Sexuality in the Movie J. Edgar

This past break I attended the movie J. Edgar. This movie was very interesting and displayed a homosexual relationship between two men, J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, and Clyde Tolson, his right hand man. While in the film, this relationship was quite visible and obvious, in real life people can only speculate that they ever had a sexual relationship. In real life, J. Edgar Hoover was very secretive about his sex life, which makes it difficult to say for certain that he in fact had a relationship with Clyde Tolson.

The significance of this secretive relationship, assuming, as the majority of historians do, that it was in fact substantial, is that it had to be kept secret. During his reign as director of the FBI it would have been a career ending blow if Hoover’s homosexuality became public. In fact, Hoover was a key player in much anti-gay legislation because of society’s expectations at the time. This shows how far we as a society have come in understanding that heteronormativity should not and cannot be the sole source of gender-role expectations. Currently, our society still has much progress to make regarding sexuality and acceptance. But the fact that throughout his
entire life (1895-1972) Hoover was forced to hide his true feelings for another person for the sake of his job, reputation, and most likely, personal safety, shows that great steps forward in issues relating to sexuality are, and have been, in progress and will and should continue.