Half a Man: The Symbolism and Science of Paraplegic Impotence in World War II America

At the conclusion of the Second World War, more than 600,000 men returned to the United States with long-term disabilities, profoundly destabilizing the definitions, representations, and experiences of male sexuality in America. By examining an oft-neglected 1950 film, The Men, along with medical, personal, and popular accounts of impotence in paralyzed World War II veterans, this essay excavates the contours of that change and its attendant anxieties. While previous scholarship on film and sexuality in the postwar period has focused on women's experiences, we broaden the analytical lens to provide a fuller picture of the various meanings of male sexuality, especially disabled heterosexuality. In postwar America, the paralyzed veteran created a temporary fissure in conventional discussions of the gendered body, a moment when the "normality" and performative features of the male body could not be assumed but rather had to be actively defined. To many veterans, and to the medical men who treated them, sexual reproduction--not function-became the ultimate signifier of remasculinization.