The Dictionary of Homophobia (48 page)

During the inter-war period, the suspicion of treason continued to be periodically evoked notably against homosexual intellectuals close to the Communist Party, such as W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and Christopher Isherwood, who were nicknamed “Homintern” (short for “Homosexual International,” which is a play on “Comintern,” which is short for “Communist International”). The increased visibility of homosexuals among the British elite, particularly writers, fueled the angst of public opinion. Oxford University, where the “cult of homosexuality” was said to rule over certain groups, became the target of vengeful articles denouncing it as a “lair of debauchery and effeminacy.” The 1920s also saw the development of a veritable dread of lesbianism. Whereas homosexual women had not until then been a preoccupying subject, feminist agitation, combined with the affirmation of the New Woman in the form of the independent-minded “flapper,” led some to believe in a lesbian “contagion.” In the context of this fear, also fed by the weakened male-to-female ratio as a result of World War I, a legal amendment aiming to outlaw lesbianism, modeled on the homosexual male model, was proposed by three Conservative members of parliament in 1921. Among the arguments they invoked were a decreased birthrate, the idea that young women who were seduced by other women would be pushed to depression or insanity, and the risk of national
decadence
. Adopted by the House of Commons on August 4, 1921, the House of Lords ultimately rejected the amendment, which was considered not only useless, but would also expose ignorant women to the existence of such vices and thus expose them to blackmail. However, the failure to criminalize lesbianism cannot be interpreted as a triumph of British tolerance, for in the media and in literature, the face of the lesbian
criminal
and psychopath was quite in vogue. The 1928 publication of
Radclyffe Hall
’s novel,
The Well of Loneliness
, intended to portray lesbian love in a sympathetic light, instead generated a scandal. A venomous media campaign, coupled with a legal trial for indecent offense, led to the book being banned and the writer forced into exile. That same year, a good many satires of Hall’s novel, such as Beresford Egan’s
The Sink of Solitude
and Compton Mackenzie’s
Extraordinary Women
, took great pleasure in being ironical about the “masculine” look of certain famous lesbians, and ridiculed their intellectual pretensions.

After World War II, anti-homosexual paranoia attained its apex. In 1951, the “Spies of Cambridge,” homosexual diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, defected to the East. Under the influence of the United States, then suffering from the weight of full-on
McCarthyism
, the British initiated a campaign aimed at identifying homosexuals present in different governmental services. Similar measures were taken by the Admiralty and the Ministry of War, and a director of Scotland Yard was sent to study investigative methods used by the FBI in this situation. The accused, under the cover of immunity, were pressured to denounce their sexual partners, resulting in mass arrests, including key figures such as actor John Gielgud and mathematician and World War II hero Alan
Turing
, who later committed suicide in 1954. In 1955 alone, over 2,500 men were arrested. The widespread presence of homosexuals reinforced an ongoing sense of insecurity in England, which was already distraught over problems in its various colonies as well as its overall loss of international influence. Newspapers and magazines devoted many pages to articles on homosexuality, asserting that this practice was particularly rampant among intellectuals.
The Practitioner
, a medical journal of the time, proposed the idea of exiling homosexuals to St Kilda in the Hebrides, where they could benefit from the “natural and invigorating” climate. In 1954, the sensational trial of Lord Montagu, his cousin Michael Pitt-Rivers, and
Daily Mail
journalist Peter Wildeblood, all accused of indecent conduct, was a turning point that revealed the abuses perpetrated by police in their pursuit of homosexuals. Under the pressure of certain politicians as well as the church, Minister of the Interior Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, who considered homosexuals to be “exhibitionists and proselytizers,” accepted the creation of a commission of inquiry into the treatment of homosexuals, under the direction of Sir John Wolfenden. In its 1957 report, the Wolfenden Committee advocated the decriminalization of private homosexual relations, but insisted on the necessity of severely punishing acts committed in public, prostitution in particular, and requested that the legal age of consent be raised to twenty-one, versus sixteen for heterosexual and lesbian relations. While the
censorship
of literature and films progressively vanished, it was not until 1967 that the recommendations of the Wolfenden Committee were accepted into law.

1967 to Present
The Sexual Offences Act of 1967 incorporated the conclusions of the Wolfenden report, but it did not apply to those serving in the
Army
or the Marines, and its scope was limited to England and Wales. In fact, the reforms could not be interpreted as a definitive victory over homophobia, as the number of homosexuals being arrested actually increased in the years following the law’s adoption. It would be necessary to wait until 1980 for the reforms to be applied in Scotland, and 1982 in Northern Ireland, where gays were the target of harassment by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and Ian Paisley, a Protestant leader, who launched a petition titled “Save Ulster from Sodomy,” which gathered 70,000 names. In Britain, the legal age of consent was reduced to eighteen in 1994 and then to sixteen in 2000, two years after an attempt to lower it had failed due to opposition by the House of Lords, who were backed by the Primate of the Church of England.

In the last twenty years, certain groups such as the police and the army, long reputed for their homophobia, are now very open to gays and lesbians. In 1990, the Gay Police Association (GPA) was formed, uniting gay and lesbian police officers from Scotland Yard; at the same time, the police started taking greater action against homophobic
violence
. With regard to the armed forces, homosexuality among those in service was legalized in 1994. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Defence maintained that “homosexuality is incompatible with military service,” and gays and lesbians ran the risk of an “administrative discharge” if their homosexuality were to be discovered. In September 1999, the European Court of Human Rights condemned the United Kingdom for discharging from the armed forces three men and one woman convicted of homosexual practices. But as of January 2000, discrimination against gays and lesbians in the armed forces became illegal in Britain.

The progressive decriminalization of homosexuality has not, however, signified the end of homophobic attitudes and habits. A 1983 survey on British social attitudes indicated that for 65% of respondents, homosexual relations are considered “always” or “often” wrong. In fact, during the 1980s, in the context of the
AIDS
epidemic and the rise to power of Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party, homosexuals became a popular target. More so than in other countries, the media, in particular the tabloids, associated AIDS with the gay community, generating panic and hysteria in public opinion. The accusation of homosexuality was also used to political ends: the Conservatives attempted to discredit the rival Labour Party by highlighting its sympathy for the gay cause, focusing particular attention on Ken Livingstone, leader of the Greater London Council (1981–84), known for his encouragement in favor of gay and lesbian cultural projects. It was in this context, in 1988, that Clause 28 (a.k.a. Section 28) was passed, forbidding local governments from “promoting” homosexuality. (This amendment is still in place today, despite attempts by groups such as ACT UP, OutRage!, and Stonewall to have it struck down.) Homophobic remarks continue to be published regularly in tabloids such as
The Sun
, which ran a headline in November 1998 on the “Pink Mafia” that supposedly ran the country. In fact, the most common form of homophobia to which gays and lesbians are subjected is
insults
, be it in
schools
, the
workplace
, public areas, or even at home from family members. According to a 1995 survey of gays and lesbians conducted by Stonewall, 73% of respondents had been the victim of insults regarding their sexual orientation during the previous five years; further, 34% of men and 24% of women had suffered different forms of physical violence, including being queer-bashed. Certain legal issues still remain in limbo, such as those pertaining to same-sex partnership or adoption. In 2001, Mayor of London Ken Livingstone (re-elected in 2000 as London’s first mayor under the new Greater London Authority) established the United Kingdom’s first register for both same-sex and heterosexuals, the London Partnership Register, which, while not granting the same legal rights as official marriage, was seen as a crucial first step toward same-sex marriage rights in the country.
—Florence Tamange

Bray, Alan.
Homosexuality in Renaissance England
. London: GMP, 1988.

Bredbeck, Gregory W.
Sodomy and Interpretation: Marlowe to Milton
. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1991.

Crompton, Louis.
Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in 19th-Century England
. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1985.

Davenport-Hines, Richard.
Sex, Death and Punishment: Attitudes to Sex and Sexuality in Britain since the Renaissance
. London: Fontana Press, 1991.

Gilbert, Arthur N. “Buggery and the British Navy 1700– 1861.”
Journal of Social History
10 (Autumn 1976).

Jeffery-Poulter, Stephen.
Peers, Queers and Commons: The Struggle for Gay Law Reform from 1950 to the Present
. New York/London: Routledge, 1991.

Jeffreys, Sheila.
The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1830–1930
. London: Pandora, 1985.

Miller, Neil.
Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present
. London: Vintage, 1995.

Norton, Rictor.
Mother Clap’s Molly House: The Gay Subculture in England 1700–1830
. London: GMP, 1992.

Rousseau, George Sebastian.
Perilous Enlightenment: Pre- and Post-modern Discourses, Sexual, Historical
. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1991. [Published in the US by St Martin’s Press, 1991.]

Sinfield, Alan.
The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde, and the Queer Moment
. London: Cassell, 1994. [Published in the US by Columbia Univ. Press, 1994.]

Tamagne, Florence.
Histoire de l’homosexualité en Europe: Berlin, Londres, Paris, 1919–1939
. Paris: Le Seuil, 2000. [Published in the US as
A History of Homosexuality in Europe: Berlin, London, Paris, 1919–1939
. New York: Algora, 2004.]

Weeks, Jeffrey.
Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present
. New York/London: Quartet Books, 1990.

—Armed Forces; Debauchery; Devlin, Patrick; McCarthy, Joseph; North America; Police; Radclyffe Hall, Marguerite; Turing, Alan; Utilitarianism; Vice; Violence; Wilde, Oscar.

ESSENTIALISM/CONSTRUCTIONISM

The debate between essentialists and constructionists is linked to a number of philosophical and epistemological disputes that have occurred throughout the intellectual history of the Western world. From a chronological point of view, the debate goes all the way back to the divergence between the followers of Platonic theory and those of the Aristotelian approach. This kind of epistemological opposition permeates the history of how we think, and exists (explicitly, or otherwise) in many scientific fields.

In
anthropology
,
sociology
, and
history
, the debate is very apparent where the study of sexuality is involved. In this context, and in a rather simplistic way, it can be said that essentialists analyze sexuality in terms of historical and cultural continuity, while on the other hand, constructionists do so in terms of discontinuity.

To essentialists, there is a base homosexual identity (masculine and feminine) that is both ahistorical and acultural: homosexuals and lesbians have always existed everywhere. Alternatively, from the constructionist point of view, the concept of “sexuality” (and consequently that of heterosexuality and homosexuality) is a category which exists in practically all cultures, but which can acquire meanings and symbolic values that are often quite different, even opposed. For example, speaking of homosexuality among the Ancient Greeks would be an anachronism, and using the same name for sexual contact between two New Guinea aboriginals would be ethnocentrism, although neither of these statements denies the existence of sexual attraction between people of the same sex in other time periods or in different cultural circles from our own.

Until the latter half of the twentieth century, a majority of authors writing on sexuality approached it from the essentialist point of view. It was not until the anthropological studies of the early 1960s—a period when the cultural diversity of mores and sexual practices became a subject of interest—that the constructionist approach to sexuality began to emerge. Shortly thereafter, the works of Michel Foucault in France and Jeffrey Weeks in the United Kingdom established a theoretical and empirical basis for social constructionism.

These two paradigms coexist in various studies and scientific analyses, but they also appear in other forms of learning, most notably in common knowledge. As such, anthropologist Carole Vance points out, we all have an essentialist perception of sexuality: the essentialist idea that human behavior is natural and predetermined by immutable genetic, biological, or physiological mechanisms, a notion that can be found practically everywhere and within everyone. The same is true for the tendency to categorize in a homogeneous manner those people who in our eyes engage in similar behavior: i.e. that all homosexuals must be the same, as well as bisexuals, and even heterosexuals. However, upon refinement of this analysis, one can see that sexual orientation does not make all individuals the same. Yet it cannot be denied that it is easier for the human mind to view these categories as being stable, rather than to have to consider more flexible concepts.