Constructing the Heterosexual, Homosexual, Bisexual System, by Jonathan Ned Katz

This feature explores the human production of the terms and concepts "heterosexual," "homosexual," and "bisexual," which are presented here as evidence of the construction of a historically specific social order or regime. This is the social-historical institution or system that divides people, identities, desires, acts, relationships, and groups into heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual with profound subjective, objective, psychological, social consequences. The chronology includes scholarly works dating to the 1980s, when historians began to develop what is now called "critical heterosexual history," analysis that interrogates the historically specific discourses and institutions that comprise the hetero, homo, bi system. First published on OutHistory in 2014. Last edit: April 15, 2021.

1944, January 2: Saturday Evening Post: ""We question him about his sexual habits"

During World War II 18 million young men inductees into the U.S. military were asked by their government about their sexual desires for and acts with women, an unprecedented inquiry into their personal and erotic life.

"We question [the military selectee] aboout his sexual habits," writes a physician in the Saturday Evening Post, and, in general, about his relationship with the opposite sex. If there is a reason to suspect it, we try to find out whether the selecteee is homosexual, a common enough aberration, but one which the Army has found it necessary to exclude from its ranks."[1]

Note
[1] Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II (NY: Free Press/Macmillian, 1990), page 21, note 40 on page 294 citing Carl Binger, M.D., "How We Screen Out Psychological 4-Fs," Saturday Evning Post, January 8, 1944, pages 19, 75-76.