| Sumario: | From the very beginning of gay politics, German thinkers created a homosexual subject who had no race. This has not previously been noted in the large scholarship on the emergence of homosexual identity. Something similar happened with the identity category ‘transvestite’, the emergence of which marked a foundational moment in trans history. The freedom to have a gay politics that ignores racism – a freedom enjoyed only by white gays, who are not suffering at the hands of racists – has a long history. This article tells its first chapter, a chapter that took place almost one hundred years ago in Berlin. The creation of a deracialised homosexual subject in the early twentieth century cast a very long shadow over gay politics. That shadow is at the centre of conflicts among activists for homosexual liberation to this day, including a 2010 public debate involving the American philosopher Judith Butler.
|
|---|