Prescription for Heterosexuality

Sexual Citizenship in the Cold War Era

Carolyn Herbst Lewis (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

240 Seiten

2013 | New edition
The University of North Carolina Press (Verlag)
978-1-4696-0982-9 (ISBN)

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In this lively and engaging work, Carolyn Lewis explores how medical practitioners, especially family physicians, situated themselves as the guardians of Americans' sexual well-being during the early years of the Cold War. She argues that many doctors viewed their patients' sexual habits as more than an issue of personal health. They believed that a satisfying sexual relationship between heterosexual couples with very specific attributes and boundaries was the foundation of a successful marriage, a fundamental source of happiness in the American family, and a crucial building block of a secure nation. Drawing on hundreds of articles and editorials in medical journals as well as other popular and professional literature, Lewis traces how medical professionals defined and reinforced heterosexuality in the mid-twentieth century, giving certain heterosexual desires and acts a veritable stamp of approval while labeling others as unhealthy or deviant. Lewis links their prescriptive treatment to Cold War anxieties about sexual norms, gender roles, and national security. Doctors of the time, Lewis argues, believed that ""unhealthy"" sexual acts, from same-sex desires to female-dominant acts, could cause personal and marital disaster; in short, says Lewis, they were ""un-American."" |In this lively and engaging work, Carolyn Lewis explores how medical practitioners, especially family physicians, situated themselves as the guardians of Americans' sexual well-being during the early years of the Cold War. She argues that many doctors believed that a satisfying sexual relationship with very specific attributes and boundaries was the foundation of a successful marriage, a fundamental source of happiness in the American family, and a crucial building block of a secure nation. Drawing on hundreds of articles and editorials in medical journals as well as other popular and professional literature, Lewis traces how medical professionals gave certain heterosexual desires and acts a veritable stamp of approval while labeling others as unhealthy or deviant.

Carolyn Herbst Lewis is assistant professor of history at Louisiana State University.

Verlagsort	Chapel Hill
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 235 mm
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Zeitgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Sexualität / Partnerschaft
	Studium ► Querschnittsbereiche ► Geschichte / Ethik der Medizin
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-10	1-4696-0982-7 / 1469609827
ISBN-13	978-1-4696-0982-9 / 9781469609829
Zustand	Neuware