Sex instruction and the construction of homosexuality in New Zealand, 1920–1965

Abstract

Historical analysis of sex education materials, as well as of the debates that surround them, can shed light upon the construction of sexuality in particular contexts. This article examines some of these materials and debates as a window into the construction of ‘homosexuality’ and ‘the homosexual’ in mid‐twentieth century New Zealand. It is argued that ‘the homosexual’ as a category was not clearly demarcated during this period, and that ‘heterosexuality’ per se did not appear in debates over ‘sex instruction’ until the 1950s. Earlier notions of self‐control were reasserted during the post‐war moral panic over young people's sexuality, and homosexuality was sometimes regarded as a symptom of social rebellion and thus a universal potential as much as a characteristic of a fixed sexual minority. Contemporary psychology and responses to the war blurred the boundaries between ‘homosexuality’ and ‘normal’ sexuality, ensuring the ongoing instability of what has more recently been termed the ‘homo/hetero binary’.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a Humanities Division Research Grant from the University of Otago. Early versions were presented to the conference of the Sociological Association of Aotearoa/New Zealand, Christchurch, December 2002, and the Outlines: Lesbian and Gay History in Aotearoa conference, Wellington, February 2003, and I thank session participants for their comments. Gail Dowgray, Graeme Dunstall, Philip Knight, Robin Skinner, Sara MacBride‐Stewart, Ben Taylor and Matt Wilcox have all offered useful suggestions and engaged me in productive discussion, while staff at the New Zealand Head Office of the Family Planning Association have been most generous with permissions as well as access to their own archives.

Notes

While the term ‘sex hygiene’ generally preceded the later ‘sex instruction’ and ‘sex education’, all terms were in use by the 1920s in New Zealand and were employed more or less interchangeably.

For example, Wotherspoon (1995, p. 209) suggests there was very little, if any, mention of homosexuality in sex education books in Australia during the 1940s.

The White Cross League, founded in Britain during the 1880s, was an Anglican organisation which promoted moral purity among men and boys. In the years following its establishment the League spread to the US and throughout the British Empire (McGeorge, 1977, p. 135).

Following Halperin's discussion (2002, p. 14), I will use the term ‘homosexuality’ descriptively (to denote same‐sex sexual contacts) rather than substantively (to name basic categories of sexuality). After all, the categories themselves, and their characteristics, remain contested across the time period.

It is worth noting, however, that Foucault's historical analysis is open to competing readings and is not accepted by all scholars of sexuality (Halperin, 2002; Murray, 2002).

I take Chauncey's point that medical and psychological categorisations did not necessarily determine the ways people understood their own and others' sexualities, at least not in the early decades of the twentieth century (Chauncey, 1991, 1994). Chauncey suggests that the sexual meanings circulating within the ‘sexual underground’ may well have been more influential.

For a broader discussion of male homosexuality in New Zealand since the nineteenth century, see Brickell (in press).

However, the late 1920s saw the notion that masturbation could cause insanity lose favour among New Zealand's doctors and psychiatrists, although it seems that more general social concerns over the impropriety of masturbation were slow to change (Smyth, 2000, pp. 161–162; Holloway, 2001, p. 164).

It turns out this phrase was lifted directly, with the exception of the spelling mistake, from the writings of German physician Gottlieb Wogel (see Bullough & Bullough, 1977, p. 65).

Allen (1995, p. 40) also suggests there is some evidence that these booklets were advertised on the radio.

The Department's Sex and the adolescent boy mentions ‘sexual behaviour between males’ solely in terms of illegality. Sex and the adolescent girl does not mention same‐sex activity at all, or even masturbation (Department of Health, 1955a, 1955b). This may be partly because self‐mastery was seen as more difficult for boys than for ostensibly naturally chaste girls (Allen, 1995, p. 77).

In some religious texts the references to temptation, with their clear conceptual link to sin, continued into the 1980s. When the legalising of sex between men was debated in 1985, one religious group argued that ‘married men with homosexual tendencies will be tempted to seek homosexual outlets, causing the breakdown of their families’ (Society for the Promotion of Community Standards, 1985), and another wrote of the ‘prospect of socially acceptable homosexual behaviour becom[ing] another alternative for those who wish to be free of the traditional constraints’ (Bethel Chapel, 1985). This latter quote also reflected the connection between homosexuality and social rebellion drawn during the 1950s, which I discuss shortly.

This is not to say that the status of masculinity was until then (if ever) entirely stable in New Zealand (Phillips, 1980). The Catholic priest who submitted to the Committee of Inquiry on Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders in 1924 rejected the idea that young men might become ‘kitten coddlers and Pomeranean petters’, and reasserted the virtues of ‘manly men, born to valiant women’ (McGrath, 1924, p. 99).

In some ways these views reflect the arguments by activists and scholars that the war was significant in providing opportunities for gay and lesbian subcultures to develop (e.g. Bérubé, 1991; Wotherspoon, 1995; Jirvani, 1997).

Again, similar views had been expressed in the Wolfenden Report (UKPCHP, 1957, p. 258).

At this point, the NCW diverged from Wolfenden, where the idea that ‘faulty sex education may be a factor in the “cause” of homosexuality’ was rejected (UKPCHP, 1957, p. 256).

For a useful international and historical analysis of the connections between youth, leisure and notions of national well‐being, see Cross (1993, pp. 102–104; 137). A discussion of post‐war pronatalism in New Zealand is provided by Molloy (1992), and in Australia by Lake (1996).

This case formed the basis for the film Heavenly Creatures. See also Glamuzina and Laurie (1991) and Molloy (1993).

The formulation in a pamphlet written by a military services Chaplain for young men entering the Services is fairly typical: ‘Sex … is the impulse that makes a man fall in love, and eventually desire to marry and have a home and family of his very own. That, and nothing less than that, is the only true satisfaction the human sex instinct can know’ (Dalby, 1943, p. 4).

For example, Griffith argued that this phase did ‘persist in adult life in such activities as clubs and societies devoted to the one sex’ (1944, p. 182).