by Mario Mieli
I have mentioned how the majority of psychiatric studies on (male) homosexuality always tend to separate into rigid compartments the categories of ‘masculine’ homosexuals (Ferenczi’s ‘object homoeroticism’) and ‘feminine’ ones (‘subject homoeroticism’), according to the traditional counterposed models of heterosexual role ascription and the strict differentiation between the sexes. Those psychiatrists and psychoanalysts who venture into the study of homosexuality find themselves unable to refrain from applying to it categories of interpretation that are completely heterosexual. And the anti-psychiatrists? They’re better at making sense of Lacan than they are at understanding homosexuality. (‘Would you like some Lacan? It’s better than a banana …’)47
So it is that, filtered through a psychoanalytic lens, we homosexuals find only a very distorted picture of ourselves; almost invariably, the views of psychoanalysts fully match the stereotyped and fallacious ideas that ignorant heterosexuals have of us. (And as far as homosexuality is concerned, all heterosexuals are more or less ignorant.) Far from starting with the appearance of our ‘external’ life of marginalisation from society, in order to attain through critical analysis the reality of our condition as homosexuals, psychoanalysis, weighed down with prejudices, applies categories of interpretation taken over from the typical heterosexual view of homosexuality. In other words, it proceeds simply from appearance to appearance, fomenting illusions, erecting obstacles to criticism, and reinforcing the prevailing ideology.
Positions that are essentially equivalent to Ferenzci’s are found very often in the history of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. It is all too common for doctors to classify the great majority – if not all – ‘cases’ of manifest homosexuality as neurotic and psychopathological. In their view, homoeroticism is neurotic as an ‘infantile fixation of the libido, in particular a fixation at the sadistic-anal stage’; ‘by its failure to dissolve the Oedipus complex and its persistent narcissism’; ‘by its repression of heterosexuality’; or finally, ‘because of defective sexual development in earliest childhood, arising from some profound deception in connection with the opposite sex’.48 These are the themes most commonly encountered.
Then there are those who see the cause of homosexuality as lying in the ‘panic fear’ experienced towards the mystery of the other sex. ‘We consider homosexuality to be a pathological biosocial, psychosexual adaptation, consequent to pervasive fears surrounding the expression of heterosexual impulses.’49
Hypotheses of this kind immediately reveal themselves to be uncritical and illusory by the way that they try and understand us on the basis of the prejudice according to which heterosexuality can be taken as ‘normal’ in some absolute sense. And yet, if we follow the psychoanalytic theories pertaining to the ‘pathogenesis’ of homosexuality, we cannot avoid considering heterosexuality too, by analogy, as a neurosis – a neurosis for the repression of homosexuality, for example, or a neurosis for the panicked fear of sexual relations with a person of the same sex. Paraphrasing Bieber, we could say: We consider heterosexuality to be a pathological, biological, psychosexual adaptation, resulting from pervasive fears surrounding the expression of homosexual impulses.
It is no fun to play hide-and-seek with psychoanalysts – or better, psychonazis – nor is it useful to confront them on their home turf. These doctors are awash with stupidities for which the anti-homosexual taboo in their (un)conscious is responsible, and it is certainly not necessary to take their affirmations seriously. And yet too many people, even today, believe they are right, and find in their prejudices support for their own, so that it is impossible for us to completely avoid dealing with them. We should bear in mind here what Domenico Tallone wrote on the psychiatric equation that homosexuality = sickness: ‘I would prefer not to have to embark on arguments on a theme which is so completely imbecilic, were it not that this imbecility is still far too successful at replacing good sense with vacuous results backed by academic titles.’50
It is clear that, unless we simply take over the current prejudice that considers heterosexuality as ipso facto ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ but homosexuality as ‘abnormal’ and ‘unnatural’, then to say that the majority of ‘cases’ of manifest homosexuality are psychopathological, and that homoeroticism is a neurosis, forces the admission that heterosexuality too is psychopathic and a disease. And so we may well ask what point there is, and especially in whose interest it is, to diagnose homosexuals as ‘neurotic’, and we can see how absurd it is to claim to ‘cure’ homosexuality as a ‘sickness’ on the basis of the heterosexual standpoint of the psychonazis, which takes itself to be healthy, but is in reality neurotic.
But why is homoeroticism deemed ‘abnormal’ and ‘unnatural’? If the animal being of man is considered the essential aspect of his ‘nature’, we see immediately that homosexuality is common among the animals, and in certain species actually more widespread than heterosexuality, and female homosexuality just as much as male.51 Homosexuality is extremely common among primates, and very many sub-primate mammals are also homosexual, to mention only lions, dolphins, dogs (who hasn’t seen two male dogs fucking, or two females, for that matter?), cats, horses, sheep, cows, pigs, rabbits, guinea-pigs, rats, etc. There are also birds that are predominantly gay (ducks, for instance).
And yet this kind of evidence does little to open the eyes of the stubborn. Blinkered heterosexuals use the concept of ‘nature’, like that of ‘against nature’, according to their own convenience. We can quote what Eurialo De Michelis has to say, for example, in his essay titled ‘Homosexuality Seen by a Moralist’: ‘What force is there in the irresistible argument that “unnatural” love is also found in the animal world? It may be something innocent in beasts, but not so in man, given that human life is particularly made up of that which distinguishes man from the animal world.’52
Let’s leave the animals alone, then, having seen that they too can love ‘against nature’, and that human life involves something else (so says De Michelis). Out of some seventy-six differing forms of human society studied by the anthropologists Clellan Ford and Frank Beach, homosexuality was disapproved of and more or less suppressed in only twenty-seven (just over a third). The anti-homosexual taboo that characterises our Western civilisation is thus not a structural element of ‘human nature’, but rather has a definite, albeit mysterious, historical origin: Sodom and Gomorrah weren’t destroyed for nothing.53
Finally, we have already seen how psychoanalysis itself, in the words of Freud, declared the universal presence of the homoerotic desire in human beings. I would deduce from all this that heterosexuality, in so far as it bases its own alleged primacy on the completely false assertion that homosexuality is ‘unnatural’, ‘abnormal’ or ‘pathological’, ultimately demonstrates that it is itself pathological. More precisely: if love for a human being of the ‘opposite’ sex is not in fact in an absolute sense pathological, then heterosexuality as it presents itself today, i.e. as the Norm, is pathological, since it derives its primacy from ruling like a despot over the oppression of Eros’ other tendencies. This heterosexual tyranny is one of the factors determining the modem neurosis, and – dialectically – it is also one of the most serious symptoms of this neurosis.
In their delirium, many psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, those cops for heterosexual capitalist authority, distinguish various types of homosexuality from the medical and psychological standpoint: according to them, we should speak not of homosexuality but rather of homosexualities. In the same vein, then, we might speak of heterosexualities instead of simply of heterosexuality.
There are doctors who differentiate the various types of homosexuality according to the age of the love ‘object’: paedophilia or pederasty, if this is a child or adolescent, gerontophilia if the person is old. But what if the sexual ‘object’ is somewhere in between?
At least as far as paedophilia is concerned, the Greek etymology makes no distinction of sex: παῖς, παιδος (pais, paidos) can refer equally to a you
ng boy or girl. Should we then distinguish paedophile heterosexuality from other forms of heterosexuality? In fact, when so-called ‘normal’ people disparage the ‘perversion’ of paedophilia in relations between people of different sex, they certainly don’t refer to it as heterosexuality – since this is their synonym for ‘normality’ – nor even as paedophilia (given that their ignorance leads them to consider this term as simply synonymous with male homosexuality). They prefer to speak just of ‘perversion’ period, or, still worse, of ‘bestial crime’. For ‘normal’ people, the man who has sex with a little girl is not a heterosexual but a monster. And yet Lolita sells very well. You can find it in the bookshelves, fantasies, and secrets of the best families.
There are even those doctors who make a show of distinguishing homosexualities according to the supposed modality of sexual ‘technique’ (sodomy, buggery, etc.). But once again, what is the sense of this distinction if one individual can exhibit several ‘homosexualities’? Does he go in for anal sex, sucking cock, kissing, cuddling and masturbation in turns, or even at one and the same time, is he active or passive with his partners, or active and passive with two partners simultaneously? But from the point of view of ‘technique’, one and the same person can equally exhibit several heterosexualities: anal sex, for example (even if Last Tango was banned in Italy), as well as the most traditional genital/frontal heterosexuality.
Finally, what would these confusion-mongering doctors54 say of those who enjoy at one and the same time various forms of both heterosexuality and homosexuality? What of a person, for example, who having his sister’s fist up his ass, himself fucks the sister’s boyfriend while masturbating the boyfriend’s little sister and sucking off his father-in-law. (And whose father-in-law?)
With all their distinctions, as useless as they are highfalutin, our doctors only model themselves after the uncle (to keep it in the family) in the poem by Catullus:
Gellius, hearing his uncle anathematise the mere mention
as well as the performance of love and love’s ways
determined to take full advantage of the situation
by promptly assaulting his aunt. Uncle
was discreetly unable even to refer to the event.
Gellius could do as he wished.
If he buggered the old man himself
Uncle would not utter a word.55
Still more ridiculous is the distinction made by certain psychonazis according to the characteristics of the homosexual connection: ‘relations at a purely instinctual level, or of a more complex erotic love’ (Tullio Bazzi). And yet it is precisely this kind of differentiation that today enables the Church to deem homosexual relations as more or less sinful according to their character. (More or less, since they are still sins as far as Catholic morality is concerned.)
Finally, doctors often distinguish forms of ‘true’ homosexuality from other forms of ‘spurious’ or ‘pseudo’ homosexuality (Bergler, Schneider, Servadio, among other champions of this view).
1) ‘True homosexuality’ is found only when ‘a man with feminine impulses is attracted to a man with masculine impulses and a masculine body’.56 Only in this case, according to the doctors, is there a ‘psychosexual inversion of the subject’.
2) It is not however a case of ‘true sexual inversion’ when a man with ‘masculine impulses’ is attracted to a man with a ‘feminoid’ body but ‘masculine impulses’. In this case, they would say, the ‘object’ is unable to love the ‘subject’. But why not? Might not the homosexual component that has previously been latent in him now surface, despite his ‘masculine impulses’ (which the doctors evidently equate with heterosexual desire)? We queens know perfectly well that there is no such thing as an incorrigible heterosexual. You need only catch him at the right moment (and it changes nothing if his body is ‘feminoid’ or ‘masculine’). ‘A homosexually experienced male could undoubtedly find a larger number of sexual partners among males than a heterosexually experienced male could find among females.’57 There is nothing more gay than fucking with a guy who was previously convinced that he didn’t feel any sexual attraction for other men, and who then, thanks to your artistry in seduction, suddenly starts to burn with desire in your arms. The medical differentiation between ‘true’ and ‘pseudo’ homosexuality is a castle in the air. Homosexuality is always true, and it truly exists even when it is not apparent, i.e. when it is still latent.
3) But the doctors evidently haven’t read Hegel, even if they do their damnedest to pass their wicked ‘philosophy’ off as science. According to some of these doctors, it is impossible to speak of ‘true’ homosexuality in the case where ‘a man with masculine impulses’, is attracted to a man with a feminoid body and feminine impulses’,58 even if in this situation – they have to admit it – good for them! – ‘it is possible for a reciprocal tie to be formed’.
According to the psychonazis, in fact, as long as a man’s ‘impulses’ remain masculine, it is impossible to speak of genuine psychosexual inversion of the ‘subject’ or ‘true homosexuality’. And here we see how the doctors, bound as they are to the notion of the ‘psychosexual inversion of the subject’ as a sine qua non for ‘true homosexuality’, and to the illusory dichotomy of ‘subject’ and ‘object’ (even if any subject is always also an object and vice versa), take no account of this third ‘case’. They consider it as an expression of ‘spurious’ homosexuality, though as far as the ‘impulses’ are concerned, it is in fact symmetrical to the first ‘case’, which in their view is the sole form of ‘true homosexuality’. In this way, by negating the aspect of reciprocity in the concept of ‘true’ homosexuality, they negate the possibility of a genuine homosexual relationship, and reduce ‘true’ homosexuality simply to an attribute of a certain type of ‘subject’.
To sum up: for many psychonazis, homosexuality is true only when accompanied by what they define as a ‘psychosexual inversion of the subject’, since in this case ‘the subject possesses a feminine psychosexuality and it is understandable that he should feel attracted to men’.59 Only the perfect ‘uranian’ – ‘the mind of a woman in the body of a man’ (Ulrichs) – would therefore be truly queer. All others are simply pseudo-queer. Why on earth, then, do people generally lump together all men who want to make love with other men? Perhaps ordinary common sense knows better than the doctors?
It is not hard to see that these doctors, for all their sophisms and fine definitions, flatly reiterate the commonplaces that apply ‘interpretative’ labels of a heterosexual stamp to homosexuality. According to them, you have to possess feminine psychosexual ‘impulses’ in order to desire a man. If you don’t, then your homosexuality is simply ‘pseudo-homosexuality’. It is clear, however, that the type of homosexual situation they define as ‘true’ homosexuality is that which most closely resembles heterosexuality. They are completely unable to see male homosexuality, for instance, as a relation between men, and reduce it essentially to a certain type of ‘invert’ with ‘feminine’ desires directed towards the male: the anti-gay taboo prevents them from understanding that homoeroticism is not just a parody of heterosexuality, but rather something quite different, and this leads them to spew out clouds of bullshit.
We, on the other hand (and even without having read Hegel), consider as truly homosexual any kind of desire, act or relation between people of the same sex. Obvious enough? Of course it is, but when it comes to homosexuality, ignorant heterosexuals know decidedly less than La Palisse.60
Included in this definition of what is truly homosexual, then, is the occasional erotic contact that a woman who in general only has relations with men might have with another woman (no matter whether she sees it like this or not); and similarly homosexual is the occasional contact that a man who generally has relations only with women might occasionally have with another man (whether or not he admits it).
According to Kinsey et al, instead of using the terms ‘heterosexual’ or ‘homosexual’ as ‘substantives which stand for persons, or
even as adjectives to describe persons, they may be better used to describe the nature of the overt sexual relations, or of the stimuli to which an individual erotically responds’.61 They are basically quite correct here, even if their proposal is, in its details, rather abstract and ignores the present situation; for, given the very real historical opposition between individuals who recognise their homoerotic desires and those who desperately deny these, it is impossible today to avoid distinguishing between manifest homosexuals and heterosexuals (including definitively repressed queers). In other words, it would be a dangerous and illusory terminological concealment of the real contradiction that exists between heterosexuality and homosexuality; in this night, not all cows are gay.62
To return then to the views of straight psychologists. Many claim that at certain times, due to the effect of certain environmental factors, homosexual behaviour develops as a purely instinctual and palliative satisfaction. This is sometimes referred to as ‘emergency’ homosexuality, and is particularly to be found amongst members of an all-male ‘community’ who are deprived of contact with women, and vice versa. (Prisons, concentration camps, colleges, convents, ships, barracks, etc.) In actual fact, it is quite false even in these cases to speak of ‘pseudo’ or ‘emergency’ homosexuality. We have rather to recognise, here too, manifest expressions of a homoerotic desire, which while previously latent, now comes to the surface, given the particular environmental conditions, in a more or less alienated fashion (particularly due to the restrictive and inhuman conditions here).
