The Dictionary of Homophobia (2 page)
In Europe, the situation since 2003 has also been mixed. There has been remarkable progress in the recognition of same-sex couples in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, France, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Hungary, and Great Britain. Even where same-sex marriage is not yet legal, there are civil union contracts that grant same-sex couples certain rights, such as spousal benefits and (to varying degrees) the right to adopt children. Moreover, in 2004, the Buttiglione incident was proof that European authorities take the question of homophobia seriously. José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, had nominated Rocco Buttiglione for the position of the European Union’s commissioner for Justice, Freedom, and Security. During a three-hour hearing to confirm his position, he declared quite matter-of-factly that “homosexuality is a sin” and that “the family exists in order to allow women to have children and have the protection of a male who takes care of them.” These excessive comments led parliamentarians not only to refuse to approve him for the sensitive position, but also to refuse to reappoint him to another post within the commission. Until then, it was taken for granted that homophobia was the problem of a minority, and that, consequently, it was a minor problem. The European Parliament demonstrated that, as far as it was concerned, it is a question the affects the majority and, consequently, is a major issue.
However, many facts suggest that homophobic resistance remains extremely strong in Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe. Lech Kaczy
ski, who was elected president of Poland in 2005, has made some extremely offensive comments about homosexuals, including suggesting that the human race “would disappear if homosexuality was freely promoted”; he also banned Gay Pride parades in 2004 and 2005, stating that they would promote “the homosexual lifestyle.” Other Pride marches have been regularly attacked in many large cities, such as Krakow, Poland; Riga, Latvia; Moscow, Russia; and Vilnius, Lithuania. In Belgrade, Serbia in 2001, gay and lesbian demonstrators were attacked and beaten not only by skinheads and religious fundamentalists, but also by passersby who decided to join in, trampling the activists who were already lying in the street.
In Africa as well, the situation is extremely ambivalent. The recently launched Coalition of African Lesbians, which includes activists from fourteen countries, constitutes a very positive sign, and LGBT associations are popping up everywhere. However, homophobic beatings, arrests, and condemnations continue, and in some areas are on the rise. The majority of the continent’s countries condemn same-sex relations, and even though these laws are not regularly enforced, they help to maintain a climate of fear and concealment, to the social and political detriment of LGBT individuals and associations.
With regard to transnational relations, political recognition of LGBT people is, and remains, rare. Refugees who are threatened in their homeland because of their sexual orientation or gender identity and who wish to find sanctuary elsewhere are, more often than not, rejected by their prospective new country. Immigration agents often do not consider the laws that condemn LGBT people in their country of origin as sufficient argument for political asylum, even when such laws call for the death penalty. With their requests denied, and knowing the fate that awaits them at home, certain asylum seekers see no way out: In September 2003, after his refugee request was rejected by British authorities, Israfil Shiri walked into the offices of Refugee Action in Manchester, doused himself in gasoline, and burned himself alive rather than be deported back to Iran. In 2004, a transsexual who had been whipped in Iran because of her sexuality, and whose request for asylum had been rejected by Sweden, committed suicide in Stralsund, near Stockholm. In 2005, an Iranian man being held at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam was on the verge of being returned to his homeland. A few years earlier, he had been arrested in Iran; he managed to escape, but his partner was hanged. Recent death sentences carried out against homosexuals in Iran finally convinced Dutch authorities to stop the expulsion order.
Finally, at the international level, the situation is just as worrisome. In recent years, the Vatican has been working in concert not only with other Catholic nations but also with the United States and Protestant, Orthodox, and Muslim countries in order to promote its conservative, reactionary agenda that includes largely homophobic and sexist positions. Pope John Paul II understood that it was possible, and useful, to overcome theological differences with other nations and churches in order to affirm the moral affinities that they share. Using his charisma, he fostered agreements and alliances that were once unthinkable. This surprising coalition has already achieved some success, such as in 2003, when it effectively opposed a Brazilian resolution at the United Nations that aimed to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. Moreover, Cardinal Ratzinger, who succeeded John Paul II as pope in 2005, and who had co-signed many Vatican documents opposing gay and lesbian rights, immediately made his position clear by forbidding gay men from becoming priests.
Following the publication of the original Dictionary of Homophobia, I launched and coordinated the first International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO). In my mind, it was an obvious extension of what I had hoped the Dictionary would achieve. At a time when the globalization of the world’s economy is on every national agenda, it is vital that we remain conscious of its political, ethical, and philosophical ramifications, which include equal rights for all. The first IDAHO was celebrated for the first time on May 17, 2005, fifteen years to the day after the World Health Organization decided to remove homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses; it was launched simultaneously in over forty countries, from Brazil to Russia, by way of Kenya, Canada, Portugal, and Lebanon. It was an impetus for lively debates, film screenings, radio and television broadcasts, concerts, street festivals, and school events. As a result, China hosted public LGBT marches for the first time in its entire history. The day was officially recognized by European Parliament, by Belgium, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Costa Rica, France, and several regions or provinces in Canada, Spain, Brazil, Italy, and other countries. In 2006, the IDAHO committee launched a petition addressed to the United Nations “for a universal decriminalization of homosexuality.” We were fortunate enough to be supported by several Nobel Prize laureates (Dario Fo, Elfriede Jelinek, José Saramago, Amartya Sen, Desmond Tutu), many famous artists (Victoria Abril, David Bowie, Elton John, Tony Kushner, Cyndi Lauper, Meryl Streep), distinguished intellectuals (Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, Taslima Nasrin, Salman Rushdie, Cornel West), political leaders (Jacques Delors, former president of the European Commission; Michel Rocard and Laurent Fabius, two former French prime ministers; Thomas Hammerberg, commissioner for human rights, Council of Europe; Bertrand Delanoë, mayor of Paris). On May 17, 2008, the French government responded favorably to the IDAHO committee: the secretary of state for human hights, Rama Yade, announced that May 17 would then become an official national day, and that France would support a UN declaration for a universal decriminalization of homosexuality. Of course, it is only the beginning of a long-term process, but I believe there is cause for hope.
—Louis-Georges Tin
2008
The problem is not so much homosexual desire as the fear of homosexuality: why does the mere mention of the word trigger off reactions of hate? We must therefore question how the heterosexual world conceives and fantasizes about “homosexuality.”
—Guy Hocquenghem,
Homosexual Desire
, 1972
According to widespread opinion, homosexuality is more liberated today than it has ever been: it is present and visible everywhere, in the streets, in the newspapers, on televisions, in the movies. It is even completely accepted, as witnessed by recent legislative advances in North America and Europe regarding the recognition of same-sex couples (Vermont, Quebec, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, France, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, England, etc.). Certainly, further adjustments remain necessary in order to eradicate sexuality-based discrimination, once and for all, but it would be nothing more than a simple question of time: time to bring to its conclusion a grassroots movement launched many decades ago.
But then again, perhaps not. Truth be told, the twentieth century was, without a doubt, the most violently homophobic period in history: deportations to concentration camps under the Nazi regime, gulags in the Soviet Union, and blackmail and persecution in the United States during the Joseph McCarthy anti-communist era. For some, particularly in the western world, much of this seems very much part of the past. But quite often, living conditions for gays, lesbians, and transgenders in today’s world remain very difficult. Homosexuality seems to be discriminated against everywhere: in at least seventy nations, homosexual acts are still illegal (e.g., Algeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Senegal) and in a good many of these, punishment can last more than ten years (India, Jamaica, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Syria). Sometimes the law dictates life imprisonment (Guyana and Uganda), and, in a dozen or so nations, the death penalty may be applied (Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan). In Africa, many nations’ leaders have brutally reaffirmed their will to personally fight against the “scourge,” which is, according to them, “anti-African.” Even in countries where homosexuality is not illegal, or explicitly named in the penal code, persecution is on the rise. In Brazil, for example, death squads and skin-heads spread terror: 1,900 homophobic murders have been officially reported during the last twenty years, without having prompted any real action from either police or legal authorities. In such conditions, it is difficult to imagine that the world’s “tolerance” of gays, lesbians, and transgenders has gained much ground, if at all. On the contrary, in the majority of these nations, homophobia appears to be more violent than ever.
This brief overview of the situation seems even more sinister as it belies the naïve impression of those who would believe that the overall acceptance of gays and lesbians in society is growing. But in reality, pessimism and blind optimism constitute two symmetric pitfalls for both thought and action, inasmuch as both of these attitudes rest upon completely illusory presuppositions: one, that homophobia has and always will exist, and is a constant in human society; the other, that homophobia is generally a thing of the past. In reality, homophobia as it exists today is neither a transhistorical inevitability, impossible to fight, nor an historical residue destined to disappear by itself over time. It constitutes a problem of humanity, serious and complex and with many ramifications.
But what exactly is homophobia? Apparently, the term was first used in the 1960s, but it is credited to Kenneth Smith, author of a 1971 article entitled “Homophobia: A Tentative Personality Profile.” Although the word appeared later in other languages—particularly in French through the writing of Claude Courouve in the 1970s—it did not appear in dictionaries until 1994. It is, therefore, a recent term with a relatively rich history.
Over time, the word’s semantic spectrum has consistently broadened. In 1972, psychotherapist George Weinberg defined homophobia as “the fear of being in a closed space with a homosexual.” This very narrow definition quickly overflowed into common usage, as witnessed by the standard definition found in the
Concise Oxford Dictionary
: “An extreme and irrational aversion to homosexuality and homosexuals.” Didier Eribon proposed to extend the notion by introducing the idea of a homophobic continuum “which goes from those words shouted on the street, which every gay or lesbian has heard, ‘fuckin’ fag’ or ‘fucking dyke,’ to those words that are implicitly written on the archway of the city hall wedding hall:
Homosexuals Not Admitted
.” From this perspective, the notion fully integrated into everyday homophobia the theoretic dialogue of judicial, psychoanalytical, or anthropological allegiance, thereby seeking to confirm or justify the established inequality between homosexuals and heterosexuals.
Pushing the limits of analysis, Daniel Welzer-Lang suggested a new definition. For him, homophobia “is, in a greater sense, the disparagement of those said feminine qualities in men and, to a certain extent, those said masculine qualities in women.” As such, he sought to link “specific homophobia, which is practiced against gays and lesbians, and generalized homophobia, which takes root in the construction of the hierarchical organization of gender.” The phenomenon can affect any individual, which explains why the insult “fag” can be applied to those who are clearly heterosexual, in the sense that, beyond sexual orientation, it condemns a deficiency in the “perfect” virility that society expects and demands in men.
Evidently, the notion of homophobia has progressively broadened as research has allowed us to understand that acts, words, and attitudes that are clearly perceived as homophobic are nothing more than the by-product of a more general cultural construction representative of violence throughout society as a whole. As a result, the semantic extension of the word has obeyed a metonymic logic that has permitted the linking of the act of homophobia to its ideological and institutional foundations, which are also denounced under this term.