A "real boy" and not a sissy: gender, childhood, and masculinity, 1890-1940

Journal of Social History, Summer, 2004 by Julia Grant

Initially, many scientists targeted adolescence as the period of life during which "normal" or "abnormal" sexualities developed, drawing on earlier views of adolescence as the period of life during which youthful passions could lead boys and girls astray. G. Stanley Hall both elaborated upon and transformed these understandings in his massive Adolescence, published in 1904, by linking the biological processes of puberty with psychological changes. (47) The recently discovered term heterosexuality served to explain how biological impulses got transformed into socially appropriate behavior, but by virtue of its antithesis--homosexuality--it also served to explain what could go wrong. (48) In 1926, for instance, mental hygienist Frankwood Williams warned an audience that "everything in the future depends upon" the "establishment of hetero-sexuality," in adolescence. Heterosexuality, he informed his audience "does not just happen; it is a development and growth that is nourished and contained by what it feeds upon." (49) William McKeever's Training the Boy [1921] proposed that human instincts develop at different times; not until the age of thirteen to fifteen did the boy "respond to the highly stimulating promptings of his inner sex nature." (50) In focusing on adolescence as the pivotal period in the establishment of heterosexuality, these writers had a social agenda. They contended that heterosexuality was imperiled by the tendency to segregate boys from girls during the critical period of adolescence. (51) If society insisted on preventing young people from normal youthful encounters with the opposite sex, the tragic results would end up in the psychiatrist's office. Prudery, the double standard, and misplaced sex antagonism all contributed to the social disease of homosexuality. Appropriate sex education and a wholesome attitude toward the opposite sex could help alleviate the modern homosexual trend. Adjustment to one's proper sex role as an adult was premised, then, not so much on the psychodynamics of family life as on the existence of social practices conducive to heterosexuality.

Increasingly, however, Freudian psychology was influencing how scholars thought about early childhood and the development of sexuality and masculine and feminine characteristics. In fact, Freudian ideas were grafted onto earlier ideas about the gender-neutrality (although Freud wouldn't have thought of it this way) of early childhood. Psychologist Leta Hollingworth claimed that young children were not particularly heterosexual, while reiterating the emerging view that childhood was not a sex-less time: "Previous to the onset of puberty, the child is not definitely heterosexual. Its sex life has been vague but incipient. Its longings for human contacts have been vague and unlocalized; its affections attachable to persons of either sex somewhat equally" [1928] (52) Sex educator Frances Strain argued that prior to adolescence children were naturally "homosexual, which is merely saying that the bond is strongest between those of the same sex." Because young children were essentially bisexual, the transition period to heterosexuality was extremely "unstable" and "fluctuating," with many opportunities for bringing about "prolonged homosexuality" [1934] (53) For some writers, then, cross-sex identification was a prelude rather than an obstacle to the development of heterosexuality. For others, the natural stage of bisexuality in young children threatened to produce full-blown homosexuality if not carefully handled. In both cases, however, the potential for the development of adult homosexuality was obvious.