The effeminate paradigm
Before World War II the American authorities were largely tolerant of gay life... The shift that occurred between the prewar and postwar period had much to do with the mass mobilization of men and women after Pearl Harbor. For many gay men and women the displacement from rural to urban areas as a result of military service marked the first moment in which they were able to articulate a gay identity amongst other like-minded individuals...
When mobilization began, the military became increasingly obsessed with restricting the admittance of homosexuals into the forces... The military's screenings were run by psychiatrists who claimed that they had devised a series of tests and evaluations that quickly reveal whether the recruit was homosexual or not...
... the psychiatric professionals drafted in by the army to aid them with the screening of new recruits believed that there were three possible signs to identifying male homosexuals: "feminine bodily characteristics, effiminacy in dress and manner and a patulous or expanded rectum". ...the image of homosexuality that was disseminated through these screening and that would soon reach the wider audience of the American public was of gay men (and women) as perverts whose sexual identity was characterized by gender deviance. The effeminate paradigm was thus further social, medical, and legal acceptance as the homosexual identity.
Jamie Russel, Queer Burroughs
When mobilization began, the military became increasingly obsessed with restricting the admittance of homosexuals into the forces... The military's screenings were run by psychiatrists who claimed that they had devised a series of tests and evaluations that quickly reveal whether the recruit was homosexual or not...
... the psychiatric professionals drafted in by the army to aid them with the screening of new recruits believed that there were three possible signs to identifying male homosexuals: "feminine bodily characteristics, effiminacy in dress and manner and a patulous or expanded rectum". ...the image of homosexuality that was disseminated through these screening and that would soon reach the wider audience of the American public was of gay men (and women) as perverts whose sexual identity was characterized by gender deviance. The effeminate paradigm was thus further social, medical, and legal acceptance as the homosexual identity.
Jamie Russel, Queer Burroughs