Emeritus Professor of Sociology at London South Bank University Jeffrey Weeks gave an overview of queer history and sexual justice at a CEU lecture on Feb. 20. Weeks was involved in early gay liberation in London and was recognized by the American Sociological Association in 2010 with the Simon and Gagnon Award for outstanding contributions to the study of sexuality.
Weeks, who started his research in the early 1970s, at first felt marginalized in the UK, as the field was relatively new and controversial. “It was a 'career killer' at this time,” he said. “Today, the situation is much different. There are archives, blogs, websites, books, etc. The phenomenon of LGBT history month is a fantastic shift because it links what's happening at universities with activism.”
One of the pioneers of sexual acceptance and sexual justice was German physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld. Weeks traces the roots of sexual justice back to Hirschfeld's advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights in the 1920s and 1930s. Hirschfeld wanted “to bring to bear reason and scientific understanding to what was traditionally seen as criminal and religious territory,” Weeks noted. He believed that scientific knowledge would lead to sexual justice.
Sexologists of the time didn't always agree and had lengthy debates about whether or not

homosexuality was inborn or culturally acquired, whether it was a mental degeneration, and if society as a whole could accept it. Importantly, though, research was being done and experts were interacting but that didn't last. For both Hirschfeld and the Nazis, the biological base of their arguments were essential but in completely different ways. “We know now that this first wave of sexual reform ended disastrously,” Weeks said. “Hirschfeld's library was publicly burned under the Nazis and he died in exile.”
Sexuality, as we view it today, began to take shape among these early sexologists, most of whom saw themselves as reformers, Weeks explained. At worst, this took the form of Nazis justifying genocide in the name of eugenics, or the practice of genetically “improving” the human race. Even in Sweden, the practice of sterilization lingered on until the 1970s as a way of dealing with people with "social inadequacies."
Also at this time, major efforts that fundamentally changed the way sexuality is perceived were taking place. First, sexologists were cataloguing sexual deviances and creating binary divisions within the sexual world, most importantly the divide between homosexual or heterosexual. Or, as Weeks noted, “the divide between perverse and harmless” that remains today. Secondly, sexologists were more closely defining the biological divisions between men and women. “Sex and gender became locked together, rooted in reproductive necessities,” Weeks said. The concepts that were being defined in the early part of the 20th century remain today. “They have become the basis of not only our thinking but living. We define ourselves as either 'gay' or 'straight' and it's difficult to get beyond this to a more fluid definition of sexuality.”
In the 1960s and 1970s alternative grassroots knowledge and movements began to grow and gay liberation went in many different directions. Groups emerged that focused on other identities; for example, some groups addressed challenges faced by those who identified as transsexual and transvestite and others were made up of ethnic minorities who felt they had been left out of the conversation. “The central paradox of gay liberation is that it was established to assert the importance of gay/lesbian identities but, at the same time, it began to undermine them,” Weeks said. “It became clear that the neat 'labels' they inherited from early sexologists were not enough to describe the communities that were emerging.”
The issue of gay rights, has been present for decades but will continue to be an international struggle, Weeks said. He noted that prior to the 1990s, sexuality was absent from human rights discourse including at the UN. Weeks noted the strides that have been made for marriage equality but also cited serious setbacks like Uganda's recent anti-gay bill that criminalizes homosexuality with life sentences in prison and punishes efforts to raise or discuss gay issues.
“The new enlightenment that Hirschfeld and his contemporaries had hoped for is now being seen,” Weeks said. “But, without sexual justice, we cannot realize our human possibility.”
Weeks was an editor of the journal “Gay Left” throughout the 1980s. He has written widely on homosexuality and other sexual issues and is the author of over 20 books. The lecture was hosted by CEU's Department of Gender Studies and presented in cooperation with LGBT History Month Hungary.





