The Transnational Homophile Movement and the Development of Domesticity in Mexico City's Homosexual Community, 1930–70

Macías‐González, Víctor M.

doi:10.1111/1468-0424.12087

Gender & History

2014

DOI: 10.1111/1468-0424.12087

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The Transnational Homophile Movement and the Development of Domesticity in Mexico City's Homosexual Community, 1930–70

Víctor M. Macías‐González¹

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2017

2024

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Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…However, many issues of queer sexuality and gender within these initiatives remain understudied. Scholarship on homosexuality has largely focused on the Famous 41 scandal (1901), elite culture, crime, and penal institutions (see Buffington, 2000; Irwin, 2003; Irwin, McCaughan, and Rocío Nasser, 2003; Macías-González, 2014, 2019; Piccato, 2007). Recent work has begun exploring working-class queer experiences, including in relation to sexology, criminology, and eugenics (see Jones, 2012, 2017; McManus, 2014; Rodríguez Sánchez, 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

Defeating the ‘social danger’ of homosexuality while ‘forging the fatherland’: Sexual science and biotypology in Mexico’s national development, 1927–57

Jones

2023

History of the Human Sciences

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This article situates Mexican sexology, and how it engaged homosexuality and gender nonconformity, within more familiar nation-building projects in Mexico following the Revolution (1910–20). It argues that much like with understandings of race, Mexican sexologists, influenced by neo-Lamarckism and ‘Latin' eugenics, viewed sexuality as caused largely by social and environmental factors, rather than simply as a congenital characteristic. Such experts advocated for social solutions for what they saw as the ‘state of danger’ that homosexuality represented, targeting their interventions at youths, who were seen as pliable, future citizens, rather than adults, who were largely seen as irredeemable and best isolated from the national body. The article explores discursive, ideological, and methodological threads in Mexican sexology from the 19th to the mid-20th century, the field’s professionalization and transnational connections, case studies of youths in which the preferred solutions involved promoting family stability and coherence, and adult cases ranging from prison studies to the case of Marta Olmos, recipient of Mexico’s first widely known sex reassignment. Overall, it demonstrates important intersections between sexology and nation-building projects related to criminology, anthropology, and eugenics, and how the attempted management of homosexuality and gender nonconformity sheds light on Mexican development more broadly.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Defeating the ‘social danger’ of homosexuality while ‘forging the fatherland’: Sexual science and biotypology in Mexico’s national development, 1927–57

Jones

2023

History of the Human Sciences

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“…is influenced more directly by the scholarship of David Churchill (2009), Craig Loftin (2012, Víctor Macías-González (2014), and Leila Rupp (2011), who have explored the international dimensions of the gay and lesbian movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The contributors to this issue also build on previous work that addresses sexuality's relationship to nationalism (Mosse, 1985;Parker et al, 1992;Puar, 2007;Stein, 1997) and to colonialism, imperialism, and Orientalism (McClintock, 1995;Said, 1978;Stoler, 2002).…”

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confidence: 99%

Introduction: U.S. Homophile Internationalism

Stein

2017

Journal of Homosexuality

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‘Now I Have Found Myself, and I Am Happy’: Marta Olmos, Sex Reassignment, the Media and Mexico on a Global Stage, 1952–7

Jones

2023

J. Lat. Am. Stud.

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In May 1954, the story broke internationally of Marta Olmos, recipient of the first widely known, male-to-female sex reassignment conducted in Mexico. Her doctor, Rafael Sandoval Camacho, claimed that homosexuality could be cured and that, through transitions, queer Mexicans could be made into ‘socially useful’ citizens. While initially celebrated as a scientific triumph placing Mexico among elite nations, and receiving support from individuals close to the Ruiz Cortines administration, opinions soured as critics – physicians, politicians, cartoonists and clerics – condemned Marta for renouncing manhood through a fraudulent cure that threatened the binary sex/gender order underpinning Mexican nationalism. Sex reassignment, understood through foreigners including Christine Jorgensen and associated with ‘anti-social’ queer Mexicans, thus exemplified misplaced priorities during a period in which the state sought to ‘modernise patriarchy’. While self-affirming for Marta and permitted unofficially through state indifference, sex reassignment became seen as anti-Mexican. Thus, Marta's case illuminated how the state reconciled development with policing its patriarchal order.

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The Transnational Homophile Movement and the Development of Domesticity in Mexico City's Homosexual Community, 1930–70

Cited by 7 publications

References 4 publications

Defeating the ‘social danger’ of homosexuality while ‘forging the fatherland’: Sexual science and biotypology in Mexico’s national development, 1927–57

Defeating the ‘social danger’ of homosexuality while ‘forging the fatherland’: Sexual science and biotypology in Mexico’s national development, 1927–57

Introduction: U.S. Homophile Internationalism

‘Now I Have Found Myself, and I Am Happy’: Marta Olmos, Sex Reassignment, the Media and Mexico on a Global Stage, 1952–7

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