New on Notches: Men of Superior IQ: Connecting Homosexuality to Intelligence in Cold War-Era Canada

Robert Block (left) and J. J. Belanger in a photo booth photo, Hastings Park, Vancouver, Canada, 1953. Credit: Courtesy ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. via Notches

A new post on Notches – “a peer-reviewed, collaborative and international history of sexuality blog” – will be of interest to AHP readers. In “Men of Superior IQ: Connecting Homosexuality to Intelligence in Cold War-Era Canada” Andrea Ens writes about connections drawn between male homosexuality and intelligence in Cold-War era Canada, noting that

Although connecting male homosexuality and intelligence might seem to counter negative appraisals of same-sex attraction, it may instead have increased fear of queer Canadians during the postwar period. Importantly, this construction of male homosexuals as intelligent was connected to broader cultural anxieties about same-sex attracted men in Cold War-era Canada.

The full piece can be read online here.

About Jacy Young

Jacy Young is a professor at Quest University Canada. A critical feminist psychologist and historian of psychology, she is committed to critical pedagogy and public engagement with feminist psychology and the history of the discipline.