surrounded by a pendulous ring is formed in
the lobe.... Such a treatment of the ear is de rigueur; otherwise a man or woman would be said to have tegthwalodila
(ears like a bush pig). Teeth, in order to be really attractive, have to be blackened (kudubwa’u: literally, black teeth....
Body hair... is regarded as ugly and is kept shaven.... I am told that girls at the time of their first menstruation are
tattooed round the vagina. This tattooing is called ki’uki’u, and is done, according to my informants, for aesthetic
purposes.14

Malinowski claims that, after a time, such “artificial transformations’ of face and
body—”the shiny black teeth” revealed by “vermillion lips,” “graceful scrolls painted in
three colors over the face,” and skin glistening with coconut oil—ceased to impress him
as “mere grotesque masquerade.”15 Perhaps sensing the improbability of his own
claimed cosmopolitanism, Malinowski gives the following impression of the way Euro-
peans like himself were perceived by his Trobriand informants: “Europeans, the na-
tives frankly say, are not good-looking. The straight hair ‘coming round the heads of
women like threads of im’ (coarse pandanus fibre used for making strings); the nose,
‘sharp as an axe blade’; the thin lips; the big eyes, ‘like water puddles’; the white skin
with spots on it like those of an albino—all these the natives say (and no doubt feel) are
ugly.”16
THE ILLUSORY NORM
As Oscar Wilde has Vivian say to Cyril, “To look at a thing is very different from
seeing a thing! Vivian adds “One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.”17
The aesthetic banter of Wilde’s character suggests how difficult it is to see well. Mali-
nowski’s own scrupulously detailed descriptions weigh against his thin claim that Euro-
peans and Trobrianders share a common standard of beauty. At any rate, any concep-
tion that begins from “universal premises” would seem poorly equipped to understand
the specificity of actual aesthetics or the diverse transformations undertaken on malle-
able human bodies in the name of “beauty.”

69
 For all that, it would scarcely be surprising if it turned out that, on the average and
across most cultures, what people regard as beautiful tends to average out along the
lines of symmetry and proportion. But this lowest common denominator would hardly
count as a very impressive finding. Although the human form is extremely malleable –
it can be stretched and reduced, pushed and pulled, shaped and reshaped in many
ways – it is not infinitely malleable. We are creatures with a front and back, a top and
bottom, a right side and a left side. Eyes are for seeing and legs are for walking and it is
best to keep our heads up and our feet down. If our dimensions have any implications
at all, it should scarcely surprise us that certain configurations of the human form im-
pose themselves, wily-nilly, on perceptions of beauty among individuals and across cul-
tures and histories. But this “imposition” is on the order of a consequence, not a
“cause” or “drive,’ and it is an artifact of the process of abstraction, averaging, and
norming, not the expression of an essential form or ideal norm.

The biology of beauty simply reifies its own unchecked assumptions and procedural
naiveté as facts” of nature. Its claims are tantamount to saying that from Nunavut to
Irian Jaya and from Oaxaca to Bangkok, masks the world over bear a resemblance to
each other. Without a doubt, they do—inasmuch as masks must accommodate a
wearer’s eyes, nose, and mouth in roughly the same order and proportion and inas-
much as masks are realistic or fantastic extensions of the human face. But to generalize
about the aesthetics of masks (or faces) is to choose to look for similarities rather than
differences. It is also to choose abstraction over concreteness. Inasmuch as masks draw
70
on different principles of imagination, embody different cosmologies, mark different so-
cial practices, serve different cultural functions, take up different orientations toward
life, and signify different things, they resemble each other not in the slightest. Funerary
masks are often solemn—they are meant to depict dead relatives. But other masks are
comic, and some belong to the realm of child’s play. Some masks are associated with
specialized theatrical performance. Others allow wearers to comment mockingly on so-
cial relations.

Certain types of masks are intended to resemble people or beasts with considerable
accuracy. Other masks test the corporeal limits and physical boundaries between peo-
ple, beasts, and things real or imagined.17 As Franz Boas suggested a century ago, one
learns nothing about any real masks anywhere in particular by posing the question of
masks as a global one. The truth of the mask is concrete: It expresses a meaning within
the logics, materials, and purposes available at some particular place and time. To con-
sider masks in the abstract, apart from their relationship to some particular culture and
moment, is to sever them from the context that allows them to mean anything at all.19
So, too, with concepts of human beauty, which also frequently involve inscriptions
on the face, extensions of the body, imaginative elongations of the hair, colorful paint
across the topography of the flesh, and masklike adornments, if the divers and sundry

71
practices of beautification and adornment, in all their spectacle, gore, and glory, were
laid out in one global constellation—foot binding alongside plastic surgery; beads, ban-
gles, and feathers alongside bodybuilding—all the juttings and indentations would
likely cancel each other out, and the resulting composite would likely come to resemble
the generic human forms” of “classical beauty,” all symmetry and proportion. The re-
sulting picture, however, still would not amount to an adequate sketch of universal, hu-
man “beauty,” because all the idiosyncrasies, all the particulars, all the specificities
would be lost, vaporized in a cloud of generality.20 The same process of averaging that
both extinguishes cultural specificities and denies history also abstracts and disembod-
ies everything that is really meaningful about beauty, its perception, and its fashioning,
in any actually existing place.
By the same token (and contrary to the generic compendia of supposedly universal
traits brandished by sociobiologists in recent texts), one cannot discern a single or une-
quivocal human nature lurking beneath the dappled details of cultural diversity. All
that we can say without distortion is that “human nature” is nowhere simply given, but
that it is everywhere endlessly elaborated (as the chapters in the following section, “Va-
rieties of Human Nature,’ themselves elaborate). If we were quadrupeds rather than
bipeds, if we had thick hair covering most of our bodies, if we had the morphological
characteristics of amoebas, undoubtedly our perceptions of beauty would be very dif-
ferent from what they are, with all their present variety and splendor. (We would also
likely have very different cultural histories without upright walking, a need to keep
warm, and more or less stable shapes.)21 In this narrow, even frivolous, sense—which
plainly admits no “test case” – it might even be said that certain biological givens “con-
strain” the parameters of beauty (and much else besides) – insofar as it is “in our
genes” that we are creatures with a front and back, top arid bottom, right side and left.
All that has really been said is that all other things being equal (and this is to say every-
thing), human beings, in that they are symmetrical and proportional, find the human
form beautiful.
But what is most precisely not “in our genes” is the creative, intelligent perception
that finds form, coherence, value, and beauty—not to say attraction —in human bod-
ies, and in so much else besides. And what is not simply “given” in the basic and unre-
flective processes of our bodies is the active, improvisational desire that inheres in our
every encounter with things, such that it makes a sense of nature and thus gives coher-
ence to the world…

72
 VISUALIZING SEX
The unabashed eugenicist tilt of biological research on beauty was distilled with
spectacular vulgarity on the ABC news program Day One, which aired in April 1995
and included an interview with David Buss, author of The Evolution of Desire.2- A
portion of that program is described here by Martha McCaughey:
As Buss elaborates in the interview, our evolutionary forebrothers who did not prefer women with high cheek-
bones, big eyes, lustrous hair, and full lips did not reproduce. Buss explains that those men who happened to like
someone who was older, sicker, or infertile are not our ancestors. We are all the descendants of those men who pre-
ferred young healthy women and so as offspring, as descendants of those men, we carry with us their desires.” On
that same show, Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccioni says that men are simply biologically wired to enjoy
looking at sexy women: “This may be very politically incorrect but that’s the way it is... - It’s all part of our ances-
tral conditioning.”21

Much has been written and said about the supposedly visual nature of men’s sexual-
ity and the supposedly “nonvisual” nature of women’s. According to the old Darwinian
formula, eager, aggressive men see beauty, whereas coy, choosy women calculate value.
Stephen Pinker reproduces the much-repeated proposition: “The male of the hu-
man species is aroused by the sight of a nude woman.... In foraging cultures, young
men make charcoal drawings of breasts and vulvas on rock overhangs, carve them on
tree trunks, and scratch them in the sand.” By extrapolation, pornography—a ten-
billion-dollar industry in the United States alone, grossing “almost as much as spectator
sports and the movies combined”—is much the same now as it always was, “a succes-
sion of anonymous nude females eager for casual, impersonal sex.” But, Pinker contin-
ues, from an evolutionary perspective, “it would make no sense for a woman to be eas-
ily aroused by the sight of a nude male.” Instead, she seeks “the best husband available,
the best genes, or other returns on her sexual favors. If she could be aroused by the
sight of a naked man, men could induce her to have sex by exposing themselves and
her bargaining position would be compromised.”24
I sometimes wonder whether evolutionary psychologists can see at all. Pinker over-
looks the obvious in his brisk invocation of primitive art, his quick leap to modern por-
nography, his outlandish claims about what men and women universally feel. The sub-
stantial presence of homoerotic themes in modern and classical pornography might in-
dicate some caution toward the unqualified claim that “the male of the human species
is aroused by the sight of a nude woman.” And men with erections, or even just erect
phalluses with no men attached, are by no means absent in the primitive art he selec-
tively cites. Are these phallic figures to be understood as evidence of primitive homo-

73
sexuality—or of the inherently bisexual nature of men? Perhaps one, perhaps the
other. But perhaps neither. We do not even know whether it was men or women or
both who left the cave drawings, wall paintings, and fetishes Pinker selectively
invokes.25

Figure 17. Upper Paleolithic ivory carving, c. 25,000 BCE., discovered near Dolni Vestonice,
Czech Republic. Sometimes described as an “abstract female form” or as a rod with breasts.” From Al-
exander Marshack, The Roots of Civilization (New York McGraw-Hill 1972). © Marshack 1972.

We cannot even be sure that they were experienced as “sexual’ representations at

all, a point developed by archaeologist Margaret Conkey in her essay “Original
Narratives.”26 LeRoy McDermott, an art professor, has suggested that the perspective
on the female physique captured in the famous Stone Age “Venus” figures is consistent
with the perspective of a pregnant woman looking down at her own body.27 Folk herb-
alist Susan Weed, along a very different line, has suggested that such figures depict post-
menstrual women their large breasts are “pendulous, not protruding.”28 For that mat-
ter, it is not even always clear whether a figure is “phallic” or “feminine.” A number of
primitive fetishes embody precisely this kind of ambiguity. Viewed one way, a famous
paleolithic figure looks like a female bust, with large, pendulous breasts. Viewed from a
different perspective, it suggests a phallus with ample testicles. What one sees in these
representations often depends on what one wants to see. (There is no reason to imagine
that this is not precisely how the figures were designed.)

74
 We do know that pornography and people’s taste for assorted forms of erotic im-
ages are not outside the history of men’s and women’s changing desires.30 A famous
Kinsey survey conducted in the 1970s suggested that most women were not stimulated
by nude photos and drawings—a finding that has worked its way into both the sociobio-
logical vulgate and into cultural feminism as a “natural fact.” But much-less-noted re-
studies, conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, found that substantial numbers of women
are in fact stimulated by male nudity. What happened in the intervening period was no
mutation in women’s genetic makeup, but historical changes induced by the tug of the
sexual revolution and the tow of feminism, as Susan Bordo shows in The Male Body.
In a relatively short period of time, Chippendale’s strippers, Playgirl magazine, and the
growing eroticization of the male body in advertising culture have socialized women
into new ways of looking and new ways of seeing.31 In fact, not just erotica, but bodies
in every conceivable sense had changed.
Samuel R. Delany’s discussion of how men have interacted with images in porno-
graphic movie theaters on Times Square captures something of the historicity – and
the complexity – of pornography, of what it might mean to see beauty or desire im-
ages:
For the first year or two the theaters operated, the entire working-class audience would break out laughing at eve-
rything save male-superior flicking. (I mean, that’s what sex is, isn’t it?) At the fellatio, at the cunnilingus even more,
and at the final kiss often on the actress’s cum-streaked lips”], among the groans and chuckles you’d always hear a
couple of “Yuccchs” and “Uhggggs.” By the seventies’ end, though, only a few chuckles sounded out now – at the
cunnilingus passages. And in the first year or two of the eighties, even those had stopped. (No, that’s what sex is: a
four-part act, oral and genital, where everybody gets a chance to be on top. Anything else was what was weird.) In-
deed, I think, under pressure of those films, many guys simply found themselves changing what turned them on. And
if one part or another didn’t happen to be your thing, you still saw it enough times to realize that maybe you were the
strange one, and it behooved you to sit it out politely and put up with it, unless you wanted people to think you were
strange.32

It was, of course, the absence of any depiction of male homosexuality “on the
screen proper” that authorized it “to go on rampantly among the observing audience,
now in this theater, now in that one. ‘The majority of that was guys like me,” Delany
writes, “who enjoyed sucking cock for our own pleasure, fellating other guys who were
getting off on the straight screen action.”33
I would frame the role of the “screen” somewhat differently: It is what allows men
who enjoy getting blow jobs from other men nonetheless to define themselves as
“straight!’ In any case, the relationship between image and meaning, idea and desire, is

75
a complex one, involved, as it is, in the twists of social currents, the turns of historic al
happenings, and the coils of individual agency.
TURN ME ON, I’M A RADIO: “DESIGN” AND ‘MISUSE”
Attempting to inoculate the antecedent sociobiology, its derivative evolutionary psy-
chology and assorted forms of biological determinism against the criticism that they ne-
glect social, cultural, and historical variations, Rutgers anthropologist Helen Fisher per-
forms the sort of rhetorical dodge that has become de rigueur in sociobiological circles
of late: “We are not packets of DNA or social creatures acting in complex networks of
friends and relatives. We are both.”34 Science reporter Geoffrey Cowley echoes similar
themes in his treatment of homosexual exceptionalism in the main text of the
Newsweek article “The Biology of Beauty”: “Homosexuality is hard to explain as a bio-
logical adaptation. So is stamp collecting. But no one claims that human beings are
mindless automatons, blindly striving to replicate our genes. We pursue countless pas-
sions that have no direct bearing on survival. If we’re sometimes attracted to people
who can’t help us reproduce, that doesn’t mean human preferences lack any coherent
design. A radio used as a doorstop is still a radio.”35
A more muddled, misguided, and misleading set of statements would be difficult to
imagine. In fact, sociobiology’s inaugural premise of a “genetic biogram” is just an-
other way of saying that at core we are precisely ‘fleshy packets of DNA.” A common
(and often sympathetic) illustration of socio-biological reasoning uses the image of a
puppet – an automaton—to show how genes ultimately “pull the strings” that guide
complex human behaviors. Despite such disavowals, the whole argument expressed by
the Newsweek piece and the “science” that it (all too accurately) distills is that the per-
ception of beauty and the operation of sexual desire are under genetic control, guided
by unambiguously eugenic principles—a preference for “biological quality” in poten-
tial mates. Worse yet is the analogy with the radio, an instrument expressly engineered
by human agents for a particular purpose. Such an argument by analogy not only em-
bodies in the body a telos of evolution – a godlike design prior to and beyond our con-
scious designs, a grand scheme from which evolution follows – it also casts as “misuses”
or “perversions” all uses of the body other than those for which it was “intended.”
It is in the notion of “design” that one sees most clearly how mysticism crisscrosses
scientism in the social history of nature: Like form to content, nature, the spirit-god,
animates a particulate universe. It is exactly the same in sociobiology as in Ralph
Waldo Emerson’s meditations on metaphysical nature: “There seems to be a necessity

76
in spirit to manifest itself in material forms.... Day and night, river and storm, beast
and bird, acid and alkali, preexist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what
they are by virtue of preceding affections in the world of spirit. A Fact is but the end or
last issue of spirit.” In evolutionary psychology, as well, “every natural process is a ver-
sion of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the center of nature and radiates to the
circumference.”36 Of course, Emerson says it with a good deal more style and grace
than our latter-day nature mystics.
DAVID AGAINST D’AMATO
It is often when clinching the argument that sociobiology exposes its most dramatic
contradictions. From the same Newsweek article, then, another such clincher: “Local
fashions seem to rest on a bedrock of shared preferences. You don’t have to be Italian
to find Michelangelo’s David better-looking than, say, Alfonse D’Amato.”37
But of course, you also don’t have to be a woman – or even a gay man – to reach
the same judgment. Once it is admitted that men, even straight men, can see David’s
attraction, the argument that the perception of beauty is an assessment of genetic re-
productive strategies becomes preposterous prima fade. Somewhere between D’Amato
and David – image of a Semitic youth given flesh arid substance by Michelangelo’s de-
sires – all the links in the argument break: sexual desire is not the same thing as the per-
ception of beauty, and neither is reducible to reproductive yearning. No doubt beauty
is “coherent,” but just how this figures in our designs, rather than in the way nature is
supposed to “design” our “human preferences,” is the starting point for any question
worth asking. No doubt beauty exerts many a pull over us. But the perception of
beauty, its place in the human body, its relationship to desire and other forms of basic
intentionality, not to say the connections among all these elements in that gravitational
field, the flesh, are more varied and more marvelous than the advocates of a single, sim-
ple, natural, and genetically programmed conception of beauty have claimed—as they
themselves sometimes have found, to their chagrin.
In August 1998, a study was published in Nature whose findings were summarized
to the lay public as follows:
In a new study of facial attractiveness, researchers from Scotland and Japan have found that, much to their as-
tonishment, people of both sexes prefer feminine-looking men over rugged, manly-miened men.
When shown a series of computerized photographs of young men whose images had been manipulated to make
them look either more masculine or more feminine than the norm, viewers designated the artificially-feminized faces
as somewhat more attractive than the average faces, and more appealing by far than the masculinized versions.38

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 This was indeed a curious development, since all the preceding literature on the sub-
ject had underscored an unabashedly heteronormative and reproductivist logic of sex-
ual dimorphism: the manly man’s thickened brow and protruding chin—supposedly
signs of ample testosterone, the hormone linked in folk science to both male fertility
and “male dominance”—were said to mark the sort of catch a genetically savvy
woman might seek. Arid female attractiveness, contrariwise, was linked to a smaller
chin and higher cheekbones: supposedly shaped by estrogen, such features were said to
exhibit the very signs of fertility to the opposite sex, no less than the inflamed genitals
of a bitch in heat. In this study, however, not only were men rated as being “more at-
tractive” when their features were “feminized,” but women with artificially “feminized”
faces were identified as potentially “good mothers” less often than were “average’ fe-
male faces.
By naming masculine beauty as “feminine” and by reducing the degree to which
femininity might be seen as part of a stereotyped “good motherhood,” researchers and
reporters have reached the point where words and meanings very nearly part compa-
ny—perhaps for the better. A nonsensical statement – “Good-looking men look more
like women” (who presumably are “opposite” to men) – might come closer to insight
than a sensible one written in the utilitarian logic of heteronormative mysticism: “A
handsome man and a beautiful woman are opposites held in natural attraction.” Per-
haps, too, such logical convolutions written across the great mirror of nature evoke
something of the ambiguity of gender roles and sexual expectations at this moment of
epistemic flux.
Logical convolutions aren’t entirely foreign to the advocates of hetero-normative
beauty, however. More recently, scientists have claimed that women go for the “mascu-
linized” faces when they’re ovulating (hence serious about maximizing their genetic
chances) and for the “sensitive” types when they’re not.39 Susan Bordo quips: “Talk
about infinitely malleable data.... 40

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