Evelyn Hooker
| Evelyn Hooker | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Evelyn Gentry September 2, 1907 North Platte, Nebraska, United States |
| Died | November 18, 1996 (aged 89) Santa Monica, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation | Psychologist |
Evelyn Hooker (née Gentry, September 2, 1907 – November 18, 1996) was an American psychologist most notable for her 1957 paper "The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual" in which she administered several psychological tests to groups of self-identified male homosexuals and heterosexuals and asked experts to identify the homosexuals and rate their mental health. The experiment, which other researchers subsequently repeated, argues that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, as there was no detectable difference between homosexual and heterosexual men in terms of mental adjustment.
Her work argued that a false correlation between homosexuality and mental illness had formed the basis of classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder by studying only a sample group that contained homosexual men with a history of treatment for mental illness. This is of critical importance in refuting the existence of the category of cultural heterosexism because it argues that homosexuality is not developmentally inferior to heterosexuality. Her demonstration that it is not an illness led the way to the eventual removal of homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Hooker was born Evelyn Gentry in North Platte, Nebraska, in her grandmother's house and grew up with eight brothers and sisters in the Colorado Plains. When she was 13, her family moved to Sterling, Colorado. The journey to Sterling would be one of Evelyn's fondest memories.
Evelyn's mother, Jessie Bethel, who had a third grade education, told her to pursue an education because that was the only thing that could not be taken away from her. The Gentry family was not wealthy in the least, and Evelyn was further stigmatized by her nearly six-foot stature. Still an advocate of education, Jessie Bethel enrolled Evelyn at Sterling High School, which was large and unusually progressive for the time. There, Evelyn was in an honors program and was able to take a course in psychology. Evelyn wanted to go to a teachers college, but her instructors saw her potential and encouraged her to go to the University of Colorado. By the time she was ready to graduate, she had obtained a scholarship to the University of Colorado Boulder.
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