Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/532701
LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.15 29 to the English-speaking world. Her treatment later in her life includes a devastating regimen of medications and electroshock therapy. A lobotomy was repeatedly recommended, though she never underwent one. "Medicine in general, and psychiatric medicine in particular, underwent enormous changes during Henrietta's lifetime. Her Smith professor believed she was doing her student a great service by placing her in the care of an important Freudian practitioner. It is impossible to recapture what was said in those many sessions with Dr. Jones, but he clearly expressed his plan to lead her 'from women to men,' the same impulse that sadly leads to the 'conversion therapies' so much in the news of late. Te introduction of prescription medications to her fragile mental state did far more harm than good, and her family's understandable wish for a solution to her breakdowns pointed them to what would now be considered inhumane therapies." As a work of history, what does Henrietta's story have to tell us about ourselves? "I did not set out to write about sexuality, but a story buried in my family launched me onto a journey about the complexity of human sexual experience and the many ways love can course through us. One of the aspects of her life I fnd intriguing is how Henrietta cannot be pinned down absolutely — she loved women; she had deep connections with men. Her fuidity, along with her privilege, likely shielded her from the worst censure early-20th-century homophobia could deal out, yet the word was that when she returned to Kentucky in the late 1930s, the Jeferson County police made it clear that she was not welcome, and she ended up in Oldham County. I will always wonder how her life would have unfolded if she had lived a hundred years later and were 14 today." An excerpt from Irrepressible: "One evening in the powder room at the Louisville Country Club, Henrietta made a pass at a fetching debutante. Te girl tore out of the bathroom and leaned over the grand staircase and shouted, 'Henrietta Bingham just kissed me on the lips!' Such an exclamation was not forgotten easily, and such behavior (which would scarcely cause a stir in London's Bloombsury area) could not be overlooked in Louisville." Excerpted from Irrepressible: Te Jazz Life of Henrietta Bingham, by Emily Bingham, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2015 by Emily Bingham. All rights reserved. kyelderlaw.com