The ordeal of discovering lesbian in Spain in the last century

Alicia Rocafull's article published on the site La Oveja Rosa - Gay Universe (Spain) on September 8, 2015, freely translated by Dino

We lived we lived regularly throughout history. One of the worst eras for Spanish lesbians was that of the Bourbon restoration, then a little tranquility arrived with the II Repubblica, but later Franco arrived with his laws on wandering and delinquents and other elements of repression. Following the introduction of a lesbian character in the "Six sisters" series, today I want to tell you how it was a lesbian in the early twentieth century.

One of the worst eras in Spain for homosexuals, together with Franco's dictatorship, was the stage of the Bourbon restoration (1874-1931). After the fall of the I Repubblica, the Bourbon restoration involves another return to the ultra -critic and monarchical values ​​defended by Cánovas del Castillo and its clique (of which conservative and progressive parts are part, also understanding Castelar), and homosexuality begins to develop in An environment of oppression on the outskirts of Madrid and Barcelona, ​​in clubs and private parties, without delaying to court some of its members individually with the opposition to the monarchy of Alfonso XIII, and after its military dictator, General Miguel Primo de Rivera.

In 1908, with the flourishing of sexology, the manuals of the time, although not always contrary to gay and lesbian rights, describes the homosexual woman in this way: "An active, courageous, creative, rather resolved, not too emotional temperament; lover of outdoor life, science, politics or even trade; Good organizer and gratified by the places of responsibility ... her body is perfectly feminine, although its inner nature is largely male“. Surely today we cannot get an idea about what's lesbian or male in this portrait, since it is the definition of any person today.

Most of the men of science of the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the XX, used to associate self -esteem, independence and feminist attitude with lesbism. All this without calling them lesbians, because the term was not yet frequently used. We lesbians were called "inverted". Well, these features in 1890 were sufficient to accuse a woman of inversion and still today are part of the collective imagination when describing a lesbian.

Another characteristic of this collective imagination referred to lesbian is to consider role games, which one plays the role of women and the other that of man, as an essential part of lesbian relationships, a concept clearly attributable to sexology, this science at the time so new, that it differentiates between two types of homosexual women.

-The "congenital inverted", of male orientation

-The "pseudoinvertitis", which could have been heterosexual if they had not been the victim of the artifices of true homosexual. They had the appearance and behavior of the female heterosexual woman of her time.

Both types of women feel mutual attraction and, as if by magic, these women carry out the roles of their respective external appearance in bed. The male/female practices, the desire to penetrate and be penetrated by another woman, are incontrovertible facts and have generated many discussions within the feminist lesbian movement, however they cannot be extended to all lesbians and be an essential element of the stereotype lesbian of today. It is simply a sexual feature that some lesbians have and others are not.

In the collective imagination, love between women, more than ever throughout history, begins to be associated with disease, dementia and tragedy. When lesbism is considered pathological, many lesbian women pathologize themselves if they were suffering a lack of identity, getting into conflict with their own being female and assuming forms of relationship and male sexual values. In the literature of the twentieth century written by lesbians or which tells stories with lesbian protaginists, it is frequent to find tormented, unhappy characters and who sometimes have suicidal patterns. Faithful reflection of what was lived up to the past "happy 20 years".

In those days it was complicated to live an openly lesbian life. Although in other places such as the United Kingdom or the United States, lesbian women were known, such as the famous Bostonian weddings (couples of lively women without the support of a man, ndt) of whom so much literature spoke to us, here in Spain there is no They were references. Here the woman was totally submissive to man and could not freely live her life. The famous women we know how lesbians had to go into exile or live their sexuality secretly. It was with the third republic that even women like Carmen Conde (first woman to be elected academic of the royal academy of Spain), Victorina Duran (designer), Margarita Xirgu (actress), Ana Maria Sagi (poet, trade unionist, journalist, feminist and athlete), Irene Polo (journalist), Lucia Sanchez Saornil (founder of Mujeres Libres), lived their life and their sexuality with relative freedom, always with great discretion.

The reverses of the early twentieth century, if they were discovered, had to undergo conversion therapies. They were considered sick and voluntarily underwent this ordeal. If everyone, but everyone, the scientists and doctors of the time say that you are a sick person and that, from the sick one you are, you can treat yourself and lead a normal life, it is logical that you accept undergoing therapy, whatever it is, for to be able to conduct a normal life and in accordance with social norms.

With the birth of Freud's first sexologists and psychoanalysis, it was thought to have the necessary tools to start these conversion therapies we are talking about. Freud expressed serious doubts about the potential of therapeutic conversion, did not agree. In a famous letter to a mother who asked him to treat his son, he replied:

"Asking me if I can help his son, he wants to ask, I think, if I can eliminate homosexuality and ensure that heterosexuality can return to his place. The answer is that in general we cannot promise to be able to get it. In a number of cases we are successful by developing the germ of the heterosexual tendency that is present in all homosexuals, but in most cases this is not possible. It depends on the type and age of the individual. The result of the treatment cannot be provided. [...] Homosexuality is certainly not a merit, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, it is not a vice or a degradation, it cannot be classified as a disease". Sigmund Freud

Freud did not consider homosexuality as an "anomaly", as the psychiatry of his time did, but claimed that each individual could achieve this "choice" due to the universality of bisexuality supported by him.

Until the middle of the twentieth century, medical attempts to "treat" homosexuality understood drug and even surgical treatments. At first, a hormonal and subsequent pharmacological treatment was performed, with stimulants and sexual inhibitors. If this did not work, hypnosis and psychoanalysis was carried out, to end with a therapy of aversion combined with the electroshock.

If all this continued not to be effective, and it was not, one began with surgical treatment: hysterectomy (removal of the uterus), ovariactomy (asptitation of the ovaries), the ablation of the clitoris, the Survery surgery of the pudding and the lobotomy. With the lobotomy you were forever stopped being lesbian, the truth was that this was the only method that "worked". For those who do not know, the lobotomy is a surgical procedure that aims to destroy the nerve connections of the frontal lobe of the brain. Following this intervention, the individual remains in an almost vegetative state, without will or ability to judge. Fortunately, many women many men agreed to be heterosexual to not get to these extremes, always and only when they did not consider themselves as sick, as it usually happened.

In 1900 a lesbian therefore had to face all this ordeal. In front of this sexual model and with centuries of Catholic refusal of lesbism, the lesbians of the twentieth century built their identity and found themselves comfortable with themselves. It was not an easy task, and even today for many it continues not to be, for this reason it is important to collect the inheritance and contributions that many women who have loved women over the last centuries have left us, because they have undoubtedly paved the road on which many of us today walk fully.
Without them our path would have undoubtedly more difficult. The introduction of LGTB characters in television series and in films makes us know their story, and recognizing their value allows us to realize that today living a different sexuality is possible and rewarding, but that it has not always been so. It is painful to see that the stories of lesbians in our television series are not beautiful love stories with a happy ending, but it is reality and we have to accept it, for us there were no happy endings.

And remember, in many places in the world, there are not happy ending for lesbians, gays and transsexuals. We must continue to fight.

Original text:Ser lesbiana en 1900 no was fácil