Paris, Adrift

by Vanda Writer

  For Gays Often Thought

  It is popularly believed that France was more accepting of homosexuality during the mid-twentieth century than other countries such as the United States. In the US during the fifties, homosexuals were persecuted daily in the New York Times and other newspapers. They were accused of being dangerous to children and likely to be blackmailed into helping the communist cause. Also, during that decade, the police were raiding gay and lesbian bars and occasionally arresting these patrons. Some lesbians stopped moving in with lovers for fear that their orientation would be discovered and they would lose their jobs. Other lesbians made hasty marriages, maybe some believing the pop psychology hype that marriage could cure them. Others dashed into convents. (Faderman, 1991)

  It is true the French had rid their country of anti-sodomy laws way back in 1791 (Jackson, 2009, p.20), while the US did not eradicate these laws in all fifty states until 2003. However, France’s legalizing of sodomy in the eighteenth century should not be taken to mean approval or even acceptance. Like the U.S and all other countries in the 1950s, France considered homosexuality to be “an abhorrent vice.” (Merrick & Ragan, 1996, p. 8), “a milieu favorable to delinquency, a breeding ground for criminal viruses.” (Sideris, 2001, p. 22) French moralists condemned both male and female homosexuality as the “worst of sins.” All lesbians were considered to be prostitutes, and in 1843, a law was passed that specifically prohibited streetwalkers from living in the same apartment with other streetwalkers. (Jackson, 2009, p. 20) I gather so they couldn’t engage in the “sin” of lesbianism.

  France’s motivation for repealing the sodomy laws at that time had more to do with the spirit of their revolution than it did with any “love” of homosexuals. The repeal of sodomy came at a time when the French were striving to secularize their government, disallowing all laws having anything to do with religious dictates or the Bible. Therefore, laws against heresy, blasphemy, and sodomy were repealed. (Jackson, 2009, 20) At the same time as sodomy was being taken off the books, there was an increase in the number of men being arrested for same-sex behaviors such as “public immorality” or “unruly behavior.” (Jackson, 2009, p.21), code phrases for homosexuality.

  The myth of French society being a free one for homosexuals may have originated with Oscar Wilde. Before Wilde was to stand trial in Great Britain for sodomy and gross indecency, his friends encouraged him to escape to France where these were not crimes. If Wilde had followed his friends’ advice, he would not have been imprisoned; however, neither would he have been embraced. He most likely would have been ostracized and forced to take a false name as he ultimately did after completing his two years of incarceration in Great Britain. (Belford, 2000)

  Another reason we, in the US, may think homosexuals were accepted in mid-twentieth century France is because of the literary and artistic figures who clustered together in the Latin Quarter in Paris from 1920 to 1950. Women like Gertrude Stein, Romaine Brooks, Natalie Barney, Janet Flanner, Colette, Sylvia Beach and others came to Paris for the relative freedom it would give them to create. (Belford, 2000) Most of these literary and artistic women were lesbians, but they did not make a cause out of their same-sex relations. Except for Natalie Barney, who was open about her sexuality, most of these women kept it to themselves, leaving that part of their lives dark to the world. (Benstock, 1988, p.10) Gertrude Stein explored the meaning of her sexuality through her writing; however, these often sexually explicit works were not published until after her death. Stein considered “serious” writing to be the province of men; therefore, the primary point of taking on the male role was to allow her to write.

  In 1942, a sharp legal distinction was made between homosexuals and heterosexuals with the changing of the age of consent law. Prior to 1942, the age of consent for all French citizens was thirteen. With the passing of the new law, the age of consent was changed to twenty-one for homosexuals, but it remained thirteen for heterosexuals.

  In 1950s France, there were often police raids on bars, just like in the United States. However, this was true only for the gay men’s bars, unlike in the US. The French did look down on lesbians but didn’t consider them important enough to raid their bars. Raids on men’s bars were especially common in the Saint Germaine-des-Prés district, where gay bars and cafes were beginning to proliferate. Although sodomy was legal, other homosexual behavior was not; for instance, two men dancing with each other was illegal.

  In the 1950s, the US mainstream culture was finding parallels between homosexuals and communists (both were considered immoral and of weak character); during this same postwar period, France saw homosexuals as Nazi collaborators. (Jackson, 2009, p41) They even went so far as to blame Andre Gide, for holding values that caused the fall of France in 1940 at the beginning of World War II.

  A film that can be found on you-tube, “Lesbians and Gays of the 1950s,” about French gay men and lesbians makes 1950s French attitudes toward gays clear. The first part of this short documentary-like film shows a nightclub with a group of rather sleepy-looking women dancing with each other; some wear dresses, others wear men’s suits and ties. There is absolutely zero sexual energy in this club and everyone looks rather bored. An old woman with gray hair plays a violin in the background. “The narrator gravely asks, “What deep rooted emotions have removed them so completely from the company of men but cause them to emulate the masculine appearance with such pathetic results? Despite their blasé attitude one is aware of their underlying sadness.” And so, we witness first-hand the ‘if you’re a lesbian you must be sick’ hypothesis. No different from the US in the 1950s.

  The film moves on to a gay men’s club where we see equally bored men dancing with each other. The narrator, attempting to sound scientific says, “while literature and tradition condones the weakness of woman, man receives only the heavy weight of ridicule. No matter how hard man tries to negate woman she’s forever present inside of him. The more he tries to deny her, the more womanish he becomes. Yes, woman is apparent in hermits, eunuchs, the chaste and more than ever in them.(meaning the gay men dancing on the film)” It is difficult to communicate by written word the venom with which this man says. ‘them.’

  It seems that in the 1950s and beyond, France was as restrictive and hateful toward gays as the United States. It was not the haven that it is often claimed to be. France had to go through an arduous learning process similar to what we in the United States have been going through to arrive at a more accepting view of differences in sexual orientation.

  References

  Belford, Barbara. 2000. Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius. New York, NY: Random House.

  Benstock, Shari. 1988. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900 1940. Austin, TX: University of Texas.

  Jackson, Julian. 2009. Living in Arcadia. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

  Faderman, Lillian. 1991. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers. New York, NY: Penguin.

  Merrick, Jeffrey, and Michael Sibalis. (Eds.) (2001) Homosexuality in French History and Culture. The Haworth Press.

  Behind the Scenes

  Well-Deserved Thank Yous

  First, I have to thank all of you who have become fans of the Juliana series and have told me in your reviews and your letters that Al, Juliana, Max, and the rest have become a part of your lives. This fills me with such humility and gratitude.

  A very special thank you goes to Karin de la Penha Collison who did all my French translations. I’m sure I drove her mad with my quick emails asking: “How do you say . . . ?” But she never complained. As a working actor, she’s a busy woman so

  I’m grateful she could spare a little of her time for me.

  I also must thank my Street Team who were the first to read Olympus Nights on the Square, Book 2 and left reviews. Reviews make such a difference. I want to especially thank the Street Team members who volunteered to be my beta readers and/or my proofreaders for this book. T
hese were (alphabetized by first name): Amanda Beilfuss, Catherine, Tejal Johnson, Nicole Person, Katrina Schmidt, Laura Huff, Tanya Marie Wheeler. These women read all of Paris, Adrift, Book 3 and gave me helpful feedback and I am grateful to them.

  My editor, Deborah Dove at Polgarus Studio, did such a great job helping with all the finer points of grammar and putting the commas where they’re supposed to be. Thanks, Debi.

  Once again, my writers’ group, The Oracles, gave me useful feedback as I was writing Paris, Adrift. The Oracles are some of the best writers in the country, so their feedback proved invaluable. Thank you: Liz Amberly, Edgar Chisholm, Bill Cosgriff, Stuart D’vers, Elana Gartner, Nicole Greevy, March Goldsmith, Nancy Hamada, Olga Humphrey, Penny Jackson, Robin Rice, Donna Specter and Mike Vogel

  About the Author

  I was born and raised in Huntington Station, New York. This town shouldn’t be confused with Al’s hometown of Huntington. They are two different places, and it’s too long a story to explain the significance of that difference. Now, I live in New York City, and I have for some time. I’ve been a professor at Metropolitan College of New York for twenty-four years, but I don’t teach writing like many people guess. I teach psychology because my advanced training was in psychology, and I am a licensed psychologist.

  I was a writer long before I was a psychologist. I wrote my first novel in eighth grade, with encouragement from my teacher, Mr. James Evers, who would meet me before school every week to discuss the latest pages I had penned. He wrote in my junior high yearbook, “My children will read your words.” Unfortunately, others were not so encouraging, and I wandered away from my writing. I spent a lot of years going from job to job because the work-a-day world could not satisfy the restlessness in my mind. Along the way, I found playwriting and was a playwright for about twenty years. The desire to tell the story of LGBT history with fictional characters who live through that history brought me back to my original form, the novel, but I learned a lot about dialogue from playwriting.

  I’d love to hear from you. My online home is www.vandawriter.com. Come sign up for my mailing list there and get info about new releases and forthcoming events. You can also connect with me on Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/drvanda and Facebook at www.facebook.com/vandawriter or twitter at www.twitter.com/vandawriter. You can contact me directly at vanda@vandawriter.com.

  Happy Reading