Infantile Desires and Perverted Practices: Disciplining Lesbianism in the WAAF and the ATS during the Second World War

Abstract

During the Second World War the two largest women's services, the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), responded pragmatically to the presence of lesbians in their ranks. Such disinterest arguably stemmed from the need to retain valuable personnel in a time of great instability. This article seeks to illuminate the responses of both services within the context of wider understandings of lesbianism in Britain during the inter-war period and during the Second World War. It argues that the responses of senior officials were rooted in received understandings of lesbianism as both an acquired vice and as an innate psychopathic infirmity. Overwhelmingly, however, classification fell in the former category, underpinned as it was by notions of middle-class boarding school desire.

‘Lady Doctor among the “Called”’: Dr Letitia Fairfield and Catholic medico-legal activism beyond the bar

“…Within it, she recommended that the Army should downplay aspersions of same-sex desire manifest in sartorial choices or even sharing beds (which some volunteers might be accustomed to through circumstances of poverty) and only act on cases in which there is 'definite evidence'. 95 Much the same advice was replicated in her article in the Medico-Legal Journal, alongside a companion piece on male homosexuality, 96 in which she declaimed the more tolerant, 'modern attitude' to 'perverted love' and refuted that a relaxation of the law or social stigma would 'lead to the happiness of individuals'. 97 Cautioning against moral panics as conscious, persistent lesbianism was 'rare', whilst maintaining that 'affectionate friendships between women are not only natural, but part of a balanced and happy life', 98 Fairfield's opening gambit was nevertheless trenchant and dogmatic:…”

“We Were the Town's Tomboys”: An Interview with Raukura “Bubs” Hetet

“…Bubs could have lost her position as a Post Office Savings bank teller if they had proved she was having a lesbian relationship. Police Force Regulations of 1950 required that candidates be "of unexceptionable moral character," and, as in other countries, lesbians were not officially tolerated in any branch of the armed services (see, for example, Knaff, 2009;Vickers, 2009;Shilts, 1993;Webber, 1993;Berube, 1991;NZ Police, 1950). Bubs knew of a number of women who had received dishonorable discharges when their lesbian relationships were discovered.…”

Networks of affect, male homoeroticism and the Second World War: a soldier's archive

“…Although there was a corps of nurses at Bourail, and female personnel in other parts of the base, including the library, they do not feature heavily in David's narrative. Bérubé (1990Bérubé ( /2010, Ford (1995, p. 98), and Vickers (2009) relationships remain unspoken in David's account. Through his eyes, New Caledonia was primarily a male space.…”