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The Riddle of "Man-Manly" Love: The Pioneering Work on Male Homosexuality

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It would be easy to fall into the trap of saying that Ulrichs invented homosexuality. He seems to have invented the idea of it as it evolved through the early stages of the homosexual civil rights movement, but it appears that a concept of homosexuality already existed in his day, and he merely expressed what so many were thinking and feeling. Unfortunately, he made much of the difference between what used to be known as inverts and perverts; he said that it was wrong to incarcerate born homosexuals, but it was OK to incarcerate men who were heterosexual but who were involved in homosexual behaviour, e.g., hustlers. This suggestion appears to us today to be outrageous. One should at least give him credit for having the guts to stand up in a convention of lawyers in the 1860s and speak in favor of decriminalization of sodomy. His theory of the basic effeminacy of gay men has had a bad effect of promotion of the stereotype of the fairy. The outlandish jargon in which he tried to categorize homosexuals of all sorts has not been transmitted to us. It would be easy enough to see his outlook as narrow and bizarre. It must be remembered that he had nobody at all preceding him in this field, he had only his feelings and a rudimentary gay subculture with no books or magazines on the subject. Kudos to Lombard-Nash for having the patience and dedication to translate all of this material for the first time without hope of producing a popular book.

Every educated and serious gay person ought to read this work, although the price is enough to limit the sale of it to the few, and the few never heard of this book. Two comments only: the facts about the Duke of Devonshire were completely overlooked in the standard book on the Devonshires, and the vague reference to a popular English novelist with a failed marriage refers, not to Dickens, but to Bulwer-Lytton.