LHMP #492 Black 1994 Perverting the Diagnosis

This is an overview of the rise of sexological theories about female homosexuality. The field consistently made connections between homosexuality and neurosis in women, as well as connecting the former with “inversion” or masculinity. Different part of the field gave different weight to ideas of genetic versus behavioral causes. There were also systematic ways in which the sexological approach to homosexuality differed for men and women. But the overall concept pressured women with homoerotic feelings to consider themselves mentally—and perhaps physically—ill.

Much of the theory came out of the idea of “neurasthenia”—an idea that ills in one part of the body could produce effects in a different part. Thus “unnatural” exertions of the mind (i.e., women thinking too much) or reproductive system (i.e., non-normative sex including masturbation or lesbianism) could cause chronic physical ailments of all sorts, and conversely, that all manner of physical ailments could be traced back to objectionable mental or sexual activities.

This combined with eugenicist theories that some women had a genetic predisposition to “sexual inversion,” which encompassed both female masculinity and homosexuality. To varying degrees, this genetic predisposition was thought to produce masculine attributes or even create a “third sex” that was no longer female but not fully male. In any degree, it was considered to predispose the woman to homosexuality.

Such was the acceptance of these theories within the field that diagnosis ignored possible non-biological factors. The genetic aspect led sexologists to believe they were arguing for tolerance of a condition that the woman couldn’t help, but in practice, homosexuality was depicted as a dangerous “disease” that could, at best, be suppressed in the individual. The only cure and only moral path was complete abstinence.

Due to this connection being made between lesbianism and mental illness, there was a general social shift to suspicion of any emotional relationships between women that were viewed as symptomatic of lesbian potential. And it was considered impossible for lesbian relationships to be happy and successful, even if deriving from an inherited predisposition. (For that matter, any behavior that deviated from the norm could be classified as “neurotic.”)

These theories of lesbianism as mental illness driven by genetic predisposition, developed by male professionals, based on case studies of women who had sought treatment for unrelated reasons, were then promulgated as fact. Any apparent contradictions could be explained away due to the inherent complexity and ambiguity of the theories.

(Male) sexologists such as Krafft-Ebing, Ellis, and Hirschfeld, while arguing for tolerance and compassion for male homosexuals, exhibited a distinct hostility toward lesbians and saw them as imitating men. This theoretical framework created a stereotype of the lesbian that included male-coded personality traits, an interest in active sports, a preference for male-coded hairstyles and clothing, and which fastened on the old myth of clitoral enlargement as either a cause or consequence of sex between women. Even when specific case studies of their patients contradicted this stereotype, sexologists dismissed their own recorded observations and searched for evidence of “neurasthenia” or “morbid” behavior.

Freudian theories of sexuality developed out of the field of sexology, further elaborating them based on the supposed dynamics of parental-object attachment. As with his predecessors, he could not work past the assumption that women’s resistance to gender-based social repression was itself a psychological “problem” to be cured. Thus, one patient’s “masculine” attributes and her desire for women was connected in his diagnosis with her feminism and “rebell[ion] against the lot of women in general.” The Freudian position that lesbianism was a toxic and “irreversible” abnormality persisted from the 1930s to the 1970s. Contrary evidence made no difference, as when one client of a prominent Freudian psychologist resolved her depression and suicidal thoughts only after accepting and embracing her lesbianism, but was dismissed with “but she’s still a lesbian.”

The basic Freudian position was that lesbianism was driven by envy of the penis (and what it stood for) leading to appropriation of masculinity to the extent possible, especially in terms of sexual object. Thus, went the theory, even if a lesbian achieved a successful relationship with a woman, she would be unhappy because her entire nature stemmed from an unaddressed (and unaddressable) frustration).

Some historians posit that by the early 1920s, lesbians were internalizing the message that not only were their sex lives dangerous and perverse, but their underlying love of women was equally perverse even if never acted on sexually. Interviews with women in this era give evidence of pervasive internalized homophobia that was not generally prevalent in society in earlier decades. The iconic example of this is Radclyffe Hall’s fictional alter ego in The Well of Loneliness. This era saw the rise of greater covertness and secrecy about lesbian relationships, even by those who had not succumbed to negative views of themselves. This, combined with socio-economic patterns regarding public socializing, contributed to the illusion that lesbians were less common than male homosexuals, and made lesbianism less easily studied (and thus, less studied).

[Note: One aspect of the sexological theories that is given little consideration in this article, but is discussed in other articles, is femme invisibility.]