The Situation in 1953

The story of The Spartan Housewives of NoVa starts in 1953. I set this story then for a reason. It is the same year that in our universe, the infamous CIA LSD and mind control project MK Ultra was started under the auspices of Sidney Gottlieb. The Spartan Housewives specifically starts on February 9, 1953, the three year anniversary of the birth of McCarthyism. Senator Joseph McCarthy was at his height in 1953. The Spartan Housewives webnovel is connected with the Richard Condon novel/John Frankenheimer movie, “The Manchurian Candidate”, which satirizes Joseph McCarthy. Additionally, the 1950s is a prime setting for a queer story like this, since in the imagination of future decades, mid-century is a prelapsarian time, before the deluge of evil in the 1960s and 70s. The 1950s was a time of strict binary gender roles; when men had to be men, and women had to be women. It was a time when Republicans regained their power.