Report by Tamara Chaplin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
In a spirited session at the close of the 2012 AHA in Chicago this January, Nathan Wilson (PhD Candidate, York University) and Ryan Jones (PhD Candidate, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) asked us to reconsider how we understand the history and content of both homosexual experience and emergent gay rights activism during what we’ve termed the “long” 1950s. Although treating disparate nationalities (the USA and West Germany, and Mexico), both panelists argued that the strategies, tactics and language used to propel gay liberation during the late 1960s and 1970s had important precedents in the immediate postwar decades. In this, they join historians like Julian Jackson and Scott Gunther, who likewise argue for the French case (with which, as a French historian, I’m most familiar) that we need to re-read the 1950s as a more politically potent precursor to the activist politics of post-Stonewall gay liberation movements than is often presumed.
Nathan Wilson’s paper, “The Gestapo Lives On: West German and American Gay Activists and the Politics of Memory,” was resolute on two points: first, that gays and lesbians in both West Germany and the United States began deploying linguistic and symbolic references to the Holocaust and the Nazi past in the 1950s (decades earlier than usually thought), and second, that they did so in order to counter what he terms, “the pernicious myth that homosexuals in general and gay men in particular were Nazi-like in temperament and outlook.” Both of these arguments intervene in a very rich body of extant scholarship (by scholars like Eric Jenson, Robert Beachy, and Dagmar Herzog, for example—not to mention new work by Jack Halberstam). While Wilson agreed that references to the Nazi persecution of homosexuals were commonly deployed in the politicized context of gay liberation, he nevertheless maintained that, “in the 1950s and 1960s the events now known as the Holocaust…became an inextricable part of both West German and American gay and lesbian political discourse.” Although he offered little evidence of lesbian engagement, Wilson’s paper provided convincing material from the few “widely circulating” gay magazines in the USA (such as the Mattachine Review and The News) and Germany (Der Weg and Der Ring) to support his claims.
One of the bolder aspects of Wilson’s talk was the way that it challenged those who maintain that memories of the war—and especially the Holocaust—were repressed throughout the West until at least the late ‘60s, if not the 1970s. It is interesting to contemplate the broader stakes of this reframing. Were gays and lesbians unique in using these tropes first in their battles for political and social emancipation (before civil rights activists or 68ers)? And were they, hence, the instrumental avant-garde of a larger social coming to terms with this painful portion of the contemporary past?
Rightly condemning popular assumptions that describe Nazism as a homosexual movement, Wilson’s paper usefully illustrated how during the 1950s and ‘60s uncoupling the links between homosexuality and Nazism—and Communism—was critical for gays and lesbians if they were to advocate for equal rights within the context of the Cold War. Of course, this story may not be as neat as it first appears. Some homosexual men (both within and outside of Germany) were seduced by Nazi ideology (Robert Brasillach—the collaborationist French writer executed for “intellectual crimes” in the purges following the war is just one famous example). And, as the existence of neo-Nazi gay groups in the US, France and elsewhere demonstrates, an unfortunate fascination with fascism persisted amongst some homosexuals in the postwar period. It is interesting to think about how to reconcile such facts (not to mention the near simultaneous emergence within gay culture during the late 1950s of leather bars) with Wilson’s narrative. I hope to hear more from him on these parallel developments, which raise important questions about the connections between such historically slippery concepts as sexual desire, politics, violence, voyeurism, fantasy and debasement.
Ryan Jones followed with a compelling talk on “Homosexual Narratives in the Long 1950s: the Mexican Case.” Jones argued for the existence of diverse, even exuberant arenas of homosexual expression, activity, identity formation and community building in Mexico City during a period that has commonly been understood as exemplified almost exclusively by repression and censure. Offering fascinating evidence regarding how, despite police extortion and a “growing pattern of homophobic vice raids,” his historical subjects resisted arrest, hired defense lawyers, and participated in the creation of gay public spaces throughout the 1950s, Jones made a convincing case for the dynamism of homosexual life in Mexico during the 1950s. Indeed, as he demonstrated, it was precisely this dynamism that became a motivating trigger for escalating levels of police and government repression in the decade that followed—repression that escalated, rather than began, in the aftermath of the 1959 Cassola murder with the crackdown on queer social venues promoted by Mexico City’s mayor (the aptly nicknamed “Iron Regent”).
Jones nuanced his larger claims by reminding us of the importance of resisting imperializing models that uncritically presume that Latin American gay identities (like the global south/nonwest at large) were necessarily what the French would call “suiviste”—their term for a person or country who follows the herd—incapable of initiating their own activist histories prior to the occurrence of the Stonewall riots in New York—rather than capable of self-consciously developing independently of Western influence. His point regarding the fact that Western bias imagines that “sexuality is only a concern when individuals have all other areas of their life in order” is well taken. Indeed, it is gratifying to see such theoretically sophisticated work being undertaken by young scholars like Jones on the history of homosexuality in this relatively understudied part of the world.
That said, despite a professed interest in debunking the “myth that queer life [in Mexico] before the 1970s was limited to the wealthier classes or was largely experienced in isolation,” Jones’ talk mainly described the existence, growth and strength of working-class gay life. Consequently, his work raises questions about whether his narrative is equally applicable to the middle-class. Where exactly were middle-class Mexican homosexuals (over whom heterosexual social codes—and doctrines of machismo—presumably exerted a stronger influence)? If the very existence of middle class homosexuals challenged normative conceptions of Mexican masculinity more than did the homosexuality of an educated elite or the (presumably debauched) working class, then were middle-class Mexican homosexuals more accurately represented by the conservative politics evident in America, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands (from the Matachine society, to the Daughters of Bilitis, or, in France, André Baudry’s Arcadie)? Was there a homophile movement in Mexico, and if so, of what did it consist? Such questions aside, Jones’ intervention was a rich example of precisely how the complex tensions between class, sexuality and national identity can play out in particular historical contexts.
Taken together, both Nathan Wilson and Ryan Jones provided stimulating evidence of the intellectual strength and vitality of new work being produced in the field of LGBT history. Anne Hardgrove of the University of Texas at San Antonio chaired. The pleasure of commenting was mine.