TH E TROUBLE WITH NORMAL:
POSTWA R YOUTH AND THE MAKING OF
HETEROSEXUALIT Y
In the years after the Second World War, economic and social factors
combined to produce an intense concern over the sexual development
and behaviour of young people. In a context where heterosexuality and
'normality' were understood to be synonymous and assumed to be nec-
essary for social and national stability, teenagers were the target of a
range of materials and practices meant to turn young people into proper
heterosexuals.
In this study, Mary Louise Adams explores discourses about youth
and their place in the production and reproduction of heterosexual
norms. She examines debates over juvenile delinquency, indecent litera-
ture, and sex education to show not why heterosexuality became a pecu-
liar obsession in English Canada after the Second World War, as much as
how it came to hold such sway. Drawing on feminist theory, cultural
studies, and lesbian/gay studies, The Trouble with Normal is the first
Canadian study of 'youth' as a sexual and moral category. Adams looks
not only at sexual material aimed at teenagers but also at sexual dis-
courses generally, for what they had to say about young people and for
the ways in which 'youth,' as a concept, made those discourses work.
She argues that postwar insecurities about young people narrowed the
sexual possibilities for both young people and adults.
While much of the recent history of sexuality examines sexuality 'from
the margins/ The Trouble with Normal is firmly committed to examining
the 'centre,' to unpacking normality itself. As the first book-length study
of the history of sexuality in postwar Canada, it will make an important
contribution to the growing international literature on sexual regulation.
MARY LOUISE ADAMS is an assistant professor in the School of Physical
and Health Education at Queen's University.
STUDIE S IN GENDER AND HISTORY
General editors: Franca lacovetta and Craig Heron
MARY LOUISE ADAMS
The Trouble with Normal:
Postwar Youth and the
Making of Heterosexuality
UNIVERSIT Y OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
 University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1997
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-4202-3 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8020-8057-X (paper)
Printed on acid-free paper
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Adams, Mary Louise, 1960-
The trouble with normal: postwar youth and the making of heterosexuality
(Studies in gender and history series)
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8020-4202-3 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-8057-X (pbk.)
1. Heterosexuality. 2. Young adults - Canada - Sexual behavior.
3. Youth - Canada - Sexual behavior. 4. Youth - Canada - Social
conditions. 5. Canada - Social conditions -1945- I. Title. II. Series.
HQ27.A321997 306.76'4'09710945 C97-931083-0
Every effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce the photo-
graphs that appear in this book. Any errors or omissions brought to our atten-
tion will be corrected in future printings.
'The Trouble with Normal.' Words by Bruce Cockburn. © 1983 Golden Music
Corp. Taken from the True North album The Trouble with Normal. Used by
permission.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities
and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its pub-
lishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Council.
www.utppublishing.com
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENT S vii
1 Introduction 3
2 Sexuality and the Postwar Domestic 'Revival' 18
3 Hope for the Future or Repercussions of the Past: Discursive
Constructions of Youth 39
4 Youth Gone Bad: The Sexual Meaning of Delinquency 53
5 'Why Can't I Be Normal?': Sex Advice for Teens 83
6 Sex Goes to School: Debates over Sex Education in Toronto
Schools 107
7 Manipulating Innocence: Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case
against Obscenity 136
8 Conclusion 166
NOTES 173
SOURCES 197
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS 215
INDEX 217
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Acknowledgments
The Trouble with Normal began life as a doctoral dissertation at the
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The early stages of the project
were punctuated by the AIDS-related deaths of two close friends. Peter
McGehee died at the age of thirty-five, in the fall of 1991. His lover,
Doug Wilson, died at the age of forty-one, exactly one year later. In some
way these two events are part of this book and, for me, Doug and
Peter's memories will always be tied to it.
During the years I worked on the dissertation, I was fortunate to be
immersed in a supportive and challenging community of feminist aca-
demics and activists - one that I now fear I took too much for granted at
the time. In particular I want to thank the members of the sex/history
study group who 'pushed' this and many of my other productions over
the years: Debi Brock, Karen Dubinsky, Julie Guard, Margaret Little,
Becki Ross, and Carolyn Strange. Thanks also to members of the
women's history group, many of whom made comments on early bits of
the manuscript and from whom I learned much about the writing of his-
tory: Himani Bannerji, Chris Burr, Karen Dubinsky, Franca lacovetta,
Maureen McCarthy, Janice Newton, Susan Prentice, Tori Smith, Carolyn
Strange, Mariana Valverde, and Cynthia Wright. And, thanks to the
members of the thesis-writing group organized by Kari Dehli in the
Department of Sociology at OISE.
The book, of course, would not exist were it not for the generosity and
support of friends and family. My mother, Betty Adams, shared with me
her recollections of Toronto in the 1940s. Her stories were part of the
original motivation for the project. Karen Dubinsky answered questions,
from the theoretically complex to the plain silly, and helped me keep the
writing in perspective. She lent books, copied articles, and supplied me
viii Acknowledgments
with gossip in those weeks when I wasn't getting out enough. Kate
McKenna was a good neighbour and a reassuring sounding board at
critical moments. Eric Mykhalovskiy read drafts of early chapters, and
they are better now for his having done so. Steven Maynard, Rob Cham-
pagne, and Cynthia Wright offered advice and references. Daintry Nor-
man helped me procrastinate and made sure I continued to talk about
things other than the history of sexuality.
This project benefited greatly from the intellectual guidance of my
supervisor, Kari Dehli. I am especially thankful for her encouragement,
pragmatism, and organizational talents, both during and after the dis-
sertation. The other members of what grew to be a very large disserta-
tion committee - James Heap, Ruth Roach Pierson, Kathy Peiss, David
Rayside, Roger Simon, and Mariana Valverde - contributed insightful
comments and helpful criticisms that proved invaluable as I was prepar-
ing the manuscript for the book. I also would like to thank the ten people
who agreed to be interviewed during the initial stages of my research.
Their memories and insights helped to determine the direction the
project would eventually take.
At the University of Toronto Press, Franca lacovetta provided use-
ful comments on early revisions of the manuscript. Gerald Hallo well' s
enthusiasm for the project and his sound logistical and editorial advice
made it a pleasure to work with him. Emily Andrew's efficiency and
gentle nudging - at always the right time - helped to keep me on track.
Margaret Allen's excellent copy-editing has made this book more user-
friendly.
My research was made possible by the collections and the work of
archivists at the City of Toronto Archives, the Metro Toronto Archives,
the Toronto Board of Education Archives, the Toronto Harbour Commis-
sion Archives, the Archives of Ontario, and the National Archives of
Canada. In particular, I would like to thank John Choules and Stormie
Stewart at the Archives of Ontario and Rick Prelinger, of Prelinger and
Associates, for giving me access to an amazing collection of educational
films. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council provided
much-needed financial support.
Finally, I want to thank Helen Humphreys for living with me and the
book, in all its incarnations, and for helping us both to be much better
than we would have been without her.
TH E TROUBLE WITH NORMAL
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1
Introduction
In the Bruce Cockburn song from which I borrowed the title of this
book, 'the trouble with normal is it always gets worse.'
1
 In this study, the
trouble with normal is its taken-for-grantedness and its power as a regu-
latory sexual category. In the 1940s and 1950s, the difference between
definitions of normal and abnormal sexuality operated as a profound
space of social marginalization and exclusion. As a powerful organizer
of everyday life, the imperative to be normal limited possibility in peo-
ple's lives; certainly it limited the forms of sexual expression and iden-
tity available to them.
This book investigates the constitution of sexual normality in postwar
English Canada. In particular, it explores the role played by discourses
about young people in the production and reproduction of heterosexual
norms. It explores the relationship between dominant sexual discourses
and a variety of practices meant to turn teenagers into 'proper' hetero-
sexuals. I argue that social conditions particular to the postwar period
combined to put notions about youth and adolescence at the centre of
sexual discourses. Moreover, notions about youth and adolescence
helped to shape the general meanings ascribed to sexuality in the
period.
Present-day sexual conservatives like to remember the 1950s as a lost
era of family values and solid, 'traditional' morals. In contemporary sex-
ual politics, the 1950s are the standard against which some conserva-
tives measure changes in the organization of sexuality. The mores of that
decade sit as a kind of benchmark, a symbol of how far North Ameri-
cans have travelled since morality was 'as it should be,' with clear gen-
der roles in every household and heterosexual conjugal monogamy as
the primary form of sexual partnership.
2
 That this portrait is an ideal-
4 The Trouble with Normal
ized version of fifties norms does not decrease its effectiveness in con-
tributing to present-day anxieties about changing sexual behaviours and
identities. A study of the late 1940s and 1950s makes apparent the ideo-
logical underpinnings of the nostalgia that currently runs counter to the
gains made by feminists, gay men, and lesbians over the past two
decades.
Ironically, this project on heterosexuality grew from an interest in les-
bian and gay history. My research was motivated by a desire to docu-
ment the social meanings of homosexuality in the years prior to gay
liberation. I wanted to get a sense of the context of lesbian and gay lives,
of the distance people would have had to travel through mainstream
discourses to identify themselves as homosexual in the postwar period.
This study, therefore, is less about the sexual margins to which homosex-
uality was relegated than it is about the sexual centre that gave those
margins their shape. I am concerned with the processes through which
particular forms of heterosexuality were constructed as normal, and
therefore socially desirable, in the postwar period in English Canada.
Without an understanding of the dominant sexual culture, it is impossi-
ble to understand the depth of the resistance engaged in by lesbians, gay
men, and others who were unwilling or unable to conform to prevailing
definitions of sexual normality. In this vein, The Trouble with Normal pro-
vides contextual grounding to the growing field of Canadian lesbian and
gay history.
3
To gain access to the dominant sexual discourses that are my primary
concern in this book, I focused my research on discourses about youth
and adolescents. During the postwar years, young people were the tar-
gets of a range of formal and informal sex-education materials through
which mainstream sexual norms were both reproduced and constituted.
But the importance of young people to sexual discourses did not lie
solely in their position as targets of knowledge; they were also important
to the construction of that knowledge. Assumptions about the corrupt-
ibility of young people, about their need for protection from moral
harm, and about their role as representatives of the future helped to set
boundaries for how sexuality, in a general sense, could be understood.
This study, then, looks not only at sexual material aimed at teenagers; it
looks at sexual discourses generally - including discussions of obscenity,
homosexuality, sexual perversions, and delinquency - both for what
they had to say about young people and for the ways that 'youth/ as a
concept, made those discourses work.
Introduction 5
Discourse as Social Geography
Let me state at the beginning that, because this is a study of dominant
discourses, the 'English Canada' I refer to is not a representative one. It
is an English Canada constructed in mainstream national discourses that
were produced, for the most part, in Toronto. Originally, this study had a
specific focus on Toronto, and this focus remains in two of the chapters
that follow - about debates over sex education at the Toronto Board of
Education, and discussions of juvenile delinquency as one of the city's
most pressing postwar problems. But, generally, the discourses I investi-
gate here are not easily described as 'Toronto discourses.' The problems
defined through these discourses, even as they circulated within organi-
zations specific to Toronto, were not constructed as local problems; their
solutions were not limited to the city. Discourses like those on indecent
literature, for instance, were constructed and responded to as if they
were of national concern.
Of course, so-called national discourses of this type did not operate in
similar ways across the country - the range of practices and institutions
to which, and by which, they were articulated varied regionally,
between rural and urban areas, and among class, racial, ethnic, and age
groups. They were, nevertheless, frequently put into circulation by way
of practices and institutions located in Toronto - by the CBC, for
instance, which began television broadcasts in the early 1950s, or by
magazines like Maclean's or Chatelaine. In the postwar period, Toronto
was the centre of English-language publishing, broadcasting, and cul-
tural production, a position that contributed to the publicizing of urban
issues and Toronto-based perspectives across the country. In represent-
ing itself through national media, Toronto became entwined with the
definition of the 'national culture.' The process was facilitated by
national media outlets and by the fact that Toronto was home to many
organizations, from the YWCA to the Health League, that claimed to be
national in scope and to represent the interests of 'all Canadians.'
What distinguished Toronto's grip on the 'national' culture in the
postwar period was its conspicuousness. While present-day CBC
announcers make at least some effort to downplay the Toronto-centred-
ness of the public broadcaster (in spite of current management strategies
that do not), writers and journalists in the 1940s and 1950s showed little
evidence that the hegemony they represented was even an issue. Thus,
when CBC television put together a panel of youth, chances were they
6 The Trouble with Normal
came from Toronto high schools. In part, this tendency was as much a
product of limited technology and resources as it was of political per-
spective. But it also reflected postwar notions that 'the nation/ however
represented, was a desirable entity. French-English conflict notwith-
standing, the idea of 'the nation' as a unified collective was the object of
far less scrutiny, in the English part of the country, than it is today. In
some senses, the shared experiences of the Depression and the Second
World War gave Canadians a common point of reference. And the
expansion of the welfare state at war's end meant that all Canadians had
something to gain from an identification with the nation and from the
marking of national interests.
It's ironic, then, that the postwar period was also a time when many
Canadians thought the interests of the nation were best served by falling
into line behind the United States. By the early 1960s, Canadian intellec-
tuals looked back on the preceding decade and decried the 'American-
ization' of Canada.
4
 J.M. Bumsted argues that the 1950s produced one of
the least virulent strains of anti-Americanism in Canadian history.
'Almost without exception/ he writes, 'Canadians accepted the role of
the United States as moral and military leader of the western democra-
cies.'
5
 National discourses, therefore, were not without their interna-
tional attachments.
A brief note on discourse as a tool of analysis: The notion of dis-
course I use here is a Foucauldian one and refers to organized systems
of knowledge that make possible what can be spoken about and how
one may speak about it. At their most fundamental level, these 'sys-
tems' are about the production of meaning, a process that is not with-
out its material effects. Discourses, according to Foucault, 'crystallize
into institutions, they inform individual behaviour, they act as grids
for the perception and evaluation of things.'
6
 They are not, as some
have suggested, unrelated to the material aspects of our world.
Indeed, material factors - printing presses, institutional resources,
money - are what allow certain discourses to become more powerful
than others. The task of discourse analysis is to determine which dis-
courses are operating when and how and in what configurations.
What possibilities for the construction of meaning arise through their
circulation? In analysing discourses one investigates the various pro-
cesses - language and social practices - which make possible the state-
ment of the 'truths' that order our social world
7
 - for instance, the
claim that heterosexuality is the most (or, in some versions the only)
natural form of sexual expression. The intent is not to prove the verac-
Introduction 7
ity of such claims or their alternatives, but to understand how it is that
they have come to be made.
Heterosexuality as Subject of Investigation
'Heterosexuality is not natural, jus t common'
- T-shirt slogan, 1993
In the late 1800s, sexologists across Europe and North America compiled
vast lists of strange and unusual sexual 'types' and sexual behaviours.
These ranged from various forms of bestiality and sado-masochism to
auto-eroticism, fetishism, and a wide array of what were assumed to be
neurotic distortions of the 'sex instinct.' Given this history, it is interest-
ing that out of all these possibilities, the most profound sexual-social
division in present-day Western culture is the one between straight and
gay, although the divide between homo- and heterosexualities is per-
haps more a linguistic construction than a reflection of the sociosexual
landscape. Clunky and inefficient in an analytic sense, this divide works
politically to obscure the diversity of experience and allegiance among
those who participate in same-sex sexual activity - a diversity that
makes it impossible to construct a firm boundary around the proper
subject matter of specifically lesbian and gay or specifically heterosexual
research. As long as homosexualities and heterosexualities are dichoto-
mized, it is difficult to understand either side of the dichotomy without
also considering its so-called opposite. As an analytic category, sexuality
- like race, like gender, like class - is relational. There can be no homo-
sexuality without a heterosexuality from which to differentiate it. Thus,
it makes sense for those of us interested in the social meanings of the
former to engage in research on the latter.
As a means of categorizing and regulating particular types of behav-
iour and people, both homo- and heterosexuality are relative latecomers
to everyday discourse. The term 'homosexuality' was coined in 1868 by
German sodomy-law reformer Karl Maria Kertbeny. In his usage, the
term referred not to sexual object choice, as it does now, but to gender
inversion, that is to effeminacy exhibited by men and masculine
demeanour exhibited by women.
8
 According to gay historian Jonathan
Ned Katz, in his important book The Invention of Heterosexuality, this new
category of homosexuality was initially counterposed not to heterosexu-
ality, which did not yet exist as either a word or a concept, but to a nar-
rowly defined reproductive sexuality. Katz says that it wasn't until 1880
8 The Trouble with Normal
that Kertbeny's new word 'heterosexuality' went public - in a published
defence of homosexuality.
9
 Twelve years later, an American doctor
named James Kiernan used the new term to refer to those who were sex-
ually inclined towards both sexes.
10
 A 1901 medical dictionary, cited by
Katz, gave a more narrow definition: 'Abnormal or perverted appetite
toward the opposite sex.'
11
The equation of heterosexuality with perversion reflected the central-
ity of reproduction to pre-twentieth-century sexual systems. It was not
until the beginning of this century that the criteria for classifying sexual
behaviours shifted from their reproductive to their erotic possibilities.
Katz argues that the emergence of the homosexual/heterosexual opposi-
tion was part of this shift away from reproductive norms and towards
what he calls a 'different-sex erotic norm/
12
 The work of Viennese sexol-
ogist Richard von Krafft-Ebing helped to crystallize this binary as well
as the notion of heterosexuality as a non-pathological predisposition to
different-sex erotic feelings and behaviour. In his book Psychopathia Sex-
ualis, which first appeared in English in 1893, the erotically normal het-
erosexual is counterposed to the abnormal homosexual, thus setting the
groundwork for the hierarchical organization of sexuality that we con-
tinue to face today.
13
It took some time, however, for the homosexual/heterosexual binar-
ism to be widely adopted as a form of classifying erotic attraction.
George Chauncey argues that in male working-class communities in
New York City, for instance, 'homosexual behaviour per se became the
primary basis for the labelling and self-identification of men as "queer"
only around the middle of the twentieth century/ Prior to that time,
'queerness' had been attributed to a man's inability to fit into normative
gender roles, not to the sex of the people he chose to have sex with.
Thus, masculine men who had sex with effeminate men - 'fairies' - had
not been considered to be abnormal or homosexual. It wasn't until the
1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, says Chauncey, that 'the now-conventional divi-
sion of men into "homosexuals" and "heterosexuals," based on the sex
of their sexual partners, replace[d] the division of men into "fairies" and
"normal men,"' a distinction that had been based on their display of
accepted gender attributes. For white, middle-class men in New York,
the importance of erotic inclination and the division between homo- and
heterosexuality had become a way of marking normality two genera-
tions earlier.
14
Chauncey says that the increasing importance of heterosexuality to
the middle class reflected the reorganization of gender relations in the
Introduction 9
early part of the twentieth century. New corporate forms of work, the
growing participation of women in the public sphere, and perceptions
that modern life was 'softening' the male character had led to a crisis of
middle-class masculinity. Widespread fear of effeminacy - crystallized
around the public image of the fairy - translated into a fear of homosex-
uality, thereby making heterosexuality a route for the demonstration of
manliness. Exclusive erotic desire for women came to be a mark of being
a man, while gender identity and sexual identity came to be an insepara-
ble pair.
15
This coupling of gender and sexual identities helped to transform the
place of sex in North American cultures. Victorian discourses about the
need for sexual control and about women's sexual passivity and pas-
sionlessness were, increasingly, being questioned by young women and
men and by political and sexual radicals. Christina Simmons says that
by the 1920s in the United States, the 'predominant tone' about sex was
one of 'liberal reform.'
16
 Simmons writes that the 'new' thinkers argued
for less distance between husband and wife, especially in terms of sex.
They claimed that 'denying sexual urges made marriage itself less sta-
ble'; hence they argued for companionate marriages based on emotional
intimacy and sexual satisfaction for both women and men.
17
 This
became the model of heterosexuality in the 1920s and 1930s, although, as
Simmons makes clear, it did not go uncontested by those, especially
women, who felt that the new sexualized marriages diminished female
power. In previous middle-class arrangements, women had held a moral
power that enabled them to determine the shape of their sexual relation-
ships. In companionate marriages, women's role became a responsive
one. Women were counselled to follow men's sexual lead; to withdraw
from sex was to threaten the marriage, to treat a husband unfairly. Sex
was the glue that was to hold these marriages together. Gender-based
roles under male control were the prescription for making sex work.
Heterosexuality itself became synonymous with gender hierarchy.
By the 1940s, companionate forms of heterosexual marriage had
achieved dominance as the way of organizing erotic, emotional, and
reproductive life. The 'revival of domesticity' after the war helped to
entrench the strict gender dichotomies that held up these forms of mar-
riage, while efforts to control extramarital sex contributed to their sexu-
alization, a process that was seen as one route to family harmony and
domestic stability. The increasing influence of psychoanalytic theories in
the postwar period also meant that heterosexuality was not simply a
means of organizing relationships between women and men; rather, it
10 The Trouble with Normal
came to be seen as essential to the expression of 'maturity/ and it deter-
mined one's ability to make claims on normality, that most important of
postwar social classifications.
It was not until the postwar period that the process of developing a
proper heterosexual identity came to be understood as something that
took place before marriage. Not only was teenage sexuality acknowl-
edged - in dozens of advice books and magazine articles on petting and
necking - but it was watched and nurtured and guided in socially
appropriate directions by sex educators, concerned parents, various
civic bodies, and voluntary organizations. Following Freud, heterosex-
ual development was seen as a fragile process, one open to corruption.
Adult heterosexuality was not taken to be an inevitability; it was an
achievement, a marker of safe passage through adolescence.
What I want to stress in sketching how the notion of heterosexuality
developed is both its only recent emergence as an articulated concept
and the fact that it has, over the last 100 years, changed considerably as
an idea and a practice. As an important sexual category that is too often
taken for granted, it requires historical and sociological investigation.
Such scrutiny is especially important in light of present-day popular
wisdom about so-called family values, in which nothing is seen as more
natural and universal than heterosexuality and the nuclear families
many people build around it.
To say that homo- and heterosexuality are only recent concepts is, of
course, not to say that people in earlier eras did not engage in activities
which today we would think of as homo- or heterosexual. Nor is it to
suggest that forms of sexual expression were not, previously, subjected
to processes of differentiation and regulation. The point is that over the
course of several decades, sexual desire and behaviours came to be seen
in a new light, as central to identity, as keys to the personality of the indi-
vidual, and, most importantly for this study, to his or her claim on nor-
mality.
While there exist many studies in which the centrality of heterosexual
identities or behaviours is implicit - for instance, historical and sociolog-
ical explorations of marriage, or of the modern nuclear family - it is only
quite recently that researchers and writers have been foregrounding het-
erosexualities as a problematic in their work. In failing to question the
'naturalness' of heterosexual identities and practices, research supports
the ideological formation which allows heterosexuality to be seen as the
dominant and only acceptable form of sexual expression, the one from
which homosexualities (and other forms of sexual expression) deviate.
Introduction 11
In this study, I begin from the premise that this hierarchical organization
needs constantly to be questioned and brought into view as socially con-
structed rather than biologically 'natural' or socially self-evident.
Gay historian Jonathan Ned Katz has been the first to undertake a sys-
tematic historical study of 'the idea' of heterosexuality. In his recent
book, The Invention of Heterosexuality, Katz challenges the notion that het-
erosexuality 'just is' by detailing its short but complex history, from its
beginnings as a category of deviance to its current position of contested
but dominant form of eroticism and fundamental organizer of social
relationships. Katz locates the beginning of his project in the lesbian and
gay liberation movements of the early 1970s which proclaimed the aboli-
tion of the homosexual/heterosexual distinction as an important goal.
Similar demands were made by women's liberation groups as they
developed powerful critiques of heterosexual ideologies as mechanisms
for the social regulation of women.
18
 But, as Katz says, questioning the
dominant position of heterosexuality was not the same thing as unpack-
ing its history. It would take a decade of research into gay and lesbian
and feminist history before the possibility of such an analysis would
crystallize. It still remains rare for heterosexualities to be the central
focus of social research.
19
In feminist circles, Adrienne Rich's important 1980 article on 'compul-
sory heterosexuality' remains the most often-cited source on the subject
(even though Rich's own position on the issue has changed).
20
 In that
article, Rich correctly rejects notions that 'most women are innately het-
erosexual'; however, she then goes on to suggest that women's nature
may, in fact, tend towards lesbianism. The implicit suggestion in Rich's
argument is that heterosexuality is an imposed system of control that
keeps women from acting on their more 'natural' inclination for sexual
and emotional relationships with other women. Using examples as
wide-ranging as foot-binding and clitoridectomy, the South Asian prac-
tice of suttee, and the modern Western trade in pornography, Rich con-
structs heterosexuality as a pervasive and almost inescapable system
through which men control women.
In this formulation, heterosexuality is a given category, constant
across time and place. While Rich claims that heterosexuality has always
been resisted by some women, she does not seem to see this resistance as
having had transformative effects. I agree with Rich when she argues
that heterosexuality must be analysed as 'a political institution' (her
emphasis), as a factor in male dominance over women, but it needs to be
analysed on other levels besides this. As Karen Dubinsky has persua-
12 The Trouble with Normal
sively argued in her book on heterosexual conflict in turn-of-the-century
Ontario, heterosexuality has not only been lived as a site of coercion or
violence or dependency for women.
21
 Heterosexual relations have also
been entered into by women as a site of pleasure and a route to indepen-
dence from controlling parents and stifling families. To claim that the
social and political effects of the 'heterosexual' relations analysed by
Dubinsky are the same as those between men and women who lived in
other time periods or on other continents is to essentialize a category
that is more usefully investigated as a product of changing historical and
cultural circumstances. While I do not dispute that heterosexuality has
been implicated in men's dominance over women, Rich's presentation of
dominance as a singular achievement leaves little room for either critical
understanding of how that dominance was constructed or social opti-
mism for how it might be dismantled. In contrast, I argue for the impor-
tance of analysing heterosexual dominance as it is constantly being
reproduced, negotiated, and subverted.
Sexual Discourses and Normalization
To argue that sexuality is socially constructed, that it changes across time
and place, is not to say that we experience it that way. Certainly, as Fou-
cault and others have pointed out, people in Western cultures have not
done so over the last two centuries during which sexological, medical,
and psychoanalytic discourses have all, in various ways, come to place
sexuality at the centre of our personal identities. To say that sexuality is
socially constructed is not to say that it is not real right now, in the late
1990s, that it is a trivial force in our lives, or that it is easily changed.
Rather, it is to suggest the importance of questioning the way we think
about sexuality, how it is organized and regulated. Why is it that we cat-
egorize ourselves and others by our sexual behaviours and identities?
Why has sexuality come to be so 'personal'? Why is it assumed to hold
the key to our development as individuals?
For Foucault, sexual discourses are conduits through which power
gains access to human bodies and where it is expressed by them at the
most fundamental level: 'When I think of the mechanics of power, I
think of its capillary form of existence, of the extent to which power
seeps into the very grain of individuals, reaches right into their bodies,
permeates their gestures, their posture, what they say, how they learn to
live and work with other people.'
22
 This particular understanding of the
relationship between sexuality and power and the framing of power as
Introduction 13
something which operates within and through the individual is im-
mensely important to contemporary notions of sexuality as one of the
primary defining features of the individual. It is also critical to the study
of the construction of norms and the processes of normalization which I
have undertaken in this book.
As a concept, normalization draws our attention to discourses and
practices that produce subjects who are 'normal/ who live 'normality/
and, most importantly, who find it hard to imagine anything different.
These discourses and practices work to delineate possible forms of
expression, sexual or otherwise, as legitimate, while others are left to
exist beyond the limits of acceptability. As Cathy Urwin describes it, nor-
malization operates as a type of deviance-prevention mechanism.
23
 Indi-
viduals are encouraged, through a variety of discursive and institutional
practices, to meet normative standards, and they come to desire the
rewards that meeting those standards makes possible. In this way indi-
viduals become self-regulating. While repressive mechanisms may be
tied to this process, as in the criminalization of homosexual behaviours
in the 1950s, their effects are far outweighed by the power of the original
'encouragement.'
What makes normalization such an effective exercise of power is the
way it operates at the level of the individual, the way, as Foucault says, it
uses its subjects. As a form of social regulation, normalization defines
and limits the choices that are available to us. Julian Henriques and col-
leagues write that norms form the 'conditions of [our] desire.'
24
 The
point is not that we simply try to meet social norms, it's that we want to.
In the 1950s, this tendency to conformity was lauded and derided by
social critics; many thought it was one of the defining features of the
period.
25
While there is definitely a relationship between social norms and vari-
ous scientific and professional constructions of 'normality/ these two
categories are not entirely synonymous. Norms are not always based on
what's normal. Normal, as Ian Hacking points out, can refer simply to
what's usual or typical, a definition which may approximate the norm or
may not.
26
 To simplify Hacking's argument, the notion of normal as
what is usual comes from medicine where, in the 1820s, it evolved as an
empirical category counterposed to the pathological. In this sense 'nor-
mal' was descriptive; however, it also had a positive value, as in
'healthy.' This normal/pathological opposition eventually moved from
medical fields to sociological and political ones. As social systems were
perceived to be in an unhealthy state, normal conditions were what
14 The Trouble with Normal
these systems had deviated from - normal conditions were seen as 'the
good ones.' Here, normal does match 'the norm' in the sense of how
'things ought to be.'
27
Both of these senses of the word - normal as description, normal as
desirable - differ from more recent connotations of normality as a statis-
tical category. In this usage, normal is not necessarily desirable; it is
'mediocre,' as Hacking puts it, following Francis Galton. Normal is the
point from which we deviate, for better or worse. It is perhaps not a
coincidence that 'the normal curve,' the bell curve, was developed in
1893, at the same time that sexologists were detailing and defining the
'normal' sexual type known as heterosexuality.
28
 While these two modes
of determining normality were different, they both helped contribute to
notions of its importance as a social marker, a means of measuring dif-
ference.
It is when this measure of difference goes to work through moral dis-
courses that it becomes a norm, a regulatory standard of behaviour, an
expression of disciplinary power. In detailing the competing means of
defining normal, Hacking makes clear that this progression is not inevi-
table. Nevertheless, what I want to suggest here is that sexual and moral
discourses were so tightly connected in the post-Second World War
period that definitions of 'normal sexuality' - as defined, for instance, in
sex education manuals, in films for teenagers, or in magazine articles -
and social/sexual norms were interchangeable. Furthermore, definitions
of what is normal and what isn't - whether those definitions are based
on statistical evidence or on notions of typicalness - are influenced by
social-sexual norms and the moral discourses through which they are
produced. It's for this reason that Alfred Kinsey, in his statistical studies
of sexual behaviours, tried to avoid using 'normal' as a category. In the
present study, the relationship between definitions of normality and
social norms is often a circular one.
Historical sociologists Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer identify the
power of the norm and the process of normalization as an important
aspect of what they call moral regulation - the social and political project
of rendering 'natural' the perspectives and ideologies of hegemonic
interests.
29
 Their idea of moral regulation shares certain features with
the forms of disciplinary power, the self-regulatory processes described
by Foucault in The History of Sexuality and elsewhere.
30
 Like Foucault,
Corrigan and Sayer are concerned with the ways that discourses come to
work through us so that we become not only easily regulated, but self-
regulating. But Corrigan and Sayer, more than Foucault, tend to focus on
Introduction 15
the fact that only certain discourses seem to gain this power. There are
powerful and less powerful discourses, a distinction that has much to do
with the material relationships within which they are grounded. The
effects of even the 'positive/ 'productive' exercise of power are related to
material circumstances through, for instance, the means by which dis-
courses are circulated, whether that be printed materials, television and
radio broadcasts, public school lessons, or any of a multitude of other
means. Such attention to the inequities in the distribution of power is
crucial to an analysis of sexuality, where the realities of subordination
and domination are longstanding and impossible to ignore.
Corrigan and Sayer suggest that moral regulation works by limiting
the forms of expression available to us - in part, by masking difference
under an illusion of social unity. It homogenizes. What we take to be
'normal' are, for the most part, representations of dominant interests.
Moral regulation helps establish dominant modes of being as not only
legitimate, but desirable. Thus, as individuals, we become embedded in
and embrace the very processes which restrict possibility in our lives
and which diminish our abilities to make sense of ourselves and the
world around us. If, for instance, heterosexuality is revered and vali-
dated while same-sex sex is punishable by law, by social ostracism, or by
its definition as abnormal, it can be difficult for young people who feel
they are homosexual to reconcile their sexual and social desires. Fears of
punishment, or of not fitting in, can inhibit their ability to express them-
selves in a manner of their own choosing. It's in this most insidious way
that moral regulation limits the number of acceptable or possible social
identities that we can take on, all the while making this situation of
reduced opportunity appear natural.
It is because the various procedures and regulatory techniques of nor-
malization are directed towards the formation of appropriate kinds of
persons that discussions of moral regulation, and the normalization that
accomplishes it, are by necessity discussions about subjectivity and
about the construction of social subjects. Here, subjectivity is to be
understood as both the conscious and unconscious aspects of the indi-
vidual. It refers to the way we understand who we are in the world and
how we take our place in it. We make this knowledge 'ours,' not through
the revelations of our 'true selves/ but via our negotiations through and
within discourse - regulated systems of what can be expressed or said.
Our discursive attachments let us bring meaning to the world around us
and to our place within it. They offer us subject positions through which
we come to understand who and what we are. Our location at the con-
16 The Trouble with Normal
fluence of a variety of discourses makes possible the range of ways we
have of expressing ourselves, as well as the meanings we assign to our
expressions. It makes it possible to resist what some have called 'dis-
course-determinism.'
The production of subjectivity is an ongoing and contested process,
not something that occurs once and for all. In terms of the marginaliza-
tion of homosexualities, for instance, we need to question how such a
process of differentiation is accomplished, and how difference comes to
be known (and respected or resisted) by people on either side of it. How
is 'queerness/ for instance, positioned by the discourses and practices
which contribute to dominant heterosexual norms? The point is, as Rich-
ard Johnston writes, that subjectivities - even the most normal and het-
erosexual ones - are 'produced and not given and are therefore the
objects of inquiry, not the premises or starting points/
31
This book outlines some of the conditions of possibility within which
postwar sexual subjectivities were produced. What were the systems of
sexual meaning available to adults and teenagers, through which iden-
tity could be expressed and understood? While I talk very little about
the subjectivities of specific individuals, I am interested in the different
subject positions produced in and made available by various discursive
formations, in the way discourses position both those who speak
through them and those of whom they speak. It is through the negotia-
tion of multiple, often contradictory subject positions that subjectivity is
produced. In this light, it is the 'preconditions' of subjectivity that I am
concerned with here. How were specific subject positions - the juvenile
delinquent, the pervert, the nice girl, the sissy, the promiscuous teen -
organized through discourse? What was their relationship to the 'nor-
mal heterosexual'?
In my research I looked at a variety of sites through which the post-
war social-sexual order was constructed and maintained: schools, court-
rooms, social-work agencies, municipal bureaucracies, popular advice
literature, and mainstream social comment. The result of these investi-
gations is not a cohesive, chronological, historical narrative. Sexuality is
far too slippery a concept to lend itself to either tidy forms of research
or tidy forms of writing. Instead, this text moves back and forth, across
the time period and across discourses and social locations, as it points to
instances where we can see the different ways discourses about youth
and sexuality were important to the constitution of heterosexual nor-
mality.
What Foucault calls 'the putting into discourse of sex'
32
 is not cotermi-
Introduction 17
nous with the production of what we might easily identify as 'sexual
discourses.' Sexuality is typically displaced onto other social categories.
While Foucault may be right that our era suffers from an explosion of
sexual discourse,
33
 it is not always easy to identify or classify the debris.
What we might want to call the sexual realm is not easily defined.
34
Banking regulations, zoning by-laws, hospital visiting policies - none of
these is immediately identified as a sexual 'thing.' Nevertheless, each of
these has promoted and protected heterosexual marriage. The point is
that 'sexuality' is not always a self-evident category, a fact which greatly
complicates research about it.
Wherever possible I have used Canadian materials in this research.
There are, however, several instances in this book, particularly in discus-
sions of popular cultural material, where the use of American sources was
unavoidable. As J.M Bumsted has written about the 1950s, 'Canada failed
dismally to prevent the United States from gaining a veritable strangle-
hold within Canada over popular culture.'
35
 Even the Massey Commis-
sion, set up in 1949 to develop a national cultural strategy, left popular
cultural forms almost entirely in the hands of the Americans. According
to Bumsted, the assumption was that mass culture was, by definition, not
Canadian.
36
 But Canadian or not, it was consumed in this country, in great
quantities: in the mid-1950s, English-Canadian television stations drew
53 per cent of their programming from the United States;
37
 by 1959, Time
and Reader's Digest alone were taking forty cents out of every dollar spent
on magazines in Canada.
38
 This incursion of American products into the
Canadian cultural marketplace creates difficulties for Canadian research-
ers interested in Canadian discourses. But one may still make an argu-
ment that Canadians 'read' American popular culture in a Canadian way
and that issues of prominence in both countries - juvenile delinquency,
obscenity - were negotiated differently in each national context. That
said, the American sources that appear in this book do so because they
helped to shape Canadian discourses about youth and sexuality.
This book identifies a variety of processes involved in the normalization
of particular forms of heterosexuality in the postwar period. What I have
paid most attention to are those points where discourses about youth
and discourses about sexuality became intertwined. I argue that each of
these two sets of discourses is critical to the way we take meaning from
the other. Furthermore, the relationship between them has had a signifi-
cant influence on both popular and expert ideas about 'normal' forms of
sexual expression.
Sexuality and the Postwar Domestic
'Revival'
In present-day popular culture, the postwar period is routinely depicted
by a predictable mix of Ozzie and Harriet, suburban bungalows, and
rock 'n' roll teen culture. On the one hand, the period has come to repre-
sent a lost era of family values for which many now yearn; on the other
hand, it is seen as a time of unceasing conformity, repression, and bland-
ness, broken only by the tyrannies of McCarthyist anti-Communism. In
Canada, any of a number of recent studies - Doug Owram's Born at the
Right Time, Franca lacovetta's Such Hardworking People, and Reg Whit-
aker and Gary Marcuse's Cold War Canada, among others - is capable of
shattering these simplistic views.
1
 While the postwar period was a time
when social conformity was valued by many and when popular culture
frequently traded in images of smiling suburban housewives, it was also
a period that saw tremendous changes on the social landscape - such as
a steady increase in the numbers of working women and huge increases
in the numbers of immigrants coming to Canada from southern and
eastern European countries.
Canadian sociologists and historians have dealt constructively with
this contradictory image, avoiding the false polarization that has charac-
terized some postwar scholarship in the United States: Was the period a
time of repression or a time of social change? In her recent anthology,
Not June Cleaver, American historian Joanne Meyerowitz takes other
feminist historians to task for focusing too much attention on the conser-
vatism of the postwar years and not enough on women's resistance. Her
argument seems to be directed primarily at Elaine Tyler May's book,
Homeward Bound, which discusses the links between United States for-
eign policy during the cold war and prevailing ideologies of gender and
domesticity. While recognizing the era's conservatism, Meyerowitz
2
Sexuality and the Postwar Domestic 'Revival' 19
claims that the emphasis on the constraints women encountered in the
period 'tends to downplay women's agency and to portray women pri-
marily as victims. It obscures the complexity of postwar culture and the
significant social and economic changes of the postwar era ... the sus-
tained focus on the white middle-class domestic ideal... sometimes ren-
ders other ideals and other women invisible.'
2
 But surely it is not a
matter of either/or, or that researchers need to give priority to one of
these projects over the other. The point of studying dominant cultural
discourses - mainstream ideals - as May has done, is that we all have to
negotiate them, whether we subscribe to them, are marginalized by
them, or actively resist them. There can be no understanding of agency -
the resistance Meyerowitz wants to reclaim - without an understanding
of the context within which it occurs.
Domesticity and Security in Postwar Canada
While the term 'postwar' is a convenient way of marking a time period,
it cannot be emphasized enough that it refers to the specific social con-
figurations that arose as six years of war came to an end. So, for instance,
when we talk about postwar prosperity we need to remember that this
prosperity arose in the wake of tremendous loss and disruption.
In 1945, the Canadian domestic economy underwent substantial
change as both public and private sectors shifted production and ser-
vices away from military requirements. While peace was obviously wel-
comed, many Canadians feared the type of economic downturn that
had followed the First World War; would the economy collapse with the
end of military production? Such postwar concerns about economic
security were complicated by the emotional and social upheavals that
resulted from attempts to reintegrate into civilian life the million men
and women who had been in the armed forces. More than 40,000 Cana-
dians had been killed during the war, and thousands more had been
injured either physically or mentally.
3
 It is not surprising, then, that
homecomings did not always provide a happy ending to long and diffi-
cult separations.
As victory celebrations subsided, Canadians struggled with the
changes the war had brought to the home front. War work had intro-
duced thousands of women and teenagers to relatively lucrative indus-
trial jobs. Many children and teenagers had been free of adult
supervision, with fathers in the military and mothers doing war work.
Workers of all ages who had migrated to cities in search of wartime jobs
20 The Trouble with Normal
experienced for the first time the freedom of living in communities away
from their relatives. Further demographic changes occurred as tens of
thousands of immigrants and refugees arrived from Europe, many from
countries and ethnic/religious backgrounds not widely represented (or
forcefully kept out) in previous waves of immigration: Jews, Czechs,
Poles, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Russians, Yugoslavians, Italians. The
degree to which these and other social changes would, or could, be inte-
grated into the fabric of postwar life was open to considerable debate -
as, for instance, in the widespread discussions about the place and
acceptability of married women workers in the peacetime labour mar-
ket, or those about the desirability of having Jews and southern and
eastern Europeans enter the country.
4
According to historian Doug Owram, the physical and emotional dis-
ruptions caused by the war, and the significant social changes it moti-
vated, oriented Canadians towards home, family, and stability to a
degree unparalleled in other historical periods in this country. Owram
suggests that giving precedence to home and family was a primary
value of the postwar era and is central to any understanding of the econ-
omy, gender relations, politics, or other aspects of those years.
5
 As repre-
sented by married, middle-class, heterosexual couples and their
legitimate offspring, the ideal family was at once seen as a source of
affectional relationships, the basis of a consumer economy, a defence
against Communism, and a salient metaphor for various forms of social
organization, from the nation to the high-school class. In the 1940s and
1950s, writes Joy Parr, 'Domestic metaphors ... proclaimed the promise
of peace.'
6
During the Depression of the 1930s, fears about security and the
future were easily attributed to material deprivation and the social dis-
ruptions that followed from it. But after the Second World War, dis-
courses about an uncertain future existed in spite of considerably
improved material circumstances across North America. While 25 per
cent of the Canadian population continued to live in poverty into the
1960s, this figure was down substantially from the 50 per cent that had
been the average during the interwar years.
7
 During the postwar period,
the United States and Canada had the highest and second-highest stan-
dards of living in the world. Total industrial output rose by 50 per cent in
the 1950s. Canadian manufacturing wages doubled between 1945 and
1956 while prices rose only slightly. Unemployment remained between
2.8 and 5.9 per cent, depending on the region, until the mid-1950s.
8
 In
contrast, the 1933 national unemployment rate had been 20 per cent.
9
Sexuality and the Postwar Domestic 'Revival' 21
Between 1948 and 1961, a decades-old housing crisis began to reverse as
building boomed and home ownership jumped from just over 30 per
cent to 60 per cent. Clearly, many Canadians were better off than they
had been. Still, speech-makers and journalists referred to a collective dis-
trust of the future.
In a 1952 editorial, Chatelaine editor Lotta Dempsey tried to put this
unease into words. Writing of a cross-Canada train trip, she noted pros-
perous-looking people at 'every station' and found herself remarking on
the difference a single decade could make:
I listen to conversations of well-fed, well-dressed people enjoying the ease and
luxury of modern trains and planes. They seem to have everything... everything
except some indefinable inner security ... and faith. Some sense of certain
strength to hold and maintain this largesse.
Perhaps we know that the borders of our peaceful land grow thinner as the
turmoil of the outside world increases.
10
After fifteen years of domestic uncertainty, Canadians were confronted
with the cold war and they were nervous about 'the outside world/ the
unknown, the other. In the face of such a nebulous threat, there seemed
little that an individual could do, and Dempsey counselled her readers
to have faith in God.
In the 1950s, Christianity remained a profoundly important discourse
in both popular and official media. Certainly, Christian values underlay
recurring arguments that placed the heterosexual nuclear family at the
centre of a secure future for both individuals and the nation.
11
 In 1946,
for instance, a Toronto mayor promoted good citizenship by declaring
'Christian Family Week.' An ad in the Toronto Daily Star read: 'If our
country is to fulfil its destiny, family life, founded on Christian ideals
and principles, must be preserved.'
12
Domesticity as Cold-War Strategy
In magazines, school board curricula, and instructional films, an ideal-
ized image of the nuclear family was promoted as the first line of
defence against the perceived insecurity of the cold-war years.
13
 Family
life would shield Canada from the threat of 'outside turmoil.' As both
Canadian and American historians have shown, in this age of prosperity
both international and domestic affairs were suffused by familial dis-
course and, thus, contributed to the need North Americans expressed
22 The Trouble with Normal
for control on a personal level. As American historian Elaine May puts
it, the postwar family was located firmly 'within the larger political cul-
ture, not outside it,'
14
 although contemporary representations of the
family usually portrayed the opposite.
Cold-war rhetoric and the activities that followed from it were not the
same in Canada as they were in the States, as Reg Whitaker and Gary
Marcuse have shown.
15
 Nevertheless, few Canadians could have
escaped the American cold-war hype that infused the popular culture of
the era - from the predominantly U.S. films and television shows that
came across the border to the U.S. magazines that, by 1954, occupied 80
per cent of Canadian newsstand space.
16
 At the very least, Canadians
and Americans shared both a fear of and a fascination with the bomb. In
1946, the Toronto Board of Education proclaimed the theme of Education
Week to be 'Education for the Atomic Age/
17
 marking the bomb and
nuclear energy as the harbingers of a new era. Four years later, a Chate-
laine editorial identified the bomb as the 'biggest thing in our new half
century.' Noting the fear that the bomb inspired in many people, the edi-
torial carefully refrained from mentioning the potential of such an
invention to cause mind-boggling harm, referring instead to that fear as
'man's [sic] reaction to his own creative powers.' Chatelaine readers were
encouraged to focus on the good that could come of this creativity, to
'help abolish those Atom Bomb blues!'
18
 Chatelaine was nothing if not
optimistic; hence the claim that atomic energy might one day provide for
'a fantastic new way of life,' one with 'luxury and security for all.'
19
 Iron-
ically, a feature on the same page acknowledged that most nuclear
research at the time was going into 'making bigger and better bombs,'
not domestic innovations.
20
 And while the feature writer didn't mention
it, her readers knew what stood in the way of the hoped-for luxury and
security, knew why military rather than other forms of research were
necessary: Western democracies were on the alert against the threat of
Communism.
In Canada, the East-West conflict that eventually came to be known as
the cold war started in 1945 when Igor Gouzenko, a cypher clerk in the
Soviet embassy in Ottawa, defected and claimed that the Soviets had
been running a spy ring in Canada.
21
 Investigations into his allegations
focused national attention on the need for internal defences against
Communism. According to Len Scher, in his book on the Canadian cold
war, an unsuccessful search for spy rings gave way to efforts to track
'domestic dissidents.'
22
 Between October 1950 and June 1951, the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) dealt with 54,000 requests to screen
Sexuality and the Postwar Domestic 'Revival' 23
both civil servants and private-sector workers.
23
 Those who were most
likely to be put under surveillance included labour organizers, members
of Communist and socialist organizations, peace activists, and homosex-
uals. Deviance from any number of mainstream norms, writes Philip
Girard, 'represented an independence of mind that could no longer be
tolerated' during the cold war. In such a climate, 'the unknown' - homo-
sexuals, for instance - 'represented a triune denial of God, family, and
(implicitly or potentially) country at a time when departing from any
one of these norms was immediately suspect.'
24
 Deviance also precluded
the homogenization that was seen to be central to Canada's strength as a
nation. The conformity that is so often identified as a primary aspect of
postwar social life wasn't simply a characteristic of increased consumer-
ism and/or the centralization of popular culture and entertainment
industries. It was also produced by an approach to citizenship that
demanded a willingness to participate in social consensus, to adopt a
shared set of behavioural standards and mores.
Democracy and Moral Standards
In 1946, an interdepartmental Security Panel (National Defence, External
Affairs, and the RCMP) was established to check on federal civil ser-
vants who had been identified by the RCMP as security risks. As Larry
Hannant writes, this was not the first time the RCMP had initiated secu-
rity screening; however, it was the first time the effort had received for-
mal government approval.
25
 In the first three months of the panel's
operation, the RCMP offered panel officials 5466 names. Checks on these
individuals resulted in 213 'adverse reports,' although only 27 of the
people in question were determined to be bona-fide security risks - pos-
sible spies. The remainder had been included on the original list because
of 'moral' failings or 'character' weaknesses, a category that included
homosexuals, and parents of illegitimate children, among others.
26
 To
security officials, these character weaknesses suggested an inability to
do the right thing, a tendency to compromise, an impairment of moral
fibre. These were the characteristics of someone who might be influ-
enced by Communists or, worse, who might be a Communist. Normal
sexual and moral development signalled maturity and an ability to
assume responsibility. By contrast, those who transgressed sexual and
moral norms were assumed to be immature, trapped in adolescence.
How could they be counted on to safeguard their country?
Despite the overenthusiasm of RCMP security checks, writer John
24 The Trouble with Normal
Sawatsky claims that Canadian officials abhorred the McCarthyism that
swept through the American military and the government bureauc-
racy.
27
 In Canada, the search for the red menace was conducted more
quietly, was more 'gentlemanly/ says Erich Koch, who worked with the
CBC International Service in Montreal after the war.
28
 There were no
televised proceedings, and there was little publicity. People were either
fired quickly or were never hired in the first place. Communist sympa-
thies were the original source of concern, but this quickly translated into
a fear of anyone who could potentially be blackmailed by a Communist
spy: alcoholics, gamblers, and people who visited prostitutes or who
had affairs. Also on this list were homosexuals, and though they were no
more blackmailable than any of the others, the RCMP formed a special
unit, A-3, to root out homosexuals from the civil service. Eventually,
writes Sawatsky, the Mounties had files on 3000 people, including mem-
bers not only of the civil service but of the general public as well.
29
In 1952, Canada's immigration law was quietly changed to keep
homosexuals out of the country.
30
 In the late 1950s and early 1960s,
attempts to construct homosexuals as security risks led the RCMP and
the Security Panel to recruit psychologists and psychiatrists to assist in
the ousting of 'perverts' from the civil service. The experts' cooperation
culminated in a research project to develop what they called the Fruit
Machine, an instrument that would confirm an individual's homosexu-
ality by measuring his reaction to homoerotic imagery. (Men were the
primary target of the purge. Lesbians, according to Sawatsky, refused to
disclose the names of friends and colleagues, thus limiting the investiga-
tions of their networks by the mostly male Mounties.) The effort was,
not surprisingly, unsuccessful, and stands as a stunning example of the
use of science to support moral regulatory practices.
31
That homosexuals were identified as particularly dangerous by the
guardians of national security suggests the importance of normative
sexuality in the social and political landscape of postwar Canada. Cer-
tainly the vilification of sexual deviants did much to shore up the pri-
mary position of the heterosexual nuclear family as the only legitimate
site of sexual expression. But the links made between sexuality and
national security also suggest the way that sexuality worked as a site
for the displacement of general social and political anxieties. In official
discourses, homosexuality was constructed not simply as the tragic
fate of particular individuals but as a force so menacing it carried the
potential to undermine the strength of the nation. In the face of the
cold war, Communists and spies and those with mysterious and ques-
Sexuality and the Postwar Domestic 'Revival' 25
tionable sex habits or morals were almost equal threats to the security
of the Dominion.
In this context, having a family became an important marker of social
belonging, of conformity to prevailing standards. It was a sign of matu-
rity and adulthood, of one's ability to take on responsibility. The social
positions of mother/wife and father/husband defined individuals as
contributors to their community and their country. As a psychiatrist
argued in Chatelaine, the formation of families and the raising of children
was, at root, a patriotic obligation. In becoming parents, men and
women were 'giving to the best of their ability.'
32
 Thus, the nuclear fam-
ily came to operate as a symbol of safety - not just on the individual
level, but on the national level as well.
Discourses about shared values, common goals, and mutual goodwill
among Canada's citizens helped to construct an image of the Dominion
itself as a family, as Annalee Golz has argued.
33
 In this frame, Commu-
nists and sex deviates were disruptions to the larger domestic order. By
protecting the borders against perverts, the state was protecting the
'home,' safeguarding those under its charge. After the war, with the
expansion of the welfare state, the government was increasingly posi-
tioned as concerned parent of its citizens. Attempts to purge the country
of 'perverts' and 'Commies' suggest that the state, as 'head of the fam-
ily/ was attending to more than the material well-being of Canadians.
Policies and practices that targeted deviants were an effort to protect and
foster moral standards, a primary task of any 'concerned parent.'
The Family
In a Canadian Youth Commission pamphlet called 'Speak Your Peace,'
the family was identified as 'the chief support of the new world.'
34
 Cer-
tainly, as the crucible of consumption, the middle-class family was the
chief support of the postwar economy. Essential to the nurturing of
workers and the buying of goods, the nuclear family was also under-
stood to be the primary site of moral education and the training ground
for the democracy that, in part, was thought to define the age.
35
 Hence
the anxiety created when various expert voices claimed that 'the family'
was threatened in the postwar world. If the family failed, would democ-
racy - and, by implication, Canada - fail too? The fac t that families were
being formed by more people more often than at any other time in this
century did little to counter a pervasive sense that 'the family' as a social
institution was under threat.
26 The Trouble with Normal
As evidence of the family's decline, social critics were most likely to
cite figures about divorce rates. At the end of the Second World War, the
divorce rate in Canada tripled, 'from 56.2 divorces per 100,000 married
persons 15 years of age and over in 1941 to 131.9 in 1946.' After 1946, the
rate fell off, but then it 'rose steadily from 1951 to 1968 (88.9 to 124.3).'
36
Most of the early rise was attributable to hastily considered wartime
weddings, although increasing opportunities for women to achieve
some measure of economic independence may also have been an impor-
tant factor. The divorce rate served to bolster a protectionist stance
towards the family and to justify its ideological fortification by way of,
for instance, television programs, school health curricula, and moral
panics over sex crime. The state of the family was a central - if not the
central - concern of postwar life.
For the most part, the image of 'the family' that was used to represent
the ideal was drawn from urban, white, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class and
upper-middle-class communities. The authors of the massive Crestwood
Heights, a 1956 study of Toronto's 'internal suburb' of Forest Hill, offered
the following description:
In infinite variety, yet with an eternal sameness, [such a community] flashes on
the movie screen, in one of those neat comedies about the upper middle class
family which Hollywood delights to repeat again and again as nurture for the
American Dream. It fills the pages of glossy magazines devoted to the current
best in architecture, house decoration, food, dress, and social behaviour. The
innumerable service occupations bred of an urban culture will think anxiously
about people in such a community in terms of what 'they' will buy or use this
year. Any authority in the field of art, literature, or science, probably at some
time has had, or will have, its name on a lecture itinerary. A teacher will consider
it a privilege to serve in its schools. For those thousands of North Americans
who struggle to translate the promise of America into a concrete reality for them-
selves, and even more important, for their children, it is in some sense a Mecca.
37
The authors of Crestwood Heights argued that upper-middle-class fami-
lies were a marker of 'what life is coming to be more and more like in
North America - at least in the middle classes.' In this sense, they wrote,
a community like Crestwood Heights 'is normative, or "typical," not in
the sense of the average of an aggregate of such communities, but in the
sense of representing the norm to which middle-class community life
tends now to move.'
38
 While I agree with their point, that society tends
'to move' in such a direction, it bears remembering that it does not nee-
Sexuality and the Postwar Domestic 'Revival' 27
essarily arrive. The experience of the 'ideal family' - breadwinner father,
stay-at-home mother, and well-adjusted children - was not available to
everyone.
If divorce was considered to be the main threat to this idealized image
of the nuclear family, working mothers and immigrant families were
also serious - and related - challenges to its claim on the Canadian imag-
ination. As many historians have noted, the numbers of married women
in the workforce increased rapidly in the postwar period. In the early
1940s, one in twenty women worked outside the home; in 1951 that fig-
ure had risen to one in ten, only to rise again, to one in five, by 1961. As
Joan Sangster writes, concerns about increases in the numbers of mar-
ried women working for pay masked class and race biases; the labour
participation rates of recent immigrants, women in some ethnic and
racial communities, and women who were poor had not changed.
39
Between 1946 and 1954, Canada admitted almost a million immi-
grants.
40
 That not all of the new arrivals organized their families in
accordance with Canadian middle-class norms led to concerns that
'New Canadians' would disrupt postwar efforts to shore up the family
as an institution. Settlement services and advocacy groups encouraged
immigrants to abandon their own family structures in favour of those
thought to be essential to the moral strength of the nation: single-family
households, presided over by breadwinner fathers and stay-at-home
mothers. Franca lacovetta says that the cold war gave social workers an
opportunity to frame such assimilationist rhetoric as a matter of national
urgency 'by equating the predominance of respectable, middle-class,
family values with the superiority of Western democracies such as Can-
ada.'
41
 That Canadian family norms were neither desirable for many
immigrants, who had their own ways of doing things, nor attainable for
those facing the hardship of arrival in a new country, did not deter Cana-
dian experts from labelling immigrant families as 'deviant' and a threat
to both 'Canadianization' and the institution of the family itself.
42
An emphasis on the family was not a new phenomenon in Canada.
However, this emphasis took a new shape in the postwar period.
Whereas the primary focus of many earlier family discourses had been
on women, motherhood, and the development of proper femininity,
43
postwar discourses about the family tended to show (and construct)
most concern for the development of properly adjusted - normal - chil-
dren. Certainly these strands of concern are closely tied together, but
what is important here is the way their relationship was characterized.
In postwar discourses the construction of appropriate forms of feminin-
28 The Trouble with Normal
ity - and masculinity - were seen as the means to the nobler goal of
childrearing. In Crestwood Heights, the production of the future Crest-
wood adult was the focus of the community's institutions.
44
According to the Crestwood authors, the upper-middle-class families
they studied were relatively isolated social units with limited connection
to a wider network of kin. In contrast to 'the usual Victorian family/ or,
presumably, working-class or immigrant families, Crestwood families
were units of consumption, rather than production. And, importantly,
they allowed 'more individuality and freedom' to their members than
had earlier forms.
45
 These modern families, though not as religious as
their predecessors, drew heavily on Judaeo-Christian ethics, 'democratic
practice,' and the advice of 'child-rearing experts.' Deviation from pre-
vailing norms could result in a family's being defined by such experts as
malfunctioning and likely to produce 'disturbed' children.
46
Present-day writers have also noted this tendency of postwar middle-
class families to be relatively self-contained.
47
 While 1990s conservatives
nostalgically recall the postwar family as a link to earlier times, and as
exemplifying enduring 'traditional' values, Elaine May claims that 'the
legendary family of the 1950s ... represented something new. It was not,
as common wisdom tells us, the last gasp of traditional family life with
roots deep in the past. Rather, it was the first whole-hearted effort to cre-
ate a home that would fulfil virtually all its members' personal needs
through an energized and expressive personal life.'
48
The extent to which the ideal family had come to be constructed in
popular discourse as a set of relationships, a source of affectional and
material needs, is evident in a 1950s educational film for adolescents
called A Date with Your Family. In the film, a teenaged boy and girl arrive
home from school full of excitement because they have 'an important
date ... dinner with the family/ which to them 'is a special occasion.' Sis-
ter changes her clothes to 'something more festive' because 'the women
in this family seem to feel that they owe it to the men of the family to
look relaxed, rested and attractive at dinnertime/ Brother studies while
sister sets the table. Then he gets Junior ready for dinner. Sister makes a
centrepiece of flowers for the dining table. Father comes through the
door, and the boys greet him enthusiastically, before Mother calls them
all to the dining-room where 'they converse pleasantly' over their meal.
Brother compliments Mother 'and maybe sis' on the food because 'it
makes them want to continue pleasing you.' The whole event is a 'time
of pleasure, charm, relaxation ...
/49
 For the non-cinematic families who
failed to meet this ideal of civility and gratification, it was, nevertheless,
Sexuality and the Postwar Domestic 'Revival' 29
a modern standard by which they would be measured, one that took
material comforts for granted. It assumed a strict sexual division of
labour and a public life in which troubles were manageable enough to be
either left at the door or assuaged by family harmony. Certainly this pic-
ture of the 'united happy family'
50
 was distinct from earlier versions in
which affectional needs came second to economic ones and expectations
for emotional fulfilment were considerably lower.
In part, idealized images of the postwar family were a consequence of
the economic changes and prosperity that favoured consumerism over
mutual dependence, suburban bungalows over farms and crowded
downtown apartments. But the constitution of the notion of nuclear-
family-as-island was also related to postwar desires for individual satis-
faction and needs for social stability. Middle-class families were fre-
quently portrayed as offering refuge from the turmoil of the outside
world. That they could actually engender isolation and alienation, as we
now know from numerous articles in Chatelaine and from books like
Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, was not widely discussed.
51
 Nor
was the fact that many Canadians, by choice or circumstance, lived in
families that bore little resemblance to the middle-class nuclear ideal.
In 1956, Maclean's published a special report on 'the family' by Eric
Hutton. Noting 'the comeback of the Canadian family/ Hutton charac-
terized it as a resilient but basically unchanging entity, although he also
told his readers 'the family way of life has changed out of recognition in
half a century.'
52
 It had taken on a particularly modern guise as Cana-
dian young people married at younger ages, gave birth to more children,
and, like the parents in A Date with Your Family, had more expectations of
the whole package than had the generations before them. As Doug
Owram writes, 'the young adults of the 1940s were the most domesti-
cally oriented generation of the twentieth-century.'
53
In 1941, the average age of first marriage for women was 25.4 years of
age. By 1961 that figure had dropped to 22 years of age. Between 1937
and 1954, the marriage rate for women between the ages of 15 and 19
doubled from 30 per 1000 to 62 per 1000.
54
 Once married, these women
had more children, more quickly, than their mothers did. Between 1937
and 1947, the number of births per 1000 of the population rose from 20.1
to 28.9, and it continued to rise until 1956. Much of this increase was
accounted for by mothers under 25 years of age and by families with
three or more children. In 1956, almost 50 per cent of live births in Can-
ada were third or later children.
55
Maclean's accounted for the popularity of babies and families in a
30 The Trouble with Normal
number of ways: large families, Hutton said, provided security in an
insecure world; the baby bonus (established in 1945) and an overall
prosperity made them easier to afford; maternal and child health had
improved; television encouraged families to spend their leisure time
together at home; Princess Elizabeth and Princess Grace of Monaco had
made maternity fashionable; and parents - even fathers - had come to
realize that children could be fun. According to the Provost of Trinity
College at the University of Toronto, 'the family is returning to favour
because so many men are making the discovery that it's the pleasantest
company they're ever likely to have in a world that is full of competition
and unpleasant episodes.'
56
 That fathers were under heavy pressure
from psychological experts to participate to a greater extent in the life of
their children, especially to prevent the abnormal sexual and emotional
development of their sons, is not discussed in Hutton's article. Without
adequate fathering, some experts said, a boy might become delinquent,
turn into a homosexual, or suffer 'untold mental distress.'
57
What is also not mentioned in Hutton's article about the comeback of
the family is that there was tremendous pressure applied to anyone who
failed to follow the trend, as evidenced by the RCMP crackdown on
homosexuals. But that episode was only the most obvious aspect of a
more widespread trend. In an American survey conducted after the war,
only 9 per cent of those questioned believed that single people could be
happy.
58
 Toronto gynaecologist and author Marion Milliard (who was
herself not married) counterposed single women and married women in
ways that made them seem almost like different species. Single women,
she said, could only be 'out of place at a gathering of married couples.'
And single women and married women could 'only, unwittingly, hurt
one another.'
59
 Even young divorcees and widows, Milliard wrote pity-
ingly, 'fit in nowhere.'
60
 Single men, in the 1950s, risked being seen as
homosexuals, a group whose social currency was nonexistent. From her
reading of postwar American sociology, Barbara Ehrenreich says that
experts claimed a number of reasons why men might not marry: 'Some
were simply misfortunes, such as "poor health or deviant physical char-
acteristics," "unattractiveness" and extreme geographical isolation. But
high on the list for men were homosexuality, emotional fixation on par-
ent(s) and unwillingness to assume responsibility.'
61
But simply getting married was not enough to satisfy postwar social
expectations. Married couples without children were also subject to dis-
approval and admonishments for not doing their duty to their country.
62
A Chatelaine article featured an infertile couple who received constant
Sexuality and the Postwar Domestic 'Revival' 31
ribbing from their friends: 'How come you two are leading such selfish
lives?'; 'Aren't you going to prove yourself a man? What are we sup-
posed to think, eh?'
63
 Another Chatelaine story, a first-person account by
a woman who chose not to have children, was roundly denounced in the
letters column of two subsequent issues.
64
 A reader from Ontario wrote:
'That writer who is "not going to have any" [children] has aroused my
indignation to such a point that I must answer, in the face of such mal-
formed humanity ... I am mother of nine ... Such a woman is denying
herself the greatest of all love and satisfaction, that of mothering a child,
and giving life the purpose of your being, the purpose of your Creator,
great and true.' After a number of similar comments, Chatelaine editors
intervened on the letters page to set things right: 'One moment please!
The Editors are happy to announce, for all such readers' peace of mind,
that the anonymous writer in question has just telephoned to say Hur-
ray, she is going to have one!'
65
While this particular exchange can be read as little more than a rally of
individual opinions, the importance of postwar professionals in con-
structing this kind of discussion cannot be overstated. In magazines, on
the radio, and in newspapers, experts were increasingly evident as
mediators of everyday life and as primary participants in the construc-
tion of boundaries between normality and deviance. For instance, the
Chatelaine letters about the woman's decision not to have a baby
appeared exactly one year after the magazine published an article by a
psychiatrist criticizing those who chose not to have children, suggesting
that they were immature and unpatriotic.
66
 The point is not that the let-
ter writers were directly influenced by the earlier article; rather, their
comments were part of a larger discourse that was, in part, constructed
via expert commentary.
While the middle class often consulted experts voluntarily, or sought
out their ideas in print, working-class and immigrant families were
likely to encounter these professionals in any number of institutional
settings - such as schools, the courts, or social service offices.
67
 But even
as the general category of 'the expert' was gaining prominence, some
experts were more revered than others. Psychologists and psychiatrists
had a particular appeal in a social system that was based more and more
on individualism. Part of the appeal of the mental-health professionals
stemmed from the influence they had wielded during the war. Their
contribution to the screening and rehabilitation of the troops had
increased public awareness of their work,
68
 and widely circulating dis-
courses about the importance of mental hygiene validated their con-
32 The Trouble with Normal
cerns. But sociologists and medical doctors were also routinely called
upon to diagnose social trends, to make pronouncements on behaviours
or identities, and to lend legitimacy to certain positions.
It was the increasing influence of psychiatry in postwar North Amer-
ica that constituted babies as evidence of their parents' 'normal,' gen-
dered, sexual and emotional development - of their having achieved
maturity. Babies were a public sign of married sexuality and, in theory,
of marital harmony. Babies could also be seen to signal acceptance of
community norms and to confirm that men and women were perform-
ing their respective normative gender roles (whether, in fact, they were
or not) and assuming the responsibility that came with them.
Those seen to be outside the family, from runaway youths to homo-
sexuals, were anomalies. Hard to classify, they were often the objects of
scorn or pity. Discourses about life in the middle-class nuclear family
made available a variety of subject positions (albeit gendered and
restrictive ones) - parent, sexual being, responsible citizen, consumer -
that either were not available or were available in limited ways to adults
who were single. Families, narrowly defined - monogamous, heterosex-
ual marriages and the children produced within them - provided an
important way of making sense of one's position in the postwar social
structure.
Marriage: Site of Legitimate Sex
One of the primary defining factors of the postwar nuclear family was
an emphasis on the sexual compatibility between husband and wife and
the importance of sex in a conjugal union. According to Steven Seidman,
the eroticization of romantic relationships was a trend that had been
building throughout the twentieth century.
69
 Certainly, reproduction
continued to be a primary goal of marital sexual activity, but sex had
come to be understood as entailing more than this. In the postwar
period, sex was meant to be a source of pleasure and emotional fulfil-
ment for both men and women.
70
 In this framework, women's sexuality
was, in theory if not in practice, as important as men's.
71
 Sex was also
perceived to be a 'natural' part of a healthy life, even if it wasn't engaged
in for the sole purpose of producing babies.
Isolated within their families, away from kin or other members of the
community, the ideal postwar couple were meant to draw their support
primarily from each other. In some popular constructions of marriage,
even close friends were to be shunned in order to protect the sanctity
Sexuality and the Postwar Domestic 'Revival' 33
and privacy of the heterosexual bond. One article in Chatelaine goes so
far as to suggest that 'The [wife's] girl friend is a danger signal, a clear
alarm that the marriage is sick and in need of loving attention .,.'
72
 In the
same article, a psychiatrist argues that the 'primary rule of married life'
was 'that nothing of intimate consequence be discussed with friends.'
Marriage was drawn as the most important, indeed as the only impor-
tant, relationship between adults. Husbands and wives were to gain
their 'basic sense of belonging, of well-being, of fulfilment' from each
other. Sex was the glue that would hold them together. As Steven
Seidman argues, sex was the sphere upon which rested the success of the
marital bond.
73
While the role of sex within marriage may have been clear, the role of
men and women in that same relationship was seen to be in an incredi-
ble state of flux. Once glued together by their sexual attraction, it was
not always clear how men and women were to perform their non-sexual
conjugal duties. The presence of married women in the labour force -
rates rose from 12.7 per cent of all women in paid employment in 1941,
to 30 per cent in 1951, to 49.8 per cent in 1961
74
 - suggested to some peo-
ple that the difference between gender roles was diminishing. While this
could have been looked upon as a positive gain for women, it was inter-
preted by many as a demasculinization of men. It was also seen to spell
trouble for heterosexual relationships, based as they were on an assump-
tion of essential difference between men and women. In 1954, Chatelaine
printed this advice to young brides from a Protestant minister:
Wives you can unman your husband by taking his place. If you are going to go
to work, you should work only for a few years ... While working you should still
live on your husband's income... Within one or two years, depending upon your
ages, you should quit work and let him support you and live on what he can
make...
The wife should also take pride in being good at her wifely job. In our day it is
sometimes difficult for women to adjust themselves to this fact...
... Make the man act his part. Do not start to be the man yourself.
75
Women's advances in the workplace, slim as they were, and new
forms of corporate organization contributed to what some contempo-
rary writers have called a postwar crisis of middle-class masculinity.
76
Corporate culture demanded a personality concerned with the thoughts
of others, tuned to the needs of others. It was the antithesis of the 'rug-
ged individualism' that grounded the versions of white, middle-class
34 The Trouble with Normal
masculinity available in popular culture. In his study of conformity in
(male) middle-class America, sociologist David Reisman, author of The
Lonely Crowd, called this the 'other-directed' personality.
77
 Its characteris-
tics, he said, were more closely matched to a traditional feminine iden-
tity than to a traditional masculine one. In robbing men of their
'individuality/ 'other-direction' feminized men.
On top of this, changes in the structure of the economy and the
increasing importance of consumption as a family-based activity shifted
men's place of importance in the household. As Barbara Ehrenreich
points out in her study of (male and female) middle-class America, men
might have earned the money, but women were the ones who spent the
bulk of it. Consumption was women's work. Men's paid employment
certainly made it possible, but it did not necessarily give men control
over it: 'In the temple of consumption which was the suburban home,
women were priestesses and men mere altar boys.'
78
These transformations in the organization of gender contributed to a
stressful negotiation of the relationship between husband and wife. Both
women and men were under a tremendous strain to build what Chate-
laine called 'modern marriages': 'a new kind of joint-ownership mar-
riage ... which may beat any earlier model back to Adam and Eve.' As
one psychologist put it, 'We are moving from dictatorship to equality in
marriage, from the day when the husband's word was law to a time
when the wife shares equally in the family decisions. And the working
wife is probably doing more for the partnership idea than anything
else.'
79
 Indeed, it was middle-class assumptions about the lack of equal-
ity in the marriages of some working-class immigrants that led social
workers to label those marriages deviant and in need of 'Canadianiz-
ing.'
80
 The popular assumption was that gender roles in marriage were
relaxing, but not too far. Expectations remained that women would be
responsible for domestic life and men for 'breadwinning.' In a 1955
investigation of marriage, Chatelaine encouraged women to give more
rather than less to their homes and families: 'And the siren-wife-mother
who realizes the once simple business of being a married woman has
become a complex and fulltime career in itself is at least halfway to lick-
ing these [aforementioned] problems'
81
 - problems like confusion over
roles, loneliness, and boredom.
As Wini Breines writes, despite discourses about 'modern marriages'
and the 'age of equality/ men and women continued to experience gen-
der as a deep-rooted site of social difference. While there were more
options for white, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class women than there had
Sexuality and the Postwar Domestic 'Revival' 35
been in previous decades, few women were encouraged to pursue them.
Middle-class women's social worth continued to be measured by their
success in raising children and providing a comfortable home for their
husbands. Marriage continued to be an inevitability rather than a choice.
At the same time, middle-class men were being told to participate more
in the affectional life of the family while having to give themselves over
to a corporate culture that was constructed on the assumption of their
freedom from domestic responsibilities. For both men and women, frus-
tration seemed an inevitable consequence of a relationship that was sup-
posed to reflect 'new' forms of gender organization without giving up
the old ones. That this package of contradictions was supposed both to
inspire and to sustain sexual attraction and pleasure was just one more
strain on a relationship that, nevertheless, maintained remarkable levels
of popularity right up until the late 1950s.
The Kinsey Reports and the Sexual Climate
Although marriage remained the only legitimate site of sexual activity
between adults throughout the late 1940s and the 1950s, postwar sexual
discourses did preserve some of the liberalization that had been fostered
by the war.
82
 Popular culture, especially, became increasingly sexualized
by way of sexy movie stars, the so-called 'sex appeal' of advertisements,
and sexually explicit books and magazines. Divorce rates increased.
83
Some Protestant churches supported the need for sex education and
were even prepared to accept its limited introduction into the schools.
84
And, though the birth-control movement was hardly at its peak in the
1950s, interest in the pill, which would be released in 1961, was high.
85
Lesbians and gay men in urban centres gained access to limited but
important public spaces.
86
 Single mothers in Ontario were eligible for
the first time to receive mother's allowance. While these and other
changes were significant, they existed alongside a more familiar reti-
cence about matters pertaining to sexuality. Thus, even the mention of
sex in the public realm continued to elicit reactions of strong disapproval
from some people. Chatelaine readers, for instance, regularly chastised
the editors for succumbing to so-called prurient interests. Questionable
material included an article about menstruation for teenage girls, cover
illustrations that showed too much leg, and self-help-type features that
focused on psychiatric explanations (perceived to be inherently sexual
explanations) for emotional and relationship problems.
87
Nothing crystallizes the various strains of postwar sexual discourse
36 The Trouble with Normal
like public response to the Kinsey reports, Sexual Behavior in the Human
Male (SBHM, 1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (SBHF, 1953).
When the first volume appeared, in an 800-page, hardcover edition,
published by a little-known scientific publishing house, it sold a total of
200,000 copies in its first six months. Even the publishers were unaware
of the impact the book would have and originally planned to print only
10,000 copies, 'one of the more spectacular publishing mistakes of the
decade,' says Kinsey's associate Wardell Pomeroy.
88
 Within a month,
Kinsey had received more than 1000 letters, only six of which, Pomeroy
claims, were negative.
89
 When the female volume was about to come out
in 1953, more than 150 magazines and major newspapers wanted pre-
release access to the text. That same year, Time declared the sex
researcher their man of the year, and Kinsey was, by all accounts, a
household name.
In general, reaction to the two books was mixed, and perhaps there-
fore suggestive of the various ways that sex was understood to fit into
North American culture. According to Pomeroy, reaction to the male
volume was largely favourable, with most of the criticism it received
focusing on the method of the study. In contrast, reaction to the female
volume was significantly more negative and tended to focus on the
morality of the findings and on the moral basis of the project itself.
Clearly, it was one thing to talk about men's sexual activity and quite
another to talk of women's. The uproar over the second book eventually
led to the termination of funding (from the Rockefeller Foundation) for
Kinsey's research.
90
 Still, there were many who appreciated the work
that Kinsey had done and the impact it could make, even if they weren't
particularly thrilled with what the doctor had found. At the very least,
reviewers were impressed by the sheer size of Kinsey's sample. The
male volume was based on interviews with 5300 men, the female vol-
ume on interviews with 5940 women. Both samples were diversified in
terms of class background, age, region and religion, but they dealt
almost exclusively with white people, a fact not noted in any of the
Canadian commentaries. Reviews in liberal Canadian magazines like
Saturday Night, Canadian Forum, and Canadian Welfare were largely posi-
tive and took seriously the implications of the research for sexual stan-
dards.
91
 Even Chatelaine sent a reporter to Indiana to interview Kinsey at
work.
92
 In her article, Chatelaine writer Lotta Dempsey took pride in
being the first Canadian woman to be part of the sex doctor's sample -
as a rule, Kinsey only granted press interviews to those who would
agree to be interviewed for his study.
Sexuality and the Postwar Domestic 'Revival' 37
Canadian reviewers made little of the fact that Kinsey's material was
American. B.K. Sandwell, in a piece for Saturday Night, criticized Kin-
sey's first volume for succumbing to the familiar American habit of not
openly identifying itself as American. But Sandwell also concluded that
the difference between Canadian and American males was so slight that
the absence of Canadians from the study was of little importance.
93
 That
Kinsey had identified numerous social factors as having an influence on
sexual behaviour (education, religion, class, region), was certainly an
opportunity for Canadian critics to speculate on the possible sexual
implications of 'Canadian-ness.' But it was an opportunity that seems
not to have been taken up.
Before Kinsey, public discussions of sex had taken place in the context
of related issues such as birth control, divorce, sexual crime, and vene-
real disease. While marriage manuals with explicit descriptions of sex-
ual activities had been published throughout the first half of the century,
these were not the subject of mainstream, everyday discussion. Cer-
tainly, such material was unlikely to find its way into newspapers and
magazines. One of Kinsey's main achievements, then, was packaging
information about sex in a fashion that could be widely disseminated. In
his books, sex was reduced to a series of clean statistics. Kinsey's empha-
sis on his own scientific background and on the scientific integrity of his
study made sex more acceptable as a topic of conversation. In a period
when North Americans were enamoured of scientists and experts of all
kinds, and were concerned about wartime changes in sexual mores, Kin-
sey's timing was perfect.
In publishing his findings, Kinsey not only brought sex into public
discussion, he brought a lot of different kinds of sex into public discus-
sion: homosexual acts, premarital sex, oral sex, anal sex, and masturba-
tion. In his description of sexual behaviour, heterosexual intercourse was
just one of many possible activities in which North Americans engaged
to satisfy what Kinsey understood to be a natural need for orgasm. It
was this challenge to normative standards of sexual behaviour - to the
definition of normal sexuality — tha t most concerned Kinsey's critics and
supporters alike. As Janice Irvine has written, homosexuals and others
who wanted to liberalize moral standards used the reports' statistics
about sexual diversity to back demands for social tolerance for sexual
minorities. On the other hand, 'vigilantes' against such changes used the
same figures to show the extent of a moral breakdown, 'to fuel the post-
war backlash' against relaxing sexual mores.
94
A reviewer in Canadian Forum wrote that 'what this [diversity of sex-
38 The Trouble with Normal
ual behaviours] does to our concepts of "normal," "excessive" and the
like needs no emphasis ,..'
95
 An editor at Saturday Night wrote that there
was no problem in the statistics themselves (remarkable as they were);
rather, the danger lay in the conclusions people might draw from them.
Some people might decide, he said, that 'anything that is done by seven-
tenths of the population cannot possibly be wrong - a conclusion which
reduces morality to a sort of popular plebiscite.'
96
 In another Saturday
Night article, Perry Hughes questioned even the ethics of applying sta-
tistics to sex. Sex, he wrote, is a 'subject that cannot be divorced from its
moral and spiritual associations, and which therefore is not a proper
subject for statistics at all... the obligation to behave oneself in a certain
manner is not affected by the question whether 90 per cent, or 50 per
cent, or only 20 per cent, of one's fellow citizens behave in that man-
ner.'
97
 Not everyone was as willing as Kinsey was to base moral norms
on statistical ones.
In the years following the Second World War, the heterosexual nuclear
family was valued as the 'traditional' foundation of the Canadian social
structure. The family was reified as a primary stabilizing influence on
both individuals and the nation as a whole. Metaphorically and practi-
cally, it was assumed to be the basis of the social consensus that was a
central part of cold-war discourse and practice. Mainstream discourses
suggested that dissent and difference could weaken the face of democ-
racy in the ideological fight against Communism. Canadians were called
upon to show an impressive social cohesiveness as evidence of their
dedication to the superiority of the Western way of life. A commitment
to the family was central to the social homogeneity necessitated by this
display.
Inherent in the postwar definition of 'the family' was its basis in a sex-
ually charged heterosexual marriage. Elaine May argues that marriage
operated to 'contain' sexuality, to protect against the social disorder that
was thought to be the inevitable result of sex-out-of-control.
98
 Certainly,
this type of anxiety was evident in the vilification of homosexuals prac-
tised by agencies of the Dominion government. As a form of social orga-
nization and the only site of legitimate sexual behaviour, the family was
integral to the definition of deviance. Those who found themselves on
the outside of the family existed beyond the bounds of social legitimacy,
and so were denied claim to one of the defining features of normality. It
was a lesson that adults would emphasize over and over again in their
dealings with postwar youth.
Hope for the Future or Repercussions of
the Past: Discursive Constructions of
Youth
Pause of a moment to consider what the boy or girl of today is confronted with:
Countless novels filled with immorality, profanity, and a profound belief in
nothing - most of them, hailed as masterpieces by reviewers who don't know a
sentence from a group of words; radio programs that in the main get laughs by
scoffing at what were once considered sterling virtues; movies that glorify rude-
ness, riches, power, animal passion, and drinking; a world that cheerfully squan-
ders billions on liquor, cars, tobacco, gambling, sports, chewing gum, and
sleeping tablets but protests strenuously at spending a few millions on educa-
tion, the church, the physically handicapped; an eagerness to honour movie
stars, successful speculators, and warriors, and more or less quietly to ignore the
great missionaries, peace-makers, preachers, teachers, doctors and artists; a
realm in which God is pushed into a back corner and the worship that used to be
His lavished wholeheartedly on screen actors and actresses, not to mention
money; an age in which unfaithfulness and divorce are coolly taken as a matter
of course, and bawdy jokes and speech are too often bandied about even in
mixed company; a world that at incredible expense has produced the atomic
bomb and now cringes in fear of it; and psychologists who apparently never
heard of self-control and patly explain away misconduct by attributing it to sick-
ness or unhappiness or a carry-over from early life.
1
This postwar version of 'the world's going to hell in a handbasket/ was
penned by the principal of Toronto's Palmerston Avenue Public School
in 1948. Perhaps longer and more comprehensive than other public
expressions of social despair over the state of youth, R.K. Hall's lament
on behalf of his students was not, however, new or unusual. Nor was his
proposed solution to the problems he had outlined. Hall encouraged the
parents of his pupils to give more to family life. In particular, he wanted
3
40 The Trouble with Normal
them to take advantage of the wholesome 'influence of the family dinner
table.'
Hall's flagging of an alleged social and moral disintegration and his
faith in the calming and rehabilitative powers of domesticity make his
plea, which appeared in a school bulletin for parents, emblematic of a
strong current of postwar middle-class social comment. Although Hall's
professional position shaped his personal concern for young people, and
lent him the authority to speak of such matters, references to 'children'
and 'youth' were regularly employed by a whole range of social critics
as symbolic devices to underline the gravity of problems wrought by
changes in the modern world and the need for ameliorative actions.
A brief note on the use of the term 'youth': The word can be used to
refer to chronological age, to a stage of life, or to specific individuals, as
in: Who are those youths sitting over there? Ostensibly, in this latter
sense, 'youth' is an ungendered noun that can refer to people of either
sex. In practice, however, the people referred to by the term 'youth' are
almost always male. That was the case in the 1940s and 1950s, and it con-
tinues to be so today. Nevertheless, I use the term, with reservations,
because as articulated in a number of postwar discourses, 'youth' con-
veys a meaning distinct from either 'adolescent' or 'teenager.' It marks a
social problem in a way that 'adolescent,' as the more 'scientific' term,
cannot. And while many postwar adults considered teenagers to be a
problem, there was no generally articulated 'teenage problem' in the
same way that there was a 'youth problem' in the years after the Second
World War. Conversely, neither 'teenager' nor 'adolescent' captures the
kind of hope in the future that 'youth' was often used to convey. 'Youth'
was a term steeped in both anxiety and promise, a contradiction that is
emblematic of the position of young people in postwar Canada.
Young People and the Transition from War to Peace
In the postwar period there were a number of competing discourses
about youth, some with clear roots in wartime disruptions, others more
distinctly tied to postwar prosperity and the 'modern age.' The notion of
adolescence as a time of rapid and profound change operated as a fun-
nel for fears about change in the society at large. As the progression of
one's adolescence was seen to determine the shape of one's adulthood,
2
so, too, the collective progress of adolescents could indicate the shape
society would take in the future; youth operated as metaphor for the
development of the society as a whole. It was as if, after two decades of
Discursive Constructions of Youth 41
turmoil, the late 1940s and the 1950s presented Canadian society with a
'second chance' to grow up.
For many adolescents, wartime had meant that their supposedly pre-
carious 'transitional years' were spent without a lot of adult supervision,
as fathers joined the forces and left home and mothers joined the bur-
geoning wartime labour force. In 1944, more than 30 per cent of women
over the age of fifteen were working outside the home for pay.
3
 Teenage
girls and boys were also among those who kept the war industries oper-
ating. After a decade-long depression it was an easy decision for many
adolescents to give up their studies for wartime wages. The combination
of teenagers' growing economic independence and the alleged lack of
parental supervision lay at the root of a broad-based debate on the inev-
itability and extent of juvenile delinquency and a more generalized phe-
nomenon that was known simply as the 'youth problem.' Educators,
civic officials, and journalists all claimed that the wartime climate had
set teenagers upon the path of trouble. The absence of parents (espe-
cially mothers) and the assumed emotional turmoil of adolescence were
taken by some as a perilous combination that could only ensure a nega-
tive outcome in terms of young people's development into mature and
responsible citizens.
As Ruth Roach Pierson and Susan Prentice have both argued, the
uproar over youth and delinquency in Canada was, in part, constructed
through discourses about mothering. After the war there was a con-
certed effort by government agencies at all levels, by business, and by
many civic organizations to push women out of the paid workforce and
back into the home. A good part of this struggle was fought on an ideo-
logical level. Working women were told it was their patriotic duty to
give up their positions in manufacturing plants to returning soldiers.
They were also told that their children were suffering from the absence
of mothers from their homes, the consequences of which might be the
transformation of so-called normal youth into delinquents.
4
Even after the war, after women's and youth's participation in the
labour force had begun to drop, and after fathers had returned home
from overseas, there continued to be public expressions of fear, like R.K.
Hall's, about the many harmful influences in adolescent lives. If it
wasn't the war it was the changing shape of popular culture - television,
popular dance music, Hollywood movies, and crime comics. All of these
were, at various times, marked as influences capable of corrupting
youthful 'innocence' - as threats to young lives, and therefore to the
future of the society as a whole. As historian John Gillis has written, both
42 The Trouble with Normal
the idea of youthful innocence and the fears of juvenile delinquency that
opposed it were the products of a worried middle class: 'The notion of a
stage of life freed from all the cares and responsibilities of a troubled civ-
ilization was their escapist dream, the vision of juvenile degeneracy
their recurring nightmare.'
5
 Of course, to middle-class adults who
believed that 'juvenile degeneracy' was rooted in the working class, that
'nightmare' was perhaps a recognition of the volatility of class inequali-
ties.
What rendered such fantasies particularly poignant, in the late 1940s
and the 1950s, were hopes that, after all the losses of the war and the
Depression, not just youth but society as a whole could cease to be trou-
bled. In the midst of prosperity, a tremendous faith in science and the
unshakability of democracy gave many white, middle-class North
Americans the sense that there could be peace, comfort, and content-
ment in the world. On the one hand, middle-class adolescents - by their
scholastic achievements, the clothes they wore, and the entertainment
they pursued - were taken as symbols of the prosperity and potential of
their families and their society. On the other hand, potentially delin-
quent or unruly youth made obvious the limitations of postwar society.
Not surprisingly, those young people most likely to be understood as
'problems' came from working-class homes and had the least to gain
from middle-class visions of the future.
What differentiated postwar discourses about troubled and trouble-
some young people from earlier worries about youthful disorder was
the changing place of the adolescent in mainstream postwar society and
the emergence of a commercialized 'teen culture.' In the 1920s, white,
middle-class, high school and college youth had developed their own
distinct, peer-regulated youth culture. Based on fashions and fads, this
youth culture was in no extensive way nurtured or encouraged by
adults.
6
 In contrast, in the 1950s, business interests responded to eco-
nomic and demographic changes by nurturing teen consumerism and
targeting youth as a specific market. Teen magazines, rock 'n' roll, teen
films, teen columns in newspapers, teen sections in department stores
were all products of the 'discovery' of the teenager. While middle-class
and working-class young people had unequal access to the products of
this market, and would ascribe different meanings to its products, they
were all affected by it.
The word 'teenager' was already in use by the early 1940s. American
in origin, it was first printed in Toronto newspapers with an apostrophe
marking the dropped, numerical prefix, as in 'teen-ager. The apostrophe
Discursive Constructions of Youth 43
had disappeared by the end of the decade, but it was not until the 1950s
that 'teenage' referred to a cultural perspective as well as an age. Tho-
mas Doherty, in his study of Hollywood teen movies, says that in the
1950s, 'teenager' marked a special 'social status/ He cites the Dictionary
of American Slang, which suggests that teenagers, as a social category,
emerged circa 1935. Before that, those between thirteen and nineteen
years of age 'were considered young adults and not a special group.'
7
Doherty argues that 'special treatment from Big Business was crucial in
establishing and reinforcing the subcultural identity of 50s teenagers.'
8
While his point is well taken, it's important to point out that, enthusias-
tic media portrayals to the contrary, there was no singular version of the
1950s teen. In Toronto, teenagers were divided along the lines of gender,
religion, race/ethnicity, and class.
9
 Some of these divisions fell between
neighbourhoods or 'parts of town,' some were reflected in the different
populations of technical schools and collegiates, public schools and sep-
arate schools, or in the chasm between students and teenaged workers.
Certainly other factors besides business contributed to the growth of
teen cultures in the 1950s. After the war, many young people were
forced to give up their lucrative industrial jobs to returning soldiers.
And technological changes were beginning to eliminate many of the
unskilled positions still open to them. Hence, teenagers tended to stay in
school longer and to spend more years in the company of their peers.
Moreover, as long as they were contained within the state-run educa-
tional system, they provided research material for inquisitive profes-
sionals - including psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians, sociologists,
and journalists. Teenagers were new and interesting. Those who took an
interest in them created specialized niches for themselves in their vari-
ous fields of study. So, for instance, psychologists and psychiatrists alike
undertook studies to determine the boundaries of normal teenage devel-
opment, including sexual development. Journalists and sociologists
made mileage out of explaining teenagers to their elders, as did educa-
tional film houses like the National Film Board. Films like The Meaning of
Adolescence, The Teens, and Who Is Sylvia? (about a teenage girl) were
intended to be instructional for both adults and teens themselves.
10
While adults were informed about a strange and baffling culture, teens
were enlightened about appropriate modes of behaving.
G. Stanley Hall and the 'Discovery' and Study of Adolescence
Twentieth-century scholarly investigations of youth owe much to the
44 The Trouble with Normal
massive 1904 study on adolescence conducted by American psycholo-
gist G. Stanley Hall.
11
 His biographer, Dorothy Ross, claims that Hall's
'concept of adolescence was probably the first systematic portrayal of
that stage of life in the modern world/ although, as she acknowledges, it
was based on ideas about youth that had been popular in the nineteenth
century.
12
 Writing in a rapidly urbanizing society, Hall understood ado-
lescence to be a distinct developmental period that began with the pro-
cess of sexual maturation at puberty and continued into the early
twenties. At the centre of his work was a theory of 'recapitulation' which
said that the development of the individual paralleled the historical
development of the race - a term that variously meant the human race or
the white or civilized race. Historian Joseph Kett suggests that recapitu-
lation had roots within and prior to Darwinism, as well as in the roman-
ticism of both Rousseau and various nineteenth-century American
writers.
13
 It was a theoretical stance with strong eugenic overtones.
Hall 'insisted that the misbehaviour and eccentricities of young peo-
ple be viewed as normal outgrowths of biological maturation rather
than as inexcusable departures from a fixed standard of behaviour.'
14
 He
described adolescents as being in a 'primitive' state where they were
ruled by instinct. While not expressed explicitly by Hall, the racist corol-
lary of this view was that so-called primitive societies could then be said
to represent the adolescence of humanity. They could be portrayed as
not yet developed, as immature.
Hall firmly believed, as did other eugenicists, that as the biological
individual evolved so would society. What made his theory unique,
however, was its emphasis on adolescence as the key to racial and cul-
tural betterment. Like Rousseau, he believed that adolescence was a
time of second birth. According to Ross, Hall thought that 'The broader
and higher development reached in adolescence would be progressively
inherited until a higher evolutionary product, the superman of the
future, was created.'
15
 In Hall's scheme, adolescence was the critical
measure of human 'progress.' His perspective lent significant weight to
youth's claim on the future and underscored the need to ensure that
young people had every advantage.
16
Clashes between 'primitive' young people and more civilized adults
were, according to Hall, what caused the inevitable 'storm and stress' of
youth. In fact, he claimed that such stress was necessary to ensure the
young person's safe passage to maturity. Hall counselled parents and
teachers to give adolescents enough freedom to let nature take its course
- in all areas but one. In terms of sexuality, Hall preached the need for
Discursive Constructions of Youth 45
control by way of sublimation. He claimed that youthful passions were
malleable or 'plastic' and could easily be directed into non-sexual occu-
pations and pursuits like religion, the arts, or athletics.
17
 Indeed, Hall
wrote that such sublimation was 'vastly easier ... tha n is often said' - eas-
ier because it was motivated by the instinct for social and physical evo-
lution.
18
 While Hall was concerned with chastity, he was at least equally
concerned with the continual development of civilization, a process he,
like Freud and others of his day, thought resulted from the redirection of
sexual energies.
Hall's theories were roundly criticized by theorists of various persua-
sions who followed him. In particular, he was derided for his biologism
and his attempts to parallel the development of children and 'the race.'
In 1930, sociologist Arthur Wallace Calhoun used Hall to argue against
the notion that child development is determined by 'some inward timer.'
Hall's recapitulation theory - child development 'from Bushman ... to
Babbitt'
19
 - was held up as the unfortunate extreme of this kind of think-
ing. In a 1947 book, sociologist Paul Landis argued bitingly that Hall had
made 'a notable contribution to the understanding of adolescents in
spite of his theoretical postulate rather than because of it.' Landis wor-
ried that Hall's notoriety had helped to keep biological theories in circu-
lation long past the period of their usefulness.
20
Anthropologist Margaret Mead was perhaps the most well-known of
Hall's critics. Indeed, her books on adolescence in South Pacific cultures
were based on studies designed to put Hall's theories of 'storm and
stress' to the test. His view, she wrote, 'though unsanctioned by the cau-
tious experimentalist, [has] gained wide currency, influenced our educa-
tional policy, paralysed our parental efforts.'
21
 Mead claimed North
American parents and teachers would do well to understand that
'Human nature within a different social form lacks the conflicts which
are so often characteristic of adolescence [in the United States].'
22
 Mead
thought that Hall's views had done much to complicate the relationship
between youth and adults in twentieth-century North America. It was
but a short step from the idea that adolescence was by nature a turbulent
time to common-sense notions that young people were inevitably trou-
blesome, that they constituted a social problem.
Despite his critics, Hall's conceptualization of adolescence as a stress-
ful, instinct-driven, transitional stage between childhood and adulthood
has yet to be completely overturned. While his ideas about recapitula-
tion went out of fashion with the eugenic movement that influenced
them, his claims about the biological basis of adolescent behaviour still
46 The Trouble with Normal
inform both popular and professional discourses about young people.
They fit nicely into common-sense discussions of puberty as the grounds
of the 'youth problem/ a perspective made evident in the 1940s and
1950s by some of the strategies designed to regulate delinquency, strate-
gies based on efforts to control adolescent sexual energies.
American youth historian Joseph Kett writes that the modern relation-
ship between adolescence and biology owes much to Rousseau. In Emile,
the onset of puberty and the process of sexual maturation were identi-
fied as the roots of adolescent behaviour and personality. Rousseau
waxes romantic about the profound emotional and spiritual changes for
which puberty is a catalyst.
23
 According to Kett, his sentiments were
echoed by North American doctors and educators during the mid- to
late nineteenth century. Kett quotes one of these, Orson Fowler, who
wrote in 1870: 'All his [the pubescent boy's] feelings shoot into rampant
growth and vigor ... Before half asleep, how much animation and the
highest phase of human vigor he evinces! Desires before tame, now
become almost resistless.'
24
 Sexual development was thought to fuel the
social and psychological transformations attributed to adolescence. Sex-
ual energies were thought to lead to 'a rise in physical, moral and spiri-
tual energy,' although this process had to be watched and protected from
corruption. Adolescent sexual development, Kett says, was seen by
some nineteenth-century observers as a delicate process that could lead
to, among other things, insanity.
25
 In this century, the imagery grew
more secular, the superlatives became less plentiful, and the potential
outcomes less extreme, but the basic correlation between the process of
sexual maturation and the course of adolescence persisted.
Hall's turn-of-the-century study did little to interrupt this conflation
of adolescence and puberty. Sociologists and anthropologists who came
after him went to great lengths to untangle the physical and the social in
discussions about teenagers. In his 1949 study, Elmtown's Youth, A.B.
Hollingshead complained that psychologists, the intellectual descen-
dants of Hall, held especially fast to biological explanations for youthful
experiences. He wrote, in particular, about 'a recent summary of the field
of adolescent psychology [which] insisted upon the "causal" connection
between the physical manifestations of adolescence and social behav-
iour.'
26
 In a footnote, he continued, 'We would agree with Dennis
[author of the summary] if he or any other psychologist demonstrated
any "causal" connection between the physical phenomenon of puberty
and the social behaviour of young people during the adolescent period,
irrespective of cultural milieu.'
27
 Paul Landis made a similar argument
Discursive Constructions of Youth 47
in the 1952 edition of his sociology textbook, Adolescence and Youth.28 He
was concerned that few researchers interested in adolescence looked
beyond the internal workings of the human organism for explanations
of behavioural problems - like delinquency. They neglected the social
forces he considered to be of paramount importance to focus, instead, on
biology. When talking about youth, 'biology' is easily reduced to puber-
tal change, to what Havelock Ellis referred to as that gradual combina-
tion of 'several factors' that 'constitute what may be properly termed
sexuality.'
29
This overemphasis on puberty as a defining feature of adolescence
sexualized youth as a category. That youth and sexuality were both con-
cepts that funnelled postwar social anxieties only increased the weight
the two concepts drew from each other. It is because of this semiotic
equation that the 'youth problem/ on some level, was imbued with sex-
ual meaning. Conversely, sexual problems, like venereal disease, were
understood to be problems of youth. On the postwar landscape, dis-
courses about youth and discourses about sex were not entirely sepa-
rate.
Youth Trouble
Popular wartime and postwar discussions about youth issues frequently
relied on an incongruous mix of biology, psychoanalysis, and sociology.
In newspaper and magazine articles, 'wartime conditions,' 'world con-
fusion,' and 'modern times' were proposed, alongside difficult family
and emotional circumstances and hormonal change, as the environment
which produced troubled youth.
30
 Reporters faithfully related non-bio-
logical theories on the causes of the youth problem, but these 'expert'
positions could hardly compete with the overwrought tone that tended
to colour discussions of delinquency. What remained constant from
Hall's time to the 1950s - despite the increasing attention given to socio-
logical and psychoanalytic opinion - was a general notion that the bio-
logical nature of adolescence - 'all those raging hormones' - made it a
constant struggle to keep trouble at bay. According to British cultural
critic Dick Hebdige, trouble is what, even now, makes adolescents visi-
ble in the broader social scene; and so, Hebdige says, it is no wonder
young people act out:
in our society, youth is present only when its presence is a problem, or is
regarded as a problem. More precisely, the category 'youth' gets mobilized in
48 The Trouble with Normal
official documentary discourse, in concerned or outraged editorials and features,
or in the supposedly disinterested tracts emanating from the social sciences at
those times when young people make their presence felt by going 'out of
bounds/ by resisting through rituals, dressing strangely, striking bizarre atti-
tudes, breaking rules, breaking bottles, windows, heads, issuing rhetorical chal-
lenges to the law.
31
Hebdige suggests that young people's own efforts to transgress (delin-
quency as resistance) are what set adult discourse about the youth prob-
lem in motion. And while I don't disagree with him, his argument
obscures a point that is critical to an understanding of the postwar youth
problem, namely the importance of biological determinism in discourses
about youth. Young people were assumed by some to be, by their very
nature, a social problem. Young people didn't need to 'act out' or step
out of bounds to get attention; they could be perceived as trouble simply
because they were teenagers. The category of having the potential for
trouble slipped easily into the category of being trouble. And so in 1950,
Maclean's could send Sidney Katz out to write a three-part story, not on
the delinquent, but on 'the teenager as a national problem.' As Katz
writes in the introduction to the first part of his series, 'They are fre-
quently pictured as being irresponsible hoodlums who spend most of
their time making a nuisance of themselves. It is often said that the
younger generation smokes too much, drinks too much, is ill-mannered,
promiscuous and perhaps criminal as well.'
32
While Katz admits that this is an overgeneralization, the fact remains
that his stories were intended as a response to shifting popular dis-
courses about the pervasiveness of the 'youth problem.' The point is not
that discourses about troublesome teenagers displaced the discourse
about the delinquent or obscured discourses about model postwar teens.
Rather, these contradictory discourses came to exist side by side - each
shifting the bounds of the others - facilitating and justifying broad-rang-
ing regulatory measures that would circumscribe the activities of all
young people, not just the 'bad' ones.
The Teenager as a Problem
Divergent discourses about 'youth' represented ideological and tactical
differences among adults as much as they marked adult discomfort with
the changing place of youth in North American culture. Between the
mid-1940s and the early 1960s, youth behaviour changed dramatically.
Discursive Constructions of Youth 49
Young people, generally, had access to more money than had previous
generations. They were courted by advertisers and manufacturers as an
important new market. They developed new codes of sexual behaviour
and pushed down statistics on the average age of marriage. And, per-
haps most important, they came to rely increasingly on their own peer-
based institutions which had been fostered by prolonged attendance at
school.
For adults who had been raised in different times, the thought that
youth - teenagers - comprised a distinct social group was difficult to
take. In a rant published in 1950 by Chatelaine, Frank Tumpane (colum-
nist for the Toronto Globe and Mail) oozed bitter sarcasm as he warned
teens what they would find at the end of this period of special treatment:
With all this barrage of propaganda designed to bolster the ego of adolescents, it
is little wonder that the young crowd have become pretty firmly attached to the
notion that they are very important people indeed ...
... But the chief flaw in being a teen-ager as a professional career is that the life
expectancy of the career is so brief. You are petted and courted by adult mer-
chandisers and publishers for the five high-school years. And then what?
You graduate from high school into the cruel, cruel world and suddenly your
status has changed to a remarkable degree.
33
In his 1959 book, The Vanishing Adolescent, Edgar Friedenberg claimed
that adults' own issues with sexuality were at the bottom of Tumpane's
kind of hostility towards teenagers. Friedenberg writes that stereotypes
of (male) teens are built upon 'prurient features: the tight, tight jeans; the
provocative gait; the conception of the basement fraternity as the scene
of copulation so continuous as to defy the laws of nature.'
34
 (One could
certainly construct a female counterpart to this: tight sweaters, grown-
up makeup, that same basement.) Images like these, says Friedenberg,
aroused in adults fears about losing control not just of young people but
also of themselves. Not surprisingly, such images led to fears about
delinquency and to the subsequent regulation by adults of young peo-
ple's behaviour.
Friedenberg goes on to argue that adolescent males awaken in adult
men the latent homosexual feelings the men have carried since their
own youth.
35
 Adolescents, in the way he describes them, would then
come to symbolize to adults their own psychic struggles to maintain
normative standards, those potent regulators of social and personal life.
According to Friedenberg, such individual psychic responses contrib-
50 The Trouble with Normal
uted to the organization of a mean-spirited social consensus: 'The "teen-
ager" seems to have replaced the Communist as the appropriate target
for public controversy and fore-boding, for discussions designed less to
clarify what is going on than to let people vent their fearful or hostile
feelings and declare themselves on the side of order and authority/
36
While Friedenberg doesn't make the link between Communists and
homosexuals, it has been made by many historians of postwar culture.
37
In the cold-war era, Communists represented the external threat to pros-
perity and democracy. Homosexuality, in this context, was the threat
from within, a destabilizer of families and the sexual/moral order. Some
felt that teenagers, open to new experiences and not yet strong of charac-
ter, would be vulnerable to both these pernicious influences. Thus, teen-
agers could indeed become a threat to social stability.
As long as teenagers as a group were seen to be potentially trouble-
some, the perimeters of the space between delinquency and regular
teenaged behaviour (whatever that was) were fuzzy. Thus, in 1962, a
North Toronto Committee on Juvenile Delinquency decided to focus its
attention on 'behaviour standards among teenagers, rather than upon
juvenile delinquency per se.' Members of the committee had discussed
some of those troublesome standards at a meeting in 1961: 'early dating,
going steady, and social drinking.'
38
 They acknowledged that it would
be a while before North Toronto would be 'plagued by' what they
called 'overt delinquency.' Nevertheless, committee members claimed
that the area was already under the influence of 'a great deal of hidden
juvenile delinquency/ necessitating their vigilance over the 'moral cli-
mate and behaviour standards/ In this case, it seems delinquency was
less a concrete social problem than a conceptual tool that helped to jus-
tify and organize adult surveillance of teenage lives, especially of teen-
age sexuality.
Teens as Symbols of the Modern Age
Although some social commentators saw all teenagers as potential
delinquents, no matter what their class background, others saw teens
and delinquents as two separate, opposing categories, a distinction that
was often, but not always, based on class. In 1951, a column in Saturday
Night claimed that Canadian mothers had no troubles with their teens
and that all the hype about the youth problem must have been an Amer-
ican import.
39
 Many middle-class adults, if not quite so optimistic, per-
ceived postwar adolescence as a 'charmed' and special time, a period of
Discursive Constructions of Youth 51
security. Certainly it compared favourably with their own Depression-
era experiences. In the 1940s and 1950s, the extension of economic
dependence well into the teens (and later, for young people who would
go on to university or college) was certainly not understood to be in any
sense regulating or limiting.
40
 Instead, it was taken as a symbol of the
importance of youth to postwar North American society. The prolonging
of childhood was one of the distinctive markers of the postwar world, a
signal that grown-up worries could be kept at bay for a good part of life.
Teens were seen by many adults to live a carefree life, without responsi-
bility. They were seen to have greater freedom than their parents had
had. That young people were permitted to choose their own courses at
school, to date without chaperons, to drive cars, and keep pocket money
frequently obscured the fact that, as not-quite-adults, they had little real
power in their lives. They were not expected to make any significant
decisions or even to be capable of doing so. And, most importantly, their
freedoms were contingent upon adult approval. The fact that many post-
war adults had been earning full-time wages and, thus, had achieved
adult status during their teenage years was never part of such compara-
tive discussions.
In 1955, a feature in Chatelaine portrayed teens as friendlier, more
frank, and more democratic than previous generations of young people
had been. The unsigned article said that 'personalities and attitudes of
today's kids' reflected a saner more prosperous world and the 'return to
normal family life.'
41
 It was in this sense that teenagers, particularly
middle-class ones, were held up as the fortunate products of their era.
Well-fed and well-brought-up in a time of peace and economic growth,
they would, it was assumed, move smoothly into the 1960s. On a sym-
bolic level, postwar teenagers represented the investment in the future
that had been made by their parents, men and women who had come of
age in more difficult times. That teenagers could 'go bad' when so much
was assumed to be right within Canadian society was one contradiction
(among many others) that threw optimistic visions of a tranquil, demo-
cratic future into question.
In the years after the Second World War, a variety of social and economic
factors combined to generate an intense concern for the position and
behaviour of young people. Youth came to symbolize both what was
'good' and what was 'bad' about the modern world. While the 'youth
problem' existed as a mark of social disarray, teenage confidence and
security stood as an emblem of postwar progress. That youth and sexu-
52 The Trouble with Normal
ality were both vehicles for social anxieties meant that these two catego-
ries of discourse were frequently entwined. Certainly young people
were regularly positioned as targets of and symbols within sexual dis-
courses. That many people understood the tone of adolescence to be set
by the physical changes associated with puberty only strengthened the
links between youth and sexuality and contributed to the discursive
construction of youth as a sexual category. This sexualization of youth
was central to public discussions over delinquency, discussions where
social anxieties about sex and about the state of young people were
tightly entwined.
Youth Gone Bad: The Sexual Meanings
of Delinquency
In the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle, an earnest Second World War veteran
takes his first teaching job at a boys' trades school in a large American
city. In scene after endless scene, Mr Dadier is exposed to a range of
what the film's textual preamble identifies as delinquent behaviour: an
attempted rape, destruction of property, robbery, street violence, disobe-
dience in the classroom, and a pronounced unwillingness to respect
authority. The audience witnesses Dadier's struggle to get through to
both his students and his jaded colleagues. They see him suffer the con-
sequences of juvenile brutality. We watch him question his own ability
to effect change. Of course, in the end, the sensitive but firm English
teacher wins the boys over. But this victory on behalf of middle-class
values and social order wasn't enough to forestall the public outcry that
marked the film's release. In Toronto, Board of Education trustees pro-
tested about Blackboard Jungle to the Ontario Board of Censors.1 The film
was an accessible, visual representation of one of the trustees' greatest
fears: youth out of hand, or as the media so frequently put it, 'the youth
problem.'
In 1954, the Toronto Board of Education had passed a similar motion of
protest against The Wild One. In that film a sullen Marlon Brando - clad in
the black-leather jacket and jeans that would soon become the uniform of
disaffected, urban, male youth (and, much later, the marker of a particu-
lar version of cool, urban, especially lesbian and gay, sexuality) - leads a
group of bikers into a small California town where they face off against a
rival 'gang.' Again, law and order prevail, but not before the bikers rend
the tranquillity of the town with a tragic display of masculine aggression.
Brando's crowd was the antithesis of the maturity and civic-mindedness
the Toronto Board wanted to encourage in its students:
4
54 The Trouble with Normal
whereas the Toronto Board of Education is responsible for the education of many
children and young people of this city. And whereas education in a broad sense
comprises not only skills but a sense of values and attitudes to social responsibil-
ities. Therefore be it resolved, that this Board register its disapproval of a motion
picture now showing at Shea's Theatre entitled 'The Wild One/ and that the
Social Hygiene Committee of the Health League of Canada ... be respectfully
requested to view the film and to make such representations to the Honourable,
The Premier of Ontario, as may be deemed advisable.
2
Board of Education trustees were concerned that the film would set an
undesirable example for young people and that it might lead to local
unrest. Their enlistment of the Social Hygiene Committee suggests the
kind of disruption the trustees envisaged. A relic of wartime concerns
over venereal disease, the work of the Social Hygiene Committee was
focused on sex education and related matters. It seems odd that the
board would bow to this external authority while protesting a film that
is more about drinking and fighting than about sex. But fears about out-
of-control teenage sexuality lay thick beneath public discussions of
delinquency. A decade before the movie protests, Abraham Feinberg,
public welfare advocate and well-known rabbi of Toronto's Holy Blos-
som Temple had drawn on this conflation of the 'youth problem' with
sex when he declared that 'Juvenile delinquency, not syphilis, is the cru-
cial social disease of our civilization.'
3
 In popular parlance, social dis-
eases are not caused by germs, they're caused by certain types of people
and certain types of sexual activity.
4
 This chapter explores the discursive
context that made Feinberg's statement possible, looking at the ways
delinquency operated as a sexual category.
Delinquency as a Symbol of Social Change
As a social issue, delinquency was not unique to the years during and
after the Second World War. As numerous historians have shown, it had
been the focus of intense social concern in Victorian Canada.
5
 In a gen-
eral sense, one can argue that there is a striking continuity to public dis-
courses about delinquency and to the way they connect to social fears
about cultural change, particularly in terms of popular media and com-
mercial entertainment. Of course, the specifics of those fears, and the
meanings they take on, change. At the turn of the century, delinquency
was understood to be a fundamental problem of 'the city.' Industrializa-
tion, urbanization, and the many social changes they wrought contrib-
The Sexual Meanings of Delinquency 55
uted to the discursive construction of the city as a 'social problem' in its
own right; delinquency was just one of its many harmful effects. By the
end of the Second World War, the city itself was less likely to be vilified.
The process of urbanization had stabilized, and the direction of migra-
tion was as likely to be out of cities - to the new suburbs - as it was to be
into them - from rural areas or other countries. In this context, urban
problems were not seen to be an inevitable consequence of the city's
'unnaturalness/ Instead, they were seen in a more optimistic light, as a
series of difficulties that needed to be, and probably could be, rectified.
Which is not to say that there was agreement on how these problems
originated or on how they might be solved. Urban problems continued
to occasion impassioned moral debates, if only because they were per-
ceived as slowing down the transformation of Canada into a modern,
affluent society. Certainly this was one perspective on delinquency that
emerged in discussions of the perceived problem in Toronto.
During the Second World War, delinquency had often been taken up
as a symbol of social fallout from global conflict.
6
 After the war, delin-
quency signified the distance between vision and reality, between
hopes for a 'new/ democratic, postwar society and the difficulty of
overcoming past inequalities and moral weaknesses. Delinquency was
a marker of the limits of postwar optimism and affluence in bringing
about social harmony. To many observers in the postwar period, Tor-
onto's delinquency problem was a sign that young people refused to
get on board, that they were reneging on their responsibility (indeed
their privilege) to help build the new society.
7
 To the more liberal-
minded, delinquency was 'only one of the many symptoms of a deteri-
orating and disorganized society and culture.'
8
 Either way, evidence of
delinquency dampened discourses about the possibility of postwar
progress. Certainly it disrupted the social homogenization - the
smoothing over and 'declassing' - that was promoted as a feature of
North American postwar society.
In popular media, delinquency was routinely constructed as a
national problem. Nevertheless, it was a problem that was negotiated
primarily on the local level. Local organizations such as the Big Brothers
and the Children's Aid Society took responsibility for documenting the
problem in their regions and for proposing solutions. Many of the insti-
tutions that were seen as integral to the fight lay within municipal juris-
dictions: schools, juvenile and family courts, parks and recreation
departments. The focus of this chapter is on Toronto; there, because of its
relationship to national media, its position as 'home' to national civic
56 The Trouble with Normal
organizations, and its modern aspirations, delinquency was a popular
cause. Indeed, it was so popular that committees were formed to eradi-
cate it in neighbourhoods where it did not yet exist.
9
It is important to note that discourses about delinquency were not
simply limited to legal/judicial decisions or to discussions about the
behaviour of individual young people. Delinquency, as it was con-
structed in discourses of social concern had ramifications that extended
far beyond the corridors of the juvenile court (which is not to minimize
the effects legal and judicial actions had on the lives of young people
and their families). Thus, decreases in the actual numbers of legally
defined delinquents had little impact on public discussions of the issue.
While both the total number of offences and the number of children
committing them dropped after the war, public concern as expressed by
the media did not diminish.
10
 It is for this reason that the postwar
response to delinquency is best categorized as a moral panic. 'When the
official reaction to a person, groups of persons or series of events is out of
all proportion to the actual threat offered, when "experts," in the form of
police chiefs, the judiciary, politicians and editors perceive the threat in all
but identical terms ... above and beyond that which a sober, realistic
appraisal could sustain, then ... it is appropriate to speak of the begin-
nings of a moral panic.'
11
 Sociologist Stan Cohen says that, in postwar
Britain, the most recurring moral panics have been associated with
delinquency and youth culture. He writes that various types of youth
'have symbolized - both in what they were and how they were reacted
to - much of the social change which has taken place in Britain over the
last twenty years [during the 1950s and 1960s].'
12
 That argument could
also be made about Canadian responses to the alleged postwar youth
problem.
It almost goes without saying that commentary on juvenile delin-
quency was produced and circulated within the middle class, while the
majority (though certainly not all) of those so labelled were the children
of working-class parents. The fact that postwar experts increasingly
adopted environmental rather than eugenic explanations for delin-
quency meant that professional views on the subject tended to avoid the
notion - prevalent in earlier decades - that delinquents were inherently
bad or immoral. But this emerging environmental perspective did not
preclude discussion of psychological, individually based causes. While a
typical argument might conclude that it was the social conditions of
delinquency rather than delinquents themselves that were inherently
immoral, a relatively pronounced determinism meant that, in practical
The Sexual Meanings of Delinquency 57
terms, this distinction was often useless. Psychology was so often pos-
ited as directly shaped by the environment that there was no question of
someone in a 'bad neighbourhood' not turning out badly herself; it was
a tightly wrought and circular equation that kept the focus of concern
squarely on individuals.
13
Bad home life was the most often-cited cause of delinquency. Charles
Goldring, superintendent of the Toronto Board of Education from 1933
through the 1950s, tended to use this explanation to absolve the school
board of responsibility for the problem or its solution.
14
 The phrase 'bad
home life' was a marker of social difference that set off those who didn't
fit postwar images of acceptability. 'Bad home life' was a catchall that
could refer to the moral atmosphere of the home, to its physical condi-
tions, or to the structure of a particular family unit. The phrase could
point to poverty, a lack of religious education, a single-parent family,
'foreignness/ alcoholism, cramped quarters, or any other deviations
from normative, upstanding, white, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class family
life.
15
 Thus, according to Chatelaine, a girl living in a crowded home 'is
more likely to wander into trouble than her classmate who belongs to
the local tennis club and can entertain her classmates in a nice home.'
16
The 'bad home life' formulation made working-class kids the default
category of delinquents.
Next in line as most frequently cited cause of delinquency was the
bad social environment, or the 'bad neighbourhood' - another means of
rooting delinquency in working-class and immigrant communities.
According to the United Welfare Chest's Youth Services Department,
delinquency tended to concentrate in areas that already had 'other
major social problems such as higher T.B. rates, extensive overcrowding
as regards living arrangements, more frequent police and fire calls,
greater concentration of bad social and moral influences, increasingly
lower tax potential on buildings and houses, and a general lack of
wholesome outlets for many of the basic needs of young people.'
17
 In
1945 a worker for the volunteer youth service agency Big Brothers
wrote of the downtown neighbourhood bordered by Bloor Street, Carl-
ton Street, Yonge Street, and Sumach Street:
There are many connecting lanes running at the back of [the] side streets and
parallel to them. These lanes are excellent warrens of refuge for activities which
shun the light of day. The eastern half of the area is a congested area teeming
with Anglo-Saxon children.
The people of this area make a very interesting study. It abounds with 'people
58 The Trouble with Normal
of the shadows.' In an area of this kind the comedy and tragedy of life rub elbows
every day: all the excesses and weaknesses of the flesh are exhibited ... In the
eastern half of the area the people are mainly English, Irish and Scotch. These
people are sturdy working class people, inclined to be suspicious, many of the m
decent and clean, others, physically dirty and morally corrupt. Children growing
up in an area of this kind are exposed to influences which exaggerate the evils
of life. Bad language, gambling, drunkenness, prostitution, are all too familiar.
18
The Big Brothers worker had described an area that included part of
Toronto's Cabbagetown. Only a few years after his report was made,
another section of Cabbagetown was levelled, its crowded houses and
back lanes obliterated by the construction of Regent Park, an early
experiment in low-cost, easy-to-control, public housing.
19
 The 'warrens'
of the old working-class neighbourhood were replaced with large
expanses of grass in an effort to limit shady activities while providing
the healthful benefits of parkland. The rundown housing was replaced
by low-rise apartment blocks where young people's access to the out-
doors was restricted. Regent Park was an effort to use planning and
structural design elements to control both the behaviour and the moral
character of people and their neighbourhood. Forty-five years later, the
project remains a testament to a regulatory approach that failed.
By linking delinquency to the characteristics of neighbourhoods,
rather than the specific kinds of people who lived in them (the above
ethnic references notwithstanding), social workers were trying to get at
the structural causes of the youth problem. But their reluctance to cite
poverty as the root of poor neighbourhood conditions led them to a
deterministic argument of a different kind. For example, a 1943 report on
delinquency prepared by the Toronto Welfare Council attempted to
refute arguments that delinquency was a result of increasing numbers of
immigrants in the city: The new residents, frequently of a different ori-
gin, with different religions and cultural backgrounds, may be said to
have inherited the evil conditions of the area into which they moved. It
seems proper to assume that, in such a case, delinquency is primarily a
problem of neighbourhood relationships, standards and traditions, as
well as one of conditions in individual families.'
20
 The report claimed
that delinquency was not a function of immigrant communities per se
but of where immigrants ended up living in Toronto. But in failing to
question the basis of the differences between various neighbourhoods,
this geographic argument could not counter the prevailing popular
assumption that immigrants were responsible for delinquency.
The Sexual Meanings of Delinquency 59
In the end, whether delinquency was blamed on neighbourhood and
social conditions or on particular groups of people, the effect was the
same. Both these perspectives meant that Anglo-Saxon, middle-class
youth were vastly underrepresented among those who were labelled
delinquent. Both these perspectives helped to construct delinquency as a
problem with roots outside the Anglo-Saxon middle class and helped to
constitute and reinforce differences between middle-class and working-
class people, between Anglo-Saxon and ethnic communities.
To say that middle-class young people were rarely charged as delin-
quents is not, however, to say that discourses about delinquency had no
part in their lives. The criminal charges that middle-class teens avoided
were the most obvious but not the only effect of the panic over delin-
quency. Popular and official discourses about delinquency shaped the
meanings that could be ascribed to the behaviours of all young people.
Social worry over the issue justified broad regulation of adolescent lives.
Especially in the realm of sexuality, the labelling of any behaviour or
activity or person as delinquent was an effective way of marking it as
beyond the bounds of acceptability. Delinquency discourses were central
to the regulation of postwar adolescent sexuality.
Sex Delinquency, Delinquency as Sex
In the pamphlet collection of the Canadian Youth Commission, an
American booklet called 'Teen Trouble' devotes four pages to a descrip-
tion of wartime delinquency. Almost all of the discussion is about sexual
conduct.
21
 To the authors of 'Teen Trouble/ delinquency meant girls on
the streets and in taverns, girls capturing soldiers or going to juke joints;
it was boys spending their big wartime wages on girls, and making rib-
ald remarks to passing women. It was also truancy and vandalism, but
these behaviours received scant attention compared to those more obvi-
ously connected to sex.
In 1951, Chatelaine magazine ran a feature about a teen 'sex scandal' in
Kitchener, Ontario. Written by Hugh Garner, the piece was surprisingly
titled, 'Youth Trouble in Kitchener.'
22
 The careful headline stands in
marked contrast to the sensational tone of the story. In the early 1950s,
daily papers were full of reports of youth trouble; surely what made this
case special - what made it worthy of a Chatelaine feature - was the sex-
ual part of the story.
On one level, the Kitchener case was special because it dealt with
explicitly sexual and 'immoral' behaviour. But it was special in degree
60 The Trouble with Normal
only and therefore, like 'Teen Trouble/ did not need a qualifying head-
line. Terms like 'delinquency' and 'youth trouble/ whether they referred
explicitly to sexual behaviour or not, inevitably carried some sexual
meaning. It's not that the trouble young people were allegedly getting
into was always of a sexual nature, but that the social category of youth
itself was understood to be a sexual one. In popular discourse, the terms
adolescent, youth, and teenager marked individuals who were passing
from the supposedly non-sexual category of childhood to the sexual cat-
egory of adulthood, individuals who were, among other things, in the
process of becoming sexual.
23
 So long as the term delinquency was
applied in a specific way to young people, as it was in the 1940s and
1950s, it would not be free of sexual connotations.
In analysing delinquency, it is important not to conflate the categories
of gender and sexuality. In general, historical work that has looked at the
overlap between sexuality and delinquency has tended to look primarily
at the experiences of girls who were labelled delinquents.
24
 In such
work, delinquency is understood to have been sexualized by way of
gendered discourses - that is, because of the differing assumptions
about the proper limits of masculine and feminine behaviours. While
there is much evidence from the postwar period to support this position,
it is a line of analysis that does not account for the range of sexual dis-
courses that shaped popular understandings of delinquency, nor does it
account for the interest shown in the sexuality of boys by those adults
concerned with the issue.
In the late 1940s and the 1950s, ideas about what counted as normal
sexual behaviour and normal adolescent sexual development helped to
establish the boundaries between what was seen as delinquent and what
was not, boundaries that shifted depending on the class, gender, race,
and ethnicity of particular individuals. Conversely, discourses about
delinquency - the threat of being labelled a delinquent - worked to con-
trol expressions of sexuality and to justify the sexual regulation of all
young people. There was a tremendous back and forth between these
two sets of discourses; indeed, it is hard to untangle them. On the one
hand, concerned adults worried about the sexualities of 'known delin-
quents.' Was it possible to keep them under control? Would they lead to
social havoc? On the other hand, many defined sexuality itself as a path
to delinquency. For instance, the offence known as 'contributing to juve-
nile delinquency' was generally seen to be synonymous with introduc-
ing young people, especially girls, to sex. It was feared that girls and
boys introduced prematurely to sex would be transformed into delin-
The Sexual Meanings of Delinquency 61
quents or 'problem youth.' As the attorney general of Ontario wrote to a
Family Court judge in 1952, 'Practically all the cases that one could find
in connection with the matter [contributing to juvenile delinquency]
dealt with sexual immorality in the presence of children/
25
According to Garner, the Kitchener scandal was 'a sordid story ...
which, summarized in the press, gave the impression of an organized
gang dedicated to the holding of sexual orgies.' The Telegram did run a
front-page story on the case, under a huge, bold headline: '6 MONTHS,
10 LASHES FOR 9 AT KITCHENER.' But despite the article's sensa-
tional appearance, its description of the 'sordid' event - the most lurid in
any of the Toronto papers - hardly evokes images of organized orgies:
'During the several hearings, witnesses described, among other things,
an all-night party, interludes in bedrooms at some of the accuseds' and
the girls' homes, and an episode involving three youths, two juvenile
boys and a 14-year-old girl, in a car parked behind a district church.'
26
In the Kitchener case, six young men between the ages of sixteen and
twenty-four were charged with carnal knowledge of 'a girl under 16';
three were charged with indecent assault and one with contributing to
the delinquency of a minor. A juvenile male was given an indefinite term
in a reformatory. Six girls were charged with being or about to become
juvenile delinquents by reason of indulging in sexual intercourse. The
connection made between the girls' sexual behaviour (which may well
have been consensual) and the deviant/criminal identity of the delin-
quent hardly needs to be underlined here. Five of the girls were also
charged with shoplifting. A story in the Toronto Daily Star quoted the
Kitchener chief of police who claimed that the shoplifting allowed the
girls 'to dress up and look older than their years when they frequented
the poorly conducted dance halls and loosely run restaurants' that he
blamed for the scandal.
27
Local responses to the Kitchener case were mixed and show the easy
slippage between categories of sexual immorality and delinquency.
While some post-scandal proposals were clearly meant to address the
sexual nature of the 'crimes,' others were intended to circumscribe the
activities of young people in a more general way. The mayor of Kitch-
ener suggested castration for male sex offenders, while organizers of
Kitchener's youth programs planned to expand services in an attempt to
diffuse excess adolescent energy. The local police hoped to start up a
boys' pipe band and choir; they suggested a nine o'clock curfew for peo-
ple under sixteen years of age; they recommended 'license cancellation
for any restaurants which become hangouts for delinquents'; and they
62 The Trouble with Normal
established a four-man morality department. In the police initiatives
alone we can see competing analyses of the troubles. Was the Kitchener
case a problem of sex or a problem of youth? Or was it, as Garner sug-
gested, a consequence of the overlap between these two categories, of
what he called 'the aberrations of puberty'?
Of course, not everyone read the series of events in Kitchener as a
major scandal. The Globe and Mail's angle on the story was about court
precautions to protect the anonymity of the juveniles.
28
 And, in a letter
to Chatelaine, a woman from Quebec wondered what all the fuss had
been about:
There was no mention of rape, abduction, molestation, dope - nothing seem-
ingly, more wicked than sexual promiscuity on the part of a few young men and
very young girls who looked, and in the present day are, much older than their
years. Such episodes occur every day in every city and town of any size in the
world where males and females mingle freely. Naturally, right-thinking people
do not condone such behaviour and authorities do their best to combat it, but
not in the primitive way that Kitchener has gone about it.
There was nothing in the actions of these youngsters to suggest perversion or
abnormality, but after the humiliating, shamefu l experience they have suffered,
it will be a miracle if any of them are ever again to have any normal feelings
about sex.
29
This letter suggests the proximity of 'delinquency' to commonly prac-
tised, if not condoned, sexual activities. In labelling consensual activities
as delinquent, officials were not simply protecting the teenagers in ques-
tion, they were protecting sexual standards.
What makes Garner's story unique among discussions of delinquency
is the fact that he explicitly links the delinquency of young men to their
sexualities. Usually, the sexual aspects of boys' delinquency were down-
played. For example, a report on street gangs in Toronto, prepared by the
Big Brothers, notes that the older boys in the study were 'abnormally sex
conscious.' But despite finding evidence of 'filthy language, obscenity,
relatively open immorality (heterosexual and homosexual) ...' the
researchers chose not to use these incidents to illustrate their report. 'We
can not see that doing this would serve our purpose any more than the
selections used [which were mostly about idleness, petty thieving, and
gambling].'
30
One case that was an exception to this tendency to downplay boys'
sexual transgressions is a 1958 study of 'Negro and partly-Negro wards
The Sexual Meanings of Delinquency 63
of the Children's Aid Society' (in Toronto). This study, of both boys and
girls, did not hesitate to identify 'masturbation and other sex problems'
as the most frequently displayed behaviour problems of the twenty-one
black adolescents who were studied.
31
 Without the protection afforded
by whiteness, the boys in this study were subjected to a scrutiny that
racially unmarked boys avoided.
When boys were presented as an undifferentiated category, when
their racial and ethnic differences were glossed over - which was almost
always - their sexualities were rarely remarked upon. In general, it was
the sexualities of girl delinquents that made it into public discourse.
Moreover, almost all girl delinquents had been labelled as such because
of their sexual or moral behaviour. Girls were far less likely than boys to
be brought to court over offences like theft, vandalism, or trespassing.
Instead, girls were charged with having committed vague, non-prop-
erty-oriented crimes like vagrancy, incorrigibility, and immorality.
32
 But
to say that boys' sexualities were not the topic of public comment or that
boys were charged with a wider range of offences than girls is not to say
that their sexual and moral behaviour was not also called into question.
In fact, court reports show that during some years, the numbers of boys
charged with morals-related offences was higher than the number of
girls.
While most boys in Toronto were charged with petty offences like
theft, property damage, and trespassing, an average of slightly more
than 10 per cent of all charges laid against boys were the non-property-
related, victimless behaviour charges that we tend to associate with
girls: vagrancy, incorrigibility, indecency, and immorality. In 1946, for
instance, the total number of charges faced by boys was 700, of which
124 were morals charges (vagrancy, incorrigibility, indecency, and immo-
rality). In the same year, the total number of charges faced by girls was
93, of which 68 were morals charges. In all but one of the categories I
counted, more boys were charged than girls.
33
 This trend was repeated
for seven of the eight years for which I had figures. In 1952, the last year
for which data were available, boys were charged with 71 behaviour and
morals-related offences and girls with 74. Unlike girls, boys were also
charged with contributing to juvenile delinquency and indecent assault,
which, as Karen Dubinsky has shown for the period up to the 1930s, was
a category that sometimes marked consensual heterosexual activity.
34
While it is unlikely that definitions of immorality, indecency, vagrancy,
and incorrigibility were identical for boys and girls, these are the charges
that would be likely to account for the kinds of sexual misbehaviour
64 The Trouble with Normal
noted in documents like the Big Brothers' study, Garner's article, the
CAS study, and other social-work research.
35
 At the very least, these doc-
uments suggest that boys' sexual behaviour was of interest to those con-
cerned about delinquency. Case-file research on the behaviour charges in
the postwar period would show to what extent.
36
Female Delinquency as Sexual Transgression
In the midst of the Second World War, the Ontario Training School for
Girls in Gait was taken over by the navy. A brief protesting the transfer
of the building details prevailing attitudes about girl delinquents:
The offences with which girls were most commonly charged in the Toronto court
in 1941 were theft, vagrancy, incorrigibility and habitual truancy. Parents are
deeply concerned about the behaviour of these girls. Most of the girls sent to
Gait were keeping late hours, running away from home, staying out all night
and many of them were being 'picked up' by soldiers. Many of the girls show a
definite tendency toward delinquency. Because of this there is a grave danger
that some of the older girls may become 'camp followers' if they are released
from the protection of the Gait Training School... The need of a training school
for delinquents and incorrigible girls is even more necessary than it is for boys ...
They are not acceptable in foster homes and would shortly become a menace to
the community if they were returned to their own homes.
37
And not because of their engagement in theft. Sexuality is, obviously, the
primary concern in this passage. Historically, it has been the primary
basis for definitions of female delinquency, and in this respect the 1940s
and 1950s were not a lot different from, say, the turn of the century.
Phrases like 'keeping late hours,' as indicators of criminality, marked
girls as being outside parental control and implied that once outside that
control girls would express their sexuality in a manner dangerous to
themselves and to their communities. In contrast, boys outside parental
control were not necessarily assumed to be 'in trouble.' And when boys
did get into trouble, as we have seen, there were more ways for them to
do it. In 1946, boys faced 700 charges, for 36 different kinds of offences,
at the Toronto Juvenile and Family Court. Girls appeared before the
court on 93 charges for 7 different offences. While some of the discrep-
ancy between boys' and girls' experiences of the justice system stemmed
from the exigencies of their gender roles and from girls' unequal oppor-
tunities - to have the freedom to roam the streets where theft might be
The Sexual Meanings of Delinquency 65
committed, for instance - it was also related to the moral and sexual atti-
tudes of law-enforcement and court officials. As Steven Schlossman and
Stephanie Wallach write in their study of female delinquents during the
progressive era in the United States, girls were institutionalized for
behaviour that, if done by adults, would not have been criminalized,
and if done by boys would have been treated far less harshly.
38
We can see this concern about 'immoral conduct' in a series of 1944
reports on individual delinquent girls at the Ontario Training School,
which relocated to Cobourg when the navy took over the facilities at
Gait. Prepared by Dr F.L. Nichols of the provincial Department of
Health, the reports are especially concerned with the girls' family and
economic backgrounds - almost all of them seem to be working class.
Nichols is also concerned with the girls' sexual histories and the ways in
which these are related to the girls' institutionalization. For instance, a
fourteen-year-old Toronto girl was referred to the Children's Aid Society
at the age of ten for accepting money from an older man for 'sexual
interference' (which, the report makes clear, did not include intercourse).
She was taken from her home for two years. While she was charged with
theft a year after being returned to her parents, she wasn't sent to the
OTS until two months after that incident, when her parents complained
of 'her disobedience, truancy, late hours and male companions.' Another
girl, a sixteen-year-old from Toronto, was warned by the Big Sisters 'not
to be out on the streets at night. She continued to be out all night with
men, at hotels, necessitating her commitment [to the OTS].' She was
eventually allowed to leave on a work placement 'but continued her sex-
ual activities, necessitating her return to O.T.S.' A fifteen-year-old girl
from a small town near Guelph was sent to Guelph to work, 'where she
had sex relations with numerous men, staying all night at hotels, and
frequenting beer parlours. She was committed ...' In one particular
report, we see the extent to which one girl understood adult concern
about her sexuality to have been important to her incarceration. Nichols
writes:
Her former mistakes she believes were:
1. Attending dances alone or with another girl.
2. Being picked up and allowing herself to be taken out during intermissions.
3. Allowing boys she didn't know to bring her home.
39
These four examples are representative of Nichols's reports in general.
Indeed they are representative of a whole variety of written sources for
66 The Trouble with Normal
the fifteen-year period under study. Discussions about girl delinquents
that do not mention sexuality are exceedingly rare. That female sexual
transgression was criminalized was certainly a product of gender ideol-
ogy, but it was also more than this. Girls who were labelled delinquent
were not just violating the expectations that were attached to their gen-
der, they were also threatening notions of the adolescent as not yet sexu-
ally mature, notions of sex as something to be experienced only by
adults. Hence, the so-called immoral behaviours of delinquent girls left
the girls' own claims on sexual 'normality' open to question. According
to postwar experts, the development of sexual maturity was understood
to be a fragile process for both boys and girls. Once off the path to a 'nor-
mal' heterosexual identity - a path that took different routes for boys
and girls - one might be lost in abnormality forever. The importance of
'normalness' - itself a heavily gendered category - to postwar social
organization and to the social organization of the latter twentieth-cen-
tury 'self made sexual transgression an issue with grave consequences.
In a 1959 research project, undertaken by a social-work student at the
University of Toronto, the imperative of normalness was the guiding
principle behind the research. This follow-up study of delinquent girls
was based entirely on the heterosexual conduct they exhibited after
being released from Warrendale, a residential 'treatment' centre in New-
market. Most of the girls had been convicted of vague, behaviour-related
misdemeanours like keeping 'late hours, questionable involvement with
boys, truancy, disobedience and defiance.'
40
 The conclusions of the
study were generally positive:
Six girls [out of the twenty in the study] were married and most of the rest were
dating regularly ... the nature and extent of dating seemed generally quite
socially acceptable. With two exceptions the girls who were going steadily with
one boy were those doing most of the dating. Both of the 'exceptions' were going
out almost every night. This might indicate a kind of personal and hetero-sexual
dissatisfaction and in these two cases it did seem to do so... There have been two
illegitimate pregnancies but both girls involved seemed to have faced the situa-
tion fairly realistically and to have matured from the total experience.
41
Surprisingly, the passage gives quick treatment to the issue of unwed
motherhood. In discussions of girls and delinquency, the spectre of the
young, unwed mother was, at times, held up to demonstrate the funda-
mental gravity of the 'youth problem.'
42
 The fear of girls' becoming
pregnant was, in part, responsible for the longer sentences meted out to
The Sexual Meanings of Delinquency 67
girls as compared to boys. If a girl could be kept under official surveil-
lance until she was old enough to marry, the consequences of her sexual
activity might be minimized.
Unlike a delinquent boy, the pregnant girl could never fully receive a
second chance.
43
 Her virginity, the sign of her compliance with social
standards, was undeniably gone and couldn't be brought back. In some
instances, marriage changed delinquent situations to respectable ones, a
fact which suggests that the problem with teenage mothers wasn't their
age or that they had engaged in sex as much as it was their having had
sex outside of a legally sanctioned relationship. But so-called shotgun
weddings weren't always proposed for the redemptive sake of the girl,
or even of her child. Weddings were also proposed to redeem the stand-
ing of the bridegroom. In one case, a man charged with carnal knowl-
edge of a fourteen-year-old girl produced a marriage certificate in court
and his case was dropped.
44
 In another instance, an eighteen-year-old
youth spent three days in a Newmarket jail awaiting a hearing on a
charge of having contributed to the delinquency of a pregnant fourteen-
year-old girl. But, in an altruistic move that was widely reported in the
press, a 'kind-hearted neighbour' put up a thousand dollars for the
young man's bail and he was released to marry the girl.
45
 After seeing
them pictured in a Kitchener newspaper - smiling in dress-up clothes,
admiring her ring - a family court judge from that city wrote to the pro-
vincial government complaining about the hasty and perhaps poorly
thought out conclusion to the case. The deputy attorney general dis-
missed the judge's concerns about the brevity of teen marriages and the
fate of their progeny, saying that 'the Marriage Act ... considers it more
important that children should be born in wedlock than that the hus-
band and wife should continue to live together.'
46
 This legal ranking of
illegitimacy above divorce and single parenthood, on the scale of social
evils, suggests the severity of the climate faced by unwed mothers.
While there was considerable overlap between discourses about the
girl delinquent and discourses about the unwed mum, these two catego-
ries were not synonymous. In the popular press, the unmarried, adoles-
cent mother was as likely to be from a 'good' home and a good part of
town as a 'bad' one. On the surface, at least, psychological theories were
far more widely used than social ones to explain the causes of a middle-
class girl's fall from grace. The most commonly cited theory was some
version of: 'the birth of a child out of wedlock [is] a means of meeting
unmet emotional and personality needs.'
47
 By the mid-1950s, social-
work students at the University of Toronto were referring frequently to
68 The Trouble with Normal
Leontine Young as the authority on this perspective.
48
 Young argued
against the position that the unmarried mother was a sex delinquent.
Young women, she wrote, do not get pregnant by accident; the evidence
on the subject 'points to the purposeful nature of the act.'
49
 Though not a
Freudian herself, Young's clinical work was taken up by Freudians as
validation for psychoanalytic theories of female development.
50
In psychologically informed discourses, the unmarried mother was
less a marker for the moral and social disintegration of postwar soci-
ety, or of youthful sexuality out of control, than she was a sign of
female distress and emotional disturbance. In part, this had to do with
the disproportionate attention paid to unwed mothers from 'good/
middle-class homes. As the products of postwar prosperity, their
downfall was less easily attributed to the inevitable list of 'character
weaknesses' that were applied to working-class girls. Far easier to
attribute it to some kind of personal, psychological maladjustment.
Indeed, Rickie Solinger, in her study of unwed motherhood in the
United States, found that psychological explanations of pregnancy
tended to be applied solely to white girls, who were almost without
question assumed to be middle class. In contrast, the pregnancies of
black girls, who were without question assumed to be working class
and poor, were said to be the result of their lack of restraint and their
tendency to engage in 'wanton breeding/ According to Solinger, the
class and race positions of teenage mothers set the boundaries of the
explanations applied to their situations.
51
While in Canada psychological explanations of teen pregnancy were
the most widely circulated, some experts did try to situate the problem
in a changing social and cultural milieu. In 1957 and 1958, the Social
Planning Council of Metro Toronto conducted research on five of the
city's six maternity homes.
52
 What they found was that while the num-
ber of 'illegitimate' births in Ontario had dropped since the war, from
forty-eight per thousand to thirty-two per thousand in 1957, the mothers
themselves were getting younger. Between 1936 and 1950, young
women under twenty had accounted for 33 per cent of illegitimate births
in the province. In 1957, that figure had increased to 40 per cent. Of the
585 mothers studied by the Social Planning Council, 45 per cent were
under eighteen years of age. Ninety-nine per cent of them were white,
and 32 per cent of them resided in Metro. Nineteen per cent came from
other provinces.
Chatelaine picked up on the findings of the Social Planning Council's
study, wanting to know who or what was to blame for the 'startling' sta-
The Sexual Meanings of Delinquency 69
tistics. Reporter Shirley Mair began her discussion by looking at the
broad social factors that might have contributed to the increase in teen-
age pregnancies. Were 1950s teenagers too sheltered? Were parents
denying their children guidance? Mair quoted an American expert who
claimed that teenagers were too frequently unsupervised, their parents
too lax. Major Mary Webb of the Salvation Army maternity home in Tor-
onto was recruited to point the finger at modern social practices: going
steady; mothers working outside the home; and the easy access teens
had to cars and transportation. But after piecing together this list of what
were becoming increasingly widespread, 'normal' activities, Mair cited a
1956 survey done by the Ontario Department of Public Welfare which
claimed that 55 per cent of teenage mothers came from 'broken homes'
or 'homes troubled by marital discord.'
53
 Was a teen pregnancy a prod-
uct of changing times or of a difficult family background (read: working-
class or divorced parents) that had led to emotional instability? Were
teenage mums just regular girls suffering the consequences of cultural
change or were they special, tragic cases?
Obviously there was no single take on the issue of unwed motherhood
among teenagers. But the pregnant girl served much less than other
wayward teens as an example of social breakdown, as evidence of the
'youth problem/ in part because she was as likely to be from an affluent
home as a poor one. Delinquents, generally, were working-class kids.
While the pregnant teen was obviously a target of pronouncements
about the so-called immoral behaviour of adolescents, she was rarely
paraded publicly as evidence for this. This reticence may have stemmed
from the extent and nature of her transgression - even to discuss her sit-
uation was to cross some boundary of social propriety. But it also has to
do with the fact that the pregnancy of an unmarried girl moved that girl
outside the bounds of 'youth.' A girl with a baby had crossed the line
that marked adolescence as a time before the attainment of 'maturity.'
Once pregnant, a girl could no longer be accommodated by popular dis-
courses about adolescence.
It was, in part, this ability of pregnancy to pull a girl out of the youth
category that led to understandings of unwed motherhood as an indi-
vidual emotional problem. Delinquency was a social problem; preg-
nancy was a personal tragedy. Delinquent girls were seen as threatening,
as having transgressed gender boundaries. They were wilful and asser-
tive, more like boys. But pregnancy could put an end to that, rendering
even the most independent girl more vulnerable, more feminine, easier
to assimilate into the prevailing social order.
70 The Trouble with Normal
Girls and Gangs in Toronto
Much more likely to be offered up as an explicit example of the female
delinquent was the 'gang girl.' How many such girls wandered the
streets, it is impossible to know. Girls were not addressed by the major-
ity of organized youth programs in the city. They were not mentioned in
the numerous reports on gangs produced by both the public and private
sector in the postwar period. In May 1949, a Miss Greene, of Central
Neighbourhood House - a downtown social service agency - addressed
a workshop about street gangs held by the Toronto Welfare Council.
Apparently she described 'some of the peculiar problems which arise
with regard to the girls in the gangs,'
54
 but this reference is unique
among the many that deal with the 'gang problem.'
Gangs (that is, groups of boys and young men, usually based on
neighbourhood or ethnic associations) were the stereotypical image of
urban, working-class delinquency at its most frightening (hence the
response to the movie The Wild Ones). Any girl who would choose to
share the company of boys who, by definition, were antisocial hood-
lums, must herself have been deviant in some way. In a successfully
prosecuted rape case, tried in Toronto in 1952, defence counsel explained
to the judge their own particular definition of a 'gang girl':
Judge: What is a 'gang girl'? - so that I may understand it?
Defence counsel #1: A girl who has submitted to sexual intercourse ten times or
more becomes a member of the gang. That is what a gang girl is known as.
Judge: Is that what you mean?
Defence counsel #1: At one sitting.
Defence counsel #2: A girl who takes part in multiple acts of intercourse and
who will become a member of a gang and submit to acts of intercourse with
other members of the gang without any palaver at all.
55
If the defence lawyers could prove the witness was a gang girl, her cred-
ibility as a victim of gang rape would suffer. In this vein the defence law-
yers were sure to point out that the witness had lived in Stanley Gardens
for three years. This temporary housing project near the Canadian
National Exhibition grounds had been set up to alleviate Toronto's
severe postwar housing shortage. Services to the area were inadequate
and living conditions were poor. Residents, not surprisingly, were
mostly working class, the type of people whose children, defence coun-
sel implied, would end up in gangs.
The Sexual Meanings of Delinquency 71
As they cross-examined the girl, the defence lawyers relied on the
usual strategies to impugn her character: Did she wear make-up? Did
she swear? How did she come to know sexual slang words? They also
focused on the fact that her mother's father was 'Indian/ These were all
efforts, deeply embedded in sexist and racist discourses, to construct the
girl's character as an immoral one. But the team of five lawyers defend-
ing five young men needed to push beyond these fairly routine tactics.
They needed to convince the judge that the sixteen-year-old witness con-
sorted with gangs, 'that she has been accustomed to being in the com-
pany of a number of youths at one time.' As part of this strategy, they
tried to present inadmissible evidence that the girl had allowed herself
to be 'picked up' by seven boys at the corner of Queen Street and Wood-
bine Avenue and had accompanied them to Cherry Beach where sexual
activity occurred.
56
 Much time was spent discussing her clothes, her
pants in particular, which she referred to as 'strides.' They were trying to
establish that she consciously adopted a style of deviant, gang-related
dress.
In the middle of the girl's testimony, one of the defence lawyers
objected to the Crown's use of the word 'pants' to refer to the strides.
'Strides,' he said, 'are not slacks at all.' They were, apparently, a trouser-
like thing, but with tapered ankles. The distinction was important.
Defence counsel #3: Now, these strides - what are they? Are they not sort of the
girls' equivalent to the zoot-suiters pants?
Witness: I don't know what they are.
Defence counsel #3: You don't know what zoot-suiters pants are?
Witness: No, I don't.
Defence counsel #3: Never heard of that expression before?
Witness: I have heard of the boys being called zoot-suiters, but that is all...
At this point the judge also confessed to ignorance on the subject.
Judge: Do you know why they are called zoot-suits?
Defence counsel #3: A suit that 'zoots/ my lord.
Defence counsel #4: Apparently they are suits for a certain group of people in
Harlem where these zoot-suits first originated in New York... [to the witness]
Do you know this: Are the cuffs on the bottom of the men's trousers - what I
called 'zoot-suit pants' - are they as narrow as those on the girls' pants that
you called strides?
Witness: I don't know anything like that at all.
37
72 The Trouble with Normal
As the lawyer said, zoot-suits were a style borrowed from black and
Hispanic neighbourhoods of New York and Los Angeles. The jackets
had broad shoulders, and the loose, 'draped' pants, known as strides,
tapered down to very narrow cuffs. According to one American
observer there was no singular category of zoot-suiter, in spite of news-
paper reports to the contrary. Some wore the suits to mark their commit-
ment to jitterbugging (a dance style that was frowned upon because of
its suggestive movements). For others, the suits flagged their resistance
to the mainstream; they were a sign of class and ethnic solidarity.
58
 In
both the States and Canada, zoot-suits were the symbolic opposite of
service uniforms and tended to brand those who wore them as not only
delinquent but as unpatriotic.
59
Mariana Valverde has looked at press coverage of so-called zoot-suit
gangs in Toronto papers in 1949.
60
 Six years after zoot-suits were blamed
for what were primarily race riots in Los Angeles and New York, Tor-
onto officials began to treat youth in 'flashy clothes' as dangerous to the
social order. Valverde cites a number of news stories where minor crimes
and misdemeanours were transformed into serious infractions because
of the clothes worn by the perpetrators. A number of these articles men-
tioned that girls were involved with the gangs, as active participants, as
supportive bystanders, and as the provocateurs in intergang hostilities.
Valverde says that no matter how young women participated in gangs,
or to what extent, they were routinely painted as the bearers of a deviant
femininity and as girls who were bound to engage in sexual misbehav-
iour.
61
 Because of their assumed assertiveness and the fact that their
actions were collective ones, gang girls were perceived as far more of a
social threat than the isolated girls in maternity homes.
The local focus on the zoot-suit gang probably had more to do with
media sensationalism than with the actual numbers of zoot-suiters in
Toronto. Although public discussions of the 'gang problem' among less
excitable commentators, such as social workers and youth leaders, fre-
quently asserted the seriousness of the problem, zoot-suits were rarely
mentioned. In 1949, the Welfare Council Youth Services subcommittee
on gangs claimed the gang problem was bad and might get worse.
62
They guessed that there were nineteen or twenty 'identifiable gangs' of
fifteen- to twenty-four-year-olds in the Toronto area, with a total of
about 2500 members. While subcommittee members claimed that most
of these young people were unemployed, with no more than grade 8
education, they also made a point, unlike the media, of saying that they
didn't necessarily come from 'low-economic homes.' Rather, gang youth
The Sexual Meanings of Delinquency 73
came from homes 'in which there is some difficulty.' There was no men-
tion, alongside this attempt to decentre class, of whether race or ethnic-
ity was important in these groups, or whether they were made up of
boys or girls.
In their work on girls and 'youth sub-cultures' in Britain, Angela
McRobbie and Jenny Garber suggest that girls were far less likely than
boys to join gangs because they were kept closer to home by their fami-
lies. In part, girls were (and are) kept under tight rein because they
tended to have more household responsibilities than their brothers.
Moreover, parents were concerned about the sexual opportunities (plea-
surable and coercive) of the outside world and about protecting their
daughters' virginity. In general, girls were less likely than boys to 'hang
around' in public places.
63
 British oral historian Steve Humphries writes
that girls who did get involved with gangs were looking for excitement
that couldn't be found with their families.
64
 Gang boys had access to
money and provided girls with entertainment; they were snappy dress-
ers and protected girls from harassment by other men. Boys, says
Humphries, claimed girls as status symbols and markers of their viril-
ity
65
Solving the Youth Problem: Recreation as Moral and Sexual
Regulation
One cannot overestimate the magnitude of the response to the issue of
juvenile delinquency in the postwar period. Apart from frequent cover-
age in Toronto's three daily newspapers, delinquency was the subject of
feature stories in magazines, of educational films, and of mass-market
fiction.
66
 Certainly, the popularity of delinquency as a compelling social
issue waxed and waned between the end of the war and 1960, but it was
never absent. And as a discursive construct, delinquency produced a
multitude of organizational practices and relationships.
Concepts of delinquency organized the work of the Juvenile Court.
They informed the activities of the city Parks Department, and of the
Toronto Recreation Council's Sub-committee on Recreation and Hous-
ing. The Committee on Public Welfare set up a Special Committee on
Juvenile Delinquency in 1944, and the same year it set aside $1000 to do
a survey of delinquency across the city. In March 1945, the Committee on
Public Welfare organized a meeting of more than 100 social agencies to
talk about setting up a coordinated civic body to deal with the issue. In
1949, the Welfare Council held a two-day institute on 'Community Plan-
74 The Trouble with Normal
ning for Dealing with Gangs' that was attended and reported on by var-
ious municipal employees. A Mayor's Committee on Juvenile
Delinquency presented a report to City Council in January of 1950. The
1954 provincial Select Committee on Reform Institutions entertained
briefs from Toronto officials when it looked at juvenile delinquency. The
Ontario attorney general set up a survey on gangs across the province in
November 1958. The federal minister of justice established a Committee
on Juvenile Delinquency in 1962.
Such state initiatives, of which this is but a partial list, received consid-
erable extra-state support. Ideas, money, personnel, and resources
moved back and forth among various departments of the local govern-
ment and voluntary organizations. Private citizens wrote to the mayor
offering their services to fight the youth problem. Organizations like the
Board of Trade, the Toronto Home and School Council, the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union, and the Women's Law Association
actively studied the issue and sent briefs and letters of advice and
encouragement to municipal politicians and bureaucrats. The Toronto
Welfare Council (later the Social Planning Council) provided city depart-
ments with the results of its research, as did the Big Brothers. The United
Welfare Chest established a Youth Services Department with the
involvement of some forty-nine social service organizations and several
city officials. From this list we get a sense of the magnitude and diversity
of the concern generated by discourses about delinquency. The voices of
the 'concerned' were not isolated; rather they represented a broad range
of middle-class social comment.
While there was no single approach to delinquency in Toronto in the
1940s and 1950s, there were some strategies which were more popular
than others. Many thought that the provision of wholesome recreational
opportunities was critical in the struggle to keep youth - mostly boys -
off the streets and out of trouble. Supervised activities would keep
young people under the watchful eye of a responsible and respectable
adult. And, if they were busy they wouldn't have to resort to question-
able means of dissipating all that youthful energy, sexual or otherwise.
Calls for recreational facilities and services as a means to curb delin-
quency and to sublimate adolescent sexuality were not unique to the
postwar era. Even G.S. Hall, a staunch proponent of adolescent freedom,
drew the line at free expression of sexuality, worrying about the conse-
quences it might entail. Hall recommended that young people channel
their sexual energies into a variety of strenuous activities, from dancing
to sports: 'Activity may exalt the spirit almost to the point of ecstasy, and
The Sexual Meanings of Delinquency 75
the physical pleasure of it diffuse, irradiate, and mitigate the sexual
stress just at the age when its premature localization is most deleterious.
Just enough at the proper time and rate contributes to permanent elastic-
ity of mood and disposition, gives moral self-control, rouses a love of
freedom with all that that great word means, and favors all higher
human aspiration/
67
Carolyn Strange notes that similar strategies were proposed to con-
trol delinquency during the First World War: 'the TLCW [Toronto
Local Council of Women], the Toronto Playground Association and the
civic administration were already convinced that regulated pleasure
was a moral prophylactic against crime and immorality.'
68
 Post-Second
World War social workers and civic bureaucrats wouldn't have used
such language, though their approach to the problem was similar. Rec-
reational activities were thought to be both preventive and corrective.
In organized youth groups, those who were already delinquent could
be shown options and alternatives to their previous behaviours. Those
who had not yet been accused of delinquency would be kept busy.
Both categories of youth would be supervised by youth workers. As
prominent Toronto psychologist W.E. Blatz, director of the Institute for
Child Study at the University of Toronto, wrote in an article in
Maclean's, 'There should be many more teen-age clubs where boys and
girls can mingle and make adjustments which will be enormously
important to them in later adult life; where they can sublimate their
sex appetite into directions which will aid them to maintain the ideals
of chastity and faithfulness which our social culture considers to be
essential/
69
The difference between this position and Hall's was Blatz's concern
not simply with sublimation but with the construction of well-adjusted
adults. Blatz - whose well-known theories on child development had
been worked out on the Dionne quintuplets as well as on the upper-mid-
dle-class children who attended St George's nursery school in down-
town Toronto
70
 - was mainly concerned with 'normal/ non-delinquent
children and their parents who were worried about the consequences of
teenage obsessions with idols like Frank Sinatra. Civic officials and
social workers, on the other hand, worried about the unsublimated
'impulses' of working-class youth and how these impulses might mani-
fest themselves in less innocuous forms than idol worship. For the most
part, recreation organized through groups like the Big Brothers and the
Boys' Brigade, or through community centres, was directed at working-
class boys. It usually involved some kind of sports and was seen as a
76 The Trouble with Normal
way of constructively channelling what might otherwise have been
destructive adolescent energies.
As late as 1958, the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto
acknowledged that girls were largely underserved by youth service
organizations.
71
 Obviously, little had changed since a 1943 study by the
YWCA found that the needs of working-class girls in the Dovercourt-
Lansdowne area were poorly served by both voluntary organizations
and the city.
72
 That study found that girls' parents wouldn't let them go
to local parks because they were full of boys and were thought to be 'too
tough/ The girls interviewed for the study said they liked skating at city
rinks, but the times available for girls were limited. They said that
groups like the Girl Guides were 'dull and tedious,' and that they were
out-of-date and too 'young' for teenagers. When asked what they
wanted, they suggested sports and dancing. They also wanted clubs
where they could discuss boys and dating. And, mostly, they wanted to
be involved in mixed (girls and boys together) social groups, the kinds
of organizations that served teens in middle-class neighbourhoods. In
the mid-1940s, 'teen canteens' and 'teen clubs' opened in collegiates and
community halls to entertain high school kids on Friday and Saturday
nights. While some were initiated by students themselves, others were
organized by 'concerned parents.'
In various ethnic and racial communities, these teen social clubs took
on meanings steeped in the inequities of the dominant culture. Crestwood
Heights notes, for instance, the existence of Jewish youth groups in For-
est Hill.
73
 The study notes instances of discrimination faced by Jewish
young people at school and the types of anti-Semitism expressed in the
community at large. In the face of exclusionary practices in their high
school, Jewish teens organized their own fraternities and sororities
(although their parents were not always in favour of such moves).
74
 The
children of Italian immigrants also developed their own courtship struc-
tures within the bounds of their communities. Franca lacovetta writes
that religious festa and other family-centred celebrations provided
opportunities - 'closely supervised by relatives' - for young men and
women to meet and socialize in a familiar environment.
75
 Similarly, a
prominent member of Toronto's black community told members of the
Social Planning Council that he had been organizing parties and small
dances in his home for black teenagers.
76
 A report from the Social Plan-
ning Council concluded that 'the problem[s] of Negro teen-agers and
young adults in the area of social relationships were serious, and were
not being adequately faced. As the Negro boy or girl approaches a mar-
The Sexual Meanings of Delinquency 77
riageable age, contacts with whites become more restricted and they
become more dependent on opportunities for establishing social rela-
tionships with members of their own race.'
77
Of course, middle-class white gentiles were also organizing race-, reli-
gion-, and class-specific groups, although they didn't identify them as
such. In 1945, Chatelaine ran an article on how to set up a teen canteen.
78
Admission might be 25 cents; separate rooms might accommodate con-
genial chatting, ping-pong, listening to records, and dancing; food might
be served at cost. Chaperonage was to be minimal, or 'imperceptible,' as
the Telegram put it. According to Mrs E.G. Trevor, organizer of one such
Toronto club, 'I know from my own experience that these boys and girls
don't want to be chaperoned by their parents. They want to play at being
grown-up and to feel that nobody's bossing them.'
79
 They wanted - and
were given - a chance to express their (hetero)sexualities in coed groups.
The approach was directly opposite to that most frequently taken by
middle-class adults to children from poor families. Middle-class young
people had regular, sanctioned opportunities to practise their heterosex-
ual skills, to mingle with the opposite sex. They were provided with
supervised activities where expressions of heterosexuality were not only
permitted, they were expected and, indeed, hoped for. At mixed social
clubs, chaperoned dances, and parties, adults and teens together con-
structed 'a wholesome setting for the boy-crazy girl or the girl-crazy
boy.'
80
 Middle-class sexual energies were perhaps perceived as less
likely than working-class ones to erupt in an antisocial manner.
Solving the Youth Problem: Regulating Teens' Access to Urban Space
There were those who thought the emphasis on recreation was just one
of many ways that modern teenagers were being molly-coddled by their
elders. As W.R. Cockburn, chair of the Toronto Board of Education said
in 1946, too much energy had been put into 'play' as a means of solving
the delinquency problem.
81
 But recreational efforts had never stood
alone. Other less subtle forms of regulating teenage morality were
always operating in the ongoing effort to conquer the youth problem.
What Cockburn seems to have missed is that 'play' was just one of the
effects of recreation programs. Organized activities were also, perhaps
primarily, designed to foster surveillance of youth by adults. For both
boys and girls, a 'tendency toward delinquency' could mean little more
than a tendency to hang out in unsupervised places. Street corners and
any number of 'disreputable' commercial establishments were thought
78 The Trouble with Normal
to lead boys and girls astray, the boys into gangs, the girls into immoral-
ity.
82
 A 1946 editorial in the Globe and Mail discussed efforts by the Police
Commission to study poolrooms 'and other such places where youth
congregate ... Indeed, there are some who feel that the pool rooms, as
well as some hamburger restaurants, are a menace and should be closed
altogether.'
83
 In a surprising display of social awareness, the Globe and
Mail countered these suggestions by inverting the relationship they con-
structed between the social and the environmental: 'Like dance halls,
beverage rooms and some other places where people meet for entertain-
ment, the conditions under which the places are run are the important
factors.'
In recognizing that 'places' themselves were inherently neither 'good'
nor 'bad,' the Globe and Mail cut short discussions of simple, blanket
solutions for the various 'youth problems' that came under the headings
of delinquency and immorality. More typical were arguments that a par-
ticular spot would inevitably lead to immorality and, hence, needed to
be shut down. For instance, in 1945, a member of the Ontario Training
School Advisory Committee wrote to the attorney general complaining
about the Silver Slipper Roadhouse, also known as the Kingsway, in
Swansea:
If you were to go down ... any Sunday night between 7 and 8 o'clock, you would
see a long queue, four wide, largely of teen-age youngsters waiting to get into
this roadhouse. Our information is that they sit around and drink 'coke' and
what have you, until 12.01 A.M. when the dance starts.
It is quite obvious that the habit of these teenage young people, spending Sun-
day evening this way and not getting home until the wee small hours of the
morning, is having a very detrimental effect not only on their health but on their
future, and we feel that it would be advisable for your Department to investigate
and see if something can be done to stop this, as juvenile delinquency is becom-
ing a terrific problem and this place is only a feeder to further delinquency.
... in the opinion of the writer this dance hall (and I assume there are others
like it) is doing more harm to the young people of the city than any gambling
place ...
84
In 1946, a writer for the Toronto tabloid Justice Weekly made similar
connections between dance halls and problem youth in a story that read
like something written in the early part of the century:
While Grand Juries, temperance cranks, jurists and social welfare folks are blam-
The Sexual Meanings of Delinquency 79
ing beverage parlours, both men's and women's, as being responsible for much
of the crime, immorality and drunkenness so prevalent these days, overlooked
are the dance halls where just as much, if not more crime, immorality and drunk-
enness get their start. In most of these dance spots, no attention is paid to the
ages of the patrons, many of whom come stag and 'pick up' members of the
opposite sex for dancing purposes, and then, in many cases, almost anything can
happen and does happen.
85
This focus on dance halls emphasizes their primary difference from
other 'bad' places (for instance, poolrooms and hamburger joints): dance
halls catered to, indeed they depended on, the patronage of young
women as well as that of young men. As places where young people of
both sexes would gather, dance halls had the potential to foster not sim-
ply delinquency, but sexual immorality and sex delinquency. Surpris-
ingly, dancing, in a general sense, was seen as a wholesome activity.
School board trustees, ministers, and youth group leaders all encour-
aged dancing, as long as it was supervised, say in a high school gym or
church basement.
86
 In unsupervised dance halls, dancing could be dan-
gerous and lead to who knows what forms of vice, as the tabloid writer
suggested. But for teenagers who were working, who no longer had
access to Friday-night dances at the high school gym, dance halls were
an obvious source of entertainment. Public lament about dance-hall dan-
gers were as much about the places themselves and what they stood for
as they were about the people who frequented them.
In 1944, concerns about youth, where they congregated, and what
they did in those places inspired City Council to propose a nightly cur-
few. Council made an official request to the police and the Juvenile
Court to enforce the provisions of a seldom-used provincial statute, the
Children's Protection Act. The act banned anyone under sixteen 'from
places of entertainment after 9 pm, unless accompanied by his [sic] par-
ent or guardian ,..'
87
 The idea behind the curfew was to keep young peo-
ple off the streets (where they were outside of adult control) and out of
commercial places of entertainment, like movie houses or dance spots,
which might incite them to illicit activities.
88
While council voted in favour of the idea, parents reacted negatively.
The response of community groups was not quite so clear. Although
participants at a conference of service organizations felt that a curfew
was not necessary, 'at the same time, the conference recommended
"wholesome and discretionary enforcement of the Children's Protection
Act" to prevent children loitering on street corners, in refreshment
80 The Trouble with Normal
places and around places of entertainment after 9 p.m.'
89
 The confer-
ence-goers were alluding to the worrisome beverage rooms, dance halls,
and hamburger 'joints' - all places most likely to be frequented by work-
ing-class youth, all places where sexual temptation was thought to exist.
As two fifteen-year-olds wrote to the Toronto Daily Star. 'Why don't they
clean out all the cheap dance halls where not only 'teen-age youngsters
but also the older crowd go. These dance halls represent one reason for
making the curfew and causing all this disturbance. We 'teen-agers go to
school five days a week and have two hours' homework each day. We
visit the library once a week and when the week-end comes we like to go
out for some good clean entertainment, such as movies, bowling, roller
skating, concerts or even school affairs.'
90
 The writers did not need to
add that high school kids, in the 1940s, were mostly middle-class kids,
and that common-sense notions about 'middle classness' meant that
they were assumed to be self-regulating, that is, capable of staying out of
serious trouble. They were not the ones for whom the curfew was
intended.
Nothing ever really came of the curfew. The police enforced it for a
short while, but then they eased off. Calls for curfews in later years were
equally unsuccessful. But there remained other, less dramatic, more eas-
ily implemented strategies for regulating the use of, and access to, public
space in the fight against the immorality of youth. For instance, the
school board refused to permit mixed (boys and girls) swimming in the
pools under its jurisdiction,
91
 and the city refused to turn on the lights at
public skating rinks on Sundays. As Frank Tumpane wrote in his col-
umn in the Globe, 'the principal argument [about the rinks] seems to be
that in some manner "moral standards" would be lowered.'
92
 Amuse-
ment parks and resort areas were also subjected to Sunday closing laws.
Some people suggested that Sunday closing regulations, enacted to pro-
tect Christian 'moral standards,' were in fact encouraging delinquency.
Without proper recreation, kids would become idle, and that's when
they would end up in trouble. At one point in 1946, the City Recreation
Department brought together a group of young people to brainstorm
about the types of things teenagers might actually be permitted to do on
a Sunday.
93
Like the curfew, Sunday closings were more likely to affect working-
class than middle-class youth. On Sundays, middle-class youth did not
need to rely on downtown commercial amusements; they could spend
the day in comfortable homes or in the neighbourhood parks that grew
increasingly spacious the farther they were from the city centre and
The Sexual Meanings of Delinquency 81
working-class neighbourhoods. It is also important to remember that in
the 1940s, Sunday was the only day off in a six-day work week; and on
that day teenage wage-earners were prevented access to the amuse-
ments that high school students without jobs were free to enjoy on Sat-
urday. The point here is not that middle-class teenagers were not subject
to moral regulation, but that they were thought to be adequately regu-
lated in much of the recreation they pursued - in the family backyard, at
piano lessons, at summer camp, at the homes of classmates, in extracur-
ricular activities at school. Perhaps more important, they were also per-
ceived to be more capable of regulating themselves (of having
internalized social values), while working-class young people needed
external controls.
The moral regulation of young people who worked did not just
encompass their off hours. The Factory Act prohibited children under
fourteen from working in certain types of places, while fourteen- to six-
teen-year-olds could work only at the restricted places before 6:30 p.m.
In 1944, the acting deputy minister of public welfare wrote to the minis-
ter to inform him that moves were afoot to strengthen the restrictions: 'I
am advised by the Department of Labour that restaurants are listed as
one of the places in which employment is so precluded or limited. Bowl-
ing alleys, theatres, and bingo halls, do not fall within the excluded
places. I am further advised by the Department of Labour that there is
presently under consideration an amendment to the Factory Act which
will enable that Department to control the employment of children in
any places not presently listed/
94
 In 1944, Bill 64 amended the Factory,
Shop and Office Building Act, extending the definition of shop to
include bowling alleys, poolrooms, and billiard parlours.
Curfew proposals, labour legislation, and Sunday closings were the
most obvious efforts to regulate the use young people (and others) made
of unsupervised public space. But these were supported by more subtle
means of control, like 'morality lights.' Apart from their peculiar name,
there was nothing special about these spotlights, which were affixed to
school buildings and mounted in some parks. Although the lights were
probably most useful in protecting properties from vandalism, this was
not always the main motivation for their installation. In 1947, school
board chair Isabel Ross claimed that 'Evening patrolmen are no substi-
tute for "morality lights" in preventing school yards from becoming lov-
ers' lanes/
95
 At a cost of $900 per school per year, the decision to mount
the lights was not made lightly. In 1950, Parent-Teacher Associations at
Jarvis and Humberside collegiates requested lights because 'darkness'
82 The Trouble with Normal
on school grounds was 'conducive to immorality.' Opponents of the
lights claimed 'that what goes on in the shadows of school grounds at
night is certainly not educational and therefore public school supporters
should not be required to pay for guarding the morals of the public at
large.' But Mrs Ross, who by this time had finished her term as chair,
represented majority opinion by reminding the dissenters that, 'I am my
brother's keeper.'
96
 The lights went up.
It's in the various proposals for solving the delinquency problem that we
see most clearly the way notions of adolescence as a sexual category
came to define delinquency in a similar light. That both boys and girls
were subjected to forms of sexual regulation, as part of delinquency pre-
vention, suggests that an analysis of gender alone is not enough to
explain the sexualization of the category. Discourses about youth, class,
race, and ethnicity all contributed to this process as well.
The relationship between discourses about sexuality and discourses
about adolescence helped to establish the boundaries between what was
seen as delinquent in the postwar period and what was not, what was
'normal/ approved sexuality for young people and what was not. The
fear of being labelled delinquent was an effective form of self-regulation,
a threat to those who might transgress sexual or moral standards. Dis-
cursively, delinquency worked to control expressions of sexuality and to
justify the sexual regulation of all young people, not just those who were
labelled as delinquents themselves.
'Why Can't I Be Normal?': Sex Advice
for Teens
In the years after the Second World War, 'normality' was a primary
marker of difference between individuals and between groups of peo-
ple. As defined by increasingly popular psychological and psychoana-
lytic theories, normality was the desired result of an individual's
emotional and psychic evolution, a product of social and environmental
factors.
1
 Such had not been the case as recently as the 1920s when nor-
mality and abnormality were seen, primarily, as bodily and not psychic
conditions.
2
 While biological explanations have never been completely
overturned, the relationship between biological and psychological theo-
ries has undergone substantial transformation over the course of this
century.
A few years ago, I stumbled upon a 1951 paperback edition of Rad-
clyffe Hall's lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness, first published in 1928.
The front cover of the paperback has the usual 1950s lesbian pulp imag-
ery: two white women; one blond, one brunette; one staring directly at
the viewer, the other, in profile, looking away. And while the front
cover, promising 'the strange love story of a girl who stood midway
between the sexes/
3
 shows indisputable signs of 1950s mass-market
publishing, it's the back cover that most clearly defines the distance
between the novel's original 1928 edition and its reissue twenty-three
years later. Turning the book over, one reads, in an anguished blue type,
'Why can't I be normal?' It's an anachronistic question that would have
held little meaning for Stephen Gordon, female invert and heroine of
Hall's novel. In the 1920s, Stephen Gordon's inversion was not por-
trayed as a case of arrested development nor as the result of inadequate
parenting. As Hall wrote of it, inversion was congenital, and born
inverts, like Stephen, spent little time wondering about cures or routes
5
84 The Trouble with Normal
to normality - in her day, you were either normal or you weren't. Nor-
mality was a state of being, not a psychological and developmental tri-
umph. Consequently, Stephen was much less interested in changing
herself than in changing the level of social tolerance for inversion in
general.
4
The increasing influence of psychology in the post-Second World War
era meant that, by the 1950s, Stephen's take-me-as-I-am attitude would
have been seen as a failure in her character. A teenager following her
example would have been seen as unrealistic at best or, more likely, as
immature or lazy. For post-Second World War teens and those who
advised them, adolescence was a time of learning about and being mea-
sured by prevailing social standards. As adults in process, adolescents
were in training for a 'maturity,' which was equated with nothing if not
normality.
5
 Failing to measure up, for any number of reasons, could
have significant consequences.
What counted as normal and what did not were both discursively
organized categories, articulated by and to a variety of institutions and
practices. Science, the school, the family, medicine, and the field of men-
tal health all contributed in significant ways to the production and circu-
lation of the various discourses about normality that were available in
mainstream, popular culture. While 'normal' was a term used to assess
many aspects of postwar life, from cleaning habits to parenting styles, it
was more often than not brought to bear on matters of sexuality and
gender, perhaps because these, especially, were assumed to be fragile.
They were understood to be the culmination of a delicate process of
emotional development, one that might easily be corrupted - a perspec-
tive rooted in the increasing popularity of Freudian ideas. Sexuality,
more than almost anything else, was understood as having the potential
for abnormality in its expression.
Of course, concerns about sexuality were not unique to the postwar
era. In western cultures, the hierarchical opposition between appropriate
and inappropriate sexualities has proved, historically, to be a common
means of organizing the distribution of power. Those on the sanctioned
side of the opposition - the normal, in the postwar case - benefit from
the privileges of inclusion in the social order. Those on the undesirable
side experience marginalization and exclusion. But as deconstructionists
will tell us, the separation between the terms of any binary opposition is
not complete. To some extent, the definition of each is located within the
other. The one is what the other is not. The terms themselves are relative,
making sense to us only as a dyad. If there was no abnormality, the con-
Sex Advice for Teens 85
cept of normality would not make sense. Nor would there be such a fuss
about continually shoring it up.
With the widespread circulation of some aspects of Freudian theory,
the line between normal and abnormal grew less distinct, and so more
threatening. Freudian suggestions that even the most 'natural' and 'nor-
mal' sexual instincts were open to perversion meant that sexual devel-
opment came to be perceived as a process of potential peril. With the
wrong influences, anyone's sexuality could veer hazardously towards
abnormality. Kinsey, claimed nervous commentators, had made that
abundantly clear.
With the publication of his reports on male (1948) and female (1953)
sexual behaviour, Alfred Kinsey and his team of researchers had shaken
North Americans with carefully documented evidence of widespread
variation in sexual practices.
6
 As Eleanor Rumming wrote in Saturday
Night, Kinsey's book called into question popularly accepted bounds of
normality. 'Normality/ she concluded, 'is what most people do. Dr. Kin-
sey's book on the Human Male showed that what most people do is far
more varied than public morality is prepared to admit.'
7
 Rumming's
definition of normality, based on statistical evidence and a liberal ethic,
was not shared by everyone who wrote on Kinsey's work. And while
Kinsey's own perspective was, in some senses, a liberal one, he didn't
necessarily share Rumming's point of view.
Kinsey tried not to speak of either normality or abnormality, terms
that he said had no place in a scientific vocabulary.
8
 Instead Kinsey
talked about biological possibilities and variations in human behaviour:
'Whatever the moral interpretation, there is no scientific reason for con-
sidering particular types of sexual activity as intrinsically, in their bio-
logic origins, normal or abnormal... Present-day legal determinations of
sexual acts which are acceptable, or 'natural,' and those which are 'con-
trary to nature' are not based on data obtained from biologists, nor from
nature herself.'
9
It was 'nature' that provided the single most important yardstick in
Kinsey's work. He evaluated human behaviour not in terms of normality,
which he considered to be a subjective quality, but in terms of its corre-
spondence to the behaviour of other mammals. 'Interpretations of
human behavior would benefit/ he said, 'if there were a more general
understanding of basic mammalian behavior.'
10
 In this particular case,
Kinsey was talking about the amount of time it takes for human males to
ejaculate, the point being the unfairness of labelling men who ejaculate
quickly as somehow sexually deficient. Chimpanzees, he said, can effect
86 The Trouble with Normal
ejaculation in less than twenty seconds: 'It would be difficult to find
another situation in which an individual who was quick and intense in
his responses was labelled anything but superior.' While the word 'nor-
mal' was not used, it seems Kinsey did have an 'ideal' in mind. From this
ideal there may be deviations - a markedly different concept from abnor-
mality - but the ideal itself is the way 'nature' intended things to be.
Kinsey's frequent references to the animal kingdom contributed to his
understanding of his own work as free from the social and moral biases
that he found so distasteful in other studies of sexuality. He presented
his project as science, plain and simple. And while he made many deri-
sive comments about contemporary moral standards, he disdainfully
claimed these were outside the scope of his study. In the end, it was Kin-
sey's attempt, successful or not, to divorce his discussion of sexual
behaviour from both morality and value-laden concepts like normality
that gave his work its tremendous impact on the whole system of sexual
meanings.
Not surprisingly, Kinsey's rejection of a moral line of argument pro-
vided plenty of fodder for reviewers of all persuasions. Some, like
Eleanor Humming, translated the reports' findings into a call for the
realignment of moral standards to reflect people's actual experiences.
11
Others worked feverishly to insert Kinsey into the very discourses he'd
tried to decentre, asking, for instance, what the sex studies meant in
terms of working definitions of normality. A piece in Saturday Night
cited Yale psychiatrist Robert P. Knight, who used Kinsey to argue his
own position that normality was definitely not a question of biological
possibility. It was, instead, a product of well-kept moral standards: 'The
common cold, says Dr. Knight, has about the same incidence as homo-
sexuality (that 37 per cent of all U.S. males have some homosexual expe-
rience) in the Kinsey figures. But the prevalence of colds, says Knight,
does not make them normal.'
12
 That Kinsey had distinguished between
medical normality (lack of any type of harmful or injurious physical con-
dition) and sexual normality (a non-scientific, moral standard), was a
point lost on Knight.
13
 In Knight's construction, there was a very fine
line between normal and moral, a semantic turn that would become per-
haps too familiar to the teenagers who negotiated the sexual terrain of
the post-Kinsey years.
Advice for Teens
In popular magazines and in prescriptive literature and films, young
Sex Advice for Teens 87
people were offered tools and strategies to use in the construction of
themselves as normal sexual beings. They were offered the promise of
normality - a position on the inside of the social body - in exchange for
conformity to rules and standards of behaviour that, in many cases, had
implications beyond the sexual realm. Normal was about being middle
class, normal was about whiteness and not being 'ethnic/ normal was
about proper expressions of gender.
As we have seen, North American postwar sexual discourses were a
conduit for fears and apprehensions about changes in the global balance
of power, about the changing shape of the family, about the effects of the
new prosperity. In this chapter, I argue that the symbolic positioning of
teenagers as 'the future,' as those who would carry the 1950s forward,
made them a likely target of interventions meant to maximize normality
and therefore maximize stability and social order against the uncertain-
ties of modern life. Sex, as the basis of family life - that 'psychological
fortress ... [that] might ward off hazards of the age'
14
 - was too important
to be left to nature or circumstance. In their attempts to 'shape' teenag-
ers, adults tried to assuage their own insecurities.
Attempts to shape teenagers into proper adults were certainly not
unique to the post-Second World War era. What is significant, however,
is the way postwar efforts focused on sexuality as a requirement for the
production of marriageable adults. In the 1940s and 1950s, adolescents
were assumed by many to need sexual guidance before assuming their
'inevitable' marital roles. Around the turn of the century, by contrast,
one prepared for marriage by learning gender-specific domestic and
economic skills. Certainly, as Karen Dubinsky has pointed out, adoles-
cents in earlier decades were warned about the dangers of sexual trans-
gression,
15
 but these warnings were not necessarily part of broader
'positive' and productive attempts to regulate the development of 'nor-
mal' sexual individuals. The latter did not begin until the 1920s and
1930s, when sexuality was increasingly being portrayed, via medical
and popular instructional discourses, as important to heterosexual mar-
riages.
16
 The 'new' companionate marriages of the post-First World War
era were to be held together by friendship and the sexual satisfaction of
both husband and wife. Promoters of this 'new' form of heterosexual
partnership advocated education about sex for those on the verge of
marriage, warning of the danger to marriage of sexual 'deviations.' By
the postwar years, companionate marriage was no longer new or
unusual. Still, it was assumed that young people, at ever-decreasing
ages, needed to be prepared for it. The growing prominence of psycho-
88 The Trouble with Normal
logical notions about the fragility of the process of attaining sexual
maturity meant that one could rarely be too careful or too concerned
about the brides and grooms of the future.
Sex advice for teens appeared in inexpensive pocketbooks, in pam-
phlets, in magazine articles, and in educational films on love, dating,
and sex.
17
 There are limits to using this type of prescriptive material for
research purposes. Certainly it was not used by all young people, and it
is difficult to determine who, in fact, did engage with it. One might also
raise questions about the extent to which different groups of young peo-
ple supported the ideas contained in the books, articles, and films, about
the distance between 'advice' and 'reality.' But the possibility that young
people did not subscribe to the information about sexuality and sexual
behaviour they received from adults does not negate the role of that
'advice' in constructing the normative standards by which teens were
judged. Lesbian and gay literature is full of examples of individuals who
have 'acted' against normative standards while at the same time suffer-
ing emotionally because of them. Martin Duberman makes this point
splendidly in his book Cures, where he describes the disjunctures he felt
while visiting a psychiatrist by day - whose goal was to cure his homo-
sexuality - and gay liberation meetings at night.
18
 Discursive construc-
tions of good teenagers and bad teenagers, of healthy sexuality and
immoral sexuality, may not have been the immediate determinants of
teen behaviour, but they did influence the context of that behaviour and
the meanings that would eventually be ascribed to it.
There was no explicitly Canadian popular discourse of teen advice.
Canadians, expert and lay person alike, borrowed heavily from Ameri-
can work in this area. Canadian magazines published American authors
and suggested the titles of American books to their readers. There was
very little difference between what appeared in Chatelaine, for instance,
and what was published in U.S. pocketbooks. Marion Milliard, who to
my knowledge was the only Canadian to have published sex advice
books in this period, used British and American publishers.
Magazine advice columns and features directed at teens - primarily
girls - were generally related to the etiquette of dating. They discussed
the ways a young woman might go about attracting a young man, or, if
she had one, how to keep him. Books covered a broader range of mate-
rial and tended to address a mixed audience. Most spent some time on
the physical basics of sex education - the workings of genitals and repro-
ductive organs, where babies come from, personal hygiene. This infor-
mation was generally contextualized by lengthy discussions on the 'joys'
It was widely assumed that, without proper supervision, children and youth
would inevitably run into trouble. These boys have had their ball confiscated by
a neighbour on King Edward Avenue in Toronto (28 May 1946).
The combination of boys and alley-ways was especially suspect. This alley is
located near Woodgreen Community Centre in Toronto (31 May 1946).
Boys outside a luncheonette. Still from the film The Meaning of Adolescence.
Organized, supervised activities were thought to keep young people out of
trouble. Sports were particularly prized as a means of channelling excess
energies, sexual or otherwise, in socially desirable directions. Playground at
Norway School, Toronto (20 May 1946).
Toronto high school students performing in a physical-education display called
Gym Window held at Maple Leaf Gardens, 1952.
Dance halls, 'hamburger restaurants/ and other unchaperoned and 'disreputa-
ble' commercial establishments were thought to provide the type of unsavoury
moral climate that would lead to sexual delinquency. Social critics argued for
the closure of such meeting places and for curfews for youth under the age of
sixteen. Still from the film The Meaning of Adolescence.
With proper adult supervision, school dances were said to provide an excellent
opportunity for girls and boys to practise their heterosexual skills. Sock hop at
Glebe Collegiate, Ottawa (3 March 1954).
Diagrams from the film Physical Aspects of Puberty.
Learning about menstruation. Still from the film Physical Aspects of Puberty.
When applied to the physical and emotional changes of puberty, concepts of
normality operated as a standard against which young people were judged, by
others as well as themselves. The space between normality and its abnormal
opposite was a powerful regulator of postwar life. Still from the film The
Meaning of Adolescence.
Advice literature (left, below, and
opposite) attempted to offer young
people tools and strategies to use in
constructing themselves as normal
beings.
'As the time for Mary's first menstrual period approached, her mother explained
about the changes that would take place, instead of leaving her [Mary] to pick
up startling and inaccurate information from her schoolmates/ Quotation and
still from the film Social-Sex Attitudes in Adolescence.
'About this time, Mary developed a strong sudden friendship with Lucille
Williams. It seemed that Mary could talk better with Lucille than anyone else.
They had no secrets from each other; they were inseparable. To Mary's mother it
seemed unnatural, this continual intimacy, this concentration of affection on one
not very unusual girl.' Quotation and still from the film Social-Sex Attitudes in
Adolescence.
'But after a few weeks [of going out together], both knew it was different. Petting
wasn't just a form of entertainment or an experiment. It was a real affection and
mutual respect.' Quotation and still from the film Social-Sex Attitudes in
Adolescence.
Not only did good posture represent good character, it was also said to benefit
the health of a girl's reproductive organs. These girls are the winners and
runners-up of the posture contest at the High School of Commerce in Ottawa
(18 November 1954).
Although adult detractors called the music of Elvis Presley disgusting, immoral,
and a catalyst for delinquency, eight thousand fans showed up at a 1957 concert
in Ottawa to see him perform. An Ottawa convent school expelled eight
students for having attended the concert.
These comic book images and their captions (above and opposite) were used in
Fredric Wertham's book, Seduction of the Innocent, to demonstrate the adverse
influence of comic books on the normal sexual and moral development of
children.
An inoitation TO LEARNING.
giving children and image
of American womanhood
In ordinary comic books,
there are pictures within
pictures for children who
know how to look
Children call these "headlinghts" comics.
A single scene of lesbian seduction in this pulp novel generated two days of
discussion in an Ottawa courtroom in 1952, as witnesses for both the defence
and the prosecution argued about the impact the scene would have on the
'normal' teenage girl reader.
Sex Advice for Teens 89
of both masculinity and femininity (so long as they were expressed by
the proper sorts of people in the proper sorts of ways). Thus established,
the heterosexual framework was pursued through the stages of pre-dat-
ing, dating, engagement, and marriage, with related discussions about
good grooming, how to hostess a party, how to meet your date's parents,
and other essential skills of the successful girl or boy. The tone in both
books and magazines was enthusiastic and upbeat. Being a modern boy
or girl was a swell thing.
The books I refer to here are not to be confused with the marriage
manuals that were popular in earlier decades and which continued to be
published after the war. The 'frankness' of the earlier volumes had no
place in the primers for adulthood directed at postwar teens. For
instance, the prime Canadian example of the marriage manual, Rev.
Alfred Henry Tyrer's Sex, Marriage and Birth Control, originally pub-
lished in 1936, contained chapters on 'Conception Control,' 'Different
Positions for Intercourse,' 'Temporary Impotence/ and 'Venereal Dis-
eases.'
19
 Teen books, on the other hand, had chapter headings like 'How
to Get - and Keep - Boys Interested,' 'All about Dating,' 'Shy Today and
Popular Tomorrow.' The new advice genre grew, in part, from changing
social mores and the rise of self-regulatory discourses of personal devel-
opment. It may also have reflected changes in marriage and dating pat-
terns. In the 1950s, children were 'dating' by the age of twelve or thirteen
and marrying around the age of twenty, which gave them only five or
six years to prepare - especially sexually - for what was assumed to be
the eventuality of matrimony. Interwar marriage manuals had been
written for young men and women. The 1950s advice books about sex
were written for boys and girls who, despite impending marriages, were
barely past childhood.
As with the advice books, postwar teens were also the target audience
of growing numbers of educational films. While educational films were
not new in and of themselves, the style and content of these 'how-to-
grow-up' teenage-guidance films were unique to the postwar period.
The films were more serious than the advice books, their tone set by the
ever-present voice of a male narrator. Produced in Canada by the
National Film Board and by private production houses, such as Crawley
films in Ottawa, for distribution by American textbook publishers, the
films played before 'captive' audiences in school classrooms, at youth
groups, and, sometimes, on television. Perhaps because of this, their
approach to content was more cautious than that followed by the advice
authors. Whereas advice books were consumed privately, perhaps even
90 The Trouble with Normal
secretly, films were viewed in public, sometimes in mixed groups of
boys and girls. To some, who thought sex education the responsibility of
parents and not the state, such materials were both ill-advised and dan-
gerous. Boards of education could face protest by offended parents and
embarrassed teachers for using them. Hence, the restrained tone of the
films was not surprising. It probably helped facilitate the securing of an
audience.
It's in the films that one sees most easily the way teen advice was
implicated in the construction of postwar middle classness. These films
flagged class in any number of ways, from simple matters like the pre-
dominance of spotless and well-furnished two-storey houses, where
children did not share bedrooms and where mothers were full-time
homemakers (even if widowed), to the homogeneity of students in a
classroom, to assumptions about dating, marriage, and future careers.
Joe and Roxy, produced by the NFB, was the only one of the thirty-seven
films I considered that featured working-class teenagers: a girl living in
an apartment with her mother who had been deserted by her husband; a
boy whose father was a tradesman who tried to discourage his son from
pursuing engineering. Among the sweater-set crowd, in the American-
style soda shops that furnished many of the other films, Joe and Roxy
would have been uncomfortably out of place.
More typical was an American film called Are You Popular?, first pro-
duced in 1947 and updated in 1958. In both versions of this film, postwar
class differences are central to the story line. To make its point the film
contrasts Ginny and Caroline. Ginny is the unpopular girl, packaged in
multiple working-class signifiers. Her jewellery is big and gaudy, her
clothes are fussy, her hair is too old for her age, she 'yoo-hoos' the other
kids in the cafeteria. And, we find out from the solemn-toned male nar-
rator, she goes parking with boys at night. Caroline, on the other hand, is
very popular, in an easy kind of way (which is, of course, the right way).
She is dressed simply. She greets her friends calmly and pleasantly. She
is 'interested in girls rather than boys.' She offers to help with the school
play. She does not 'park' with boys in their cars.
20
 She will, however, go
on a date with a boy if it is okay with her mother. She will be home
before an agreed-upon curfew. And, when she and her date arrive home,
mother will greet them with a tray of fresh brownies. For both Caroline
and Ginny, class, moral character, and popularity are indivisible.
In all of the films, all of the characters are white. None speak with
accents or have 'foreign'-sounding names. There is no mention of the
way religious or cultural differences might affect one's popularity or
Sex Advice for Teens 91
one's ability to date or how one approaches marriage. Several films do
suggest, however, the importance of marrying someone from a similar
background. Overall, nothing disrupts the seamless representation of
middle-class dominant culture. Certainly nothing suggests that the
advice on growing up given in both the books and the films might not be
useful to everyone.
The Straightness of Normality
There was a remarkable conformity among the different advice books
and films about what constituted normality. While it was talked about as
a unitary category, normality, in these texts, differed for boys and girls,
teens and adults. And while it was presented as a self-evident descrip-
tive, normality was constructed through a complex formation of profes-
sional and popular discourses, all of which were easily bent to serve
moral ends. Biological and psychological discourses, which at times con-
tradicted each other, were tucked comfortably alongside the most 'unsci-
entific' common sense. The end result of this eclectic approach was a
peculiar mix of essentialist theory, moral coercion, and behaviouralist
strategy that was all meant to inspire teens to 'do the right thing.'
At its most basic level, normality was grounded in notions of the sup-
posedly biologically rooted mutual attraction of males and females.
Addressing young women, Ann Landers wrote in her 1963 book, 'Of
course you would not be normal if you were able to keep your mind off
the boys, completely. And no normal boy is able to keep his mind off
girls completely either.'
21
 While heterosexual desire, on its own, wasn't
enough to guarantee one's status as normal, it was essential. In the lim-
ited world of the teen manual, homosexuality marked the extreme outer
edge of the abnormal. Homosexuality existed as that place in the books
where discussions of abnormality were up front and explicit. It was a
subject the more reticent films rarely touched.
In her 1960 book, Sex and the Adolescent, journalist Maxine Davis
wrote, 'Human beings have always been frightened by phenomena
which seem to be unnatural. For example, before they learned some-
thing about astronomy they were terrified by the eclipse of the sun by
the moon; they thought it was the end of the world. Today, the average
healthy adult has a comparable aversion to homosexuality; he thinks it a
dreadful incurable disease or an unnatural emotional deformity'
(emphasis mine).
22
 And while Davis claimed she wanted to allay these
types of fears, homosexuality remained, in her text, something vastly
92 The Trouble with Normal
remote from everyday life. Indeed homosexuality was constructed as so
outside the range of normal teen experience that it was presented in all
of the books as an external threat. Homosexuals were other people - not,
certainly, teens themselves. Thus, most of the information about homo-
sexuality that found its way into these books was intended to help boys
and girls to protect themselves from deviants.
In her often-cited book Teen Days, Frances Bruce Strain, a proponent of
sex education in American schools, wrote: 'Adults call these persons
homosexuals. High-school students have their own names for them.
One must know of them in order that they may be recognized and
avoided.'
23
 Lester Kirkendall, another well-known American sex-educa-
tion expert, warned teens that they needed to know about homosexuals
because young people were likely to encounter them as they began to
venture afield from their homes. He claimed that homosexuals were
most likely to be found in large cities and 'around places where it is com-
mon for only men and boys, or girls and women, to gather.'
24
 He went
on to explain how the careful teenager would be able to turn away the
homosexual's advances. While Kirkendall and the other writers never
explicitly explain how to tell the homosexual from someone who was
normal, they did provide clues. First, homosexuals are male (lesbians are
barely mentioned in the six books I'm referring to). Second, homosexu-
als are adults.
'True homosexuality/ according to Davis, is 'an unfortunate adult
maladjustment.'
25
 As a product of failed, slowed, or reversed sexual and
emotional development, homosexuality is a condition that couldn't pos-
sibly be determined (or diagnosed) until the 'transitional phase' of ado-
lescence was completed. Of course the irony in this is that homosexuals
were then considered by psychologists to be in an arrested state of ado-
lescent development - they were seen as immature.
26
Different writers had different explanations for the cause of a sexual
aberration like same-sex desire. Strain said it might be due to the
unavailability of the opposite sex at a crucial time of development - for
instance, in the case of boarding schools. She also suggested other rea-
sons related to poor family conditions or unpleasant early experiences.
27
Lester Kirkendall looked primarily to the home to find the cause of
homosexuality: 'Some [people] ... are so unfortunate as to be blocked in
their normal development by conflicts with their parents, unhappy
home conditions, lack of opportunity to build friendships, timidity, poor
social adjustment, and possibly poor physical conditions. A combination
of factors thus produces the homosexual, an individual who might with
Sex Advice for Teens 93
better fortune have followed the normal processes of maturing and
00
growing up.
The developmental focus on the causes of homosexuality made it pos-
sible for the broad range and occurrence of same-sex affections in teen-
agers' own lives to be corralled and put to good ideological use. In
typical models of heterosexual development, there existed a secure place
for same-sex attractions, or crushes. Homosexual feelings or intimacies
experienced by young people themselves were recuperated by advice
writers as essential steps on the road to heterosexual normality. Most
people, the writers claimed, go through some sort of homosexual 'phase'
at some point in their lives. Evelyn Duvall, who was recommended to
Canadians in Chatelaine magazine, constructed a continuum of affec-
tional and sexual ties that began with 'same sex, same age' interests,
passing through 'same sex, older age' crushes on the way to 'other sex,
older age/ before finally reaching the real thing, the 'other sex, same age'
stage of 'love development.'
29
 In this model, homosexual ties are seen as
preparation or practice for heterosexual relationships. In their book On
Becoming a Woman, Mary McGee Williams and Irene Kane discussed
same-sex crushes as good training not only in sexuality, but also in terms
of gender roles. 'There's nothing wrong with idolizing a woman - if it's
kept under control and if she's a person worthy of your respect. As a
matter of fact, it helps to have a model on whom you can pattern your
behavior, and it's a step in learning to be a woman, to learn to admire a
good and admirable one.'
30
Homoerotic desire in this sense was not only normal but desirable.
Nevertheless, it was important that this 'not unusual part of growing
up' did not expand into an active desire for physical contact - it was
important to keep clear the boundaries between normal and abnormal.
Should such transgressive feelings arise, the young person was advised
to seek counselling to find out why his or her 'emotional development
[was] being delayed beyond what [was] considered normal.'
31
 The
assumption was always that any same-sex sexual behaviour indicated a
developmental stage that had been taken too far. Moreover, it was noth-
ing a few new friends and some vigorous sports activity wouldn't put
back on track.
Little attention was paid by these authors to concerns young people
might have had about their own sexual identities, worries that they
themselves might have been 'a little queer.' Ann Landers was the only
writer to approach homosexuality from this angle, and she only talked
about boys, claiming that they accounted for 70 per cent of her mail on
94 The Trouble with Normal
the subject. They are the ones, she wrote, who were 'tortured with guilt
and self-hatred ... terrified that someone may learn they aren't "like
everyone else."'
32
 They were the ones who, 'yearn to be normal.'
Perhaps because of the letters she received, Landers was more willing
than her colleagues to make a distinction (albeit an unhappy one)
between homosexuality as a phase and homosexuality as a tragic future.
While she believed sexual identities to be the result of a process of emo-
tional development, she saw that process as relatively quick and finite.
Thus Landers, unlike the other writers, thought that one could be an ado-
lescent and a homosexual at the same time; homosexuality was not nec-
essarily a phase. However, she also claimed that cures were possible,
although their chances of success were greater if 'the homosexual seeks
professional help in his early teens.' But one wonders whether the young
homosexual would have pursued such a course of action while everyone
around him (or her, invisible though she was) was saying that homosex-
ual feelings were a normal part of growing up. How was one to know the
difference between homosexual desires that were 'twisted and sick' and
those that were preparing one for heterosexual matrimony? The negotia-
tion of the normal/abnormal boundary could be very complicated.
Never one to cut off hope, Landers stressed that much could be done
in terms of 'adjustment' to homosexuality. She claimed that, 'Psychiatric
therapy can, in most cases, give the homosexual some understanding
and insight into his problem. It can help him adjust to his condition and
accept himself as he is.'
33
 What that acceptance might look like in a soci-
ety where homosexuality was rarely acknowledged, let alone tolerated,
Landers didn't say. And if the young homosexual didn't already feel the
extent of the distance between 'himself and those laying claim to nor-
mality, Landers helped him along by suggesting to her non-homosexual
readers: 'Be thankful you have been blessed with healthy, normal sex
drives, and remember that not all boys and girls are so fortunate. When
you encounter people who are 'different/ remember that their lives are
probably unbelievably difficult and that they are faced with the enor-
mous problem of adjustment. You can help by understanding.'
34
Most of the advice writers claimed that they wanted to reduce peo-
ple's fear of homosexuality although, clearly, they weren't interested in
calming young people's personal fears about living homosexual lives.
Instead they focused on widespread social fears of homosexuals in the
culture at large. It was widely believed in the 1950s, as it is by many
today, that young people could be inducted into homosexuality by older
homosexuals. In developmental theories of homosexuality, contact with
Sex Advice for Teens 95
an adult homosexual was one event that might send normal develop-
ment astray. A particularly vitriolic version of this theory appeared in
the American digest magazine Coronet:
All too often, we lose sight of the fact that the homosexual is an inveterate
seducer of the young of both sexes [sic], and that he presents a social problem
because he is not content with being degenerate himself; he must have degenerate
companions, and is ever seeking younger victims ...
... He demands a partner. And the partner, more often than not, must come
from the ranks of the young and innocent. (Emphasis in the original.)
35
Davis wrote that if a young boy is seduced by an older man and 'has
repeated relationships with adult homosexuals, there is a serious risk
that his originally normal instincts may eventually become permanently
perverted.'
36
 Homosexuality, in this instance, is not something you per-
form or do, or something you are, it is something that might happen to
you. This meant that, despite the 'naturalness' of heterosexuality and the
abnormality of homosexuality young people were vulnerable to derail-
ment from the straight path. As long as homosexuality was understood
to be an external threat, notions of the 'naturalness' and inevitability of
heterosexuality were left unchallenged.
Normal Gender Makes Normal Sexuality
In teen advice books and films, the relationship between sexuality and
gender was a fluctuating one. While postwar theories of homosexuality
relied less on notions of gender inversion than earlier theories had,
37
 the-
ories of heterosexuality, by contrast, were heavily steeped in ideas about
the proper fit between gender and sexuality. Whereas one could be a
homosexual without feeling the inversion of gender, one could not be a
successful heterosexual if one's gender was out of line.
Girls and boys who did not match prevailing images of masculinity
and femininity - sissies and tomboys - were a challenge to the firmness
of the boundary that split off abnormal from normal. But, surprisingly,
not a single writer mentioned the possibility that these children might
turn into homosexuals. Doing so might have given too much credence to
theories that homosexuality was a biological condition, as Kinsey had
tried to show, and not a perversion of normal instincts or evidence of
relaxed moral standards. To succumb to biological arguments about the
basis of 'abnormalities' would have necessitated an admission of the
96 The Trouble with Normal
futility of sex education and other regulatory measures as a prophylaxis
against deviations from social norms. Such arguments would have put
these writers out of business. So in the few discussions of tomboys and
sissies that appear in these texts, there is no mention that the improper
alignment of gender might have non-heterosexual consequences.
Instead we read merely of the difficulties that femmy boys and butch
girls faced in the schoolyard. The hope was always that the "minuses" of
their sex'
38
 could be rehabilitated. While homosexuality was thought to
be the result of (failed) adolescent development, sissyness and tomboy-
ness were presented as conditions that (successful) adolescent develop-
ment could cure.
In the late 1940s, Kellogg's cereal company ran a regular ad in Chate-
laine magazine that was formatted to look like a column by 'psychologist
Janet Power.' A 1948 instalment was entitled 'Barbara Is a Tomboy.'
39
Psychologist Power (!) responded to a letter from Barbara's mother
describing her daughter's habits and asking 'How can I make Barbara
more feminine, yet not curb her high spirits?' Power suggested that Bar-
bara's mother ignore 'her tomboy antics' and instead praise Barbara 'for
everything feminine she happens to do.' Barbara's mother was to
encourage a closer relationship between Barbara and her sister, to take
Barbara shopping, and to give both daughters more responsibility in the
home. Eventually, Barbara would calm down when she learned how
proud it makes her mother: 'Remember, stress CONSIDERATION OF
OTHERS and GOOD MANNERS. At first Barbara will obey just to
please you, but quiet, normal gentleness will soon become a habit with
her. Show Barbara it's fun to be a DAUGHTER to you and FATHER - not
a tomboy!' (emphasis in original).
40
Femininity in this case is a matter of behaviour modification; it is not
something one feels, but something one learns. Several versions of this
approach were expressed in teen advice books and guidance films. The
writers made clear that while young women have an inherent capacity
for femininity - it is, after all, a 'natural' product of their biological
femaleness - they need instruction so their femininity will attain the
proper shape. 'Most of what goes into making a woman act and behave
and feel like a woman is learned as she grows up ... Learning to enjoy
boys as persons, to like men without being afraid of them on the one
hand or being too overwhelmed by them on the other, learning to enjoy
the fine arts and skills of being a real woman, with all the satisfactions
and challenges that lie before women today - these are important, and
they are for you to learn.'
41
Sex Advice for Teens 97
But with questions around gender identity, as with other topics, there
is a continual tension in these texts between 'modern' psychological the-
ories and 'old-fashioned' explanations that draw on biology. Either set of
theories could be easily adapted to meet the exigencies of moral dis-
courses. That these two positions could, at times, be contradictory was a
theoretical and narrative puzzle the advice writers left unsolved. In a
1942 book directed at parents and teachers, Frances Strain suggested
that tomboys and sissies be referred to the family doctor to determine
'the underlying physical basis' of 'the problem.' She also said that when
such children enter adolescence and their hormones start up 'either nat-
urally or through medication, the minuses may both become pluses, del-
icate boys become virile and strong, stalwart girls become graceful and
more feminine, ready to be to each other not pals but "dates" and sweet-
hearts.'
42
 Here, her advice differs from the behaviour-training approach
of the Kellogg's ad. But, four years later, in a book directed at young
adolescents, Strain was caught between biological and psychological
perspectives when she said that femininity in boys 'is just on the surface.
Given a chance, these boys swing back to normal.' Should that not hap-
pen, or if it could not 'because of individual make-up,' they would just
have to 'live within the scope of their tastes and skills ,..'
43
 They would
have to 'adjust.' No need for hormonal remedies here. Whether the dif-
ferent exercise of biology in Strain's two books represents an updating of
her theory or her attempts to be more upbeat with children than with
adults, it is hard to say.
In most of the books and films, biology was presented as the source of
things good, while environmental and psychological/emotional factors
were what turned good things into bad ones. This is very clear in
Strain's later book where she based her discussion of ideal genders on
'nature':
Boys are to be fathers and providers. They become broad of shoulder, long of
limb, fleet of foot, stronger, tougher and more combative. The animal world
gives plenty of evidence of male equipment for this task of winning a wife, pro-
tecting and caring for a family. The magnificent antlers of the bull moose and his
roaring mating call up in the north woods has inspired many a dainty little doe
and won her to him. The bull seal with his mighty tusks, the lion with his mas-
sive head and mane, the game cock and his spurs, all of these are Life's provi-
sions for the male of the species.
44
Unnatural gender types, like sissies and tomboys, were frequently said
98 The Trouble with Normal
to be the fault of parents; a bad home life could turn one's 'natural/ nor-
mal constitution inside out. Learning to maintain gender boundaries, to
express the right kind of masculinity or the right kind of femininity, was
partially a matter of giving shape to the kind of biological urges evident
in the 'animal world.' As Evelyn Duvall wrote, 'most young people have
a strong urge to be normal ,..'
45
 To do so, adolescents were to become the
opposite halves of a heterosexual whole. Learning to date, then, was a
means of building on biology, trying on heterosexuality and fulfilling
gender requirements. The reader of On Becoming a Woman learns that
womanliness, for instance, is not something complete unto itself; it is
something to be 'practised' on men. To be a 'truly feminine woman,'
according to Williams and Kane, a woman had to 'really like men.'
46
 This
didn't mean, however, that she joined them for games on the ball field.
Girls needed to like boys in ways that would make them into dates, not
into pals. Although there were many ways for boys and girls to be
together, only one was evidence that nature was unfolding as it should.
Dating as Heterosexual Practice
If anything marks postwar ideologies about gender and sexuality and
the relationship between the two categories, it's dating. Much has been
written about dating as a fairly recent, North American institution. Beth
Bailey, Ellen Rothman, and others have discussed the various historical
factors that shaped the adoption of the 'dating system' by young Ameri-
cans.
47
 In most of this writing, dating appears as a series of events or
customs that change with the economic and social climate. But, as Karen
Dubinsky has pointed out, these histories of courtship fail to look at dat-
ing as a key aspect of the institutionalization of heterosexuality.
48
 Nei-
ther have they looked at the ways that dating contributed to the
construction of the teenager as a particular kind of sexual being, or at the
ways that dating was as important for those who did not participate in it
as it was for those who did.
In her study of young, working-class women in turn-of-the-century
New York, Kathy Peiss talks about the opening up of opportunities for
heterosexual sociability for working-class women.
49
 This mixing of the
genders didn't become the norm for middle-class youth until somewhat
later. Paula Pass suggests that it came about with the increasing numbers
of coed colleges in the 1920s, and with the increasing enrolment in
mixed-sex high schools.
50
 It was in these institutions that youth began to
be perceived as a distinct sector of society, a cohesive group with its own
Sex Advice for Teens 99
tastes, traditions, and norms. High schools also brought adolescents
together in a way that made them targets of adult/expert observation
and intervention. For instance, post-Second World War high schools pro-
vided the audience for the how-to-grow-up-properly films I've men-
tioned in this chapter. Without the large numbers of young people
collected in state school systems, it is unlikely such films would have
been profitable.
As Peiss makes clear, 'dates' outside the home were not an invention
of the middle class nor of the twentieth century. What was different
about middle-class dates as they evolved in the 1920s and the decades
that followed was that middle-class dating became the socially approved
system of boy-girl interaction, with its own rituals and peer-enforced
norms. Other situations in which boys and girls found themselves
together in the service of their sexuality came to be censured. This trans-
formation had a lot to do with changing economic conditions after the
First World War, the growing proliferation of cars, and the availability of
commercial amusements.
51
 In order to date, one had to have money,
somewhere to go, and a means of getting there.
By the interwar period, claims American historian Beth Bailey, dating
had come to be organized along competitive 'economic' lines. In the
1930s, young men and women were keen to have as many dates as pos-
sible. Popularity was both an outcome of and a contributor to dating
success. Bailey cites American sociologist Willard Waller who described
the 'dating and rating system' as he saw it in the late 1930s.
52
 To be pop-
ular and successful, Waller said, men had to have material advantages -
access to disposable income, cars, the proper clothes, and so on. Women,
of course, didn't compete on this same level. For a woman to be popular
she herself had to be seen as valuable and in great demand. Thus, she
tried to be seen with men who rated, turning down those who didn't or
those who insulted her worth in the marketplace by asking her out at the
last minute. As Bailey understands it, the rating and dating system was
based on the conformity that was central to middle-class youth culture
as well as on the competition that was a product of a nascent consumer
society.
53
By the 1950s, this constant changing of partners was all but lost as
teenagers began to invest themselves in serial monogamy via the institu-
tion of 'going steady.' Again historians locate the source of this shift in
the economic and social conditions of the larger society. After the war,
says Bailey, teens used the dating system as a means of escaping the
intense competition of the burgeoning consumer culture.
54
 Elaine May
100 The Trouble with Normal
says that dating habits were part of a larger search for security and sta-
bility during the cold war.
55
 But dating was not merely a reflection of the
larger economic and political circumstances. Dating was also a means of
organizing social relations among youth. Peer-enforced standards of
behaviour, encouraged by adults, brought the regulation of what was
normal down to the level of young people themselves. As a public dis-
play of one's ability to fit in or not, 'going steady' was a requirement of
popularity that made those who were not participating in its rituals
obvious. Serial monogamy, with its lack of spontaneity - its stability -
made the unattached especially visible. The problem is summed up by a
young woman in Sylvia Fraser's autobiographical book about Hamilton,
Ontario, in the 1950s: '"It's better to stay home than to go with someone
you don't like," I assure her, knowing that I'm lying. All social life at
Hamilton High is strictly two-by-two, as in Noah's Ark. Not to date is to
be an object of scorn or pity.'
56
 Once on the outside of the coupled world,
the chances of getting in were fewer than they might have been in the
constantly changing social scene of the thirties.
For all its significance as a teenage institution, going steady was not,
by any means, free of adult influence. Teachers, journalists, filmmakers,
advice-book writers, and parents all did their best to keep this form of
dating consistent with larger social norms. While boys and girls could
mark the boundaries of their social worlds in terms of who was with
whom and who was alone, adults attempted to keep limits on the entire
dating system, especially in terms of sexual expression and how interac-
tions between boys and girls reflected contemporary ideologies about
gender.
Adults in the postwar period, who would have been more familiar
with the 1930s version of dating, were torn over whether or not teenag-
ers should be encouraged to go steady. American marriage counsellor
Clifford R. Adams, writing in Chatelaine in 1948, claimed that 'courtship
is much more wholesome and sincere than it was a few dozen years
ago.'
57
 For him the trend towards serial monogamy was a sign of matu-
rity and a stabilizing of moral standards that had been shaken by the
war. Ten years later, Dr Marion Hilliard, a frequent contributor to Chate-
laine on issues of sexuality, claimed, disdainfully, that going steady was
little more than insurance for teens: 'Both boys and girls drift into these
comfortable arrangements. They never have to make any effort to learn
to handle a new situation or adapt to different personalities. They settle
down into this teen-age pattern so completely sometimes that they find
they can't even dance with other partners. They know one another's
Sex Advice for Teens 101
minds and opinions as well as the lyrics of their favorite hit tune. They
become fixtures in each other's homes. When they can support each
other, they get married.'
58
 In going steady, Milliard saw a way for teens
to express their conformity and to keep themselves ensconced in over-
protected lives.
Writing for Maclean's in 1959, Sidney Katz showed a comparable lack
of enthusiasm in an article called, 'Going Steady: Is It Ruining Our Teen-
agers?' Katz likened the practice to a social disease, claiming it had
reached 'epidemic proportions.'
59
 For him monogamous dating was a
disturbing sign of the impact of postwar social-welfare measures: 'Chil-
dren, evidently, have absorbed in concentrated form, the adult emphasis
on security as evidenced by our own advocacy of health insurance, pen-
sions and guaranteed annual wages. The teen-agers' premature conser-
vatism and excessive desire to conform are also symptomatic of their
search for security.'
60
 Katz saw teens as the inevitable product of too
much prosperity. They were passive and lacked initiative. Why else
would they be content to settle so early into staid and routine patterns of
coupling? He also claimed that top kids in the social system didn't suc-
cumb to social pressure to go steady. Nor did immigrants. According to
Katz, these two groups (which he constructs as internally cohesive and
mutually exclusive) were more enterprising. Like other writers, it was
Katz's contention that going steady was a 'female device,' developed by
girls to achieve their own ends. Boys who participated in it willingly, he
says, lacked masculinity.
61
 They were not on the way to becoming nor-
mal men.
Other writers saw monogamous dating in a different light. For Wil-
liams and Kane it was good preparation for marriage.
62
 And Frances
Strain is enthusiastic about what she calls the 'dating pyramid,' the road
to marriage itself and the culmination of normal heterosexual develop-
ment. 'This wonderful social structure,' as she describes it, starts with
group dating, then double dating, single dating, going steady, courtship,
engagement, and marriage. The whole process begins around the age of
thirteen or fourteen and ends with the nuptial event at the age of
twenty-three or twenty-four.
63
 (Her age limits reflect her immediate
postwar publication date; later in the 1950s, they would have been lower
in both cases.) In this model, dating was practice for marriage, a useful
way of training sexuality into a desired mode of expression, of normaliz-
ing it. Dating was the socially approved arena for young men and
women to practise their masculinity and femininity on each other.
To the extent that it became institutionalized, with numerous ritual
102 The Trouble with Normal
and structural intricacies, dating offered advice writers no end of oppor-
tunity to intervene in young lives. Dating, though the 'natural' expres-
sion of heterosexuality, was not something that just anyone could do
properly - it had to be taught, and adults were more than happy to take
on the job of teaching. As in the learning of masculinity and femininity,
advice writers claimed no contradictions between their assertions that
heterosexuality was 'natural' and the assumption that it was an identity
and a practice that had to be achieved: 'Both girls and boys must learn
how to be smooth in their dating. None of us is born with the attributes
of being a good date ... Such learning can be fun, and it is important
without question. On it hangs our feeling of being a successful member
of one sex or another.'
64
 In this passage, Evelyn Duvall is talking about
grooming and being punctual and wearing the right clothes. But success
as a dater, and as a young man or a young woman, was based on more
weighty issues than these. Once one was in the dating system, one had
to be able to stay there without 'getting into trouble.' Fears around the
extent of sexual activity between daters was one topic on which the anti-
going steady adults agreed with those who were for it. But while the lat-
ter thought going steady was a way to control sex between teenagers,
the former believed it encouraged dangerous intimacies. Sidney Katz
cited the results from a poll published in Canadian High News in which 82
per cent of parents were opposed to their daughters' going steady. They
were afraid 'something might happen.'
65
 No mention was made of their
sons.
Ann Landers shared the parents' concerns: 'It is unrealistic to assume
that healthy, red-blooded high school kids can be together day in and
day out, month after month - sometimes year after year - and keep their
physical urges under perfect control.'
66
 Sex, she warned, was a 'danger-
ous by-product of going steady.' Marion Milliard thought the same: 'As a
doctor I don't believe there is such a thing as a platonic relationship
between a man and woman who are alone together a great deal.'
67
 A
strong sex drive was seen to be normal (for boys and girls, according to
Milliard), but a teenager needed to and could learn how to control it,
because 'Uncontrolled, this force can take over and direct you.'
68
 For
those who agreed with Milliard, sex education, like that found in the
advice books, would give teenagers the moral grounding to stem their
physical inclinations.
Some sources downplayed discussion of sex, perhaps because of a fear
that too much sexual knowledge was, itself, a dangerous thing. Reading
Chatelaine's regular column 'Teen Tempo,' one could assume that the
Sex Advice for Teens 103
extent of teenage girls' concerns with sex stopped at whether or not to
permit a goodnight kiss on the doorstep. Most dating how-to films,
which were ostensibly presenting real teenage couples, managed to skip
quickly over sex as an issue that might be of concern. In an American
film called Going Steady, shown on a 1954 CBC talk show, Youth Takes a
Stand, sex is introduced and dismissed in three short lines:
Marie: Going steady? Yes, I guess I have been going steady.
Mother: I hope Jeff doesn't feel he has the right to take liberties.
Marie: Oh mother.
69
The film was shown as part of a special episode on going steady. The
conversation between Marie and her mother contains the only reference
to sex in the entire program. A 1957 film, How Much Affection 1, produced
by Crawley Films of Ottawa for McGraw-Hill Books in New York, is
unusual in that it dances around sex without actually having to say the
word:
Mary: Tonight the feeling between us kept getting stronger and stronger. And on
the way home we stopped and parked. And then things seemed to happen,
till we nearly [Mary glances down at her dressing table, Mother stands
by looking concerned, there is a long pause] - It was so close. Suddenly I real-
ized what we were about to do. I asked Jeff to take me home. I guess he felt
ashamed too. He said he was sorry, that it was his fault.
Mother: Do you think it was his fault?
Mary: Oh mother, I don't know what to think, I'm so mixed up. I don't even
know if I want to go out with Jeff again.
70
Mary and her mother have a talk about feeling 'warm and affectionate'
and about the times when 'your physical urges fight against your rea-
son.' When Mary next runs into Jeff at school they apologize to each
other. Later they see 'poor Eileen' and her baby on the street. Her baby
was born five months after a hasty marriage to Fred. Her face looks hag-
gard. We are to assume Mary and Jeff learn from her 'mistake.'
Joe and Roxy, produced by the NFB, is the one film that shows
working-class teenagers. Also produced in 1957, it isn't quite as dra-
matic or explicit in its message as How Much Affection ?, although it does
include images of sexual behaviour.
71
 We see a young couple hanging
around the girl's house, unchaperoned, after school.
72
 The boy fixes a
broken toaster. They start to play tag. He chases her. He tackles her on
104 The Trouble with Normal
the couch. They end up on the floor kissing. They stare into each other's
eyes. He starts to feel uncomfortable and gets up to tidy up his repair
job. When he comes back to the living-room the two are shy with each
other and sit apart on the couch. They talk about getting engaged. They
start to rough-house but then they grow quiet. The narrator intervenes:
'Moods change very swiftly at 17, gay and raucous and tender. An age of
many moods and many doubts.' Sex is there and not there at the same
time.
These reticent portrayals of teenage sexuality were at odds with
advice-book discussions of sex as powerful and 'awe-inspiring.' Teenag-
ers were supposed to learn about sex as a wonderful natural urge, but
then they were to ignore or control that urge until they were legally
sanctioned to express it. People like Marion Hilliard assumed it was
impossible; she frankly told girls not to trust themselves and to keep out
of any situation where sex might occur.
73
 Other writers thought the right
information presented in the 'right way' would prepare girls 'to deal
with the power [their] "femaleness" places in [their] hands.'
74
 While we
all have urges, we are quite capable of keeping them under control. Het-
erosexual desires might have been normal, but only if expressed under
certain conditions.
In her book Young, White and Miserable, Wini Breines talks about the
crazy-making contradictions that faced young American women in the
1950s. In a consumer culture that celebrated youth and sexuality it
appeared there was a new openness to sex. Certainly, postwar teenagers
had plenty of opportunity to engage in sexual activity. The emphasis on
coed activities at school and after, combined with the privacy that was
inevitable for at least some part of almost every date, put heterosexual
boys and girls in extremely close proximity to each other's sexuality. But,
as Breines says, this openness and opportunity unfolded in the context
of 'prudish families and narrow, even cruel, sexual norms.'
75
 But unfold
it did. In his 1953 study on women, Kinsey found that 'very nearly 50
per cent of the females who were married by the age of twenty had had
pre-marital coitus.'
76
 He also says that the rates of premarital coitus for
women had remained relatively constant, with only minor increases
since 1930.
77
 What was similarly surprising to his 1950s readers was Kin-
sey's claim that 90 per cent of all the women in his sample had engaged
in premarital petting, while the figure rose to 100 per cent for those who
subsequently married.
78
In the face of widespread sexual behaviour among adolescents, advice
writers continued their attempts to construct normal heterosexuality as a
Sex Advice for Teens 105
relatively non-sexual practice until marriage. Despite timid discussions
about goodnight kisses and popular articles by learned women and men
on the dangers of petting, teenagers did continue to engage in a range of
heterosexual sexual activity, although as Breines says, it wasn't always
pleasant or fun:
I mention only in passing, despite its importance, the terror of pregnancy, shared
by girls who considered or engaged in sexual intercourse. It mediated girls'
appropriation of the pleasure-seeking ethos of sexualized consumerism and
diminished their pleasure of heterosexual sex. The point... is not that this fear
was unique to white, middle-class adolescents in the postwar years, but that this
juxtaposition of sexual opportunities and encouragement with ignorance, con-
demnation, humiliation, and the unavailability of birth control is unusual.
79
When the social norm meant waiting until marriage, teenagers who
engaged in sexual activity - girls especially, though boys as well -
played dangerously with their own social value and categorization. We
saw in the last chapter the consequences of unwed motherhood and the
way that the delinquency label could be applied to girls who asserted
themselves sexually. To meet their own needs and desires for sex as well
as social requirements for at least the image of chastity, teenagers
engaged in complicated negotiations around the categories of sexual
activity. Can you kiss on the first date? the second? the third? What after
that? What is the correct relationship between the cost of a date and the
percentage of her body a girl must share with a boy? What stretch of a
hand or a mouth turns necking into petting? Sexual activity took place
on a graduated scale that culminated in 'going all the way.' So long as a
couple went up the scale in the proper order, at the proper stage of their
dating relationship, the dating system could contain and sanction their
intimacies. As an institution, going steady allowed both girls and boys
to maintain their reputations while permitting them access to sex, in
some cases, even intercourse, so long as they didn't get caught. Preg-
nancy was an incontestable marker of having crossed the line between
normal/moral/good and abnormal/immoral/bad. Even homosexuality
was easier to hide.
Early marriage was the ultimate solution to teenage sexual behaviour.
In the 1950s the average age of marriage dropped to twenty-two years of
age for Canadian women,
80
 and not just because of 'shotgun weddings.'
Marriage was a legitimate avenue of sexual expression for those young
men and women who felt caught between the incitement to sex in the
106 The Trouble with Normal
culture at large and the proscriptions against their own engagement in
it. Early marriage was one way to bring changes in sexual behaviour
into line with the established moral order; it could realign the boundary
between abnormal and normal behaviour. As Williams and Kane put it,
'After going steady comes marriage, if life is to progress in an orderly
fashion and it generally does.'
81
 And while they, like other advice writ-
ers, hadn't intended that final step to come as early as it sometimes did,
the vision of the sexual world that they promoted and helped to instil in
popular culture made marriage the most obvious way to a positive reso-
lution of the contradictions of young heterosexuality. As a Chatelaine edi-
torial writer put it, 'Fortunately there continues to be something within
all normal young people that makes them feel that marriage is good and
meant for them.'
82
The space between normality and its abnormal opposite was a powerful
organizer and regulator of postwar life. As a category that could mark
one's acceptability and cast one's future, normality had to be constantly
fought for, despite ideological constructions of it as 'natural.' But while
the classificatory power of normality had tremendous influence, it did
not entirely determine the way people lived their lives, as Kinsey's fig-
ures suggested. As a discursive construction, normality was perhaps less
responsible for shaping teenagers' daily activities than it was for curtail-
ing the possible range of meanings that could be ascribed to them.
Whether one felt normal or aspired to normality or not, it was always
there for you and others to check yourself against.
83
 At times, the conse-
quences of not measuring up were considerable. So-called abnormality
was expressed at a terrible price, be it ostracism, incarceration, or psy-
chiatrization. Homosexuality, unusual expressions of gender identity,
promiscuity, and pregnancy were all evidence of an unsuccessful strug-
gle to keep firm boundaries between outside threats to one's own psy-
chosexual development and internal, 'natural' possibilities. As sexual
beings in process, teenagers were assumed to be especially vulnerable.
Hence, they were particularly singled out as targets for intervention by
adults - if they were normal, the future would be normal too.
Sex Goes to School: Debates over Sex
Education in Toronto Schools
In 1944, and again in 1948, Trustees at the Toronto Board of Education
debated the implementation of sex education curricula. In both cases,
sex education had been proposed as a means of combatting pervasive
social problems: venereal disease and sexual deviation. While schools
were already involved in the production and regulation of sexual norms
and in educating young people about sexuality (for example, through
the selection of specific novels or poems and not others, the regulation
of co-ed activities, and the gendering of subjects like home economics),
there was little agreement on how this task might be approached in a
deliberate manner or whether it was appropriate for an institution of the
state to do so. Underlying this disagreement were diverging opinions on
the nature of adolescent sexuality, on the rights of the family and on the
limits of state responsibility for moral questions. Two assumptions
grounded the whole debate: first, that intervention into teenage sexual-
ity was necessary and, second, that society could only benefit from the
normalization of sexual behaviours and identities. What was at issue
was how and by whom the processes of intervention and the rendering
of normality were best carried out.
In their consideration of sex education curricula, municipal officials
were struggling to find local solutions to national problems. Venereal
disease, for instance, was regularly claimed by the press as 'Canada's
number one health scourge,'
1
 our 'no. 1 saboteur.'
2
 During the war, the
number of VD cases in Canada had increased significantly.
3
 In newspa-
pers and magazines and in materials put out by health organizations, it
was 'youth' who were placed at the heart of the problem, those at great-
est risk of infection, and those most responsible for its spread. The
Health League of Canada alleged that the VD problem was 'largely one
6
108 The Trouble with Normal
of youth/ although, they added, it was a youth problem that had been
'exaggerated by the war.'
4
 But 'youth' was a slippery category. In 1945,
where 70 per cent of VD cases were in the age group between sixteen
and thirty, only 10 to 11 per cent of those cases were teenagers, the group
of young people most likely to be pinpointed when the terms 'youth'
and 'problem' appeared in close proximity.
5
 The overemphasis on the
'youthfulness' of those with VD meant that teenagers came to be seen,
alternately, as responsible for the health crisis and as victims of it. In
either case, they were identified as one of the primary targets of VD-pre-
vention efforts.
Despite widespread pronouncements about the urgency of educating
young people about sexuality - especially its dangers - only Ontario,
Manitoba, and British Columbia made provisions for instruction about
sex in schools during the postwar period. In Ontario, the city of London
had a small VD-prevention program, while Toronto's was the only
school board to consider the implementation of a comprehensive sex
education curriculum. There were a number of reasons for Toronto's
unique position. First, some board officials prided themselves on taking
a proactive approach to social problems. The Toronto Board of Educa-
tion, like other Toronto institutions, liked to consider itself at the leading
edge of its field. Second, and of much greater importance, Toronto was
home to many of the national organizations that argued publicly in
favour of sex education. Officials of these organizations had access to the
local media and to school board officials, and their influence was critical
to the introduction of sex education at the board. Finally, the Toronto
Board was a huge, well-funded institution. The independent develop-
ment of new curricula was something that few smaller boards could
have undertaken. Smaller boards were forced to wait on provincial
guidelines and prepared materials. In terms of developing a sex educa-
tion curriculum, it was not so much a question of money as of access to
resources and expertise. Toronto teachers and Board Trustees were sur-
rounded by concerned doctors, mental health professionals, and social
workers who were only too willing to extend their influence over the
country's largest school district. They attended committee meetings,
helped write reports, presented lectures. They helped put sex education
on the Toronto board's agenda.
Discussions about sex education in Toronto had very little to do with
the sexual concerns or the sexual well-being of young people them-
selves. In these discussions, young people were simply the means
through which adults attempted to fashion solutions to postwar social
Debates over Sex Education in Toronto Schools 109
problems. Teenagers were a route to the tightening of moral standards
that had been relaxed during the war, a route to a reconstituted norma-
tive heterosexuality that would carry Canada securely through the mod-
ern era.
Social Hygiene
In February 1944, E.L. Roxborough, a trustee of the Toronto Board of
Education and vice-president of the Toronto Big Brothers Movement,
proposed that a place be found for social hygiene in the secondary
school curriculum. VD rates had increased dramatically during the war,
and youth were widely perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be the group
most affected. That they should be exposed to prevention education was
not an unreasonable suggestion, if one's main concern was with the
health of the students. As we will see, however, student health was far
from central in debates over Roxborough's proposal.
Social hygiene was an approach to venereal disease prevention and
sexual and moral education that had been developed by middle-class
reformers in the early decades of this century. As Lucy Bland writes,
social hygiene involved a union of 'medicine and morals.'
6
 By the mid-
1940s, Roxborough's proposal notwithstanding, social hygiene was rap-
idly approaching outdatedness as a term and an idea. The Canadian
Social Hygiene Council, originally called the Canadian National Council
for Combatting Venereal Disease, had been active after the First World
War in a variety of sex education efforts, some of them informed by the
work of Canadian eugenicists.
7
 Social hygienists had a history of trying
to tackle VD by targeting 'foreigners,' prostitutes, and the 'feeble-
minded' as sources of infection. The prevention efforts they had orga-
nized were largely a matter of advocating purity and denouncing pro-
miscuity and prostitution.
8
By the mid-1940s, the overtly racist strategies of eugenics had grown
increasingly out of favour, and such moralizing tactics for disease pre-
vention were being dismissed as dated and unscientific. During the Sec-
ond World War, VD-prevention efforts were based more on 'scientific
facts' than on moral admonitions. For instance, two NFB films made in
1945, one for young men and one for young women, are full of dia-
grams, statistics, and charts.
9
 They show images of syphilis and gonor-
rhoea under the microscope. They are narrated by a male physician. But
what most sets them apart from the materials developed after the Sec-
ond World War was their emphasis on treatment. Medical science, rathe r
110 The Trouble with Normal
than moral rectitude, is the hero of these films. We see VD clinics and
hear about doctors' commitment to confidentiality. We learn that vene-
real disease is a solvable problem.
In proposing social hygiene, rather than sex education, Roxborough
was flagging a conservative approach to VD prevention. Roxborough
was not the first to raise the subject of social hygiene at the Toronto
Board of Education. In 1926, the Toronto Home and School Council and
the Canadian Social Hygiene Council had tried to distribute pamphlets
about sex education to the parents of children in the public schools. But
at that time board officials considered the project too controversial and
refused to cooperate.
10
 Then, in 1941, concerned about wartime venereal
diseases, trustees passed a motion urging the Dominion and provincial
governments to 'embark on a nation-wide programme of public educa-
tion on these [public health] matters which so vitally affect our present
war defence programme and our future post-war strength as a great
people.'
11
 What the overall impact of the motion was is hard to say, but
certainly there was no mention of venereal disease in the 1942 provincial
high school defence course curriculum. The closest that course came to
any sort of sex education was in a section called 'social adjustment.'
Under this heading girls were permitted to discuss: 'associating happily
with boys; being attractive; entertaining boys; keeping a boy's friend-
ship; love ...
/12
 Boys, however, did not learn about social adjustment;
they attended classes on internal combustion engines, signals, and
woodcraft instead.
Despite its allusions to health and cleanliness, social hygiene was
inextricably connected, in popular discourse, to venereal disease and
'dirty' sex, aspects of life that were assumed to be both too private and
too distasteful for public attention. The fact that both these topics were
regularly the subject of public discussion during the war, in newspapers
and magazines and on the radio, had not been enough to distinguish
them as suitable topics for schoolroom lessons. Thus, even in the face of
the wartime VD crisis - in 1943 there were 10,000 more cases of venereal
disease in Canada than there had been in 1942
13
 - Roxborough's motion
was treated cautiously by the rest of the board. 'We should go slow,'
trustee Dr J.P.F. Williams told reporters. 'If we go at all,' added his col-
league, trustee Frank Chambers.
14
 The matter was left open for 'further
consideration' by the board's Management Committee.
A month later, Dr Charles Goldring, Superintendent of Schools, pre-
sented Management Committee with a report on the subject.
15
 Goldring
told the trustees that the provincial Department of Education had yet to
Debates over Sex Education in Toronto Schools 111
develop provisions for the teaching of social hygiene. Nevertheless, a
program for secondary school girls had been in existence in London,
Ontario, since 1942. A similar boys' program had been postponed when
the male doctor who taught it was called away on active service. But
Goldring was disinclined to make such an unauthorized move at his
own school board. Instead, he wanted the provincial Department of
Health to determine whether such a course on VD prevention was nec-
essary. If it was, he then wanted the Department of Education 'to secure
from the Department of Health authentic information to serve as a stan-
dard lesson or lecture to be given by the Health teachers on the various
high school staffs to their students.'
16
 Goldring thought that this lecture
should be given to boys and girls separately and that it 'would be advis-
able to have the Guidance officers present.' While the lectures would be
given 'as a matter of routine ... and should be considered a normal part
of the school course/ it was obvious that Goldring himself didn't feel
that way about them. A month before presenting his report, Goldring
was quoted in the Toronto Daily Star, saying that social hygiene classes
could not be taught by regular teachers but only by 'men or women
qualified through medical skill and knowledge.'
17
 While this suggestion
wasn't included in his report, he did claim it would 'be an advantage to
have a medical doctor talk to the Physical Education teachers on this
subject.' For Goldring, social hygiene was a sensitive topic.
Members of the Management Committee seemed to share Goldring's
hesitations about taking social hygiene on board. Although they decided
to endorse the proposal to teach social hygiene - on the condition it be
approved by the Department of Education - they made no suggestions
about what types of material would be introduced into the classroom.
Such matters were better left to the province.
Support for Sex Education outside the Board
In 1944, the national Junior Chamber of Commerce and the Health
League of Canada (a group whose mandate carried on from the work of
the Canadian Social Hygiene Association) did a significant amount of
organizing around sex education in the schools. They sent out resolu-
tions for endorsement to many other organizations and to government
officials. They contacted American organizations for materials. They dis-
cussed the issue in special committees and drew up policies based on
their findings.
18
 The Toronto board's consideration of social hygiene
may well have been prompted by this community activism. And, as the
112 The Trouble with Normal
Toronto board's discussions were publicized, other organizations also
began looking into matters of VD prevention and the responsibility of
the schools in fighting VD. A number of these other groups, like the
Ontario Educational Association (OEA) and the Canadian Teachers'
Federation, had definite links to the Toronto board. In general, discus-
sions by non-state agencies were less narrowly framed than those at the
Board of Education. External groups were concerned not just with vene-
real disease but with morals. They talked not in the couched terms of
social hygiene but about sex education, a subject that went beyond the
prevention of venereal disease and was conceived by some to be a form
of 'character building' that could improve the calibre of adolescent
morality.
19
 For instance, at the 1944 convention of the OEA, a resolution
to include sex education as part of the provincial school curriculum
passed by a vote of ten to one in the Trustees' Section of the meetings.
Arguments in favour of the resolution claimed that sex education would
help to check not just social disease, but juvenile delinquency as well.
20
Dissenting opinion argued that 'parents or preachers were the people to
give sex counsel and that [the issue] was a moral question'
21
 and there-
fore outside the jurisdiction of the schools.
This counterposing of parental/church and school/state responsibili-
ties marks a recurring theme in the sex education debates. Underneath it
lay questions about the ownership of moral issues, the capabilities of
parents to cope with modern circumstances, the incursion of the state
into the private realm, and the perceived wane of religious influence,
generally. As a Globe and Mail editorial said, the state is 'a useful instru-
ment of the public will, but there are aspects of life which it cannot enter
with impunity/
22
 Apparently, sexuality was one of them.
Religion operated in the sex education debate in various ways. To
some commentators, religion was a general antidote to moral decline.
23
Others saw religion as providing a moral counterpoint to scientific sex
education in the schools.
24
 Still others found in religion the moral justifi-
cation for keeping sex education in the home.
25
 But apart from such gen-
eral references, few 'official' religious positions on the subject appeared
in the mainstream press. Shortly after Roxborough's proposal, the Angli-
can Church endorsed a resolution supporting sex education in homes,
churches, and schools 'in order to stop the spread of venereal disease,' a
problem the diocesan council attributed 'to a breakdown of moral stan-
dards, a general decay of faith, and economic causes and widespread
dislocation of society.' But the church would only agree to the teaching
of sex education if a 'Christian point of view' could be safeguarded.
26
Debates over Sex Education in Toronto Schools 113
More often than not, it was Catholic organizations (as opposed to the
Catholic Church itself) that publicly opposed sex education teaching on
religious grounds. When the Canadian Youth Commission was prepar-
ing its report on Youth, Marriage and the Family, Catholic opposition to sex
education greatly complicated the process, or as the director of the CYC,
R.E.G. Davis, put it: 'We have had an unbelievable struggle in getting
agreement ...
/27
 At issue was a bibliography that was to include informa-
tion on sex education. Members of the committee debated (by post)
whether or not to drop the references to sex education. One woman
wrote, 'If only there was another word for "sex" we might not have to
step so gingerly/
28
 In the end, they decided to replace the term with the
less controversial 'mental hygiene.'
Overall, little opposition of any kind to sex education was reported in
the press. News reports gave coverage to groups, like the OEA that
passed resolutions in favour of sex education in the schools. National
magazines published feature articles supporting sex education. Psychol-
ogists and others concerned with youth proclaimed its usefulness as a
cure for a variety of social ills. In a June 1944 Gallup poll, 93 per cent of
respondents wanted Canadian high school students to be exposed to lec-
tures on the prevention of venereal disease.
29
 This is not to say that there
was no opposition to sex education; rather, a public discourse had been
constructed around it in various media which, deliberately or not, made
the school board seem to be more cautious than its constituents. If Cana-
dians in general wanted their children educated about sex, why was the
Board of Education in one of the country's largest cities reluctant to act?
It was a question of bringing sex into the public realm, of negotiating the
boundary between state and private concerns.
Provincial Guidelines on Teaching VD Prevention
By July 1944, five months after Roxborough's initial proposal, and at the
request of the Toronto board, venereal disease had been approved as a
topic for inclusion on the Ontario curriculum for grades 10 and 12. How-
ever, it would be two years before students actually encountered related
material in their classrooms. Provincial guidelines drawn up to govern
teaching about venereal diseases emphasized a variety of precautionary
measures that were intended to drain the topic of controversy. The
guidelines stipulated that, before any mention of VD was made in the
classroom, parents would receive informational letters from the Depart-
ment of Education and teachers would be provided with special manu-
114 The Trouble with Normal
als. Lessons on VD would be introduced in regular (non-coed) physical
education health classes where they would be part of the general discus-
sion about communicable diseases. Students would be asked not to
make any notes on the subject (which might have gone beyond the
bounds of decency). They would be given provincially produced book-
lets at the end of their lessons. And, finally, teaching about venereal dis-
ease, though permitted, would not be mandatory.
Written under the shadow of bureaucratic anxiety the guidelines had
no clout. They were an effort to negotiate concerns around venereal dis-
ease and fears about what might happen if sex was discussed in schools.
Would parents rebel? Would students be enticed into sexual activity?
Would the more sheltered girls and boys be turned away from sex by
frank discussion? Where other curriculum guidelines detailed the exact
number of hours to be devoted to a topic and the desired outcome of the
lessons, the substance of VD teaching was left to the whim of particular
school boards. Concerns about public health and the infection of teenag-
ers by syphilis and gonorrhoea were obviously secondary to moral con-
cerns about who could talk to teens about sexual matters and what the
result of such discussion might be in terms of teenage sexual knowledge
and behaviour.
Evidence of the acceptability of VD education to most Canadian par-
ents had had little impact on provincial education officials. To introduce
sexual matters into publicly funded classrooms was to put the school
into competition with the home and the church as the primary sites of
young people's moral and, in the former case, sexual development. It
was to upset notions of family privacy and of the division of labour
between the home/church and the school. To make that shift was to
acknowledge that those institutions were no longer capable of fulfilling
their assigned responsibilities.
Some people were unconcerned by this potential realignment of moral
constituencies, wanting the state to play a stronger role in influencing
the moral development of adolescents. A number of Toronto teachers
had hoped that concerns about venereal disease would be able to justify
the place of a more broadly defined sex education in the secondary
school curriculum. The 'menace' of syphilis and gonorrhoea was a
potent hook for arguments that education about sexuality was socially
relevant and therefore within the jurisdiction of the school. A 1944 edito-
rial in the Star proposed a model of sex education that depended 'largely
on the education of young persons in the responsibilities of social living.
It requires that boys and girls should receive scientific education about
Debates over Sex Education in Toronto Schools 115
the origin of life and their responsibility for life. It requires that young
men and women should be inspired with a wholesome attitude toward
one another.'
30
Clearly, the Star's definition of sex education had implications which
stretched beyond disease prevention. Saturday Night published a similar
call for a broadly defined sex education to be taught in schools. Author
Miriam Chapin argued that such a program needed to consist of two
things: (1) 'instruction in the physiology of sex/ and (2) 'guidance to
young people working out a code of conduct which is socially
approved/
31
 But while Chapin thought that sex education was impor-
tant, she also seemed to consider it a special or delicate case, arguing
that instruction in this area was outside the capabilities of not only the
average parent but also the average teacher. Chapin shared this latter
position with Goldring and others who were convinced that sex educa-
tion teaching could have a tremendous influence, for better or worse, on
teenage conduct.
Arguments both for and against formal sex instruction revolved
around parents, their rights and obligations, and their capabilities. In
early 1945, the Toronto Teachers' Council endorsed a report that advo-
cated sex education in elementary and secondary schools as well as
courses for adults in night schools. The report addressed concerns that
'Venereal diseases have reached an alarming level and menace the
present and future welfare of Toronto and Ontario generally ... Many
parents neither know the facts of sex nor the proper technique of impart-
ing them to their children. Among adults and parents there is wide-
spread ignorance. Organizations fighting venereal disease need the
support of an educational program designed -to assist in removing its
causes.'
32
 In suggesting classes for parents, the Teachers' Council was
lending support to popular middle-class sentiments that 'bad,' usually
working-class and immigrant ('foreign') parents, more than the prevail-
ing wartime social conditions, were responsible for youth problems,
especially VD and juvenile delinquency. Just a few weeks before the
council's endorsement of the report, the Management Committee of the
Board of Education had discussed the possibility of setting up manda-
tory 'parenting' classes for the parents of delinquent children.
33
But the discussion of parental inadequacies in terms of sex education
wasn't limited to working-class parents. While many assumed that
working-class and 'foreign' children were exposed to too much sex, mid-
dle-class children were thought to be too protected. Their parents were
accused of being prudes or too easily embarrassed by frank discussion.
116 The Trouble with Normal
In 1945, psychologist W.E. Blatz (of the Toronto Juvenile and Family
Court and the Institute for Child Study) wrote in Maclean's: 'many par-
ents side-step their responsibilities in the education of their youngsters
in sex matters ... Parent shortcomings in this respect are further compli-
cated during wartime because so many fathers, so many elder brothers,
are included in the 730,000 Canadian men who are in the armed forces
and away from their homes.'
34
It bears noting that Blatz was a major proponent of the importance of
parent education in the development of the 'normal' child. His work
with the Institute of Child Study in Toronto and, in the 1930s, as educa-
tional consultant for the Dionne quintuplets, had helped to establish his
own international reputation as an expert in mental hygiene, and the
central importance in Canada of psychology for 'building and preserv-
ing well-adjusted children/
35
 But while Blatz had helped to forge strong
links between psychologists and the educational system, he was not in
favour of passing on the responsibility for sex education to the schools
or the church or medical doctors. It was, he claimed, the responsibility
and privilege of parents to do the job. That they were doing that job
badly, as Blatz concluded, must have seemed to him an opportunity to
extend the influence and scope of psychological expertise. While the
education of children was accomplished by the school, the education of
parents was an open field. Psychologists were as likely as anyone to
fill it.
One of the ways in which parents were encouraged to contribute to
sex education, whether it was part of the school curriculum or not, was
by providing an example of the 'serene and happy companionship
between husband and wife [which would] have a definite influence on
the emotional attitude of the child.'
36
 Parents were to model socially
desirable forms of heterosexual, monogamous relationships. If, by
chance, there were parents who didn't fit the mainstream image of a suc-
cessful couple, here was a way of bringing that point home both to them
and to their children. In this sense, sex education was not simply a
means of moulding children's sexuality. As Blatz said, 'we aim not only
that individuals conform to our social standards, but that they enjoy mar-
riage and its sexual aspects to the full in legitimate circumstances'
37
 (emphasis
mine). This linking of conformity and pleasure is what sociologist Niko-
las Rose would identify as one of the 'distinctive features of modern
knowledge and expertise of the psyche.' Expertise, says Rose, has come
to shape our desires. Our lives 'become worthwhile to the extent that
they are imbued with subjective feelings of meaningful pleasure.'
38
 Sex
Debates over Sex Education in Toronto Schools 117
education was an effective way of bringing this expertise into the daily
lives of ordinary people, where it could contribute to the sexual regula-
tion of both children and their parents.
Advocating for Sex Education at the Toronto Board
For the most part, magazines and newspapers presented sex education
as a far-reaching and necessary project which could help to build exem-
plary citizens. But in the pages of the Toronto Globe and Mail and in the
offices of the Ontario Department of Education and the Toronto board,
the matter was persistently treated as one of delicacy and potential dan-
ger. In November 1945, the provincial Department of Education pro-
duced a teacher's guide about venereal diseases that focused only on
their scientific aspects - the process of infection, progression of the dis-
ease, and treatments. Some teachers felt that in ignoring social and 'spir-
itual' concerns, the booklet played it too safely, trying to de-emphasize
the sexual and moral aspects of VD transmission in a bid to avoid con-
troversy. At the Toronto board, two committees formed, one of male
teachers and one of female teachers, to consider ways the booklet might
be modified. Their recommendations were included in a 1946 document,
'Guiding principles in the presentation of the subject of venereal disease'
prepared by the Director of Health and Physical Education for Toronto
schools.
 39
The male teachers' committee concluded that information about vene-
real disease needed to be preceded by discussions about sex education
more generally. 'In this way,' their report said, 'first impressions will be
positive and stress the normal ... The need for a high standard of moral
conduct, the normal girl and boy relationships, the significance of mar-
riage and the conditions upon which happy family life is built will all be
emphasized in a normal and objective way.'
40
 The male teachers thought
that in any discussions of venereal disease, it was better to stress its
'hopeful' aspects rather than its morbid ones. They wanted to avoid
compromising the 'higher aims' of sex education and its focus on
'healthful living,' and so they counselled against using VD as a means of
frightening young people to change their sexual behaviour. The men
also decided that 'the most normal place' on the curriculum to insert sex
education would be in grade 10 after the study of the ductless glands. At
the time of their writing, there was still no place on the curriculum
where a teacher could deal with human reproduction.
The ductless glands and the 'secondary sex characteristics' were as far
118 The Trouble with Normal
as teachers were permitted to go in the discussion of sexuality. And
these topics were to be covered quickly. The following is the entire treat-
ment of the 'Glands of the Secondary Sex Characteristics' in a provin-
cially authorized health text book:
These glands, partly ductless, make hormones which are absorbed into the
blood and induce the qualities of manliness and womanliness. In the male they
produce hair on the face, deeper voice, broader shoulders, bigger frame and
muscles, love of combat and strenuous life and the instinct to protect and
defend women and little children. The changes in girls are not quite so spectac-
ular, but are nevertheless quite definite. The figure becomes more rounded and
fuller. Fatty tissue is distributed under the skin, making it soft and delicate.
The voice remains relatively high-pitched but softer. New feelings of tender-
ness for children are experienced as well as an increase in interest in the oppo-
site sex.
41
What stands out here, besides the gender ideology, is a conflation of sex-
uality and gender that would have left many students totally unpre-
pared for the introduction of material on venereal disease. How to move
from a discussion of sex as tender feelings to a discussion of sex as the
cause of debilitating illness? How to understand the mechanics of trans-
mission, with no sense of body parts or how they might be used?
Neither of the teachers' committees addressed these kinds of ques-
tions. They were far less concerned about physiology than about moral-
ity. The women teachers' committee wanted to help students
understand venereal disease in the 'proper perspective': 'Although we
recognize the importance of instruction in Venereal Disease, we consider
that of even greater importance is the development of a healthy, sane,
and moral attitude toward sex matters in general.'
42
Teachers, the women's committee said, had to be concerned with the
development of 'proper attitudes to all matters pertaining to sex.' How-
ever, they made it clear that it would not be proper for a teacher to dis-
cuss sexual relations - a directive that might have proved difficult for
someone striving to offer, 'convincing reasons against the practice of
promiscuity/ The women's committee suggested that 'the discussion [of
sex education should be] guided in such a way that it will be of real
value to [the students] in establishing a standard of conduct which will
ensure rather than jeopardize their future happiness.'
Here, sex education is understood to be much more than the dry
transmission of scientific facts that had been envisaged by provincial
Debates over Sex Education in Toronto Schools 119
bureaucrats. The women teachers' model was intended to be an effective
form of moral regulation that would encourage adherence to prevailing
cultural norms. And, to ensure that the program reached the largest
number of students, the women teachers thought, as had the men, that
sex education needed to be introduced in grade 10. In the 1940s, many
working-class students left high school to find jobs when they turned
sixteen; if sex education were to begin in grade 10, the majority of high
school students, including the predominantly working-class kids who
had to leave, would be exposed to the material.
The result of these two committees' having met was not an expansion
of the students' curriculum but a series of five lectures on the topic of
Family Life given separately to men and women physical education
teachers. Whether this segregation was for reasons of propriety or
because of gender-specific subject matter is not clear; there exists no doc-
umentation of their content. The lectures for the male teachers were pre-
pared by a Dr Bernhardt (presumably Karl Bernhardt of the Institute of
Child Study, although there is no confirmation of this assumption in
board documents). The women's lectures were given by Dr Jean Davey
of Women's College Hospital. According to Charles Goldring, all the lec-
tures were well attended.
43
What happened after the lecture series is not altogether clear from sur-
viving board documents. In a report written in 1948, two years after the
teachers' committees met, Goldring says that the lecture series was fol-
lowed (he doesn't say when) by a meeting of members of the board, the
board's Advisory Vocational Committee, and 'some of the secondary
school principals.' The officials met to screen four films, three of which
focused on the basics of reproduction (illustrated in one film by rabbits),
and one which explained menstruation.
44
 Goldring says that 'the mem-
bers of the Advisory Vocational Committee ... were sufficiently
impressed by these films to authorize the showing of some, or all, of
them in the vocational schools.'
45
 Whether 'some or all' of the films were
actually shown is not clear. Why the same films were not authorized for
the collegiates is also unclear. One can speculate that the topic of repro-
duction may have been deemed too sensitive for the predominantly
middle-class students who were enrolled in the heavier academic pro-
grams; or that middle-class students were thought not to need the films
as badly as the predominantly working-class students at vocational
schools; or that middle-class parents were more likely to complain that
such films represented the encroachment of the school into family life.
It is impossible to know how many Toronto physical education teach-
120 The Trouble with Normal
ers took up the subject of venereal disease or sex education with their
students or how many followed the recommendations of the two teach-
ers' committees. While it had been approved as a topic of instruction in
1944, venereal disease did not actually appear on the Ontario course of
study for health and physical education until 1946, when it was listed as
just another communicable disease, alongside tuberculosis and small-
pox. Certainly, teachers had few resources to draw on in helping them to
adopt a more wide-ranging perspective than that proposed by the prov-
ince. Nor had they been given any substantial direction from their board
to do so. After Trustee Roxborough's 1944 motion about social hygiene,
the board did not discuss sex education, in any form, until 1948, and
then only in response to public pressure.
While concerns over VD motivated this first round of debate about sex
education at the Toronto board, discussions about its implementation
show that disease prevention was just one of several ways to understand
the initiative. Some, like William Blatz, saw in sex education a means of
regulating parents. Others, like the men and women on the teachers'
committees, saw sex education as a vehicle for regulating the moral and
sexual development of their students. However, neither of these posi-
tions gained a strong foothold at the board, where control of sexuality
was more likely to be exercised via the suppression of information than
through more productive, positive forms of regulation. In part, the lim-
ited inroads made by sex education advocates reflected fears about the
volatility of teen sexuality and what the consequences might be of talk-
ing about sex in front of teenagers. But the evidence suggests that the
hesitations around social hygiene were primarily related to questions
about the role of public education. Concerns about bringing sex into the
public realm, about making it an explicit concern of the state, meant that
these first attempts at introducing sex education into the schools had
limited effects in terms of the regulation of teenage behaviour and teens'
sexual identities. Certainly, in the entire discussion of social hygiene, lit-
tle concern was evident for teenagers themselves or the fact that VD
was, for some young people, already a painful reality of daily life. On all
sides of the debate, the immediate needs of young people for informa-
tion about sexual activities and VD prevention and treatment were over-
looked.
If VD was the object of the first round of sex education discussions at
the board, teenage sexual development was the object of the second. In
both cases, actual teenagers were nothing more than the vehicles carry-
ing 'concerned adults' to their desired goals.
Debates over Sex Education in Toronto Schools 121
Preventing Sex Crime
While fears about the spread of VD had been the catalyst for wartime
discussions of sex education a different social menace was occupying
public attention by the late 1940s. Sex crime and sexual perversion were
the social threats that put sex education back on the school board's
agenda. Alarm over sex criminals reflected a more generalized postwar
concern about so-called sexual deviations or sexual abnormality. For
instance, news articles about sex crime frequently slipped into discus-
sions of perversion and sex variance, rarely making a distinction
between criminal and non-criminal behaviours. A 1947 article by Sidney
Katz in Maclean's shows the conflation of the various categories:
One of the chief reasons sex criminality has grown to such proportions is that we
have miserably failed to approach the problem intelligently. Sexual abnormality
has always been a hush-hush subject, and the sex pervert is probably the least
understood of all our citizens.
The sex variant is much more common than is generally realized. Fortunately
only a small percentage of perverts are criminals ...
46
At a time when ideologies about the nuclear family and the benefits of
domesticity - personal and collective - were gaining strength, sexual
'abnormalities' were seen as a serious threat not only to women and chil-
dren but to social stability.
In the postwar period, the trend to social conformity reflected a gen-
eral need for security. In the aftermath of global conflict and in the face
of the cold war and 'creeping Communism/ middle-class North Ameri-
cans took refuge in the safety and comfort of sameness. Part of this
homogenization required the sublimation of what were perceived to be
potent sexual energies, a process that American historian Elaine May
calls 'containment.'
47
 Social conventions limited sexual expression to the
bounds of heterosexual marriage; anything else was not normal and
might be dangerous. In this context, so-called sexual perverts, a category
which included groups as different as homosexuals and rapists, were a
threat not simply because of any potential harm they might cause to
individuals, but because they showed up the impossibility of ever
achieving complete social accord.
Historian Estelle Freedman has written about the moral panic over
sexual crimes that emerged in the United States in the mid-1930s. Drop-
ping off during the war, it re-emerged in the late 1940s and 1950s.
48
 The
122 The Trouble with Normal
two main features of the panic, noted by Freedman, were: first, it was
not necessarily related to an increase in the statistics for sexually related
crimes; and second, in many places in the United States, it led to the
implementation of laws to curb so-called sexual psychopaths and to the
'transfer of authority over sex offenders from courts to psychiatrists.'
49
Local variations notwithstanding, the situation in Canada was quite
similar. In this country, fears over sex crime were given shape in the
Criminal Code amendments of 1948, in a 1952 Senate Committee con-
cerned with Salacious and Indecent Literature, and in the 1954 Royal
Commission on the Criminal Law Relating to Criminal Sexual Psycho-
paths. Women's, church, and labour groups addressed the issue of sex
crime in their meetings. Social service and community groups under-
took research projects and prepared reports. In 1955, a group of Toronto
housewives established the Parents' Action League to combat sex crime,
a kitchen-table organization that achieved the endorsement of a whole
range of national organizations and prominent 'experts.' Throughout
the decade, magazines and newspapers repeatedly published features
warning parents of the threat to their children and advocating stronger
legal measures. Yet all this unfolded without there being any appreciable
increase in the rate of sex offences in Canada,
50
 which, according to fig-
ures from the Toronto city police, accounted for less than 2 per cent of all
criminal offences.
51
In the 1948 Criminal Code amendments, a criminal sexual psychopath
was defined as anyone who 'by a course of misconduct in sexual mat-
ters, has shown a lack of power to control his sexual impulses and who,
as a result, is likely to attack or otherwise inflict injury, pain or other evil
on any person ...
/52
 Such persons could be sentenced to an indeterminate
term in a penitentiary where their cases would come under review every
three years. The idea behind the law was that sex criminals could be
kept off the streets as long as they remained a threat to others.
Public support for the new law, as reported in the Toronto dailies, was
overwhelming.
53
 Many had argued for positions much more severe than
that passed by the government - for instance, that sex criminals be dealt
with entirely outside the judicial system (and its various routes of
appeal) and kept in mental hospitals until they showed evidence of hav-
ing been cured. Surprisingly, psychiatrists, a group that would have had
much to gain from the medicalization of sex crimes, were not in favour
of such changes.
54
 Nevertheless, extreme measures were portrayed fre-
quently as the only reasonable methods of protecting public safety. 'Sex
maniacs/ 'monsters,' or 'freaks of nature,' as they were called in the pop-
Debates over Sex Education in Toronto Schools 123
ular press, were considered to be on a slippery slope of degeneracy that
could eventually lead them to murder.
55
Part of the impetus behind sexual psychopath laws was an under-
standing of sexual deviation as an uncontrollable aspect of a man's (they
were always men) personality, as an illness or defect that was difficult, if
not impossible, to cure. A letter from a women's labour organization to
the Ontario minister of health said, These persons are sick, both men-
tally and physically, they are NOT normal human beings.'
56
 It was a
view that made it that much easier to advocate locking them up for
good. Deviant sexuality was a powerful social symbol.
It was in this context that, on 21 April 1948, the Canadian Penal Asso-
ciation presented the findings of a study on ways to curb sexual
offences. Sponsored by the Kiwanis Club, the report was widely quoted
in the daily press, where the conflation of sex offenders, sex perverts,
and sex deviants was widespread and moral outrage was prominent.
57
The report itself adopted a more detached, objective tone: 'There is
increasing evidence to show that part at least of the violent and often
vindictive prejudice and contempt which is so commonly expressed by
the public for those known to be sex offenders stems from tension and
anxiety representing a kind of collective guilt. Thus the more loudly we
protest the beastliness of the sex offender, the more surely do we con-
vince ourselves that we at least are free from taint.'
58
 The authors tried to
debunk the notion that sex criminals were likely to commit greater and
greater crimes; they claimed that their recidivism rate hovered around 9
per cent as compared to the more usual 65 or 70 per cent for non-sexual
crimes.
In general, the Penal Association report made a strong argument for
prevention of sex crime, as an alternative to treatment after the fact.
'Educational expert' Kenneth Rogers of the Canadian Welfare Council
(and of the Big Brothers) wrote: 'Sound moral and character discipline
can prevent the physically-based sexual deviate from becoming a sex-
offender. Sound child-training can prevent the normal boy and girl from
becoming a psychogenic sexual deviate, a sex-offender or from being
influenced or seduced by an aggressive sex offender.'
59
 In a lengthy and
impassioned discussion, Rogers underlined the importance of the
schools' involvement in this work:
The fact must be faced that ignorance on the subject of sex education is abysmal
- even in these days ... As one writer has put it, this whole matter of sex igno-
rance 'has been a legacy of darkness, compounded of shame, handed down from
124 The Trouble with Normal
father to son.' This insightful observation is a challenge to our 'tradition' that all
sex matters - especially sex education - belongs in the home. If a tradition is so
rigid that it prevents society from correcting its own faults, then it may be neces-
sary to break that tradition.
Let the fact be faced that many, many parents are themselves very ignorant in
this matter. Marriage and having children have taught them a few simple, and
often quite unrelated, facts regarding the mechanics and causes of procreation.
These are either rarely talked about, or if talked about are talked about quite
loosely. So when their children are of an age to receive home instruction their
ignorance is often complicated by their embarrassments. The crux of this prob-
lem lies just here, that when those children become parents they are not likely to
be any better prepared for their responsibility than their parents were! If telling
the true factors is always to be left to parents under these conditions the rising
tide of sex-crimes, sex delinquencies and disease may never be stemmed.
60
Rogers was unwilling to entertain the usual arguments against sex
education in the schools, arguments similar to those that had been used
earlier to forestall social hygiene teaching in Toronto classrooms. Con-
temporary social problems were, to him, evidence that those arguments
had outlived their usefulness. 'By our ignorant, short-sighted and blun-
dering relationship to the business of normal heterosexual relations and
social living/ Rogers wrote, 'we manufacture perverts.'
61
For Rogers, sex education meant more than a one-off lecture or a bit of
private counselling by the guidance teacher. He envisaged 'mass' pro-
grams of 'carefully prepared classroom instruction/ beginning in ele-
mentary school and continuing into high school grades. Children
needed to learn about sex, Rogers concluded, to keep them from drifting
'into one of the abnormalities which appear to be on the increase lately.
We should not be called upon to pay the increasing toll of ignorance; a
wretched toll summed up in separations, divorces, promiscuity, venereal
diseases, homosexuality and sex crime.'
62
 Here 'sex crime' operates as
only the most frightening possibility in a chain of troublesome sexual
issues. To prevent sex crime would be to prevent these other, lesser prob-
lems as well.
On the day after the Penal Association released its report, school
board trustees passed a motion requesting Goldring to prepare a report
on what the board had done, or could do, to help implement the Penal
Association's recommendations regarding education. Goldring took less
than two weeks to prepare his report. In it he detailed the sequence of
events around the implementation of the units on venereal disease, con-
Debates over Sex Education in Toronto Schools 125
eluding that schools were already doing everything in their power to
deal with sex education: 'It should be remembered that the scope of the
instruction in this or any other subject of the curriculum is determined
by the Department of Education ... [Instruction in this phase of helpful
living is probably as extensive as is permitted under existing [provincial]
regulations.'
63
Goldring suggested that the interest generated by the Kiwanis project
might prompt the province to make some changes to the curriculum. But
he offered no suggestions as to what direction those changes might take
or what part the board might play in helping them along. His position
on sex education was no less cautious than it had been on social hygiene.
No matter how socially valuable they might be, Goldring was no advo-
cate for discussions of sex in schools. Nevertheless, at the end of May,
the Management Committee appointed a special committee to consider
sex education. Committee chair Charles Edwards told the Telegram that
sex education in the schools might keep children from picking up misin-
formation on the street. And an enthusiastic superintendent of second-
ary schools, C.W. Robb, claimed that 'No more important subject exists
today/
64
 an unusual public endorsement by a board official on what was
still perceived by some to be a sensitive topic.
Family Life Education: The Theory
Before the special committee met for the first time in early September
1948, Charles Edwards wrote to an American authority on sex educa-
tion, Dr Adolf Weinzirl of the University of Oregon, asking for informa-
tion about providing sex education in public schools. In his lengthy
reply, Weinzirl outlined the kind of 'character building' program that
had been proposed by a number of American groups in response to the
limitations of VD education programs. According to Weinzirl, a sex edu-
cation program, best referred to as 'family living,' had to respond both to
the need of parents to have their children educated in 'morals' and the
need of students to learn about sex and 'family living.'
Broadly speaking, parents do not have a clear idea as to how 'morals' are
'taught.' From our standpoint, we can understand that what is meant here is the
transmission of our cultural attitudes with respect to the exercise of reproduction
in connection with monogamous marriage to the oncoming generation. It really
means the establishment in children of feelings and emotions that will compel
attitudes and behaviour leading to a minimum of promiscuity and to restricting
126 The Trouble with Normal
sex to monogamous marriage with the expectation of having and raising chil-
dren.
63
A more explicit description of moral regulation would be hard to find.
Implicit in Weinzirl's explanation was the assumption that these feelings
and emotions were not necessarily natural, or inevitable, but that they
had to be taught. Mothers and fathers had an important role to play in
all this, teaching by example that monogamous marriage 'is the ideal
relationship.' Weinzirl suggested that the various components of a pro-
gram in family living - scientific information, materials confirming the
family 'as the basic unit of society,' discussions on family relations - be
integrated into the curriculum as a whole - for instance, into biology,
social science, and home economics classes. With such an approach, he
wrote, opposition from conservative members of the public is mini-
mized. (Surveys in Oregon had apparently calculated the rate of opposi-
tion to be no more than 2 or 3 per cent.)
The 'family living' approach to sex education marked the evolution of
earlier social hygiene efforts. Social hygiene had been narrow in scope,
justifying itself as the solution to a specific social problem - venereal dis-
ease. While family life education would address problems like VD and
juvenile delinquency, it was also intended to shape a new kind of youth,
to contribute to the production of young women and men who were
well versed in and committed to the moral values of their communities.
As American sex educator Frances Bruce Strain wrote in her 1942 book,
Sex Guidance in Family Life Education: A Handbook for the Schools, family
life programs were 'directed toward the furtherance of normal sexual
development and stability in children in an ordered world ...
/66
 They
were about the regulation of sexual behaviours and identities, a tech-
nique for moral governance that capitalized on the fact that youth were
unfinished products.
For Strain, education for family life was a project that went far beyond
the control of disease. Her own guidelines listed no fewer than eleven
topics that needed to be promoted in a comprehensive program:
1. Satisfaction of the love impulse throughout its various stages of growth
2. Association of the sexes in work and play
3. Adoption of acceptable terminology
4. Utilization of innate pride in function for good living
5. Knowledge of mammalian reproduction, including huma n
6. Correlation of sex knowledge with everyday experience
Debates over Sex Education in Toronto Schools 127
7. Preparation for sexual maturation
8. The balancing of sexual and non-sexual (egoistic, social) satisfactions
9. The removal of causative factors in sex delinquency
10. The substitution of acceptable for unacceptable modes of sex expression
11. The fostering of the creative and recreative arts and sciences
67
Strain's program covered sex education from biological, social, and
moral perspectives in order to prepare students for the 'immediate
world of reality.' It would produce properly gendered, normal teens,
who could use their sexuality to help them meet prevailing social con-
ventions and reap the rewards of conformity.
Strain understood sex education to be a progressive project that
needed tempering by good judgment and conservatism in its implemen-
tation: 'if one becomes a radical, one loses step with both the conserva-
tives and the progressives. Especially one loses influence with young
people, for much as they scoff at "being old-fashioned" and "stuffy,"
they are critical and exacting, especially of those who are in positions of
dignity and authority.'
68
 It was certainly not the role of the sex educator
to challenge those exacting positions.
Strain's desire to keep a conservative face on sex education in the
schools was a pragmatic response to the kind of resistance to sex educa-
tion that, for instance, had been apparent at the Toronto board in 1944.
And, indeed, in Strain's text, conservatism is everywhere evident in her
absolutely rigid faith in gender difference and her promotion of a single
acceptable standard of sexual expression. Thus, Strain's notion of the
ideal teacher was someone who was young, married, a parent of one or
two children, a 'pleasing dresser,' of medium height and weight: 'To
have lived a normally married life, to have loved, mated, had a family,
and reared them year after year in one's home - this is undoubtedly to
have one of the best qualifications for leadership in this field.'
69
 A man
and a woman working together as a team would provide the best calibre
of sex instruction, for 'one must know both masculine and feminine
nature,' Strain said. If a school could allocate just one teacher, a woman
would be more desirable than a man. Single people and divorced people
could, if necessary, be satisfactory choices if they were not bitter, or
antagonistic towards the opposite sex. For any teacher, strict adherence
to the appropriate gender role was critical: 'Men must be definitely mas-
culine with that quality which used to be called manly, and women must
be feminine with that quality which used to be called womanly. It won't
do to shade even slightly in the opposite direction.'
70
 Clearly, what was
128 The Trouble with Normal
'progressive' about family life education was not its stance on sexuality
per se, but its position on where sexuality might be discussed, by whom,
and for what ends. Given the eventual outcome of matters at the Toronto
board, as we will see, even this position was a controversial one.
Family Life Education: The Toronto Curriculum
At its first meeting, the special committee appointed by the Toronto
Board of Education asked Charles Goldring to prepare a report on a pos-
sible program of sex education suitable for students in grades 7 and 8, a
request that already showed how trustees' attitudes to sex education
had changed - social hygiene proposals had targeted older students in
grade 10. Goldring passed the task on to a committee of teachers under
the leadership of N.R. Speirs, director of physical training. This eight-
member committee was joined on occasion by three consultants: Dr
J.D.M. Griffin, psychiatrist and member of the Canadian Council on
Mental Hygiene; Dr Kenneth H. Rogers, psychologist at the University
of Toronto and staff member of The Big Brothers movement; and J. Alex
Edmison, KC. Each of these men had been involved in the study on sex
offenders done by the Canadian Penal Association. Their status as
experts and the fact that their study had received widespread attention
helped to establish the integrity and importance of the teachers' commit-
tee.
The report on family life education produced by this teachers' com-
mittee took its cues from Weinzirl and other prominent American and
British sex educators. It took a far different direction from the limited
1944 provincial guidelines on social hygiene. Indeed the whole 'family
life' approach precluded 'morbid discussions' of venereal disease. The
report went so far as to suggest that perhaps venereal disease did not
need to be mentioned at all in the classroom. The aims of the program
would be much better served by motivating students to fashion them-
selves after the ideal rather than frightening them with prescriptive talks
about nasty topics like syphilis and gonorrhoea. The aims of the grade 7
and 8 programs proposed by the teachers were:
1. To enable pupils to appreciate and value the normal, natural husband-wife-
child relationship in the home and recognize in that the sustaining of success-
ful, happy family life.
2. To give pupils standards of values that will enable them to distinguish what is
good in sexual life from what is sordid, selfish or perverted.
71
Debates over Sex Education in Toronto Schools 129
Classes would be coed in grade 7 and segregated in grade 8, when repro-
duction would be discussed.
Teachers of this innovative course were to be guided by principles in
the provincial curriculum on health education. Of particular impor-
tance was a directive claiming that 'The establishment of habits, atti-
tudes and ideals of life, is more important than mere physiological
information.'
72
 Thus, the family life curriculum de-emphasized biology
in favour of teaching about moral and social perspectives on sex. Chil-
dren were to be instructed in the mores and conventions of their soci-
ety, especially as they demanded the control and direction of sexuality
into the one sanctioned form of expression - heterosexual monogamy.
Children would learn 'that there are good and justifiable reasons
behind the conventions governing sexual behaviour and that they pro-
tect the home and particularly women and children.'
73
 Alternatives to
marriage would not be presented, nor would the difficulties and prob-
lems of family life - they were not positive enough. Material about sex
delinquency was also deemed unfit for children. Instead pupils
'should be made to feel the excellence of sex and its immense potential-
ities.'
74
One of the ways of showing this perspective was by demonstrating
the superiority of the human being over other life forms. The definition
of superiority here is tied not to human biological complexity but to our
ability to form heterosexual, nuclear families. So, in a discussion of
amoebas, for instance, it is not enough to know how they go about
reproducing; we also need to know that: 'there is [for them] no infancy,
no dependence, no care and no family.' Same thing with fish: 'two par-
ents required - some family life - mother lays eggs father fertilizes. Ther e
is some slight protection of the eggs until they are hatched and in some
cases even a protection of the young fish, but there is little indication of
any family life - no affection - sometimes young are eaten by parents.'
75
And so we go until we get to human beings:
The child is born into a family unit with a mother and father who were mar-
ried and agreed to love and cherish each other and care for their children.
Human mating is not merely seasonal or purely instinctive. It can be affected
by intelligent choice and governed by long-term considerations. It takes two
parents living together to provide a happy place for a child to be born, be
cared for, and to grow up into a happy, healthy person. That is why down
through the ages we have had the institution of marriage and the family as a
setting for babies.
76
130 The Trouble with Normal
And this right after the war, with the increase in single-parent families
caused by divorce, desertion, and death.
Clearly, domestic ideology was more important in this instance than
the representation of 'real life.' This point is fundamental to the whole
process of constructing social norms and of normalizing particular
forms of expression. As Kinsey found, norms are definitely not about
what people do. There is little room for the expression of power in a
social landscape where all are accorded equal access to the norm. And
normalization is very much about the distribution of power. It is about
making distinctions, performing exclusions. The more narrow the defi-
nition of normality, the more powerful its potential to subordinate and
suppress.
Reactions to the Curriculum
Family life education as proposed in the teachers' report was accepted
with strong commendations from the special committee of the board.
But Management Committee was less enthusiastic, holding back on its
endorsement until the province gave its go-ahead. When provincial
approval did come, it was conditional: family life was to be offered only
on an experimental basis; family life teachers would have to receive spe-
cial training; and department officials would have to be permitted to
observe family life classes.
Media reaction to the idea of family life education was mixed. An edi-
torial in the Telegram claimed that while the board was 'trespassing upon
an obligation of parents,' it was 'taking a progressive and necessary
step.' It was natural, the editorial continued, 'even necessary/ for young
people to exhibit an 'innocent curiosity' about sex. The problem for sex
education instructors would be to respond to that curiosity with infor-
mation that could 'obviate false notions and subdue unhealthy trends,
but in a manner which ... does not stimulate premature interest ...
/77
Young people could learn about sex, but they were not to engage in it. It
was assumed that only special teachers would be able to keep adoles-
cent hormones in check. These, then, were not the same concerns over
the school's incursion into private life that had held back discussions
about social hygiene. In 1948, critics worried about the explicitness of
the information students were to be offered and what students would do
with it when they got it.
The Globe and Mail, which was not particularly responsive to the idea
of sex education in the schools in the first place, was concerned about the
Debates over Sex Education in Toronto Schools 131
calibre of the instruction in such a course. If one of the goals of sex edu-
cation, by whatever name, was to forestall the development of sexual
perversions, to assist children in achieving 'normalcy/ then it was crucial
for instructors to be sanctioned representatives of the norm. As a Globe
editorial put it: 'It is not just a question of knowing facts and being able to
recite them to a class, but a teacher of sex must have the manner, moral
attitude and psychological balance which are absolutely essential [to this
topic].'
78
 While teachers of mathematics or spelling were not required to
embody their subject matter, teachers of family life would be. Likewise,
students were thought to be either suitable or not suitable to receive sex
education. Trustee Isabel Ross (who also sat on the moral issues commit-
tee of the local Council of Women) asked, 'What about the boy or girl
who is not ready for sex education in grade 7 or 8? ... I would hesitate to
give the information to some children. It would be necessary to pick and
choose, and carry some over into later grades, before they are taught the
subject.'
79
 What 'not ready' actually meant in this instance is not clear.
Presumably it ran the gamut from immature to already 'oversexed.'
As an untried phenomenon, the family life curriculum took on the
exaggerated powers of things unknown. It had been designed to shape
youth into morally correct citizens. If, indeed, it was capable of achiev-
ing that end when taught well, what might happen to young people if it
was taught, or learned, badly? Fears were that its powers might occasion
the undesirable effects it was meant to forestall, such was the assumed
volatility of teenage sexuality. This assumption, when coupled with
notions that young people's sexual development was fragile and vulner-
able to derailment, made sex education a potentially hazardous under-
taking.
In March 1949, N.R. Speirs, director of physical training for the Tor-
onto board, presented the first in what was planned to be a series of
instructional lectures on family life for the supervisors of physical edu-
cation and about 250 teachers. Over the course of the afternoon meeting,
the family life curriculum was outlined and teachers were given an
opportunity to view a number of films that were being considered for
the course. The main purpose of the introductory lecture was to reassure
teachers of the importance of the project and to allay any doubts about
the suitability of the material for young students. In this vein, Speirs
began by citing the results of '[unnamed] studies made in Toronto'
which showed that only 13 per cent of students received sex instruction
from their parents. Clearly, he suggested, there was a need for the school
to intervene.
132 The Trouble with Normal
Speirs addressed various concerns that parents might be expected to
raise, all the while stressing the high calibre of the teachers themselves,
and the quality of the program. In particular, he put distance between
these chosen instructors and those he called the 'emotional quacks' who
had been behind earlier, old-fashioned, embarrassing efforts at sex edu-
cation and social hygiene. The family life curriculum had been devel-
oped in contrast to those dated enterprises, most of which had been
organized through church and other charitable organizations concerned
with social and moral purity.
80
 Turn-of-the-century sex educators had
tried to scare young people away from masturbation; their teachings
were laced with religious doctrine. Family life education, by compari-
son, was said to be a modern, 'scientific' program, based on contempo-
rary pedagogic principles. It emphasized positive values not fear or
shame. 'Instead of appealing to adolescent altruism and idealism, the
[earlier] approach was apt to be either cynical or sentimental. Most of
these historic misadventures are now hoary with age and deserve to be
forgotten.'
81
 Family life education would help speed their relegation to
the history books.
In spite of the 'excellence' of family life education, Speirs made fre-
quent references to the need for caution and tact in its implementation.
'Nothing should be done,' he said, 'to suggest that family life education
is "risky" or "questionable" in the opinion of teachers or authorities/
though 'questionable' is the exact word that some trustees and some
members of the public applied to the whole experiment. It may have
been fear of the public's wary appraisals that prompted Speirs to declare
that 'nothing is to be given to the pupil that could be taken home - no
notes - no examinations - no pamphlets or books and, of course, no
advertising matter [for the program itself].'
82
 At home, sex education
materials might find their way into the hands of younger children, or
they might lead to nervous questions from concerned parents.
Speirs also warned against discussions of sex delinquency: 'We do not
want to lay ourselves open to the rumour which circulated in Forest Hill
that they were using the Kinsey Report as a text book.'
83
 He wanted the
course to be run along conservative lines: 'When in doubt - don't.' His
fears were well-founded. Two weeks after the lecture, Goldring was
called to report to the board on the 'nature and suitability' of the films
that had been screened for the teachers. On 7 April, the board met
behind closed doors to discuss the entire project. Apparently, some of
the teachers at Speirs's lecture had objected to the nature of the material
presented. One told the Globe and Mail that the family life course had 'no
Debates over Sex Education in Toronto Schools 133
morals/
84
 Some trustees agreed with the complaint, saying that children
in grades 7 and 8 were too young to be exposed to the course.
85
 In the
end, the proposed course, which was to have started after Easter, was
postponed and referred to Management Committee for yet more discus-
sion. The Globe and Mail applauded the decision to hold off: 'To oblige
teachers paid by the State to take over this intimate function of parent-
hood ... is an unjustified intrusion into the privileges of the home ... Now
that the Board has come to see the problems [of the family life course]
more clearly, it might be a good time to drop the business.'
86
But the trustees didn't drop it. They discussed it again, at length for
the first time, in another session behind closed doors - the only appro-
priate place, some of the trustees thought, for the consideration of sexual
matters. Then, they screened three of the movies that had been shown to
the teachers. The result of the hush-hush meeting and the long-overdue
discussion was that Goldring was asked to prepare yet another report on
a modified version of the original family life program. He was to keep
'in mind that the instruction to be given be chiefly that which is outlined
in the course for Grade 7,'
87
 meaning that the grade 8 curriculum was to
be scrapped. It also meant the end of anything sensitive enough to
demand boys and girls be separated, such as any information dealing
with the actual human bodies that lived in the families being discussed.
The grade 8 program had included topics such as: 'the hygiene of ado-
lescence, including menstruation and nocturnal emissions'; sexual
vocabulary; social behaviour, including 'sex-releasing activities'; and,
most importantly, 'the meaning of growing up,' a section about repro-
duction and bodily functions. The grade 7 curriculum - suitable for coed
classes - was focused on the family (including fish and amoeba families)
and 'getting along with others.' Some of the critical topics suggested for
discussion were: 'hogging the phone' - a particularly middle-class con-
cern - cheating, tattletales, 'turning down a date gracefully/ 'taking sis-
ter to the party/ and chores. A short section on boy-girl relationships
would stress that 'interest in the opposite sex was normal/ and that
'rough play [was] undesirable/ A much longer section on community
life would discuss 'loyalty to family ideals/ 'conventions and customs/
and 'development of a scale of values/ In some schools, 'where girls
mature earlier/ menstruation would be discussed (by girls only) in
grade 7. The qualification was class-based. As a Big Brothers worker had
claimed in his investigations of a working-class neighbourhood, 'The
girls mature rapidly and the moral problem is real even with girls of
public school age.' They were, he said, 'worldly-wise/
88
134 The Trouble with Normal
In stripping the grade 8 portion of the program, the board was taking
the sex out of the sex education course. It was reverting to its earlier
method of regulating teen sexuality by restricting access to information.
After the revisions, family life education ceased to be a euphemism for
sex education and came to mark the limitations of the course. Students
would receive little guidance around the physical and emotional
changes they would experience during puberty, nor would they learn
about their own sexual capabilities and what they might mean if they
began to date. Instead, students would become well versed in the ideol-
ogy of the Canadian heterosexual nuclear family. They would learn the
importance of rules and standards of conduct, and they would come to
understand the significance and the face of normality. In the 'cleaned-
up' version, family life education was about being a middle, class teen-
ager under the authority of parents and community. In its original ver-
sion, it had been about growing up and anticipating adult roles. Even in
its reduced state, the final family life package remained an offence to the
sensibilities of some trustees. Nevertheless, the board passed the course
with a narrow vote of ten to eight.
89
 But over the next decade, there was
not a single reference made to sex education in the board's records. Sim-
ilarly, on the provincial level, mention of venereal disease disappeared
from the 1950 course of study for health and physical education.
90
According to the Telegram, the family life program was dropped from the
Toronto curriculum, without comment, in the fall term of 1952. It wasn't
until the mid-1960s that the whole debate began anew. Experts were
engaged, the Department of Health was lobbied for permission, and
trustees quarrelled over their opposing viewpoints. Finally, in 1966, a
comprehensive program on family life was introduced to students in
grades 7 to 12.
One of the things we learn from this story is that the introduction of dis-
cussions about sex into the public realm does not always represent
progress; nor is it an easy process, as Foucault argues in The History of
Sexuality. Public discourse is a powerful site of and mechanism for the
regulation of sex. While we might deplore a social climate that prohib-
ited the open discussion of the physiology of sex in schools, we might
find equally offensive explicit attempts to mould children via their
desires for sexual knowledge.
The initiatives around sex education at the Toronto Board of Educa-
tion in 1944 and 1948 took their starting point from social needs as deter-
mined by particular groups of adults during a particular historical
Debates over Sex Education in Toronto Schools 135
period. Discussions over sex education were rarely about youth. Instead,
they considered the relationship between families and the state; they
were about the mandate of the school board and the calibre of teachers.
When teenagers were inserted into these debates, they were the raw
material for the development and reproduction of normative heterosex-
ual standards, a process that could be based either on a lack of knowl-
edge or on the production of it, depending on one's perspective. Teens
were never present in these discussions as individuals who might them-
selves already be participating in sexual behaviours, or who might
already have contracted a venereal disease or been exposed in some way
to 'sex crime.'
In both the social hygiene guidelines and the family life curriculum,
young people were on offer to assuage the fears of the postwar middle
class. Fears about social change and about future security were crystal-
lized in discourses about sexuality that took teenagers as their objects.
Certainly, without national public discussions of VD and sex crime, sex
education would never have been raised on the board's agenda. That the
family life program lasted only a year indicates the weakness of the
board's commitment to even the watered-down version of the subject.
What is interesting here is the way that young people could symbolize
social problems - the VD carrier, the potential sex criminal - and their
solution - the morally responsible boy or girl, the parent of the future.
This meant that as the board attempted to solve one set of problems, like
sex crime, it risked creating another, by bringing teenagers and sexual
knowledge into too-close contact. It was a catch-22 situation for the
trustees. Because it was assumed that teens had yet to develop a mature
moral sense or a mature sexuality, they were perfect candidates for sex
education; indeed, they were clearly in need of it to help guide them
towards accepted social norms. But the disjuncture between moral com-
petencies and sexual potential was tremendously difficult to negotiate.
Who could say that a teenager's moral sense would stay ahead of her
libido? In this regard, a little sexual knowledge might prove a dangerous
thing.
7
Manipulating Innocence:
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case
against Obscenity
In 1949, a Toronto man wrote to the Ontario Government Censorship
Bureau (a bureaucratic entity that, in fact, did not exist) to protest the
availability of cheap pulp paperbacks. 'These books/ he wrote, 'many
of them filthy in the extreme, have alluring colour covers, and any ado-
lescent can buy publications for 25 [cents], that his parents would
be shocked to read.'
1
 His complaint was one of many received by
the Ontario attorney general's office in the post-Second World War
period when, after years of paper shortages and restrictions on trade,
Canadian newsstands were opened to a huge range of mass-market
publications from the United States. Concerned citizens, as individuals
and as members of a wide spectrum of organizations, condemned the
'licentiousness of magazines,'
2
 the 'flood of objectionable literature,'
3
'porno-graphy for profit,'
4
 and, among other things, the transformation
of Canada into 'an open end[ed] sewer' for filth from the United
States.
5
 For the most part, these objections were articulated through a
discourse of concern for youth who, it was assumed, had relatively
unlimited access to inexpensive printed material over which their par-
ents and teachers had little control.
In the 1930s and 1940s, mass-produced literature had flourished,
especially in the United States. The creation of new genres and new
approaches to marketing and distribution combined with improve-
ments in printing techniques to make the publication of comics and
paperbacks increasingly profitable.
6
 After the war, Canadian news-
stands felt the full impact of this growing sector of the U.S. publishing
industry. The market for so-called 'real literature' was swamped by
thirty-five-cent pulp novels, fifteen-cent magazines and 10 cent comics
that were readily available in drugstores and cigar stores. In Ottawa, for
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case against Obscenity 137
instance, a single news and magazine distributor received 3800 copies of
Women's Barracks, a 1952 pulp novel title.
7
 In 1950, a researcher for the
Toronto Board of Education counted 135 different comics for sale in that
city, and he estimated their readership at more than 500,000 individuals
each month.
8
 To put these figures into perspective, the Canadian distri-
bution of hard cover-books was limited to 2000 bookstores, while maga-
zines and pulps could be bought at more that 9000 outlets.
9
Alongside this boom in pulp publishing, so-called sexy magazines
were also becoming increasingly visible. As a 1952 Reader's Digest article
said, such questionable material was nothing new; what had changed
was its accessibility. In the years before the Second World War, 'girlie'
magazines had been available only in (male) adult environments like
'barbershops, saloons and army posts.' By the 1950s, however, these
magazines were being sold right at the corner drugstore, on the same
shelves as family magazines and 'useful books.'
10
 In 1953 the launch of
the 'tasteful' and expensively produced Playboy solidified the trend.
Fears about the power of mass media to divide parents from children
were not unique to postwar North America.
11
 They had followed the
emergence of novels in the nineteenth century, and of silent films in the
1910s and 1920s. They would re-emerge over television in the late 1950s
and the 1960s. We see them today in discussions about rock videos, Nin-
tendo games, and the Internet. Writing about the British campaign
against horror comics of the mid-1950s, Martin Barker says that 'each
rising mass medium in turn has been targeted in the name of revered
values.'
12
 But, he adds, parental and social concerns are less a factor of
the medium that spawned them than they are of the values assumed to
be threatened by it. Where turn-of-the-century working-class parents
worried that commercial entertainments such as cheap movies under-
mined traditional gender roles and put their daughters in too close prox-
imity with boys,
13
 middle-class parents of the 1950s worried about
standards of sexual behaviour and whether the pulps encouraged their
children towards deviance. In both cases, the medium was an easier tar-
get of popular protest than the general social context which spawned it.
Postwar discourses about the 'corruptibility' of youth, and their need
for protection from sex as it was portrayed in various forms of pulp liter-
ature, were able to provide the impetus for broad-ranging initiatives of
moral and sexual regulation that targeted adults as much as they tar-
geted young people themselves. Discursive constructions of youthful
innocence helped to set the boundaries of normative sexuality, thus mar-
ginalizing non-normative forms of sexual expression by people of all
138 The Trouble with Normal
ages. Without the concepts of youth they were able to mobilize, these
regulatory discourses would never have been so widely circulated.
Postwar discussions about the effects of indecency and obscenity on
young people occurred in a variety of contexts. Here I pay particular
attention to three of these: efforts in the late 1940s to restrict the circula-
tion of comic books, especially crime and horror comics; the proceedings
of the 1952 Senate Special Committee on Salacious and Indecent Litera-
ture; and a 1952 trial over obscenity that took place in Ottawa. Each of
these illustrates the way 'youth' was used as a rhetorical trope in
attempts to maintain dominant sexual and moral standards.
While the Ottawa trial contributed to the production of official legal
discourse about obscenity, the public debate over comic books and the
special senate committee were key to the constitution of more popular
English-Canadian discourses. They provided a focal point for public
consideration of what was constructed in many media reports as a
national problem. And, indeed, obscenity was taken up as an issue
across the country by a diverse range of constituencies with agendas
that were not always entirely compatible. For instance, presentations
were made to the senate committee by women's and labour organiza-
tions, children's advocates, and youth groups from all provinces, by
anglophones and francophones, and by representatives of Protestant
and Catholic churches. Nevertheless, the problem evoked a different
response in Quebec than it did in the rest of Canada simply because
most of the material deemed to be indecent came from the United States
and was published in English. I focus specifically on the construction of
the problem in English Canada.
Given the U.S. origin of the pulps, I was surprised by how few
attempts were made to counterpose a Canadian moralism against some
version of American licentiousness. At the turn of the century, the rela-
tionship between the two countries was often sexualized in popular dis-
course. In her book on turn-of-the-century heterosexual conflict, Karen
Dubinsky shows a wonderful example of this discursive strategy with
an 1891 cartoon about a Canadian election fought over free trade. In the
image, Miss Canada is being chased by a menacing Liberal (in favour of
free trade) while Uncle Sam looks on approvingly. Tory John A. Mac-
donald (anti-free trade) steps in to save the virtue of the lady and the
nation.
14
 In the early cold-war era, the tendency was against such a
polarization of Canadian and American interests. On the one hand,
Canadian and American political ideologies were developing along
somewhat similar cold-war-inspired lines; in the ideological fight
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case against Obscenity 139
against Communism the United States was an increasingly important
ally, not one to be vilified as a moral threat. On the other hand, Canadi-
ans were increasingly exposed to various forms of U.S. popular cul-
ture.
15
 It is likely that many Canadians would have been familiar with
and felt affinity towards the many campaigns against immorality
and obscenity that were taking place in the States. There was, in fact, a
sharing of resources and personnel that took place among activists and
organizations on both sides of the border. In this sense, the Canadian
anti-comics campaign was decidedly different from the one that was
unfolding in Britain, where the initiative was spearheaded by the British
Communist Party as part of a general fight against American cultural
imperialism.
16
The Threat of Indecency, or Why the Concern about Obscenity?
What counted as harmful literature in the late 1940s and the 1950s was a
wide range of material, although the exact details of its content is not
always easy to ascertain. As they do today, standards of decency and
propriety varied widely - even within class and ethnic groupings. Cer-
tainly there did not exist agreed-upon definitions - even in law - of
either indecency or obscenity. What I am concerned with here, however,
is not so much the actual content of materials that were thought to be
indecent or obscene, but the language and discursive strategies used to
present them as such. How was it that social critics were able to generate
concern about particular types of publications? My findings are similar
to those of Martin Barker in his analysis of the British campaign against
horror comics. Barker found that arguments against the comics were
based more on popular ideas about the young people who were
assumed to be reading the comics than about the content of the books
themselves.
17
 In Canada, postwar debates about the moral effects of
mass-market publications crystallized concerns about the nature of
youth, their relationship to sexuality, and the place and character of sex-
uality in Canadian society.
Two distinct, but related, efforts to clean up Canadian newsstands
suggest that different media came under scrutiny at different times. In
the late 1940s, crime comics were the major concern, until a 1949 amend-
ment to the Canadian Criminal Code almost completely eliminated
them from the newsstands. In the 1950s, cheap paperbacks and what
were referred to as 'girlie magazines' took their turn as targets of public
protest and condemnation. Disapproval of these publications was insti-
140 The Trouble with Normal
tutionalized in the 1952 senate special committee. While these two epi-
sodes of moral concern exploited a variety of regulatory strategies -
some shared, some not - the ideologies that helped to construct them
were remarkably similar.
Anti-indecency campaigns (I use the word campaign with hesitation -
it suggests perhaps too organized a shape for what were often contradic-
tory efforts) relied heavily on representations of young people as in need
of both protection and control, particularly in the realm of sex and
morality. Teens were assumed to be impressionable - 'born imitators' -
in ways that adults were not. Adolescence was seen as a time of both
sexual and moral development,
18
 the success of the former depending to
a great extent on the success of the latter. With the proper guidance, teen-
agers could learn to control their unfolding sexuality. However, this
belief that teenage morality was a blank slate meant that teens were
open not only to 'proper' influences but to 'improper' ones as well.
Their moral immaturity - or moral innocence, as it was more likely to be
called - was said to leave them vulnerable to harmful sexual attitudes
that might lead to degeneracy and delinquency. As one magazine jour-
nalist claimed, 'The love comics are to the girly magazines what elemen-
tary schools are to high schools. If a child's taste is formed by love and
crime comics, he or she will continue to crave lurid, unreal, violent and
sexy material in print.'
19
 And such material, apparently, could skew an
adolescent's understanding of her own social climate: 'The mass produc-
tion and distribution of sensational novels depicting lewd, repulsive and
perverted behaviour of the characters as a normal way of life has super-
seded all other worthwhile publications offered for sale in Canadian
stores. Men and women are portrayed as monsters of perversion and the
women pictured as Lesbians and modern Messalinas. Added to this is
the continuous suggestion that crime and perversion is [sic] normal ...'
20
More than anything else, it was normality that was deemed to be
under threat from the pulp publications. They were accused of making
immorality seem normal, of shifting the boundaries of what was seen to
be acceptable: perverts might cease to be perverse; abnormality might
fail to operate as a negative marker of sexual and moral difference from
the norm; monogamous heterosexual marriage might end up as just one
of many forms of sexual expression. Arguments about the dangers of
indecency suggested that a whole process of moral degeneration would
be put into effect if 'immature' teenagers read pulps, absorbed their sor-
did values, and carried them into the 1960s.
Young people were widely regarded as products in which adults
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case against Obscenity 141
invested sums of time and money, along with material, emotional, intel-
lectual, and spiritual resources. Parents considered it their right to make
these investments exclusively or to have them made by other adults of
their choosing. In this context, teenagers' reading of comics or dime-
store novels turned the publishers of this literature into trespassers and
usurpers of parental prerogative. The publishers were guilty of compet-
ing with and disrupting the influences of the home, the church, the
school. A widely circulated 1952 resolution from the town council of
Timmins, Ontario, included the following justification for regulatory
measures against obscenity: 'AND WHEREAS, millions have been spent
on excellent universities, high schools and public schools to educate our
children to become law-abiding, productive and lovable citizens, who
are our most sacred investment, and who should not be exposed to an
education, through the reading of filthy literature, stories of compromis-
ing situations, and details of sex crimes, which tend to undermine our
whole educational system ...'
21
Some thought that bad literature was powerful enough not just to
threaten but to cancel the efforts of church, school, and home to educate
young people about proper forms of sex and family living. Members of
the Canadian Committee for the International Conference in Defence of
Children worried that indecent literature might turn young people from
the goals adults had set for them: 'high ideals, noble emotions and con-
structive action directed to the general good.'
22
 Pulp literature was seen
as competition for approved forms of sex education (however limited
these were) that promoted the normalization of sexual and moral stan-
dards. The outcome of this contest could affect 'the whole moral tone of
the nation.'
23
 'Civilized life,' 'democracy,' and 'freedom' were all
thought to be dependent upon a particular, dominant version of moral-
ity. As long as this was challenged by the salacious materials on the
newsstands, the future itself seemed to be threatened.
During the early years of the cold war, statements about 'threats' to
the nation often concealed fears about Communism, and the discussion
about printed indecency was no exception to this. A direct relationship
was assumed between a particular version of moral health and Canada's
strength as a nation. Demoralization, in both senses of the word, was
assumed to be a prime strategy of infiltrating Communists. In their 1953
report, members of the Senate Special committee on Salacious and Inde-
cent Literature stated that 'in the world-wide struggle between the
forces of darkness and evil and those of good, the freedom-loving, dem-
ocratic countries have need of all the strength in their moral fibre to com-
142 The Trouble with Normal
bat the evil threat, and anything that undermines the morals of our
citizens and particularly of the young is a direct un-Canadian act/
24
During the proceedings of the committee, chair J.C. Davis (who took
over after the death of J.J. Hayes Doone, the instigator of the project)
expressed his own racist version of this position, without any opposition
from his colleagues: 'This is a Christian country, and we have to fight the
powers of darkness from non-Christian countries. The morals of this
country have to be strengthened to keep us strong. We are being
attacked at the very roots by the influx of indecent literature and we
have to stop it one way or another.'
25
Notions of 'threat to the nation' operated discursively in much the
same way as the more frequently cited 'threat to youth' - by stirring up
moral indignation that might lead to calls for protective regulation.
Moreover, each of these phrases could be used to underscore the gravity
of the other: a threat to the nation was perceived to be a threat to teenag-
ers and youth. Who could not be moved by the vulnerability of young
people, struggling towards maturity? Who did not want them to
develop to their full potential? Who could abandon the goals of those
who had died so recently on European battlefields? Who could abandon
their sons and daughters to an atmosphere of immorality and indecency
that was assumed to be the antithesis of a democratic society? The cru-
sade against obscenity and harmful literature was built on, and gained
its momentum from, these kinds of discursive attachments. Notions of
patriotism and 'Christian values' were called on to underscore argu-
ments against the mass-market publications. They lent weight to an
issue that might otherwise have appeared to be trivial.
The Canadian Fight against Crime Comics
In Canada, the fight to ban crime comics, although not entirely cohesive,
was broadly based. As the product of well-organized efforts by individ-
uals and groups it certainly had significant effects. The man most often
identified with the crime comics campaign was E. Davie Fulton, Tory
member of Parliament from Kamloops, British Columbia. Fulton
claimed that national interest in the matter had been 'aroused' by the
Federated Women's Institutes, the Federation of Home and School Asso-
ciations, the Ontario Teachers' Federation, Parent-Teacher Federations,
and the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE) - all of them
middle-class and predominantly female organizations.
26
Comic books were by no means new in the late 1940s, but their con-
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case against Obscenity 143
tent had undergone substantial change since they first appeared in the
1920s as bound collections of newspaper strips. In 1938, readers were
introduced to Superman, the first super hero (created by Jerry Siegal and
Toronto-born artist Joe Shuster). By 1941, American publishers were put-
ting out 168 different titles, and by the middle of the war, National Peri-
odical Publishers claimed sales of more than 12 million comics per
month.
27
 At its peak, in the postwar decade, it is estimated that the U.S.
comics industry was producing 60 million comics per month.
28
Before the war, Canadian comic book fans had developed their read-
ing habits on a steady diet of American publications. But in December
1940, faced with a growing wartime trade deficit, Prime Minister Mac-
kenzie King restricted the importation of non-essential goods from the
United States. Comic-books were banned along with other fiction peri-
odicals, opening the way for an indigenous comic book industry.
According to historian John Bell, four Canadian publishers quickly
made moves to take advantage of the trade restrictions. Bell says that
while all four (Maple Leaf Publishing, Anglo-American, Hillborough
Studios, and Bell Features and Publishing) published in various genres,
they were particularly eager to make up for the absence of American
superheroes.
29
Canada's first two superheroes, Iron Man and Freelance, both debuted
in 1941, and both had their origins in the 'Southern Hemisphere.' Iron
Man was found living alone in a 'sunken bubble-city/ the only survivor
of a civilization that had been wiped out by an earthquake. On returning
to the surface-world, he used his indestructibility and superhuman
strength to fight Nazis and other bad guys. Freelance, by comparison,
grew up with a lost tribe in a tropical valley (!) in Antarctica. While he
had no special powers beyond his amazing athletic ability, he too battled
the Axis powers. Neither, says John Bell, had anything particularly
Canadian about him. Thus it was Nelvana of the Northern Lights, issued
in August 1941, who became Canada's first truly national superhero.
Based on a character from Inuit mythology, Nelvana was, neverthe-
less, portrayed as a white goddess, the personification of the North. She
drew her supernatural powers from the Northern Lights and dressed in
a short, fur-hemmed skirt, tall boots, and a cape. She had just about
everything a superhero could want: she was immortal, she could fly,
travel at the speed of light, melt metal, disrupt radio communications,
make herself invisible, and alter her own shape and that of her brother
(with whom she communicated telepathically). She put her powers to
use fighting supernatural villains with nasty ties to the Nazis.
30
144 The Trouble with Normal
Nelvana's male counterparts, Johnny Canuck and Canada Jack,
emerged in 1942 and 1943, respectively. Created by Leo Bachle, who was
at the time a student at Toronto's Danforth Technical School, Johnny was
a captain in the air force and travelled the world fighting the Axis pow-
ers. And while he had no supernatural abilities, Johnny was always tri-
umphant. Bell identifies the critical elements of any Johnny Canuck
story as: 'an exotic locale, contact with the anti-Axis underground, a
beautiful woman and countless improbable escapes by "Canada's
answer to Nazi oppression."'
31
 Canada Jack was similarly without
supernatural powers. His adventures took place on the home front,
where he battled saboteurs and Nazi spies, clad in a tank top and gym-
nast's tights. He was assisted by a group of children known as the Can-
ada Jack Club which, Bell says, 'was quite unique in that it existed both
in the pages of the Canadian Heroes comic book and in the real world.'
32
The success of Canada's wartime superheroes was short-lived. In
1945, the borders opened again to U.S. imports, and the Canadian com-
ics industry began to collapse.
33
 A 'Canadian Comic Report,' compiled
by Superior Publishing Limited in Toronto, claimed that between
November 1948 and October 1949 the total number of titles on Canadian
newsstands grew from 95 to 176. The number of Canadian titles listed in
the document was only 23.
34
After the Second World War, the patriotic superheroes took a back seat
to new narrative genres. Crime, horror, and love comics became espe-
cially popular, launching a wave of public concern. New titles appeared
regularly, and many readers increased their consumption by exchanging
copies with friends. As Fulton said, the whole process of buying, read-
ing, and trading could occur outside parents' control. Newspaper and
magazine articles frequently played up the fact that comics were not a
large part of adult culture. Parents and teachers were often described in
the act of 'discovering' a 'hidden stash' in a child's room or school desk.
Apparently many were 'shocked' by what they found: drawings of
women that emphasized their breasts and buttocks; detailed stories
about crime, including murder and rape; titles like Tales from the Crypt,
Haunt of Fears, Crimes by Women, Heart Throb, and Flaming Love.
Toronto Board of Education trustee W.R. Cockburn was typical of
those who spoke out against comics. In 1945 he raised concerns about
them with the board's Management Committee, saying they were
'degrading and detrimental to the welfare of our youth.'
35
 Complaining
that biblical comics were largely unavailable in Toronto, Cockburn
showed his colleagues comic books he had been able to buy in the city -
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case against Obscenity 145
Daring, Human Torch, Black Terror, and Boy Commandos — saying, 'They're
nothing but a lot of rot about daggers and guns.' A similar argument
was endorsed in 1947 by the members of the lODE's National Education
Committee who lamented the eclipsing of funny comics: 'Instead we
have "Superman" and gangs of thieves, G-men and sadistic murderers
who carve their way through the "funny pages" talking plain talk, and
giving people "the works."'
36
While views like those expressed by Cockburn and the members of
the IODE were widely reported on, they were not shared by everyone. In
1949, Chatelaine ran a story by Mary Jukes called 'Are Comics Really a
Menace?'
37
 In an attempt to interrupt prevailing anti-comics discourse
she claimed that psychologists, teachers, and parents 'do not look upon
this form of entertainment as dangerous [despite] the daily papers con-
tinu[ing] to turn up stories tying juvenile delinquency to the reading of
certain types of comics.' In a poll of 2000 of its readers, Chatelaine found
that 'they are wholeheartedly in favor of real comics; they don't feel that
all comics should be scrapped because of the few horror numbers.' Of
course, the acceptability of 'real' (funny?) comics was precisely the point
the IODE had been trying to make. Fulton, Cockburn, and the others
who raised their concerns publicly didn't think all comics should be
scrapped; their goal was to influence policies that separated the 'good'
(what they called 'real') comics from the 'bad.' It was a position that
many of the Chatelaine readers seemed to share, despite Jukes's attempts
to construct their opposition to it. One-sixth of mothers, she said, found
comics to be 'trashy, awful and undesirable,' while 'the majority object
only to those portraying violence, ugliness and fantastic situations ...
Another large group disapprove of the fantastic type of comic - the
phantom woman whose supernatural powers involve her constantly in
fisticuffs with burly men; sexy women with bodies of Lana Turner and
spirits of Genghis Khan, to quote one [reader] 'Even Hollywood has
never lifted the American bust to the high place it occupies in the fantas-
tic and crime type of comic."'
38
Portrayals of crimes, overly graphic representations of women's bod-
ies, and a rarely defined immorality were the main concerns of the
anti-comics crusaders. Today, postwar comics seem an odd mix of pro-
vocativeness and predictability. In Canadian titles, at least, the good
guys and gals always won - even if it wasn't until the last frame - and,
generally, crime didn't pay. But such morally acceptable endings were
invariably preceded by fights, killings, and other dirty deeds, depictions
of scantily clad women, and graphic or textual sexual innuendo. 'Barry
146 The Trouble with Normal
Kuda/ a story in a 1946 issue of Unusual Comics (Bell Comics, Toronto),
shows how these 'dangerous' elements were combined: 'What made the
walls of Queen Merma's palace tremble as she held a farewell banquet
for Barry Kuda and Algie? Barry was soon to learn, when the banquet
hall became a scene of boiling terror and Sato's awful army, with their
bodies glowing red hot, fought to brand the Queen's domain with THE
SYMBOL OF SIN!'
39
As Sato's volcanic eruption destroys Merma's palace, the blond and
muscular Barry Kuda (wearing a wrestling-type singlet and shorts) car-
ries the slim, white, long-haired Merma (wearing bikini shorts and coni-
cal breast-coverings) to safety. Barry returns to the palace to fight the
devilish Sato, complete with horns, and to find his friend Algie. But
Barry's plan is foiled when he is frozen stiff in his tracks by one of Sato's
men.
In the meantime, Sato himself has gone in search of Merma.
Merma: What do you want, Sato? Keep away! What can you gain by killing me?
Sato: But - I'm not going to kill you, my dear. It's lonely in Volcania! I'd like a
real queen for a wife!
Merma: No! No! Not that! Barry - Bar -
Her cries are to no avail. Merma gets frozen too. In the next frame, she is
lying helpless on a table, Sato's doctor hanging over her scantily clothed
body. When her 'frozen flesh is thawed,' he gets ready to inject her with
the blood of one of Sato's guards so that she will be able to survive in
their underworld. 'Oh. No! No! Barry! Algie! Help!'
The scene shifts to the outside of the palace where Barry has managed
to thaw himself out, find his friend, and kill some of Sato's minions.
Bodies are flying in all directions. And just in time, Barry and Algie run
through the carnage to find Merma who is about to receive the injection
of devilish blood. 'Help No -------- Oh, Barry! Thank Heavens!' Sato is
vanquished, Merma is saved, and Barry and Algie are feted as heroes.
A 'Lucky Coyne' episode, from a 1946 issue of F.6./. comics, is a more
typical crime story.
40
 It, too, portrays fighting, a mild brand of sexual
sadism, and women in suggestive clothing and poses. But again, good
triumphs over evil at the end. The story opens with Lucky Coyne, a jour-
nalist and regular guy (no special powers), interviewing a recently
released convict, Count Morphine. Morphine has just opened a lonely
hearts club. He tells Lucky his time in prison left him sympathetic to the
plight of lonely people. Lucky smells a rat. He sends his pals Kitty and
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case against Obscenity 147
Terry off to visit the club. From their vantage point on the dance floor,
they try to figure out what Morphine is really up to. But Morphine over-
hears their deliberations, and the two plants are whisked to the base-
ment where they are shown a woman in a torn dress, chained hand and
foot to what looks like a large wooden water wheel. 'This lonely heart's
beloved is a bit late in his appointment/ Morphine tells them. 'He
should have returned three minutes ago.' Morphine's helper starts to
turn the woman on the wheel and she screams (in huge bold capitals),
'OH, NO, NO!'
In the next frames, Terry's arms are bound behind his back as Kitty is
tied beneath a large vice that is covered in nails. Morphine turns to
Terry: 'Mike will take you to a certain jewelry store. Your speedy return
and what you bring will determine your playmate's fate!' The bound
Terry clues in: 'So that's your game! Torturing a guy's girl unless he robs
for you!' Fortunately, Lucky sees Terry being forced down the street by
Mike. Lucky decks Mike. Terry explains the situation to him as they run
back to the club. They get to Kitty just as the nails are about to crush her.
They save the woman on the wheel, Kitty phones the police, and Lucky
and Terry go upstairs to corner the evil Morphine. After a few punches,
the police arrive, the thieves are put out of business, and we see Kitty
hanging on Lucky in the final frame.
Opponents said that the comics ' glamorize[d] crime, brutality and
immorality'
41
 and gave young people 'a wrong idea of the civilized way
of life.'
42
 Adult commentators tended to take the view that young read-
ers (blank slates that they were assumed to be) passively absorbed what-
ever the comics put before them and that, once exposed to crime, sex,
and violence on the page, children and teens would develop a taste for it
and be moved to re-enact it in daily life.
In June 1948, Fulton first introduced the issue into the House of Com-
mons, arguing that crime comics were leading Canadian young people
into delinquency. While this flagging of possible moral degeneration got
the issue on the government's agenda, it was not enough to convince the
minister of justice, J.L. Ilsley, of the immediate need for suppression. The
minister claimed that his own research, including queries to the provin-
cial attorneys general, had not uncovered any conclusive evidence of the
link between reading crime comics and subsequent delinquent activity.
Ilsley quoted Dr C.M. Hincks, general director of the National Commit-
tee for Mental Hygiene, who said: 'It has never been scientifically estab-
lished that crime or thrill stories either in movies, radio or comics have
contributed to delinquency. Prohibiting publication is an admission of
148 The Trouble with Normal
failure on the part of the family and the educational system in encourag-
ing the development of wholesome and healthy interests.'
43
Ilsley's stance on comics was a 'scientific' one versus the decidedly
moral approach adopted by Fulton. Originally, Fulton had attempted to
take a more 'rational' approach. Before introducing his bill, he requested
statistics on delinquency from the minister of justice. But the figures he
received, for crimes committed by people under the age of eighteen, did
little to help his case. In 1945 there had been 3934 convictions; in 1946
there were 3682; and in 1947 there were 3350.
44
 Despite Fulton's contin-
ued claims to the contrary, the actual incidence of delinquency was fall-
ing. According to sociologist Augustine Brannigan, this trend in
delinquency rates was consistent for the years 1942 to 1949, and the fig-
ures remained 'relatively low' until the mid-1950s.
45
 Still Fulton per-
sisted, appealing to common-sense notions of what was good for young
people, of how easily they might be corrupted, and of how dangerous
the effects of comic books were:
I just want to give an example from the one [comic book] I have in my hand. It
starts off on the inside cover with the picture of a man striking a match and star-
ing at it. The caption over the next picture is, 'Tonight I dreamed of a blazing
moon like a fiery wheel in the sky - burning trees were crashing about me/ and
the caption is illustrated. The next picture portrays him walking to a slum tene-
ment, and he says, T saw an old condemned building. Nobody would care if it
burned down.' The next picture shows this man holding a burning match, and
the caption says, 'Tonight I stole into the cellar of the condemned building and
set my first fire.' That is a fine thing to put before a youngster of twelve or so,
who perhaps has just struck his first match.
46
Eventually, Ilsley conceded that legislation was necessary. Appar-
ently, his change of position came after he received a selection of comics
from Fulton - Crime and Crime Does Not Pay - comics which Ilsley char-
acterized as a flagrant abuse of freedom of the press. But Ilsley wanted
to take his time over the new law, and the conclusion of the comics
debate was held off until the next parliamentary session. By the time
that session was underway, Ilsley had retired from politics and been
replaced as justice minister by Stuart Garson. Fulton introduced his Pri-
vate Member's Bill once again, and a full-scale debate of crime comics
occupied the House for several days.
MPs rallied to the call to protect youth from 'the trash you get in these
dime crime comic books.'
47
 In a particularly evocative, though not
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case against Obscenity 149
entirely typical, contribution to the Commons debate, Daniel Mclvor,
MP for Fort William, described the crime comics as a tactic of 'the devil.'
He said, 'You can almost hear him saying, "Get them young. That is the
time to get them." Our Sunday school teachers can work their heads off
and still not succeed in combating an agency such as obscene literature.
T. • /48
It is a curse.
Many of the MPs admitted to having made studies of crime comics at
their local drugstore or in their home ridings. They argued their support
for Fulton's bill on the basis of personal experience and gut reaction.
They waved (unnamed) comics at their colleagues and read statements
from concerned constituents. Howard C. Green (Vancouver-Quadra)
read from a letter from 'a mother in Vancouver, who, by the way, is the
daughter of a distinguished Canadian authoress': 'I know you are as
anxious as any conscientious parent to see our Canadian children res-
cued from the evil effects of these criminal immoral magazines. I believe
a big house-cleaning of our magazine and paper-back 25-cent books is
overdue. We busy ourselves building youth centres, working in church
to show our young people the guide posts to clean living, and all the
time a stream of filthy books is allowed to come into our country.'
49
 The
MPs mobilized common-sense assumptions about shared moral princi-
ples: 'I know it would disgust everyone in the House and it would dis-
gust the average man and woman right across Canada.'
50
 There was
much mutual congratulation on the 'high level' of the debate, and there
were commendations for Fulton from the other MPs and for the minister
of justice for bringing the bill to the House.
Bill 10 was passed in December 1949. It amended section 207 of the
Criminal Code which dealt with obscene literature: 'to cover the case of
those magazines and periodicals commonly called "crime comics," the
publication of which is presently legal, but which it is widely felt tend to
the lowering of morals and to induce the commission of crimes by juve-
niles.'
51
 While the actual wording of the amendment was broad and
vague, its inclusion in the general section on 'obscene literature' is tell-
ing. Subsection one of section 207 would be contravened by anyone who
'prints, publishes, sells or distributes any magazine, periodical or book
which exclusively or substantially comprises matter depicting pictori-
ally the commission of crimes, real or fictitious, thereby tending or likely
to induce or influence youthful persons to violate the law or to corrupt
the morals of such persons.'
52
 Even in law the moral capacities of young
people were what set the bounds of decency. Under such a broad defini-
tion, fairy tales and news articles might have been subject to prosecu-
150 The Trouble with Normal
tion. Of course, they were not. Crime comics, on the other hand, rapidly
disappeared from Canadian newsstands. At the end of 1950, a researcher
for the Toronto Board of Education claimed to have found no crime com-
ics for sale in the city.
53
Fredric Wertham and Seduction of the Innocent
One of the main proponents of the theory that comics were dangerous
literature - the reading of which could lead otherwise normal young-
sters to perform criminal or sexually immoral activities - was Dr Fredric
Wertham, senior psychiatrist for the New York City Department of Hos-
pitals from 1932 to 1952. In 1948, the year E. Davie Fulton introduced his
bill into the Canadian House of Commons, Wertham published five arti-
cles in popular American magazines denouncing comics in general and
crime comics in particular.
54
 In the House of Commons debates, Fulton
referred to Wertham and cited his American 'evidence' as support for
the proposed amendment to the Criminal Code.
Wertham outlined his position in detail in his 1954 book, Seduction of
the Innocent, which was a featured selection for the Book-of-the-Month
Club that year.
55
 The book mentions E. Davie Fulton and the passage of
Bill 10, quotes from Hansard, and speaks in glowing terms throughout
most of a chapter about the work against comics that had been done in
Canada, both in Parliament and among ordinary citizens:
56
 'No debate
on such a high ethical plane, with proper regard for civil liberties but
with equal regard for the rights and happiness of children, has ever
taken place in the United States/
57
It is impossible, here, to do a full critique of Wertham. Nevertheless, it
is important to consider his work because it was so influential on Cana-
dian activists. He was quoted in the House of Commons debates. He
was referred to and cited by people writing to the Ontario attorney gen-
eral. He corresponded with members of the British Columbia Parent-
Teacher Federation, including a Mrs Eleanor Gray, who was mentioned
by name in Seduction of the Innocent. In a letter he wrote to thank Gray for
a Christmas card, Wertham acknowledged his own importance in the
international debate on comics when he wrote, 'P.S: If you wish to, you
may quote any part of this letter in any way you wish.'
58
According to Wertham, comic books affected reading skills, desensi-
tized young people to violence, and led to delinquent behaviour, psy-
chological difficulties, and problems in sexual development. While
delinquency, illiteracy, and sex each get their own chapter in Seduction of
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case against Obscenity 151
the Innocent, concerns about sexuality appear throughout the book, as
does the evocative sexual language that Wertham used to build his case.
For instance: 'I have come to the conclusion that this chronic stimulation,
temptation and seduction by comic books, both their content and their
alluring advertisements of knives and guns are contributing factors to
many children's maladjustment' (emphasis mine).
59
 At times he was
even more blatant, writing, for instance, that children 'give up crime-
comic reading like a bad sexual habit.'
60
 But what operates as a literary
device on one page becomes fact on another - for Wertham, reading
comics was a bad sexual habit. In a chapter entitled, 'I want to be a sex
maniac!' he says that 'an elementary fact of [his] research' is that 'comic
books stimulate children sexually.'
61
 Wertham took it as self-evidently
bad that 'children' should be sexually 'turned on.' Reading comics, he
said, impedes 'the free [sexual] development of children' and causes
'sexual arousal which amounts to seduction.'
Wertham's tendency to refer to children, while offering case studies of
adolescents, was a rhetorical technique that helped to support his main
argument that comics 'seduced' the 'innocent.' To have referred to ado-
lescents would have been to refer to young people who were already in
the process of becoming sexual, who were somewhat less than sexually
innocent. In invoking 'children,' as an imperilled group, Wertham
heightened the sense of moral outrage implicit in his writing. The slip-
periness between the terms child and adolescent that is evident in Wer-
tham's text is not unique to him, though he manipulates it to his
advantage in a remarkable fashion. That adolescence was considered by
many to be a transitional 'stage' between childhood and adulthood con-
tributed to the slippery usage. Definitions of adolescence as transitional
meant that while adolescents were not children, they continued to be
affected by notions about childhood - for instance, the ambiguous con-
cept of childhood innocence.
'Innocence' was put to work by anti-indecency activists in a number
of ways, although it was generally employed to rouse in adults a protec-
tive 'instinct.' According to sociologists Rex Stainton-Rogers and Wendy
Stainton-Rogers, various notions of childhood innocence have persisted
in Western culture since at least medieval times, their roots lying in
Christian ideas about infants as free from sin. The Stainton-Rogerses
write that since Rousseau's Emile (1762), childhood innocence has
remained a romantic and valorized ideal in Western societies.
62
 But
while this notion of innocence has been long-lasting, it remains a diffi-
cult one to pin down. We can see various senses of the word by counter-
152 The Trouble with Normal
posing it to a range of opposites. The Stainton-Rogers suggest
'knowingness, ignorance, savagery and animality' as some of the possi-
bilities, along with sexuality, which they claim is 'by far the most com-
mon' opposition.
63
 But the meaning that sexuality might take on in this
instance is elusive in its own right. Wertham's concern about even the
sexual feelings young people had was just one of many possible per-
spectives on what constituted evidence of corruption.
Certainly, Wertham's talk about sex would have fuelled parents' fears
about their children's reading habits. The whole notion of seduction,
which appears first in the title and re-emerges throughout the text, rests
on a giving up of control, a giving in to temptation. It suggests a triumph
of desire over rationality - not the sort of thing to facilitate children's
obedience to their teachers and parents, or their allegiance to sexual and
moral norms. But worse than this, seduction comes about by the allure
of someone or something compelling and powerful. One is rarely
seduced by the everyday; a seducer is much more likely an outsider, an
unknown. A seducer is mysterious and illusive. And he or she succeeds
in the seduction not by using physical force but by enticing the seducee
to consent. How could parents fight such a force? How could they
ensure not only their children's physical safety, but their mental and
moral safety as well?
It is tempting to read anything peculiar to the 1950s as a response to,
or a consequence of, anti-Communist ideology and the cold war. In Wer-
tham's case, it is almost impossible not to make that connection.
Throughout his study, he exploits the fear parents had that they were
losing control of their children, that economic and technological changes
were complicating the world and creating distance between the young
and the old. At a time when tight, emotionally fulfilling families were
promoted as essential to the pursuit of personal and political security,
anything that put space between children and their parents (not only
comics but also rock 'n'roll and dance, hair, and clothing styles) was sus-
pect. And anything that 'seduced' children, that made them consent to
their own lack of parental control, reeked of brainwashing (read: popu-
lar explanation for the spread of Communism). It was Wertham's ability
(whether conscious or not) to give sexual overtones to this fear of the
unknown and the foreign and to link the whole package to children that
made his book resonate so strongly with many of its readers.
Certainly, Wertham was not the only one to believe that comics had a
negative effect on children's sexuality, but he was the only one to state
his concerns so explicitly. While other commentators spoke demurely of
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case against Obscenity 153
the links between comics and perversion or comics and immorality, Wer-
tham spoke explicitly about masturbation, sado-masochistic fantasies,
homosexuality and homoeroticism, prostitution, and sex crime. Though
his concerns were numerous, underlying them all was the risk that
young people were being exposed to things of which they apparently
had no prior knowledge, things that he felt were not suitable for chil-
dren (however defined), including, and especially, their own sexual feel-
ings. He cites numerous cases where boys and girls recounted to him
masturbatory fantasies which were 'aggravated' by reading comics.
Even in those cases where young adults seemed to have emerged from
their comics-reading years unharmed, Wertham held steadfastly to his
position that they might, nevertheless, end up with sexual troubles: 'But
is it not one of the elementary facts of modern psychopathology that
childhood experiences very often do not manifest themselves as recog-
nizable symptoms or behavior patterns in childhood, but may crop up
later in adult life as perverse and neurotic tendencies?'
64
Wertham's analysis rested on a simple construction of monkey read,
monkey do, based on his clinical observation of troubled youth. He was
particularly concerned about what he saw as the tendencies of the vari-
ous forms of comics to encourage homoerotic attitudes. Would the mil-
lions of comics circulating across North America lead to an increase in
the number of sex deviates? Wertham claims that certain types of comics
tended to fix boys in their pre-adolescent phase of disdain for girls -
what other writers frequently called the 'normal' homosexual phase of
heterosexual development.
65
 It seems that homo-erotic attitudes were
caused, in part, by 'the presentation of masculine, bad, witchlike or vio-
lent women. In such comics women are depicted in a definitely anti-
erotic light, while the young male heroes have pronounced erotic over-
tones.'
66
Wertham lamented the fate of adolescent boys, who lived with their
own fears of becoming homosexual. Apparently such boys were likely to
become 'addicted' to the 'homoerotically tinged type of comic book,' a
habit which could only lead to homoerotic fantasies, followed inevitably
by guilt and shame as they learned of social taboos against sexual devia-
tion. Certainly, homosexually inclined boys had few other sources to
turn to for acknowledgment of their desires, and, given the social cli-
mate, they may have felt shame about their reading habits. But, of
course, Wertham was not concerned about the discriminatory social con-
ditions and widespread intolerance that led to those feelings of oppres-
sion; he was concerned about the tenor of the comic books. Singled out
154 The Trouble with Normal
as exemplary of those needing to be cleaned up were the 'dangerous'
chronicles of the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder.
Wertham's discussion of Batman is a prime example of 1950s moral
panic about sex perversion - four and a half pages of 'expert opinion' on
the 'Ganymede-Zeus type of love-relationship.' His arguments about the
dangers of Batman drew on the most stereotypical signifiers of homo-
ness and on a macho individualist version of masculinity more suited to
the receding frontier than to postwar domesticity and middle-class cor-
porate life.
At home they [Batman and Robin, aka Bruce and Dick] lead an idyllic life ...
They live in sumptuous quarters, with beautiful flowers in large vases, and have
a butler, Alfred. Batman is sometimes shown in a dressing gown. As they sit by
the fireplace the young boy sometimes worries about his partner: 'Something's
wrong with Bruce. He hasn't been himself these past few days.' It's like a wish
dream of two homosexuals living together. Sometimes they are shown on a
couch, Bruce reclining and Dick sitting next to him, jacket off, collar open, and
his hand on his friend's arm.
67
Moreover, Robin was often shown standing with his legs apart, 'the gen-
ital region strictly evident/ and Batman, in their crusading adventures,
frequently came to Robin's rescue. By Wertham's definition, the stories
contained no 'decent, attractive, successful women,' evidence of an anti-
woman attitude he equated with the homoerotic theme. Boys exposed to
this pastiche of codes and signifiers would, no doubt, be incited to
homoerotic fantasies. And, Wertham claimed, he had the case studies to
prove it.
While girls are mentioned infrequently in Seduction of the Innocent,
they too were at the mercy of the comic-book publishers, perhaps even
more so than boys. Wertham contends that female character develop-
ment was more severely affected by comics than was male character
development, primarily because of the nature of female superheroes.
68
He considered characters like Wonder Woman so far outside normal
constructions of femininity that girls would be thrown into a spin of
mental torment if they should ever endeavour to identify with their her-
oines.
Resting on his claim to 'professional' knowledge, Wertham 'outs'
Wonder Woman, asserting that her lesbianism is 'psychologically unmis-
takable.' Apparently, Wonder Woman 'is always a horror type. She is
physically very powerful, tortures men, has her own female following, is
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case against Obscenity 155
the cruel, "phallic" woman. While she is a frightening figure for boys,
she is an undesirable ideal for girls, being the exact opposite of what
girls are supposed to want to be.'
69
 One could make much of the 'sup-
posed to' in this sentence. Is Wertham responding to women's and girls'
dissatisfaction with postwar discourses on femininity? Is the powerful
Wonder Woman a symbolic foreshadowing of the eruption of 1960s fem -
inism? Is this why Wertham is careful not to make any mention of Won-
der Woman's sidekick, the pudgy, bon-bon eating Etta?
In the context of postwar psychological discourse, so-called normal
sexuality, as we have seen, was not a given; it needed to be fought for
and nurtured. 'Normal' sexuality was thought to be the culmination of a
precarious developmental process that might easily be sent astray. Out-
side influences could stall or preclude the attainment by adolescents of
sexual maturity. Comics, at least as Wertham and his followers under-
stood them, were clearly in this category of outside threat. What was
thought to make comics especially dangerous was the fact that they
were deliberately aimed at a young readership. While their content was
'tame' when compared to, say, sex magazines, the moral imperative to
clean comics up was considerable because of the long-term conse-
quences they might have had on the 'immature' characters of their
intended young audience. The perceived unambiguous relationship
between comics and youth was critical to the success of the anti-comics
activists. Certainly the passage of the Fulton bill was a major victory for
them. More importantly, concerned citizens were also able to exert tre-
mendous pressure directly on the publishers. In 1954, the publishers
developed their own production code, similar to that used in the film
industry. Overseen by the Comics Magazine Association of America, the
code included guidelines such as the following:
• All characters shall be depicted in dress reasonably acceptable to society.
• Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at or portrayed. Violent love scenes
as well as sexual abnormalities are unacceptable.
• Respect for parents, the moral code, and for honorable behavior shall be
fostered. A sympathetic understanding of the problems of love is not a license
for morbid distortion.
70
While campaigns against the perceived immorality in other types of
reading material also drew on discourses about young people's vulnera-
bility to corruption, the frame of the discussion was not the same as it
had been in the fight against comics. Unlike the market for comics, the
156 The Trouble with Normal
market for sex magazines and pulp novels was not primarily made up of
children and teenagers. To talk about protecting young people from the
influence of these adult publications was to admit, on some level, a loss
of control over young people by adults and a failure to maintain the
innocence the campaigns claimed they were protecting. Would the truly
innocent youth read such things? It was a contradiction the campaigners
never addressed.
Targeting Obscenity: The Senate Committee on Salacious and
Indecent Literature
For those concerned about the reading materials available to young
Canadians, Fulton's success with the crime comics bill was a mixed
blessing. Some claimed it left open a space that was filled by other, per-
haps even more dangerous publications - 'by offensive substitutes no
less harmful to character formation.'
71
 Certainly the elimination of the
crime comics left a gap on the agendas of the decency crusaders. But it
was a gap that was quickly filled, as concerned citizens turned their
attentions to other genres of so-called immoral literature, including pulp
magazines and mass-market novels.
New Brunswick senator J.J. Hayes Doone said that Fulton's fight had
prepared the path for this next step to clean up the newsstands. In May
1952, Doone presented to the Senate arguments against 'offensive publi-
cations,' saying that the (unnamed) magazines, books, and photographs
provoked juvenile delinquency and adolescent crime, that they were
'dangerous to the permanence of family life,' and 'evidence of a break-
down in our social machinery.'
72
 In response to what he claimed was
widespread public demand, Doone appealed to his colleagues, 'particu-
larly on behalf of children,' to establish a special committee of the Senate
to investigate
1. Salacious and indecent literature;
2. Publications otherwise objectionable from the standpoint of crime promotion,
including crime comics, treasonable and perversive tracts and periodicals;
3. Lewd drawings, pictures, photographs and articles whether offered as art or
otherwise presented for circulation.
73
The motion was agreed to, and in 1952 the committee met six times.
They heard twenty-five witnesses and received 'hundreds' of briefs,
letters, and petitions. At the end of the parliamentary session, the com-
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case against Obscenity 157
mittee recommended, and the Senate agreed, that it be reappointed in
the next session.
74
 Surprisingly, given its success as a vehicle for public
opinion, the committee's final report, presented in April 1953 and pre-
sumably based on the hundreds of pages of its published proceedings,
covered only five pages and included but a single recommendation.
Committee members suggested that customs operations be expanded in
order to deal with the 'serious threat to the moral standards of Canada'
that resulted from the importation of American publications.
Nowhere did the committee ever define salacious or indecent litera-
ture, though they said it came in many forms: 'The soft-covered book,
selling at a small price; numerous periodicals and magazines; and a
more recently threatening immense influx of the digest type of sex litera-
ture.'
75
 The assumed danger in all of these, and the primary (stated) con-
cern of committee members, was their 'effect on the Canadian juvenile
mind and conscience,' even though - unlike comics - these publications
were not directed specifically at young people. Nevertheless, concerns
for the 'moral and mental fitness' of teenagers were said to motivate the
committee's work generally, and the many, many calls for regulation
which it entertained.
While the committee's report did not lead to any immediate or sub-
stantive legislative change, the effects of the committee, as generator and
disseminator of a national discourse, were not negligible. The proceed-
ings, and news reports of them, contributed to a heightened public
awareness of the 'dangers' to be found on local newsstands; they helped
strengthen general notions that the integrity of 'shared' Canadian moral
standards needed to be protected; they underscored the discursive rela-
tionship between teen immorality (sex delinquency) and 'offensive'
reading material; and they lent a significant institutional authority to the
various clean-up campaigns organized by churches and community
groups. In all of these senses, Doone's initiative was tremendously suc-
cessful.
None of those who spoke before the committee was in favour of the
continued unregulated circulation of the 'salacious and indecent litera-
ture.' Even representatives of the distributors echoed prevailing senti-
ments about the need 'to do something.' But ideas on what that
'something' might be varied. There were few explicit calls for censor-
ship, and a number of presenters actually made speeches about its dan-
gers. In terms of postwar discourses on democracy, censorship evoked
images of Soviet repression and a 'threat to essential liberties.'
76
 Most
briefs focused on the need to tighten existing obscenity legislation and to
158 The Trouble with Normal
encourage its enforcement with the weight of public opinion. The court
actions that this enforcement might lead to were not considered to be
censorship. Instead, they were seen as evidence of justice at work. The
removal of a book or magazine from circulation was simply one of the
limitations on public life that were necessary for the protection of free-
dom.
A central feature of the moral panic over indecency was that nowhere
in these discussions were the definitions of immorality and indecency at
issue, nor was the need of Canadians to be protected from them ques-
tioned. Immorality and indecency were assumed to be known and
harmful categories; all that needed to be asked - by concerned senators,
editorial writers, or parents - was how they could best be dealt with.
This limited frame of reference is blatantly obvious in the evidence from
an Ottawa obscenity case that ran concurrently with the first round of
the senate hearings. In the trial evidence, one sees how this truncated
debate was made possible by ideas about the relationship between
youth and sexuality. Indeed, one can also see that had it been possible to
step outside prevailing discourses of childhood and adolescence, the
trial might never have occurred.
Lesbianism as Obscenity or Women's Barracks as a Threat to Girls
In March 1952, National News Company, an Ottawa distributor, was
charged under Section 207 of the Criminal Code with eleven counts of
having obscene matter in its possession, 'for the purpose of distributing.'
Seven 'girlie' magazines and four pulp novels were named in the
charges. All were eventually found to be obscene by Judge A.G. McDou-
gall, and National News was fined a total of $1100.
77
Among the novels was Women's Barracks, written by an obscure
French author named Tereska Torres.
78
 Its story is similar to the one told
in Torres's 1970 autobiography about her time in the women's section of
the Free French Army during the Second World War.
79
 The novel follows
a group of women who spent several years together in a London bar-
racks. We read of their work assignments and drills, of their hopes for
France, and their social and sexual lives. The characters are a mixed lot,
mostly young heterosexuals, though there are two lesbians and an
'older' (forty-year-old), sexually experienced woman named Claude
who has affairs with men and women. Several of the heterosexual
women have affairs with married men, one of them gets pregnant out of
wedlock, all of them drink. In the midst of this, the narrator operates as
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case against Obscenity 159
the moral centre of the book. She distances herself from the other
women and their sexual and emotional experiments - engaging in none
of her own - trying to maintain her ideals about love, fidelity, and mar-
riage.
To the present-day reader, Torres's prose is far from lurid. Neverthe-
less, Women's Bmracks was packaged in typical 1950s pulp style and mar-
keted as 'THE FRANK AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FRENCH GIRL
SOLDIER.' While the allusions to sex in the book are many, the details of
it are few. In her foreword to the book, Torres links the sexual activity
and its emotional fallout to the adversities of war; in 'normal' circum-
stances, she suggests, little of this activity would have taken place.
80
When the book first came to trial, Crown Attorney Raoul Mercier's
strategy was a simple one. He wanted to prove, simply, that the book
had been for sale in a particular cigar store, that the store had been sup-
plied by National News, and that copies of the book had been found on
the premises of the distribution company. He was confident that the
judge would find the text itself obscene when he came to read it.
In 1952, the test of obscenity used by Canadian courts was 'whether
the tendency of the matter charged as obscene is to deprave and corrupt
those whose minds are open to such immoral influence and into whose
hands a publication of this sort may fall.'
81
 Based on notions of innocent
and impressionable youth, the test was a lowest-common-denominator
definition of what was appropriate for Canadian readers, adults and
children alike. Known as the 'Hicklin test,' it was first defined by British
judge CJ. Cockburn in 1868 and introduced into Canadian courts in
1904.
82
 In his ruling, in a case about an anti-Catholic pamphlet, Cock-
burn stated explicitly that he was concerned with the danger a work
charged as obscene posed to 'the minds of the young of either sex, or
even to persons of more advanced years.' Canadian judges maintained
this primary emphasis on youth. In a 1957 obscenity case, Regina v.
American News, Ontario Court of Appeal judge J.A. Laidlaw wrote: 'I
have no doubt that the object of the law is to protect the youth of the
nation and to guard them against the danger of exposing their morals to
impure matter ... Cockburn CJ. mentioned youth in his judgment in the
Hicklin case, and most Judges in considering whether or not a particular
matter is obscene have regard to the youth of the nation.'
83
The Hicklin test remained in effect in Canada until 1959, when amend-
ments to section 150(8) of the revised Criminal Code (1953-4) detailed a
definition of obscenity based on the 'undue exploitation of sex,' where
the term 'undue' had 'regard to the existing standards of decency in the
160 The Trouble with Normal
community.' In 1962, this new definition was the basis of the Supreme
Court of Canada decision that dismissed a charge of obscenity against
the book Lady Chatterley's Lover. This decision also rendered the Hicklin
test obsolete. In shifting the direction of judicial concern from the 'minds
of youth' to 'community standards/ the new law helped forestall a ten-
dency to declare material that might have been 'harmful' for young
readers to be harmful in general. It was this tendency, institutionalized
by the Hicklin test, that made adolescent morals a major focus of the
Women's Barracks case.
Under the law, no one could be convicted on an obscenity charge if
they could prove that the 'public good' had been served by the act in
question. This was the grounds of the defence strategy pursued by
National News's lawyers, G.W. Ford and J.M. McLean. As they put it,
even if Torres's book was technically obscene, it still might have fulfilled
a social purpose.
84
 Expert witnesses were called to explain just what that
purpose might have been. The crown attorney, wanting equal time,
revised his original strategy and called his own experts to prove the first
lot wrong. All told, the trial gave rise to a substantial, public, docu-
mented discussion of lesbianism.
While lesbianism is clearly not the focus of the novel, it was the focus
of courtroom debate. A copy of the novel is filed with the court tran-
scripts at the Archives of Ontario. Inside the front cover are the initials
'R.M./ presumably referring to Crown Attorney Raoul Mercier.
Throughout the text are underlinings and annotations in both pencil and
black pen. Fifteen pages are marked with tags made out of sticky tape,
possibly pages from which Mercier might have wanted to read in the
courtroom. On all but two of these pages, there is some reference to les-
bianism.
85
 In the margins Mercier has written: 'lesbianism' and 'sex act'
(each of these is repeated several times); 'lesbian crave' (56); 'menage a
trois' (87); 'homosexual' (32); 'act of lesbianism' (125). The one scene of
lesbian seduction is marked 'all previous chapters lead to but this one
climax' (46); passages prior to this are marked 'preparation' (34) and
'build-up' (12 and 36), presumably referring to the scene of lesbian
seduction. There are no tags on the parts where heterosexual women
find themselves pregnant, or where they discuss their plans to sleep
with married men, or where they attempt suicide. The definition of
immorality at work here is too narrow to include them. For Mercier,
what made this book obscene was its discussion of lesbianism.
Even one of the expert witnesses for the defence, Toronto Globe and
Mail writer J.A. McAree, claimed that lesbianism was the 'theme' of the
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case against Obscenity 161
book.
86
 Certainly, he and his colleagues did nothing to challenge the
alignment of lesbianism with immorality. In fact, the basis of defence
arguments was that Torres's novel served the public good by warning its
readers, especially young women, about the dangers of lesbianism.
Allan Seiger, a professor at the University of Michigan, tried to under-
score the relationship of the lesbian activity to the war: 'These women
are to be regarded, I think, as much casualties of the war as other sol-
diers ,..'
87
 John Bakless, a journalism professor at the University of New
York, stated that the book presented the lesbian episodes as being 'posi-
tively repulsive to any normal male or female.'
88
 He also said that in 'the
context of the book as a whole they clearly point out that the wages of
sin is death.'
89
 But, asks Mercier, is it not likely that
a little girl who is not maybe a French woman in the same barracks, but who
is in [a] convent or in a boarding school reaching the puberty age, does not
know anything about these things, reads this passage from this book,
wouldn't you say they would be willing to indulge in this practice to see if it
is as described?
A: I have read that book through, and I wouldn't want to be near a lesbian. Don't
forget what happens...
Q: And you do not think they would be tempted to try lesbianism?
A: No, sir, there is disaster there too plainly, and it is only with sympathy and
regret that you can read it ...
90
What happens is that Ursula, the sixteen-year-old, sleeps with Claude,
the older bisexual woman, and falls in love with her. Claude 'toys' with
Ursula emotionally. In her tormented state, Ursula is unable to muster
feelings for a male Polish soldier who is pursuing her. Later, she tries to
have sex with a male French sailor. But she is not up to it, and he ends up
treating her like a little sister during the several days and nights they
spend together. After this, Ursula's affections for Claude diminish. She
falls in love with the Polish soldier, they plan to marry, they have sex,
she gets pregnant, and he goes off to the front and is killed. In despair,
she kills herself. It is a disaster, certainly. But the sequence of events is
hardly caused by her one night of lesbian sex.
However, it is not Mercier's reading of the plot that stands out here;
rather it is his attempt, and that of his opponent, to present the text as
having powerful social consequences. What might the book do to young
women in particular? Oddly, it is Mercier and his collection of expert
witnesses who argue that the picture of lesbianism painted by Torres is
162 The Trouble with Normal
an inviting one. Indeed, its attractiveness is what makes it dangerous.
They refer several times to the passage where Ursula finds herself in bed
with Claude - the only explicitly 'lesbian sex' scene in the book. (Not
surprisingly, the markings in the margins of Mercier's copy of the book
become quite frenzied at this point):
Ursula felt herself very small, tiny against Claude, and at last she felt warm. She
placed her cheek on Claude's breast. Her heart beat violently, but she didn't feel
afraid. She didn't understand what was happening to her. Claude was not a
man; then what was she doing to her? What strange movements! What could
they mean? Claude unbuttoned the jacket of her pajamas, and enclosed one of
Ursula's little breasts in her hand, and then gently, very gently, her hand began
to caress all of Ursula's body, her throat, her shoulders, and her belly. Ursula
remembered a novel that she had read that said of a woman who was making
love, 'Her body vibrated like a violin.' Ursula had been highly pleased by this
phrase, and now her body recalled the expression and it too began to vibrate.
She was stretched out with her eyes closed, motionless, not daring to make the
slightest gesture, indeed not knowing what she should do. And Claude kissed
her gently, and caressed her ... All at once, her insignificant and monotonous life
had become full, rich and marvellous ... Ursula wanted only one thing, to keep
this refuge forever, this warmth, this security. (45)
What would become of a normal teenage girl who read this passage?
Adult women, surely, would have the moral strength to resist the temp-
tation such a'positive image might hold. But teenagers, their moral char-
acters not yet fully developed, would be less able to distinguish right
from wrong. According to Isabelle Finlayson - Crown witness, mother
of two, and member of the Ottawa school board and numerous women's
groups - teens had not had enough experience to 'be expected to form
their [moral] standards, therefore, they would take it [the lesbian sexual
activity] as a proper conduct, as conduct accepted generally/
91
 Finlayson
seems to be saying that teens had not yet had time to bring their stan-
dards in line with socially approved ones. They were still, in a sense,
moral works-in-progress who might choose pleasure over indignation
and denial.
According to Rev. Terrence Findlay, another Crown witness, the dan-
ger of the seduction scene was that a young girl might read such a pas-
sage and be enticed to experiment. A young girl, he said, is only
'beginning to form within her' a knowledge and experience of sex and
is, therefore, 'intensely curious.' Findlay suggested that if a girl had not
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case against Obscenity 163
already received training about the dangers of lesbianism, the book
might 'have a tendency to suggest to that girl that here is a way of satis-
fying sexual desires without the danger of consorting with male com-
panions.'
92
 This kind of literature, he said, tended to sway normal girls
towards the abnormal, by making the latter seem both attractive and
possible.
Ford tried to counter Findlay's position by emphasizing the 'normal-
ity' of most teenaged readers. Is it not likely that the pleasure of the
seduction scene would be annulled by the scene where Ursula finds her-
self unable to have sexual relations with the French sailor? For Ford,
these two scenes are intimately linked - lesbian sex leads to frigidity
with men. Would not a 'normal teen-age girl' with 'normal sexual reac-
tions' be 'nauseated' by Ursula's 'abnormal relations' - the latter phrase
referring both to sex with a woman and an inability to have sex with a
man?
93
Ford wanted Women's Barracks to be taken up as a cautionary tale that
might warn young women of the dangers of lesbianism, and in this way
might serve the public good. No one disagreed with him over the need
for this, although Crown witnesses rejected Torres's book as appropriate
to the task. But, asked Ford, were they not all better informed on the sub-
ject after having read the novel? Isabelle Finlayson, in particular, claimed
she had known nothing about lesbianism before she read the book. How
then, asked Ford, could she possibly have warned her daughter of les-
bian dangers? Ford's argument had nothing to do with the book's effects
on Finlayson herself; as an adult she was assumed to be beyond its influ-
ence, capable of reaching her own conclusions on such a vexing moral
issue. Someone like Finlayson, well schooled in popular discourses
about sexual deviance and perversion, would have been able to see past
the pleasure of the seduction scene to the downfall which would inevita-
bly follow. A teenaged girl, on the other hand, needed to have that
downfall made explicit. According to Ford, Torres's novel did just that. It
provided the context that schoolgirl gossip and curbside chatter about
lesbianism might not.
Judge McDougall did not accept Ford's case. In his judgment he
wrote:
[The book] deals almost entirely with the question of sex relationships and also
with the question of lesbianism. A great deal of the language, and particularly
the description of two incidents of unnatural relationships between women, is
exceedingly frank. The argument advanced before me was that publicity should
164 The Trouble with Normal
be given to the question of lesbianism in order that it might act as a deterrent
influence and in this respect would be a matter of public good. The dissemina-
tion of such information is no doubt a matter that should receive proper atten-
tion from a medical and psychological standpoint, but the manner in which the
material is presented in this book does not comply with those standards in any
94
manner.
The underlying assumption, on both sides, indeed the basis of the
obscenity charge, was that a pulp novel could have a harmful impact on
young people who read it. The test of obscenity used by Canadian courts
demanded that Davis and Ford take this as their starting point.
In 1953, Women's Barracks was the focus of another trial in St Paul,
Minnesota, where notions of the corruptibility of young people were not
embedded in the definition of obscenity and therefore had no sway over
the final judgment: 'In conclusion, therefore, it is the opinion of the
Court that the book, Women's Barracks, does not have a substantive ten-
dency to deprave or corrupt by inciting lascivious thoughts or arousing
lustful desire in the ordinary reader in this community in these times. It
is the finding of the Court that the likelihood of its having such a sala-
cious effect does not outweigh the literary merit it may have in the
hands of the average reader.'
95
Notions of adolescence as a time of rapid and profound change echoed
widespread fears about change in the society at large. As the progression
of one's adolescence was seen to determine the shape of one's adult-
hood, so too the collective progress of living, breathing adolescents was
thought to indicate the shape Canadian society would take in the future.
In this sense, youth operated as a metaphor for the development of the
society as a whole: if they turned out all right, it was assumed the nation
would be fine, too. But, after two decades of turmoil, such an outcome
was not guaranteed.
It is in this context that ideas about the moral and physical capacities of
young people were able to help constitute the limits of sexual discourse.
The desire to 'protect' youth and the future they were assumed to repre-
sent helped to motivate broad-ranging initiatives of moral and sexual
regulation - such as the conviction of National News, the banning of
crime comics, and the implementation of the senate special committee -
that took not only youth but adults as their objects. Common-sense ideas
about the nature of adolescent moral and sexual development contrib-
uted to the setting of limits on how and where sexuality could be
Corruptibility, Youth, and the Case against Obscenity 165
expressed or represented and by whom. Some adults saw teenagers as
being under the control of their blossoming sex drives. These adults
wanted to set limits on public discussions of sexuality because they
feared it would set teens off on an orgy of experimentation. Other adults
were less concerned about the impulses of puberty and the exigencies of
hormones than they were about teenagers' moral immaturity. They wor-
ried that boys and girls faced with sexual information or images would
be unable to distinguish right from wrong and thus might 'innocently'
engage in questionable activities. In both perspectives, notions of sexual-
ity as potentially dangerous, as destabilizing and morally charged, com-
bined with ideas about the nature of puberty and adolescent develop-
ment to curtail public discussion of sex.
The relationship between discourses about sexuality and discourses
about youth - especially the way these combined to conduct social anxi-
eties around a broad range of issues - was central to the generation of
the moral panic around obscenity. At stake in the furore over mass-mar-
ket publications were accepted standards of sexual morality, standards
that affected both young people and adults. Indecent material, in its var-
ious guises, offered competing ways of making sense of sex, morals, and
relationships. Comics and trashy novels contradicted the many efforts to
transform teenagers into 'fine moral citizens' that were commonplace in
English Canada during the late 1940s and 1950s. The discourses made
available in the pulps threatened the complex of processes through
which particular forms of heterosexual expression were normalized.
Comics, girlie magazines, and trashy novels suggested alternative ways
of organizing sexuality, ones that might upset the dominance of a
family-centred, monogamous heterosexuality. At bottom, indecent liter-
ature challenged dominant sexual and moral standards and these, as
much as individual young people, were assumed to need protecting.
8
Conclusion
As a concept, heterosexuality was not yet sixty years old as the Second
World War ended. Still, it had already evolved considerably: from a cate-
gory of deviant sexual behaviour, to a classification of sexual object
choice, to the basis of successful marriages, to a marker of the maturity
and ability to conform that were critical to social reckoning at mid-cen-
tury. Moreover, between the 1920s and the 1940s, definitions of hetero-
sexuality came to encompass notions about proper gender roles, about
the nature of sexualized relationships between women and men, and
about the emotional and psychic development of individuals. Indeed,
by the late 1940s, the meanings of heterosexuality had expanded to such
an extent that its hegemonic position in Canadian culture - as repre-
sented by the number of Canadians marrying and starting families -
was read as a marker of national stability.
Clearly, heterosexuality is not reducible to any type of natural or bio-
logical essence. Neither is it a simple matter of sexual attraction between
women and men, nor of the particular forms of sexual behaviour
women and men might engage in with each other. Heterosexuality is a
discursively constituted social category that organizes relations not only
between women and men, but also between those who fit definitions of
heterosexuality and those who do not, and between adults and youth.
Heterosexuality also helps to constitute relations of class, ethnicity, and
race. It is frequently made meaningful by way of non-sexual discourses,
and, in turn, these discourses are themselves sexualized.
The ability to lay claim to a definition of normality was a crucial
marker of postwar social belonging. To be marked as sexually 'abnor-
mal' in any way was to throw into question the possibility of achieving
or maintaining status as an adult, as a 'responsible citizen/ as a valued
Conclusion 167
contributor to the social whole. Normal sexuality, as constructed in post-
war advice books, films, magazines, and sex-education curricula, in
legal, medical, psychological, and popular discourses, was invariably
the preserve of married, monogamous, adult heterosexual couples who
produced children, and of the adolescent girls and boys who were pre-
paring themselves to fit into that model. That young people could 'pre-
pare for' or be prepared for normal sexuality is a central aspect of
postwar sexual discourses. With the rise of developmental psychology,
so-called normal sexuality was understood to be an emotional and psy-
chic achievement. While this process played itself out on biological ter-
rain, biology alone was not enough to guarantee one's normalness.
Hence the tremendous impulse, expressed by many adults, to intervene
in teenage sexual development.
Teens were assumed, in many senses, to be works-in-progress, mallea-
ble and easily influenced - characteristics that many adults thought
could facilitate their turning into either delinquents or model, sexually
responsible citizens. As a group, therefore, teens were often the targets
of an 'ideal' sexual knowledge intended to guide them towards matu-
rity. Youth were portrayed in popular media and sex education materials
as the 'parents of the future/ a formulation which brought teen sexual
development to social prominence and aligned it with the development
of society as a whole. Given this, it is not surprising that teenagers were
frequently the ground over which the boundaries of normative sexuality
were negotiated and reinforced. But young people were not simply the
targets of sexual knowledge. Notions about their moral and physical
capacities also helped to constitute sexual discourse in a more general
sense. The desire to 'protect' youth and the future they were assumed to
represent helped to motivate broad-ranging initiatives of moral and
sexual regulation that took adults and young people as their objects.
Common-sense ideas about the nature of adolescent sexual and moral
development contributed to the setting of limits on how and where sex-
uality could be expressed or represented, and by whom. Some adults
saw teenagers as being under the control of their blossoming sex drives.
These adults wanted to set limits on public discussions of sexuality
because they feared such discussions would set teens off in an orgy of
experimentation. Other adults were less concerned about the impulses
of puberty and the exigencies of hormones than they were about teenag-
ers' moral immaturity. They worried that boys and girls faced with sex-
ual information or images would be unable to distinguish right from
wrong and thus, 'innocently,' might engage in questionable activities. In
168 The Trouble with Normal
both perspectives, notions of sexuality as potentially dangerous, destabi-
lizing, and morally charged combined with ideas about the nature of
puberty and adolescent development to curtail public discussion of sex
- as we saw in previous chapters in debates over both sex education and
indecent literature.
As a concept, 'youth' was part of what made postwar sexual dis-
courses work. Regulatory efforts that were promoted as a means of 'pro-
tecting the children' carried a certain moral weight that both justified
their existence and increased the likelihood of their success. In this
framework, images and discussions of juvenile delinquency operated as
the possible fate of young people who were left 'unprotected.' While
delinquency had many social meanings in the postwar years, it was rou-
tinely invoked as a sexual category, as the consequence of the moral cor-
ruption of youth, or of youthful sexuality run amok. In either case, fears
about delinquency contributed to calls for regulation that would control
the sexual activities of young people and efforts that would steer teen-
age morality in the right direction.
The centrality of youth in postwar sexual discourses was a product of
the particular social conditions of the era. After six years of war and the
decade-long Depression that had preceded them, Canadians were not
always trusting of what the future might bring. They worried about the
rise of the cold war and expressed fears about the fragility of the nascent
peace and prosperity. At the same time, people revelled in the allied vic-
tory over fascism and demonstrated a heightened faith in democracy.
Technological change and the increasing availability of consumer goods
put 'modern life' within the reach of large segments of the Canadian
population. These contradictory aspects of postwar life combined to ori-
ent Canadians in a profound way towards home, family, and stability.
Nuclear families would help protect Canadians against the insecurities
of the age. They would also provide the base for the growing consumer
economy and for the democracy that was promoted as the route to vic-
tory in the cold war. Families were understood to be the primary stabi-
lizing influence on both individuals and the nation as a whole.
In this context, postwar youth, as the 'parents of the future,' would
prove critical to Canada's success or failure in the modern age. As a col-
lectivity, youth were represented in popular discourses as a product of
both wartime disruptions and modern prosperity. The social progress of
adolescents was read by many as an indication of the shape society
would take in the future. While the 'youth problem' was taken up as a
sign of social disarray, the confidence of 'modern' teens was seen as a
Conclusion 169
sign of postwar progress. Issues of sexuality could determine which of
these images was prominent or appropriate at any given time for partic-
ular groups of young people. Were they behaving 'normally' or not? If
teenagers were normal - that is, if they met the social norms through
which sexual normality was constituted - popular discourses suggested
that the future would be normal too.
This study is primarily concerned with the way that definitions of nor-
mality - definitions under which heterosexuality was subsume d - oper-
ated as and within forms of social and moral regulation. In particular, it
addresses the way that normality was not simply 'imposed' on young
people but was something they came to desire, or, as Nikolas Rose puts
it, the way that personal desires fell into line with the 'needs' of postwar
social and political formations - the way those formations helped to
'shape the private self.'
1
1 have sketched out some of the ways in which
the desire to be normal was constituted in young people in the postwar
period, the ways in which normality was normalized. From school cur-
ricula to legal sanctions against so-called delinquent behaviour to os-
tracism for teen pregnancy, we can see how sexual normality was
constructed in class, gender, and race-specific ways as the path to social
acceptance and future happiness. Discourses about the importance of
normality were so pervasive in the postwar period that alternatives to
them were hard to imagine, although, of course, some people did man-
age to. It's through this kind of restriction of possibility in people's lives
that the process of normalization goes to work, homogenizing the social
fabric, erasing differences among individuals, and encouraging confor-
mity. Thus, postwar sex education curricula presented only a single,
Anglo-Saxon, middle-class version of the family, advice books failed to
account for sexual variations, and discourses about indecent literature
tried to curtail the accessibility of some forms of sexual representation.
Dominant versions of sexuality were thereby constructed as the only
'natural' forms of sexuality - as the normal ones.
That normality was understood to be 'natural,' to be a self-evident cat-
egory, only made it more effective as a standard by which individuals
were measured and categorized, as a means of moral regulation. What's
natural cannot be challenged or changed. It is assumed to be inevitable.
In this book I have begun to unpack 'normality' as a complex discursive
construction. Future research might also try to account for how postwar
young people negotiated normalizing discourses. In suggesting here the
ways that these discourses achieved their power, I don't mean to con-
170 The Trouble with Normal
struct them as completely determining of teenage behaviour and iden-
tity-formation. Obviously, as lesbian and gay oral histories have shown,
not everyone was willing or able to conform to mainstream sexual stan-
dards.
2
 The discussion of sexual discourses in this book offers a starting
point for oral histories which might point to the ways postwar teenagers
understood dominant notions of sexuality. How do present-day adults
feel mainstream sexual discourses affected their lives, the choices they
made, and their understanding of their own sexualities?
As a study of dominance, of a taken-for-granted category like heterosex-
uality, this project raises interesting methodological questions. As femi-
nists have frequently suggested, dominant categories function as the
default categories of everyday discourse; they rarely need to announce
themselves. As with maleness, for instance, heterosexuality's dominance
over other forms of sexual expression makes its social presence obvious.
It is not surprising, then, that I had few opportunities to deal with evi-
dence that explicitly articulates, say, a position on heterosexuality or a
definition of what it should look like. To put it in very simple terms, the
word 'heterosexuality' rarely appeared in the sources I used for my
research. My study of it has been based on the interpretation of evidence
that 'points to' heterosexuality. It has been based on the analysis of dis-
courses through which the meanings of heterosexuality are constructed.
Analytic strategies inspired by linguistic theories suggest the impor-
tance of looking for meaning in the spaces between social categories, in
the binary oppositions through which these categories are constituted.
3
In these analyses, one learns, for instance, about whiteness by studying
the way it is counterposed to racialized 'others/ One learns about mas-
culinity by analysing its relationship to femininity. While this can prove
to be an extremely useful strategy, as I have found, there are limits to its
usefulness when one is trying to analyse the dominant side of a hierar-
chical opposition. In my experience, one can't always draw from a well
of difference to make sense of historical concepts.
In practice, it is not always easy or even possible to determine which
categories are in fact in opposition to each other, to determine the two
sides of any particular binary. In such cases, a historical analysis permits
one to construct meaning from the evolution of categories over time. The
category 'heterosexuality,' for instance, has undergone substantial
change over the course of a single century as it has been produced and
reproduced within shifting discursive formations and practices. The role
of the researcher is to try to identify those formations, to pull them apart,
Conclusion 171
and to suggest how meaning might have been constructed through
them.
It is important not to essentialize the space of difference between cate-
gories, to dehistoricize it, to render it fixed. While I began this project
wanting to know the space of difference between homo- and heterosexu-
alities, it later became clear to me that the opposition between these cate-
gories was not a simple one in the late 1940s and the 1950s. The
homosexual/heterosexual opposition was not always the most mean-
ingful way for me to learn about heterosexuality. As either side of a
binary shifts, the space between the two sides shifts as well. The rela-
tionship between the centre and the margins is a historical construction
that evolves over time and in specific social contexts. It needs to be anal-
ysed in this light.
Jonathan Ned Katz suggests that the twenty years immediately after the
Second World War were the climax of the consolidation of 'heterosexual
hegemony.'
4
 He claims that these two decades were a time in which
dominant notions of heterosexual behaviour and identity were rarely
challenged; I have to agree with him. We can be thankful that this epi-
sode in the history of heterosexuality was not a particularly long one. In
the late 1960s, its hegemonic position was shaken by the emerging
movements around feminism and lesbian and gay liberation. And while
we are yet to be free of heterosexuality as a powerful social, sexual, or
political institution, its grip over the population as a whole has dimin-
ished somewhat. Certainly it has ceased to be the only option as a mode
of sexual expression. Moreover, definitions of heterosexuality have
changed over the last few decades. In the 1990s one can engage, for
instance, in extramarital heterosexual sexual activity and still conform to
mainstream definitions of sexual normality; or one can stay single with-
out fear of severe social ostracism. It seems that over the last three
decades the fit between normality and social norms has grown looser.
What does not seem to have diminished, however, is the importance of
normality itself as a social classification.
These changes in the social definition of sexuality are, at least in part,
at the root of current nostalgia for the 1950s, those good old days of the
'traditional family' and stable marriages. Present-day conservatives like
to remember the postwar period as the lost era of family values. What
American sociologist Wini Breines has suggested, in her study of white
teenage girls in the 1950s, is that the 'family values' that are so fre-
quently mourned by today's right wing are exactly the values that led
172 The Trouble with Normal
postwar teenagers to participate in the various social-protest move-
ments of the 1960s.
5
 Of course, members of right-wing groups draw
quite different conclusions. In recent years their speeches and deputa-
tions before the Toronto Board of Education and the Metropolitan Tor-
onto Council have protested the development of an anti-homophobia
curriculum for Toronto schools and called for funding cuts to lesbian
and gay arts groups.
6
 In Ontario they helped to defeat Bill 167 which
would have granted same-sex benefits and family-recognition rights to
lesbians and gay men. Most recently, social/moral conservatives on the
Liberal backbenches were almost successful in blocking federal support
for sexual, orientation protection. It took a public tongue-lashing of the
Chretien government by Human Rights commissioner Max Yalden to
move the Liberals past their fear of addressing sexual inequities. That
those who are against such measures often claim to be so for the sake of
their children suggests that, while discourses about sexuality have cer-
tainly changed since the 1950s, there continues to be a way they can be
read through discourses about youth. Future studies might point to the
ways the relationship between these two sets of discourses has evolved
and to the reasons for the relationship's persistence. Future studies
might also speculate on the possibility of some day reaching a point
when sex will no longer be able to catalyse fear and narrow-mindedness
- when sex will no longer make sense as something from which young
people need to be protected.
Notes
Chapter 1: Introduction
1 'The Trouble With Normal' appears on Bruce Cockburn's album of the same
name, True North Records, 1983 (title used with permission). Cockburn's lyr-
ics decry the 'normalness' of a pervasive neocolonial capitalism.
2 Stephanie Coontz gives an excellent account of this kind of 'nostalgia' in her
book, The Way We Never Were.
3 For examples of postwar Canadian lesbian and gay history, see: Chamber-
land, Memoires lesbiennes; Chenier, 'Tough Ladies and Troublemakers'; and
Churchill, 'Coming out in a Cold Climate.'
4 Both well, Drummond, and English, Canada since 1945,238.
5 Bumsted, 'Canada and American Culture in the 1950s,' 400.
6 Foucault, 'Questions of Method,' 10.
7 For discussions of discourse, see the following by Foucault: Power/Knowledge;
The History of Sexuality; 'Questions of Method'; and 'The Subject and Power.'
The following texts have also been useful: Belsey, Critical Practice; Weedon,
Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory; Henriques et al., Changing the
Subject.
8 For discussions of the linguistic and political emergence of the homosexual,
see: Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain, from the Nineteenth
Century to the Present; Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1; and Jonathan
Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac.
9 Jonathan Ned Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality, 54.
10 Ibid., 19.
11 Ibid., 86.
12 Ibid., 81.
13 Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis (numerous editions; English translations
174 Notes to pages 8-17
are generally of the 12th, revised edition, originally published in the United
States in 1906).
14 Chauncey, Gay New York, 13.
15 Ibid., 111-27; see also, Kevin White, The First Sexual Revolution.
16 Simmons, 'Modern Sexuality and the Myth of Victorian Repression,' 160.
17 Ibid., 162.
18 See, for early examples of this argument: Radicalesbians, 'The Woman-Identi-
fied Woman'; Rubin, 'The Traffic in Women'; Myron and Bunch, eds, Lesbian-
ism and the Women's Movement.
19 As exceptions to this, see: Resources for Feminist Research, special issue on
'Confronting Heterosexuality'; Feminism and Psychology, special issue on het-
erosexuality; The latter was expanded and published as Wilkinson and
Kitzinger, eds, Heterosexuality: A Feminism and Psychology Reader. George
Chauncey's Gay New York is an excellent discussion of the emergence of het-
erosexuality and the influence it had on gay lives in New York City in the
early part of this century.
20 Rich, 'Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence'. Rich has
changed her position on some of the material in the article; see her essay,
'Towards a Politics of Location.'
21 Dubinsky, Improper Advances.
22 Michel Foucault, cited by Martin, 'Feminism, Criticism and Foucault/ 6.
23 Urwin, 'Constructing Motherhood: The Persuasion of Normal Development,'
165.
24 Henriques et al., Changing the Subject, 218.
25 See Reisman, The Lonely Crowd.
26 Hacking, 'Normal.' Thanks to Ian Hacking for sharing his notes with me and
thanks, too, to James Heap for bringing the paper to my attention.
27 Ibid., 13.
28 Thanks to James Heap for pointing this out to me.
29 Corrigan and Sayer, The Great Arch, 4.
30 Foucault, History of Sexuality, 116. See also his Discipline and Punish.
31 Johnston, 'What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?' 23.
32 Foucault, History of Sexuality, 11.
33 Ibid., especially part I.
34 Frank Mort's Dangerous Sexualities, a study of the relationship between sexu-
ality and public health measures during the cholera epidemics in England in
the 1930s, gives excellent examples of the type of displacement I am talking
about.
35 Bumsted, 'Canada and American Culture in the 1950s,' 399.
36 Ibid., 402.
Notes to pages 17-23 175
37 Ibid., 405.
38 Fraser Sutherland, The Monthly Epic, 182.
Chapter 2: Sexuality and the Postwar Domestic 'Revival'
1 Owram, Born at the Right Time; lacovetta, Such Hardworking People; Whitaker
and Marcuse, Cold War Canada.
2 Meyerowitz, 'Introduction/ in Not June Cleaver, 4; May, Homeward Bound.
3 Finkel, Conrad, and Strong-Boag, History of the Canadian Peoples, 384.
4 For a discussion of women war workers, see Pierson, 'They're Still Women
after All'; and Joan Sangster, 'Doing Two Jobs.' For a discussion of Canadi-
ans'reluctance to accept non-northern European immigrants and refugees,
see lacovetta, Such Hardworking People.
5 Owram, Born at the Right Time.
6 Parr, ed., 'Introduction,' A Diversity of Women, 5.
7 Finkel, Conrad, and Strong-Boag, History of the Canadian Peoples, 429-30.
8 Francis, Jones, and Smith, Destinies: Canadian History since Confederation, 338-
9 and 353.
9 Finkel, Conrad, and Strong-Boag, History of the Canadian Peoples, 331.
10 Dempsey, Chatelaine editorial, 1.
11 See, for example: Canadian Youth Commission, Youth, Marriage and the Fam-
ily; Franks, 'A Note to Brides,' 29ff; Marriage Today, a film produced by
McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1950.
12 Advertisement for Christian Family Week, Toronto Daily Star, 2 May 1947.
13 The idea that strong families are the root of social stability has been a recur-
ring theme in the face of capitalism's rise and evolution. For a discussion of
this see: Ursel, Private Lives, Public Policy; Dehli, 'Women and Class.'
14 May, Homeward Bound, 10.
15 Whitaker and Marcuse, Cold War Canada.
16 Finkel, Conrad, and Strong-Boag, History of the Canadian Peoples, 426-7.
17 Advertisement for Education Week, Telegram, 11 Apr. 1946.
18 Saunders, 'What's the Biggest Thing in Our New Half Century?' 6.
19 Ibid., 53.
20 Adele White, 'Let's Abolish Those Atom Bomb Blues/ 6-7ff.
21 Whitaker and Marcuse, Cold War Canada, chs 2-4.
22 Scher, The Un-Canadians, 8.
23 Ibid., 9.
24 Girard, 'From Subversion to Liberation/ 3.
25 Hannant, The Infernal Machine, 144. For discussion of the Security Panel, also
see Whitaker and Marcuse, Cold War Canada, ch. 7.
176 Notes to pages 23-9
26 Girard, 'From Subversion to Liberation/ 4. Also see Kinsman, '"Characte r
Weaknesses" and "Fruit Machines."'
27 Sawatsky, Men in the Shadows, 116.
28 Cited in Scher, The Un-Canadians, 81.
29 Sawatsky, Men in the Shadows, 126.
30 See Girard, 'From Subversion to Liberation.'
31 Kinsman '"Character Weaknesses," and "Fruit Machines'"; also Robinson
and Kimmel, The Queer Career of Homosexual Security Vetting in Cold War
Canada.'
32 Franks, 'A Note to Brides,' 29.
33 Golz, 'Family Matters.'
34 The quotation is from a pamphlet produced by the Canadian Youth Commis-
sion, 'Speak Your Peace: Suggestions for Discussion by Youth,' Bulletin No.
Two - Youth and Family Life, NAC, MG 28 111, vol. 64 (Ontario Committee).
35 For an example of discussions about the family as a site of democracy, see:
the National Film Board films Family Circles, produced in 1949, and Making a
Decision in the Family (1957); Osborne, 'Democracy Begins in the Home.' For
discussions about the family as the primary site of moral education, see
newspaper debates about the introduction of sex education into school class-
rooms: 'Board of Education Considers Courses in Sex Education'; 'No Need
for Haste.'
36 Alison Prentice et al., Canadian Women: A Histojy, 323.
37 Seeley, Sim, and Loosley, Crestwood Heights, 3.
38 Ibid., 20 (emphasis in original).
39 Joan Sangster, 'Doing Two Jobs,' 99-100.
40 Li, The Making of Post-War Canada, 97.
41 lacovetta, 'Remaking Their Lives,' 143.
42 lacovetta, 'Making '"New Canadians."'
43 See, for example: Arnup , Education for Motherhood; Comacchio, Nations Are
Built of Babies.
44 Seeley, Sim, and Loosley, Crestwood Heights, 4. See also, Owram, Born at the
Right Time.
45 Seeley, Sim, and Loosley, Crestwood Heights, 161.
46 Ibid., 165.
47 See, for example: Owram, Born at the Right Time, or May, Homeward Bound.
48 May, Homeward Bound, 11.
49 A Date with Your Family, a Simmel-Meservey Release, produced by Edward C.
Simmel and written by Arthur V. Jones (no date, appears to be mid-1950s).
50 Golz talks about how discursive constructions of the 'happy united family'
were 'interlinked with an idealized notion of the "Canadian family" as both
Notes to pages 29-34 177
the social foundation and the metaphorical microcosm of Canadian nation-
hood.' See her 'Family Matters/ 49.
51 Starting in the late 1940s, Chatelaine published numerous articles about
women's fate in the suburban middle-class family. Features and editorials
mentioned the 'something missing' in women's lives, a sense of unease and
dissatisfaction. See, for instance: 'Unhappy Wives,' 2. For discussion of Chate-
laine as a source of material that challenged prevailing ideologies, see
Korinek, 'Roughing It in Suburbia.' Also, Friedan, The Feminine Mystique.
52 Hutton, 'The Future of the Family: A Maclean's Report/ 74.
53 Owram, Born at the Right Time, 12.
54 Alison Prentice et al., Canadian Women, 311.
55 Ibid.
56 Cited by Hutton, 'The Future of the Family/ 76.
57 Nash, 'It's Time Father Got Back in the Family/ 28.
58 Cited in May, Homeward Bound, 80.
59 Milliard, A Woman Doctor Looks at Love and Life, 94.
60 Ibid., 99.
61 Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men, 20.
62 Franks, 'A Note to Brides/ 29ff.
63 Morris, 'Give the Childless Couple a Break/ 11 ff.
64 Anonymous, 'I'm Not Having Any/ 14.
65 Chatelaine (June 1947): 6.
66 The article was 'A Note to Brides/ by Ruth MacLachlan Franks, M.D. (see
above, nnll, 62).
67 lacovetta, 'Making "New Canadians."'
68 Seeley, Sim, and Loosley, Crestwood Heights, 426.
69 Seidman, Romantic Longings, 118.
70 Marion Milliard's book and her regular columns in Chatelaine frequently
espoused the importance of sexual happiness in marriage.
71 For discussions of North American women's sexual dissatisfactions during
the 1950s, see: Breines, Young, White, and Miserable; and Harvey, The Fifties: A
Woman's Oral History.
72 Morris, 'Don't Let Your Girl Friends Ruin Your Marriage/ 26.
73 Seidman, Romantic Longings, 94.
74 Strong-Boag, 'Home Dreams/ 479.
75 Lautenslager, 'A Minister's Frank Talk to Brides and Grooms/ 98-9.
76 See, especially, Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men.
77 Reisman, The Lonely Crowd.
78 Ehrenreich, Fear of Falling, 34.
79 Anglin, 'Who Has Won the War between the Sexes?' 12.
178 Notes to pages 34-9
80 lacovetta, 'Making "New Canadians/" 276.
81 Ibid., 70.
82 Costello, Love, Sex and War, 9.
83 In the year after the war the divorce rate tripled, as hastily constructed war-
time marriages withered under more prolonged consideration. But between
1947 and 1951 rates were relatively stable. Between 1951 and 1968, the
divorce rate rose steadily from 88.9 to 124.3 divorces per 100,000 married per-
sons (Alison Prentice et al., Canadian Women: A History, 323).
84 'Church Group Would Study Sex Education.'
85 For a discussion of the Canadian birth-control movement, see McLaren and
McLaren, The Bedroom and the State. On excitement about the pill, see Anglin,
'The Pill That Could Shake the World,' 16-17. Letters, for and against
Anglin's article appear in Chatelaine (Dec. 1953), 3.
86 See Kinsman, The Regulation of Desire, and the National Film Board film For-
bidden Love, directed by Aerlyn Weissman and Lynne Fernie, 1992.
87 The menstruation article, 'High School Huddle,' was written by Adele White,
26-7. It was followed by both positive and negative letters. The letter com-
plaining about 'the ungainly display of limbs' appeared in Chatelaine (Nov.
1952): 2. And the complaint about psychiatry, from a reader wondering why
'every issue has to have an article about sex,' appeared in Chatelaine (Oct.
1949): 14.
88 Pomeroy, Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research, 265.
89 Ibid., 273.
90 Ibid., 360, 363.
91 Ketchum, 'Turning New Leaves/ 44-5; Sandwell, 'Statistical Method Applied
to Sex Shows New and Surprising Results/ 12; Seeley and Griffin, 'The Kin-
sey Report/ 40-2; Rumming, 'Dr. Kinsey and the Human Female/ 7-8; Kidd,
Review of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, 45-6. For a less positive critique,
see Hughes, 'Kinsey Again: Leers or Cheers?' lOff. For a bona-fide anti-Kin-
sey rant, see the review by 'E.J.M./ 50ff.
92 Dempsey, 'Dr. Kinsey Talks about Women to Lotta Dempsey/ 10-11.
93 Sandwell, 'Statistical Method Applied to Sex/ 12.
94 Irvine, Disorders of Desire, 54.
95 Ketchum, Turning New Leaves/ 45.
96 Sandwell, 'Statistical Method Applied to Sex.'
97 Hughes, 'Kinsey Again: Leers or Cheers?' 10.
98 May, Homeward Bound, ch. 4.
Chapter 3: Hope for the Future or Repercussions of the Past
1 'Low Standards of Conduct Handicap Work of Schools.'
Notes to pages 40-8 179
2 This point is made nicely by Constance Nathanson in the title of her book,
Dangerous Passage: The Social Control of Sexuality in Women's Adolescence.
3 Alison Prentice et al., Canadian Women: A History, 311.
4 For a discussion of the relationship between mothers in the labour force and
fears about juvenile delinquency, see Pierson, 'They're Still Women after All,'
50; and, Susan Prentice, 'Militant Mothers in Domestic Times.'
5 Gillis, Youth and History, 182.
6 Pass, The Damned and the Beautiful.
7 Doherty, Teenagers and Teenpics, 44.
8 Ibid., 51.
9 Seeley, Sim, and Loosley, Crestwood Heights.
10 The Meaning of Adolescence, produced by McGraw Hill Books, 1953; The Teens,
produced by Crawley Films for the National Film Board, 1957; Who Is Sylvia ?,
produced by the National Film Board, 1957.
11 G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology,
Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education.
12 Ross, G. Stanley Hall, 333.
13 Kett, .Rztes of Passage, 218.
14 Ibid., 217.
15 Ross, G. Stanley Hall, 332.
16 Paul Axelrod notes that G.S. Hall spoke in Toronto in 1891 at a meeting of the
National Education Association. Axelrod says that evidence that Hall's theo-
ries were used and influential in Canada can be found in McKee, 'Voluntary
Youth Organizations in Toronto, 1880-1930,' ch. 2. See Axelrod, Making a
Middle Class, 188 n47.
17 Ross, G. Stanley Hall, 329.
18 G.S. Hall, Adolescence, 457.
19 Calhoun, 'The Child Mind as a Social Product,' 80.
20 Landis, Adolescence and Youth, 51.
21 Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa, 2.
22 Mead, 'Adolescence in Primitive and Modern Society,' 174.
23 Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, 216.
24 Cited by Kett, Rites of Passage, 134.
25 Ibid., 134.
26 Hollingshead, Elmtown's Youth, 6.
27 Ibid., 6 n9. The study he referred to was by Wayne Dennis, 'The Adolescent.'
28 Landis, Adolescence and Youth, 2nd ed., 47.
29 Ellis, Psychology of Sex, 83.
30 This combination of factors is particularly apparent in the blaming of work-
ing mothers in wartime discussions of delinquency.
31 Hebdige, Hiding in the Light, 17.
180 Notes to pages 48-55
32 Sidney Katz, 'It's a Tough Time to Be a Kid.' Part one.
33 Tumpane, 'The Cruel World vs. Teen-agers/ 4-5.
34 Friedenberg, The Vanishing Adolescent, 177.
35 Ibid., 182.
36 Ibid., 177.
37 SeeD'Emilio, 'The Homosexual Menace'; Kinsman, '"Character Weaknesses"
and "Fruit Machines'"; May, Homeward Bound.
38 Staff report on the work of the North Toronto Area Social Planning Council,
Committee on Juvenile Delinquency, City of Toronto Archives, SC 40, Box 67,
File 3. Also Minutes from a meeting on 19 Feb. 1963.
39 Ness, 'Who's Afraid of Teenage Problems?' 28.
40 See: Seeley, Sims, and Loosley, Crestwood Heights, esp. ch. 8; Axelrod, Making a
Middle Class, 16.
41 'The Secret World of Our Teen-agers,' 12-13.
Chapter 4: Youth Gone Bad
1 Toronto Board of Education, Minutes, 19 May 1955. See also 'The Blackboard
Jungle: Some Protest School Film Protest.'
2 Toronto Board of Education, Minutes, 17 June 1954.
3 'Delinquency Seen as Main 111.' According to the 1955 edition of Canadian
Who's Who, Feinberg was selected by a Saturday Night magazine poll as one of
the seven greatest preachers in Canada. He was a frequent contributor on
both local and national television and radio programs, and to the Toronto
Globe and Mail and various religious and non-religious magazines. Through-
out the 1960s, he was very active in the peace movement.
4 During the first half of this century, discussions about venereal diseases
rarely focused on the transmission of micro-organisms - germs. Instead they
highlighted the types of people likely to carry them or the approaches to sex
such people might follow. Prostitutes especially were targeted by this type of
discourse. But so were other groups assumed to be 'promiscuous,' or sexu-
ally or morally different. At various times 'foreigners,' homosexuals, single
women, and the 'feebleminded' have been identified as sources of infection.
For more discussion on this, see Cassel, The Secret Plague; Mary Louise
Adams, 'In Sickness and in Health.'
5 Houston, 'The "Waifs and Strays" of a Late Victorian City'; Bennett, 'Taming
"Bad Boys" of the "Dangerous Class"'; and Neil Sutherland, Children in
English-Canadian Society.
6 For examples of this kind of argument, see 'Parents and Juvenile Delin-
quents,' (editorial); D.C. Draper (Chief Constable, Toronto City Police Force),
'Report on Juvenile Delinquency/ submitted to Board of Commissioners of
Notes to pages 55-61 181
Police, Toronto, 13 Apr. 1944, Metropolitan Toronto Archives, RG 5.1, Box
153, File 4; Zoffer, 'Psychological Factors in Juvenile Crime,' 18.
7 For a particularly vitriolic example of anti-teenager sentiment, see Tumpane,
'The Cruel World vs. Teen-agers,' 4.
8 Hugh Wolter,'Brief on Delinquency and Anti-social Behaviour for Community
Councils and Other Groups' (Mar. 1949), 1, City of Toronto Archives, RG 283.
9 See previous chapter. Staff report on the work of the North Toronto Area
Social Planning Council, Committee on Juvenile Delinquency, City of Tor-
onto Archives, SC 40, Box 67, File 3.
10 For statistics about delinquency, see the Reports of the Toronto Family Court,
City of Toronto Archives, RG 47, Box 135. Total number of offences commit-
ted in 1942 was 1693; in 1943 it was 1618; in 1945 it was 1055; in 1947 it was
739; in 1949 it was 844; and in 1952 (the last year available in the collection of
Reports) it was 827.
11 Stuart Hall et al., Policing the Crisis, 16.
12 Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 10.
13 Richardson, The Century of the Child.
14 'Delinquency and Schools'; 'Child Delinquency Starts in Homes.'
15 To Combat Delinquency' (editorial); 'Parents and Juvenile Delinquents' ; 'A
Problem for Parents' (editorial); letter to Attorney General Blackwell from
Mrs J.H. Booth, dated 25 Apr. 1944, AO RG 4-02, File 24.4; Toronto Home and
School Council, 'A Survey of the Gang Problem in Toronto,' Metropolitan
Toronto Archives, RG 5.1, Box 153, File 6.
16 Dorothy Sangster, 'How Much Freedom Should a Teen-ager Have?' 61.
17 United Welfare Chests, Youth Services Department, 'Bulletin,' No. 6 (May-
Aug. 1947), 3, City of Toronto Archives, RG 11, Series Al, Box 2, File 3.
18 Rogers, Street Gangs in Toronto, 47-8.
19 Sewell, The Shape of the City, 66-74.
20 Welfare Council of Toronto and District, 'A Plan for the Reduction of Juvenile
Delinquency in Toronto,' 15 Nov. 1943, 25, Library of the Social Planning
Council of Metropolitan Toronto.
21 'Teen Trouble: What Can Recreation Do about It?' National Recreation Center
(USA), no date (though the text suggests some time in 1943 or later. The copy
I saw was in its sixth printing), NAC, MG 28 111, vol. 38, File 2 (3v).
22 Hugh Garner, 'Youth Trouble in Kitchener,' Chatelaine (July 1951): 12.
23 For an example of this kind of view, see the chapter titled, 'Preview' in Davis,
Sex and the Adolescent.
24 Strange, Toronto's Girl Problem; Schlossman and Wallach, The Crime of Preco-
cious Sexuality.'
25 Letter from C.P. Hope of the attorney general's office to Henry A. Burbidge,
Family Court judge, 5 May 1952, AO, RG 4-32,1952, File 475.
182 Notes to pages 61-7
26 '6 Months, 10 Lashes for 9 at Kitchener.'
27 '12 Men Held in Delinquency of Five Girls Aged 12 to 14.'
28 'Trustees "Excuse" Girls, Give Clue to Identity; 9 Boys Get Jail, Lashes.'
29 Chatelaine (Sept. 1951): 72.
30 Rogers, Street Gangs in Toronto, 20.
31 Schwalbe, 'Negro and Partly-Negro Wards of the Children's Aid Society
of Metropolitan Toronto/ 76, City of Toronto Archives, SC 1, Box 113, File
65.
32 Toronto Family Court, 'Report for the Year 1947,' City of Toronto Archives,
RG 47, Reports, Box 135.
33 Toronto Family Court, 'Report for the Year 1946,' City of Toronto Archives,
RG 47, Reports, Box 135.1 looked at the years 1944 until 1952, the last year for
which the reports are available.
34 Dubinsky, Improper Advances.
35 For example, see Gibson, 'Twenty-nine Delinquent Children.'
36 Maynard, '"Horrible Temptations."'
37 'Considerations to Be Presented to the Minister of National Defense for
Naval Services, Regarding the Rumoured Closing of the Ontario Training
School for Girls, Gait, Ontario, June 30,1942,' City of Toronto Archives, SC
40, Box 2; File 19.
38 Schlossman and Wallach, 'The Crime of Precocious Sexuality,' 46. See also,
Odem, Delinquent Daughters.
39 Reports by Dr F.L. Nichols included in a memo from R.C. Montgomery,
Director, Hospitals Division, Department of Health to C.F. Neelands, Deputy
Provincial Secretary, 11 Feb. 1944, AO, RG 10-107-0-324.
40 Scott, 'A Follow-up Study of the Experiences after Discharge of a Number of
Girls Who Have Lived in Warrendale,' 58, City of Toronto Archives, SC 1, Box
113, File 65.
41 Ibid., 96.
42 See, for instance: Canadian Youth Commission, Youth, Marriage and the Family,
56; Welfare Council of Toronto and District, 'A Plan for the Reduction of Juve-
nile Delinquency in Toronto,' 15 Nov. 1943, 5, Library of the Social Planning
Council of Metropolitan Toronto.
43 In 'The Crime of Precocious Sexuality/ their study of female delinquency in
the progressive era in the United States, Schlossman and Wallach found that
boys were far more likely than girls, even un-pregnant ones, to receive proba-
tion, the justice system's legitimate version of the second chance (63).
44 AO, RG 4-32,1948, no. 590.
45 'Weds Girl, 14, Boy "Freed."'
46 Letter from J.R.H. Kirkpatrick to Deputy Minister of Child Welfare, 26 Jan.
Notes to pages 67-72 183
1955. Reply from C.R. Magone, Deputy Attorney General to J.R.H. Kirk-
patrick, 10 Feb. 1955, Archives of Ontario, RG 4-32,1955, no. 177.
47 McGuire, 'The Age Factor in Unmarried Motherhood,' City of Toronto
Archives, SC 1, Box 111, File 50.
48 Young, Out of Wedlock. Young's work is cited frequently in the dissertations of
social work students from the University of Toronto which are on file in the
City of Toronto Archives with the papers of the Children's Aid Society, SC 1,
Boxes 109,110, 111, 112.
49 Ibid., 22.
50 See Fliess, 'On the Psychology of Two Types of Unmarried Mother.'
51 Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie.
52 Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto, 'A Report on Maternity
Homes in Metropolitan Toronto,' July 1960, City of Toronto Archives, SC 1,
Box 118, File 7.
53 Mair, 'Why Are More Teenage Girls "Getting into Trouble"?' 30-lff.
54 'Report on the Welfare Council's Workshop on Toronto Street Gangs, May 26,
1949,' Appendix A of Special Committee Minutes, 8 July 1949, Conference re:
Juvenile Delinquency and Associated Problems, City of Toronto Archives,
RG 200, Box 6, Book 12.
55 AO, RG 4-32,1951, no. 660, Transcript, 186. All five of the defendants were
convicted. Their original sentences ranged from eighteen months definite/
twelve months indefinite to four months definite/two months indefinite in
the Ontario Reformatory in Brampton. The sentences were successfully
appealed and lengthened. Howie Meeker appeared as a character witness for
one of the defendants.
56 The mention of Cherry Beach flagged the immoral nature of the liaison.
Cherry Beach had a tawdry reputation. It was not maintained as were the
eastern and western beaches in the city. Apparently, young people used to
meet there for late-night parties, while the children of working-class families
went there to swim because, unlike Sunnyside or the Island beaches, they
could get access to and swim at Cherry Beach for free. See letter to the editor,
Toronto Daily Star, 6 July 1950. Toronto Harbour Commission Archives, Sun-
nyside Scrapbooks.
57 AO, RG 4-32,1951, no. 660, Transcript, 341-2.
58 See Redl, 'Zoot Suits: An Interpretation.' For a more recent analysis, see Cos-
grove, 'The Zoot Suit and Style Warfare.'
59 In the United States, riots broke out between servicemen and black and His-
panic zoot-suiters in Los Angeles in 1943. Subsequently, the making of the
suits was prohibited. My mother remembers that young men wearing zoot-
suits in Toronto were ridiculed as having avoided conscription. She also says
184 Notes to pages 72-7
that boys wore the pants especially for jitterbugging and that they spent a lot
of time worrying about the drape of the leg.
60 Valverde, 'Building Anti-delinquent Communities.'
61 Ibid., 29.
62 'Review and Summary of the Discussion and Thinking of the Sub-committee
on Gangs to Date/ 9 Feb. 1949: brief attached to a memo from William A.
Turnbull to Commissioner of Public Welfare, Metropolitan Toronto Archives,
RG 5.1, Box 153, File 5.
63 McRobbie and Garber, 'Girls and Subcultures/ 213.
64 Humphries, A Secret World of Sex, 154.
65 Ibid., 144.
66 For fictional treatments of delinquency, see: King, 'Moment of Decision';
Peterson, 'The Runaway'; or Elson, Tomboy, a pulp novel about a teenage girl
who is 'just one of the boys' in a gang. For films, see: Police Club for Boys,
NFB, 1954; Measure of a Man, Brigham Young University Productions (date
unknown); Boy with a Knife, Educational Film Distributors, 1956; Borderline,
NFB, 1956; What about Juvenile Delinquency, 1955.
67 G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, 205.
68 Strange, Toronto's Girl Problem, 194. See also Cavallo, Muscles and Morals.
69 Blatz, 'Your Child - and Sex/ 39.
70 Richardson, Century of the Child, 120; see also Dehli, 'Fictions of the Scientific
Imagination.'
71 Social Planning Council, Recreation Section, 'Report of Meeting with Repre-
sentatives of the Boys Brigade/ 15 July 1958, City of Toronto Archives, SC 40,
Box 23, File 8.
72 'Report on the Investigation of the Recreational Opportunities for Teen Age
Girls/ Oct. 1943, Metropolitan Toronto Archives, RG 5.1, Box 153, File 9.
73 Seeley, Sim, and Loosley, Crestwood Heights, 215.
74 Ibid., 330.
75 lacovetta, Such Hardworking People, 152.
76 Social Planning Council, Committee to Assess the Need for Specialized Ser-
vices in the Leisure-Time Field for the Negro Population, Minutes, 17 Nov.
1958, City of Toronto Archives, SC 40, Box 25, File 7.
77 Social Planning Council, Report of the Committee to Assess the Need for Spe-
cialized Services in the Leisure-Time Field for the Negro Population, 2, City
of Toronto Archives, SC 40, Box 25, File 7.
78 Richards, 'So You're Starting a Teens' Canteen/ 28.
79 'Organizes Teen-age Club.'
80 'Teen Trouble/ 19, NAC, MG 28 1.11, Vol. 38, File 2 (3v).
81 'Too Much Stress on Play.'
Notes to pages 78-85 185
82 Rogers, Street Gangs in Toronto, 82.
83 'Community Centres an Answer' (editorial).
84 Letter from HJ. Terry to Hon. Leslie E. Blackwell, attorney general, 5 Jan .
1945, AO, RG, 4-02, File 24.4.
85 '16-Year-Old Girl Plans Dummy Hold-up with Youths Picked up in Dance
Hall/ 13.
86 'Toronto Trustees Defend Students' Right to Dance.'
87 'Everyone Bewildered by City's Curfew Move.'
88 For a wartime assertion of the link between commercial entertainment and
immorality, see the Welfare Council of Toronto and District, 'Crime and the
Community/ 1940,12, Library of the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan
Toronto.
89 'Curfew Hour Held Unneeded in Queen City.'
90 Toronto Daily Star, 3 Apr. 1944.
91 'Reject Junction Club's Bid for Mixed Splash Parties.'
92 Tumpane, 'At City Hall.'
93 'Informal Discussion by Young People Representing a Cross-section of the
Youth of Toronto, on Recreation Needs and Problems as They See Them,
Monday, May 13th, 1946,' Part 2, City of Toronto Archives, RG 12A, Box 78,
File 3.
94 Memo from B.W. Heise, acting Deputy Minister of Public Welfare to R.P. Viv-
ian, Minister of Public Welfare, 7 Jan. 1944, AO, RG 4-02, File 22.7.
95 '"Lights Till Wee Hours" to Banish Lovers' Lanes Nip School Vandalism.'
96 'Put up Morality Lights at 2 Schools, Committee Asks.'
Chapter 5: 'Why Can't I Be Normal?'
1 See Rose, Governing the Soul.
2 D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 16.
3 Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness.
4 See, for instance, the last lines of the book: 'God ... We have not denied You,
then rise up and defend us. Acknowledge us, oh God, before the whole
world. Give us also the right to our existence!' (ibid., 437).
5 For discussion of 'the ideology of maturity' as it was applied to adolescents
in the American context, see Graebner, 'Coming of Age in Buffalo.'
6 Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male; Kinsey,
Pomeroy, Martin, and Gebhard, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.
7 Rumming, 'Dr. Kinsey and the Human Female/ 7.
8 Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, 199.
9 Ibid., 202-3.
186 Notes to pages 85-95
10 Ibid., 580.
11 See also Seeley and Griffin, 'The Kinsey Report/ 42.
12 Hughes, 'Kinsey Again: Leers or Cheers?' 10.
13 Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, 201.
14 May, Homeward Bound, 11.
15 Dubinsky, Improper Advances. See also Odem, Delinquent Daughters.
16 Simmons, 'Companionate Marriage and the Lesbian Threat.'
17 For the most part I gleaned the titles of books and pamphlets from bibliogra-
phies prepared by (1) teachers at the Toronto Board of Education, (2) the
Canadian Youth Commission, and (3) contributors to the newsletter for
Ontario public health nurses. Other titles were mentioned as worthy of atten-
tion in Canadian magazine articles. In the end I've chosen six titles that span
the mid-1940s to the early 1960s. The decision to include a particular book
was based on three things: first, and most practically, on its current availabil-
ity; second, on the number of references made to it or its author in other
sources; and third, on its representativeness in terms of the genre as a whole.
It's important to note that all six were published originally in the United
States.
18 Duberman, Cures.
19 Tyrer, Sex, Marriage and Birth Control.
20 Are You Popular? Produced by Coronet Films, first in 1947 and re-made in
1958 with a new cast and updated dialogue. Both copies are available for
viewing at Prelinger and Associates, New York.
21 Landers, Ann Landers Talks to Teenagers about Sex, 47.
22 Davis, Sex and the Adolescent, 59.
23 Strain, Teen Days, 160.
24 Kirkendall, Understanding Sex, 34.
25 Davis, Sex the Adolescent, 63.
26 Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men, 24.
27 Strain, Teen Days, 160.
28 Kirkendall, Understanding Sex, 34.
29 Duvall, Facts of Life and Love for Teenagers, 202-6.
30 Williams and Kane, On Becoming a Woman, 51.
31 Duvall, Facts of Life and Love for Teenagers, 274.
32 Landers, Ann Landers Talks to Teenagers about Sex, 81.
33 Ibid., 92.
34 Ibid.
35 Major, 'New to Our Youth,' 102.
36 Davis, Sex and the Adolescent, 228.
37 I am thinking particularly of sexological writings like Havelock Ellis's Studies
Notes to pages 96-103 187
in the Psychology of Sex, vol. I, part four, and Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psycho-
pathia Sexualis. Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness also fits this model. An
invert was, according to these writers, someone born with a bad match
between their body and their felt gender. So Stephen, in The Well of Loneliness,
felt she was very much a masculine soul living inside a feminine body.
38 Strain, Sex Guidance in Family Life Education, 142.
39 Chatelaine (Sept. 1948), 106 .
40 Ibid.
41 Duvall, Facts of Life and Love for Teenagers, 22.
42 Strain, Sex Guidance in Family Life Education, 144.
43 Strain, Teen Days, 81.
44 Ibid., 75.
45 Duvall, Facts of Life and Love for Teenagers, 77.
46 Williams and Kane, On Becoming a Woman, 46 (emphasis in original).
47 See Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat; Rothman, Hands and Hearts D'Emilio
and Freedman, Intimate Matters.
48 Dubinsky, Improper Advances, 114.
49 Peiss, Cheap Amusements.
50 Pass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 261.
51 D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 258.
52 Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat, 26.
53 Ibid., 27.
54 Ibid., 53.
55 May, Homeward Bound, 101.
56 Sylvia Fraser, My Father's House, 71.
57 Clifford R. Adams, 'Romance Isn't Easy,' 4.
58 Milliard, 'Can You Live without Him?' 10-11.
59 Sidney Katz, 'Going Steady: Is It Ruining Our Teen-agers?' 9.
60 Ibid., 39.
61 Ibid., 38.
62 Williams and Kane, On Becoming a Woman, 46.
63 Strain, Teen Days, 130.
64 Duvall, Facts of Life and Love for Teenagers, 120.
65 Sidney Katz, 'Going Steady,' 10.
66 Landers, Ann Landers Talks to Teenagers about Sex, 19.
67 Milliard, 'Dr. Marion Hilliard Talks to Single Women,' 48.
68 Williams and Kane, On Becoming a Woman, 29.
69 Goz'ng Steady, produced by Coronet Films, 1951.
70 How Much Affection ?, produced by Craw ley Films for McGraw-Hill Books,
1957.
188 Notes to pages 103-10
71 There is obviously a point that needs to be made here about the NFB's more
'realistic' film as compared to those produced for the American market.
72 Joe and Roxy, produced by the National Film Board of Canada as part of the
Perspective Series, 1957. The fact that Roxy and Joe are home alone, while
Roxy's mother is at work, was a relatively radical statement when U.S. films
were portraying mothers as forever baking, always home after school. In
some American films, teens who brought friends over when their parents
were out, let alone 'boyfriends' or 'girlfriends,' were portrayed as misbehav-
ing and risking punishment.
73 Milliard, 'Dr. Marion Milliard Helps Teen-age Girls Meet Their Biggest Prob-
lem,' 100.
74 Williams and Kane, On Becoming a Woman, 28.
75 Breines, Young, White, and Miserable, 87.
76 Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, 287.
77 Ibid., 300.
78 Ibid., 233.
79 Breines, Young, White and Miserable, 115.
80 Alison Prentice et al., Canadian Women: A History, 311.
81 Williams and Kane, On Becoming a Woman, 149.
82 'It's a Tough Time to Be in Love,' (editorial), 1.
83 Rose, Governing the Soul, 11.
Chapter 6: Sex Goes to School
1 Foster, 'Penicillin Can Wipe out Canada's Number One Health Scourge,' 22.
2 B. Fraser, 'VD ... No. 1 Saboteur,' 7.
3 For a discussion of VD in Canada during the Second World War, see Pierson,
'They're Still Women after All.'
4 'Want All Canadians Given Test for V.D.'
5 'Open VD Education Campaign for Fourth Year High Pupils.'
6 Bland, '"Guardians of the Race" or "Vampires on the Nation's Health"?'
377.
7 McLaren, Our Own Master Race, 74.
8 Buckley and McGinnis, 'Venereal Disease and Public Health Reform in Can-
ada.'
9 Sixteen to Tiventy-Six (for young women) and Very Dangerous (for young
men), both produced by the NFB, 1945.
10 Dehli, 'Women and Class,' 217.
11 Toronto Board of Education, Minutes, 19 June 1941,122.
12 Ontario, Department of Education, Courses of Study, Grades IX, X, XI, and XII,
Notes to pages 110-16 189
Defense Training and Health and Physical Education, May 1942, 7 and 18.
Reported on in the Toronto Daily Star, 25 Aug. 1942.
13 The total number of cases was 41,069. Health League of Canada, 'The Social
Hygiene Voice/ Jan. 1945, NAC, MG 28 111, Vol. 35, File 1 (3d).
14 'Goldring to Report on Social Hygiene.'
15 C.C. Goldring, Report to the Management Committee of the Board of Educa-
tion, 6 Mar. 1944, Toronto Board of Education, Social Hygiene File.
16 Ibid., 3.
17 'Goldring to Report on Social Hygiene.'
18 Health League of Canada, Toronto Branch, Subcommittee on Sex Education,
Minutes, 25 July 1944, NAC, MG 28 111, Vol. 35, File 1 (3d).
19 'A Sound Proposal' (editorial).
20 'Trustees Approve Teaching Sex Subjects in Schools.'
21 "'Teach Young How to Live Is Obligation," Drew Says.'
22 'Problems of Sex Instruction.'
23 'Delinquency Seen as Main 111.'
24 'Sex Education Classes Said Vital to School Health.'
25 'Women's Groups Divided on School Sex Education.'
26 'Church Group Would Study Sex Education.' There is no evidence that this
proposal was ever made explicitly to any school board.
27 Letter from R.E.G. Davis to S.R. Laycock, national president of the Canadian
Federation of Home and School Associations, 11 Mar. 1947, NAC, MG 28111,
Vol. 42.
28 Dora Wilensky (Jewish Family and Child Services, Toronto) cited in a letter
from Margaret Davis to Mrs Kaspar Fraser [Lois], 11 Apr. 1947, NAC, MG 28
111, Vol. 42.
29 'A Challenge to the Schools' (editorial).
30 Ibid.
31 Chapin, 'Sex Instruction in the School Curriculum,' 39.
32 'Sex Education Scheme Approved by Teachers.'
33 Toronto Board of Education, Reports by board officials, 'Parenting School/ 8
Jan. 1945. Previous attempts by the board, in conjunction with the Home and
School Council, to educate working-class and immigrant parents had
resulted in failure. See Dehli, 'Women and Class/ especially ch. 7.
34 Blatz, 'Your Child - and Sex/ 7.
35 Richardson, The Century of the Child, 112; Dehli, 'Fictions of the Scientific
Imagination.'
36 Winnifred Ashplant, secondary school health counsellor from London,
Ontario, quoted in 'Sex Education Classes Said Vital to School Health.'
37 Blatz, 'Your Child - and Sex/ 38.
190 Notes to pages 116-23
38 Rose, Governing the Soul, 4.
39 'Guiding Principles in the Presentation of the Subject of Venereal Diseases/
Feb. 1946, appended to C.C. Goldring's Report to the Management Commit-
tee of the Board of Education, Toronto, 13 May 1948. Toronto Board of Educa-
tion Archives, Sex Education File.
40 Ibid., 1.
41 Phair and Speirs, Good Health, 209.
42 'Guiding Principles in the Presentation of the Subject of Venereal Diseases,' 3.
43 C.C. Goldring, Report to the Management Committee of the Board of Educa-
tion, 13 May 1948, 3.
44 The films were called: In the Beginning (1938), Human Reproduction (1947,
McGraw-Hill), Sex in Life, and Menstruation. I have been able to watch only
the first two of these. Neither deals with issues of conduct or sexual behav-
iour or feelings. Their primary focus is on the fertilization of eggs, cell divi-
sion, etc. In the Beginning uses rabbits to document the reproductive cycle - to
the point of cutting open a female to extract first her uterus and then a
twenty-eight day-old 'foetus.' Human Reproduction has long shots of dia-
grams of male and female bodies, complete with arrows and labels that
appear and disappear as needed. We also see a foetus develop and the
changes a woman's body goes through during pregnancy.
45 Goldring, Report, 13 May 1948, 3.
46 Sidney Katz, 'The Truth about Sex Criminals,' 12.
47 May, Homeward Bound, 14.
48 Freedman, '"Uncontrolled Desires,"' 200.
49 Ibid., 199.
50 'Brief from the John Howard Society of Ontario' to the Royal Commission on
the Criminal Law Relating to Criminal Sexual Psychopaths, 13 Feb. 1956,
NAC, RG33/131 Vol. 1.
51 'Remarks by Chief Constable John Chisholm before the Royal Commission
on the Criminal Law Relating to Criminal Sexual Psychopaths/ 9-10 Feb.
1956, Toronto, NAC, RG 33/131, Vol. 1.
52 The definition comes from Section 1054 A of the 1948 Criminal Code of Canada.
53 See 'The Sexual Psychopath'; and 'A Practical Approach.'
54 G.H. Stevenson, 'Psychiatry and Sex Offenders/ paper presented at the On-
tario Neuropsychiatric Association, 16 Jan . 1948, AO, RG 10-163-0-617, Box 24.
55 Letter from a private citizen to Premier Drew, 22 May 1948, complaining re
'sex offence law enforcement/ AO, RG 4-32,1948, no. 540.
56 Letter from Evelyn Burt (Toronto Council of Women's International Union
Auxiliaries) and Jean Laing to Russell Kelly, Minister of Health, 24 Jan. 1948,
A 0,RG 10-107-0-224.
Notes to pages 123-31 191
57 See, for instance, 'Study of Sex Perverts in Prisons Reveals Present Penal
Treatment Contributes to Their Degeneration.'
58 Canadian Penal Association, 'Interim Report: Committee on the Sex
Offender/ June 1948, 9, NAC, RG 33/131, Vol. 2.
59 Ibid., 22.
60 Ibid., 24.
61 Ibid., 25.
62 Ibid., 27.
63 Goldring, Report, 13 May 1948, 3.
64 'Sex Education to Be Studied by Committee.'
65 Letter to Charles Edwards from Adolf Weinzirl, 24 July 1948, Toronto Board
of Education, Minutes of Special Committee appointed to consider and report
on the matter of Sex Education in Schools, 2 Sept. 1948, App. A, Toronto
Board of Education Archives.
66 Strain, Sex Guidance in Family Life Education, viii. Strain's work was routinely
included in bibliographies on sex education prepared by Canadian organiza-
tions. See, for instance: Report of Teachers'Committee on Sex Education for
Grades VII and VIII, 12: appended to Minutes of Special Committee
appointed to consider and report on the matter of Sex Education in Schools,
22 Nov. 1948, Appendix A, Toronto Board of Education Archives; syllabus for
a course on the Psychology of Adolescence, prepared by S.R. Laycock, Uni-
versity of Saskatchewan, College of Education, 1941, NAC, MG 28 111, Vol.
60; Ontario, Department of Health, Division of Public Health Nurses, 'Sug-
gested Bibliography for Public Health Nurses in Secondary Schools,' Bulletin
(July 1944), 5, AO, RG 10-30-A-l.
67 Strain, Sex Guidance in Family Life Education, 11.
68 Ibid., 319.
69 Ibid., 307.
70 Ibid., 313.
71 Report of Teachers'Committee on Sex Education for Grades VII and VIII, 1,
Minutes of Special Committee appointed to consider and report on the matter
of Sex Education in Schools, 22 Nov. 1948, App. A, Toronto Board of Educa-
tion Archives.
72 Ibid., 3.
73 Ibid., 1.
74 Ibid., 4.
75 Ibid., 6.
76 Ibid., 7.
77 'Board of Education Considers Courses in Sex Education' (editorial).
78 'No Need for Haste' (editorial).
192 Notes to pages 131-7
79 'Sex Education in Public Schools Report Is Tabled/
80 Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap and Water, 67-76.
81 N.R. Speirs, 'Family Life Education - Introductory Lecture/ 23 Mar. 1949,
appended to C.C. Goldring, Report to Management Committee of the Board
of Education, Toronto, 6 Apr. 1949.
82 Ibid., 8. Frances Strain counselled the same thing.
83 Ibid.
84 'School Board Bans Sex behind Closed Doors/
85 Toronto Board of Education, Private Minutes, 7 Apr. 1949.
86 'A Lesson in Sex Education/
87 Board of Education, Management Report, No. 9, Part II, 26 Apr. 1949, Toronto
Board of Education Archives.
88 Rogers, Street Gangs in Toronto, 20.
89 'Board Approves Sex in Very Modified Form/
90 Ontario, Department of Education, Courses of Study, Grades IX, X, XI, and XII,
Health and Physical Education, 1950.
Chapter 7: Manipulating Innocence
1 Letter to 'Ontario Government Censorship Bureau' (a bureaucratic entity
which did not exist - the letter was directed to the Attorney General), 20 June
1949, AO, RG 4-32,1949, no. 270.
2 Paul Guay, President of Press and Cinema Services (Canada's equivalent to
the League of Decency in the United States), Ottawa Archdiocese of the Cath-
olic Church, Brief submitted to the Senate Special Committee on Salacious
and Indecent Literature; see Canada, Senate, Special Committee on Salacious
and Indecent Literature (hereafter Special Committee), Proceedings, 3 June
1952,10.
3 Letter to Attorney General Dana Porter from a 'citizen' in Stoney Creek, 8
Nov. 1955, AO, RG 4-32,1955, no. 25.
4 'Notes taken at a meeting on 24 February 1956, during which a delegation
representing a number of [Ontario] civic and religious groups presented a
brief to the Attorney General re: salacious literature,' AO, RG 4-02, File 91.7.
5 B.C. Provincial Congress of Canadian Women, Brief submitted to the Senate
Special Committee on Salacious and Indecent Literature, Special Committee,
Proceedings, 11 Feb. 1953, 41.
6 For a discussion of the evolution of mass-produced pocket books and the
various technologies that have made it possible, see Radway, Reading the
Romance.
7 The book was Women s Barracks by Tereska Torres, and the distributor was
Notes to pages 137-42 193
National News Company. See, The Queen v. National News Company, 514, AO,
RG 4-32,1953, no. 830. There are no records of how many copies were sold.
8 'Comics as Yule Gift to Clergyman-Trustee, Tely's Palooka Fan.'
9 Senate, Special Committee, Report, 29 Apr. 1953, 243.
10 Banning, 'Filth on the Newsstands/ 150.
11 Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage, 3.
12 Barker, A Haunt of Fears, 6.
13 Peiss, Cheap Amusements.
14 Dubinsky, Improper Advances, 12.
15 By 1954, U.S. magazines occupied 80 per cent of Canadian newsstand space,
and 74.6 per cent of the 1289 feature films that were shown in Canada in 1953
were Hollywood productions (only one was Canadian). American program-
ming was broadcast regularly by Canadian radio and television stations
(including on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television channels). For
discussions of the impact of American popular culture in Canada see: Finkel,
Conrad, and Strong-Boa g, History of the Canadian Peoples; F. Sutherland, The
Monthly Epic; and Rutherford, When Television Was Young.
16 Barker, Haunt of Fears. While Communist and other left organizations, such
as the Congress of Canadian Women, were involved in the anti-comics cam-
paign, they do not seem to have been the driving force in this country. The
Canadian movement was very broad-based and seems to have been given its
greatest push from PTA groups.
17 Barker, Haunt of Fears, 87.
18 See Landis, Adolescence and Youth, 47.
19 Banning, 'Filth on the Newsstands/ 150.
20 Congress of Canadian Women, Submission to the Senate, Special Committee
on Salacious and Indecent Literature, Special Committee, Proceedings, 25 Jun e
1952,149.
21 Resolution from the Town of Timmins, Ontario, about indecent literature,
AO, RG 4-32,1952, no. 59. Endorsed by at least thirty-two other municipali-
ties, it urged the government to survey and censor magazines in order to
eliminate 'all that which is undesirable and unfit for consumption by the
children of this Province ...'
22 Canadian Preparatory Committee, International Conference in Defense of
Children, Submission to Senate, Special Committee on Salacious and Inde-
cent Literature, Special Committee, Proceedings, 25 June 1952,161.
23 Christian Social Council of Canada, Brief presented to the Senate Special
Committee on Salacious and Indecent Literature, Special Committee, Proceed-
ings, 17 June 1952, 77'.
24 Special Committee, Report, 246.
194 Notes to pages 142-50
25 Special Committee, Proceedings, 25 Apr. 1953, 221.
26 Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 21 Oct. 1949,1043.
27 Parsons, 'Batman and His Audience/ 68-9; Boichel, 'Batman: Commodity as
Myth/ 6.
28 Bell, Guardians of the North, 18. Bell's booklet is the catalogue from an exhibi-
tion of the same name at the Canadian Museum of Caricature during the
summer of 1992.
29 Ibid., 3.
30 For more detailed descriptions of these and other comic-book characters, see
ibid.
31 Ibid., 11.
32 Ibid., 15.
33 Ibid.
34 AO, RG 4-32,1949, no. 270.
35 'Trustee Calls "Comic" Books "Degrading and Detrimental."'
36 Cited in Brief presented to a Special Committee of the Senate by the IODE,
1952, AO,RG 4-02, File 91.7.
37 Jukes, 'Are Comics Really a Menace?' 6-7.
38 Ibid., 7.
39 Unusual Comics.
40 FBI Comics.
41 'Comic Book Study Urged for Effect on Children.'
42 'Board Debates Comic Books.'
43 Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 14 June 1948, 5201.
44 Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 9 June 1948, 4935.
45 Brannigan, 'Mystification of the Innocents/ 118.
46 Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 8 June 1948, 4932.
47 Statement by G.K. Fraser, MP for Peterborough West. Canada, House of
Commons, Debates, 6 Oct. 1949, 580.
48 Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 4 Oct. 1949, 517 .
49 Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 7 Oct. 1949, 624.
50 Statement by G.K. Fraser, MP for Peterborough West. Canada, House of
Commons, Debates, 6 Oct. 1949, 580.
51 Canada, House of Commons, Bill 10,1949.
52 Ibid.
53 'Comics as Yule Gift to Clergyman-Trustee.
54 Parsons, 'Batman and His Audience/ 71.
55 Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent.
56 Ibid., ch. 11: 'Murder in Dawson Creek - Comic Books Abroad.'
57 Ibid., 282.
Notes to pages 150-60 195
58 Copy of letter from Fredric Wertham to Mrs T.W.A. [Eleanor] Gray, 14 Dec.
1953. The letter is appended to a letter from Mrs Gray, on behalf of the British
Columbia Parent-Teacher Federation, to the attorney general of Ontario, 4
Feb. 1954, AO, RG 4-32,1954, no. 26, Box 98.
59 Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 10.
60 Ibid., 81.
61 Ibid., 175.
62 Stainton-Rogers and Stainton-Rogers, Stories of Childhood, 27.
63 Ibid., 29.
64 Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 177.
65 For an example of this, see Davis, Sex and the Adolescent, 62.
66 Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 188.
67 Ibid., 191.
68 Ibid., 99.
69 Ibid., 34.
70 'Code of the Comics Magazine Association of America/ 26 Oct. 1954, AO, RG
4-02, File 76.12.
71 Canada, Senate, Debates, 8 May 1952,186.
72 The quotations are taken from a speech given by Senator JJ. Hayes Doone in
New Brunswick in 1949. Cited in Canada, Senate, Debates, 8 May 1952,186.
73 Ibid., 186.
74 Senate, Debates, 25 June 1952, 501.
75 Special Committee, Report, 243.
76 'Let's Be on Guard' (editorial).
77 Regina v. National News Company Limited, 8 Oct. 1952, AO, RG 4-32,1953, no.
830.
78 Torres, Women's Barracks. While published by a New York company, the book
was printed in Canada. There is a copy of the novel, with margin notes by the
crown attorney, on file with the court transcripts. AO, RG 4-32,1953, no. 830.
79 Torres, The Converts. The text on the front cover of the book jacket reads, 'The
autobiography of Tereska Torres, author of "Women's Barracks."'
80 Torres, Women's Barracks, 5.
81 Judge A.G. McDougall, 'Reasons for Judgment, re: Tragic Ground,' Regina v.
The National News Company Limited, 22 Nov. 1952, AO, RG 4-32,1953, no. 830.
82 Rex v. Hicklin, Law Reports, 3 Queen's Bench, 360,1868; Rex v. Beaver, 9 Ontario
Law Reports, 418,1904.
83 Regina v. American News Co. Limited, Ontario Reports, 145,150 (1957).
84 R. v. National News, 16.
85 The other two tags mark a slang reference to prostitution and a scene where a
young woman loses her virginity with a man.
196 Notes to pages 161-72
86 R. v. National News, 29.
87 Ibid., 44.
88 Ibid., 64.
89 Ibid., 54.
90 Ibid., 64.
91 Ibid., 380.
92 Ibid., 361.
93 Ibid., 365.
94 A.G. McDougall, 'Judgment re: Women's Barracks,' 22 Nov. 1952, AO, RG 4-
32,1953, no. 830.
95 Judgment from a trial in St Paul, Minnesota, 16 June 1953, quoted in Torres,
Women's Barracks, llth printing, June 1958, inside front cover.
ChapterS: Conclusion
1 Rose, Governing the Soul.
2 See, for instance: Kennedy and Da vis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold; Harvey,
The Fifties.
3 See, for instance, Fuss, ed., Inside/Out.
4 Jonathan Ned Katz, 'The Invention of Heterosexuality/ 20.
5 Breines, Young, White and Miserable.
6 For discussions of right-wing anti-gay organizations like CURE (Citizens
United for Responsible Education) see: Pegis, 'A Sick Body of Evidence';
Jackson, 'Christians, the Right and Political Power.'
Sources
Archival Sources
Archives of Ontario (AO)
RG 2 Education
Pamphlets, regulations, etc. (Series Q).
Physical Education Branch Directors' Select Records. 1945-65 (Ace. 10932)
RG 4 Attorney General
Ministers' subject/correspondence files. 1943-59 (Series 4-02).
Committee on Obscene Literature. 1958 (Series 4-11).
Central Registry Files. 1944-55 (Series 4-32).
Sex Deviates. 1958 (Series 4-36).
RG 10 Health
Ministers' Files. 1956-63 (Series 1).
Public Health Nursing, Printed Material. 1921-59 (Series 30-A).
Subject Correspondence, VD Control. 1943-77 (Series 63).
Public Health Central Files. 1938-60 (Series 106).
Mental Health Central Files. 1942-63 (Series 107).
RG 20 Correctional Services
Minister's Advisory Council on Treatment of the Offender. 1959-73.
RG 22 Court Records
Unmarried Parents Files, Provincial Family Court, Metro Toronto. 1942-66
(ace. 21742 [FD1], boxes 104-10).
City of Toronto Archives
Toronto. Board of Control. Minutes. 1945-60.
198 Sources
Toronto. Council. Minutes. 1945-60.
RG 1 Reports
Civic Recreation Committee. 'Youth and Recreation in Toronto, Preliminary
Survey.' 1936.
Welfare Council of Toronto and District. 'Crime and the Community.' 1940.
RG 9 Police
Annual Reports of Chief Constable. 1944-55.
RG 11 Department of Public Health
Annual Reports. 1944-60.
RG 12A Department of Parks and Recreation
Toronto Recreation Council. Sub-committee on Recreation and Housing. 1944-
46 (Box 68, File 2).
Parks Department. Matters Regarding Juvenile Delinquency. 1942-6 (Box 78,
File 3).
Parks Department. Juvenile Delinquency. 1947-51 (Box 90, File 9).
RG 37 Public Welfare Department
Annual Reports. 1944-60.
RG 47 Toronto Family Court
Annual Reports. 1944-52.
RG 200 Special Committee Minutes
Minutes of the Advisory Committee on Recreation. 1937-40.
Private Conference re: VD Control. 1944.
Minutes of Juvenile Delinquency Committee. 1946-9.
Conference re: Juvenile Delinquenc y and Associated Problems. 1949.
RG 283 Juvenile Delinquency Committee. 1948-9.
SC 1 Children's Aid Society papers.
SC 40 Social Planning Council papers.
Library of the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto
Report of the Mayor's Citizens Committee for the Investigation of Narcotic
Addiction and Vice in Metro Toronto. 1959.
Social Planning Council. Report on Maternity Homes in Metropolitan Toronto.
1959.
Welfare Council of Toronto and District. 'A Plan for the Reduction of Juvenile
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Youth Projects. 1943-9 (Boxes 153 and 154).
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Films
The following films were produced by the National Film Board of Canada and
are available for viewing at the National Archives in Ottawa.
Borderline. 1956.
Family Circles. 1949.
Forbidden Love. 1992 (available at regional NFB offices).
Joe and Roxy. 1957.
Making a Decision in the Family. 1957.
Police Club for Boys. 1954.
Sixteen to Twenty-Six. 1945.
The Teens. 1957.
Very Dangerous. 1945.
Who Is Sylvia? 1957.
200 Sources
I viewed the following films at the offices of Prelinger and Associates, a stock
footage house and film archives in New York (430 W. 14th Street, Rm 206, New
York, NY 10014)
A Date with Your Family. Simmel Meservey Release, nd.
Are "You Popular? Coronet Films. 1947.
Are You Popular? Coronet Films. 1958.
Are You Ready for Marriage? Coronet Films. 1950.
Boy with a Knife. Educational Film Distribution. 1956.
Choosing for Happiness. McGraw-Hill Books. 1950.
Dating Dos and Don'ts. Coronet Films. 1952.
Emotional Maturity. McGraw-Hill Books. 1957.
Going Steady. Coronet Films. 1951.
How Do You Know It's Love? Coronet Films. 1950.
How Much Affection? McGraw-Hill Books. 1957.
How to Say No. Coronet Films, nd.
Human Reproduction. McGraw-Hill Text Films. 1947.
In the Beginning. Producer unknown. 1938.
Is This Love? McGraw-Hill Books. 1957.
Marriage Today. McGraw-Hill Books. 1950.
Measure of a Man. Brigham Young University, nd.
Molly Grows Up. Personal Products Corporation. 1953.
More Dates for Kay. Coronet Films. 1952.
Perversion for Profit. Citizens for Decent Literature. 1956.
Physical Aspects of Puberty. McGraw-Hill Books. 1953.
Social-Sex Attitudes in Adolescence. McGraw-Hill Books. 1953.
The Meaning of Adolescence. McGraw-Hill Books. 1953.
The Last Date. Mutual Casualty Company, nd.
What about Juvenile Delinquency. Young America Films. 1955.
When Should I Marry? McGraw-Hill Text Films. 1957.
Your Body during Adolescence. McGraw-Hill Books. 1954.
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Initiatives in Ontario.' Journal of Canadian Studies 28, no. 4 (Winter 1993-4):
117-30.
Anglin, Gerald. 'The Pill That Could Shake the World.' Chatelaine (Oct. 1953): 16-
17, 99-103.
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Bailey, Beth. From Front Porch to Back Seat. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
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Banning, Margaret Culkin. 'Filth on the Newsstands.' Reader's Digest (Oct. 1952):
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Barker, Martin. A Haunt of Fears: The Strange History of the British Horror Comics
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Bell, John. Guardians of the North: The National Superhero in Canadian Comic-book
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Belsey, Catherine. Critical Practice. New York: Routledge 1980.
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Bothwell, Robert, lanDrummond, and John English. Canada since 1945. Rev. ed.
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Brandt, Alan. No Magic Bullets. London: Oxford 1985.
Brannigan, Augustine. 'Mystification of the Innocents: Crime Comics and Delin-
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Breines, Wini. Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties.
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versity of Toronto Press 1987.
Cavallo, Dominick. Muscles and Morals: Organized Playgrounds and Urban Reform,
1880-1920. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1981.
'A Challenge to the Schools.' Editorial. Toronto Daily Star, 29 Nov. 1944.
Chamberland, Line. Memoires lesbiennes: Le lesbianisme a Montreal entre 1950 et
1972. Montreal: Les editions remue-menage 1996.
Chapin, Miriam. 'Sex Instruction in the School Curriculum.' Saturday Night (15
Apr. 1944): 39.
Chauncey, George. 'From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality: The Changing
Medical Conceptualization of Female "Deviance."' In Peiss and Simmons, eds,
Passion and Power, 87-117.
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- '12 Men Held in Delinquency of Five Girls Aged 12 to 14.' Toronto Daily Star, 5
Feb.1951.
Tyrer, Alfred Henry. Sex, Marriage and Birth Control. Toronto: Marriage Welfare
Bureau 1943 (originally published 1936).
'Unhappy Wives.' Editorial. Chatelaine (Apr. 1948): 2.
Unusual Comics (Sept./Oct. 1946). Bell Publishing.
Ursel, Jane. Private Lives, Public Policy: 100 Years of State Intervention in the Family.
Toronto: Women's Press 1992.
Urwin, Cathy. 'Constructing Motherhood: The Persuasion of Normal Develop-
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Valverde, Mariana. The Age of Light, Soap and Water: Moral Reform in English Can-
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- 'Building Anti-delinquent Communities: Morality, Gender and Generation in
the City.' In Parr, ed., A Diversity of Women, 19-45.
'Want All Canadians Given Test for V.D.' Toronto Daily Star, 5 Apr. 1944.
'Weds Girl, 14, Boy "Freed/" Kitchener-Waterloo Record, 20 Jan. 1955.
Weedon, Chris. Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory. Oxford: Blackwell
1987.
Weeks, Jeffrey. Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain, from the Nineteenth Cen-
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214 Sources
- Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800. London: Long-
man's, 1981.
Wertham, Fredric. Seduction of the Innocent. New York and Toronto: Rinehart
1954.
Whitaker, Reg, and Gary Marcuse. Cold War Canada: The Making of a National Inse-
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White, Adele. 'High School Huddle.' Chatelaine (Sept. 1947): 26-7, 48.
- 'Let's Abolish Those Atom Bomb Blues.' Chatelaine (Jan. 1950): 6-7, 53.
White, Kevin. The First Sexual Revolution: The Emergence of Male Heterosexuality in
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Wilkinson, Sue, and Celia Kitzinger, eds. Heterosexuality: A Feminism and Psychol-
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Williams, Mary McGee, and Irene Kane. On Becoming a Woman. New York: Dell
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'Women's Groups Divided on School Sex Education.' Globe and Mail, 22 Mar.
1946.
Young, Leontine. Out of Wedlock. New York: McGraw-Hill 1954.
Zoffer, Gerald. 'Psychological Factors in Juvenile Crime.' Saturday Night (26 Jan.
1946): 18.
Illustration Credits
Archives and Museum, Toronto Board of Education: 'Gym Window' display at
Maple Leaf Gardens, Alexandra Studio; photographer: Turofsky
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.: Cover of On Becoming a Woman, by
Mary McGee Williams (Dell Books)
City of Ottawa Archives, Andrews-Newton Collection: Sock hop at Glebe Collegiate,
CA 3428; posture contest at High School of Commerce, Ottawa, CA 6539; crowd
at Elvis concert, AN 49378 #23; backstage with Elvis, AN 49378 #129
City of Toronto Archives, Globe &Mail Collection: Boys holding signs, King Edward
Avenue, Toronto, 104887; boys in alley-way, 104984; boys playing baseball,
104643
The Follett Corporation: Cover of The Facts of Life and Love for Teen-agers (National
Board of YMCAs, 1956)
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.: Comic-book excerpts and captions from Frederic
Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, 1953
Johnson & Johnson Inc.: Cover of 'Growing Up and Liking It' (Personal Products
Ltd.)
McGraw-Hill, Inc.: Cover of 'Growing Up Emotionally' (Science Research Asso-
ciates, 1957)
National Archives of Canada, Crawley Films Ltd.: Boys outside luncheonette, MISA
216 Illustration Credits
9488; girl and boy smoking, MISA 9938-1; hair- and voice-change diagram,
MISA 9495; sex-glands diagram, MISA 9500; girl with cramps, MISA 9508; nor-
mal growth chart, MISA 9984; Mary and her mother, MISA 9641; Mary and Lu-
cille, MISA 9661; girl and boy on couch, MISA 9632
Random House Inc.: Cover of Women's Barracks (Fawcett, 1950)
Index
Adams, Clifford R., 100
adolescence, discovery of, 43-4; and
puberty, 44
adolescent, as term, 40
adolescents, 4; as primitive, 44; sexual
development of, 46. See also teenag-
ers; youth
advice literature, 86-106, 169
Anglican Church, 112
Are You Popular? (film), 90
Bailey, Beth, 98, 99
Bakless, John, 161
Barker, Martin, 137, 139
Batman, 154
Bell, John, 143-4
Bernhardt, Karl, 119
Big Brothers, 57, 74, 109, 133
Big Sisters, 65
Bill 10, 149-50
Bill 167, 172
black youth, 62-3, 76-7
Blackboard Jungle (film), 53
Bland, Lucy, 109
Blatz, W.E., 75, 116, 120
Boys' Brigade, 75
Brando, Marlon, 53
Brannigan, Augustine, 148
Breines, Wini, 34, 104, 171
Britain, 56; campaign against horror
comics in, 137, 139; gangs in, 73
British Columbia Parent-Teacher
Federation, 150
Bumsted, J.M., 6, 17
Cabbagetown, 58
Calhoun, Arthur Wallace, 45
Canada, Department of Justice, 74
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
5, 24
Canadian Council on Mental
Hygiene, 125
Canadian Forum, 36, 37
Canadian High News, 102
Canadian National Council for Com-
batting Venereal Disease, 109
Canadian National Exhibition, 70
Canadian Penal Association, 123-4,
128
Canadian Social Hygiene Council,
109, 110
Canadian Teachers' Federation, 112
Canadian Welfare, 36
Canadian Youth Commission, 59, 113
218 Index
Catholic Church, 113
Central Neighbourhood House, 70
Chambers, Frank, 110
Chapin, Miriam, 115
Chatelaine, 5, 21, 22, 29, 30, 33, 34, 35,
36, 49, 51, 57, 59, 62, 68, 77, 88, 93,
96, 100, 102, 106, 145
Chauncey, George, 8
Cherry Beach, 71
childlessness, 30-1
childrearing, 28
Children's Aid Society, 63, 65
Children's Protection Act, 79
Christian values, 142
class, 50, 55, 56, 57-9, 67, 72-3, 75-7,
80-1; construction of middle class,
90-1; and dating patterns, 98-9; of
high school students, 119; and
parenting, 115; representations of
working-class youth, 90; and sex
education, 133
Cockburn, Bruce, 3
Cockburn, C.J., 159
Cockburn, W.R., 77, 144
Cohen, Stan, 56
cold war, 21-5, 138, 141, 152
Comic Magazine Association of
America, 155
comics, 136, 137, 138; American, 143;
Canadian, 143-4; crime, 139, 142-
50; and delinquency, 145, 148, 150;
and girls, 153; and homosexuality,
153-4
Committee on Juvenile Delinquency,
74
Communism, 22, 23, 50, 121, 139, 141,
152
consumption, 28, 34
Coronet, 95
Corrigan, Philip, 14
Crawley Films, 89, 103
Crestwood Heights (Seeley, Sim, and
Loosley), 26, 28
Criminal Code, 122, 139, 149, 150, 159
Cures (Duberman), 88
curfew, 79-80
dance halls, 78-9, 80
dancing, 79
Date with Your Family, A (film), 28
dating, 88, 89; evolution of, 98-100;
going steady, 99-102; as heterosex-
ual practice, 98-106; petting, 105; as
sign of normal heterosexual devel-
opment, 101
Davie, Jean, 119
Davis, J.C., 142
Davis, Maxine, 91, 92, 95
Davis, R.E.G., 113
delinquency, 41, 42, 49, 54, 156, 168;
charges, 63, 64; and comics, 145,
148, 150; explanations of, 56-9; gen-
der aspects, 60, 63, 64; and girls,
64—70; and heterosexual conduct,
66; institutional response to, 73-5;
and male sexuality, 62; and middle-
class youth, 59; as national issue,
55; and normal sexuality, 60; rates
of, 148; recreation as solution to,
74-5; and sex education, 112; and
social change, 54-9; and urban
spaces, 77-82
democracy, 141, 157; and moral stan-
dards, 23-5
Dempsey, Lotta, 21, 36
Depression the (of 1930s), 20
Dionne quintuplets, 116
discourse, as analytic tool, 6
divorce rates, 26
Doherty, Thomas, 43
Index 219
domesticity, 9, 19-21, 121, 130, 168;
and cold war, 21-3
Doone, J.J. Hayes, 142, 156, 157
Duberman, Martin, 88
Dubinsky, Karen, 11, 63, 87, 98, 138
Duvall, Evelyn, 93, 98, 102
Edmison, J. Alex, 128
Edwards, Charles, 125
effeminacy, 8
Ehrenreich, Barbara, 30
Ellis, Havelock, 47
Elmtown's Youth (Hollingshead), 46
Emile (Rousseau), 46, 151
eugenics, 44, 109
expert discourse, 31
Factory Act, 81
family, 121, 129-30, 133; and the cold
war, 21-5; and consumption, 28;
and democracy, 28; middle-class, as
norm, 26-7; norms and ideals of,
28-32; and patriotism, 25
family life education, 119, 125-35
Pass, Paula, 98
fatherhood, 30
FBI Comics, 146
Federated Women's Institutes,
142
Federation of Home and School Asso-
ciations, 142
Feinberg, Abraham, 54
Feminine Mystique, The (Friedan), 29
feminism, 171
feminists, 4
films, 103-4; sex education, 119; teen
guidance, 89-91
Findlay, Terence, 162-3
Finlayson, Isabel, 162-3
Ford, G.W., 160, 163
Foucault, Michel, 6, 12, 13, 16, 134
Fowler, Orson, 46
Fraser, Sylvia, 100
Freedman, Estelle, 121-2
Freud, Sigmund, 10, 45
Freudian theory, 84, 85
Friedan, Betty, 29
Friedenberg, Edgar, 49-50
Fruit Machine, 24
Fulton, E. Davie, 142, 144, 145, 147-
50, 155, 156
Gait on, Francis, 14
gangs, 70, 72, 73; clothes and, 71-2;
girls and, 70-3
Garner, Hugh, 59
Garson, Stuart, 148
gay liberation, 4, 11, 171
gay men, 4
gender: ideology, 118; roles, 102, 127,
166; and sexuality, 8
gender identity, 97-8
Gillis, John, 41
Girard, Philip, 23
Girl Guides, 76
Globe and Mail, 49, 62, 78, 112, 117, 130,
131, 132-3
Going Steady (film), 103
Goldring, Charles, 57, 110, 115, 119,
124-5, 128, 132, 133
Golz, Annalee, 25
Gouzenko, Igor, 22
Gray, Eleanor, 150
Green, Howard C., 149
Griffin, J.D.N., 128
Hacking, Ian, 13
Hall, G. Stanley, 43-7, 74
Hall, R.K., 39^0, 41
Hall, Radclyffe, 83-4
220 Index
Health League of Canada, 5, 107, 111;
Social Hygiene Committee, 54
Hebdige, Dick, 47-8
Henriques, Julian, et al., 13
heterosexual norms, 3
heterosexuality: category, 7, 166, 170;
as developmental process, 10, 87-8;
identity, 10; invention of word, 8; as
natural, 95, 102, 126, 166; as normal
4, 91-5, 124, 169; as perversion, 8;
research about, 11
Hicklin test, 159-60
high school, 99
Hilliard, Marion, 30, 88, 100-1, 102,
104
Hincks, C.M., 147
History of Sexuality, The (Foucault), 14,
134
Hollingshead, A.B., 46
Holy Blossom Temple, 54
homosexual behaviour, 13
homosexual/heterosexual binary, 8,
84-5, 171
homosexuality, 7, 30, 49, 153; as
abnormal, 91-5; as adolescent
phase, 93, 153; as adult condition,
92; causes of, 92-3; and comics,
153-4; and Communism, 50; inven-
tion of word, 7; inversion, 83; mar-
ginalization of, 16; as practice for
heterosexuality, 93; same-sex
crushes, 93; sissies, 95-8; as threat
to youth, 92, 94-5; tomboys, 95-8.
See also lesbians
homosexuals: in the civil service, 24-
5; and immigration laws, 24
How Much Affection? (film), 103
Hughes, Perry, 38
Humphries, Steve, 73
Hutton, Eric, 29-30
lacovetta, Franca, 18, 27, 76
illegitimate births, 68
Ilsley, J.L. 147-8
immigrant families, 27
immigrants, 20, 58,101,115
Imperial Order Daughters of the
Empire (IODE), 142-5
indecency, 138, 139-42; campaigns
against, 140; definitions of, 139
Institute for Child Study, 75, 116,
119
inversion, 83
Irvine, Janice, 37
Italians, 76
Jewish youth, 76
Joe and Roxy (film), 90, 103
Johnston, Richard, 16
Jukes, Mary, 145
Junior Chamber of Commerce, 111
Justice Weekly, 78
Katz, Jonathan Ned, 7, 11, 171
Katz, Sidney, 48, 101, 102, 121
Kellogg's, 96-7
Kertbeny, Karl Maria, 7
Kett, Joseph, 44, 46
Kiernan, James, 9
King, William Lyon Mackenzie,
143
Kingsway, the, 78
Kinsey, Alfred, 14, 85-6, 95, 104,
130
Kinsey reports, 35-8, 132
Kirkendall, Lester, 92
Kitchener, Ont, youth sex scandal,
59-62
Kiwanis Club, 123
Knight, Robert P., 86
Koch, Erich, 24
Index 221
Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, 8
Lady Chatterley's Lover (Lawrence),
160
Laidlaw, J.A., 159
Landers, Ann, 91, 93-4, 102
Landis, Paul, 45, 46
lesbian and gay history, 4, 170
lesbian pulp novels, 83
lesbianism, 158-64
lesbians, 24, 140, 154
Lonely Crowd, The (Reisman), 34
McAree, J.A., 160
McCarthyism, 24
McDougall, A.G., 158, 163
Mclvor, Daniel, 149
McLean, J.M., 160
Maclean's, 5, 29, 48, 75, 101, 116, 121
McRobbie, Angela, and Jenny Garber,
73
Mair, Shirley, 69
marriage, 32-5, 89, 121, 129, 140, 166;
average age of, 29, 105-6; compan-
ionate, 9, 87; and gender roles, 34;
preparation for, 87; and sex, 32-3
marriage manuals, 89
masculinity, 8, 33-4, 154
mass-market publications, 136, 138,
156
Massey Commission, 17
maternity homes, 68, 69
May, Elaine Tyler, 18, 22, 38, 99, 121
Mead, Margaret, 45
Meaning of Adolescence (film), 43
mental hygiene, 31-2, 113
Mercier, Raoul, 159, 160, 161-2
Meyerowitz, Joanne, 18
middle-class sexuality, 8
moral panic, 56, 121, 158, 165
moral regulation, 14-15, 81, 126, 137,
164, 167, 169; and recreation, 73-7;
and sex education, 120
morality lights, 81-2
morals offences, 63
National Committee on Mental
Hygiene, 147
National Film Board, 43, 89, 90, 103,
109
National News Company, 158, 159
'New Canadians,' 27
Nichols, F.L., 65
normal, as descriptive term, 13-14, 84
normal/abnormal binary, 84—5, 94
normality, 83; as conformity, 87, 166;
definitions of, 85-6; and gender,
95-8; as heterosexuality, 91-5
normalization, 12-16, 107, 130, 141,
169
North Toronto Committee on Juvenile
Delinquency, 50
obscenity, 138, 157, 159, 160, 164
On Becoming a Woman (Williams and
Kane), 93, 98
Ontario, Department of Education,
110-11, 113, 117, 125
Ontario, Department of Health, 65,
111 , 134
Ontario, Department of Labour, 81
Ontario, Department of Public Wel-
fare, 69
Ontario Educational Association,
112, 113
Ontario, Select Committee on
Reform Institutions, 74
Ontario Teachers' Federation, 142
Ontario Training School Advisory
Committee, 78
222 Index
Ontario Training School for Girls, 64,
65
Owram, Doug, 18, 20,19
Parent-Teacher Associations, 81
Parent-Teacher Federation, 142
parenting classes, 115
Parents' Action League, 122
Peiss, Kathy, 98, 99
physical education, 111, 117,119,120,
134
Pierson, Ruth Roach, 41
Playboy, 137
Pomeroy, Wardell, 36
popular culture, 139
popularity, 90, 99
postwar Canada, 18-38; economy, 19,
20-1; scholarship on, 19; social con-
ditions, 19
premarital sex, 104
Prentice, Susan, 41
prescriptive literature, 88
prostitution, 109,153
psychiatry, 31-2
psychoanalytic theory, 9, 68
psychology, 84
puberty, 46, 47, 62,165
pulp novels, 136-8,140,156,159; les-
bian, 83
queer, 8, 93
race: whiteness, 90
rape, court case, 70-1
Reader's Digest, 17,137
Regent Park, 58
Regina v. American News, 159
Reisman, David, 34
Rich, Adrienne, 11
Robb, C.W., 125
Rogers, Kenneth, 123,128
Rose, Nikolas, 116,169
Ross, Dorothy, 44
Ross, Isabel, 81-2,131
Rothman, Ellen, 98
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 44, 46,151
Roxborough, E.L., 109,120
Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 22,
30; security investigations, 22-5
Royal Commission on Criminal Sex-
ual Psychopaths, 122
Rumming, Eleanor, 85, 86
Salvation Army, 69
same-sex crushes, 93
same-sex sexual behaviour, 93
Sandwell, B.K., 37
Sangster, Joan, 27
Saturday Night, 36, 37, 38, 50, 85, 86,
115
Sawatsky, John, 24
Sayer, Derek, 14
Schlossman, Steven, and Stephanie
Wallach, 65
Second World War: social conditions,
19
Seduction of the Innocent (Wertham),
150-6
Seidman, Steven, 32
Seiger, Allan, 161
Senate Committee on Salacious and
Indecent Literature, 122,138,140,
141,156-8
sex advice, 88-106
Sex and the Adolescent (Davis), 91
sex crime, 121-5,153; and sex educa-
tion, 123-5
sex delinquency, 59-64, 79,129,132,
157
sex education, 88, 90, 96,107,169; as
Index 223
family life education, 125-8; films,
119; and juvenile delinquency, 112;
London, Ont., 108, 111; and moral
regulation, 120; and parents, 115-
16; and provincial curriculum, 112;
and sex crime, 123-5; and the state,
120; and venereal disease, 114. See
also family life education
Sex, Guidance and Family Life Education
(Strain), 126
sex magazines, 137
Sex, Marriage and Birth Control (Tyrer),
89
sexologists, 7
sexual behaviour, 37,93,102-6; mas-
turbation, 63,132,153
sexual deviance, 23, 87, 92,107,121,
123,153,166
sexual discourses, 16-17; and power,
12
sexual identity, 10
sexual normality, 3, 38
sexual perversion, 121,131,140
sexual psychopaths, 122-3
sexuality: and gender, 95-8; social
constructions of, 12; sublimation of,
45; teenage, 10
Sher, Len, 22
Simmons, Christina, 9
Sinatra, Frank, 75
sissies, 95-8
social hygiene, 54,109-13,125,126
Social Planning Council of Metro Tor-
onto, 68, 76. See also Toronto Wel-
fare Council
Solinger, Rickie, 68
Speirs, N.R., 128,131-2
Stainton-Rogers, Rex, 151-2
Stainton-Rogers, Wendy, 151-2
Stanley Gardens, 70
Strain, Frances Bruce, 92,97,101,126
Strange, Carolyn, 75
subjectivity, 15-16
Sunday closing laws, 80-1
teen clubs, 76-7
teen culture, 42
Teen Days (Strain), 92
teen market, 42,49
teenagers: hostility towards, 49-50; as
problem, 48-50; and prosperity, 50-
1; as social category, 49; as symbol,
167; as term, 40,42-3. See also ado-
lescents; youth
Teens, The (film), 43
Time magazine, 17, 36
tomboys, 95-8
Toronto Board of Education, 107-35,
137,172; film protest, 53-4, 77;
Management Committee, 110-11,
115,125,130,133,144
Toronto Board of Trade, 74
Toronto Daily Star, 61, 80, 111, 114-15
Toronto Home and School Council,
74,110
Toronto Juvenile Court, 79,116
Toronto Local Council of Women, 75
Toronto Mayor's Committee on Juve-
nile Delinquency, 74
Toronto Playground Association, 75
Toronto Police Commission, 78
Toronto Teachers' Council, 115
Toronto Telegram, 61, 77,125,130,134
Toronto Welfare Council, 58, 70, 72,
74, 76. See also Social Planning
Council
Torres, Tereska, 158
Trevor, Mrs E.C., 77
Tumpane, Frank, 49,80
Tyrer, Alfred Henry, 89
224 Index
United States: Americanization of
Canada, 6,17; liberal sex reform, 9;
as moral threat to Canada, 138;
popular culture, 139; postwar
scholarship, 11; se x crime in, 121-2
United Welfare Chest, 57, 74
Unusual Comics, 146
unwed mothers, 66-9,105; illegiti-
mate births, 68; maternity homes,
68; and sex delinquency, 68
urban space, 77-82; regulation of
access to, 77-82
Urwin, Cathy, 13
Valverde, Mariana, 72
Vanishing Adolescent, The (Frieden-
berg),49
venereal disease, 47,107-8; preven-
tion, 109,112,113-17,120; and pro-
vincial curriculum, 120; rates of,
110; and sex education, 114,117;
teachers' guide about, 117; as youth
problem, 108
Waller, Willard, 99
Warrendale, 66
Webb, Mary, 69
welfare state, 6,25,101
Well of Loneliness, The (Hall), 83
Wertham, Fredric, 150-6
Whitaker, Reg, and Gary Marcuse, 18,
22
Who Is Sylvia? (film), 43
Wild One, The (film), 53, 70
Williams, J.P.F., 110
Williams, Mary McGee, and Irene
Kane, 93, 98,101,106
Winzerl, Adolf, 125
Woman's Christian Temperance
Union, 74
women and work, 20, 33
Women's Barracks (Torres), 137,158-64
Women's College Hospital, 119
Women's Law Association, 74
women's liberation, 11
Wonder Woman, 154
working mothers, 27
Yalden, Max, 172
Young, Leontine, 68
Young, White and Miserable (Breines),
104
Young Women's Christian Associa-
tion, 5, 76
youth: and class, 50, 55, 56, 57-9, 67,
72-3, 75-7,80-1,90; as corruptible,
137,148; and innocence, 41-2,137,
140,151-2; as metaphor, 40-1, 42,
164; as sexual category, 60,140,165,
168; sexuality, 120; social despair
about, 39-40; as symbol, 50-1, 87;
as term, 40; trouble, 42, 60; in war-
time, 41; and work, 41, 81,119. See
also adolescents; teenagers
Youth, Marriage and the Family (Cana-
dian Youth Commission), 113
youth problem, 41, 47-8, 54; and biol-
ogy, 47; and puberty, 46; solutions
to, 73-82
Youth Takes a Stand (television pro-
gram), 103
zoot suits, 71-2