By Sherrie A. Inness
Electroshock. Hysterectomy. Lobotomy. those are just 3 of the numerous "cures" to which lesbians were subjected during this century. How does a society advance this sort of profound aversion to a selected minority? In what methods do photos within the renowned media perpetuate cultural stereotypes approximately lesbians, and to what quantity have lesbians been capable of subvert and revise these pictures? This e-book addresses those and different questions via studying how lesbianism has been represented in American pop culture within the 20th century and the way conflicting ideologies have formed lesbian reviews and id.
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Extra resources for The lesbian menace: ideology, identity, and the representation of lesbian life
Sample text
In this way, a semiotics of lesbianism is created in which the sign "lesbian" functions only if a woman is defined by masculine attire. Thus, Hall helped construct an image of the lesbian that could be contextualized within popular heterosexual ideology. In 1886, Krafft-Ebing wrote, "Uranism may nearly always be suspected in females wearing their hair short, or who dress in the fashion of men" (398); in this later period, Hall simply Page 22 affirmed the validity of Krafft-Ebing's description. It would have been much more frightening to the heterosexual reader if Stephen Gordon had defied contextualization by not wearing masculine clothing.
As Faderman states, some people feared that the suppression of a woman's secondary sexual characteristics would inevitably lead to lesbianism (Surpassing 339). Furthermore, with the rage for flapper fashions, a group of women did emerge whose very similarity suggested an understanding among women about which men could only wonder.
For example, in 1934, Henry Gerber called The Well "ideal anti-homosexual propaganda" (qtd. in Katz 405). Some gays disliked the novel's stereotyped lesbians, feeling that the book was what Violet Trefusis called a "loathsome example" (qtd. in Faderman, Surpassing 322). Many lesbians feared that heterosexuals would understand Stephen Gordon as confirming rather than challenging the lesbian's isolation from "normal" society. Gays and lesbians perceived The Well as portraying a lesbian who reinforced heterosexual assumptions about the mannish character of the lesbian.