This is not to say that Hinduism does not address or in fact condemn those men who stray outside the sexual norm. The most ancient of Hindu’s sacred knowledge, the
vedas
, mention the term
pandaka
(in the
Atharva veda
), which seems to designate a man with long, oily, wavy hair, and who wears jewelry and rings as a woman. Such a man is “effeminate,” and in the
vedas
, the term is used as a curse: “May your son became
pandaka
.”
Another striking word appears in the sacred Sanskrit epic the
Mahabharata
: the war prince Shikandi is called
napunsaka
, or he who does not penetrate, but it is difficult to ascertain if he does not want to penetrate or if he is unable to; his sexual behavior is at least uncertain. On the other hand, the
Mahabharata
also contains the term
kilba,
to describe the warrior Arjunas who, while in exile, cross-dressed in order to hide out at Princess Uttara’s court; he also became her dance teacher. (At the same time, he refuses the sexual advances of her brother.)
Buddhist and Jain (a dharmic religion originating in Ancient India) sacred texts both mention the term tritika laingika, which can be translated as the “third sex.” In fact, the Jain text includes more than ten categories of masculine gender, but these which roughly correspond to various physical types, such as those who are bald, or who do not have mustaches; as such, they are not really sexual definitions.
The only evidence of convergence between sexuality and gender identity in Hinduism, however allusive, appears in the
Shiva purana
, the text dedicated to the Hindu deity Shiva, in which Shiva is also called
Ardhanareshwara
(half-man). Shiva is a complex deity; like his symbol, the lingam, he is an ascetic who preserves his seed, but sometimes spreads it on the entire universe. In one of the sacred stories, he disperses sperm that is so hot it cannot even be collected by Agni, god of fire; it ultimately falls back into the Ganges, where six drops end up creating a divinity called Shanmukha.
In each of these definitions of men who contravene Hinduism’s sexual standards, there is no question of an exclusive homosexual-type being. Sometimes the god changes himself into a woman (such as Vishnu becoming Mohini) who then adopts heterosexual behavior, thus eluding any stigma attached to homosexuality.
The only specific sanctions against homosexuality are mentioned in
Arthashashtra
(fourth-century BCE), the great treatise on economic policy, military strategy, and the state, and in the
Manusmriti
(third-century CE), the work of Hindu law and Indian society. In both texts, homosexuality is depicted as a negative, non-reproductive behavior, and both recommend severe penalties for those accused of it. Both texts consider sperm a “social resource” which must not be expended for means other than reproduction. If a man willfully engages in sexual activity that is not reproductive, this social resource is wasted, and for this he must be condemned. As the matriarch Gandhari declared to her husband in the
Mahabharata,
“
Putha heen Pitah
” (“No children, it is hell”); she then threatens him with going elsewhere to be inseminated. In this case, there is no morality here; it is a question of genetic inheritance.
—
Ashok Row Kavi
Conner, Randy, David Hatfield, and Mariya Sparks.
Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol, and Spirit
. New York/ London: Cassell, 1997.
Kidwai, Saleem, and Ruth Vanita.
Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History
. Delhi: Macmillan India Ltd., 2002.
Pattanaik, Devdutt. “Homosexuality in Ancient India.”
Debonair
, Anniversary Issue (2001).
———.
The Man Who Was a Woman and Other Queer Tales From Hindu Lore
. New York: Harrington Park Press, 2002.
—Buddhism; China; India, Pakistan, Bangladesh; Japan; Korea; Southeast Asia; Sterility.
HIRSCHFELD, Magnus
Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935), the German physician, sexologist, and advocate for the rights of homosexuals, was born to a Jewish family in Kolberg on the Baltic coast. He studied medicine in Munich and Berlin and traveled to the United States and North Africa before settling in Magdeburg, then Berlin, in the Charlottenburg quarter. It was the
suicide
of one of his patients, and his own sexual orientation, a day before the patient’s wedding that led Hirschfeld to wonder about the “causes” of homosexuality. Taking inspiration from the works of K. H. Ulrichs in particular (which suggested the existence of a “third sex,” defined as “a woman’s soul in a man’s body”), Hirschfeld published his first pamphlet, “
Sappho
und Sokrates” in 1896, under the alias Th. Ramien. In a subsequent publication
Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes
(1914) (
The Homosexuality of Men and Women
[2000]), he refined and developed his theory, based on numerous testimonies and thousands of questionnaires, that claimed the existence of
sexuelle Zwischenstufen
(sexual intermediaries) defined by four criteria— sexual organs, physical characteristics, sexual instinct, and moral aptitude—which allowed for the classification of human beings according to different degrees of hermaphroditism and intersexuality. According to Hirschfeld, homosexuality was congenital, not learned, and thus was not an “anomaly” but rather a “sexual variety” against which it is impossible to take action.
Not only a sexologist but also an activist, Hirschfeld cofounded the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee (WhK; Scientific-Humanitarian Committee) in Berlin on May 14, 1897. The group was the first militant gay movement in Germany, aimed at defending the rights of homosexuals as well as working to repeal Paragraph 175 of the German penal code that criminalized homosexuality beginning in 1871. (Hirschfeld included the story of the WhK’s early years in his 1923 autobiographical work
Von einst bis jetzt
(From once up to now); in addition, he chronicled the rich Berlin gay scene in 1908’s
Homosexuals of Berlin
.) In 1899, Hirschfeld also started a journal,
Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen
(Yearbook for sexual intermediaries), to publish new ideas about alternative sexualities (it was replaced in 1926 by
Mitteilungen des WhK
[Communications of the WhK], which was published until 1933). In order to fulfill its mission, the WhK led a lobbying campaign targeting the government and the
media
, printing thousands of information brochures, such as
Was soll das Volk vom dritten Geschlecht wissen
(What people must know about the third sex). In 1897, it started a petition demanding the abolition of Paragraph 175 which was signed by several high-profile people, among them doctors (Krafft-Ebing), politicians (Karl Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein), writers (Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Emile Zola), and scientists (Albert Einstein). Hirschfeld also was able to get a few left-wing politicians interested in his cause, among them August Bebel, one of the founders of Germany’s Social Democratic Party, who subsequently raised the question of Paragraph 175 in the Reichstag in 1905, arguing that according to Hirschfeld’s research, six percent of the population was homosexual or bisexual, meaning that thousands of Germans were at risk of being threatened by blackmailers, with no recourse due to Paragraph 175. However, politicians from both the left and right did not agree, both on moral grounds and the perceived will of the people, so the law remained in place.
But the
Eulenburg affair
of 1907–09, the country’s biggest domestic scandal to date, put a temporary end to the actions of the WhK. Motivated by political revenge, a pro-imperialist journalist named Maximilian Harden accused anti-imperialist Prince Philipp of Eulenburg, close advisor to Wilhelm II, and Count Kuno von Moltke, a general in the German army, of being homosexual; the two were subsequently charged under the provisions of Paragraph 175. At the trial that followed in October 1907, Hirschfeld was called to the witness stand as an “expert”; he contended that Moltke’s homosexuality was an “unconscious orientation,” hoping this would be a means to break the government’s hypocrisy on the subject. This strategy, however, was disastrous: in light of severe criticism, Hirschfeld was forced to retract his statement, causing support for his movement to decline by two-thirds (many of those withdrawing their support were homosexuals who now feared being exposed). In 1909, a bill (which was ultimately rejected) proposed extending Paragraph 175 to include lesbians, resulting in a temporary alliance between the WhK and certain feminist movements. However, it was not until the era of the Weimar Republic (1919–33) that the WhK had real influence again, the result of a favorable climate that also saw the blooming of Berlin’s gay subculture.
In 1919, Hirschfeld founded the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Research) in Berlin, which soon became known worldwide as a research center that collected documentation on homosexuality as well as a place where homosexuals looking for medical or psychological support were welcomed. Among its prominent visitors were André
Gide
, René Crevel, and Christopher Isherwood. Hirschfeld’s efforts also became international; he encouraged the formation of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology (1914) in England, and helped to found the World League for Sexual Reform (1928) at a congress in Copenhagen. In 1919, when film censorship did not yet exist in Germany, Hirschfeld worked with producer and director Richard Oswald, a specialist in social and educational
cinema
, on the first gay activist film,
Anders als die Andern
(Different from the others), which called for the repeal of Paragraph 175 by bringing public attention to the suffering of the “inverted” who commit suicide under the threat of blackmail (Hirschfeld co-wrote the film as well as appeared in it). While the film received many laudatory reviews and was a popular success, it was also subject to violent attacks from champions of moral order as well as anti-Semitic groups; numerous riots broke out where it was shown, which led
police
to ban it in certain cities, including Munich and Stuttgart. When cinematic
censorship
was instituted in Germany in 1920, the film was banned outright, and subsequently only shown to doctors or research-based organizations.
Hirschfeld also attempted to link the WhK with other gay movements, but he was sometimes treated with hostility (not without anti-Semitic elements) by groups such as Adolf Brand’s Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (Community of Self-Owners), which thought Hirschfeld’s model of homosexuality was effeminate, preferring instead the virile model of pederasty. Hirschfeld’s relationship with left-wing parties, which had supported his efforts in Parliament, became unclear as well, as the Social Democratic Party and Communist Party did not hesitate to use homophobic arguments in their efforts to combat fascism, against Ernst Röhm, commander of the SA and a homosexual of public record. For a while, Hirschfeld considered founding his own political party, but he was disappointed by the lack of support from the gay community. The year 1929 marked a turning point when the Social Democrats, Communists, and German Democrats had enough votes in the Reichstag to repeal Paragraph 175, but the rising Nazi Party managed to prevent it. The failure led to intense debates within the WhK, including severe criticism of Hirschfeld himself, leading to his resignation as a result. In 1933, Adolf Hitler’s rise to power brought the ban of the WhK, as well as the apprehension of some members and the forced closure of the Institute for Sexual Research. Hirschfeld was outside Germany at the time, thus escaping certain death, but he had faced the wrath of Nazis and others throughout the 1920s. In Munich on October 4, 1920, he was beaten up and seriously hurt by a crowd armed with stones; in covering the story, the nationalist press regretted that he was not killed. In another incident two years later in 1922, a young man shot at him during a conference in Vienna. By 1929, Hirschfeld found it impossible to go out in public; the Nazis saw him as a typical agent of the Weimar Republic, and were relentless in their persecution of him. Taking refuge in France, he tried, without success, to re-start his Institute. Exhausted, he died in Nice in 1935.
As a pioneer of gay rights, Hirschfeld’s notoriety resulted in countless affronts and personal insults. His love for publicity, as well as his sympathetic, medical-based opinions about homosexuals (who were usually treated as sick or as victims), made him subject to criticism. Claiming to be apolitical, he sometime lacked sound judgment, at times enjoining gays to vote for left-wing parties while also calling on right-wing parties that he hoped (unreasonably) would join his cause. However, one must place his actions and theories in the context of the period: confronted by hostile forces, in relative isolation—at its height, the WhK counted only 500 members—Magnus Hirschfeld was a gay activist ahead of his time, whose courage offered hope to thousands of gays, helping to make homosexuality a subject that one could then openly discuss on both a scientific and humanist basis.
—Florence Tamagne
Herzer, Manfred.
Magnus Hirschfeld, Leben und Werk eines jüdischen, schwulen und sozialistischen Sexologen
. Frankfurt/ New York: Campus, 1992.
Wolff, Charlotte.
Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology
. London: Quartet, 1986.
—Associations; Cinema; Deportation; Eulenburg Affair, the; Far Right, the; Fascism; Germany; Himmler, Heinrich; Scandal; Violence.
HISTORY
Until recently, homosexuality was not considered a legitimate subject for historians. Several factors contributed to this: for one, the preeminence of politics did not predispose historians to be interested in behaviors that were considered private and personal (at most, there was mention of the “
unnatural
interests”—whether real or imagined—of certain persons); on the other hand, academics were expected to share the general public’s abhorrence of it (as Maurice Sartre said, “Whoever risked taking too much interest in the issue could be suspected of sympathies for it”). Such sentiment touches on the historian’s limited freedom: since the reform of Prussian universities at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Western university system was liberal in theory, based on disinterested (affectively detached) research of “truth,” but all truth is not necessarily good to discover, and academic discourse was seriously restrained, in any given era, by what British philosopher John Stuart Mill in 1859 called “the moral coercion of public opinion.” In any case, it must be stressed that between 1880 and 1960, historians discussed homosexuality in much the same way as society had: as a defect going back to pre-Christian Antiquity (such was the opinion of Henri-Irénée Marrou and with him a number of Catholic historians), as well as an aberration of religious, military, or royal communities. Homosexuals were considered weaklings (as exemplified by Edward II, James I, and Philippe of Orléans), licentious, perverted, head cases, or degenerates (biographers often joyfully connected the subject to
pedophilia
, to complete at terarology, whether it be Nero, Gilles de Rais, or Ernst Röhm). It was said that when a particular personality was believed to be gay or exonerated of the aberration, he was either “blackened” or “cleared” (thus the endless debates, some continuing to this day, on the sexual preferences of Julius Caesar,
Henri III
, Frédéric the Prussian, and Adolf Hitler, to give some examples). It is clear that references to “unnatural behavior” have been common in homophobic
rhetoric
for centuries. We shouldn’t be surprised that evidence of homosexuality among Prussian officers provoked French and British historians to issue salvos of wild ethno-psychology, which were less objective science than exacerbated nationalism during the course of the two World Wars. It is also important to note that the “Pederasty” chapter on Henri-Irénée Marrou’s famous
Histoire de l’éducation dans l’Antiquité (History of Education in Antiquity)
, published in 1948, overflowed with hyperbole (featuring references to “unnatural sexual relations,” “
abnormal
acts,” “villainous crimes,” “absurdity and folly,” “monstrous aberrations,” and the “ravages of deviated sexual instinct”). One of the results of this common historical view of homosexuality was the near-total silence—for more than fifty years—on the subject of homophobic crimes committed by the Nazis: given that homosexuals were considered monsters in the eyes of most people (including historians), they were not conferred the status of victims, despite their horrific treatment at the hands of the Third Reich.