Sexology Dialogs Of The Early 1900s

We can view science through a social constructionist lens, particularly during the start of the 1900s. Looking back, we can see how the social climate influences science. With the 1900s came the start of many movements and changes in the US. Because of this, the science of the day focuses on preserving the social hierarchy, to the benefit of the white heteropatriarchy. Evolutionary theory was used to “prove” the inferiority of African Americans, women, and non-heterosexuals. These same tactics are applicable to early sexuality, as Somerville’s essay “Scientific Racism and the Emergence of the Homosexual Body” shows (17).
Somerville’s essay explores the sexology dialogs of the early 1900s using the racial ideologies of the time. She [Somerville] claims that the tools used to distinguish race were also applied to sexology in three key ways (18). The scientific
discourse on race and sexuality shared three main points: comparative anatomy, anxieties about “mixed” bodies, and the view that “unnatural” desires are perversion. We see these methods in modern society, but they are stereotypes rather than scientific fact.
Many of the stereotypes about modern black culture stem from the studies on comparative anatomy in the early 1900s.
Sexual differences were the basis of the search for proof of biological differences between races (25). While men were examined, it is in the female body that scientists found differences in sex traits. These studies place black women into the category of abnormal, in comparison to the normal of a white woman (26). This method applies to the sexology studies of the day. Scientists looked for physical differences in the genitalia of homosexual women to categorize them as abnormal. Both lesbians and African American women were thought to have “an abnormally prominent clitoris” (27), and their labia were even compared to men’s testicles (28). While black and lesbian women are classified as abnormal or inferior, the straight white woman is upheld as normal and superior. These “facts” are stereotypes in modern times. Modern pop culture perpetuates the stereotype that black women have larger breasts and buttocks than white women. Black and lesbian women are also seen as inherently sexual and
impure.
Somerville’s second point focuses on the eugenics movement and the cultural anxiety about mixed bodies. The existence of mixed races seems to have made people uncomfortable. A person of mixed race was neither white nor black, so wasn’t “pure” and was seen as a threat to “white purity” (30). This “mulatto” figure was used to characterize sexual inverts as neither wholly masculine nor feminine (31). Demonstrating this is the modern stereotype of non-heterosexual people as femme or butch.
The idea of mixed origins also applies directly to the term “homosexual”. The combination in Greek (homos) and Latin (sexual) roots was considered a bastardization to some Eugenicists, among them Ellis and Carpenter. However, the term became so popular that the alternate terms suggested by Carpenter were forgotten (32). The first spectrum of sexuality was taken from the concept of a similar racial continuum by Xavier Mayne, an early advocate of homosexuality (32). Mayne’s continuum of race, and then gender, superseded the ideological hierarchy that placed pure bodies over mixed bodies in the natural order (33).
The cultural anxiety of “mixing” comes into play again with Somerville’s third point, that unnatural desire is seen as perversion. Medicine moved away from biological differences in race and sexuality. A new theory started to base sexuality on object choice. Homosexual and interracial desires were taken up in sexological studies and seen as abnormal or perverse (34). In an all-girl school, there were interracial relationships among the students. Intimacy between girls has been seen in many situations, but what sets this apart is race. While intimacy among women had been seen as normal, race was sexualized, thus making the relationships of these girls sexual in nature (34/35). Perversions, such as homosexuality and interracial relationships, were deemed as such because of the “abnormal sexual object choice” (37). This line of thinking sets apart the sexual relationship between a black man and white woman. The stereotype of the “black rapist” is rampant in current culture. While interracial relationships are more accepted today, many people still view homosexuality as perverse or deviant.
Somerville questioned the growth of sexology through a lens that had only been briefly explored by Ellis. She argues that the emergence of racial ideology came hand in hand with models of sexuality. She showed three parallels between racial ideology and sexology to demonstrate her conclusion. These parallels are the basis of the representation we see in popular culture today in both racial and sexual minorities, as shown in my interpretations of Somerville’s work.