Homosexuality and Liberation: Elements of a Gay Critique

252 Pages·1980·5.991 MB·English

by  Mario Mieli, D. Fernbach

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Gay Men's Press is
an independent
publishing project
intending to
produce books
relevant to the
male gay
movement and to
promote the ideas
of gay liberation.
Mario Mieli, an Italian, came to London in 1971 as a student and
joined the Gay Liberation Front. The following year he returned
to Italy, where he helped to found the radicaJ gay
FUORJ!,
movement and magazine, in which he has remained active for
many years.
mario mieli
homosexuality
and liberation
elements of a gay critique
translated by david fernbach
GAY
MEN'S
PHESS
LONDON
First published in Great Britain 1980 by Gay Men's Press
Copyright© 1977 Giulio Einaudi editori s.p.a., Turin, Italy
Translation, Introduction and English edition Copyright 1980
©
Gay Men's Press, 27 Priory Avenue, London N8 7RN.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Mieli, Mario
Homosexuality and Liberation.
1 .Homosexuality
I. Title
300 HQ76.8.US
ISBN 907040 01 2
O
Typeset by Range Left Photosetters, London
Cover printed by Spider Web Offset, London
Printed and bound in Great Britain by A. Wheaton and Company
Limited, Exeter

Introduction by David Fernbach
7
Preface
18
Chapter One: Homosexual Desire is Universal
21
The Gay Movement Against Oppression
1. 21
Polymorphous 'Perversity', Bisexuality and
2.
Trans-Sexuality
23
The Assertion ofH eterosexuality and the Misconception
3.
of the Woman Within
31
Neurosis as the Negative of 'Perversion'
4. 38
Oedipus or The Other
5. 42
Chapter Two: The Ideology of Oppression
53
The Staging of' Love'
1. 53
The Dogma of Procreation
2. 58
The Psychonazis
3. 60
So-Called 'Therapy'
4. 72
Chapter Three: Fire and Brimstone, or How Homosexuals
Became Gay 76
The Homosexual Taboo and its Origins
1. 76
The Persecution of Homosexuals Over the Centuries
2. 83
Contemporary Legislation and the Homosexual Rights
3.
Movement
89
The Church: From Obscurantist to 'Progressive'
4. 102
Repressive Desublimation and Reformism
5. 106
The Gay Revolutionary Project
6. 114
Chapter Four: Heterosexual Men, or rather Closet Queens 122
1. Sport 122
2. Male Bonding and Friendship 125
3. Hetero-Queens. The Cult of the Gay Superstar 128
4. Jealousy, Masochism and Sadism 130
5. Sublimation, Social Cohesion and Religion 134
6. Anal Eroticism and Obscene Language. Money and
Shit 137
Chapter Five: Crime and Punishment 146
1. Homosexuality in the Guise of Heterosexuality 146
2. Hustlers 150
3. The Repressed Roots ofA nti-Gay Violence 153
Victimisation and Masochism 159
4.
Chapter Six: A Healthy Mind in a Perverse Body 166
1. 'Non-Desire and Negation 166
2. Homosexuality and Paranoia 70
l
3. The 'Schizophrenic' Trip and Trans-Sexuality 176
4. Women and Queens 185
Chapter Seven: Towards a Gay Communism 193
1. Transvestism. Homosexuality and 'Homosexualisation' 193
2. Anxiety and Repression. Gay 'Filthiness' 199
3. Fear of Castration and the Parable of War 201
The Sublimation of Eros in Labour 207
4.
5. The 'Protectors' of the Left 212
6. Straights Faced with Transve�tites. Some Points on the
Family 218
The Ghetto. Coming Out at Work 224
7.
8. Subjection and the Revolutionary Subject 228
Notes 231
introduction
The English publication of Mario Mieli's Homosexuality and
Liberation truly shows the international character of the gay
movement. For Mario himself lived in London for two years,
during the heyday of the Gay Liberation Front (1970-72), in
which he was one of the more notable activists. And this personal
involvement of Mario and other Italians in the British gay
movement, in its early, radical stage, contributed to the founding
of Fuori! (=come out), the revob1tionary collective and magazine
started in Milan in 1972. The Italian gay movement has certainly
shared a lot of its history with the movement in Britain and
elsewhere, but it has also had its own particular experiences, and
developed original and important ideas. So with the translation
of Mario's book into English, the international exchange can
perhaps flow back again, and just as the Italians were helped
from Britain, we can now learn valuable things from them.
There are several significant differences between the political
and cultural context in which the Italian gay movement developed,
and that in the English-speaking countries. Two of these are the
hold of the Catholic church, that great apparatus of sexual
repression, which immediately makes sexual politics a sharper
issue; and the general crisis of Italian politics and society, with
the presence of a large revolutionary movement. This made it
rather easier for the gay liberation movement in Italy to maintain
its original radical stance for a longer time and resist being
dissolved into an apolitical 'gay community' and a meek civil
rights movement. Thus, while the attempt at a specifically gay
critique of existing society more or less came to an end in Britain
7