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Bonus Episode: When Being Queer Was A Mental Illness
The south and east facade of St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, D.C., where historian Regina Kunzel’s archive of writing by incarcerated queer patients originated. Photo credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division/Wikimedia Commons
In the mid-twentieth century, United States homosexuality and gender crossing was punishable in the law, and was understood by psychiatrists as a mental disorder, albeit one that could be treated and cured. Treatments ranged from intensive psychoanalysis to physical assaults, medication, and surgeries; patients both volunteered for treatment and…
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