Graphic by Christopher Ikonomou
In Winter Quarter of 2020, UCLA’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies (LGBTQS) Program hosted its first Fiat Lux seminar, entitled “UCLA Centennial Initiative: Dr. Evelyn Hooker, Mattachine Society, and Homosexuality Depathologized.” Professor Mitchell Morris, the head of the LGBTQS Program, taught the course, which was geared toward first-year students but accepted anyone regardless of seniority by their second enrollment pass. The class discussed a UCLA professor from the 1950s by the name of Evelyn Hooker and examined the world in which she lived and worked. But who exactly was this professor, where does the Mattachine Society tie in, and why does all this still matter? Let’s start by looking at Evelyn Hooker.
Evelyn Hooker (1907-1996) was a psychologist best known for her studies of gay men, which culminated in her 1957 paper, “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual.” Although she was a cisgender and heterosexual woman, several factors made her especially sympathetic toward the LGBTQ+ community. Not only did she grow up feeling like an outsider in her hometown due to her relatively poor childhood and “unfeminine” height of nearly six feet, she also lived with a Jewish family in Germany as Hitler rose to power and saw first-hand the danger of blind allegiance to the status quo.
When she began teaching at UCLA in the 1940s, a gay male student named Sam From took a special interest in Hooker and her class. After recognizing her as someone who was “wise” (a straight person who knew about and accepted homosexuality), From introduced Hooker to his group of gay friends, who insisted they needed someone like her to study them.
Until that point, the only scholarship done on homosexuality treated it as an illness and focused on people who were imprisoned, mentally ill, or otherwise stigmatized. The Cold War exacerbated these prejudices, as gay people were equated with communists: Both groups looked like “ordinary” people, but had the power to corrupt normative social and domestic values — or so the larger public believed.
This is where the Mattachine Society comes in. The Mattachines were members of a Los Angeles-based group formed in 1950, taking their name from medieval jesters whose masks concealed their wearers’ identities and allowed them to speak their minds. In much the same way, the Mattachine Society garnered positive publicity for the emerging LGBTQ+ community through blood drives and other humanitarian projects, while engaging in more radical activities on the side. Their radical activism included publishing LGBTQ+ books, fostering LGBTQ+ communities, and responding to letters from distraught LGBTQ+ folks, directing them toward cities and communities that might support them.
Although this may not seem so extreme today, in the 1950s, homosexuality was still largely viewed as a mental illness, and the efforts of the Mattachine Society helped people all around the world who might have felt isolated and alone otherwise. The Mattachines were not the first gay rights organization in the United States, but they were one of the earliest groups that survived for over a decade. Their activism exemplifies the difficulties LGBTQ+ folks endured in the middle of the 20th century. With practically all standardized institutions turned against them, the stage was set for Evelyn Hooker to revolutionize the world of psychology with her ground-breaking research in 1957.
As a woman in the male-dominated field of psychology, Hooker wasn’t taken seriously as a professional. Luckily, this played out in her favor when she applied for research grants during the height of the McCarthy era, while Cold War tensions and homophobia were at a fever pitch. Because she was a woman, her work might have not been seen as very threatening; or perhaps nobody bothered to look into her case. Regardless, she got the funding she needed and began to compile her research.
Thanks to the encouragement of Sam From and his friends, Hooker designed a study incorporating 60 people: 30 gay men and 30 straight men. She presented them with psychology tests that were highly regarded at the time, including the Rorschach test, which asks subjects to describe what they see in nonsensical inkblots. Psychologists believed the results reflected a person’s mental state and could be used to gauge an individual’s mental health.
Finding willing participants, especially straight men, was difficult for Hooker. Few people felt comfortable being seen on a walk to her office, as Hooker’s reputation led many to fear rumors spreading about their sexuality if they did so. Hooker solved this dilemma by conducting tests at her own home, which was walled off and provided sufficient privacy for herself and her research participants.
Once the tests had been conducted, Hooker invited respected psychologists to examine the results. First, she removed all identifying features of her participants, including their sexuality labels. Then, she challenged the professionals to decide which results belonged to straight men and which results belonged to gay men. Much to their bewilderment, the professionals discovered they could never achieve more than a 50-50 chance of accurately pinpointing a gay man’s results. This helped prove that there is no innate shortcoming in the mental health of LGBTQ+ folks.
Hooker’s experiments were fairly well-received in the psychology community, and they contributed to the official removal of homosexuality as a mental illness from the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) in 1973. Her research only scratched the tip of the iceberg that is the LGBTQ+ community, as gay men were the sole participants in her research and only thirty of them at that. Regardless, Hooker’s work gave many LGBTQ+ folks confidence and paved the way for homosexuality to be viewed through non-medical lenses.
Moreover, with UCLA’s many centennial festivities coming to a close, it is important to take the time to remember an amazing professor who did ground-breaking research on our very own campus. Of course, Hooker could not have done it alone, and Professor Morris’ Fiat Lux taught students the background knowledge they needed to fully comprehend the significance of Hooker’s experiments. The Mattachine Society was just one group of people fighting for equality when the majority of the world pathologized homosexuality. To learn more, “Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker” is an excellent documentary from 1992 that expands upon the life and research of this famous UCLA professor.