Coming out under fire : the history of gay men and women in World War Two

by Allan Bérubé

Paper Book, 1990

LCC

D769 .B46

Status

Available

Call number

D769 .B46

Publication

New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Plume, c1990

Description

During World War II, as the United States called on its citizens to serve in unprecedented numbers, the presence of gay Americans in the armed forces increasingly conflicted with the expanding antihomosexual policies and procedures of the military. In Coming Out Under Fire, Allan Berube examines in depth and detail these social and political confrontation--not as a story of how the military victimized homosexuals, but as a story of how a dynamic power relationship developed between gay citizens and their government, transforming them both. Drawing on GIs' wartime letters, extensive interviews with gay veterans, and declassified military documents, Berube thoughtfully constructs a startling history of the two wars gay military men and women fough--one for America and another as homosexuals within the military. Berube's book, the inspiration for the 1995 Peabody Award-winning documentary film of the same name, has become a classic since it was published in 1990, just three years prior to the controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which has continued to serve as an uneasy compromise between gays and the military. With a new foreword by historians John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, this book remains a valuable contribution to the history of World War II, as well as to the ongoing debate regarding the role of gays in the U.S. military.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member aulsmith
This book is exhaustively thorough, which is good in a history book exploring new territory, especially when access to the participants is disappearing as they age and die. However, it makes for a choppy, sometimes repetitive read. If you want the details, read the book. If you just want the
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overall gist, see the movie instead.
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LibraryThing member mdobe
Review by Elaine Taylor May points out that Berube's is a pioneering work in the social history of gays in World War II. He finds that the experience of WWII was both that of increased surveillance and of a greater solidarity as a gay subculture developed in the military during wartime. In a time
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when the military needed manpower, the services were ambivalent about what to do about gays in the military. As military's psychiatrists sought to discover the gay personality type, new ways of dealing with gay servicemen included the "queer stockade" and "blue discharges" (less than honorable discharge) as well as rehabilitation for return to duty. A minority of these psychiatrists did not feel that homosexuality affected battlefield performance. The fact that the military did not allow women in combat zones meant that those who entertained the troops returned to the age old convention of men playing the parts of women. Developing a drag performance style designated as "camping," the gay servicemen claimed their own cultural space. Berube also recounts the battlefield performance of gay men, which included many acts of heroism. The period of tolerance in the immediate post-war period quickly yielded to homophobic witch hunts in the cold war.

Among the more interesting sections of this book is the one that deals with medicine's treatment of homosexuality. In "Pioneer Experts: Psychiatrists Discover the Gay GI," he describes the research undertaken by military psychiatrists to better diagnose homosexuality in men. They began by working on tests that determined if a serviceman had a gag reflex, which they assumed disappeared in gay men who had performed frequent oral sex on other men. They moved on to studies which categorized the personality characteristics of gay men -- effeminacy, superiority and fear. One main objective of this work was to weed out true homosexuals from straight men who used homosexuality as an excuse to get out of the military. Though this was not as common as it would be later in Vietnam, malingering was still seen as a problem by military officers. Berube's account also explains how the compassion of many psychiatrists led them to purposefully "misdiagnose" the patient, rather than put "homosexual" on the medical record they made up other diagnoses like "psychoneurosis" to protect the patient. In one of the ironies of history, the first challenge to the military's anti-gay policies was launched by a group of psychiatrists reporting to LTC Lewis H. Loeser at the 36th station hospital in Devonshire, UK. Their research, documented by 450 case histories argued that homosexuality did not make men less capable soldiers and urged the Army to abandon discrimination against homosexuals in the military.
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LibraryThing member lydia1879
I've been researching a historical fiction novel about queer men and women in WWII for some time now, and from the preface, I knew this is the book I was looking for.

Incredibly broad but detailed in its scope, Berube delivers such a meaningful social history. At times, while reading, I felt his
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voice peeking through the writing, above the academic rigour, above the research to make a point all his own. Some would criticise this, but I liked it because it demonstrated to me how much this book meant to him.

What made this book stand out from the others was its consistent use of first person accounts and interviews. Berube constantly brought LGBTIQA people to the forefront of his book, quoted them and their life stories. I think this really added depth and power to the queer experience and gave his book credibility in a way that facts could not.

You read the text and are constantly reminded that someone, many people lived this experience. Queer people fought in a war only to find that their own military, their own country, did not consider them people, but sexual psychopaths, deviants and perverts.

And yet we persevered, says Berube, with an all-knowing wink the audience. And yet we survived.

The author gives us an alternate history, reveals how queer people had an affect on popular culture, how we transformed the military, how the military's oppressive policies only united us, literally and figuratively, to fight back, to write ourselves into history.

This book is so nuanced without being complicated.

It is compassionate. It is full of spirit.

It is a triumph.
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LibraryThing member librisissimo
I found it very interesting for the historical and personal information.
My memory for the details is not great this long after reading it, but I was persuaded, as the author intended, that more respect should have been given to those who served honorably and were treated badly; and that the primary
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effect of gathering up the gay troops to discharge them had the unintended consequence of letting them know how large a group they were.
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Awards

Lambda Literary Award (Winner — 1990)
Stonewall Book Award (Finalist — Non-Fiction — 1991)

Language

Original publication date

1990

Physical description

xiii, 377 p.; 21 inches

ISBN

0452265983 / 9780452265981

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