In this lively and engaging work, Carolyn Lewis explores how
medical practitioners, especially family physicians, situated
themselves as the guardians of Americans' sexual well-being during
the early years of the Cold War. She argues that many doctors
viewed their patients' sexual habits as more than an issue of
personal health. They believed that a satisfying sexual
relationship between heterosexual couples with very specific
attributes and boundaries was the foundation of a successful
marriage, a fundamental source of happiness in the American family,
and a crucial building block of a secure nation.
Drawing on hundreds of articles and editorials in medical journals
as well as other popular and professional literature, Lewis traces
how medical professionals defined and reinforced heterosexuality in
the mid-twentieth century, giving certain heterosexual desires and
acts a veritable stamp of approval while labeling others as
unhealthy or deviant. Lewis links their prescriptive treatment to
Cold War anxieties about sexual norms, gender roles, and national
security. Doctors of the time, Lewis argues, believed that
"unhealthy" sexual acts, from same-sex desires to female-dominant
acts, could cause personal and marital disaster; in short, says
Lewis, they were "un-American."