“Their Lack of Masculine Security and Aggression Was Obvious”: Gender and the Medicalization of Inebriety in the United States, 1930–50

Abstract

This article examines the roles of gender and sexuality in the public and private debate over medicalizing inebriety in the United States from 1930-50. During this period various interest groups wrestled with two competing visions of how to frame chronic drinking, which came to be labelled alcoholism following the repeal of Prohibition. Mainstream doctors and psychiatrists agreed that the underlying cause of alcoholism was in the mind of the individual. A number of psychiatrists went further, suggesting a connection between alcoholism and latent homosexuality. In contrast, laypeople identifying themselves as alcoholics advanced a second, competing vision of alcoholism that framed it as a blameless physiological illness. This second understanding of alcoholism, particularly as promoted by members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), emphasized the need for restoring heteronormative gender roles for alcoholics (who were generally men) and their spouses (who were generally women) as an important step to recovery. Indeed, this may help to explain the success of AA and its medicalization model in the US from 1930-50, as both built upon widely held cultural assumptions concerning gender roles and sexuality.