A Queer History Of The United States - Plot & Excerpts
Sex in the Trenches Eight. Sex in the Trenches It is impossible to overestimate the effect of World War II on American culture, and in particular on lesbians and gay men. The United States entered World War II, which had been ongoing since September 1939, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. This decisive turning point in U.S. history reordered American social life and mores, public and private space, and virtually all social interactions having to do with gender and sexual behavior. The country’s entrance into the war radically transformed the domestic economy into a booming war economy, ending the Depression. The war economy not only provided much-needed jobs for Americans—the unemployment rate dropped from 17.2 percent in 1939 to 4.7 percent in 1942 and 1.2 percent in 1944—but also stimulated production of manufactured goods and increased farm production. As military-related industries such as shipyards, munitions plants, and aircraft manufacturing factories thrived, they provided employment for millions of women and men and drew workers to move from their towns and cities of birth.
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