The Tightrope of Normalcy

Homosexuality, Developmental Citizenship, and American Adolescence, 1890-1940

Bibliographic Data

ID4301190
AuthorsDon Romesburg
Year2008
Volume21
Issue4
Pages417-442
Publication date2008-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Historical Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0952-1909 • E-ISSN: 1467-6443
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-6443.2008.00344.x
OpenAlexW1966352746
LanguageEN
Citations received11

In the early twentieth century, American developmental citizenship presumed a gradual extension of rights based upon a naturalized trajectory that would lead individuals toward heterosexuality, gender complimentarity, and increasing social and political investment. Means changed dramatically through which psychological, pedagogical, and political discourses positioned adolescence, sexuality, and gender in relationship to national belonging. Yet compliance with gender and sexual normativity as a marker of successful adjustment into adulthood persisted as a powerful precondition to full citizenship. Figurative "problem youth" were attacked in part because they threatened to expose exclusionary assumptions undergirding supposedly universal ideals in optimistic modern American democracy

Citizenship · Democracy · Heterosexuality · Homosexuality · Human sexuality · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Gender Studies · Law · Social Psychology

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