National Politics and Sexuality in Transregional Perspective by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472482648
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 34706708
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusions

To conclude, the debates I have discussed show how the figure of the homosexual man was split on the basis of a gender dichotomy. Despite differences in the theoretical approaches of Hirschfeld, Freud, and Blüher, the three sexologists all agreed that the masculine homosexual was culturally more valuable than the effeminate one. Though Hirschfeld defended the effeminate homosexual, his theory also had anti-feminist implications. The gender binary functioned as a cultural marker that either normalized or made undesirable, enhanced or lowered the value of, certain identity constructions. To increase the perceived value of the masculine homosexual, the degradation of the effeminate one was accepted and even promoted.

This discourse also shows how debates about homosexuality were interwoven with racial discourses. The effeminate homosexual was not only categorized as narcissistic, mother-identified, pathological, and degenerate; he was also described with the colonial terms “backward” and “primitive.” Specific concepts of race, gender roles, and sexual preferences corresponded to, and mutually reinforced, one another. More specifically, the category of race reinforced the gender gap that existed within the category of (homo)sexual identity. In Friedlaender’s work, women and the reproductive realm of the family exemplified the “primitive.” Repeating a long-established anti-Semitic trope that depicted Jewish men as effeminate, Blüher and his followers posited a close relationship between Jewishness and what they saw as the degenerate type of homosexuality. After World War I, this combination of homophobia and anti-Semitism became even more pronounced until the Jewish man was not only taken to exemplify the effeminate but came to symbolize a sort of gender undecidability disrupting the dualism of male and female that is crucial for maintaining heteronormativity and, by implication, for maintaining the vitality of the nation at large (Gilman 1991; Hödl 2007; Rohde 2005).

In the terms of racial-homosexual discourse, Blüher was struggling to disengage virile homosexuality from Jewishness. His statements to this effect were part of a general trend in German nationalist discourse to renew the German nation’s masculine nature and reinstate its male-defined political order. This explains the appeal of Blüher’s ideas, particularly in conservative circles. Inspired by Blüher’s theories, some völkisch activists of the homosexual movement, including the young physician Karl-Günther Heimsoth (1899–1934), developed the ideal of an Aryan, homoerotic male leader and hero (Bruns & zur Nieden 2006; zur Nieden 2004; zur Nieden 2005a). Ernst Röhm (1887–1934), head of the National Socialist paramilitary (the SA), who openly praised homosexuality and practiced it with SA members, seemed to embody this ideal. Here is the beginning of the influential idea of the homosexual Nazi, which became more influential after World War II and is still important (Zinn 1997; zur Nieden 2005b; Machtan 2001, 2002). The fact that Hitler was well informed about Röhm’s sexual preference led masculinists in the early 1930s to assume, falsely, as it turned out, that the Nazi regime would tolerate male–male relationships if they exuded heroic, military masculinity. To the contrary, Röhm’s arrest and his execution, together with numerous other SA functionaries during the Night of Long Knives in 1934, was

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