The Dictionary of Homophobia (21 page)
CUARH ceased all activities in 1987. Around the same time, the gay association milieu in France became more diversified, including the establishment of various social interest groups (e.g.,
sports
,
music
, dating). Additionally, the fight against homophobia was no longer exclusive to gay and lesbian associations, as political parties, unions, and humanitarian associations also took up the fight. A number of activists from the gay groups of the 1970s and 1980s had worked in these large organizations and were a driving force behind their consideration of the homosexual issue. Ad hoc commissions around gay rights were sometimes created within political parties (the Green Party), union confederations, and associations (Amnesty International), sometimes serving more as a means of “internal education” rather than an external role. Politicians led Gay and Lesbian Pride marches, and union leaders actively participated. Progressively, as the fight against homophobia passed from simple statements of intent to action, it ceased to be waged solely by gay and lesbian associations and became a general political issue.
Moreover, the international gay association landscape was profoundly transformed at the end of the twentieth century. If the older gay associations in Europe survived the passage of time and were able to preserve their solid foundations (e.g., NVIH-COC in the Netherlands, RFSL in Sweden, SETA in Finland, ARCIGAY in Italy, and HOSI in Austria), other European gay groups were wracked by internal fragmentation (LBL in Denmark, FAGL and FWH in Belgium). On the other hand, gay associations in Eastern Bloc countries before the fall of Communism remained under the will of the Iron Curtain, all pro-gay initiatives were quickly quashed. In 1984, an attempt to form a gay group in Leningrad in the former Soviet Union was put down by the KGB. It would be necessary to wait until the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev and the spirit of
perestroika
(economic restructuring) for the Moscow gay and lesbian alliance to see the light of day in 1989, and for a Russian gay newspaper,
Tema
, to be officially registered.
However, a new revolution, this one technological, turned the landscape of gay rights groups of the 1990s upside down. The distribution and accessibility of electronic communication brought about a remarkable change in the sociology of the gay community. The Internet increased the visibility of groups who had previously very little access to traditional media (such as in Turkey and
Eastern Europe
). Most of all, however, the Internet permitted the creation of websites that supplemented or replaced the need for formal gay associations in countries where such associations had been difficult, if not illegal, to create. It is thus that a gay information network was established in all parts of the world. It is also thanks to the Internet that public opinion was quickly informed of homophobic episodes in other countries, such as the anti-gay trials in Egypt in 2001. Thus, the new “Information Society” as described by the United Nations (for the World Summit on the Information Society that occurred in Geneva in 2003, and in Tunisia in 2005) did not only describe a technological revolution, but also a revolution in the associations and networks of gays and lesbians.
—Jean-Michel Rousseau
Adam, Barry D., Jan Willem Duyvendak, and André Krouwel, eds.
The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics: National Imprints of a Worldwide Movement
. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1999.
Duyvendak, Jan Willem.
Le Poids du politique. Nouveaux mouvements sociaux en France
. Paris: L’Harmattan. 1994. [Published in the US as
The Power of Politics: New Social Movements in France
. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995.]
Front homosexual d’action révolutionnaire.
Rapport contre la normalité
. Paris: Ed. Champ-Libre, 1971.
Gonnard, Catherine, and Jean-Michel Rousseau. “Homophonies: une sonorité différente.” In
Actes du colloque international homosexualité et lesbi
a
nisme, mythes, mémoire et historiographie
. Lille: Cahiers GayKitschCamp, 1990.
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]
Thompson, Mark, ed.
The Long Road to Freedom: The Advocate History of the Gay and Lesbian Movement
. New York: St Martin’s Press. 1994.
Working for Lesbian and Gay Members
. Public Services International and Education International: Brussels, 1999.
—Criminalization; Decriminalization; Hirschfeld, Magnus; Mirguet, Paul; Politics; SOS homophobie; Stonewall.
BALKANS, the
The relative visibility of homosexuality in the Balkans is a recent development, closely tied to increased attention to events in the rest of the world which have resulted in, among other things, the adoption of radical new trends from gay and lesbian movements in the West. This new situation in many Balkan countries, however, is accompanied by extreme homophobic
violence
, which can only be understood through an analysis of the homosexual and homophobic characteristics in traditional Balkan society.
Albania, Greece, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia—all very heterogeneous in both people and language—have long been defined by rural patriarchies. This fact can be linked to the relative absence of democracy in these countries during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (democracy was not restored in Greece until 1974 with the collapse of the military government; other countries were not democratic until after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989) and to the kind of regime that allowed its society’s dominant values to perpetuate. These two political characteristics explain the homophobic violence, legal or otherwise, that has accompanied the opening of these countries to Western concepts.
Granted, the vast heterogeneousness of information sources, as well as the lack of substantial studies on the experiences of homosexuals in the region (especially in the nineteenth century), demands that care be taken when examining this issue. In addition, as is often the case, the relative lack of information on lesbianism and
lesbophobia
precludes a proper analysis here. However, certain basic phenomena can still be identified.
Homosexuality & Homophobia in Traditional Balkan Society
The first serious anthropological texts concerning Balkan societies are Westerners’ records of travel, beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing through the nineteenth, but whose style could hardly be deemed scientific. These should be read with caution, as they tend to imprecisely define the Balkans as the meeting-point between the Occident and Orient. Two characteristic traits were identified by American historian Larry Wolff, beginning with accounts of eighteenth-century life (as revealed in his 1994 book
Inventing Eastern Europe
), as well as in texts from the nineteenth century: the control of wives and their fidelity through a strong patriarchal authority, and the encouragement of male violence, individual or collective, especially with regard to the use of weapons. For instance, about twenty percent of the legal code established by the Prince of Montenegro for his people in 1850 was devoted to the subject of the patriarchal control of women, and another fifty percent to the use of weapons.
The control of women and the fraternity of men were no small part of the traditional customs. Take, for example, the tradition of sworn brotherhood in Montenegro in the late nineteenth century: two young men present themselves in church, armed, and swear to live and die for one another, then swap weapons. Homosexual or otherwise, this symbolized a passionate love made legitimate by its masculinity and the exclusion not only of women, but also femininity.
At the other extreme, the tendency to patriarchal power often led to other traditions, such as the “sworn virgins” of northern Albania (a phenomenon that continued into the twentieth century). In the absence of a male heir to a family, a young girl would be raised as though she were a boy, and in adulthood would take on both the clothing and demeanor of a man; she would also be referred to by others as a man. This allowed the woman to be the “patriarch” of a family that would otherwise not be able to remain autonomous. These women were normally celibate, although there is evidence of a few unions between “sworn virgins” and other women. In this example, what was worrisome was not the potential for homosexuality, but rather the risk of gender confusion or anything else that might contest the perceived virility of society’s traditional masculine relationships.
The same elements can be found in remnants of traditional Greek culture, still present in modern times. The physical, as well as emotional, separation of men and women arguably encouraged passionate bonds between adolescent boys as well as between adult men, as revealed in several works (such as Marie-Christine Anest’s studies on Greek children and adolescents during the campaigns against Cypress and Corfu in the 1970s, and those by sociologist Kostas Yannakopoulous on adults in Pyraeus and Athens between 1990 and 1992). Although such relationships were criticized for their overly sentimental nature, the potential for them to become sexual usually went unremarked.
In this way, denial played an important role. The phallocentric ideology of people in this region, combined with the physical and emotional separation of the sexes, did not allow for the recognition of overt homosexuality. All those who dared to declare themselves homosexual—or in the words of their detractors, “pederasts” or “fags” (
poustides
in Greek, for example)—were subject to utter contempt and even violence. In her book
Black Lamb and the Grey Falcon
(1941), Rebecca West, while describing a lengthy voyage in Yugoslavia, echoes this denial by declaring that there are no homosexuals in Serbia (unlike her home country of Britain, she laments). An understanding of this denial is essential, as it explains how any concepts of male homosexuality are treated in the region as completely alien.
New Visibility of Homosexuality & Hard-Line Homophobia
It is then easy to understand that the arrival of the Western model of gay and lesbian liberation since the 1970s and especially the 90s was not well-received by traditional Balkan society (as demonstrated by the homophobic campaigns launched by the various national Orthodox churches in the region. However, progress made on the various legal and political fronts, connected to a new willingness to open up to the West, allowed the new gay ideal to be tolerated. But as revealed by Yannakopoulos, who has written on same-sex relations in Greece, a paradoxical, internalized kind of homophobia can be observed in the tension between male homosexuals who still live according to the old traditions and those who embrace the new “queer” identity. Individually, many gay men possess a “mish mash” of the two identities, in which internalized homophobia and true liberation are made to coexist.
It is primarily in the former
communist
states where homophobic violence in the region is most visible today. The 1990s drastically changed the landscape for gays and lesbians; a number of issues, such as vehicles for public debate on the subject, the persistence of extremist anti-gay violence, the slow pace of legal change, and pressure from the West, all contributed to turning these countries into veritable laboratories for nascent gay and lesbian rights as they made the sometimes awkward transition to full democracy.
Prior to the end of communism, homosexuality was a punishable crime in all communist countries in the region with the exception of the former Yugoslav states Croatia (which decriminalized homosexuality in 1977) and Slovenia (decriminalized in 1976), as well as Bulgaria (decriminalized in 1968). In the countries where homosexuality was illegal, their patriarchal values meshed well with those instilled by the Soviet Union (where homosexuality had been illegal since the 1930s). As an example of the harsh laws, homosexual acts and even tendencies were punishable in Albania by up to ten years in prison (before it was decriminalized in 1995). With the fall of communism at the end of the 1980s, one of the central issues became that of minorities. In the midst of a serious identity crisis, the new voices demanding rights for gays and lesbians were all that more shocking.
As an example, Serbia’s treatment of homosexuals since 1990 was defined by two major events. On June 27, 1991, Arkadija, the country’s sole gay and lesbian association, held its first convention whose theme was “The Right to be Different.” The same day, the Yugoslav government of Slobodan Miloševi
attacked Slovenia, who had just declared its independence, sparking a ten-year civil war against Croatia, Bosnia, and Albanians in Kosovo, which included a hunt for homosexuals in the region. Then on June 30, 2001, two days after Miloševiwas taken into United Nations custody, the very first Gay Pride parade took place in Belgrade. But the
police
, despite having been alerted, did nothing to defend parade-goers from being violently beaten by homophobes who included neofascist football supporters, young orthodox Christians, and followers of
far right
nationalist leader Vojislav Sešelj.