175s

[David Morris]

Very nice post, Otto. Unfortunately the "real" history doesn't support the 
premise that their release let them back "out" into the world of "normal" 
repressed sexuality.  They weren't even let out.

One survivor's testimony on this link told us that the 175's were required 
to sleep with their hands outside their covers upon punishement of beating 
(no wanking!).  Their incarceration was no Homo-Eden.  They were even 
strictly segregated from casual interaction with the "normal" prisoners.  
And their abuse by another of the "lowest" class of prisoners, hoodlums, 
made them at the very bottom of the preterite class.  This does make them 
prime Pynchon subjects!

David Morris

>From: "Otto" <o.sell at telda.net>
>Beginning with the last I would say it's the usual reversal of the sides of 
>a binary opposition. The release becomes a punishment because in the camp 
>they did not have to hide their sexual orientation. The fact that they were 
>there, their "Rosa Winkel" made that clear that they are. Released into 
>"normal" society (which isn't normal as Katz shows) they fell again under 
>the §175 StGB (Strafgesetzbuch). Let me refer to Dave Morris' post from 
>today to this.
>
>The het/homo binary
>
>"Kinsey also explicitly contested the idea of an absolute either/or 
>antithesis between hetero and homo persons. Stressing the variations 
>between exclusive heterosexual and exclusive homosexual behavior and 
>feeling, he denied that human beings "represent two discrete populations, 
>heterosexual and homosexual." The world's population, he ordered, "is not 
>to be divided into sheep and goats." [...] The hetero/homo division of 
>persons is not nature's doing, Kinsey stresses, but society's. As 
>sex-liberal reformer, he challenged the social and historical division of 
>people into heterosexuals and homosexuals because he saw this 
>person-labeling used to denigrate homosexuals. Motivated by a reformist 
>impulse, he rejected the social reality and profound subjective force of a 
>historically constructed tradition which, since the early twentieth century 
>in the U.S., had cut the sexual population in two--and helped to establish 
>the social and personal reality of a heterosexual and homosexual identity 
>(...) a norm that worked to affirm the superiority of men over women and 
>heterosexuals over homosexuals."
>
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