Raczymow, Henri.
Maurice Sachs ou les travaux forcés de la frivolité
. Paris, Gallimard, 1988.
Tamagne, Florence.
Histoire de l’homosexualité en Europe: Berlin, Londres, Paris, 1919–1939
. Paris: Le Seuil, 2000. [Published in the US as
A History of Homosexuality in Europe: Berlin, London, Paris, 1919–1939
. New York: Algora, 2004.]
White, Edmund.
Jean Genet
. Paris: Gallimard, 1993. [Published in the US as
Genet: A Biography
. New York: Knopf, 1993.]
—Armed Forces; Contagion; Eulenburg Affair, the; Hoover, J. Edgar; McCarthy, Joseph; North America; Peril; Rhetoric; Turing, Alan.
TREATMENT
Historically, the world of
medicine
has had two objectives when dealing with the issue of homosexuality: one, the curing of “inflicted” individuals, and another, a general concern for preventative measures in the name of “public health.” In this sense, the history of how homosexuality has been treated by the medical establishment is comparable to the history of the treatment of tuberculosis or alcoholism. In
France
, for example, homosexuality was classified as one of the “social scourges,” as pronounced by the 1960
Mirguet
amendment in which homosexuality was officially equated with alcoholism and prostitution. At the same time, the repeated failures of medical science to “cure” homosexuals encouraged a great deal of “originality” among proposed methods that also opened the door to charlatans. As such, gay men and lesbians were often guinea pigs for a number of “behavioral re-education” methods along with alcoholics, drug addicts, and “psychopaths.” Paradoxically, the question of treatment was often advanced by professionals who had never any fundamental role in the medical theory of homosexuality. Magnus
Hirschfeld
, the German physician, sexologist, and gay rights activist, never felt treatment was an issue due to his own homosexuality; Richard von Krafft-Ebing, the Austro-German psychiatrist and sexologist, did not believe in curative possibilities (except possibly with bisexuals); and Sigmund Freud in no way believed that his method of analysis could be useful in treating homosexuals. Among such theorists, only endocrinologists, given the nature of their discipline, were in favor of treatment—in particular hormonal therapy, which, in the framework of research protocols, fortunately involved only a few individual subjects, mainly in the United States and, in a more sinister way, Nazi
Germany
.
More frequent among methods in the first half of the twentieth century to treat homosexuals were therapeutic ones employed by psychiatrists designed to cure their patients. Among the multitude of available psychotherapies, founded on a mechanistic reading of Freud’s
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
, the main attempts were based principally on aversion therapy, which employed tactics such as emetics or electroshock treatments in order to incite “disgust” in the individual toward his objects of desire. However, after World War II, many cases of “social deviance” were treated through lobotomies, particularly in the United States and in the former USSR.
Today, many who consider homosexuals to be “incorrigibles” who need to be corrected still believe that they can and should be cured. Many
Middle Eastern
countries use forced internment. Moreover, in the United States, groups of “
ex-gays
” (those who have renounced their homosexuality, often as a result of a religious awakening) suggest reparative therapies, a singular mix of prayer and psychotherapy, techniques which are increasingly supported by the religious right, which orchestrates sophisticated campaigns to promote the “rehabilitation” of homosexuals. Obviously, the success of this tactic is rather limited, as one can imagine, but the rise of such groups, notably in
Latin America
and
Southeast Asia,
supports the notion that the medical treatment of homosexuality is not only desirable, but also is possible. Further, recent
genetic
research in the United States that suggests that homosexual desire is natural and preordained ironically leaves the door open to the idea of “retroactive” therapy, in which eugenics (through prenatal diagnosis and modification of the incriminating gene) is used to “finally” eradicate homosexuality at the source. Finally, however, if all the proposed treatments fail, there is always the “final solution” proposed by Dr Paul Cameron who, speaking at the 1985 Conservative Political Action Conference in the US, said, “Unless we get medically lucky, in three or four years, one of the options discussed will be the extermination of homosexuals.”
—Pierre-Olivier de Busscher
Cameron, Paul. “What Causes Homosexual Desire and Can It Be Changed?” Washington, DC: Family Research Institute, 1992.
Katz, Jonathan.
Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U
.
S
.
A
. New York: Crowell Company, 1976.
Kristof, Nicholas D. “China Using Electrodes to ‘Cure’ Homosexuals.”
The New York Times
(January 29, 1990).
Rosario,Vernon (ed.).
Science and Homosexualities
. New York/London: Routledge, 1997.
—Biology; Degeneracy; Endocrinology; Ex-Gay; Fascism; Genetics; Hirschfeld, Magnus; Inversion; Medicine; Medicine, Legal; Mirguet, Paul; Perversions; Psychiatry; Psychoanalysis; Turing, Alan; Violence.
TURING, Alan
British mathematician Alan Turing (1912–54), often considered to be the father of modern computer science, remains one of the most famous victims of homophobia brought about by the hysteria caused by
McCarthyism
that found its way to Great Britain. The history of science will remember Turing for the major role he played during World War II as a code breaker, which allowed the Allies to decipher the German military code known as “Enigma.” In 1952, however, the respected professor’s life at the University of Manchester became a nightmare. After a brief relationship with a nineteen-year-old working-class youth named Arnold Murray,Turing discovered that his apartment had been robbed by one of Murray’s friends. After filing a complaint, during the investigation, he admitted to having sexual relations with Murray. His testimony resulted in his and Murray’s arrest for the crime of “gross indecency,” punishable by two years’ imprisonment. Both men pled guilty, but while Murray was released unconditionally, Turing was placed on probation and with compulsory medical
treatment
. At the same time, Turing was relieved of all duties relating to the encryption and decryption of code, as he was perceived as a security risk. He was also forced to take female hormones for a year in order to suppress his libido, and developed female traits as a result of the treatment, including breasts. Additionally, his every move was scrutinized as well as those of his associates (particularly his foreign friends), and he was physically separated from others at work, in a position specifically created for him at his university. Despondent, Turing eventually committed suicide in 1954 by eating a cyanide-laced apple.
Alan Turing’s destiny was exactly that of an individual who was perceived as a “threat” or “
peril
” to national security because he was both a homosexual and a high-level scientist working in sensitive areas. His death made him a martyr in the homosexual cause; his story was the subject of the play
Breaking the Code
written by Hugh Whitemore, as well the opera
The Turing Test
written by Julian Wagstaff.
—Pierre-Olivier de Busscher
Hodges, Andrew.
Alan Turing: The Enigma
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.
—Eulenburg Affair, the; Hoover, J. Edgar; McCarthy, Joseph; Medicine; North America; Scandal; Suicide; Treason; Violence.
UNITED STATES.
See
North America
UNIVERSALISM/DIFFERENTIALISM
The concepts of universalism and differentialism form an opposing binary that regularly serve as the basis for many intellectual debates in France. While this divide exists in many other countries, it has taken on remarkable significance in France, a remarkable importance,
a priori
defining positions, arguments, and theories. It has been—and still is—of crucial importance in dialogue concerning racism and sexism notably. Likewise on the question of homosexuality, as the debates regarding
PaCS
(Pacte civil de solidarité; Civil solidarity pact) have shown, these two poles have often been successful. Explicitly or not, the idea according to which the universal must transcend differences and impose itself upon them is present in many arguments, opposing themselves to differentialism, according to which identity builds itself first as a primary and unwavering difference. Truth be told, within the intellectual arena in France, universalism is clearly the dominant position, and as for the rest, no one claims to be explicitly on the side of differentialism, which appears mostly as an argumentative strategy that allows for the denouncing of political adversaries. But in reality, universalism can just as well serve as a strategic
rhetoric
, in that one philosophy or another may be used in a homophobic sense, sometimes by the same individuals, thus producing contradictory statements that nonetheless condemn homosexuality.
Normative Universalism
Conceived of in order to emancipate the individual from social, economic, and cultural determinism implicit in feudal society, political-judicial universalism is at the heart of the Enlightenment’s rationalism. History, however, has demonstrated the ambiguity of such “liberation” when it serves, notably, to justify colonial paternalism. As a specific stance, universalism can become the strategy for a dominant group claiming to liberate another from the idiosyncratic “chains” to which it seems tied. This is evident in the heterosexist argument: In the name of the
de facto
heterosexual majority, homosexuality is dreaded as a specific deviance by
medicine, psychiatry
, or Christian morality; homosexuals thus being, according to Foucault’s formula, “incorrigibles that need correcting.” Human dignity and homosexuality are thus considered incompatible. In the universalist mirror, the homosexual difference appears to be an outgrowth, a defect, if not an outright crime. As physically and mentally healthy human beings, we cannot identify ourselves with this anomaly; the universalist idea of physical and mental hygiene seems to forbid it. In this scheme that all of humanity supposes fecundity and birth, heterosexual universalism is simply the expression of nature being conscious of itself and its pervasive laws. Thus, the homosexual is considered a moral or genetic monstrosity, situated somewhere between the thoughtless fool, the perverted libertine, and the unfortunate trisomic. In turn, as an object of curiosity, hate, compassion, and therapeutic trials, the homosexual is the incarnation of unacceptable, even aberrant, difference; it was as if citizenship were granted to the plague or cholera. From this perspective, to a certain extent, the homosexual is not a human being in the sense that humankind is a political animal, as his morals by definition contradict the laws of universalism required to form a society. He can have no rights, other than the right to change and to fall into line. His difference creates irrevocable controversy.
The Tribunal of Universal Reason
In recent years, universalist arguments have been especially put to use by an intellectualized homophobic rhetoric. (Notably in France during the debate over PaCS.) It is no longer homosexuals as individuals who are attacked, blamed, and pathologized, but homosexuality in general; a form of flawed logic. Going well beyond nature and biology, current heterosexist universalism bases itself, among other things, on a universal ontology, a “fact of reason,”
gender differences
, and their complementary relationship to one another. Homosexuality is thus no longer only criticized for being “
unnatural
,” spurning biological laws that impose the male/female relations in order to perpetuate the species and escape
sterility
. If homosexuality, reduced to a simple “desire of sameness,” cannot be recognized by the state at the same level as heterosexuality, it is because homosexuality is ignorant of
symbolic order
, fundamental
otherness
, the “ultimate end of thought” (Françoise Héritier), the “hard core of reason,” and the “universal principle of non-contradiction” (Pierre Legendre). Mixing logic and biology, these enigmatic assertions surprisingly recall cryptic and intimidating pre-Socratic fragments, during a time when the lack of empirical knowledge allowed the most audacious ideas to flower. In this case, intelligence, according in the Fragments of Anaxagoras, which causes motion and coming into being, is nothing more than a particular type of attraction between opposites, i.e. that of the
opposite sex
. Thus, it is ironic that this universalistic and heterosexist logic seem rather dismissive of ancient Greek thought, which, largely developed in a social context of homoerotic desire!
The Differentialist Symptom & Heterosexist Differentialism
Confronted with these banishments of correct law and good logic, homosexuality attempts to compose itself as a viable difference, both in human and social terms. In this historical process of progressive legitimization, the
decriminalization
of homosexuality, and the growing acknowledgement that it is not a mental illness, constitute a fundamental step. Today, officially, at least in Western societies, the homosexual is no longer considered a
criminal
, nor a sick person identified with a shameful or pathological difference, as had been the case in the Soviet Union under Stalinism, which saw gays and lesbians sent to
gulags
under Article 121 of the penal code. The affirmation of homosexual culture, sensibility, and humanity, from university conferences to Lesbian and Gay Pride celebrations, attempts to present an image of homosexuality as a worthy and possible difference, and that the attraction to people of the same gender is an
anthropological universal
, an omnipresent virtuality in all societies. Espoused by a good number of intellectuals, the homosexual cause becomes a just and universal one, in the refusal to make sexual orientation a criterion of
discrimination
: the idea that “they have a right to be different.”