We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Was the Homosexual Made White? Race, Empire, and Analogy in Gay and Trans Thought in Twentieth‐Century Germany.
- Authors
Marhoefer, Laurie
- Abstract
From the very beginning of gay politics, German thinkers created a homosexual subject who had no race. This has not previously been noted in the large scholarship on the emergence of homosexual identity. Something similar happened with the identity category ‘transvestite’, the emergence of which marked a foundational moment in trans history. The freedom to have a gay politics that ignores racism – a freedom enjoyed only by white gays, who are not suffering at the hands of racists – has a long history. This article tells its first chapter, a chapter that took place almost one hundred years ago in Berlin. The creation of a deracialised homosexual subject in the early twentieth century cast a very long shadow over gay politics. That shadow is at the centre of conflicts among activists for homosexual liberation to this day, including a 2010 public debate involving the American philosopher Judith Butler.
- Subjects
GERMANY; GAY identity; RACE &; politics; GERMAN history, 1871-; HISTORY of gay people; RACISM; IMPERIALISM &; society; HISTORY
- Publication
Gender & History, 2019, Vol 31, Issue 1, p91
- ISSN
0953-5233
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1468-0424.12411