The Dictionary of Homophobia (118 page)

While the subsequent commonplaceness and sacredness of prison among certain young men demonstrates that its initial meaning can be changed, for most men prison still represents a threat on another level, especially with regard to their sexual identity. In fact, the unisexual reality of the prison environment forces them to prove that they are men—“real” men, and not “fags”—because there is a belief that there is a great deal of homosexual activity in prisons, and inmates must defend themselves against it. The virility of the outside world is thus reinforced in the prison setting. Inmates must demonstrate that they believe that homosexuality is degrading, and as a result are exaggerated in their homophobia. To participate in the condemnation of homosexuality is to signify that it is dishonorable for oneself. This stigmatization of homosexuality recalls the “fear of the other within us” that must be rejected and expelled; it also expels the fear of the same within. The worrisome similitude that threatens the sexualized identity must be converted into a “strangeness”; as a result, homosexuality is rejected in a process that comes under the domain of the “scapegoat,” as described by French philosopher René Girard.

In this sense, homophobia meets the notion of
heterophobia
, of which it is a variant. According to French sociologist Albert Memmi, heterophobia signifies “a diffused and aggressive fear of others.” Prison can be perceived as a “house of men” where social relationships and hierarchies are constructed around virility. If there are instances of sexual activity between men in detention areas, they are often the object of a battle of strength and dominance, and are not considered by those involved to be homosexual activity per se, but rather a substitute for heterosexual relations. Such relations seem to be structured on the dual and unequal logic of the “buggerer” and the “buggered,” thus whoever is “active” in these sexual relations does not consider himself homosexual, whereas the one who is “passive” is considered to be so, in the sense that he occupies the role of the woman. The taboo and the denial of sexuality in prison is akin to the denial of abuse, in that we can wonder to what extent prison authorities support this. For example, it is well known that sex offenders are the targets of continuous bullying, violence, and rape in prison. Under these conditions, homosexuals, or those perceived as such, are particularly subject to punitive rape, because, as a homosexual, he “was asking for it.” In other areas, transvestites were the victims of sexual abuse by prison guards. In the majority of cases, when complaints were filed, the facts were watered down and punishment did not equal the gravity of the crime.

The phenomenon is even more striking in countries where homosexual acts are officially condemned by law, or officiously pursued by
police
. When, after a raid or trial, a homosexual prisoner is sent to prison, other inmates—who quickly discover the reason for his imprisonment (often due more or less to involuntary indiscretion of the authorities)—feel justified in committing violent acts against the newcomer, who often becomes the prison’s resident whipping boy, sexual slave, or scapegoat who can be humiliated, exploited, assaulted, or even killed with impunity; as a result, the dominant inmates obtain a symbolic advantage over the inherent social mechanisms and hierarchies within the prison milieu. Thus, the homosexual inmate is doubly condemned: first by the judges or police who sent him to prison, then by his fellow prisoners. This trait is common in prisons of all sizes in all areas of the world, including concentration
camps
and Soviet
gulags
, constituting a very specific phenomenon.

Apparently, what is considered rape in the outside world is not qualified as such in prison, in the sense that the victims are not considered persons within society, but rather as individuals outside of society. This process tends to legitimize unacknowledged abuse and make it commonplace. If penal institutions are uncomfortable around the question of sexual abuse in prisons—in the same way that they are with regard to the problems in the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases—it is also that they are embarrassed by the question of sexuality, which they have repressed for decades while pretending to deal with it. This explains why France’s penitential reform of April 2, 1996, according to which “an inmate who commits an obscene or offensive act in view of others is committing a second degree offence,” is still in force. Reducing sexuality to an “obscene act” seems anachronistic, but as far as most prisons are concerned, sexuality remains a dirty, shameful, and punishable thing. In one instance, an inmate in France was sentenced to thirty days in solitary confinement for being caught kissing a visiting woman. In another instance, in 1998, an inmate received a ten-day sentence in solitary confinement for presenting a signed petition to the Observatoire international des prisons (a French NGO that monitors prison conditions worldwide) requesting “the right to intimacy in detention.” Inmates are thus treated as children, as if they were not entitled to a dignified sexuality.

Paradoxically, many prisons have either implemented or are considering family units for inmates that would allow for the possibility of conjugal visits. In fact, in 1991, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment requested that the French penitentiary administration allow inmates to receive prolonged visits in order to pursue familial and affective relationships (including sexual relations) “in conditions that respect human dignity.” The European Commission of Human Rights has repeatedly expressed “that it is essential to the respect of family life” that prisons allow inmates to maintain “contact with their immediate family,” that sexuality is an integral part of a person’s physical and mental health, that “the development and accomplishment of the personality demand the possibility of developing different types of relationships, including sexual relationships with other persons.” In September 1997, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe launched a call to “lighten the stigmatism and the perverse effects linked to detention” and incited its member nations to improve the visiting conditions for spouses and their children by “setting up appropriate areas for intimacy.” Further, the Council of Europe added, “A study on sexuality in prisons demonstrated that, based on pilot projects in the United States, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, and Mexico, conjugal visits, when based on cultural habits, have positive repercussions on discipline within the establishment.” In this sense, permitting sexual relations within the context of prison is a disciplinary measure, a means to maintain order among the prison population. By the same token, the denial of sexual relations in prison hampers all attempts at the prevention of sexual abuse, as well as sexually transmitted diseases, and reinforces homophobic attitudes and behaviors.

It remains that if homophobia is distinct in prison, it is not only due to the specificity of the prison setting, but also, and perhaps most of all, to the disposition acquired on the outside and internalized within: the experience of homophobia in prison only serves to reveal the permanence of a homophobic culture present outside prison walls which updates itself and shows itself in various ways in the fertile ground of the prison environment.
—Michaël Faure

Faure, Michaël, Lilian Mathieu, and Daniel Welzer-Lang.
Sexualités et violences en prisons
. Lyon: Observatoire international des prisons/Aléas, 1996.

Foucault, Michel.
Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison
. Paris: Gallimard, 1975. [Published in the US as
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977.]

Girard, René.
Le Bouc émissaire
. Paris: Grasset, 1982. [Published in the US as
The Scapegoat
. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.]

———.
La Route antique des hommes pervers
. Paris: Grasset, 1985.

Herzog-Evans, Martine.
L’Intimité du détenu et de ses proches en droit comparé
. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000.

Lesage de la Haye, Jacques.
La Guillotine du sexe
. Paris: Les Editions de l’Atelier.

Memmi, Albert.
Le Racisme
. Paris: Gallimard 1982 and 1994. [Published in the US as
Racism
. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2000.]

Monnereau, Alain.
La Castration pénitentiaire
. Paris: Ed. Lumière et Justice, 1986.

—Armed Forces; Deportation; European Law; Gulag; Police; Violence.

PRIVACY

The protection of homosexuality through the right to one’s privacy, which both the French Civil Code and the European Convention on Human Rights specifically address, has had limited results to date. Traditionally, the notion of privacy has three distinct components: the right to freedom from interference in the private sphere; the right to keep certain personal information secret; and, finally, the right to freely make choices concerning one’s own life. That said, each in their own way, French law and the European Court of Human Rights both contributed to confine the emotional and sexual life between individuals of the same sex to the strict sphere of privacy—the “secret” of the bedroom, as it were—thus reinforcing the idea that homosexuality ought to remain hidden. In fact, while the European court played a major role in condemning the
criminalization
of same-sex relations between consenting adults, it has, on one hand, considered that “sexual life” is in the domain of privacy protected by the Convention, but on the other, has to this day refused gay and lesbian couples the right to have families, which is also set out in this same Convention. This being said, there have also been some promising decisions set down by the Court in recent years: the notion of privacy has been extended to relationships other than those that are strictly intimate, and protection of family life has been extended to the relationship between a gay or lesbian parent and his or her child.

For its part, French law perpetuates a representation of a sexual orientation that is tinged with disgrace. This appears firstly in jurisprudence when it rules that revelations (or even allegations) of an individual’s homosexuality violate that individual’s right to privacy. In this manner, the “honor” and “reputation” of the individual are purportedly being protected. In accepting homosexuality as a valid circumstance whereby an individual’s reputation may be irreparably damaged, a judge actively participates in, if not the construction, at least the perpetuation of a negative and degrading social representation of homosexuality. Further, the restriction in accessing the identity of the partner in a
PaCS
(Pacte civil de solidarité; Civil solidarity pact) agreement, and the impossibility of selecting PaCS participants by their gender (even for statistical purposes) under pretext of protecting a “homosexual vulnerability” reinforce the idea that homosexuality must be occulted. Used ostensibly to protect concerned individuals from disgrace, the notion of privacy is today at risk of perpetuating the idea of the impossibility of being openly gay or lesbian.

From a strategic point of view, shouldn’t the preservation of “gay privacy” by law “at all cost” in order to protect an individual from various prejudices be complemented by a denunciation and condemnation of these prejudices as irrational? It would contribute not only to the transformation of social representations of homosexuality, but also to the more effective protection of individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation.
—Daniel Borrillo and Thomas Formond

La Pradelle, Géraud de, and Caroline Mécary.
Les Droits des homosexuel(le)s
. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1998.

Schutter, Olivier de. “Fonction de juger et nouveaux aspects de la vie privée.” In
Homosexualités et droit
. Edited by Daniel Borrillo. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999.

—Closet, the; Communication; Criminalization; Decriminalization; European Law; Insult; Jurisprudence; Outing; Scandal; Vice.

PRIVATE LIFE.
See
Privacy

PROSELYTISM

“We must condemn gay proselytism.”
—Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front party, 1984

The concept of proselytism, defined here as the zeal employed by those who spread the “faith” in order to gain converts, is one of the most common spaces of homophobic
rhetoric
. Through the pejorative connotations tied to this term, homosexuality is depicted as some underground sect that wishes to spread its insidious ways through various social classes, if not entire nations. In this manner, it becomes increasingly obvious that homosexuality is a universal plot whose objective is to corrupt morals in order to weaken the general public, so that it may better dominate and exploit it. Moreover, this concept of gay proselytism becomes a means to explain the paradoxical “proliferation” of homosexuals despite their inability to produce their own children: “They may not reproduce, but there are more of them every year,” French writer Tristan Bernard once said. Regardless, under different forms, this concept was especially useful during periods of “witch hunts” in order to justify various purges of homosexuals: for example, the campaign at the end of the Middle Ages against the
bougres
(Bulgars) (the term originally designated a “
heresy
” that originated in Bulgaria), or in the twentieth century, most notably in Nazi Germany, but also in the Soviet Union, and in the US under McCarthyism.

The metaphor of gay proselytism is linked to the idea of a counter-religion—heretical, of course—which attempts to spread a faith that goes
against nature
. Even if it appears archaic, this phraseology is still nonetheless common today, particularly among the American religious right, in the fundamentalist circles close to Opus Dei, and in certain Christian, Charismatic, and radical movements. In 1998, during the annual conference of the Concerned Women for America, Wilma Leftwich suggested the existence of an international plot to “abolish the sovereignty of the United States, forbid Christians from practicing their religion, and reduce the American population through the general accessibility of abortion, the sterilization of women with many children, and the promotion of homosexuality.” Similarly, in a book by conservative politician William Dannemayer entitled
Shadow in the Land: Homosexuality in America
, often cited by the religious right, gays and lesbians are portrayed as a sort of “army of Genghis Khan”; the author further states, “We must defeat militant homosexuality, or else it will overwhelm us.” In a similar vein, right-wing French politician Christine
Boutin
(who led the charge against the
PaCS
civil union proposal) wrote in her book
Le “Mariage” des homosexuels?
(The “marriage” of homosexuals?) of the “followers of homosexuality,” describing a sort of homosexual cult and even a “homosexual propaganda,” terminology that recalls medieval concepts in which sodomites are the most frightening members of pernicious sects seeking to recruit new initiates; from this, a number of expressions emerged, such as “the heresy of love,” which to a certain extent are still used today.