‘Masculinity Crisis’ – How National Security Weaponized Homosexuality to Protect the Rigid Image of “Real” Masculinity

The new heightened sense of National Security during the Cold War kept the nation under a watchful eye, and this watchfulness was also being done within the U.S. government. With fears of Russia’s nuclear power and the Soviet Union’s political power taking over nations, this fear translated into the government surveilling their people of having communist ties within their political system and removing them from the government, also known as the Red Scare. However, during this time of surveillance, a new target was added to the U.S. government’s targeting list: LGBTQ+ people, also known as the Lavender Scare. This target resulted in “thousands of suspected homosexuals [being] investigated, interrogated, and dismissed by government officials and private employers” (Friedman 1105). 

Friedman’s article discusses that some of the historical evidence as to why the Red and Lavender Scare were intertwined might stem from Alfred Kinsey’s 1948 controversial publication Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Friedman 1106). This study sparked a conversation on male sexuality and put masculinity on a spectrum. This made men who did not fit the box of embodying a real man targeted as deviant and a threat to society (Friedman 1109). Because of this label of deviance, the connection between the Red and Lavender Scare seemed to be justified in its comparison—“including moral corruption, psychological immaturity, and an ability to ‘pass’ undetected among ordinary Americans” (Friedman 1106). 

This conversation of placing masculinity on a scale was dangerous during the second Red Scare period because it resulted in measuring masculinity and marking someone as deviant if they didn’t embody the attributes “real” man characteristics. McCarthy aided in emphasizing this image of “ popular manhood” during his campaign for senator and was in full “support of the Lavender Scare,”; even helping to reinforce that true masculinity asserted political dominance (Friedman 1109). However, McCarthy’s staunch commitment to the rigid idea of a “masculine identity” became his undoing when he was unable “to sustain [this] image” (Friedman 1110). The ease of smearing McCarthy’s credibility shows a lot about what was really deemed important in the name of National Security. How was a man who was for the persecution of both these groups now the enemy? Perhaps a deeper question is whether the focus on these two groups was to distract from the fact that the National Security State was fabricating an American enemy. The connection between being a communist and being homosexual is puzzling. One group is an anti-democratic political system, and the other is a sexual orientation. So, why are they categorized as the same level of threat to the U.S. government (why they were even considered a threat is a whole other conversation)? One reason for the comparison to communist and homosexual individuals Friedman discovered was how it was believed “members of both groups lacked the masculine autonomy that enabled loyalty to the nation” (Friedman 1106). 

Throughout Friedman’s reading, loyalty and trust were commonly associated with who were the real political leaders within the government. There are many ways leaders are expected to embody these qualities, but why is masculinity a way to measure one’s loyalty and trust in the government? This underlying factor makes the National Security States’ serious effort to persecute these two groups inconceivable and disgraceful. The National Security State was claiming to fight a domestic enemy, but it seemed like they were trying to create an enemy for the American people to fear. 

Sexual innuendos are still tactics used to smear political campaigns and a politician’s credibility. It seems that sexual innuendos have evolved from targeting someone’s sexuality to becoming an uncovering scheme of sexual activity and commentary. The Friedman article was written just after Bill Clinton’s presidency, making his sexual scandal one of the most recent cases of political sexual innuendos as of 2005. However, sexual innuendos are still very much tied to the political world in recent years. The first example that comes to mind is the sexual comments made during the 2016 political campaign between Mark Rubio and Trump. On the campaign trail, Rubio first commented on Trump’s hands, implying, “You know what they say about men with small hands–you can’t trust them.” Rather than letting this inappropriate comment stay one-sided, Trump engaged with Rubio’s comments during both his campaign trail and the televised Republican debate. Trump felt it was necessary to combat Rubio’s comment during the debate and said, “If they are small, something else must be small,” and added, “I guarantee you there is no problem–I guarantee you.” This moment has become one of the most blatant sexual innuendos in modern U.S. political debates. What makes this situation more alarming is the fact that there was no hiding these comments. No one needed to uncover what was said because there was confidence that what would be said would not sound distasteful but play into the remarks often associated with male discussion. After analyzing the prominence of maintaining an image of masculinity in Friedman’s article, it is obvious that there is still an importance placed on being perceived as a “true man” in today’s political world (and the world in general).

Outside Reference:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/history-donald-trump-small-hands-insult/story?id=37395515