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The sexual psychopath: Masculinity, gender variance, and paranoia in the twentieth century
Brouillette, Christen H.
Brouillette, Christen H.
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t24039_Brouillette.pdf
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2024-07
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This thesis investigates the creation of the sexual psychopath, its very specific definition, and the laws which were created to restrain them. Newspaper articles and primary and secondary sources regarding the evolution of psychology, childhood, masculinity, and sexuality were used, as well as crime statistics from the 1930s to form and support the argument. The sexual psychopath included homosexuals, pedophiles, and elderly men who attacked young women but excluded men of color and adult men who attacked adult women. This normalized sex crimes committed against women and targeted homosexuals under the guise of protecting women. Despite public outcry to protect children from sex criminals in the mid-1930s, court officials underutilized sexual psychopath laws and even sought to narrow the definition of statutory rape. This made it clear that despite legislators claiming to have children’s best interest at heart, the laws created to protect them were instead used to target ‘aberrant’ populations such as homosexuals and punish them. This thesis also examines the rhetoric used to demonize homosexuals and finds that since the panic of the 1930s, very little has changed. This is explored through the founding of the Save Our Children organization and Anita Bryant’s efforts to roll back protections for homosexuals in the late 1970. Therefore, I suggest that fears about the sexual psychopath stemmed from cultural anxieties about fluctuating definitions of masculinity and homosexuality. These groups identified children as a population that needed protection from the sexual psychopath and limited their definitions of sexual psychopath to particular groups, specifically single and gay men. This effort to stabilize healthy expressions of masculinity and assuage those fears ended up stunting sexual expression and contributing to socialized homophobia and fear of single, gay men, fears that continue into the present day.
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Thesis (M.A.)-- Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of History
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Wichita State University
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© Copyright 2024 by Christen H. Brouillette
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