When the US government targeted LGBTQ employees in the Lavender Scare of the 1950s, the most numerous victims were gay men. As historian Robert Byron Genter writes, lesbians were also driven out of federal jobs. But that was tricky because officials had trouble figuring out what a female homosexual might be.
Genter notes that one rationale behind getting gay people out of government employment was that they could be subject to blackmail. But a deeper one was the idea that being gay reflected a failure of “character.”
While experts of all sorts believed there was something unsavory about homosexuality, they conceptualized what this meant in a variety of ways. Some used the paradigm of “sexual inversion,” which identified same-sex attraction with gender nonconforming physical appearance and behavior. Others insisted that homosexuality was a matter of acts, not identity—as late as 1965, when Civil Service Commission John Macy Jr. met with members of the early gay-rights organization the Mattachine Society, he explained that “[w]e do not subscribe to the view, which is indeed the rock upon which the Mattachine Society is founded that ‘homosexual’ is a proper metonym for an individual.”
Still, gay identities were widely understood to be a thing, for men and women. In their 1951 book Washington Confidential, Genter writes, political reporters Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer claimed that “there are at least twice as many Sapphic lovers as fairies” in government employ.
And, soon, those women were coming under fire. In 1954, the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary was faced with allegations that one subcommittee’s staff was largely made up of lesbians whose interpersonal drama was hurting office morale.
More to Explore
The Lavender Scare
That same year, similar allegations swept through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Some accused women immediately resigned, but others fought back. Two nurses, Grace O’Lone and Mary Meyer, acknowledged that they had previously been in a sexual relationship but claimed they no longer were. At the same time, Meyer expressed her disapproval of the entire inquiry, arguing that officials should focus on fighting Communism, “a much more dangerous thing than even the most outstanding sex pervert.”
Weekly Newsletter
Genter writes that which acts between women might constitute perversion was an open question. While two men kissing or holding hands clearly broke taboos, with women it might reflect acceptable friendly affection. On the other hand, one Navy psychiatrist told a Senate committee that sexual activity in lesbian relationships might be limited to “hugging and kissing” and that “it is possible for two women to be in something of a homosexual relationship without either of them being fully aware of it.” In the case of Meyer and O’Lone, defense attorney Al Philip Kane argued that true lesbianism was only possible if one of the women had an enlarged clitoris capable of vaginal penetration.
After sitting through long discussions of what they did or didn’t do in bed, Meyer and O’Lone beat the allegations—though only by convincing the officials that they had successfully overcome their sexual desires and now lived together chastely.
Support JSTOR Daily! Join our membership program on Patreon today.
