In this context, the community does not impose a single way of being and identity so much as it offers a multiplicity of possible strategies. To someone used to being referred to as a “queer” or as a “lesbo,” the options are no longer restricted to the invisibility of the
closet
or conformity to a socially accepted homosexual persona simply because it has been identified and represented (e.g., the village dandy, the sensitive hairstylist, the effeminate boy). It is within the parameters of the community and the freedom of space it allows that members can learn to play among the identities available to him or her: the ability to play a role, drop it, and even make up new ones. It is significant that the concept of “queer,” having taken on the challenge of the dismantling of established identities through their very dissemination, was not able to develop except within the confines of an established community. The anti-communitarianists are short-sighted: far from being the last word in minority policy, the community is first and foremost the necessary condition through which the freedom of minorities becomes possible.
—Philippe Mangeot
ACT UP-Paris.
Le Sida
. Paris: Ed. Dagorno, “Combien de divisions,” 1994.
Chauncey, George.
Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the Making of a Gay Male World, 1890–1940
. New York: Basic Books, 1994.
D’Emilio, John.
Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970
. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983.
Delphy, Christine. “L’Humanitarisme républicain contre les mouvements homos,”
Politique: La revue
, no.5 (1997).
Eribon, Didier.
Réflexions sur la question gay
. Paris: Fayard, “Histoire de la pensée,” 1999. [Published in the US as
Insult and the Making of the Gay Self
. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.]
———.
Papiers d’identité: Interventions sur la question gay
. Paris: Fayard, 2000.
Fassin, Eric. “Notre oncle d’Amérique,”
Vacarme
, no.12 (2000).
———. “L’Epouvantail américain: penser la discrimination française,”
Vacarme
, nos. 4–5 (1997).
Finkielkraut, Alain. “Chroniques hebdomadaires,”
France Culture
.
Levine Martin P. “Gay Ghetto,”
Journal of Homosexuality
, no.4 (1979).
Julliard, Jacques. “Chroniques hebdomadaires,”
Le Nouvel Observateur
.
Lévy, Elisabeth.
Les Maîtres censeurs
. Paris: Jean-Claude Lattès, 2002.
Macé-Scaron, Joseph.
La Tentation communautaire
. Paris: Plon, 2001.
Mangeot, Philippe. “Bonnes Conduites? Petite histoire du ‘politiquement correct’,”
Vacarme
, nos. 1–2 (1997).
Martel, Frédéric.
Le Rose et le noir. Les homosexuels en France depuis 1968
. Paris: Le Seuil, 1996. [Published in the US as
The Pink and The Black: Homosexuals in France since 1968
. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1999.]
Muray Philippe.
Chers Djihadistes
. Paris: Mille et une Nuits, “Fondation du 2 mars,” 2002.
———.
On ferme
. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1997.
Newton, Esther.
Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America’s First Gay and Lesbian Town
. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.
Pollak, Michael. “L’Homosexualité masculine, ou: le bonheur dans le ghetto?”
Communications
, no. 35 (1982). New edition in
Sexualités occidentales
. Edited by Philippe Ariès and André Béjin. Paris: Le Seuil, 1984. [Published in the US as
Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times
. New York: Blackwell, 1985.]
———. “Homosexualité et le sida.” In
Une identité blessée
. Paris: Ed. Métailié, 1993.
Schneider, Michel.
Big Mother: psychopathologie de la vie politique
. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2002.
Taguieff, Pierre-André.
Résister au bougisme. Démocratie forte contre mondialisation techno-marchande
. Paris: Mille et une Nuits, “Fondation du 2 mars,” 2002.
—AIDS; Associations; Gender Differences; Ghetto; Heterophobia; Lobby; North America; Peril; Privacy; Rhetoric; Symbolic Order; Universalism/Differentialism.
CONSTRUCTIONISM.
See
Essentialism
CONTAGION
The concept of homosexuality as a contagion, one of many strains of homophobia derived from
medicine
, is nonetheless deeply rooted in the religious concept of evil. At its origin is the notion that Satan tries to lead men into
sin
with fairly successful results (e.g., sins of the flesh, the forbidden fruit). Evil is thus something that is not innate but rather imposed on the subject, who is an unwitting victim. In the same cultural context, homosexuality becomes a sort of contagious moral disease; such was the point of view of theologian Albert the Great in the thirteenth century: “It is a contagious disease that spreads from one person to another,” to which the wealthy are most at risk. No doubt this was also the thinking of King Louis XIV of France when he expelled a number of notorious sodomites from the court, whose influence on one of his sons (the Count of Vermandois) he had begun to fear.
The medical community returned to the theme of contagion in the nineteenth century. In his
Etude médico-légale sur les attentats aux moeurs
(Medical-legal studies of assaults against decency), published in 1857, Auguste Ambroise Tardieu, president of the French Academy of Medicine, dusts off some old metaphysical prejudices against homosexuals and couches them in pseudoscientific positivist terms, claiming that the true pederasts (the inverted) are few in number, but go about “recruiting” “aunties” (the perverted). Most doctors and psychiatrists lapped up this theory, and by the end of the nineteenth century a clear concept of the homosexual predator who pounces on his unsuspecting prey had developed. This was clearly the perspective of those who prosecuted Oscar
Wilde
on charges of gross indecency in 1895: one accused the writer of “being the center of a circle that systematically corrupted young men,” and the Crown prosecutor spoke of “a moral infection threatening society … that would not fail, given enough time, to corrupt and affect it in its entirety.” Here, it could be seen that the theme had evolved to take into consideration Louis Pasteur’s recent advances in science: the homosexual was now a microbe seeking to undermine and corrupt healthy organisms. In short, what was once a minority sexual taste became a mental illness, then a social pathology capable of transforming itself into a pandemic. For this reason, up until the 1960s, sexologists and educators were obsessed with the danger of homosexual contagion. In 1895, Dr Garnier wrote in
Epuisement nerveux et génital
(Nervous and genital exhaustion):“An important point that must be kept in mind with regard to sexual psychopaths is that they should never be permitted to visit well-frequented social locations where they risk encountering those intent on finding recruits.” The German educator Heinrich Többen, in his
Die Jugendverwahrlosung und ihre Bekämpfung
(The depravities of youth and how to combat them), published in 1922, stressed that the fashionable doctrines “carry with them the danger of homosexual poisoning, that is, the premeditated perversion of our youth.” In 1930, the French moralist Théodore de Félice wrote, in
Le Protestantisme et la question sexuelle
(Protestantism and the sexual question): “The aversion of homosexuals to members of the opposite sex classifies them neatly among the sick, and among the dangerous sick, as they are always on the hunt for new partners to render abnormal in turn.”
For this reason, as permitted by law, judges were particularly severe in cases involving the “corruption of a minor,” such as when the accused was a boy’s first sexual partner, even when the latter is consenting. In France, the hardening of anti-homosexual laws from 1942 to 1960 was based on the notion that homosexuals were sick individuals contaminating youth (in particular, according to Quentin Crisp, homosexuality was “thought to be of Greek origin, less widespread than socialism, but more dangerous, especially for children”). And while Sigmund Freud put an end to the opposition between the inverted and the perverted, he maintained that there were differing gradations of inverts, defining three: “absolute invert,” “contingent invert,” and “amphigenetic invert,” or bisexual. As for later, a certain number of psychoanalysts, especially American ones, maintained the vocabulary of
perversion
and contamination well after homosexuality was officially struck from the list of metal illnesses in 1973.
The myth of “recruitment” or “conversion” supposedly carried out by the inverted has proven persistent. Behind this myth is a popular fantastical rationalization: unable to reproduce, homosexuals must seduce and thus convert innocent victims in a perverted attempt at propagation. This dramatic interpretation of sexual identity is at the heart of persistent suspicions of homosexual teachers (the idea of recruitment, especially). Homophobia evident in youth movements (in 1990, the Boy Scouts of America no longer allowed open homosexuals to be troop leaders) and the military (until recently, admitting gays into the
army
was likened to leaving the door open to general contamination) can be explained in the same way. It also explains the frenzy of right-wing organizations such as France’s Avenir de la culture (Future of the Culture) against the increased visibility of gays and lesbians in the media: according to the homophobic Christian right, the more attention homosexuals receive, the more they are able to recruit others to their “lifestyle.” Even
AIDS
(which many homophobes originally saw as a blessing) has begun to appall them, in that it is now viewed as making homosexuality appear commonplace in the media.
But where one sees contamination, one also sees the possibility of a cure. For years, many doctors and psychiatrists have claimed that it is possible to bring those who “stray” back to the straight path, and all sorts of remedies to this effect have been proposed (behavioral, psychological, and biomedical) to counter the effect of “perverse” habits. This illusion is perpetuated by militant members of far right groups such as the Moral Majority Coalition and the Christian Coalition in the United States, which strive to fight against “gay propaganda” (or “gay ideology,” as pronounced by Pope John Paul II). There are many examples of campaigns of reparative therapy, in which homosexuals can be “cured,” launched during the 1990s within prayer groups known as
ex-gay
ministries. But this therapy has had limited success, as noted by one “ex-ex-gay” humorously: “You pick a prayer partner the first evening, you pray with him the second evening, and on the third evening, your prayers are answered.”
This leads us back to dealing with the contagion and the drive to isolate and neutralize the contaminating agents, the origin of the sickness. First of all, there is the need to identify the various absolute inverts, pederasts, and predators; hence the extreme efforts made to apply an external characterology to homosexuals. The effeminate homosexual is the most reassuring, being easily identifiable. However, homosexuals who are indistinguishable from heterosexuals—the Cary Grants, Jean Marais, Dirk Bogardes, or Rock Hudsons—have always posed a far more troubling problem to doctors. Once identified, the converted pederast can be set apart. It was in the Nazi concentration camps where the fallacy of quarantine was promoted the furthest. The Nazis were obsessed with the danger posed by absolute inverts to the German population: their perverted actions were believed to contaminate adolescents, especially the most handsome (that is to say, the superior racial stock that was most vital for future supermen). Thus, the Nazis made a distinction between “genetic homosexuals” (who were deported and sentenced to hard labor, sometimes forced to undergo medical experiments and castration, and often murdered), and “situational homosexuals,” who were treated with more indulgence, in hopes of setting them back onto the right path.
—Pierre Albertini
Bayer, Ronald.
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis
. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987.
Foucault, Michel.
Les Anormaux, cours au Collège de France
. Paris: Gallimard, Le Seuil, 1999. [Published in the US as
Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1974–1975
. New York: Picador, 2003.]
Grau, Günther.
Hidden Holocaust: Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany, 1933–1945
. London: Cassell, 1995.
Herman, Didi.
The Antigay Agenda
. Chicago/London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1997.
Himmler, Heinrich.
Discours secrets
. Paris: Gallimard, 1978.
Krinsky, Charles. “Recruitment Myth.” In
Gay Histories and Cultures
. Edited by George E. Haggerty. New York/ London: Garland, 2000.
—Armed Forces; Debauchery; Decadence; Degeneracy; Ex-Gay; Medicine; Peril; Proselytism; School; Sterility; Theology; Treatment.
CRIMINAL
In the past, homosexuals almost everywhere were considered criminals, in the real sense of the word; in many countries, they still are. Even though France decriminalized homosexual acts between consenting adults in 1791, and though their example was followed by many nations (such as the Netherlands, who brought their criminal code into alignment with that of the French in 1810), homosexuals in other European or Commonwealth countries had to wait for over a century for
decriminalization
(Poland in 1932, England in 1967, Canada in 1969, etc.). Today, many countries across the world still have laws condemning sodomy and homosexuality.
Nevertheless, even in those places where homosexuals were not criminals in the eyes of the law, homosexuality was often perceived as a defect and a social transgression. Consequently, the confusion between criminal and homosexual was commonplace, as both defied the norms of good behavior, rubbing elbows together during their nightly adventures (if the homophobic talk was to be believed), and thus were perceived as a threat to the establishment. As French policeman François Carlier noted in 1887, “[Homosexual] passion leads to, in the social sense, the most monstrous of partnerships. The master with his servant, the thief with the man with no criminal record, the cad in rags with the dandy—all accept the other as though they were part of the same class of society.” In this same vein, writer Ali Coffignon wrote in 1890: “The millionaire and the tramp fraternize; the official and the ex-convict exchange their ignoble caresses.”