[URBAN NOTE] "How a homophobic 20th-century book conjured up the ghosts of Paris’ queer past"

[rfmcdonald]

At Daily Xtra, Michael Lyons describes how his discovery of a vintage book from the 1920s at Trinity College's used book sale opened him up to new discoveries about LGBT history, despite its homophobia.

Probing the depths of Trinity College’s rare books sale can yield some queer finds —in every meaning of the word. When I browsed through hundreds of dusty tomes last month, I ended up selecting a modern English translation of a turn-of-the-century French book, Le Troisième Sexe. It’s an odd book, in turns amusing and awful, conjuring up the ghosts of homosexuality past haunting the streets of Montmartre, Paris.

Le Troisième Sexe, published in 1927, is something between a personal essay, literary criticism, a treatise on “homosexuality’s scabrous banners” and a voyeuristic travelers guide for heterosexuals fascinated by the underworld of “pederasts,” “inverts,” “uranists,” “men-women” and “ephebes” of early 20th-century Paris and beyond (the author uses the terms almost interchangeably, so he’s generally not calling all homosexuals pedophiles).

The book is published under the name Willy, the nom-de-plume of Henry Gauthier-Villars, a cultural critic and author, who co-signed his name on “collaborations” with at least 50 known writers. Like previous collaborations, the translator notes that Le Troisième Sexe was written by an unknown author, with Willy interspersing the text with his own (terrible) witticisms.

The tract starts with an overview of homosexual bastions in the world, like Italy and America. Willy also refers to the particularly militant organizing homosexuals of Germany — he seems astounded that queer people could like hiking — and the foundational works of Dr Magnus Hirschfeld and his Institute of Sexual Research in Berlin.

[. . .]

This sort of dualism of informational writing with a sneering, titillated, judgmental reflex is the essence of Le Troisième Sexe. Looking through the eyes of the author, one would think all Parisian homosexuals were excessively rouged, simpering, mincing effetes who writhed for heterosexual spectators, plying sugar daddies with cocaine and caresses.