The Dictionary of Homophobia (89 page)

Despite a general ideology in Latin America strongly influenced by male chauvinism, which historically led to particularly violent homophobic acts, 1969 saw the creation of the first gay rights group, later called the Frente de liberación homosexual, in Argentina. In 1978, similar associations were founded in Mexico and Brazil, followed by Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela in the 1980s; and during the 1990s, LGBT movements began to organize in Chile, Uruguay, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. However, in countries such as Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, and Nicaragua, and the US territory of Puerto Rico, homosexuality was still considered a crime until the mid-1990s. Even now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Puerto Rico retains anti-sodomy laws. Ecuador, on the other hand, has become an example of social modernity, becoming the second country in the world, after South Africa, to explicitly include in their constitution a ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation. With regard to city and regional jurisdictions, in the 1990s, Buenos Aires and Rosario in Argentina, and the state of Aguascalientes in Mexico, as well as over seventy cities in Brazil, have adopted laws against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. (Mexico even has an openly lesbian deputy seated in the Chamber of Deputies.) And massive pro-gay demonstrations are becoming more common in many capital cities in South America. For example, more that 1 million people attended the 2007 Gay Pride parade in São Paulo, Brazil.

Nonetheless, there still exists in every Latin American and Caribbean country highly moralistic and repressive legislation, which generally is applied most rigorously against gays, lesbians, and transsexuals. Some examples: homosexuality is often considered an “aggravating circumstance” and transvestism a crime of “indecency” or “impersonation.” Gays and lesbians also still do not have access to the institution of
marriage
, as the civil codes and constitutions of these countries constrain the definition of marriage to heterosexual couples.

As a consequence of colonialism and slavery, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transvestites in the majority of Latin American and Caribbean countries are still subjected to a high degree of physical violence and moral pressure. In every region of Brazil, for example, one can hear the “
Viado tem que morrer!
” (the fag must die); while elsewhere on the continent, parents publicly proclaim that they would prefer their son be a thief, or their daughter a prostitute, than gay or lesbian. Catholic Church bishops and more recently with even more fervor, fundamentalist Protestant Church pastors have violently attacked gays in the
media
and in their sermons, censuring anti-AIDS campaigns aimed at homosexuals and supporting obstacles to same-sex civil partnerships. Many of these sects also conduct clinics to cure homosexuality. In some countries of the Caribbean, anti-sodomy laws from the colonial period still persist, and in recent years, have led to official homophobic measures forbidding, for example, the landing of gay passengers from cruise ships in the area.

Worse still: homophobic murders. In practically every country of Latin America, homosexuals and transvestites continue to be attacked and killed in a totally revolting climate of impunity. These crimes are made worse by the identity of the perpetrators: many of the homicides are carried out by death squads, the police or, more recently, neo-Nazi groups. Despite the unavailability of regional statistics on hate crimes, there is information on homophobic homicides in two of Latin America’s largest countries. In Mexico, according to the
Comisión Ciudadana de Crímenes de Odio por Homofobía
, 213 homophobic murders were reported between 1995 and 2000, although the actual number is estimated at roughly three times as much. In Brazil, according to the
Grupo Gay da Bahia
, between 1980 and 2000, 1,960 homophobic murders were reported, of which 69% of the victims were gay, 29% were transvestites, and 2% were lesbians; this translates to an average of one homophobic murder in Brazil every two days.

In sheer numbers, it is in Latin America and the Caribbean that the greatest number of homophobic crimes are committed, evidence of its ties to its homophobic past, a sad fact in a region that boasts a vibrant and diverse homosexual culture and shows a remarkable exuberance and
joie de vivre
.

Under these circumstances, there was certainly a need for the International Day Against Homophobia, launched by Louis-Georges Tin, and celebrated in many countries in Latin America, including Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela. Moreover, the day has been officially recognized by public authorities in Costa Rica and Mexico.
—Luiz Mott

Azoulai, Martine.
Les péchés du Nouveau-Monde: les manuels pour la confession des Indiens, XVIe–XVIIe siècle
. Paris: Albin Michel, 1993.

Balutet, Nicolas. “Le Mythe des géants sodomites de Patagonie dans les récits de voyage des chroniqueurs des Indes occidentales.”
Inverses
, no. 2 (2002).

Burg, Barry Richard.
Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenh-Century Caribbean
. New York: New York Univ. Press, 1995.

Carrier, Joseph.
De las Otros: Intimacy and Homosexuality Among Mexican Men
. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1995.

Cardin, Alberto.
Guerreros, chamanes y travestís. Indicios de homosexualidad entre los exóticos
. Barcelona: Tusquets, 1989.

“Comisión Ciudadana de Crímenes de Odio por Homofobia,” In
Reporte de crímenes 2000
. Mexico: 2001.

Delon, Michel. “Du goût antiphysique des Américains.”
Annales de Bretagne
, no. 84 (1977).

Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America.
La Violencia al Descubierto: Represión contra Lesbianas y Homosexuales en America Latina
. Toronto: 1996.

Goldberg, Jonathan. “Sodomy in the New World: Anthropologies Old and New.”
Social Text
, no. 9 (1991).

Green, James. “Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Brazil.”
Journal of Homosexuality
42, no. 4 (2002).

Lancaster, Roger N. “Subject Honor and Object Shame: The Construction of Male Homosexuality and Stigma in Nicaragua.”
Ethnology
, no. 27 (1988).

Mathy, Robin M., and Frederic L. Whitam.
Male Homosexuality in Four Societies: Brazil, Guatemala, the Philippines, and the United States
. New York: Praeger, 1986.

Mendès-Leite, Rommel. “Les Tropiques et les péchés: mésaventures des sodomites.” In
Sodomites, invertis, homosexuels: perspectives historiques
. Lille: GayKitschCamp, 1994.

Mott, Luiz.
Epidemic of Hate: Violation of Human Rights of Gay Men, Lesbians and Transvestites in Brazil
. San Francisco: International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, 1996.

———, and Marcelo Cerquiera.
Causa Mortis: Homofobia
. Salvador, Brazil: Editora Grupo Gay da Bahia, 2001.

Murray, Stephen.
Male Homosexuality in Central and South America
. San Francisco: Instituto Obregón, 1987.

Ordonez, Juan P.
Ningún Ser Humano es Desechable: Limpieza Social, Derechos Humanos y Orientación Sexual en Colombia
. San Francisco: IGLHRC, 1995.

Ramos, Juanita, ed.
Compaòeras: Latina Lesbians, an Anthology
. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Vainfas, Ronal.
Tropico dos pecados: moral, sexualidad e inquisição no Brasil
. Rio de Janiero: Campus, 1989.

Williams, Walter.
The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture
. Boston: Beacon Press. 1986.

Young, Allen.
Gays Under the Cuba Revolution
. San Francisco, Gay Fox Press, 1981.

—Anthropology; Arenas, Reinaldo; Gender Differences; Heterosexism; Inquisition; Police; Spain; Violence.

LAW.
See
European Law

LEDUC, Violette

Violette Leduc (1907–72) was a bisexual novelist and memoirist in France whose work specialized in women’s issues, including lesbianism. In her first autobiography
La Bâtarde
(
The Bastard
) (1964), which became her best-known book, she noted that she was born an illegitimate child to a servant girl; her work was borne out of the hopelessness of not being loved, as well as the anguish of self-doubt, but the notoriety associated with her affairs with both men and women did not ultimately mollify her career. Leduc was “a homely woman,” according to Simone de Beauvoir—a “bastard,” poor, alone, long unrecognized as a writer, and involved sexually with persons of both genders. She was “the sum of all intrusive marginalities,” according to Carlo Jansiti, who wrote her biography. Even if it is overly simplistic, as suggested by Leduc scholar Catherine Viollet, to see her work as “purely autobiographical,” Leduc’s life and writing are interwoven to such a degree that both Leduc the woman and Leduc the writer were subjected to severe criticism; but were all of these critics homophobic?

She was certainly confronted by homophobia early in her life. Her first love affairs were homosexual: in 1925, she fell in love with an undergraduate classmate, Isabelle P. (as documented in her autobiographical novel
Thérèse et Isabelle,
1966), then with a female supervisor, Denise Hertgès (represented by the character Cécile in
Ravages,
1955, and Hermine in
La Batârde)
. This last liaison provoked her expulsion from college, for reasons of “morality,” in 1926. For her mother, though, being homosexual was less ignominious than being an “unwed mother,” and this maternal permissiveness might have eased Leduc’s own acceptance of her homosexual tendencies. In spite of this, Leduc also had heterosexual liaisons, while her relations with lesbians remained ambiguous. In a letter to Beauvoir, for whom she felt an unrequited passion (she is the “Madame” in
L’Affamée
[Starved], 1948 and also features in
Trésors à prendre
[Treasures to take]
,
1960), she explained that “women are too weak, too dull to impose their state as a couple when they are not disguising themselves as men.” Was this self-denigrating remark a defensive reaction against potential homophobic attacks? It is unlikely, given that Leduc did not hide her admiration for homosexuals such as writer Maurice Sachs, French leftist Daniel Guérin, and Jean Genet (as detailed in the second installment of her autobiography,
La Folie en tête
[
Mad in Pursuit
], 1970). Further, it is not so much the fact that she liked women or surrounded herself with gay men that triggered enmity, but rather her intransigent character: it is possible that her apparent self-hatred transformed into a form of misogyny.

In reality, attacks of a homophobic nature were more specifically aimed at her work than her personal life. The example of her novel
Thérèse et Isabelle
is enlightening; it was initially supposed to be the beginning of her 1955 novel
Ravages
but was dropped as part of 150 pages excised by the publisher Gallimard for being too daring. The novel was inspired by Leduc’s real-life passion for her classmate Isabelle, describing the relations between the two young girls with precision. Leduc contended that she was not looking for scandal by writing about the affair, but her “unashamed sincerity” at first offended Beauvoir, who proofread Leduc’s manuscripts: “Certain pages are excellent … but as far as publishing this, it is impossible. It is a story of lesbian sexuality as blunt as Genet’s work.” As for Gallimard, its editors read it as an “enormous and precise obscenity” which had to be censored in order “to suppress its eroticism and keep its affectivity.” (The elaborate descriptions of a penis and an abortion also disturbed the editors, but it was the lesbian scenes that were the most scandalous.)
Ravages
was thus published in a purged edition in 1955, but Leduc’s search for “the magic eye of a breast … the meat of a woman’s open sex” remained dear to her heart: “Continue to write after such a denial? I cannot. Hives are coming through my skin at every moment.” In 1964, she inserted part of
Thérèse et Isabelle
into the manuscript of
La Bâtarde,
but as Catherine Viollet revealed, this came at the price of self-censorship, as demonstrated by the pages that were stricken out by the author; the rest was published as
Thérèse et Isabelle
in 1966. During this time, homophobic critics became a real problem for the writer. She began to doubt the validity of her writings: “I wouldn’t dare … my writing will be disgusting without my meaning it to be” (
La Folie en tête
). She even got to the point where she wondered if “she hated lesbians”; in
La Chasse à l’amour
(The hunt for love)
,
the final installment of her autobiography published posthumously in 1973, she characterized them as sad and “frenzied.”

The homophobic criticism of Leduc was puzzling given the abundance of literature portraying lesbians as early as the nineteenth century.Why then were Leduc’s writings rejected? According to Leduc biographer Colette Trout Hall, it was because the writer strayed from Baudelaire, Balzac, or Proust’s images of the “vicious and damned” female couple. Leduc defined the characters of Thérèse and Isabelle as “too authentic to be vicious,” which put into question the traditional representation of lesbianism based on male erotic fantasies. She was the first female writer to assert the value of a lesbian sexuality described from a woman’s perspective. While amorous friendship between women was tolerated—the “psychic love” described by lesbian scholar Lillian Faderman—the purely sexual aspect remained taboo, as was well illustrated by the editors’ remarks on eroticism and affectivity. Thus, it is possible to describe the censorship exerted against Leduc as not only homophobic, but also anti-feminist.

Just as Leduc herself, a woman who loved women but who felt no empathy for lesbians, her work met a paradoxical fate. In the 1950s, it was the lesbian love scenes that subjected her to censorship; then in the 1970s, she was of no interest to either scholars or feminists because there was no underlying ideology to her lesbianism, contrary to Hélène Cixous or Monique Wittig. For Leduc, desire encompassed women, men, and even nature; it was, above all else, poetry. She “exposes love or even desire’s irreducibility to a sexual tendency” (writer and translator René de Ceccatty). Thus the Leduc paradox: while her writings did not find a large audience prior to 1964—due at least in part to a form of homophobia or even
lesbophobia
—it was the author’s own lack of homophilia or lesbophilia that diverted interest in the study of her work before the 1980s.
—Anne-Claire Rebreyend