No Secret Anymore: Lesbian Representations in Cold War America

Abstract

Teaching “The History of Sexuality and Sex Roles in the U.S.” is never boring. For some of my students at Lehman College in Bronx, New York, initially the topic is titillating; as we explore the social constructions of gender and sexuality, however, it becomes a challenging way to think about U.S. history. We investigate how and when American ideals of freedom, democracy, and justice intertwine with “acceptable” erotic expressions. We also question how and why popular representations of normative and nonnormative sexualities are created, promulgated, suppressed, and celebrated. To emphasize the importance of media in creating American attitudes about sexuality, this lesson plan utilizes visual examples of popular images of lesbians in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Both novels and filmic representations of lesbians during this period provide a window onto contemporary attitudes toward and perceptions of lesbians and also function as “chronicles of resistance” for “challenging … fi xed systems of gender and sexual identity” (1).