Gender Inequality In World War 2

There are many institutions that play a role in defining certain aspects of our social construct. We can connect sexuality, and its concepts to the family structure, government, demography, medical field, education, literature etc. Thus, coining the terms such as homosexuality and heterosexuality stems from the institutions listed above. Although, the medical profession was extremely unscientific during the birth of these terms. Sexuality has not always been the forefront of societies consciousness, so why now in modern society has it become such a topic of conversation? Through the lectures, we have touched on the importance world events such as World War II, and mainly how the psychiatric community has influenced the perception of sexuality.

Inequality is the byproduct of structures and systems of any government. Policies and ingrained prejudices, that over many decades lean the scales in favor of some, while hindering opportunity for others. The foundations of World War II rests upon political institutions that were dominated by elite interests that were leaders of inequality. I believe that the prejudice and scrutiny that engulfed the war made its way back to America. Making our leaders question who is fit to be a leader in our powerful military. Fear drives human behavior. Not understanding the fabrication of why people are the way they are, scares people, especially leaders. This fear has undermined the promise of democracy and can lead to the breakdown in social cohesion. Ultimately, leading to the Lavender scare after the war. This focus on the Lavender scare brought a lot of attention to the gay community; bringing a lot of research, investigations, and unfortunately resulting in the labeling of contemporary views of homosexuality. This scare led to the defining of homosexuality as communists who posed a grave threat to national security. However, we saw in the documentary shown in class, “Coming Out Under Fire” that military officials and psychiatrists, too, inadvertently helped gay women and men by creating these new terms, like “homosexual” and “personality type” to identity and understand gay men and women. World War II and the events targeting homosexuality prior to the war led to the concretization of this