Eliminate the ‘females'

Sex between men is almost absent from the official record of the armed services and largely disavowed by soldiers. ² Exaggerated denials and silence about the presence of homosexuality is the consequence of its very potential in all-male environments; large concentrations of deracinated young men brought with it the possibility that soldiers with no female company might turn to each other for sex – as Australian army commanders privately acknowledged on rare occasions. But in certain circumstances, and among particular individuals, the expression of homosexuality was much more than fleeting physical mechanics – it involved dense networks of friends and lovers and expressions of identity with like-minded others. ³ The cultural beliefs and scientific thinking on these different forms of behaviour and identity, while not mutually exclusive, informed the institutional responses of both the Australian and the US armies in the Second World War. Psychiatry, in particular, would claim authority in its ability to define, distinguish and treat different forms of homosexuality.