The Politics of Masculinity in the (Homo-)Sexual Discourse (1880 to 1920)

Masculinity became an important topic of discussion around 1900,not only as reaction to the growing women's movement, but alsoa result of new developments in the medical and sexual sciences.In the late nineteenth century medical doctors began to takea sustained interest in same-sex sexual relations between men,giving rise to the concept of the homosexual man as feminizedand dangerous to the social order. While the medical conceptof the ‘third sex’ could also be –and was– used for emancipatory purposes by early advocates ofhomosexual rights, a group of masculinists rejected these discriminatorycharacterizations by insisting on their masculinity and arguingthat state and society were in fact based on male bonding. Thesemasculinist strategies, which sought to integrate male–malesexuality into hegemonic masculinity, represented resistanceagainst discrimination, but they also served to shore up andmodernize hegemonic structures that discriminated against womenand Jews.