Blackouts

In 1935, a multidisciplinary group formed in New York City to study whom they termed “sex variants.” This committee, which adopted the name Committee for the Study of Sex Variants, consisted of professionals in medicine, the social sciences, and the state—including the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections. They sought “to undertake, support and promote investigations and scientific research touching upon and embracing the clinical, psychological, and sociological aspects of various from normal sex behavior” (McCallum, David. The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences. Springer Nature, 2022). The Committee adopted new technologies like x-ray imaging and then modern ideologies like psychoanalysis to study a group of volunteers who identified as “homosexuals”—a contemporary term.

Many of these volunteers were contacted through underground queer networks known to Jan Gay—born Helen Reitman, estranged daughter of American gynecologist and anarchist Ben Reitman—a lesbian sexologist, author, and researcher. Gay’s work provided the initial basis for the Committee’s work: In the 1920s, she interviewed lesbian women in Europe and New York. No publisher would release her findings without the purview of a male medical professional, so she sought the help of Dr. Robert Dickinson and Dr. George W. Henry—the former of whom lacked judgment of queer people, which was unusual for the time.