Gender, Sexuality, and the Cold War: A Global Perspective

The Cold War was a brief moment in time, but the history of gender and sexuality is as long as the human story itself. Singular in its global range, this anthology explores the linkage, as opposed to a mere intersection, between these two histories. The volume’s thirteen diverse articles and Marko Dumancik’s useful introduction examine some of the ways in which the Cold War affected sexuality and gender in several parts of the world and, conversely, how the Cold War was itself shaped by certain regionally distinctive femininities, masculinities, and sexualities.Especially since May’s innovative Homeward Bound in 1988, historians of the United States have been examining the Cold War’s linkage to gender and sexuality.1 Muehlenbeck, however, has gathered works that also bring the discussion to Iceland, Egypt, Germany, Vietnam, the U.S.S.R., Great Britain, India, Mexico, Ghana, and Czechoslovakia. Impressively transnational in focus, this work nonetheless is not at heart a comparative history. Although the authors commonly cite analogous studies of other societies, most of the articles consider a single nation-state. Cross-cultural comparisons emerge indirectly in two works—Kathleen Tobin’s revealing analysis of U.S. notions of international birthrates and Karen Garner’s study of women’s international organizations and the United Nations. May Hawas, whose article with Muehlenbeck about “state feminisms” in Czechoslovakia and Egypt is the rare overtly comparative piece, is also distinctive in her training—English literature, not history—and in her position at an Egyptian university (like the editor, most of the contributors are from institutions in the United States). The other authors appear to have been trained as historians, in a variety of areas—political, legal, military, religious, social, and cultural. Consequently, their range of evidence, concepts, concerns, and methods is appealingly wide.Cold War political leadership was mostly a men’s club. For the past half-century or so, many scholars, including some in this anthology, have only expressed more elegantly comedian George Carlin’s facile insistence that international conflicts have essentially been “exercises in dick-waving.” In this book’s only two articles on masculinities, assertion of a masculinity perceived to be imperiled is what Grace Huxford sees in the British Army during the Korean War and is the basis of Erica L. Fraser’s interpretation of how cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin’s pioneering space flight and subsequent publicity tour were culturally construed in the Soviet Union. Unsubtly, maleness, as this volume presents it, seems essentially problematical.The cohabitation of anti-communism and homophobia in the United States, especially involving scorn for gay males, has received considerable attention if not adequate explanation. “The lavender scare,” part of a book title, has even become the now-common name for this bigoted harassment at mid-century.2 Patrizia Gentile’s article instructively takes the topic northward to Canada.As if simply noting the sex of political leaders told the entire story, scholars have not sufficiently examined the Cold War for its relationship to female sexuality and the role of women in various societies. Addressing that imbalance, this anthology presents three times as many articles on “femininities” as on “masculinities.” It addresses, for instance, the cultural construction of the “Cold War kitchen” in Ghana and the distinctive blending of anti-colonialism and feminism by communists in India.Well edited and sensibly organized, the collection is distinguished by its clear writing, ample documentation, and fresh topics.

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