Margot Canaday’s book The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America describes recent history in the rise of policy and law making in relation to homosexuality, and more specifically how it came to be recognized and punished by the state. Central themes of Canaday’s book include immigration, military and welfare at the federal level, as well as an evidence-based perspective of major changes. This essay will describe how explaining the key features of the progression, namely implementation of policies based on a binary understanding of heteronormativity and exceptions, created the driving force behind repression of homosexuality in the twentieth century, but also that in understanding how this occurred the power of heteronormative dominance is reduced.
Brief summary of argument
The argument in relation to immigration describes how officials in the early twentieth century came to define the perverse alien as “a new species of undesirable immigrant” (Canaday, 19). By 1952, however there was explicit recognition and identification of what constituted a homosexual, and this resulted in provisions to restrict their entry and immigration to the United States (Canaday, 214). The parallel argument in relation to the military followed the concerns about and restrictions on sodomy, and how this bolstered the interest in the identification of homosexuality in the Second World War and afterwards (Canaday, p.5). By defining homosexuality a new form was uncovered- lesbianism (Canaday p.174). In this way, the military made progress in identifying a problem beyond sodomy. Welfare presented somewhat of a different issue, given that immigration and the military did not have the same kind of sensitivity as the receipt of public funds without working for them. There was considerable concern that homosexuals were not only sexually immoral, but they were also lazy and gadabouts who did not deserve public support (Canaday, 91). In fact, there was cross-over between welfare and military issues in relation to homosexuality because of the GI bill, and the restriction of many benefits to veterans on the basis of their sexual preference (Canaday, 137).
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Top down?
Canaday (p. 5) states that her argument takes “a state building from the bottom up argument”. By this she is referring to the microlevel of federal behaviors and practices, rather than bottom up reflections in policy of popular values. What Canaday appears to mean is that the actions occurred at the local level, but they still occurred at the cause of systematic and structured rules which were developed at the federal level. To put the issue another way, the bottom up argument does not include the perspectives of people or the public, or commentary on the fear of threat and changing sexual morality, but rather remains focused on the public administration and policy making. The initial problem was determined to be “keeping undesirables out of the country, peopling an army, or distributing resources among the citizenry” (p. 3). The first attempts to deal with the problem took the broadest policy forms, and responded to anything outside of heteronormativity as a form of sexual perversion. To that end it can be seen that there was significant generalization in relation to who and what the problem actually was, but for the most part it remained unidentified except as that which did not match the expectations. Homosexuality and other forms of non-heteronormative existence or behaviors were not identified as to what they were, but rather what they were not, and that grouping was defined as perversion.
The key aspect of binary division
A key aspect of Canaday’s book is the division of the contemporary history of homosexuality in policy into the period before and the period after the Second World War. The Second World War was pivotal, in that it crystallized the defining point, with the specific identification of homosexuality in policy. This was in contrast to the previous approach, where the standard was the exception to heteronormativity, as the state lacked a reliable way of identifying that which was undesirable (Canaday, p. 57). Without the clear understanding of a division between homosexuality and heterosexuality, the perversity remained generalized. The addition of specific identification changed the focus from the failure to observe norms to one of recognition of the existence of homosexuals. This appeared to have the effect of encouraging the formation of community with explicit recognition of homosexuality and other deviations from heteronormativity.
Analysis and conclusion
The state seems to lose much of its power in a deconstruction of the development of power over sexuality and heteronormative standards. When normative domination is seen in its progression over time in relation to the issue, the evidence has the effect of undermining the rationale and justification for these supposed advancements. While heteronormativity is continually identified even today in media and representations of ideals, this has been increasingly under threat as new television and streaming media addresses the reality not just of homosexual experiences, but increasingly of transgender experiences as well. The L Word, Will and Grace and other mainstream American media at the turn of the century provided for a new understanding that homosexuality was not abnormal, it just wasn’t heteronormative. Canaday’s book maybe a decade old, but it helps to interpret what has been happening both in terms of the increasing recognition of the rights of same sex couples as well as normative displays of non-heterosexual couples and romance. This is not a change of policy which was entrenched in society, but rather it is a return to the legal and policy reality which predates the contemporary period. That is not to say that homosexuality, for example, was accepted in that previous period, only that it was not named and therefor not targeted.
- Canaday, Margot. The straight state: Sexuality and citizenship in twentieth-century America. Vol. 64. Princeton University Press, 2009.
