Pinks, Pansies, and Punks: The Rhetoric of Masculinity in American Literary Culture

2. Doughfaces, Eggheads, and Softies: Gendered Epithets and American Literary Culture in the 1940s

67 Doughfaces, Eggheads, and Softies: Gendered Epithets and American Literary Culture in the 1940s At a certain point in the 1940s, the concept of hardness became a recurring metaphor in American cultural life. In the area of foreign policy, it became a vivid and arresting way of discussing national identity. Therefore, it is perhaps fitting that the theme of penetration , a perennial concern of hard masculinity, became one of the most popular tropes of anti-Communist discourse during that time. The word “penetration” itself appears five times in George Kennan’s famous “long telegram” to the State Department in 1946.1 Kennan, the architect of the policy of containment, was fond of evocative and emotionally charged metaphors that boldly asserted the need to restrain the expansionist policy of the Soviet Union. In Kennan’s anti-Communistscenario,thegovernmentoftheSovietUnionwasa masculine brute that had illegitimately assumed power by raping the feminine Russian people. In another document, Kennan describes the Russian people as “a beautiful lady being guarded by a jealous lover” (the Communist Party).2 In this case, Kennan’s gendered rhetoric evokes the narrative of chivalrous romance: the West must respondtotheaggressive,hypermasculineSovietswhoarethreatening to violate the smaller nations that cannot properly defend them2 68 Pinks, Pansies, and Punks selves. In each case, Kennan views the USSR as doubly masculine, and thus the United States must not cede any ground; it must shore up its own masculine identity to measure up to the Russian bear. Kennan also insists that the West must act because it contains “a wide variety of national associations or bodies which can be dominated or influenced by such [Communist] penetration” (qtd. in Costigliola 1333). Thus, it is not surprising that the converse of porousness—the state of imperviousness—becomes a central tenet of U.S. foreign policy. Kennan also urges policy makers to “tighten” up and act with “cohesion, firmness and vigor” (ibid.).3 In this case, the gendered metaphors even suggest that the national body must protect itself from the frightening prospect of anal rape.4 This preponderance of gendered metaphors was not unique to Kennan. The hard/soft dichotomy was an extremely popular rhetorical paradigm during the Cold War, and those who were perceived as “soft” on Communism were frequently attacked and berated. The distinction between hard and soft first appears in the late 1940s in the writings of Arthur Schlesinger, a liberal historian and prominent Democrat. Schlesinger’s The Vital Center (1949) was an influential text that served as a blueprint for liberal anti-Communism during the Cold War. Like Kennan’s long telegram, Schlesinger’s language andimageryarestructuredaroundgenderedmetaphorsand,insome cases, homophobic tropes. Unlike Kennan’s allusions to chivalric duty, however, Schlesinger uses macho phraseology and phallic metaphors that identify penile hardness with a tough-minded and realistic view of the world. In the coming years, Schlesinger would become an important architect for John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier and its attempt to merge muscular anti-Communism with a liberal domestic agenda. In terms of gender, the most interesting part of The Vital Center is Schlesinger’s masculinist attack on the soft and “impotent”left-wingersandfellowtravelers,whoarenothard-boiled and realistic enough to recognize the essential brutality of the Communist movement.5 In Schlesinger’s attack on softness, Michael Gold’s obsession withleisure-cultureeffetenessisrevived;Schlesingeractuallycoined a new phrase that never became a part of the Cold War parlance: “doughface progressive.” Much like the Pillsbury Doughboy, the 69 Doughfaces, Eggheads, and Softies term implies a male body that is essentially soft and pliable. The term “dough” also connotes the notion of being “uncooked” and implies a stateofstuntedadolescence.Schlesinger’sattempttolinkthedoughface to immaturity is an extension of the then popular psychological notionthathomosexualityisaformofarresteddevelopment.Hence, “doughface progressive” can be read as a code word for effeteness and, in many cases, homosexuality. The doughface progressive is “soft not hard and he believes himself genuinely concerned with the welfare of individuals” (36). As in Terman and Miles’s diagnosis of softness, altruism is regarded as a sign of femininity. Doughface progressives , according to Schlesinger, are fellow travelers, academics, and “ivory tower types” who possess a “sentimental belief in progress ” and simply do not understand the grim facts of life. Like many of his supporters, Schlesinger had served in the military in World WarIIandhadworkedfortheOfficeofStrategicServices(OSS),and his wartime service and firsthand experience with Nazism and the Soviet Union made him critical of soft left-wingers who did not fear totalitarian governments. The homosexual valence of...