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Averting White Male (Ab)normality: Psychiatric Representations and Treatment of ‘Homosexuality’ in 1960s South Africa

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 34; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057070802038058

1465-3893

Tiffany F. Jones,

Abstract South Africa arguably has the most progressive constitution in the world, one that includes the recognition of gay rights. However, just over four decades ago, when gay rights movements were gaining momentum worldwide, the South African government, in its homophobia, became increasingly vigilant at cracking down on any 'homosexual' activities within its borders. Heteropatriarchal views of sexuality in South Africa supported white male power structures, promoted binary ideas of masculinity and femininity, normalised heterosexuality, and determined social roles by biological sex. The state's control over the sexual activities of its population was more than just about controlling sexuality: it sought to prohibit interracial sex and to ensure that whites continued to propagate and retain political dominance. Ideas about homosexuality, in particular, threatened the Christian-nationalist procreative ideals of the apartheid government and increased fears about the perceived moral degeneration of society. Scholarship about homosexuality in South Africa, has shown how, in the 1970s and 1980s, psychiatrists in the South African Defence Force Military Hospital partook in human rights abuses by utilising aversion therapy, hormone therapy, sex change operations and barbiturates on young white homosexual men as a means to 'cure' them from their homosexual 'disease'. Implicit in these studies of abuse is the notion that psychiatric practitioners were simply corrective agents of the apartheid state. However, most ignore the complex views of all those involved in debates about homosexuality that took place before the 1970s and outside the military. This article argues that psychiatric practitioners' attempts to quell the state's intensification of legislation on 'homosexuality' should be recognised. While many practitioners did support heteropatriarchal ideals of sexuality and normality, practitioners held disparate ideas about the aetiology and treatment of homosexuality that sometimes, but not always, supported the Nationalist government's objectives. Notes 1 G. Reid et al., 'The Aversion Project: Human Rights Abuses of Gays and Lesbians in the SADF by Health Workers During the Apartheid Era' (unpublished paper, Cape Town, 1999). 2 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC), Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report (Basingstoke and Oxford, Macmillan Reference Limited, 1998), Vol. 4; G. Kraak, dir. and J. Kruger, prod., Property of the State: Gay Men in the Apartheid Military, 52 min (Cape Town, Stargate Distribution, 2002), videocassette; and R.M. Kaplan, 'Treatment of Homosexuality during Apartheid', British Medical Journal, 329, 7,480 (2004), p. 1,415. 3 Staff at AFP, 'Apartheid Army did Sex Changes on Gays: News Report' (31 July 2000), available at http://www.gfn.com/tools/printstory.phtml?sid = 6921, retrieved on 29 June 2004. 4 K.M. Phillips and B. Reay, 'Introduction', in K.M. Phillips and B. Reay (eds), Sexualities in History: A Reader (London and New York, Routledge, 2002), p. 15. 5 G. Elder, 'Of Moffies, Kaffirs and Perverts: Male Homosexuality and the Discourse of Moral Order in the Apartheid State', in D. Bell and G. Valentine (eds), Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities (London and New York, Routledge, 1995), p. 56. 6 G. Elder, Hostels, Sexuality, and the Apartheid Legacy: Malevolent Geographies (Athens, OH, Ohio University Press, 2003). 7 G. Retief, 'Keeping Sodom Out of the Laager', in M. Gevisser and E. Cameron (eds), Defiant Desires (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1994), p. 100. 8 There are many studies that in the last decade have argued that queer identity is an ever-changing and unstructured concept. It is not my intention to recreate these debates, which have been well documented. For further information regarding the changing nature of homosexual identity, see Phillips and Reay (eds), Sexualities in History; M.H. Kirsch, Queer Theory and Social Change (London and New York, Routledge, 2000); A. Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York, New York University Press, 1998); and G. Isaacs and B. McKendrick, Male Homosexuality in South Africa: Identity Formation, Culture, and Crisis (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1992). 9 Immorality Amendment Act, no. 23 of 1957. 10 See D. Joubert (ed.), Tot Dieselfde Geslag: Debat oor Homoseksualiteit in 1968 (Cape Town, Tafelberg, 1974), pp. 34–72 for a collection of articles in Die Burger. 11 H.L. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. xix–xxi. 12 M. Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (New York, Random House, 1965), p. 243. 13 M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality (New York, Pantheon Books, c1978). 14 S.L. Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca, NY and London, Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 192. 15 S. Fernando, Mental Health, Race and Culture (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1991), p. 119. See also H.S. Gross et al., 'The Effect of Race and Sex on the Variation of Diagnosis and Disposition in a Psychiatric Emergency Room', Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 148, 6 (1969), p. 638; B. Malzberg, The Mental Health of the Negro (New York, Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene, 1963); G.J. Warheit, C.E. Holzer and S.A. Arey, 'Race and Mental Illness: an Epidemiological Update', Journal of Health and Social Behavior 16 (1975), pp. 243–56. 16 See T.F. Jones, '"Dis-ordered" States: Views about Mental Disorder and the Management of the Mad in South Africa, 1939–1989' (Ph.D. thesis, Queen's University, 2004), p. 298. 17 Fernando, Mental Health, pp. 2–3, 51, 61 and 162. 18 D. Russell, Women, Madness and Medicine (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995), p. 33. 19 D. Russell, Women, Madness and Medicine (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995), p. 38. 20 D. Russell, Women, Madness and Medicine (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995), p. 155. 21 P. Chesler, Women and Madness (New York, Avon, 1972). 22 E. Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830–1980 (New York, Pantheon, 1985); G. Lloyd, The Man of Reason: 'Male' and 'Female' in Western Philosophy (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1984); and S. Felman, 'Women and Madness: The Critical Phallacy', Diacritics, 5 (1975), pp. 2–10. For further information on the connections between gender and madness, see J.M. Stoppard and L.M. McMullen, Situating Sadness: Women and Depression in Social Context (New York, New York University Press, 2003); J. Busfield, Men, Women and Madness: Understanding Gender and Mental Disorder (London, Macmillan, 1996); C. Mazzoni, Saint Hysteria: Neurosis, Mysticism, and Gender in European Culture (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1996); J.M. Ussher, Women's Madness: Misogyny or Mental Illness? (New York, Harvester Wheatsheaf, c1991); Y. Ripa, Women and Madness: the Incarceration of Women in Nineteenth-Century France, translated by C. du Peloux Menagé (Cambridge, Polity Press, c1990); and P.S. Penfold and G.A. Walker, Women and the Psychiatric Paradox (Montreal, Eden Press, 1983). 23 R. Bayer, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis (New York, Basic Books, 1981), p. 3; G.J.M. van den Aardweg, On the Origins and Treatment of Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Reinterpretation (New York, Praeger Publishers, 1986), p. xiii. 24 As the number of homosexual men within these institutions were not recorded and the definition of homosexuality was vague and relative, the number of 'homosexuals' detained within institutions remains unknown, yet most practitioners who wrote about homosexuality in medical journals emphasised the limited number of such individuals institutionalised. 25 Republic of South Africa, Annual Report of the Commissioner for Mental Health, Year Ended 31st December 1970 (Pretoria, Government Printer, c1972) and Union of South Africa, Annual Report of the Commissioner for Mental Hygiene, Year Ended 31st December, 1960, R.P. No. 35 (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1962). 26 K. Botha and E. Cameron, 'South Africa', in D.J. West and R. Green (eds), Sociolegal Control of Homosexuality: A Multi-Nation Comparison (New York and London, Plenum Press, 1997), pp. 5–42. 27 For further description of laws regulating homosexual activities before 1966, see Botha and Cameron, 'South Africa'. 28 R. Green, 'The United States', and R. Hoffmann, J. Hutter and R. Lautmann, 'Germany', in Sociolegal Control of Homosexuality, p. 145 and p. 261. Not all states repealed their sodomy laws and it was only in November, 2003 that the American Supreme Court ruled that individuals in Texas could not be punished for partaking in homosexual activities. Thirteen US states still have sodomy laws. According to a CNN report, four states, 'Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri prohibit oral and anal sex between same-sex couples. The other nine ban consensual sodomy for everyone: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia'. 'Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Sodomy Law' (18 November 2003), available at http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/06/26/scotus.sodomy/, retrieved on 19 July 2004. 29 'Submission from the South African Police', in Republic of South Africa (RSA), Report of the Select Committee on the Immorality Amendment Bill: Original Evidence, S.C. 7–'68 (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1968), pp. 11–12. 30 Similarly, Sander Gilman has suggested that 'individual perversion is seen as a proof of the potential perversion of the group.' Indeed, in South Africa, fears that seemingly 'normal' heterosexual men and women could be 'perverted' to becoming homosexuals were prevalent. Gilman, Difference and Pathology, p. 192. 31 RSA, S.C. 7–'68, 38. 32 RSA, S.C. 7–'68, 38 33 Elder also notes that 'the bulk of the discussion [during the select committee investigation] revolved around the control and regulation of white homosexuality exclusively.' Elder, 'Of Moffies', pp. 58, 60. 34 See T.D. Moodie, 'Mine Cultures and Miners' Identity on the South African Gold Mines', in B. Bozzoli (ed.), Town and Countryside in the Transvaal: Capitalist Penetration and Popular Response (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1983), pp. 176–97; T.D. Moodie with V. Ndatshe and British Sibuyi, 'Migrancy and Male Sexuality on the South African Gold Mines,' Journal of Southern African Studies, 14, 2 (1988), pp. 228–56; T.D. Moodie with V. Ndatshe, Going for Gold: Men, Mines and Migration (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1994). 35 M.E. Campbell, 'Discourse Analysis of Rape in South African Townships (1948–1994): A Case for "Policing the Penis"' (MA Diss., Dalhousie University, 2000), pp. 45, pp. 150–51. 36 RSA, S.C. 7-'68, p. 71. 37 See C.E. Kaufman, 'Reproductive Control in Apartheid South Africa', Population Studies, 54 (2000), pp. 105–14. 38 D. Posel, The Making of Apartheid 1948–1961: Conflict and Compromise (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 5. 39 See for example, Q. Rahman, 'Fluctuating Asymmetry, Second to Fourth Finger Length Ratios and Human Sexual Orientation', Psychoneuroendocrinology, 30, 4 (2005), 382–91; A. Camperio-Ciani, F. Corna, C. Capiluppi, 'Evidence for Maternally Inherited Factors Favouring Male Homosexuality and Promoting Female Fecundity', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences, 271, 1,554 (2004), pp. 2,217–21; A.A. Howsepian, 'Sexual Modification Therapies: Ethical Controversies, Philosophical Disputes, and Theological Reflections', Christian Bioethics 10, 2–3 (2004), pp. 117–35; W.H. James, 'The Cause(s) of the Fraternal Birth Order Effect in Male Homosexuality', Journal of Biosocial Science, 36, 1 (2004), pp. 51–59, 61–62; D.F. Swaab, 'Sexual Differentiation of the Human Brain: Relevance for Gender Identity, Transsexualism and Sexual Orientation', Gynecological Endocrinology, 19, 6 (2004), pp. 301–12; M. Yarhouse, 'Homosexuality, Ethics and Identity Synthesis', Christian Bioethics, 10, 2–3 (2004), pp. 239–57; and V.L. Quinsey, 'The Etiology of Anomalous Sexual Preferences in Men', Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 989 (2003), pp. 105–17, 144–53. 40 See for example, A.M. Don, 'Transvestism and Transsexualism: A Report of 4 Cases and Problems Associated with their Management', South African Medical Journal, 37 (1963), pp. 479–85. 41 L.S. Freed, 'Medico-Sociological Data in the therapy of Homosexuality', South African Medical Journal, 28, 48 (1954), pp. 1,022–1,023. 42 L.S. Freed, 'Medico-Sociological Data in the therapy of Homosexuality', South African Medical Journal, 28, 48 (1954), p. 1,023. 43 L.S. Freed, 'The Summarised Findings of Medico-Sociological Investigation into the Problem of Prostitution in Johannesburg', South African Medical Journal, 22, 2 (1948), p. 52; K. Moodie, 'Ducktails, Flick-Knives and Pugnacity', Journal of Southern African Studies, 24, 4 (1998), p. 759. 44 Don, 'Transvestism and Transsexualism', p. 483. 45 Gillis, RSA, S.C. 7–'68, 152. 46 Simonz, RSA, S.C. 7-'68, 95. 47 S. Dubow, 'Afrikaner Nationalism, Apartheid and the Conceptualisation of Race', Journal of African History, 33 (1992), pp. 209-237. 48 S.L. Gilman, Freud, Race, and Gender (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 135–6. 49 J.F. Ritchie, The African as Suckling and as Adult: A Psychological Study (Livingstone, Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, 1943), p. 42. See M. Epprecht, '"Bisexuality" and the Politics of Normal in African Ethnography', Anthropologica, 48, 2 (2006), pp. 187–201, for further discussion of Ritchie's arguments. 50 Don, 'Transvestism and Transsexualism', p. 482. 51 Cilliers, RSA, S.C. 7–'68, 225. These views contradict those of many prominent African leaders, such as Robert Mugabe, who, like van Zyl, has suggested that homosexuality was an imported perversion from Europe. Indeed, as Marc Epprecht has shown, '[m]any black Zimbabweans believe that homosexuality was introduced to the country by white settlers and is now mainly propagated by "the West".' M. Epprecht, 'The "Unsaying" of Indigenous Homosexualities in Zimbabwe: Mapping a Blindspot in an African Masculinity', Journal of Southern African Studies, 24, 4 (1998), p. 631. 52 B.J.B. Laubscher, Sex, Custom and Psychopathology: A Study of South African Pagan Natives (London, Routledge, 1937), p. 271. 53 A. Lamont, 'Predictability of Behaviour Disturbance in Patients Presenting with Psychiatric Symptoms', South African Medical Journal, 40, 5 (1966), pp. 87–90. 54 Epprecht, '"Bisexuality" and the Politics of Normal'. 55 Gay and Lesbian Archives (hereafter GALA), 'A. Levin to the Secretary of Parliament', 28 February 1968, Immorality Amendment Bill of 1968 (AM2656), B106. 56 Don, 'Transvestism and Transsexualism'. 57 A satirical and comic commentary about the views of police on the Immorality Act is Tom Sharpe's novel, Indecent Exposure, in which Kommandant van Heerden, believing that black women were being used by South Africa's 'enemies' to seduce his officers from their duty, decides to subject his men to aversion therapy. Showing them pictures of naked black women and administering electric shock to their genitals, he attempts to condition his men to avoid all contact with black women. However, in an unexpected twist, the therapy ends up making his officers gay. Tom Sharpe, Indecent Exposure (London, Secker & Warburg, 1973), pp. 78–120, 162. 58 Don, 'Transvestism and Transsexualism'. 59 Fourie, RSA, S.C. 7–'68, 294. 60 Psychoanalysis today has been rejected by many practitioners as a viable treatment option for homosexuality, yet many continue to use it to treat their patients. For a detailed assessment of the relationship between psychoanalysis and homosexuality, see C. Lane and T. Dean (eds), Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2001). 61 Zabow suggests that the Society of Neurologists, Psychiatrists and Neurosurgeons became the SPSA in 1966. However, neurologists were still part of the organisation in 1968. It is unclear as to exactly when neurologists left the group and the SPNSA was renamed as the SPSA. Department of Justice Archives (hereafter DJA), Pretoria, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Records (hereafter TRC), T. Zabow, 'Submission to Health Sector of Truth and Reconciliation Committee by the Society of Psychiatrists of South Africa', p. 1. 62 L.S. Freed, 'Homosexuality and the Bill', South African Medical Journal, 42, 22, (1968), p. 567. 63 GALA, Levin to the Secretary of Parliament, 28 February 1968. 64 Zabow, RSA, S.C. 7–'68, 163. 65 Sakinofsky, RSA, S.C. 7–'68, 147. 66 GALA, Society of Psychiatrists and Neurologists of South Africa, 'Memorandum to the Select Parliamentary Committee Enquiring into the Immorality Amendment Bill', 28 March 1968, AM2656, B180. 67 B. Tholfsen, 'Cross Gendered Longings and the Demand for Categorization: Enacting Gender within the Transference-Countertransference Relationship', Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy, 4, 2 (2000), pp. 27–46. 68 As Glen Retief points out, there has been limited investigation into the effects of the amendments to the Immorality Act, although there are indications that the police raided parties and clubs in the 1970s. Immorality Amendment Bill of 1969 and Retief, 'Keeping Sodom Out of the Laager', p. 103. 69 As Glen Retief points out, there has been limited investigation into the effects of the amendments to the Immorality Act, although there are indications that the police raided parties and clubs in the 1970s. Immorality Amendment Bill of 1969 and G. Retief, 'Keeping Sodom Out of the Laager', p. 102. 70 Kaplan, 'Treatment of Homosexuality during Apartheid', p. 1,416.