In my review of Paul Buhle and Harvey Pekar’s “The Beats”, I referred to
Robert Duncan’s essay “The Homosexual in Society” that appeared in
Dwight Macdonald’s journal Politics in 1944. This seminal gay liberation
document certainly deserves to be available on the Internet and so I
have scanned it in from Duncan’s “A Selected Prose” that was published
in 1990.
A word or two about Dwight Macdonald is in order. He was a Shachtmanite
who eventually dropped any pretensions to Marxism and embraced a mixture
of anarchism, liberalism and pacifism. He was also bitterly
anti-Communist and even hooked up for a while with the CIA-backed
Congress for Cultural Freedom. When the 60s radicalization began,
Macdonald reverted to the radical politics of his youth to some extent
and became part of a cadre of high-profile intellectuals who opposed the
Vietnam War (Norman Mailer and Mary McCarthy were two other notables.)
The inclusion of Duncan’s essay in Macdonald’s journal in 1944 opens up
some interesting avenues for research. As far as I know, the Trotskyist
movement was pretty bad on gay issues. Cannon’s group was worse than
Shachtman’s—at least that is what I would suspect. If Macdonald was
open-minded enough to challenge the prevailing homophobia on the left,
you have to wonder what else was appearing in the pages of his magazine.
Leon Trotsky supposedly once said that “Everyone has the right to be
stupid, but comrade Macdonald abuses the privilege”. This remark
reportedly delighted Macdonald. I can only say that at least on the gay
question, Macdonald holds up very well.
Duncan’s essay anticipates many of the gay liberation themes that would
be articulated after the Stonewall rebellion, despite a certain
defensiveness expressed in terms of his disapproval of the “homosexual
cult” and “camp”.
Originally appeared in Politics, I, 7 (August 1944). The revisions were
made in 1959. The expanded version was first published in Jimmy & Lucy’s
House of “K,” 3 (January 1985).
The Homosexual in Society
INTRODUCTION
Seymour Krim has urged me to reprint this early essay as “a pioneering
piece,” assuring me “that it stands and will stand on its own feet.” At
the time it was printed (Politics, August 1944) it had at least the
pioneering gesture, as far as I know, of being the first discussion of
homosexuality which included the frank avowal that the author was
himself involved; but my view was that minority associations and
identifications were an evil wherever they supersede allegiance to and
share in the creation of a human community good—the recognition of
fellow-manhood.
full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/05/02/robert-duncans-the-homosexual-in-society/T
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