Her Neighbor's Wife by Lauren Jae Gutterman;

Author:Lauren Jae Gutterman;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 2)
Published: 2019-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

No More Secrets, No More Lies

In the 1950s and 1960s, the women in this study tended to think of their same-sex desires as merely a part of themselves, one that should be subordinated to their more central identities as wives and mothers and remain unspoken. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, wives began to experience their feelings for other women as revealing an authentic inner self that could not and should not be denied. This change reflected a growing political emphasis on personal transparency which could be found in the grassroots feminist movement’s demands to make the personal political, as well as in politicians’ increasing openness with the media about their intimate, private lives.35 In keeping with this broad social shift, the women in this study increasingly felt that they owed it to themselves and their husbands to convey the truths of their newfound identities. Married women thus began moving away from an earlier strategy of sexual discretion to a policy of openness with their husbands, much as gay and lesbian children did with their parents during this same period.36

This transformation in communication was due in large part to the importance gay and lesbian activists placed on coming out, but it was also due to a new explicitness around homosexuality within mainstream culture. The 1967 United States Supreme Court ruling in Redrup v. New York narrowed the definition of obscenity and made possible more explicit depictions of sex in American fiction. In the late 1960s, homosexuality also moved to the forefront of the news. On October 31, 1969, Time magazine featured a series of articles on the topic of, as the issue’s cover stated, “The Homosexual in America,” and in December 1971, Life published an elevenpage spread titled “Homosexuals in Revolt,” which depicted the gay liberation movement as one of the most significant happenings of the year.37 By the 1970s, the Motion Picture Association of America had replaced the Motion Picture Production Code with the modern film rating system, enabling more straightforward, if still stereotypical, portraits of homosexuality in Hollywood films. Among these films was the pioneering The Boys in the Band (1970), which focused on a group of gay male friends. Within two years of its release, more than a dozen films dealing with homosexuality made their way into theaters. Such films included both major studio pictures and small-budget, independent films. Television reflected this new frankness about homosexuality as well, and many married women who corresponded with Martin and Lyon in the 1970s explained they had learned of the couple’s existence through their 1972 appearance on the Phil Donahue Show—a daytime talk show dealing with controversial issues and aimed at housewives.

Wives’ new openness with their husbands also reflected the emergence and sweeping cultural influence of humanistic psychology. Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, psychologists Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers placed a new emphasis on personal growth and self-realization. In contrast with psychoanalytic and behavioral psychologists who took a rigid, hierarchical approach to counseling and aimed to help patients fulfill

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