Season 1: Episode 4: Dr. Evelyn Hooker

Making Gay History | LGBTQ Oral Histories from the Archive

Making Gay History

Sexuality, Personal Journals, Health & Fitness, History, Society & Culture

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2016

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

In 1945 Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s gay friend Sam From urged her to do a study challenging the commonly held belief that homosexuals were by nature mentally ill. It was work that would ultimately strip the “sickness” label from millions of gay men and women and change the course of history. Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources. For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our ⁠Patreon community⁠. ——— To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Eric Marcus and this is making gay history.
0:07.0	This week you'll meet Dr. Evelyn Hooker.
0:12.0	She was something else, a force of nature, even at 81,
0:16.0	but you have to be a force of nature to do what she did when she did it.
0:20.0	Back in 1953, Dr Hooker started work on a first of its kind psychological study that demonstrated gay men were no different from straight men when it came to their sanity.
0:30.0	At that time, just about everyone thought gay people were mentally ill,
0:33.3	homosexuality was a sickness.
0:35.1	Even most gay people believed it.
0:36.9	And what do you do when you're sick?
0:38.0	You try to get cured.
0:39.6	And that's what a lot of gay people did.
0:41.5	So they spent years and fortunes trying to get over an illness they didn't even have.
0:45.3	The really unlucky ones were forced against their will into horrible treatments that were nothing short of
0:50.8	torture, lobotomy, chemical castration, and shock treatment,
0:55.0	and I'm really not kidding.
0:55.8	Those were the ways in which gay people were treated.
0:58.4	This is a story about serendipity,
1:00.7	a pivotal moment in history
1:02.0	when a gay psychology student named Sam Fromm set his sights on Dr.
1:05.4	Evelyn Hooker.
1:06.9	He urged Dr Hooker to do a study of normal gay people to show the world what they were really
1:11.6	like. That was in 1945. And then life got in the way,
	...

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