Mark Gevisser: “Pink lines are being drawn across the world”

How did you come across the work of German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935), and what got you interested in writing a biography of this enigmatic figure?
Anybody interested in queer history knows a bit about Hirschfeld because he was the father of the modern gay movement. There is a really wonderful German feature film called Der Einstein des Sex (meaning The Einstein of Sex in English), which is loosely based on Hirschfeld’s life. It was made by a pioneering director called Rosa von Praunheim. Hirschfeld was as an expert on sex and sexuality. But to be honest, he looked more like an intellectual than a sex guru. His work had made him a global celebrity. In the early 20th century, when people were just beginning to talk openly about sex and sexuality, this man went on a lecture tour of the United States to speak about these subjects. I wrote a little about him in my book The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers (2020) but that barely scratched the surface. I wanted to spend more time researching and writing about him.
What, according to you, are some of his most important contributions?
Hirschfeld fought for gay rights by introducing into the public domain the idea that homosexuality was a natural variance in the species rather than an illness, crime or sin. He was a scientist but he tried to prove this in ways that we might find dodgy today. He was a biological determinist. His work is important because he dedicated his life to campaigning for the decriminalization of sodomy, and wrote a very important book called Die Homosexualitat des Mannes und des Weibes (The Homosexuality of Men and Women). It was published in 1914, and was the first global survey of how homosexuality was practised in different parts of the world. He wanted to show that it was present in all cultures. He coined the term “transvestites” (now considered offensive) before the words “transsexual” and transgender” came into use. He oversaw the first rudimentary “sex-change surgeries” and lobbied for transvestites to be issued official identity cards permitting them to present as they wished.
You seem to have followed in Hirschfeld’s footsteps. The Pink Line examines the state of LGBTQ rights in India, Malawi, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Russia, Uganda, Mexico, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and the United States. How did you pick these countries?
Yes, I do see echoes and resonances but I am not a sexologist like Hirschfeld was. I am a journalist and a non-fiction writer. The Pink Line does not set out to be an encyclopaedia or atlas of queer life globally. I wanted to go to places where politics around LGBTQ identity were activated in such a way that pink lines were being drawn around issues of sexuality and gender identity. For the chapters in my book, I chose countries where readers could see how the world was changing. But to find those countries, I had to cast a wider net. I was very fortunate to get an Open Society fellowship, and was able to travel to more than 20 countries between 2012 and 2019. I met people, groups, collectives and listened to their stories. I found that in the second decade of the 21st century, same-sex marriage and gender transition are being celebrated in some societies, while others are strengthening laws that criminalize homosexuality and gender nonconformity. Pink lines are being drawn across the world.
Hirschfeld didn’t necessarily travel because he wanted to. He was a Jew who was known to be homosexual, so the Nazis hated him. In 1931, when he was due to return from his lecture tour in the US, his colleagues in Berlin suggested that he stay away. He then managed to organise a lecture and study tour all over Asia. Since he was a celebrity, he was able to fund the tour with his lectures. He went to China, Japan, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), India, Egypt, and the Palestine Mandate (now known as Palestine and Israel). On these travels, he studied sexuality and also the role of women in society. He was a feminist.
How did India end up on your list of countries to visit and write about?
I knew from the beginning that India was going to be one of the countries. I have long been interested in the queer movement here, and have followed the struggle to decriminalize sodomy. Saleem Kidwai and Ruth Vanita’s book Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History (2000) played an important role in my understanding,
My first visit to India was in the early 2000s. I came on a holiday with the man who was my boyfriend then, and became my husband later. Through mutual friends, we were introduced to Indian activists. We also went to some meetings of the organisation, Gay Bombay.
I am interested particularly in the way that India has forged a direction integrating indigenous notions of sexuality and gender with a more globalized human rights conception. I find India quite unique in that respect. You see the way that integration works at the Supreme Court. Whether it is the decriminalization of homosexuality or same-sex marriage, petitioners have recourse to the Vedic texts, to Nehru and Ambedkar, and to international human rights law when speaking about gender fluidity or the equality of everybody. That’s why I came here.
Within India, why did Tamil Nadu particularly engage your interest?
In 2012, on my first research trip to India for this book, I visited Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai. There is a strong movement for transgender rights in Tamil Nadu, which is supported by progressive laws in the state. I wanted to learn more and write about that, partly because it has not been studied as much as it should have been. My work as a writer is not possible without the generosity of local hosts who make introductions. In Chennai, an organisation called Orinam played that role. I don’t speak Tamil, so I needed an interpreter. I was told that I was meeting only urban people, and that I ought to meet rural people as well. The writer in me was blown away by the struggle of the kothis that I met in a village outside Cuddalore. They have set up a temple to their goddess Angalamman, who is an iteration of Kali. Men wear saris when they worship her. When I met those kothis, I knew that I wanted to tell the story about pink lines in India through their story and perspective.
I think that there might be another reason for choosing Tamil Nadu. Many South Africans of Indian descent have ancestors who came from Tamil Nadu as indentured labour. My partner is of Indian descent. We have been together for 35 years. His family came to South Africa from India. They are my family too. That makes me feel connected to India in a special way.
You write about how ‘kothi’ as an identity category developed “partly on the wings of the fight against AIDS… among poor and rural people… in a way that rivalled the boom of a middle-class gay scene in the cities.” One of them told you, “Gays wear nice clothes and have parties and sex. A kothi is someone who lives in the village and does women’s work.” What does this reveal about the fault lines in the LGBTQ movement in India?
This was said a decade ago, so things might have changed but perhaps not so much. Gay identity in India and other parts of the world is not just a sexual identity. It is a class identity. It is a globalized identity built around notions of sexual freedom and entitlement to rights. But the other side of having a gay identity is about the way you dress, and an embrace of commodity culture. It is about wearing fashionable clothes, consuming brands that are gay-friendly, and listening to certain kinds of music that are played in gay clubs all over the world. To be part of this world, you have to be online and you need to have enough proficiency in English to be able to make sense of this world. Many of the kothis that I met in rural Tamil Nadu did not fit in with the people from middle-class environments in Chennai, Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore who identified themselves as gay. They didn’t feel like they belonged because the urban people saw them as country bumpkins and excluded them.
Coming back to Hirschfeld, what was his time in India and China like?
When Hirschfeld was in China, he took on a Chinese lover. This young man, whose name was Tao Li, was in his early twenties. He became Hirschfeld’s guide, protégé and heir. Their relationship was very interesting. Hirschfeld was older than Tao Li’s father by this time. I guess one could see Hirschfeld as a “rice queen”, the term that is often used for a white man who takes on an Asian lover. But Tao Li came from a very wealthy family. In fact, he even helped fund Hirschfeld. Tao Li also opened Hirschfeld’s eyes to colonialism and racism.
In India, Hirschfeld was hosted by the Bengali elite – Rabindranath Tagore, Girindrasekhar Bose and Jagadish Chandra Bose. Through them, he met nationalists like Jawaharlal Nehru. I came to Kolkata to look through the archives, so I got invited to speak at the Kolkata Literary Meet. In fact, Hirschfeld’s book Weltreise eines Sexualforschers (meaning World Travels of a Sexologist) tells us a lot about his time in India. He spoke in support of the Indian freedom movement. Apart from Kolkata, he went to Madras, Patna, Banaras, Delhi, Agra, Jaipur and Bombay. I am interested in the time that he spent in Patna. His host was a political leader called Abdul Aziz. He was a bachelor in his fifties, and had a beautiful mansion. Hirschfeld writes about Patna being the highlight of his trip. I am trying to find out more about Abdul Aziz and his friend Syed Mahmud, who was the secretary of the Indian National Congress.
After his travels in Asia, Hirschfeld could not go back to Berlin because the Nazis were in power. He went to France and lived there until his death in 1935. He had two lovers. There was Tao Li, who was Chinese. And there was a German lover named Karl Giese, who was Hirschfeld’s deputy at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science) that Hirschfeld himself had set up. The three of them had a very modern relationship.
Tell us about Hirschfeld’s meeting with Nehru.
They met twice. Before they met in India, they had met in Berlin. I do not know anything about that meeting yet. My hypothesis is that Nehru visited the Institute for Sexual Science on a trip to Germany. It was a place visited by progressives from everywhere because it was involved with important issues like birth control, love marriage, sexual counselling, and legalization of prostitution. Nehru invited Hirschfeld to stay at his home in Allahabad. When they met again in India, Nehru went to the railway station to receive Hirschfeld. He had to go away for some work soon after, so Hirschfeld was hosted by Nehru’s wife Kamala and his sister Krishna. Hirschfeld stayed in the same room that Gandhi was in the habit of occupying when he visited Nehru. Hirschfeld also met Nehru’s charming daughter Indira.
Did Hirschfeld see his Jewish identity and his gay identity as being in some kind of conflict with each other, or would you say that he was comfortable with both identities?
He never wrote about these. He came from a Jewish family but didn’t carry any sense of a Jewish identity. He saw himself as German. The Nazis, however, branded him as Jewish. Though he did not write about being gay, we know that he had two male lovers. One of the big explorations of the book that I am writing is around why he chose to be closeted.
You use the word “chose” in relation to being closeted. Why is being in the closet usually seen only through the lens of persecution and not as a political strategy?
That’s a very good point, and I think this is exactly what happened in Hirschfeld’s case. In his era, he needed to be respected as a pre-eminent scientist. If he was open about his homosexuality, he would have been accused of having an agenda in his work as a researcher.
Is Hirschfeld’s work included in contemporary Holocaust education initiatives?
Yes, very much so, in Germany! When the Nazis came to power in 1933, one of their first acts of public destruction was to trash the Institute of Sexual Science that Hirschfeld had established. They took all the books out of the library at the institute and burnt them. Hitler, in fact, had branded him “the most dangerous Jew in Germany.” There was a key moment when the Nazis became viciously homophobic. This was after the assassination of Ernst Röhm, who was a homosexual man and a very prominent member of the Nazi Party. The Nazis began to round up homosexuals and send them to concentration camps. Gay men were marked using badges with pink triangles. Hirschfeld escaped as he was living in exile.
Now, in Germany, there is a Magnus Hirschfeld National Foundation to provide reparations to families of homosexuals who were victims of the Holocaust, to support research about Hirschfeld’s life and work, to educate people about the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, and to advocate for the rights of LGBTQ individuals. Hirschfeld’s legacy is important to preserve. He is a symbol of liberation. His writings show us what a free and open place Berlin was in the early 20th century for queer people living there before the Nazis came in and took over.
Being gay and Jewish yourself, do you see Hirschfeld as an ancestor?
As a writer, I am always looking for a sweet spot in the people I write on. By this, I mean a point of identification that enables empathy but also a point of difference that provokes intrigue and curiosity. As far as Hirschfeld is concerned, the point of identification includes the Ashkenazi Jewish heritage and being queer. He was a beneficiary of the first wave of globalization, and I am a beneficiary of the second wave. But in other ways, I inhabit a very different universe. For instance, I have no strategic need to be closeted in the way that he did. In some ways, his world is unknowable. The challenge, as a writer, is to make it legible for readers today. That is exciting for me! My working title is The Einstein of Sex.
Looking back at the last 30 years, I can’t believe how much society has changed for homosexuals. But I also think of how open Berlin was in the early 20th century, and how fascism changed all of that. It is something of a cautionary tale. I am not saying that the Nazis will come back. That was a unique circumstance. But we must be vigilant about where we are heading. We want to believe that the long arc of history bends towards justice and that we are always headed in the direction of progress but that’s not how things necessarily happen.
Chintan Girish Modi is a freelance writer, journalist and book reviewer.