Pride & struggle a century ago

1. Rise of German Homosexual Emancipation Movement

By Leslie Feinberg Winds of change will fill the banners of Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Pride this June, lifting them to new heights. After decades of fierce and unrelenting struggle, same-sex love has been effectively decriminalized and many gains have been won. Organizing, rolling civil disobedience has helped push back state denial of equal rights of same-sex couples--a form of institutionalized discrimination that is a pillar of class society. Millions of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and trans people across the United States will take to the streets in Pride events in cities and towns this June, as they do each year to recall and honor the 1969 Stone wall uprising against police repression. And millions of people of all nationalities, sexualities, genders and sexes will line the streets to applaud and cheer these celebrations of individual courage and collective struggle. The 1969 rebellion in New York's Green wich Village was led by the most oppressed of the LGBT communities--people of color, teenagers, transgender and transsexual, homeless, impoverished and so marginalized in the work force that prostitution was the only source of income for many. The uprising was the spark that ignited a large-scale movement. It galvanized quantitative fighting back into qualitative mass resistance. It did not develop in social isolation. The Stonewall Rebellion--which marked the birth of what became the modern LGBT movement--rose in the wake of social upheaval against imperialist war and rampant racist repression. Marchers will draw on the lessons of how the left wing of early gay liberation found its way into the anti-war movement, took part in and defended the national liberation struggles, helped develop women's liberation, and took part in labor battles from the shop floor to organizing in support of the Chicano farm workers' union drive. If they look to accurate historical accounts, today's activists will also find that the young gay liberation movement received support from the most revolutionary sectors of the political left wing. More than three decades later, revisiting this dynamic historical period of struggle is an activist contribution to today's movement. Home Books Subscribe Donate Noticias en Español Workers World June 3, 2004: Rise of German Homosexual Emancipation Movement http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/prideseries10603.php[2/3/2011 3:46:31 PM] But it is less known to many today that the Stonewall Rebellion launched the second--not the first--mass movement for LGBT liberation. The first great wave of struggle to demand sexual and gender emancipation had taken place from 1869 to 1935. It began in Germany. It was a dynamic, expanding movement that grew to be international. And it left its mark on other social and political movements, as well as literature and the arts. The history of the struggle in that period, as well, is rich with lessons. Why not in France? Why did the movement appear in Germany? And why in that epoch? It's impossible to glean a broad understanding without examining the social and economic soil in which the German movement for sexual and gender emancipation was rooted. The widespread, murderous counter- revolutionary pogroms against women, transgender expression and same-sex love carried out by the Catholic and early Protestant hierarchies had subsided as the Industrial Revolution began sweeping away the kingdoms of Europe. The momentous revolution in France at the end of the 18th century-- in which the downtrodden and disenfranchised of the cities, including many women, played a vitally important part--had uprooted the vestiges of the feudal power of the kings and the Catholic Church. The French Revolution established a legal code, Napoleonic Code, which remov ed homosexual acts from the list of criminal offenses. Of course, state and church bias and demonization were not eradicated by formally removing the laws. Variations of sexuality, gender and sex continued to be subject to a political policy of divide and conquer. And a class-divided economy itself continued to pit segments of the work force against each other. But the Napoleonic Code was the enlightened act of a young capitalist class that saw its role as righting the wrongs of feudal backwardness. And this decriminalizing of homosexual acts had farreaching effects on other European nations. Why did the French Revolution remove anti-homosexual statutes while the capitalist revolutions in England and the United States did not? The French Revolution was later, and more thorough, for sure. But the French capitalist class also had to battle the powerful and tenacious Catholic Church and its ideology. That may have impelled the revolutionists to have to carry out a more thorough " of the Church's "moral" authority than in the other countries. So why didn't a sexual liberation movement arise in France? Why in Germany? Because anti-gay repression was much stronger in Germany. Workers World June 3, 2004: Rise of German Homosexual Emancipation Movement http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/prideseries10603.php[2/3/2011 3:46:31 PM] Prussian expansion set stage for battle Germany in the late 1800s had a powerful industrial base. But it was weakened by the remaining constraints of feudalism. Germany had few colonies as a result. Other European powers were colonizing the world, plundering from Africa to Australia. Asia and Africa were conquered by the British, French, Dutch and Belgian imperialist powers. In many of these cultures, women still enjoyed significant societal rights; variance in sex, gender and sexuality were accepted and respected. But with bullets and bibles, the imperial patriarchs of wealth at the pinnacle of capital's expanding power conquered militarily and ideologically with their cultural values and property relations. In North America, the fierce clash between the expansion of slavery and the expansion of Northern industrial capital was about to break out in the bloodiest battle of the 19th century--the Civil War. The victory of the North would set the stage for U.S. capital to begin its merciless globalization in search of greater profits. But Germany was not unified enough to be a colonial contender--yet. It was fragmented into almost 300 different countries. While several of these had no laws against same-sex love, Prussia did. And it was Prussia that was devouring all the other German states except Hanover. Next: The love that dared to speak its name Reprinted from the June 3, 2004, issue of Workers World newspaper This article is copyrighted under a Creative Commons License. Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011 Email: ww@workers.org Subscribe to WW by Email: wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net

2. The love that dared to speak its name

By Leslie Feinberg The love that had dared not speak its name raised its voice in the 1860s in Germany. As its demands rose, they were amplified by support from the revolutionary groundswell of workers who were organizing and fighting to win basic democratic rights. From the first challenges to sexual oppression in the 1860s, the left wing of the emerging socialist movement--those revolutionaries who were fighting to shatter the manacles of capitalism as well as the mental shackles of ideological reaction--supported this strug gle against state repression and for sexual liberation. In 1862, a young lawyer named Jean Baptiste von Schweitzer was convicted of a homosexual act in a city park. Von Schweitzer was a member of the socialist German Workers Association, headed by Ferdinand Lassalle. Some in the group wanted to expel Von Schweitzer. But Lassalle defended him, arguing that sexuality "ought to be left up to each person" whenever no one else is harmed. Not only wasn't Von Schweitzer expelled; he became president of this socialist workers' organization after Lassalle's death. The struggle for emancipation ratcheted up in the 1860s, when a Prussian proposal for a harsh penal code made male homosexuality an even more serious crime. In 1864, a gay man in Germany began writing courageously and prolifically against this law and in defense of homosexuality. Karl Ulrichs was a civil servant in the small city-state of Hanover. He knew that Prussia would soon absorb the city, extending anti-gay legislation throughout Germany. As early as 1862 he had coined the word "Urning" to describe a male sexually attracted to other males, which he believed derived from a kind of intersexuality in some brains. The English translation is "Uranian." This term--based on a myth in Plato's "Sym posium" that referred to a god dess of men who love men--was picked up and used throughout Europe and England. Despite being confronted with shock and outrage, Ulrichs carried out a 30-year public campaign, mainly literary, warning of the dangers of the repressive Prussian law and insisting on justice for "Urnings." In 1869, a Hungarian doctor wrote an open letter in defense of gay rights to the minister of justice. While his last name is known-- Home Books Subscribe Donate Noticias en Español Workers World June 10, 2004: The love that dared to speak its name http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/pride20610.php[2/3/2011 3:46:39 PM] Benkert--he wrote under the pseu donym Karoly Maria Kertbeny. In 1868 he created the term "homosexuality." Benkert pointed out that since the French Revolution and the introduction of the Napoleonic Code, the momentum of history was toward decriminalizing homosexuality. He listed famous homosexuals in history like Shakespeare, Newton, Michel angelo, Frederick the Great and countless others and asked how much cultural history would have been squandered by their imprisonment. Benkert stressed that society had to escape from the genocidal feudal campaigns that had claimed millions of lives. He denounced the use of scapegoating and concluded that the state had no business nosing around in people's sexual lives. In 1871, a Draconian anti-gay Para graph 175 was introduced with no debate into the penal code of the Second Reich. Fight against Paragraph 175 heats up After 30 years of trailblazing work by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Benkert and others, the first political movement of a mass character for sexual and gender rights emerged in Germany in 1896. The demand for sexual and gender emancipation continued to draw backing from socialist leaders. A year before the official emergence of this movement, Eduard Bernstein, then a Marxist and a leader of the German Social Democratic Party, wrote a defense of the gay British literary figure Oscar Wilde in an important left newspaper. Wilde's arrest and trial were an example of how anti-gay and anti-transgender repression--in this case charges against a feminine gay male--were intertwined in the minds of prosecutors. Bernstein's article called on socialists to lead the way in sexual reform, challenged anti-gay prejudice and rejected the increasingly popular psychiatric theories that pathologized same-sex love. The first gay liberation organization was born in Germany two years later, in 1897. It was called the Scientific Humani tarian Committee. Its founder and notable leader throughout much of the committee's 35 years was Magnus Hirschfeld--a gay Jewish doctor who may have also been, like many other leaders of the German movement, a cross-dresser. He coined the word "transvestite," did extensive research and produced germinal writings on the subject of crossdressing. The Scientific Humanitarian Com mittee published a yearbook that reported on movement activities. It also documented literary, crosscultural, cross-historical and scientific studies on same-sex love and transgender. The committee aimed to abolish Paragraph 175, raise social consciousness and encourage sexually oppressed people to fight for their rights. To achieve its goals, the committee held regular public Workers World June 10, 2004: The love that dared to speak its name http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/pride20610.php[2/3/2011 3:46:39 PM] forums, organized speaking tours nationally and internationally, and sent literature to other governments about the need to decriminalize same-sex love. The committee's main focus was a petition campaign, launched in 1897, to collect signatures of prominent people demanding the repeal of Paragraph 175. Socialists of all sexualities unite From its earliest days, the committee won support from revolutionaries, who were at that time called Social Democrats. In 1898, the committee took to parliament the signatures of 900 doctors, lawyers, educators and scientists calling for the repeal of Paragraph 175. It was rebuffed. However, the socialist minority in the German parliament did support the demand. The great socialist leader August Bebel took the floor, becoming the first major supporter to battle for the petition. Bebel, author of "The Rights of Women"--an early socialist denunciation of the oppression of women under capitalism--signed the petition, took copies to parliament and urged others to add their names. He argued that homosexuality was so widespread among all economic classes in society that "if the police dutifully did what they were supposed to, the Prussian state would immediately be obliged to build two new penitentiaries just to handle the number of violations against Paragraph 175 committed within the confines of Berlin alone." When Bebel made this speech, and subsequent ones, on the parliament floor, the right-wing politicians booed. But socialists greeted his defense of same-sex love with supporting shouts of "Hear, hear!" Hirschfeld himself was affiliated with the Social Democratic Party from 1898 until the rise of fascism forced him into exile. Rise of a mass movement The committee carried on a whirlwind of activity. In 1899 it sent a letter to Roman Catholic priests asking them to take a stand on gay oppression and gay rights, sent information to parliament members, wrote to more than 2,000 daily newspapers, placed ads in newspapers, sent 8,000 letters to top administration and police officials, another to public prosecutors, and 8,000 copies of the petition to judges. More than 6,000 prominent people, half of them doctors, signed the petition. Others included Albert Einstein, Leo Tolstoy, Emile Zola, Kathe Kollwitz, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann and Rainer Maria Rilke. Well-known socialists of that period, including Bebel, Karl Kautsky, Rudolf Hilferding, Gerhardt Hauptman and Eduard Bernstein, also signed. Workers World June 10, 2004: The love that dared to speak its name http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/pride20610.php[2/3/2011 3:46:39 PM] In 1905, during another debate on Paragraph 175, the committee went back to parliament with more than 5,000 signatures. The Center Party, a right-wing group with strong support from the Catholic Church, led opposition to reform. Again it was a socialist--Adolph Thiele-- who argued on behalf of gay rights. But the move for reform was again defeated. In 1907 more than 2,000 people attended a public debate on Paragraph 175. But this pinnacle of organizing was followed by a period of reaction that drove many supporters underground and forced activists to keep a lower profile. The opening shot of this anti-gay witch hunt was a highly publicized scandal about alleged gay activities by a number of high German political figures who were forced to stand trial. In 1910, at the height of anti-gay frenzy, the parliament began to debate extending Paragraph 175 to include lesbian acts between women. Next: Lesbians on front lines of fight for liberation Reprinted from the June 10, 2004, issue of Workers World newspaper This article is copyrighted under a Creative Commons License. Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011 Email: ww@workers.org Subscribe to WW by Email: wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net

Lesbians on the front lines of fight for rights, liberation

By Leslie Feinberg A proposed German penal code was drafted in late 1910 that would criminalize sexual acts between women. Any law that threatened same-sex love between women was also inherently anti-trans gender, since the oppressed populations overlapped. In 1721, for example, a German individual who was named Catha rina Mar garetha Linck at birth was burned at the stake for the crime of being a female-bodied person who lived as a male and married another woman. Until 1794 a Prussian code executed people of all sexes for what the law characterized as "unnatural acts." That edict was amended in 1837 to a sentence of "imprisonment followed by life-long punishment." In their book "Lesbians in Germany: 1890s-1920s," authors Lillian Faderman and Brigitte Eriksson wrote, "In 1851 punishment for 'unnatural acts' was restricted by a new code to males only. 'Victorian' mentality had spread to Ger many. The law preferred to ignore the possibility that women were capable of sexual expression." The menace of including same-sex love between women in Paragraph 175 posed a new challenge for the women's movement in Ger many, which had been "advancing unimpeded" since the early 1900s. Women who today might call themselves lesbians were very active in the early German women's rights movement. But they largely did so without "coming out of the closet." The early Uranian movement had been mostly made up of individuals who today might identify as gay men, male-to-female cross-dressers and transsexual women. However, as the Homo sexual Emancipation Movement grew in social strength and weight, it emboldened lesbians to openly emerge as social leaders. 'Reach for the stars!' Anna Rueling was just such a leader. That name was a pseudonym as well. She was born Anna Theo Sprungli. Exactly a century ago, Rueling made a famous public address in Home Books Subscribe Donate Noticias en Español Workers World June 17, 2004: Pride & struggle a century ago http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/pride0617.php[2/3/2011 3:46:51 PM] Berlin, delivered before a meeting of the Scientific Human itarian Committee. This 1904 public meeting was an important breakthrough. Faderman and Eriksson note "Accord ing to [Uranian leader Magnus] Hirsch feld, the police sometimes even prevented women from attending the Scientific Humani tarian Committee's public forums because the discussion of homosexuality was regarded as unsuitable in the presence of women. A public lesbian organization would not have been tolerated at that time." Rueling congratulated the committee, wrote Michael Lombardi-Nash, "for its support of women's rights and for including lesbians, along with homosexual men, in its fight for equal rights." (The Gay & Lesbian Review, May-June 2004) Her speech that night was a landmark. It was titled "What interest does the women's movement have in solving the homosexual question?" In it she stressed the imperative of unity between the women's and homosexual emancipation movements. But the talk was essentially calling for unity against transgender oppression, as well, since Rueling--like many rights activists of that era--considered homosexuals to be a kind of intermediate sex. She called for equal opportunities in education and the job market for women, men and homosexuals. Unity was key to Rueling's arguments. "If people would just observe, they would soon come to the conclusion that homosexuality and the Women's Movement do not stand opposed to each other, but rather they aid each other reciprocally to gain rights and recognition, and to eliminate the injustice which condemns them on this earth." She stressed that homosexual women "have suffered because of their masculine inclinations and natural characteristics, and because of the many, many injustices and hardships caused by laws, society, and the old morality which concerns women." Rueling told those gathered, "[F]rom the very beginning of the Women's Movement to the present day, it has been more often than not homo genic women who took over the leadership in numerous battles." Rueling blasted the mainstream leadership of the movement. "If we weigh all the contributions which homosexual women have made to the Women's Movement, one would be astounded that its large and influential organizations have not lifted a finger to obtain justice in the state and in society for the not so small number of its Uranian members, and that they have done absolutely nothing to this very day to protect so many of its most well-known and most worthy female predecessors in this battle from ridicule and scorn when they explain to the greater public about the true essence of Uranism. ... "The so-called 'moderate' tendency will not help homosexuals one bit for the simple reason that deeds of this kind have no tendency at all. Victory will come as a sign of radicalism, and we expect that the radicals will change the direction. ... Workers World June 17, 2004: Pride & struggle a century ago http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/pride0617.php[2/3/2011 3:46:51 PM] "The Women's Movement and the movement for homosexual rights have thus far traveled on a dark road which has posted many obstacles in their way. Now it will become brighter and brigh ter around us and in the hearts of the people. This is not to say that the work of securing the rights of women and of Uranians has come to an end; we are still in the middle of two opposing sides, and many a bloody battle will have to be fought." Rueling concluded with optimistic historical vision, "And when, at times, as they will, hard times come to either side--that will not be the time for hesitation to stand up in defense against injustice and to march on to victory which will surely be ours. Revelation and truth are like the rising sun in the East--no power can force it out of its orbit. Slowly but surely it rises to its glittering zenith! "Perhaps not today or tomorrow, but in the not too distant future the Women's Movement and Uranians will raise their banners in victory! Per aspera ad astra! [Reach for the stars!]" 'An injustice doubled' In his 1905 book "Berlin's Third Sex," Hirsch feld estimated that there were more than 1 million homosexuals--male and female--in Germany; some 56,000 in Berlin alone. The coffee houses, restaurants and beer halls for the "third sex," however, were mostly frequented by males. Hirschfeld did refer to a "dating agency" in 1905 for lesbians. And he also described Ber lin "masquerade" parties in which "many of the lesbians wear male costumes." But the looming peril in 1910 of the extension of Paragraph 175 galvanized a broad range of organizations and individuals--including leaders of the Homosexual Eman cipation Move ment, and socialist and women's rights organizations--that worked to stop the expansion of the penal code. Leading activists of the fightback argued that the extension of Paragraph 175 meant, "An inequality would not thereby be eliminated, but rather an injustice doubled." In 1911 The League for the Protection of Mater nity and Sexual Reform, a politically conservative organization within the women's movement, adopted a resolution which may be the first statement by any women's rights group on homosexuality. It denounced the proposal to criminalize lesbianism as "a grave error." [The Homo sexual Emancipation Movement in Germany, James D. Steakley] On Feb. 10, 1911, the League held a meeting, at which Hirschfeld also spoke, to discuss how to link the struggles. The socialist newspaper "Forward" reported that the turnout was so large that a second meeting had to be scheduled. Next: The 'war to end all wars' derailed the struggle