The Dictionary of Homophobia (146 page)

Empirical Data
To measure the scale and importance of the phenomenon, it is necessary to study the sources of the statistics. In France, the mortality rate from suicide more than doubled among young men aged between 15 and 24 years in the period between 1950 and 1996 (increasing from 6.5 per 100,000 people to 14.5) and doubled among men aged between 25 and 44 for the same period (increasing from 19.4 to 37.1), thus almost equaling the rate for those aged between 45 and 74 (which has decreased from 49.7 to 39.7). Among women, these rates are lower (on average three times lower, settling at 4.3 per 100,000 in 1996 for those aged between 15 and 24 years, 10.7 for those aged between 25 and 44, and 16.3 for those aged between 45 and 74), but attempted suicides are more numerous among women than men, the rate reaching 2.6 for the younger age category (Badeyran and Parayre). In annual numbers, suicides are lower among the younger category than the older, but given the low death rate due to illness for this age group, suicide represents the primary cause of death among those aged 25 to 34 years. Alfred Nizard noted that “among industrialized Western societies with high suicide rates, France ranks below Finland, Denmark, and Austria, at a comparable level to that of Switzerland, Belgium, and the province of Quebec.”

Statistics on the causes of death suffer from under-reporting and a lack of information regarding the motives for suicide, which is an obstacle to understanding the link between homosexuality and these desperate individuals; it is thus interesting to study the risks of suicide by way of survey results. Of course, this work poses the problem that the extrapolation of these results cannot include the data from the people who have already committed suicide. American researchers Alan Bell and Martin Weinberg were among the first to demonstrate the higher risk of suicide among homosexual or bisexual individuals. In their now classic work, they demonstrated that the gay men in their sample population were significantly more anxious than heterosexual men, and that they had a greater tendency to report feelings of depression and thoughts of suicide. In half of the cases of suicide attempts by gay men, the respondents reported that the attempt “was related to the fact that they were gay.”

Corroborating Results
Since the publishing of these landmark reports, many North American studies using representative samplings have delved deeper into the question. The reluctance (notably by medical professionals) to consider the gay population as being particularly “at risk” has certainly contributed to the improvement of the scientific quality of these studies, which were required to be irreproachable. Their results converged and highlighted the significantly higher risk of suicide for homosexuals or those with such tendencies. For example, an American study by Susan Cochran and Vickie Mays using a national sampling of 17- to 39-year-olds demonstrated that gay men had an attempted suicide rate of 20% compared to 4% for exclusively heterosexual men. In a Minnesota study by Gary Remafedi and associates, using a sample of 12- to 19-year-olds, the attempted suicide rate of lesbians was 21% versus 15% for exclusively heterosexual girls. By analyzing these studies, we can see that the risk of lesbians attempting suicide is 40–90% greater than that of heterosexual girls; as for homosexual men, their risk was, according to the Cochran-Mays study, four to seven times greater than that for heterosexual men. These are important distinctions that leave no doubt as to the reality of the phenomenon; the variations between the estimates stem mostly from differences in definition (identity and/or sexual behavior) and scope (age, geographical area).

This does not mean that every LGBT person is living in a tragic situation, however. Happily in the present day, homosexuality tends to be not only one of the many possible options within the spectrum of human sexuality, but also a sexuality in which one can attain complete personal fulfillment. However, the bitter reality of homophobia—traditionally present in our society—and
heterosexism
—which considers that heterosexuality is the necessary sexual norm of every individual—is at the origin of much of the suffering and distress experienced by homosexuals from early childhood onward, and for which society as a whole must assume the human, moral, and financial weight and cost.
—Jean-Marie Firdion

Badeyan, Gérard, and Claudine Parayre. “Suicides et tentatives de suicide en France, une tentative de cadrage statistique,”
Etudes et résultats
, no. 109 (2001).

Baudelot, Christian, and Roger Establet.
Durkheim et le suicide
. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, “Philosophies” collection, 1990.

Bell, Alan, and Martin Weinberg.
Homosexualités, un rapport officiel sur les comportements homosexuels masculins et féminins
. Paris: Albin Michel, 1978. [Published in the US as
Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women
. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979.]

Blum, Robert, Simone French, Gary Remafedi, Michael Resnick, and Mary Story. “The Relationship between Suicide Risk and Sexual Orientation: Results of a Population-Based Study,”
American Journal of Public Health
88
,
no. 1 (1998).

Bozon, Michel. “Les Significations sociales des actes sexuels,”
Actes de la Recherche en sciences sociales
, no. 128 (1999).

Caroli, François, and Marie-Jeanne Guedj.
Le Suicide
. Paris: Flammarion, “Dominos” collection, 1999.

Cochand, Pierre, and Pierre Bovet. “HIV Infection and Suicide Risk: An Epidemiological Inquiry Among Male Homosexuals in Switzerland,”
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatry Epidemiology
33, no. 5 (1998).

Cochran, Susan, and Vickie Mays. “Lifetime Prevalence of Suicide Symptoms and Affective Disorders Among Men Reporting Same-Sex Sexual Partners,”
American Journal of Public Health
90, no. 4 (2000).

Debout, Michel.
La France du suicide
. Paris: Stock, 2002.

Dorais, Michel.
Mort ou Fif, la face cachée du suicide chez les garçons
. Montreal:VLB Editeur, 2001. [Published in Canada as
Dead Boys Can’t Dance: Sexual Orientation, Masculinity, and Suicide
. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004.]

Fergusson, David, John Horwood, and Annette Beautrais. “Is Sexual Orientation Related to Mental-Health Problems and Suicidality in Young People?”
Arch. Gen. Psychiatry
56 (1999).

Firdion, Jean-Marie, and Eric Verdier.
Homosexualités et suicide, etudes, témoignages et analyses
. Montblanc: H & O Editions, 2003.

Foucault, Michel.
Histoire de la sexualité
. Vol. I : “La volonté de savoir.” Paris: Gallimard, 1976. [Published in the US as
The History of Sexuality
. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.]

Goffman, Erving.
Stigmate, les usages sociaux des handicaps
. Paris: Minuit, 1975. [Published in the US as
Stigma
. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963.]

Hawton, Keith, Ella Arensman, Danuta Wasserman, et al. “Relation Between Attempted Suicide and Suicide Rates among Young People in Europe,”
Journal of Epidemiology Community Health
52, no. 3 (1998).

Nizard, Alfred. “Suicide et mal-être social,”
Population & Sociétés
, no. 334 (1998).

Remafedi, Gary, ed.
Death by Denial: Studies of Suicide in Gay and Lesbian Teenagers
. Boston: Alyson Publications, 1994.

Rofes, Eric. “I Thought People like That Killed Themselves.” In
Lesbians, Gay Men and
Suicide. San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1983.

Schiltz, Marie-Ange. “Parcours des jeunes homosexuels dans le contexte du VIH: la conquête de modes de vie,”
Population
52, no. 6 (1997).

—Arenas, Reinaldo; Discrimination; Family; Heterosexism; Insult; Psychology; Scandal; School; Shame; Sociology; Symbolic Order; Violence

SWITZERLAND

Since its formation in 1291, Switzerland has only recognized one form of conjugal union:
marriage
between a man and a woman. As elsewhere in Europe during the medieval era, it was the Christian church and the ancient patriarchal system that governed Swiss society. Relations between persons of the same sex were considered illegal, as demonstrated by the case of a knight named von Hohenberg and his page, who were burned at the stake in front of the gates of the city of Zurich in 1482 for the crime of sodomy. With the advent of the
Protestant
Reformation during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, acts “
against nature
” were still severely punished; between 1555 and 1670 in Calvinist Geneva, many men and women were executed for this reason, by decapitation, hanging, or drowning.

The French Revolution and the subsequent occupation of eastern and southern Switzerland by Napoleon’s troops would, thanks to the application of the Napoleonic Code, lead to the decriminalization of same-sex relations in the regions of Geneva, Vaud, and Valais, as well as Ticino, whereas most of the German-speaking cantons continued to punish these acts with four to five years in
prison
. It would be necessary to wait for the promulgation of the new federal penal code in 1942 for same-sex relations to be decriminalized on a national scale, although this did not mean that political and religious institutions would cease spreading homophobia throughout every level of Swiss society.

Heinrich Hössli (1784–1864) was at the origin of the Swiss gay liberation movement. In 1836, Hössli, a respected milliner in the world of women’s fashion, published the first volume of
Eros, die Männerliebe der Griechen
(Eros: the male love of the Greeks) (volume two was published in 1838).
Eros
retraced the history of love and sexual relationships between men in the areas of education,
literature
, and law from the time of
Ancient Greece
to the early nineteenth century. Hössli’s book was the first modern work to explicitly defend love between men, including historical aspects that had been consciously forgotten or falsified; by doing so, the book was a condemnation of homophobia. It also had an enormous impact on the other precursor to the European gay liberation movement, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs of
Germany
.

At the dawning of the twentieth century, the first sociopolitical gay liberation movements made their appearance in Germany, and by 1922, German-speaking Switzerland was the site of a good number of initiatives aiming to organize homosexuals and fight against homophobia. After several setbacks, the Schweizerische Freundschafts-Bewegung (Swiss Friendship Movement) was formed in Basel and Zurich in 1931. What is interesting is that the organization was headed by a woman, Anna Vock (1885–1962), known under the pseudonym of “Mammina,” and that its membership included a great number of lesbians. This was doubtlessly due to the fact that most Swiss cantons, contrary to other European states, punished sexual relations between women as well. The group joined forces with two others, Damenclub Amicitia and Excentric-club in Zurich, and together they launched the first gay magazine in Switzerland,
Freundschafts-Banner
(Friendship banner), which appeared on January 2, 1932.

In 1934, actor Karl Meier, a.k.a. Rolf (1897–1974), discovered the magazine’s existence and quickly became involved, writing a good many articles. Over the years, the lesbians began to withdraw from the organization, and Meier eventually became its president, turning the Swiss Friendship Movement into an entirely male group. In 1937, the magazine was re-baptized
Menschenrecht
(Human rights), before assuming its final name in 1942,
Der Kreis
(The circle). Meier ensured the magazine’s uninterrupted publication through World War II; its readership was made up of a small, select group spread throughout many countries. A French edition appeared in 1943, followed by an English one in 1952.
Der Kreis
was the most influential gay magazine in the world until it ceased publication in 1967.

Persecuted by the Nazis, German homosexuals took refuge in Zurich during the 1930s. As a place of self-imposed exile for Magnus
Hirschfeld
from 1932 to 1933, as well as many others, Switzerland was the last bastion of (relative) freedom for gays during World War II and became the
de facto
European center of the gay liberation movement, though the movement was still nascent and somewhat clandestine.

Despite a democratic system renowned for its respect for and integration of minorities, Switzerland maintained many traditional—and even archaic—positions. For example, it was not until 1971 that women were given the right to vote, which says a lot about the deep roots of Switzerland’s patriarchal values and the social roles handed down to men and women. Sexism and its insidious progeny, homophobia, were thus rampant in the history of Switzerland.

As the gay liberation movements created before World War II died with their founders, it would be necessary to wait until the 1970s for the appearance of the next wave, the GHOG (Geneva Homosexual Group) and the GHL (Lausanne Homosexual Group), both adjuncts of France’s FHAR (Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action), which helped to launch the new era of gay visibility. The publications and media actions by this handful of visionaries marked an important turning point in the campaign to raise public awareness of its political and social aspirations. Not only did these activists face homophobia in their daily lives, but also attacks from other homosexuals who advocated
discretion
and non-action, such as those from the Lausanne group Symétrie (counterpart to André Baudry’s French organization Arcadie). These French-speaking groups would quickly associate themselves with the German-speaking associations in Basel, Bern, Lucerne, St Gallen, and Zurich, giving birth to CHOSE (the Coordination of Swiss Homosexuals)
.

The first national Gay Liberation Day in Switzerland took place in Bern on June 23, 1979. Three hundred people gathered to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the
Stonewall
riots in New York and to demand an equal age of consent for all, the destruction of
police
files on homosexuals, and the legal recognition of gay and lesbian couples. In 1982, the Geneva association Dialogai was founded, whose aim was to create a space for dialogue and help for gays and lesbians as well as fight against homophobia; this was followed by OSEEH (Swiss Organization of Gay Teachers and Educators) in 1983, ASS (Swiss Aid Against AIDS) in 1985, OSL (Swiss Organization of Lesbians) in 1989, and in 1993, the Pink Cross, a national umbrella association whose key issue was the legal recognition of same-sex couples. In 1992, Article 194 of the penal code, which had set the age of consent at eighteen years for homosexual relations and sixteen years for heterosexual relations, was abrogated by popular vote, establishing equality in the age of consent.