Deconstructing heterosexuality: life stories from gay New York, 1931-1941

By 1940, the sexual identity of heterosexuality became established in American popular culture. In the late 1930s, a path-breaking study of homosexuality was conducted by a multidisciplinary team of medical and scientific specialists, under the sponsorship of the Committee for the Study of Sex Variants. The "sex variants" study was based on a sample of volunteers from New York's lesbian and male homosexual community. This article focuses on a narrative analysis of the case study texts of the male sample. Using deconstruction as an interpretive strategy, the texts are examined in relation to the culturally dominant sexual ideology of heterosexuality. Implications are drawn about the relevance of life stories to identity politics.