The Specter of Female Masculinity: How Women Shaped the Ex-gay Movement in the 1970s and 1980s

Abstract

Starting in the 1970s, the “ex-gay movement,” a loose collection of conservative Christian counselors and therapists, experienced sizable growth in the United States. Importantly, women played a prominent role in the expansion of the ex-gay movement in the ensuing decades, both as counselors and as counselees. This article highlights the tension that arose between the patriarchal gender norms and the role women counselors played in the ex-gay movement. When read “along the grain,” ex-gay texts demonstrate the production of a gendered hierarchy that not only valued “female femininity” over “female masculinity” but also reified patriarchal authority in the US. Female pastoral counselors, such as Leanne Payne and Elizabeth Moberly, advocated for the conservative gendered vision of the religious right. But as women, these counselors—and their books—could not transcend the patriarchal order of the religiously conservative ex-gay movement.