>>508642020This new emphasis on sex education posed a threat to the way of life of much of the institution's leadership. Gustav-Wrathall reveals that many of the most revered YMCA leaders of the late nineteenth century were "life-long bachelors known for their intense love for young men." Comparing them to women reformers of the era such as Jane Addams and Lillian Wald, he notes that while single, these men were "never alone." Drawing on the rich historiography on female relationships and intimacy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he argues that early YMCA leaders led lives that were emotionally, economically, and socially "men-centered."
But as medical models of homosexual pathology and heterosexual normativity became integral parts of the YMCA's sex education program, such relationships became suspect. The Y's sex-segregated environment came to be seen as unnatural. "It was difficult, if not impossible," Gustav-Wrathall argues, "to sustain intense friendships while attacking homosexuality". The result is what Gustav-Wrathall labels the "heterosexualization" of the YMCA. Leaders who devoted their lives to the care of young men within a homosocial setting were replaced by married men whose wives played a prominent, if ceremonial, role. In 1933, despite protests from the YWCA, women were welcomed into full membership in the organization. According to Gustav-Wrathall, the demise of the bachelor secretary and the sexual integration of the Y sapped the organization of much of its spiritual dynamism.
Gustav-Wrathall examines the complex relationship between the YMCA's physical education program and homoeroticism—how the program "created a culture that facilitated and shaped same-sex sexual desires" but simultaneously called for increased self-control. By creating not only a discourse but also a physical setting devoted to men's bodies, the YMCA became a center of contestation for notions concerning the male physique and male bonding.