C 2005)

Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 34, No. 2, April 2005, pp. 255263 (

DOI: 10.1007/s10508-005-1802-1

Book Reviews
Beyond Sexuality. By Tim Dean. University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, Illinois, 2000, 304 pp. $46.00 (cloth),
$18.00 (paper).

that are sometimes levelled at Lacan. With this intention,

the suggestive Lacanian sound bite there is no sexual
relation is brought into play, not only to illustrate the nonsensical logic of an assumption of natural heterosexuality,
but also to demonstrate Lacanian insight into the failure
of sexual relationality per se, independent of gender.
Another shibboleth to be dispensed with is the politically
problematic phallus, the target of much feminist criticism
of Lacans opus. Dean insists that the concept of the
object a, elaborated in Lacans late theorization, provides
a gender-neutral signifier of desire that renders the phallus
obsolete. Since, according to Lacan, the object a can
mobilize desire in the gaze, the voice, the phoneme, the
lips, the rim of the anus and the slit formed by the eyelids
(p. 194), or equally can take the form of something
done (p. 196), sexual difference and the privileged act
of intercourse are effectively decentred and relativized
by the multivalent movements of fantasy. This allows for
an understanding of desire as something independent of
gender, and that may come to rest on any one or many
of an infinite variety of objects, body parts, utterances, or
indeed acts. For Dean, then, psychoanalytic thought leads
us to the understanding that there is no privileged sexual
activity or erotic narrative to which we should all aspire,
no viable sexual norm for everybody, because desires
origins are multiple and its ambition no more specific
than satisfaction (p. 196).
Deans strategy occupies innovative ground in sexuality studies, by its refusal to endorse either campaign on
the battlefield between social constructionism and essentialism. Perhaps the best example of a sibling-in-arms
in this war would be Fausto-Sterling (2000). Similarly,
it eschews straightforward allegiance to Lacanian orthodoxy and to Foucauldian critiques of sexual science, with
the eminently queer aim of confounding both (p. 4).
The study highlights successfully what is most valuable
about the social constructionist arguments of Foucault
and Butler, while also not being afraid to critique their
shortcomings. Dean is particularly insightful in showing up those instances where Butler has misconstrued
Lacan. It is convincingly argued, for example, that by
conceptualizing sexual difference only at the level of the
imaginary, Butlers theorization fails to take into account
the dimension of the real. Only psychoanalysis, claims
Dean, can offer a non-normative account of the workings

Reviewed by Lisa Downing, D.Phil. (Oxon.)1

In this original and timely book, Dean attempts the

counterintuitive task of demonstrating the compatibility
between Lacanian psychoanalysis and queer theory. He
claims thatfar from being a conservative discourse
which schematizes, diagnoses, and regulates normal
and perverse desirepsychoanalysis is a queer theory
in its own right (p. 265). A rigorous re-reading of
the works of Lacan, the French Freud, is prescribed
in order to help us reconceptualize sexuality, not only
outside of heteronormativity, but also outside the realm
of individuals (p. 17). It is Deans hope that, by so
doing, we might come to an understanding of the radical
impersonality of desire (p. 17).
This is not the only recent title to attempt the
tricky rapprochement between psychoanalysis and some
form of queer politics. Domenici and Lessers (1995)
volume, Disorienting Sexuality, tackles the normalizing
bias of much psychoanalytic discourse on sexuality,
from the points of view of a number of gay, lesbian,
and heterosexual practicing analysts. Homosexuality and
Psychoanalysis, a volume also co-edited by Dean (Dean
& Lane, 2001), argues in favor of the forgotten radicalism
of the foundational texts of psychoanalysis; a radicalism
that is often elided by the conservatism inherent in certain
institutionalized forms of psychoanalysis. In both the
edited volume and especially in Beyond Sexuality, Dean is
careful to de-couple, with rigorous exactitude, the radical
potential of Lacans writing (he admits that Lacans
corpus contains no ready-formed alternative politics of
sexuality) from the muddying Anglo-American reception
of Lacans work on the one hand, and from the politics in
which Lacans adherents are embroiled, on the other.
One of Deans most urgent tasks is to undermine
the criticisms of heteronormativity and phallocentrism

1 School

of Modern Languages, Queen Mary, University of London,

Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, England; e-mail: l.m.downing@
qmul.ac.uk.

255
C 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.
0004-0002/05/0400-0255/0

256
of desire, as only psychoanalysis engages in rigorous
conceptualization of the unconscious and fantasy.
This is a crucial tenet of Deans argument. He
asserts that without the unconscious, queer sexualities
themselves become normalizing . . . insofar as sexuality
becomes wedded to identity (p. 6). Thinking sexuality
entirely outside of identity is a challenging prospect.
Indeed, in Deans own account, an unmistakeable tension
persists between, on the one hand, the repeated advocacy
of a depersonalization of sexuality, and, on the other, his
tendency to rethink the concept of sexuality by reference
primarily to examples of specifically gay male behaviors
and fantasies. One might argue that this specificity serves
merely to provide focussed illustrations of the workings
of desire according to the paradigm he is attempting to
convey. For example, it is suggested that the anonymity
that characterizes certain types of gay sexual behavior
(epitomized by the practice of fucking using a gloryhole
(p. 274) may provide the best illustration of the depersonalization of sexuality. Yet the ghost of identity politics is
hard to exorcise, as gay male sexuality returns time and
again as a motif of Deans textual performance. Identity
is even used as a criterion for being able to demystify
certain sexual commonplaces. This is seen in a joke made
apropos of primary anal eroticism: perhaps it takes a
gay man to observe that the phallus is simply a turd in
disguise (p. 266). Despite the flippancy and humor of
the comment, it tellingly reveals the extent to which the
idea of sexual identityin this case gay identitypersists
for Dean. Its persistence is the element which, to some
extent, is disavowed in his account.
Perhaps the most striking example of the imbalance
between the books stated agenda of depersonalizing
sex and the trace of Deans commitment to a subjective
identity position is found in his central case study, that
of the cult of seropositive chic among gay males. We
are reminded of Foucaults argument that the ubiquitous
deployment of sexuality, and our commitment to the idea
of sexuality as the cornerstone of our ontological identity,
have made us willing to exchange life for sex. AIDS,
according to Dean, has literalized this problematic. The
discussion of AIDS allows for a thoughtful account of the
place of the psychoanalytic concept of the death drive in
the field of desire. Given the glamor of HIV-positive
status in the discourses of certain gay subculturesa
status that has come to mark the final element in a
complete gay identityAIDS becomes a phenomenon in
which we see crystallized the unpalatable idea that death
holds an erotic lure (p. 145). However, the voluntary
acquisition of HIV status among gay males is not the
onlyor even the most direct and unmediatedexample
one could find of the death drive at work in erotic life.

Book Reviews
A more literal dramatization of this premise might be
those sexual practices which directly take death as their
object, such as erotic asphyxiation or the fantasiesand
in some cases enactmentsof consensual erotic murder
pacts that are the speciality of certain online chatroom communities (see Downing, 2004). These do not
feature in Deans analysis. My point is not that Deans
example is necessarily less effective than these examples
indeed, it is obviously carefully chosen and judiciously
used in order to make a very specific political claim about
the cultural disavowal of AIDS. However, his choice of
promiscuous, penetrative gay male sexuality as the sole
example of the workings of the death drive in sexual life
demonstrates a consistency of interest that looks strikingly
similar to a focus on identity rather than an exploration
of desubjectivization.
Where Dean does draw on other sexual modalities,
it is with particular polemical intent. Freuds extreme
examples of perversions involving the mental work of
idealization of the instinctlicking excrement and sex
with the deadare cited towards the end of the book.
Dean immediately recasts these configurations of desire
as queer strategies in so far as they (struggle) against the
affect-laden social norms regulating society (p. 268). So
far, so good. However, these cases are not marshalled
as examples in themselves of the diversity of desires
devices; rather, they become rhetorical pawns in the
service of Deans overarching aim, that of: arguing for
a more expansive sense of gayness (p. 278). While
ostensibly wishing to trouble the border between the
sexual and the non-sexual (p. 270) and to shift beyond
sexuality as the primary register in which we make sense
of ourselves (p. 88), Dean nonetheless continues to think
in terms of new modes of relationality only in order to
modify existing configurations of gay culture (p. 172).
This stated aim suggests overwhelmingly the persistence
of a model of identity based on sexual preference that
belongs more to the old order of taxonomies critiqued
by Foucault than to a new one that may lie beyond
sexuality.
The paradox at the heart of this fascinating book is
that its considerable commitment to gay politicsin the
broadest sense of the termis the driving rhetorical force
that lends the writers voice its intense passion, character,
and conviction. However, this is a jarring element in
a work that repetitively states its commitment to the
depersonalization of desire, to a beyond of sexuality
that must also, per se, involve a beyond of subjectivity.
The apparent irreconcilability of the two should not be
seen as a flaw in Deans achievement, so much as an
illustration of the ambition of his project. To produce
any discourse about sexualityeven with the intention of

Book Reviews
radically destabilizing existing discursive assumptionsis
to journey through and between territories whose borders
have for so long been drawn on the maps of our cultural
consciousness that even a skilled cartographer cannot
easily erase or shift them by dint of rhetorical and logical
effort. Dean has, however, made an admirable attempt
with a memorable book that no serious theorist of the
contemporary sexual field can afford to ignore.

REFERENCES
Dean, T., & Lane, C. (Eds.). (2001). Homosexuality and psychoanalysis.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Domenici, T., & Lesser R. (Eds.). (1995). Disorienting sexuality: Psychoanalytic reappraisals of sexual identities. New York: Houghton
Mifflin.
Downing, L. (2004). On the limits of sexual ethics: The phenomenology
of autassassinophilia. Sexuality and Culture, 8, 317.
Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). Sexing the body: Gender politics and the
construction of sexuality. New York: Basic Books.
DOI: 10.1007/s10508-005-1803-0
The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and
Lesbians in the Federal Government. By David K. Johnson.

University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2004, 277 pp.,

$30.00.
Reviewed by Aaron L. Bachhofer, M.A.2

Historians have explored the 1950s with abandon, rich

as the decade was with Cold War political intrigues
both at home and abroad. Scholars frequently place
the Second Red Scares investigations and purges under
the murky heading of McCarthyism, a characterization
that marginalizes its non-Communist victims. Johnson
addresses this deficiency in The Lavender Scare, a detailed
account of the persecution of gays and lesbians by the
federal government after 1950. Building on the fine work
of other historians (DEmilio, 1998; Theoharis, 2001), and
using recently declassified documents, Johnson describes
how homosexual security risks posed as great a threat
as communists in the public mind. Johnson argues that the
Lavender Scare (so named due to the association of homosexuality and the color Lavender) actually developed
in conjunction with McCarthys anticommunist crusade,
was deeply rooted in the post-World War II crisis of
masculinity, and continued long after McCarthys demise.
Further, Johnson outlines the impressive grass roots
organizational response to their removal by persecuted
homosexuals in Washington, D.C., a response that formed
2 Department

of History, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater,

Oklahoma 74078-3054; e-mail: ajbach@attg.net.

257
the foundation of the modern homosexual civil rights
movement.
In the first part of his book, Johnson describes the
climate of fear that hovered over Washington during the
1950s. Throughout 1950, Joseph McCarthy charged that
the federal government was crawling with communists
and that they occupied sensitive positions. Based on misconstrued intelligence information, McCarthy believed
that all communists shared some sort of mental or
physical defect that rendered them susceptible to the
doctrine, an argument often applied to homosexuals and
homosexuality as well. The theory went that homosexuals,
like communists, recruited the maladjusted and weak for
membership, those who would be susceptible to coercion
and blackmail. Worse, the homosexuals invisibilityquite
necessary for employment and even physical safety in the
1950smade them a more ominous threat.
As the most visible federal agency with international ties, the State Department received the brunt
of McCarthys wrath. When Secretary of State Dean
Acheson testified before Congress on February 28, 1950,
concerning the departments annual budget, the headlines
from McCarthys charges brought plenty of press and
a combative attitude on the part of Republican senators like Styles Bridges. When questioned about 102
security risks recently removed from the Department,
Deputy Undersecretary John Peurifoy admitted that 91
were homosexuals. That unfortunate admission validated
McCarthys charges and generated a huge following for
him. A dual threatcommunist and homosexualnow
seemed to plague the capital. For Johnson, this was
partisan politics at its worst. Frustrated Republicans, 18
years removed from the White House, used McCarthy as
a tool to lash out at the New Deal. They single-handedly
redirected the search from communists sympathizers
alone to the broader category of security risks.
This would have profound impacts on the flourishing
homosexual subculture in the capital. The New Deal
created thousands of jobs, both clerical and specialized,
for the many energetic men and women that moved to
Washington after 1932, and the capitals total population
doubled to almost 1.4 million between 1930 and 1950.
The gradual feminization in clerical fields and the neutral
civil service exams made government jobs desirable and
attainable for gay men and women prior to the 1950s,
and Lafayette Park and a number of bars, restaurants, and
other cultural institutions provided another draw for gays
and lesbians to move to Washington. This rich and often
bawdy social scene remained free from serious reprisal for
some time according to Johnson, but after the Peurifoy
revelation in 1950 the visibility of the homosexual
subculture caught the eye of Congressmen like Joseph

258
McCarthy, Styles Bridges, Kenneth Wherry, and others.
The post-war attempts to clean up Lafayette Park and other
cruising haunts became enforcement mechanisms during
the Lavender Scarethe motivation was no longer to protect children or save gullible men and women from moral
decay. Now, the very survival of the nation depended
upon filtering homosexuals out of the government, and
shedding light on their home and socialization patterns
became an accepted part of that process.
The second part of The Lavender Scare outlines the
methodology used to terrorize homosexuals. The State
Department was unlike other cabinet posts in that it
enjoyed no formal base of support according to Johnson,
and it was widely viewed as a bastion of the intellectual, elitist Eastern establishment that exercised too
much control over foreign policy. Once the charges of
rampant homosexuality emerged, the age-old equation
of homosexuality with weakness and gender inversion
came into play. The press derisively referred to the
diplomatic corps as cookie pushers in striped pants,
an image manifested in the persona of Sumner Welles,
undersecretary of State and trusted adviser to President
Roosevelt and rumored to have had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a train porter. In response to public
pressure, the State Department created an internal security
system designed to ferret out homosexuals and prevent
their entrance into government service. Applicants were
screened, checked against lists of known or suspected
perverts, interviewed, interrogated, and spied upon.
Homosexuals were given unprecedented attention, equal
to or surpassing that for Communists and the politically
disloyal, and of the 1000 or so people removed from the
State Department during the 1950s and 1960s, most were
homosexual.
As with most government scandals, the Lavender
Scare soon spilled out from the State Department and infected other bureaus. Republican Congressmen demanded
that the Civil Service Commission review applications
and personnel records for possible security risks. Republican Senator Kenneth Wherry expanded the scare by
issuing subpoenas to local police in hopes of uncovering
embarrassing facts about government employees. Once
Washington, D.C. police vice lieutenant Roy Blick testified before Congress that over 5000 homosexuals lived in
the capital, and almost 4000 worked for the government,
no agency was above suspicion. That Blicks figures were
either grossly inflated or groundless remained irrelevant
to enemies of the New Deal, who painted Washington
as a haven for prostitutes, gamblers, Communists, drug
dealers, fairies and Fair Dealers.
By the spring of 1950, pubic interest in the question
of homosexuals in government forced many Democrats

Book Reviews
to address the issue as well. Senator Clyde Hooey
investigated the issue, and after months of convoluted
and contradictory evidence hearings, Hooeys Committee
report failed to uncover a single incident of homosexual
officials being blackmailed in exchange for state secrets.
Yet all intelligence agencies still classified sex perverts
as security risks. The results gave widespread currency to
the myth that homosexuals threatened national security
(p. 115). The fact that no gays or lesbians stepped
forward to refute any of the ridiculous chargesout of
obvious fear of retributiononly underscored that perception. The Lavender Scare now included an important,
bipartisan, congressionally sanctioned report stating that
homosexuals were dangerous and merited removal. It
became the centerpiece of post-1950 governmental hiring
policy.
The third portion of Johnsons work assesses the
results of the Lavender Scare, which extended to the
highest levels of government. Following his 1952 Presidential election, Dwight Eisenhower implemented a new
security system that stressed character, morality, and suitability instead of political loyalty. Unlike the bombastic
McCarthy, Eisenhowers campaign was methodical, quiet,
and widely perceived as fair, and it continued on in
some form into the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
Individual agency heads wielded final authority over all
employment and security related issues, powers formerly
enjoyed only by the State Department, thanks to an
obscure Congressional bill amendment known as the
McCarran rider. The Eisenhower administration also
pressured international organizations, like the United
Nations, and American allies to exclude homosexuals
from government offices. By the mid-1950s, the threat
to homosexuals came from a variety of sourcesthe
Metro police, U.S. Park Police, the FBI, the CSC, and
countless private campaigns on the part of federal agencies
hoping to avoid the public embarrassment felt by the
State Department. Even the mere association with known
homosexuals warranted an investigation, as prevailing
wisdom suggested that gays surrounded themselves with
their own kind. Investigations occurred frequently, and
only complete acquittal or forced resignation resulted.
This was the most insidious aspect of the Scare for
Johnsonthe ostracism of gay federal employees by colleagues, superiors, and former friends. Johnson estimates
that over 5000 federal employees lost their jobs during
the early 1950s as a result of the Lavender Scare, and
the number of suicides or other disaffections is still
unknown.
As wrenching as the Scare became, it generated
profound effects on the fight for homosexual rights in
the United States. Resistance at first was subtlenot

Book Reviews
cooperating with security investigations, relying on highplaced homosexuals and sympathetic heterosexuals for
protection, and dragging out investigations as long as
possiblebut it occurred. More organized gay resistance
soon followed, as groups like the Mattachine Society of
Washington and the ACLU launched a powerful campaign
to place limits on city morals squads. After the Kelley
counsel decision in 1952 and the Guarro decision in 1956,
the evidence required to prove solicitation for sexual
favors was more stringently examined and more difficult
to sustain. Gay political activists like Frank Kameny, a
civilian Army employee fired after the discovery of a previous arrest for homosexuality, redefined the arguments
against workplace sexual discrimination in terms of civil
rights instead of individual standards of morality. His
involvement with the Mattachine Society of Washington
sparked a new homosexual militancy in the capital, one
that relied on the court system for many significant
remedies. When the Scott v. Macy decision of 1965 and the
Norton decision of 1969 came down, summary dismissals
were no longer possible. Johnson concludes that it is
ironic that the very threat Congressional conservatives
hoped to quash in the 1950san organized, threatening
homosexual menacewas brought to fruition by the
success of their polices.
The Lavender Scare is a very readable and valuable
work that clarifies the relationship between the Cold
War and national security interests, and those victimized
by the need to preserve said security. Johnson builds a
strong case that homosexuals suffered as much if not
more than alleged communists, and that their suffering
endured long after the initial wave of McCarthyism
subsided. Johnson also finds that the origins of the
modern gay rights movement lie in Washington, D.C.,
the product of pioneering homosexual activists fighting
federal employment discrimination. In this sense, he
disavows Stonewall as being the epicenter of the struggle
and revises other historians who describe the movement
as an intellectual reaction to 1950s consensus politics
(Corber, 1997). This work will take its place beside those
of George Chauncey and Allen Berube, and every serious
student of 20th century American history should own it.
REFERENCES
Corber, R. (1997). Homosexuality in cold war America: Resistance and
the crisis in masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
DEmilio, J. (1998). Sexual politics, sexual communities: The making of
a homosexual minority in the United States, 19401970 (Second
ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Theoharis, N. (2001). Chasing spies: How the FBI failed in counterintelligence but promoted the politics of McCarthyism in the Cold
War years. Chicago: Ivan Dee Press.

259
DOI: 10.1007/s10508-005-1804-z
Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science
and Popular Culture. By Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla.

Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana,

1995, 416 pp., $39.95 (cloth), $18.95 (paper).
Reviewed by Pega Ren, Ed.D.3
Deviant Bodies, a compendium of dissertations and thoughts
on the politics of the body, is an industrious read. Each of
the 14 chapters represents its authors perspective on some
aspect of the body as symbol of personal and political
influence or, conversely, the influence of politics and
personal identification on the individual body. The topics
are ambitious; this is not a book easily digested by the lay
reader. Indeed, it appears to be a compilation of theses
and dissertations. Because a different author pens each
chapter, the book is notably uneven in reading comfort
and accessibility. Though I define as an academic, it was
solely because of my commitment as the reviewer that I
stayed with the book until the end. This is heady stuff!
The editors acknowledge this in their Introduction
when they explain that:
As a whole, the book represents an inquiry into modern
Western epistemology by examining the very idea of
embodied deviance, which we define as the historically
and culturally specific belief that deviant social behavior
(however that is defined) manifests in the materiality of
the body, as a cause or an effect, or perhaps as merely
a suggestive trace. In short, embodied deviance is the
term we give to the scientific and popular postulate that
the bodies of subjects classified as deviant are essentially
marked in some recognizable fashion. (p. 2)

It is my guess that the bookstore browser, having read this

far, would utter a mental Huh? and move on to a tome
less academically ambitious.
For those not intimidated by scholarly journalism,
Deviant Bodies offers the full meal deal. Urla and Terry
posit, The book makes its contribution to the contemporary scene through case-based analyses that look closely
at instances of how the body has been figured discursively
in relation to particular constructions of deviance (p. 3).
They proclaim their belief that this volume seeks to show
how the ideal human body has been cast implicitly in the
image of the robust, European, heterosexual gentleman,
an ideal defined by its contradistinction to a potpourri of
deviant types (p. 4). The book does, indeed, support
this belief, and furthermore warns us of the [devastating]
costs of perceiving social problems as matters of somatic
3 1528

East 5th Ave., #201, Vancouver, British Columbia V5N 1L7,

Canada; e-mail: sexdoc@smartsextalk.com.

260

Book Reviews

essence (p. 17). This reviewer closed the book fortified

with new perspectives and sensitivities about the nature
of the body as the dupe of social and political forces that
seek to simplify the complexities of living different in a
world in which normal is constantly redefined by only
a few.
There is some difficulty in reviewing a book in which
each chapter is penned by a different author. FaustoSterlings first chapter, Gender, Race, and Nation, sets the
tone, alerting the reader to the academic stamina needed
to grasp the overriding concepts. Her engrossing storytelling approach encourages the reader to rest a bit easier
despite the seriousness of the subject matter; however,
the second chapter, Framed, by Mirzoeff toppled this
suggestion of comfort. It was, sadly, the only chapter this
reader could not finish. Halfway through I threw in the
towel, convinced I lacked the necessary intelligence to
navigate the book.
Tolens chapter regarding the Salvation Army in
British India outlines the Eurocentric, paternalistic perspective, unquestioned by the Brits themselves, of British
missionary zeal in classifying Indians, seen as static,
archaic, and primitive (p. 82). Their unbridled imperialism is echoed in many settings today. It seems we are
slow to learn. These sentiments repeat in Horns chapter,
This Norm Which Is Not One, which examines male prejudice
toward women in late-nineteenth-century Italy, leading
to the institutionalization of erroneous beliefs. Some of
Horns writing is challenging, as in his explanation that
on the one hand, a statistical and probabilistic construction of criminality threatened, in the case of women, to
collapse the categories of the deviant and the normal.
On the other hand, the female body was found to resist
and subvert the exegetical practices of anthropologists, to
mask its truths and seduce its readers (p. 109). Huh?
The fifth chapter, Anxious Slippages between Us and
Them, by Terry is quite readable. It consists, however, of
34 pages regarding a study that failed to prove the body
is indicative of variant behavior. Though the story is well
told, it could have been edited without losing its message.
In a powerful summation, Terry states that:
. . . the line between the sexes could no longer be
drawn sharply, nor, by logical extension, could the line
between heterosexuals and homosexuals. An important
consequence of this was the growing fear in the late 1930s
and 1940s that people with homosexual desires may be
everywhere; it was not entirely possible to determine who
was who . . . . It is important to understand that the Sex
Variant study was as much an effort to construct and
maintain hygienic heterosexuality as it was to investigate
homosexuality. (p. 153)

Proctors chapter, The Destruction of Lives Not Worth

documents the eradication of Jews and others in

Living,

Germany during World War II. It is appropriately chilling

and thought-provoking. A chapter reviewing the politics
and maintenance of federally funded and administrated
schools for Indians follows it. It primarily addresses life
for the female students, told in heartbreaking detail in
excerpts from the girls themselves. Their buoyancy and
forgiveness, weighed against the regimental fervour of
their keepers, is impressive.
Gronemans chapter on nymphomania comes next,
and rewards the persistent reader with writing that is well
documented and captivating. Groneman is a storyteller,
researcher, and feminist historian, and weaves these
diverse talents into a comprehensive essay on the history
of female sexuality. Starting with the position that by the
nineteenth century, an ideology was firmly established:
women by nature were less sexually desirous than men
(p. 226) and that mens natureunlike womenswas
never primarily defined by their genitalia (p. 232),
she then examines the effects that sex-positive thinkers,
rebels of their time, had on this suffocating philosophy.
Inspiring. She concludes with an explanation of a shift
from a physiological to a psychological explanation of
nymphomania during the twentieth century . . . (p. 238).
This reviewer would happily read more of Gronemans
work.
Theatres of Madness follows, an installation of images,
telling poignant and horrific stories about womens bodies,
specifically clitoridectomies. Oddly, some of these images
appear completely black (publishers gaff?). Those that
are visible document this shameful chapter in our human
lives with poignant objectivity and artistic impact. The
editors move us from this study of the literal desexing
of women to the more insidious influence of the Barbie
doll on womens depersonalization of themselves. Urla
and Swendland subtitle their work Unsettling Ideals of the
Feminine Body in Popular Culture (p. 277), and unsettling
it surely is. Their goal? In this essay, we focus our
attention on the domain of popular culture and the ideal
feminine body as it is conveyed by one of pop cultures
longest lasting and most illustrious icons: the Barbie doll
(p. 278).
Irvines contribution, Regulated Passions: The Invention of
Inhibited Sexual Desire and Sexual Addiction, follows. Even as a
clinician, this sex therapist reviewer found the chapter to
be highly academic and certainly not for the lay reader. I
found it interesting to note that both the ISD and sexual
addiction themes were both born in 1977, though the
author does not dissect this oddity. She integrates these
two prongs of recent sexological ideology with a feminist
twist when she suggests the diagnostic binarisms of
inhibition and excess easily suggest gendered sexual
norms and, in fact, early on, the demographics revealed

Book Reviews
more women diagnosed with ISD, while men largely filled
the ranks of sex addicts. The disorders therefore reified
a normative system of sex/gender relations (p. 332). It
seems that regardless of the society or the time-frame we
study, we return to that sad conclusion.
The book concludes with chapters on the embarrassing job we do of giving our youth adequate and accurate
sex education, infertility in modern China, and the never
ending question of nature or nurture regarding race. This
final chapter reiterates the books overriding philosophy,
that explanations based on natural or inherent abilities
serve the . . . social purposes [of placing] people in
desired contexts . . . and exclude them from other contexts
. . . [and are], in effect, a way to construct the body
in ways that will legitimate existing social categories
(p. 400).
Deviant Bodies is not an easy read. It would be a good
choice for a long flight, when concentration is relatively
uninterrupted and distractions are few. The book is not
without merit; I benefited from reading it and it certainly
gave me food for thought. It would be rare, though, to find
many who would or could discuss its contents. For the
finite audience it targetsacademicians, researchers, and
sexologistsit is a worthy tome.
On a pragmatic note, the book is a comfortable size
and written in a font large enough for even the bifocular
set. The margins were not quite large enough for note
taking, although there was always a bit of room for such
following the well-documented Notes. The spine of the
book failed to withstand even my single reading, and
the heft of the volume made it bulky to tote. Still,
the subtitle of the book, Critical Perspectives on Difference in
Science and Popular Culture, promises discourse of interest
to those intrigued with the intertwining of the physical
and the philosophical, and Deviant Bodies delivers just
that.
DOI: 10.1007/s10508-005-1805-y
The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism
at Niagara Falls. By Karen Dubinsky. Between the Lines,

Toronto, 1999, 283 pp. $29.95 (Cdn.).

Reviewed by Margaret S. Schneider, Ph.D.4

That Niagara Falls was the second greatest disappointment

of American married life is a popular paraphrasing of
a comment made by Oscar Wilde in the 1800s. Hence,
4 Department

of Adult Education and Counselling Psychology, Ontario

Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor
St. West, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V6, Canada; e-mail: mschneider
@oise.utoronto.ca.

261
the title of Dubinskys critical analysis of the history of
Niagara Falls and the honeymoon. We know, of course,
what the first greatest disappointment was (nudge, nudge,
wink, wink) and, with that foundation, Dubinsky traces
the evolution of both Niagara Falls, Canada and the
honeymoon, over the last two centuries.
Dubinsky portrays the sexual and social development
of the honeymoon and Niagara Falls (both the natural
phenomenon and the city itself, which she calls the greatest theme park of heterosexuality I have ever witnessed
(p. 3) as well as the economic exploitation of both. A large
portion of the book focuses on the development of Niagara
Falls as a tourist destination or, to put it bluntly, a tacky
tourist trap. And while the depth of detail in the recounting
may not be of obvious interest from the perspective of
human sexuality, its significance lies in the intertwining
of the commercialization of honeymoons and the most
popular honeymoon destination in North America in the
twentieth century.
How did Niagara Falls and honeymoons become
virtually synonymous? The answer lies, for Dubinsky,
in how romance, sex, and danger were incorporated into
the imaginary geographies of nineteenth-century Niagara
Falls visitors (p. 31). The danger of the Falls itself
was apparent. Storiesreal, exaggerated, and invented
of visitors being swept away after falling into the river,
deliberately going over the Falls to a perilous end, or
being trapped on ice flows, wrought fear in the hearts
of tourists. What better setting for newlyweds to reify
their gendered roles as the man of the house puts his
arm around his fragile bride to protect her from the
ravages of Mother Nature? The local color, as it were,
added to the perception of danger as Black and Indian
(sic) guides led tours under the falls, and Black staff
in hotels waited on the newlyweds. From its Victorian
beginnings, the development of Niagara Falls was sent
on a trajectory of commercialism and consumerism; the
town never managed to evade its tacky, honky-tonk reality.
Dubinskys documentation of this trajectory, the cutthroat
competition, the racism and classism, the politics and
the economics that shaped Niagara Falls as it is today
is intricate and colorful. It is accentuated by a collection
of historical photographs and prints, and sets the context
for our understanding of the social convention of the
honeymoon.
Dubinsky explains that the honeymoon, as it is
practiced today, had its origins in the 19th century custom
of the wedding tour, in which the newly married couple,
often accompanied by family members, visited those
relatives who were unable to attend the ceremonya sort
of cross-country coming out or rite of passage whereby the
newlyweds took their place in adult society. By the end

262
of the century common wisdom held that this practice,
immediately following, as it did, the stress of planning
and executing a wedding was, according to one priest,
a deplorable custom which renders so many marriages
sterile (p. 21). Thus evolved the modern practice of the
honeymoon as a get-away for the new couple.
Ironically, the Victorian era honeymoon couples
were embarrassed to be recognized as newlyweds, and
sought to hide their newly sexualized relationship, even
though their status was obviously to all around them. The
ambivalent feelings about the unavoidable public nature of
their presumably newly found sexuality were not allayed
by the intrusion of the medical establishment in the form
of sex experts. Their focus was to transform the Victorian
sexual brute and the bungling bridegroom of the
early 20th century into a sexually competent husband.
The intrusion of the medical establishment was aided
by the construction of marriage as a public health risk
as mandatory premarital medical examinations became
increasingly required to prevent the spread of venereal
disease. The gaze of the relatives on the bridal tour had
been supplanted by the gaze of the medical establishment
and, as it happens, the public as well, since by the middle
of the 20th century, if not before, honeymooners had
become standard fare in sophomoric spoofs and jokes,
as in the nudge and wink reference above.
Honeymoons became increasingly entrenched as a
social custom with the convergence of a number of factors,
including the increase in leisure time (as a result of
legally required vacation time) and with the new mobility
that emerged after World War II. This was driven by
businesspeople who recognized the honeymoon as an
economic goldmine. A honeymoon at Niagara Falls was
marketed as affordable to all social classes, as indeed it
was. But the uncontrolled, unplanned commercial growth
that took place in Niagara Falls as everyone fought
for their piece of the action resulted in an atmosphere
which most people, indeed, found disappointing. Yet,
honeymooners continued to flock to Niagara Falls.
Dubinsky does a fine job of reconstructing the
economic development of Niagara Falls, hanging its hat,
as it were, on the social convention of the honeymoon.
Her discussion of honeymoons as a socially constructed
institution was fascinating. But, there is not enough of
the latter, and I was left with two pressing questions.
First, as an intellectual exercise I asked myself, Why
have a honeymoon, anywaywhy not, for example, return
to the new apartment for a couple days of privacy with
enough provisions to see you through? After all, as all
those seamy jokes would have it, no one really sees the
Falls (or whatever) anyway. Is marriage so transformative
that it requires a dangerous journey, much like Joseph

Book Reviews
Campbells heroes? And it is still transformative at a time
when we can no longer believe in the virgin bride and
groom since many couples are a) already having sex, b)
already living together, c) have been previously married,
d) are likely to divorce and remarry and/or, e) all of the
above? What is it that is so compelling about this almost
exclusively heterosexual custom (that is no doubt being
appropriated by gay and lesbian couples as we speak!).
Perhaps the history of the honeymoon is a book that still
needs to be written, especially since what was an exclusive
heterosexual purview may not be for long.
Coincidentally, shortly before I read Dubinskys
book, I was on a flight to Hawaii (another one of those
honeymoon destinations) seated nearby a honeymoon
couple accompanied by about a dozen of their close
friends and relativesa kind of mixture of the traditional
bridal tour and the modern honeymoon. (Would that
I had already finished the book so that I could have
deconstructed the experience on the spot.) The flight
attendants fussed over them, advertising their status to the
entire plane. What is it that makes us fall all over ourselves
when confronted with newlyweds? Is it fond memories of
our own rite of passage, or is it an unconscious attempt to
deny the disappointment of it all? These are the kinds of
questions that a reader would be stimulated to ask, having
read Dubinskys book.
As for the second unanswered question that the
book raised for meless philosophical, but nonetheless
compelling: Where do the inhabitants of Niagara Falls go
on their honeymoons?
DOI: 10.1007/s10508-005-1806-x
Sex, Religion, Media. By Dane S. Claussen.

Rowman &
Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland, 2002, 320 pp.,
$72.50.

Reviewed by Geoffrey L. Ream, M.A.5

This edited volume provides several snapshot views

of sexuality and religious content in the media, and
locates them within a historical context of how American
religious organizations and media entities have interacted
with each other in the 20th century. Data sources tapped
by its authors range from interviews with individuals to
empirical surveys to content analysis of news, magazines,
films, and music videos. This book is a fascinating read
for anyone who seeks to understand sexuality in a cultural
context, and it treats organized religion as a definite part
of that context.
5 Department

of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca,

New York 14853-4401; e-mail: glr22@cornell.edu.

Book Reviews
The first three chapters focus on media entities, and
demonstrate their proclivity, both past and present, for
mixing sexual and religious or pseudo-religious content.
Print media, as exemplified by MacFaddens Physical
Culture, drew a cult following to a gospel of virility and
health during the 1920s and 1930s. During an era of great
restraint in media sexuality, the movie Samson and Delilah
(1949) demonstrates the acclaim that was nevertheless
accorded to work with powerful sensuality that was barely
beneath the surface. Modern music videos also blend
explicitly religious with sexual imagery to achieve an
intended audience response.
The next three chapters are on the complementary
theme of media organizations discomfort with both
sexuality and religion. Media selectively ignore the middle
ground of religious debate around homosexuality and
instead allow the conservative fundamentalist Christian
establishment to represent their intolerant stance as the
consensus position of Christianity. Media coverage of
child sexual abuse by Catholic priests treats these cases
as crime stories and thus de-emphasizes their religious
content. Also on this theme, Chapter 10 decries media
silence over the conservative sexual values encoded in the
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). Religious groups own media
entities are also suspect: Just as Evangelical Christian
media do not mention the dissent within their own ranks
regarding the pathological status of homosexuality, Jewish
media are completely silent about child sexual abuse by
Orthodox rabbis.
Chapters 79 detail Evangelicals reactions to mass
media. Both those of individuals and of Donald Wildmons American Family Association are depicted as simplistic and psychologically concrete, evidencing a watchdog mentality over personal morality (e.g., allegations
that Mighty Mouse snorted cocaine) and a short attention span that does not process larger themes or
meanings.
Chapters 1115 examine religion through the lens of
media. Chapter 11s title, The Organ in the Sanctuary, is
an oblique reference to the sexuality of male clergy, which
figured prominently in films during the early 20th century.
In the next chapter, a content analysis of news reports on
new religious movements (cults), the media is observed
to act as an agent of social control, upholding societys
sexual values by publishing allegations of aberrant sexual
behavior within movements and fomenting social panics

263
such as satanic ritual abuse, which many believe to
be little more than an urban legend. The next three
chapters are about discourse on homosexuality, in both
mass media and on the web. Information presented up
to this point regarding the medias reductionism and
general discomfort in religious matters as well as its
sluggish deference to the grating voices of censors in
regard to sexual matters helps explain how mass media
is forced to awkwardly articulate an untenable middle
ground between one side that is fighting for basic human
rights and another side that is fighting to chase the first
side out of the media arena altogether.
The last section contains the most psychologically
oriented content of the book. Western discourse about
sexuality is revealed to focus primarily on lust, biology,
and health risks, rendering sex to be dehumanizing rather
than an act of human intimacy and communication. The
media, as earlier chapters assert, is both a product of and
is marketed to society, and it transmits societys values.
Media have a definite cultivation effect on adolescents
sexual attitudes, although the empirical data presented
stop short of supporting any conclusions regarding adolescent sexual behavior, which would be beyond the books
scope. Media also cultivate parents sexual attitudes with
respect to their adolescent offspring, as evidenced by
media stereotypes influencing parents reactions to a son
or daughters disclosure of a sexual-minority identity.
In conclusion, the editor underscores the need for
understanding sexuality, religion, and media in a cultural
and historical context, and reiterates many of the authors
indictments against conservative religious organizations
for serving as agents of sexual censorship and oppression
they misunderstand not just sexuality and the media, but
their own religion and its history. The editor further criticizes the media for being the unwitting tool of oppressive
forces: In its effort to portray battles over the territory
of sexuality in terms of two evenly matched sides, the
media holds religious leaders and religious organizations
to lower standards of proof than other sources, such as
scientists or scholars, while continuing to quote them
anyway (p. 275). This statement echoes many sexuality
writers frustrations with artificially even-handed media
coverage of conservative pseudoscientific propaganda.
The editor finishes with a warning to individuals to be
better media consumers for these reasons, and for media
entities to be better producers of information regarding
religion and sexuality.