Event
The Myth of Corruption: Postwar Psychiatry, the Homophile Movement & the Meanings of Seduction
Author: Lauren Gutterman, University of Texas at Austin
Comment: Stephen Vider, Bryn Mawr College
This is an online event.
This chapter shows how psychiatrists and homophile activists in the post-WWII period challenged understandings of homosexuality as rooted in experiences of same-sex “seduction” in childhood. They did so, in part, because of the ways this understanding of homosexuality’s etiology facilitated stereotypes about gay and lesbian “recruitment” and “corruption” of children. In undermining these stereotypes, however, some psychiatrists and activists fostered problematic arguments of their own, namely that only children who were already inclined toward homosexuality were vulnerable to same-sex seduction, and that they had unknowingly incited or willingly participated in such encounters.
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Online Event
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