It wasn't long before the world experienced yet another change. Anxieties over global politics masked cultural anxieties about sexual norms. Women were becoming the scapegoat once again. The KKK and the White Citizens' Councils helped light the fire under these cultural anxieties by attacking anyone who was out of the "norm". Communists were feared and so was anything out of social family tradition. Anticommunism and homophobic campaigns were run to dilute the public and military forces of "sexual perverts". The government would even go as far to compare communism with homosexuality. Lesbians and those who were even mentioned to possibly be lesbians were dismissed from army services as "undesirable". Gay and lesbian bars were even subject to police abuse. It was like the Salem witch trials all over again. History really does repeat itself.
During this time period, women were also seen as a symbol of safety and security...well most of them that is. Agnes E. Meyer of Atlantic Monthly stated "Women have many careers but one vocation - motherhood...It is for woman as mother, actual or vicarious, to restore security in out insecure world." Women were now being told, once again, to get back in their place of taking care of the home and the kids. Society was trying to survive though a scary time in history and all they wanted was something familiar; grounding them to a comfort they could rely on, in this case it was their women.
In the 1950's, the "dominant domestic ideology" later known as the "feminine mystique" had placed women almost solely into the role of wife and mother. Although there was no way to turn back the clock on women's sexuality, society was now driving the idea of sexuality for women towards motherhood. They were allowed to be sexually active but they could not be the one in charge. Even actresses of the day were becoming more submissive in the roles they played. All of these eased the anxieties that males had.
( Evans, Sara M. "The Cold War and the "Feminine Mystique"." Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America. New York: Free, 1989. 243-262. Print.)
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