Anti-Communism, Homophobia, and the Construction of Masculinity in the Postwar U.S

During the late forties and through the fifties the U.S. was swept by a number of panics, of which anti-Communism and homophobia were prominent. This article examines these fears, and the parallels between them, in an effort to locate some sources of those anxieties. The article argues that the discourses about homosexuality and Communism became vehicles for the expression of concerns that lay closer to home and were more difficult to talk about-in particular, for the expression of fears about the decline of masculinity in the U.S.