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Chronology of Sex & Gender in Post-Modernity
(1940-2000)
by Keith Carson
© 2000, Keith Carson
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1940
 | one-fifth of Caucasian women and one-third of
African American women are wage earners; 60% of black working
women are domestics compared with only 10% of white women;
among Japanese American women workers almost 38% are in
agriculture and 24% are in domestic service |
| Carson McCullers publishes The
Heart is a Lonely Hunter |
| Virginia Woolf presents paper (later
published as The Leaning Tower) to the Workers’
Educational Association in Brighton, England; also, publishes Roger
Fry: A Biography |
1941
| US government and industry collaborate on a
public media campaign to persuade women to take jobs during World
War II, most famously featuring “Rosie the Riveter”; almost 7
million American women respond: 2 million in industrial work and
400,000 in the military |
| Carson McCullers publishes Reflections
in a Golden Eye |
| Virginia Woolf dies |
| Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor |
|
Blithe Spirit plays on
Broadway |
1942
| U.S. military expands prohibition against
homosexuals in the military |
| Philip Wylie publishes A Generation of Vipers
which blames over-protective mothers for raising unmasculine sons
who are unfit for military service |
| Jim Kepner of Los Angeles begins a private
collection of gay-related literature, photographs, newspaper
clippings, and other materials which later evolves into the Gay
and Lesbian Archive (opens to the public in 1979) |
1944
| Lillian Smith publishes Strange
Fruit |
| Judy Garland stars in Meet
Me in St. Louis |
| Sweden decriminalizes homosexuality |
| premier of Aaron Copeland’s ballet Appalachian
Spring |
1945
| Equal Pay for Equal Work bill is reintroduced in
Congress (1872); it is not passed until 1963 |
| although, according to surveys, 80% want to
continue working, female industrial workers are subject to massive
layoffs as returning service men replace them in large numbers |
| atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of
Nagasaki and Hiroshima by the United States ending World War II in
the Pacific theater |
|
Carousel opens on
Broadway |
| Laurence Olivier directs and stars in Henry
V |
1947
| pseudonymous Lisa Ben [(anagram for “lesbian”)
Edythe Eyde] begins publishing Vice Versa, the first known
U.S. lesbian magazine in Los Angeles |
| Marshall Plan to restore war ravaged Europe
commences |
| Andrew Gide awarded the Pulitzer Prize for
literature |
1948
| The Kinsey Institute publishes its
groundbreaking study---Sexual Behavior in the Human Male---by
Alfred Kinsey, et.al. |
| Gore Vidal publishes City
and the Pillar |
| Truman Capote publishes Other
Voices, Other Rooms |
| Mohandis Ghandi is assassinated in India |
| blacklisting of Hollywood stars, producers,
writers, and others associated with film industry begins |
| Margaret Chase Smith (R-Me) becomes first female
elected to the U.S. Senate in her own right; later, in 1964, she
becomes the first woman to run for U.S. President in a major
political party primary (Republican); she retires from the Senate
in 1973 |
1949
| Yukio Mishma publishes Confessions
of a Mind |
1950
| 30% of all American women are in the paid labor
force: more than half of all single women and more than 25% of
married women |
| Mattachine Society is founded by Harry Hay,
Chuck Rowland, and others in Los Angeles (attributed status of
first modern American gay liberation organization) |
| James Barr publishes Quairefail |
| Alger Hiss is sentenced for perjury |
| North Korea invades the South |
1951
| David Webster Cory (Edward Sagarin) publishes The
Homosexual in America |
| Carson McCullers publishes Clock
Without Hands |
| Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are sentenced to
death for alleged espionage |
1952
| Mattachine Society mobilizes the Los Angeles
community against police brutality, entrapment, harassment, and
violence |
| ONE, gay and lesbian issue-oriented publication,
formed in Los Angeles; name suggested by a black man, one of the
organization’s six founders, taking the name from a Thomas
Carlyle quote |
| U.S. Congress enacts law barring open
homosexuals (gay and lesbian foreigners) from entering the
country; legislation is not repealed until 1990 |
| George Jorgensen, former sergeant in the U.S.
Army, undergoes a sex change operation in Denmark becoming
Christine Jorgensen |
| The Kinsey Institute publishes second
groundbreaking study---Sexual Behavior in the Human Female---by
Alfred Kinsey, et.al. |
| Dr. Evelyn Hooker begins her historic study of
male homosexual personality; published in the late 1950s as a
series of monographs, her research indicates that there are no
signs of maladjustment in male homosexual’s personality |
1953
| U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower issues an
executive order banning homosexuals from federal employment |
| shake-up in leadership of Mattachine Society
caused by anti-communist hysteria led by Ken Burns and Hal Call |
| Joseph Stalin dies |
| Dag Hammarskjold becomes United Nations
Secretary General |
| James Baldwin publishes Go
Tell it on the Mountain |
1954
| Army-McCarthy Hearings televised |
| homophile activists Kepner, Rowland, and Hull
travel to Mexico City to organize |
| W. Somerset Maugham publishes Ten
Novels and Their Authors |
| Brown v. Board of Education |
| Los Angeles postmaster seizes copies of ONE
magazine and refuses to mail them on the grounds that they are “obscene,
lewd, lascivious and filthy” |
1955
| Daughters of Bilitis, believed to be the first
openly lesbian American organization, formed in San Francisco by
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon |
| Tennessee Williams awarded the Pulitzer Prize
for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof | |
Mattachine Review
begins publication |
| Rosa Parks arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for
refusing to vacate a seat at the white front section of a public
bus |
| Emmett Till lynched in Mississippi |
| Boise sex scandal |
1956
| Presbyterian Church of the United States of
America approves ordination of women; Margaret Towner ordained |
| Daughters of Bilitis begin publication of The
Ladder |
| U.S.S.R. crushes popular revolts in Hungary and
Poland |
| Allen Ginsberg publishes Howl |
| Elvis Presley breaks onto the national music
scene popularizing American rock ‘n’ roll |
| James Baldwin publishes Giovanni’s
Room |
| outbreak of the Cuban Revolution |
| F.B.I begins COINTELPRO |
1957
| American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) adopts
national policy statement that supports the constitutionality of
state sodomy laws and federal regulations denying employment to
gay men and lesbians; ACLU does not reverse these policies until
1964 |
| Wolfenden Report |
| Broadway premier of Bernstein’s West
Side Story |
| Ann Bannon publishes Odd
Girl Out |
| Soviets launch Sputnik 1 |
| number of voting men and women reach parity
(roughly equal) for the first time in American history |
1958
| U.S. Supreme Court rules that ONE magazine may
be distributed through the United States Postal Service |
| Jack Kerouac publishes Dharma
Bums |
| John Birch Society formed |
| John Kenneth Galbraith publishes Affluent
Society |
| Buddy Holly shoots to the top of the American
popular music scene |
1959
| William Burroughs publishes Naked
Lunch |
1960
| Daughters of Bilitis sponsors national
conference on lesbianism in San Francisco |
| Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves
birth control pills |
| women earn only 60 cents to every dollar earned
by men, a decline since 1955; women of color earn only 42 cents to
every dollar earned by men |
1961
| Illinois becomes first state to abolish its
criminal statutes against consensual homosexual sex |
| Jose Sarria, a drag performer, becomes first
openly gay man to campaign for public office |
| construction of the Berlin Wall |
| New Motion Picture code allows treatment of
homosexuality |
| birth control pills are approved for marketing
in the United States |
| President John F. Kennedy creates the Commission
on the Status of Women to be chaired by former First Lady Eleanor
Roosevelt; parallel commissions are eventually organized in all
fifty states |
| Patsy Cline is a popular music sensation |
1962
| Tavern Guild formed in San Francisco |
| James Baldwin publishes Another
Country |
| The Beatles become a world rock sensation |
| Vatican II is convened |
1963
| John Rechy publishes City
of Night |
| gay rights pickets are staged |
| Pop Art and Andy Warhol |
| East Coast Homophile Organization (ECHO) formed |
| Civil Rights March on Washington |
| Equal Pay Act, proposed two decades ago,
establishes equal pay for men and women performing the same job
duties; legislation does not cover domestics, agricultural
workers, executives, administrators, or professionals |
| report issued by the President’s Commission on
the Status of Women documents discrimination against women in
virtually every area of American life; specifies 24
recommendations some of which are surprisingly far-sighted (e.g.
community property in marriage); 64,000 copies of the report are
sold within a year |
| Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique;
details the “problem that has no name”; 5 million copies are
sold by 1970, laying the groundwork for the modern feminist
movement |
1964
| Title VII of the Civil Rights Act bars
discrimination in employment by private employers, employment
agencies, and unions based on race, sex, and other grounds; Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) established to
investigate complaints, oversee compliance, and enforce penalties;
in its first five years, the EEOC receives 50,000 complaints of
gender discrimination |
| Patsy Mink (D-Hi) becomes the first Asian
American woman elected to Congress |
| gay rights demonstration staged in New York City |
| Jane Rule publishes Desert of the Heart;
film version titled Desert Hearts produced in 1985 |
| earliest known pinback button for homosexual
rights is manufactured in Washington D.C. for a conference of the
East Coast Homophile Organization meeting there |
| Canadian gay magazine published; inspired by ONE
--- its American counterpart--- the magazine is called TWO |
| Association for Social Knowledge, oldest known
Canadian homophile organization, founded in Vancouver, British
Columbia |
| Society for Individual Rights (SIR) established
and publication of Vector magazine |
| Randy Wicker becomes the first openly gay person
to appear on national television |
1965
| Mattachine Society pickets the White House and
Pentagon protesting the federal government’s discriminatory
employment practices |
| Black Power leader Malcolm X is assassinated |
| Atheneum Society becomes the first state
chartered gay organization in the U.S. South |
| San Francisco’s first known drag ball |
| racial tensions in Selma, Alabama |
| U.S. commences bombing in North Vietnam |
| in Griswold v. Connecticut, the U.S.
Supreme Court overturns one of the last state laws prohibiting the
prescription or use of contraceptives by married couples asserting
a realm of privacy that married couples enjoy and which is
protected by the Constitution |
| President Lyndon Johnson issues Executive Order
11246 which expands the 1964 Civil Rights Act by requiring federal
agencies and government contractors to use “affirmative action”
to overcome employment discrimination |
|
Weeks v. Southern Bell
overturns restrictive labor laws and discriminatory corporate
policies and regulations on the hours and conditions applying to
female work; opens many previously male-only jobs to women |
1966
| gay community center opens in San Francisco
operated by the Society for Individual Rights (SIR) |
| Walter Percy publishes The
Last Gentleman |
| Mao’s cultural revolution in Communist China |
| Harry Benjamin writes The
Transsexual Phenomenon |
| National Organization for Women (NOW) founded in
New York |
|
ASK Community Center opened in Vancouver to
serve the homosexual community; first Canadian gay community
center |
| commissions on women from all fifty states meet
in Washington D.C. to report their findings |
1967
| Chicago Women’s Liberation Group organizes |
| New York Radical Women is formed; following year
they begin process of sharing life stories which becomes known as
consciousness raising |
| California becomes first state to re-legalize
abortion |
| President Johnson issues Executive Order 11375
expands the non-discrimination scope of Executive Order 11246 to
include women; enforcement is not achieved until 1973 |
|
The Advocate begins
publication in Los Angeles and remains the oldest continuing gay
publication in the United States |
| The Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop opens on
Mercer Street in New York City; relocates in 1973 at Christopher
and Gay Streets |
| John Herbert publishes Fortune and Men’s
Eyes about homosexuality in the Canadian prison system |
1968
| New York Radical Women receive extensive media
coverage while protesting the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic
City, NJ |
| first national women’s liberation conference
meets in Chicago |
| National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL)
established |
| EEOC rules that unless employers can show a bona
fide occupational qualification exists, sex-segregated help wanted
newspaper ads are illegal |
| Federally Employed Women is established to end
gender-based discrimination in civil service jobs; within a few
decades expands to 200 chapters nationwide |
| Jo Freeman and others publish The
Voice of the Women’s Liberation Movement |
| National Welfare Rights established by Johnnie
Tillmon, Etta Horm, and other activists; enroll 22,000 members by
1969; breaks up by 1975 |
| Shirley Chisholm (D-NY) becomes first Black
woman elected to Congress |
1969 STONEWALL RIOTS NYC June, 1969
| “Jane”, a Chicago-based abortion referral
service established; during its four years of existence it
provides more than 11, 000 women with safe, affordable abortions |
| Boston Women’s Health Book Collective
publishes Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book by and for Women
incorporating medical information and personal stories |
| California adopts the country’s first no-fault
divorce law allowing couples to divorce by mutual consent; other
states quickly follow suit |
| U.S. Supreme Court in Bowe v.
Colgate-Palmolive rules that women meeting the physical
requirements can work in many jobs traditionally performed by men
only |
| Gay Liberation Front (GLF) established in New
York taking its name from the National Liberation Front in
Vietnam; founded by participants in the Stonewall Riots and other
gay community activists, the group is organized as an ongoing
militant political action group |
| Time magazine publishes cover story entitled The
Homosexual in America; first American cover story on gay
rights in a national magazine |
|
Gay Power becomes
first gay newspaper to appear after the Stonewall Riots |
| Canada decriminalizes private sexual acts
between consenting adults over the age of twenty-one |
| University of Toronto Homophile Association
becomes first gay liberation organization in Canada |
1970
| first legislative hearings on gay rights in the
United States are convened in New York City by three NY State
Assembly members |
| first march to commemorate the Stonewall Riots
is held in NYC |
| Catalyst Press, the first gay press in Canada,
is established in Toronto by Ian Young and publishes Cool Fire
(Ian Young and Richard Phelan) |
| Radicalesbians---splinter group of the Gay
Liberation Front---established by a group of New York-based
lesbian-feminists publishes The Woman-Identified Woman, a
manifesto which defines a lesbian as “the rage of all women
condensed to the point of explosion” |
| Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis becomes the
first lesbian/feminist bookstore in the United States; also, A
Women’s Place bookstore established in Oakland, CA |
| Robin Morgan publishes Sisterhood
is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s
Liberation Movement |
| Betty Friedan organizes Women’s Liberation Day
on August 26th to mark the 5oth
anniversary of women’s right to vote |
| North American Indian Women’s Association
founded |
| Kate Millett publishes Sexual
Politics | |
Comision Feminil Mexicana Nacion established
to promote Latina rights by Graciella Olivares, Gracia Molina
Pick, Fransico Flores, Yolanda Nava, and others |
| San Diego State College establishes first
official integrated women’s studies program |
| women’s wages fall to 59 cents for every
dollar earned by men; although non-white women earn even less, the
gap is closing between white women and women of color |
| Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) reintroduced in
Congress |
| Lutheran Church in America and the American
Lutheran Church agree to ordain women; Lutheran Church Missouri
Synod refuses to except female ordination; Barbara Andrews becomes
first ordained Lutheran minister |
1971
| first battered women’s shelter in U.S. in
Urbana, Illinois founded by Cheryl Frank and Jacqueline Flenner;
by 1979, more than 250 shelters are operating around the country |
| Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services
Center is founded |
| New York Radical Feminists conduct a series of
speakouts and a conference on rape and women’s treatment in the
U.S. criminal justice system; consequently, Susan Brownmiller
publishes Against Our Will and rape crisis centers are
opened across the country |
| for the first time in 130 years, in Reed v.
Reed future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
successfully uses the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution to overturn a sex-biased law before the U.S. Supreme
Court |
| Ms. magazine first appears as an insert in New
York magazine; Ms. co-founder and editor, Gloria Steinhem, becomes
a leading journalist and media personality for the Second Wave |
| National Women’s Political Caucus is
established as a non-partisan group to encourage women to run for
political office |
| The Furies is founded by dissident lesbian
activists critical of mainstream women’s groups like NOW |
| NOW approves its first resolution supporting
lesbian rights |
| American Library Association begins awarding an
annual Gay Book Award; first award presented to Isabel Miller for Patience
and Sarah |
| Connecticut becomes second state to repeal
sodomy laws: a full decade after California became the first state
to take such action |
|
Front de liberation homoseual
becomes first francophone gay organization in Canada meeting in
Montreal and sponsoring rap groups and dances |
| “We Demand” brief calling for legal reform
and changes in public policy regarding homosexuality is presented
to the Canadian federal government by numerous Canadian gay
organizations; first public gay demonstration in Canada staged on
Parliament Hill in support of “We Demand” brief |
1972
| first emergency rape crisis hotline opens in
Washington D.C.; by 1976, 400 independent rape crisis centers
operate nationwide offering counseling, self-defense classes, and
support groups |
| Title IX of the Education Amendment requires
that “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex,
be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or
be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or
activity receiving federal financial assistance.” |
| U.S. Supreme Court in Eisenstadt v. Baird
rules that the right to privacy encompasses an unmarried person’s
right to use contraception |
| Congress extends the Equal Pay Act to include
executives, administrative and professional personnel |
| Congress passes the Equal Employment Opportunity
Act giving the EEOC power to take legal action to enforce its
rulings |
| after languishing since 1923, the ERA is passed
by Congress on March 22nd and sent to the states for ratification;
Hawaii approves it within the hour; by the end of the week
Delaware, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Idaho, and Iowa follow suit;
the measure, which would prohibit discrimination on the basis of
gender, is defeated a decade later, in 1982 |
| Ms. magazine starts regular publication reaching
a circulation of 350,000 per year |
| Barbara Jordan (D-Tx) becomes the first Black
woman to be elected to Congress from a southern state |
| Sally Priesand becomes first U.S. woman ordained
as a rabbi in Reform Judaism |
| U.S. District Judge rules that the Civil Service
Commission can not discriminate against gay employees unless it
can prove that being gay would interfere with their jobs |
| Beth Chayim Chadashim opens in Los Angeles as
the first gay synagogue in America |
|
A Not So Gay Word: Homosexuality in Canada is
the first nonfiction book on homosexuality published in Canada |
| East Lansing, Michigan becomes the first U.S.
city to ban anti-gay bias in city hiring |
| William Johnson ordained as first openly gay
minister in the United Church of Christ in California |
|
The Other Woman is
first predominantly lesbian/feminist publication in Toronto |
| Toronto Gay Action stages its first Gay Pride
Week August 19-27 |
1973
| U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade rules
that constitutional privacy rights include a woman’s right to a
first trimester abortion; two decades later “Jane Roe” reveals
herself as lesbian Norma McCorvey; ruling voids abortion laws in
46 states |
| first national lesbian conference in Canada
convenes in Toronto under the auspices of the YWCA |
| Montreal Gay Women established as a separatist
group |
| first Canadian lesbian journal, Long Time
Coming, published in Montreal |
| Billie Jean King becomes a sports legend when
she beats Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes”: a
televised tennis match viewed by nearly 48 million people |
| National Black Feminist Organization is founded |
| Karen Nussbaum establishes 9 to 5: National
Association of Working Women in Boston; she later is appointed
Director of the Women’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor |
| Toronto City Council passes resolution banning
discrimination in city hiring on the basis of sexual orientation |
| Martin Duberman, Ron Gold, Frank Kameny, Barbara
Gittings, Dr. Howard Brown, Bruce Voeller, and Nathalie Rockhill
establish the National Gay Task Force in NYC as a civil rights
organization |
| The Body Politic forms the Canadian Gay Archives |
| Gay Community News first published in Boston as
the only weekly gay and lesbian newspaper at that time |
| Centre humanitaire d’aide et de liberation
sponsors the first pan-Canadian conference of gay organizations |
| Daughters, Inc. is founded by June Arnold and
Parke Bowman; the lesbian-feminist publishing house prints first
edition of Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle which is
later sold to Bantham Books as a mass-market paperback |
| Barbara Grier and Donna McBride establish
lesbian Naiad Press in Florida |
| Olivia Records is founded by lesbian-feminist
collective |
| American Psychiatric Association declassifies
homosexuality as a mental disorder |
| Joan Nestle and Deborah Edel found the Lesbian
Herstory Archives in NYC |
| American Bar Association passes a resolution
calling for repeal of all state sodomy laws |
| in Miller v. California and Paris
Adult Theater I v. Slaton, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that
local communities may define obscenity (so-called “community
tandards”), thereby, eliminating a national standard |
| Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
established as a non-profit gay law firm committed to securing
civil rights for gays through the court system |
| Civil Service Commission eliminates height and
weight requirements used to discriminate against women applying
for police, park service, and fire fighting jobs |
| Office of Federal Contract Compliance prohibits
sex discrimination in employment by any federal contractor and
requires affirmative action to correct existing imbalances |
| U.S. military is integrated when the women-only
branches are eliminated |
| U.S. Supreme Court in Pittsburgh Press v.
Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations upholds EEOC ruling
against sex-segregated help wanted ads in newspapers; opens way
for women to apply for jobs previously limited to men and offering
better pay and opportunities for advancement |
1974
| Tish Sommers and Laurie Shields establish
Alliance of Displaced Homemakers to advocate on behalf of divorced
and widowed homemakers seeking employment |
| Little League agrees to include girls “in
deference to a change in social climate”, but creates a softball
branch for girlsto channel them away from baseball |
| Mexican-American Women’s National Association
(MANA) established; by 1990, MANA chapters spread to 16 states
with members from 36 states |
| hundreds of colleges are offering courses in
women’s studies: 80 full programs are in existence and 230 women’s
centers on college campuses provide support for female students |
| Women’s Educational Equity Act, drafted by
Arlene Horowitz and introduced in Congress by Rep. Patsy Mink
(D-Hi), funds development of non-sexist teaching materials and
establishes model programs to encourage full opportunities in
education for female students |
| Coalition of Labor Women established to promote
unity among blue-collar women across occupational lines |
|
Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur determines
it is illegal to force pregnant women to take maternity leave on
the assumption they are incapable of working in their physical
condition |
| Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibits sex
discrimination in all consumer credit practices; expanded to
include commercial credit practices in 1988 |
| Ella Grasso becomes first woman to win election
as governor in her own right in Connecticut |
| number of women in public office increases:
women hold 8% of state legislative seats and 16 seats in Congress;
by 1986, 14.8% of state legislative seats and 24 seats in
Congress; by 1997, 21% of state legislative seats and 62 seats in
Congress |
| Texas Chicanas establish a statewide network of
Mujeres Pro-Raza Unida conferences to promote awareness, political
action, and organizational techniques | | |
