Article
ID: CBB496362783

Half a Man: The Symbolism and Science of Paraplegic Impotence in World War II America (2015)

unapi
Disabilities; disability; accessibility Physiology Masculinity Science and war; science and the military World War II Sexuality 20th century United States

At the conclusion of the Second World War, more than 600,000 men returned to the United States with long-term disabilities, profoundly destabilizing the definitions, representations, and experiences of male sexuality in America. By examining an oft-neglected 1950 film, The Men, along with medical, personal, and popular accounts of impotence in paralyzed World War II veterans, this essay excavates the contours of that change and its attendant anxieties. While previous scholarship on film and sexuality in the postwar period has focused on women’s experiences, we broaden the analytical lens to provide a fuller picture of the various meanings of male sexuality, especially disabled heterosexuality. In postwar America, the paralyzed veteran created a temporary fissure in conventional discussions of the gendered body, a moment when the “normality” and performative features of the male body could not be assumed but rather had to be actively defined. To many veterans, and to the medical men who treated them, sexual reproduction—not function—became the ultimate signifier of remasculinization.

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Authors & Contributors
Bernstein, Frances L.
Bini, Elisabetta
Alison Lynn McManus
Molosiwa, Phuthego Phuthego
Vezzosi, Elisabetta
Sarah Handley-Cousins
Journals
Physics in Perspective
Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Journal of the History of Sexuality
Journal of Historical Geography
International Journal of African Historical Studies
History of Science
Publishers
The University of Georgia Press
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Viella
University of Tennessee Press
University of Minneapolis Press
University of Illinois Press
Concepts
World War II
Science and war; science and the military
Masculinity
Sexuality
Science and gender
Nuclear weapons; atomic weapons
People
White, Walter
Stouffer, Samuel Andrew
Smellie, William
Morton, Samuel George
Groves, Leslie R.
Atlas, Charles
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
Places
United States
Soviet Union
Great Britain
Arctic regions
Botswana
Greenland
Institutions
American Physical Society
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