Queer Encounters with Communist Power (Ukázka, strana 99)

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to not marry but live in a steady partnership with a partner of the same sex.”

Despite that, he pragmatically stated, “for rational reasons, many indisputably homosexual people (nezpochybnitelní homosexuálové) aspire for marriage, i.e. a legal union with a person of the opposite sex.” Brzek went on to list several reasons why, in his opinion, this was the case: First, the society of the ‘normal’ people (společnost ‘normálních’) makes the life of homosexuals difficult and often even unbearable. More sensitive individuals are not able to tolerate such discrimination and hope that entering marriages will mask their true orientation. The second reason tends to be the fear of loneliness in old age… Last, but not least, is the desire for one’s own progeny (potomstvo). Especially homosexual men, probably because of the presence of some female characteristics in their personalities, often have a stronger need to take care of their own children than heterosexual, ‘normal’ men.237

Even without using the term ‘homophobia,’ Brzek recognized and openly blamed the majority society for being responsible for the behavior and atmosphere which made the lives of homosexual men and women difficult.

Remarkable was also his overt usage of the term “discrimination,” which was not common in Socialist texts during Normalization, as well as his open support for same-sex partnerships. Both of these points meant walking a fine line in 1981, as medical and social experts were expected to function as the messengers of correct social behavior for the masses.238 What is fascinating, especially in the context of the current frenzied debates about the potential legal right of gays and lesbians to adopt children, is Brzek’s explicit recognition of the desire and right of homosexual people to raise children and his pragmatic presentation of a traditional family as a practical trick to do so. His officially published argumentation demonstrates the remarkable openness of Czechoslovak Socialist sexology and points to the discursive freedom of sexologists to advocate for complex social constructions and false façades.

However, Brzek also exposed that his medical expertise, and thus his analytical potential when dealing with sexuality and sexual orientation, rested on deeply ingrained gender stereotypes — in this case one that automatically connects women with care and naturalizes the connection between women and children. At the same time, Brzek’s use of this particular gender stereotype was complicated by an interesting twist, in which he claimed that homosexual men actually had stronger desires to have their own children than heterosexual men did — because of their (feminine) ability to take care of them.

The important difference in Brzek’s argument was the implicit meaning of 237 Brzek 1981, 18.

238 Havelková and Oates-Indruchová, eds., 2014.

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having children. While heterosexual men might want to have their own children because of their biological predisposition to procreate, homosexual men do not desire children simply because they want to have them. Presumably, homosexuality erases such a simple, virile masculine desire, but instead replaces it with a feminine, innately possessed ability to care.239 Brzek’s subsequent explanation of the precondictions and rules for a successful marriage between homosexuals and heterosexuals is even more striking. First, according to Brzek, the homosexual person “must realize that even in marriage his or her homosexual orientation will persist.”240 When a homosexual person makes the decision to get married, he or she “should definitively end all existing homosexual contacts, including only friendly ones. It is even advisable to leave the environment, where a person can easily get seduced, such as bigger towns.”241 Second, he or she must find such a person of the opposing sex, who will be “at least pleasant as a human (lidsky příjemná) to be around and with whom personal contact is not completely abhorrent.” Third, Brzek advised that it was important to first make sure that both potential partners had the ability to enact mutual sexual intercourse.

Brzek argued that certainly for a homosexual woman this is technically easier but even she can gradually become disgusted by having sex with a man. Of course, a more appropriate husband for a homosexual woman is a man with a low need of sexual intercourse… It is, however, surprising, how often homosexual men have no problems having sex with women, which is true even for very effeminate men.242

And fourth, Brzek recommended that because such marriages were not free of risks, “the other person should be informed about this situation [the partner’s homosexuality] before the marriage… However, if the fact of homosexuality was not communicated early enough before the marriage, then during the marriage the homosexual person must never admit it. Such information could not only destroy the marriage, it could also be abused by the other party.”243 Brzek additionally warned that whatever the individual marital situation of any given homosexual person was, “nothing should be 239 A reverse analysis of how such an argument would work in the case of homosexual women, who were routinely read by Czechoslovak sexologists through the prism of aggressivity and masculinity, is missing from Brzek’s article.

240 Ibid.

241 Other medical literature from the era speaks as well of this therapeutic trend of recommending to homosexuals moving away from towns to villages and small, isolated places (for example Karel Nedoma, “Homosexuální prostituce u mladistvých,” Československý psychiatr 58/5 (1962): 312–314).

242 Brzek 1981.

243 Brzek 1981. (Emphasis mine).

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undertaken without continual and systematic consultations with a specialist, a sexologist, with whom it is advisable to stay in regular touch even in the course of a successfully functioning marriage.” Brzek ended the article by stating that “all this, which was said here, of course does not apply to purely formal marriages, in which both partners know about each other’s [homosexuality] and eroticism plays no role, as it is for example in marriages of homosexual men with homosexual women. The point of those unions is, of course, totally different… but that is no longer the territory of a sexologist.”244 All gender stereotyping about “technically easier” sex for homosexual women aside, the most fascinating, and important detail for the Socialist context, is the openness and matter-of-factness with which a medical expert promotes double lives — for both men and women — on the pages of an officially sanctioned and state-controlled popular journal. It is amazing that on the one hand, homosexuality was officially defined as an illness and a medical diagnosis, and on the other hand, sexologists, as the expert agents of the Socialist state, were recommending and professionally couching arranged marriages between ‘homosexuals’ and ‘heterosexuals.’ In the absence of legislature, which would enable queer people to live in legally recognized samesex partnerships, marital adaptation therapy through arranged marriages presented for sexologists the only avenue to officially (even if awkwardly) help queer people enter long-term, legal partnerships that would enable them to raise children and have security in old age. The price for such security, however, was high. While homosexual people were no longer subjected to medical attempts to change their sexual identity through biological interventions to be heterosexuals, they were still “socially motivated” to suppress their identity and sexual behavior through marriages to pretend and perform heterosexuality. Moreover, the conducting and functioning of marriages described by Brzek required participating and fully-aware heterosexuals. Their motivations for engaging in such marriages are not mentioned at all in the article. Brzek’s article also made it clear that sexologists were well aware that rather than entering arranged marriages with heterosexuals, some queer people simply married each other to reach the social advantages and security mentioned by Brzek.

Similar to Brzek’s article five years earlier, in 1986 and 1987 the popular weekly Zdraví published yet another extraordinary series of four articles by several authors on the topic of “contemporary homosexuality.”245 To an uninformed reader, it was simply an exchange of three experts, who argued 244 Brzek 1981, 18.

245 Each issue of the journal had different sections for diverse medical fields. All of the mentioned articles were published on pages 18 and 19 reserved for “Sexology.” From the late 1970s, Zdraví regularly published academic articles about homosexuality.

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