ABSTRACT
Clarke's article and the response it generated suggest that these concerns continued into the cold war era. By articulating the unique form the anxiety took during the postwar years, professionals in numerous fields, government officials, and creators of the popular culture revealed the powerful symbolic force of gender and sexuality in the cold war ideology and culture. Softness would lead to subversion, which is why the Doughface so often ends up as the willing accomplice of Communism. Ideologues were soft, not hard and displayed the weakness of impotence, compared to tough-minded American capitalists. Alfred Kinsey, with meticulous scientific detail, shocked the nation in 1948 and 1953 with his documentation of widespread premarital intercourse, homosexual experiences, masturbation and extramarital sex among American men and women. Marriage was considered to be the appropriate container for the unwieldy American libido.
