Evidence of an Emerging Homosexual Subculture during World War II in Case Studies of Queer Clandestine Agents

Abstract

This thesis traces the uneven emergence of a distinct homosexual subculture during World War II through cases studies of two queer clandestine agents operating in France from the Special Operations Executive and the United States Army Military Intelligence organization. The emergence of a distinct homosexual subculture, facilitated by the mobilization of single men, accelerated because the single-sex environment of the military provided opportunities for same-sex desiring men to congregate. This phenomenon was national and often transnational in nature, as men from several Allied nations interacted. Collectively, this historical moment was formative in the development of a distinct homosexual identity. During this period, medical, psychological, legal, and social ideas about homosexuality began to codify, and military screening accelerated this process. Same-sex desiring men, however, were also forming distinct cultural artifacts, communication styles, and uses of public space to create a collective identity. Same-sex desiring men not only participated in the war effort, but also participated in clandestine activities. The operational cover identity of these queer agents co-existed with their civilian identities; their public identities co-existed with their emerging homosexual identity. This thesis reclaims from the past the stories of these homosexual agents and contextualizes them within the Allied clandestine operations and within the uneven emergence of a homosexual subculture. The 1940s was a period of fluid sexuality, fundamentally different to our modern categories and boundaries of sexual identities. It was a period of ambiguous or uncertain performances of sexualities, at times divorced from personal identities, a landscape of shifting and unreliable sexualities. Homosexual (in legal, medical, or psychological categories), queer (in common parlance), and gay (a label emerging among homosexual men as a means to self-identify while remaining hidden to normative society) circulated as labels for same-sex desiring men in this period. Building upon Matt Houlbrook’s lead, “queer” is used in this analysis as a fluid identifier for men who experienced same-sex sexual relations regardless of their personal identities. It encompasses the range of same-sex expressions that flourished in this period. The wartime experience of queer, clandestine agents leaves a historical residue of the development of a distinct homosexual subculture. It is useful to illuminate these agents’ experience of homosexual culture-building while conducting clandestine operations in order to detect nascent cultural artifacts and signifiers, the development of cultural colloquialisms and language codes, tentative public community-building efforts, and the opposition these emerging forms faced within the broader heteronormative culture. This thesis reflects the convergence in scholarship between gender, sexualities, masculinities, queer studies, nationalities, and international relations. It resides at the intersection of these approaches and employs queer clandestine agents as signposts marking the stages of development, however fraught and uneven, of a distinct homosexual subculture during the war.