Sex, politics and morality in France, 1954-1982

History Workshop Journal

Volumn 61, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 77-102

  Jackson, Julian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33750021392     PISSN: 13633554     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/dbi076     Document Type: Article

References (138)

1. Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and his Kind: 1929-1939 (1976), London, 1977, p. 23.
2. Its Spartacus rating was: B, D, E, G, GLM, P, S and four stars.
3. Richard Cobb, Promenades. a Historian's Appreciation of Modern French Literature, Oxford, 1980, p. 142.
4. One English visitor described this ritual in the following way: 'When I entered the Arcadie club the evening was in full swing. They have an enormous dance floor and I guess about 200 people were dancing when I arrived. I had just finished my second drink when the music changed and everyone formed an enormous circle on the dance-floor, just like a fully-dressed daisy chain. About eight or ten young men were given a small rolled up mat and went with mat in hand into the circle. I had been pulled into the circle and wondered what strange ritual was to take place. Soon it was all too apparent - I was to witness a delightful custom which I would recommend many of our British gay clubs to import. The young men with the mats each walked up to someone they liked, in the circle, and touched the one of their choice with the mat. The pair then went again to the centre and placed his/her right knee on each mat, leaned forward, and kissed someone of his choice whilst the original holder of the mat took a place in the circle. I was flattered to be in the centre as much as I was in the circle, and discovered later that it is also customary for some of the people you have kissed to ask you to dance - slow romantic dances and all done with the grace and charm for which Parisians are famous', John Stafford, Quorum 7, 1974, Hall-Carpenter Archives, London, Journals 26.
5. John d'Emilio, Sexual Politics. Sexual Communitis, Chicago and London, 1983
6. Martin Meeker, 'Behind the Mask: Reconsidering the Mattachine Society and Male Homophile Practice, 1950s and 1960s', Journal of the History of Sexuality 10: 1, January 2001, pp. 78-116
7. Hubert Kennedy, The Ideal Gay Man: The Story of Der Kreis, New York, 1999.
8. To be published by Chicago University Press.
9. For some reflections on this subject, Sylvie Chaperon, 'L'Histoire contemporaine des séxualités en France', Vingtieème siècle 75, summer 2002, pp. 47-59.
10. In his introduction to his conversations with Ariès, Michel Winock, Un Historien de dimanche, Paris, 1980, p. 10, notes the 'prudence académique au nom de laquelle il vaut toujours mieux parler du sexe des anges que du sexe des humains' (the academic prudence whereby the sex of angels is always more worthy of discussion than the sex of humans).
11. The most perceptive commentator on this issue is Eric Fassin. Among his many writings, see in particular Fassin, 'L'Individu minoritaire', Vacarme 17, autumn 2001, pp. 15-17
12. Clarisse Fabre, Eric Fassin, Liberté, égalité, sexualités, Paris, 2003, pp. 21-37.
13. For two recent and opposing examples of the kind of crudely polemical writing to which this debate can give rise in France, see François Devoucoux du Buysson, Les Khmers rose. Essai sur l'idéologie homosexuelle, Paris, 2003
14. and Anne and Marine Rambach, La Culture gaie et lesbienne, Paris, 2003.
15. These remarks come from the preface to the English edition, Frédéric Martel, Pink and the Black. Homosexuals in France since 1968, Stanford, 2000, p. xx.
16. Martel's book aroused considerable polemic in France. For his reply to his critics, see Martel, 'Le Rose et le noir: Retour sur un controverse', Esprit, November 1996, pp. 197-216.
17. Le Monde, 27 June 1997 (the author of this article, it should be said, was Martel). The proceedings of the conference were published as Les Etudes gays et lesbiennes, ed. Didier Eribon, Paris 1998.
18. Although there have been some pioneering French historians of homosexual history, like Maurice Lever, Les Buchers de Sodome, Paris, 1985,
19. or Michel Rey, 'Parisian Homosexuals Create a Lifestyle 1700-1750: The Police Archives', in 'Tis Nature's Fault: Unauthorised Sexual Behavior during the Enlightenment, ed. Robert Maccubin, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 179-91
20. and 'Police et Sodomie à Paris au XVIIIe siècle, du péché au désordre', Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 29, winter 1982, pp. 113-24
21. most of the first scholarly work has come from Anglophone historians, notably in Homosexuality in Modern France, ed. Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant Ragan, New York and Oxford, 1996,
22. and Homosexuality in French History and Culture, ed. Jeffrey Merrick and Michael Sibalis, Binghamton, NY, 2001.
23. In 1999 the publisher Balland allowed the writer Guillaume Dustan to edit a series entitled 'Le Rayon gay' (the pink shelf), but it was quickly renamed simply 'Le rayon' because bookshops were not keen to stock it.
24. For example, among recent publications, see Florence Tamagne, Histoire de l'homosexualité en Europe: Berlin, Londres, Paris 1919-1939, Paris, 2000
25. Dictionnaire des cultures gaies et lesbiennes, ed. Didier Eribon, Paris, 2003
26. Louis-Georges Tin, Dictionnaire de l'homophobie, Paris, 2003. These three books were published by Le Seuil, Larousse and PUF respectively.
27. For example, Jacques Girard, Le Mouvement homosexuel en France 1945-1960, Paris, 1981
28. Christopher Miles, 'Arcadie ou l'impossible Eden', La Revue h 1, summer 1996, pp. 25-30
29. Miles, 'Arcadie, 1968-1982, splendeurs et misères', La Revue h 4, spring, 1997, pp. 43-52.
30. George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, New York, 1994.
31. For a preview of the arguments of the sequel, see George Chauncey, 'Après Stonewall, le déplacement de la frontière entre le "soi" public et le "soi" privé', Histoire et sociétés 3: 3, summer 2002, pp. 45-59.
32. John Lauritsen and David Thorstad, The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935), New York, 1974
33. James D. Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany, New York, 1975.
34. Marcel Proust, A la Recherche du temps perdu vol. 3, Paris, 1988, p. 33.
35. For a brief overview of the legal situation, see Janine Mossuz-Lavau, Les Lois de l'amour. Les Politiques de la sexualité en France(1950-1990), Paris, 1991
36. Marc Daniel, 'Histoire de la législation pénale française concernant l'homosexualité', Arcadie 96, December 1961
37. and Arcadie 97, January 1962.
38. Félix Carlier, La Prostitution antiphysique (1887), Paris, 1981
39. Louis Canler, Mémoires de Canler, Ancien chef du service de sur̂eté, Brussels, 1862 (reprinted, Paris, 1968).
40. Michel Foucault, La Volonté de savoir, Paris, 1976, p. 33.
41. Nancy Erber, 'The French Trials of Oscar Wilde', Journal of the History of Sexuality 6: 4, spring 1996, pp. 549-88.
42. For the Germiny affair, see Christian Gury, L'Honneur perdu d'un politicien en 1876, Paris, 1999
43. and William Peniston, Pederasts and Others. Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth Century Paris, New York and London, 2004, pp. 151-61.
44. For homosexual life in Paris during this period, see also Régis Revenin, Homosexualité et prostitution masculine à Paris 1870-1918, Paris, 2005.
45. For Proust and homosexuality see: Patrick Pollard, André Gide: Homosexual Moralist, New Haven and London, 1991
46. Michael Lucey, Gide's Bent: Sexuality, Politics, Writing, New York, 1995
47. Martha Hanna, 'Natalism, Homosexuality and the Controversy over Corydon' in Merrick and Ragan, Homosexuality, pp. 202-24
48. Eva Ahlstedt, André Gide et le débat sur l'homosexualité, Göteborg, 1994.
49. In this he is close to his fictional character the Baron de Charlus who claimed that seven out of ten men were homosexual.
50. André du Dognon, 'La difficulté d'en être...', Arcadie 1, January 1954.
51. Another example would be Julien Green, whose novel Le Malfaiteur, started in 1936, was published in 1955, but the central chapter, which revealed the homosexuality of the main protagonist and therefore provided the key to his suicide, only appeared in the 1973 edition.
52. For a brief overview of homosexual Paris see, Michael Sibalis, 'Gay Paris' in Queer Sites. Gay Urban History since 1600, ed. David Higgs, London, 1999, pp. 11-37.
53. For Paris in the 1920s, Gilles Barbedette and Michel Carassou, Paris Gay 1925, Paris, 1981,
54. and for interwar Paris in general, Florence Tamagne, Histoire de homosexualité en Europe: Berlin, Londres, Paris 1919-1939, Paris, 2000.
55. John Lehmann, In the Purely Pagan Sense, London, 1985, pp. 113-14.
56. Sarah Whitney, 'Embracing the Status Quo: French Communists, Young Women and the Popular Front, Journal of Social History 30, 1996, pp. 25-53.
57. For the origins of this law see: Michael Sibalis, 'Homophobia, Vichy France and the "Crime of Homosexuality"', GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 8: 3, summer 2002, pp. 301-18
58. Marc Boninchi, Vichy et l'Ordre moral, Paris, 2005, pp. 143-93.
59. Luc Capdevila, 'Le Mythe du guerrier et la construction sociale d'un éternel masculin après la guerre', Revue française de psychanalyse 62: 2, spring 1998, pp. 607-23.
60. Jean-Paul Sartre, 'Qu'est qu'un collaborateur?' in Situations 3, Paris, 1949, pp. 43-61.
61. Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Re-ordering of French Culture, Cambridge Mass., 1995
62. Claire Duchen, 'Occupation Housewife: The Domestic Ideal in 1950s France', French Cultural Studies 2: 4, winter 1991, pp. 1-11.
63. In Germany, for example, 700 homosexuals were investigated and 140 prosecuted in Frankfurt in 1950; in Denmark the so-called 'pornography scandal' led to the arrests of many homosexuals in 1955-56; in Great Britain 1954 was the year of the notorious Montagu trial; in the 1950s in the United States, homosexuals suffered even more from the McCarthy persecutions than did alleged Communists, and thousands lost their jobs. For homosexuality in Germany in this period see Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth Century Germany, Princeton and Oxford, 2005, pp. 89-95
64. for the United States, David Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government, Chicago, 2004
65. for Britain, Patrick Higgins, The Heterosexual Dictatorship: Male Homosexuality in Post-War Britain, London, 1996.
66. Daniel Guérin, 'La Répression de l'homosexualité en France' in his Shakespeare et Gide en correctionnelle?, Paris, 1959, pp. 93-121.
67. Jean Cocteau, Le Passé défini, Paris, 1954, p. 136.
68. In fact Green did agree, via an intermediary, to contribute a piece to Arcadie one day, but asked if in the meantime the journal would publish a piece by his protégé, lover and future adoptive son Eric Jourdan. This was published, under the pseudonym Roger Veronaise, in the first number of Arcadie. It was subsequently singled out as one of the pièces d'accusation when Arcadie was prosecuted for immorality in 1955. Given that Green's contribution never in fact appeared, the episode left Baudry understandably aggrieved, as he recalled in our several of our interviews, and as recounted also by Roger Peyrefitte L'Illustre écrivain, Paris, 1982, p. 362.
69. Marcel Jouhandeau, Carnets de l'écrivain, Paris, 1957, p. 274, republishes his letter to Baudry of 18 January 1954 which appeared in the Nouvelle revue française of 1 March 1954.
70. Marcel Jouhandeau, Journaliers 1957-1959, 1961, p. 85.
71. For other negative reference to Arcadie see: Jouhandeau, Parousie. Journaliers xxii: Fevrier 1967-juillet 1968, 1975, p. 186
72. Du singulier à l'éternel. Journaliers xxvii, 1981, p. 175.
73. For an interesting attempt to make a case for the importance of Jouhandeau's writings on homosexuality see Didier Eribon, Hérésies, Paris, 2003, pp. 169-205.
74. Cocteau sent a message of support which was published in the first issue; Peyrefitte published a story in the first issue and continued to publish in the review over the next years.
75. 'Allocution Prononcée lors de la présentation des voeux au club', 8 January 1965. Mimeographed circular in my possession (henceforth these circulars in my possession will be referenced: JTJ).
76. He claimed that he had first used the word at the congress of the International Committee for Sexual Equality in Amsterdam in 1953. In fact the word seem to have been used first by the Dutchman Arendt van Sundhorst in 1949. On Arcadie's preference for the term see, among many other discussions, 'Homophile ou homosexuel', Arcadie 71, November 1959.
77. In fact, in order not to put off potential recruits Baudry never publicly admitted that he had been found guilty at the trial, and the fact was first uncovered thanks to the detective work of Olivier Jablonski, 'The Birth of a French Homosexual Press in the 1950s', in Homosexuality, ed. Merrick and Sibalis, pp. 233-48.
78. Daniel Guérin, Front populaire, révolution manqué. Témoignage, Paris, 1963.
79. The quotation comes from Daniel Guérin, Eux et lui in Homosexualité et Révolution, St Denis, 1983, p. 44. He goes on to say that 'phallism is a 'neologism of my own making, meaning the preference for the phallus'. Guérin has recently become the centre of considerable scholarly attention: Two biographies are in preparation, and a conference was held on him at Loughborough University in September 2004. For Arcadie he wrote articles on various subjects including Kinsey, Fourier, Proudhon and Wilhelm Reich.
80. See Jacques Vandemborghe [Guy Chevallier], 'Mai 68, dans la Sorbonne occupée', Mec Magazine 1, 1988, pp. 30-3, which reproduces the text of this poster.
81. This was the masthead also of one of the ephemeral newspapers of FHAR, L'antinorm.
82. There is no full length study of FHAR but information about it can be found in: Françoise d'Eaubonne, 'Le Fhar', La Revue h 2, autumn 1996, pp. 18-30
83. Alain Sanzio, 'Une Décennie mouvementée', Masques 9/10, 1981, pp. 99-109
84. 'FHAR' in Dictionnaire, ed. Eribon, pp. 194-5
85. Y. Le Goff, 'Le FHAR', Têtu 54 (3/01)
86. Girard, Mouvement, pp. 81-122.
87. FHAR wrote its own brief history in its legendary Rapport contre la normalité, Paris, 1971.
88. On the GLH, see Jean Le Bitoux, Citoyen de seconde zone. Trente ans de lutte pour la reconnaissance de l'homosexualité en France (1971-2002), Paris, 2003, pp. 135-62
89. Le Bitoux, 'Le Groupe de Libération Homosexuelle (1975-1978)', La Revue h 5/6, 1998, pp. 43-8
90. Girard, Le Mouvement, pp. 113-48.
91. Gai pied 38, April 1982.
92. 'Marc Daniel', Arcadie 100, April 1962.
93. 'Essai de méthodologie pour l'étude des aspects homosexuels de l'histoire', Arcadie 131, November 1964.
94. Gai pied 43, October 1982.
95. 'Lettre ouverte à Paul Reboux', Arcadie 13, January 1955.
96. 'Lettre personnelle', JTJ, December 1965.
97. 'Jacques Remo', 'Côté cour côté jardin', Arcadie 46, October 1957.
98. For other examples of this idea: 'Remo', 'Amour, grandeur et misère ou les propos qui ne veulent pas plaire', Arcadie 4, April 1954
99. Baudry, 'L'Âme d'Arcadie', Arcadie 169, January 1968.
100. 'Serge Talbot', 'Les Facteurs sexualisants', Arcadie 40, April 1957.
101. Baudry, 'Confusion', Arcadie 40, April 1957.
102. 'Jacques Remo', 'Le Temps passe', Arcadie 25, January 1956.
103. Baudry, 'A certains lecteurs', Arcadie 55/56, July-August 1958.
104. 'Serge Talbot', Arcadie 27, March 1956.
105. Claude Sorey, 'Homophilie et société', Arcadie 176/7, August-September 1968.
106. 'Pierre Nedra' [André Gaillard], Arcadie 178, October 1968.
107. 'Serge Talbot', 'Ceux que veulent les Arcadiens', Arcadie 24, December 1957.
108. 'A-C. Desmon' [André Lafond], 'L'Homophile dans la société' d'aujourd'hui', Arcadie 202, October 1970.
109. Desmon', 'L'Homophile'.
110. The phrase 'le droit à l'indifférence' was coined by the writer Jean-Louis Bory, who was loosely associated with Arcadie.
111. See the interesting observations of Didier Eribon in Réflexions sur la question gai, Paris, 1999, pp. 176-83.
112. Two useful books on the subject are Daniel Garcia, La Folle histoire du marriage gay, Paris, 2004 and Didier Eribon, Sur cet instant fragile ... Carnets, janvier-août 2004, Paris, 2004. Eribon was one of the activists most involved in pushing the marriage issue.
113. See in general George Chauncey, Why Gay Marriage? The History of Today's Debate over Gay Equality, New York, 2005
114. Same-Sex Marriage: Pro and Con, ed. Andrew Sullivan, New York, 1997.
115. Eribon, Sur cet instant, pp. 84-8, quotes and discusses a striking passage by Roland Barthes along these lines.
116. 'Manifeste pour l'égalité des droits', Le Monde, 17 March 2004.
117. In fact this ruling was confirmed on 19 April 2005 by the Cour d'appel of Bordeaux.
118. Sarkozy, Le Figaro, 17 May 2004.
119. Garcia, La Folle histoire, pp. 111-28.
120. Finkielkraut, L'Express, 17 May 2004
121. Julliard, 'Papa et papa?', Le Nouvel observateur, 20 May 2004.
122. Garcia, La Folle histoire, p. 141.
123. Garcia, La Folle histoire, p. 170.
124. The quotation comes from Proust, A la Recherche, vol. 2, Paris, 1988, p. 536.
125. Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument about Homosexuality, New York, 1989
126. 'The Case for Gay Marriage', The Economist, 24 Feb. 2004.
127. See also Jonathan Rauch, Gay Marriage: Why it is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, New York, 2002.
128. For a critical discussion of these American conservatives, see Paul Robinson, Queer Wars: The New Gay Right and its Critics, Chicago and London, 2005.
129. Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics and the Ethics of Queer Life, New York, 1999, pp. 84-119.
130. Eribon, Sur cet instant, p. 18.
131. Interestingly, the American homophile magazine, One, an off-shoot of the Mattachine movement, published an article entitled 'Homosexual marriage?' as early as August 1953, and the subject was debated by the organization One, Inc., between 1961 and 1963.
132. 'A-C.Desmon', 'L'homophilie dans la société d'aujourd'hui', Arcadie 202, October 1970.
133. Sorey, 'Homophilie et société (suite)', Arcadie 178, October 1968.
134. See Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault et ses contemporains, Paris, 1994, pp. 274-81.
135. Arcadie Actes du colloque international, Le Regard des autres, Paris, 1979, p. 25.
136. Eribon, Réflexions, pp. 411-46.
137. Foucault, 'L'Occident et la vérité du sexe', Dits et écrits, 3 1976-1979, Paris, 1994, p. 183.
138. Libération, 12 July 1982.