Comments from a session at the convention of the American Psychological Association, August 18, 1997 (Chicago, IL)

Question: What's an old straight broad like me doing in this setting?

Well, it's an accurate characterization of me now, and the exact terms Evelyn in the last years of her life used to describe herself. Except she did not use the word "straight" but rather said "hopelessly heterosexual" – followed always by a hearty "Ho ho ho."

Over the past 25 years Evelyn honored me with her friendship and I am deeply honored to be allowed a moment of your time here to say a few words. About Evelyn – the unique, the noblest grand dame of them all.

I first met Evelyn in the very early 1970s. I had just arrived in Los Angeles and an old friend from graduate school (gay, not a psychologist) invited me to hear a talk by Evelyn (a terrific talk, its audience largely composed of men who had been subjects in her original study and all of whom clearly and loudly indicated their approval).

Dragged up afterwards to be introduced, I was amazed when she recognized me as the then-editor of the Journal of Social Issues (JSI). She was an involved member of SPSSI (the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, JSI's publisher) from way back, of course.

Our friendship continued and grew stronger over time, as we marveled together over progress and the lack of progress in psychology's awareness of and treatment of issues of honor and fairness and equity and all that stuff.

Yes, it's a fact that Dr. Evelyn Hooker "changed our minds" as the movie title has it. She single-handedly forced folks to wake up to some gross misjudgments about male homosexuality and mental illness.

But let me say a few words about a larger context – about Rebellion and Recognition.

We should remember Evelyn Hooker not just for the content of her work but for the fact that she – from the get-go – did always what she thought mattered. Evelyn was an independent thinker, and independent doer. She wanted to be a professor and a scientist (her earliest research, after all, was on vicarious trial-and-error learning in rats).

But back then (the early '30s) for an academic job or for any job as a scientist: No Women Need Apply.

Nevertheless she persisted in the pursuit of questions that most aroused her curiosity. And lo and behold, for reasons she herself never fully understood, NIMH (the National Institute of Mental Health) began funding her to study the topic that most aroused her curiosity.

The rest is happy history, of course.

So please let's together note this person as a model for the best in all of us. Rejected and scorned by the mainstream and most of its tributaries, never able to obtain a "real" job in academe, subject to sieges of serious depression, alone and often lonely, she fought on regardless – because as she herself said, "It had to be done."

Too many years after her accomplishment (roughly 35 years late), kudos and recognition began pouring in. And she treasured every plaque, every acknowledgment, Somewhat wistfully though – so long so right, so unaccepted. But with lots of laughs, lots of cheer.

My earliest "encounter" with Evelyn was in 1976, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. I was reading all the behavioral and social science literature that I could find that challenged the traditional psychiatric view of homosexuality as a form of psychopathology.

Naturally, I came across references to Evelyn's 1957 article in the Journal of Projective Techniques. Our campus library, however, didn't have the old copies of that journal so I had to request it through inter-library loan.

When a photocopy of the article arrived, I noticed something unusual. A tear sheet stapled to it carried the usual library information – title, journal, date, and so on. But it also included a comment that had been typed by someone in the library system.

After the paper's title, "The Adjustment of the Overt Male Homosexual," a library staff person had typed "YOU COULD PLAY AROUND WITH THIS ONE."

I had never seen such an editorial comment on a library document. And I have not seen another one like it in all the years since.

I relate this story because I believe it illustrates how different times were only 20 years ago. Back in the 1970s, a university librarian felt no hesitation about trivializing Evelyn's study on a document that a library patron would receive.

How much more difficult it must have been for Evelyn to have her work taken seriously two decades still earlier, when McCarthyism was still a force in American society.

How brave it was of her to tackle such a taboo topic then, years before it would become at least somewhat "respectable" for scientists to investigate homosexuality empirically, questioning the biases and value judgments so inherent in psychoanalytic orthodoxy.

Almost ten years later, I had the opportunity to meet Evelyn face-to-face at a psychologists' banquet at which she was being honored. Hesitantly, I introduced myself to her and was both surprised and delighted to learn that she knew of my work on heterosexuals' attitudes toward lesbians and gay men.

I was too tongue-tied to carry on much of a conversation with her, but the fact that she had read my work was tremendously important to me.

A few years later, when she participated in an APA convention symposium, I again had the experience of knowing that my work had come to Evelyn's attention when she mentioned my research both in a pre-session videotaped interview and from the lectern during the symposium.

Why did it mean so much to be recognized by Evelyn Hooker? Because she was an icon for researchers in the field of sexual orientation. Because her research represented a landmark in empirical inquiry on homosexuality. Because she had the integrity and the bravery to question the popular consensus among her colleagues at a time when individuality was not so highly valued in American society.

I was fortunate enough to be able to work closely with Evelyn during the last years of her life. In 1994, she asked me to assist her in establishing the Wayne Placek Award, and to set up the process whereby the money left to her by Wayne Placek would be used to encourage research in the tradition that she did so much to establish.

The award today is very much what Evelyn wanted it to be – a catalyst for innovative new research and a source of support and mentoring to researchers at an early stage in their career.

But while we were working to articulate the award's specific goals and developing the guidelines and procedures that applicants would use to apply for funds, Evelyn frequently had self doubts.

"Do you think they'll let us do it this way?" she asked me on more than one occasion.

"Evelyn," I always replied, "You are a living legend. You can do whatever you want with this award. No one will question you."

I could always tell that she only half-believed me, but she was willing to trust me on this one.

"I thought you were just being kind," she wrote to me after one such conversation, "but that perhaps you were more perceptive than I was. Well, I have to believe you were correct in your judgment."

So we went ahead and created an application and evaluation process that sets high expectations for everyone associated with it – applicants, reviewers, and the award committee. Looking back at Evelyn's life and work, those expectations seem entirely appropriate.

I was surfing the World Wide Web, searching for pages that had some mention of her. And I came across a page at the Family Research Council's site that went on at considerable length trying to discredit Evelyn's research – as if her study had been conducted within the past few months rather than 40 years ago, and as if hers was the only empirical study that failed to find a connection between homosexuality and mental illness.

I had to think that Evelyn would have been pleased that her research is still considered so dangerous by the antigay establishment that they would put so much energy into disputing her findings after all these years.

Those of us who are following in Evelyn's footsteps today can only hope that our work will have such a lasting legacy – that decades after we've published it, we will still be remembered by our professional colleagues and the people we sought to help, while still being considered dangerous by the likes of the Family Research Council.

Blog   |   Contents   |   New on the Site   |   Publications   |   Library   |   Site Search   |   Contact Us   |   Useful Links