Classic LGBT Lit: "The Third Sex"
Willy's Contemporary Account of Homosexuality in Jazz Age Paris
© Kat Long
May 31, 2008
Part travelogue, part gossipy tell-all, The Third Sex (University of Illinois Press) provides a first-person glimpse into the gay culture of Paris in the 1920s, a locus of sexual experimentation, pop psychology and artistic ferment. The pseudonymous Willy (real name: Henri Gauthier-Villars), better known as the husband of famed French writer Colette, was also a writer and provocateur. A valuable contemporary account of pre-World War II gay culture in Europe, The Third Sex has now been translated into English from the original French by Lawrence R. Schehr, a professor of French at the University of Illinois.
Willy’s World
Europe in the 1920s was a hotbed of artistic and philosophic ideas, and one contemporary issue discussed in salons was sexual identity and homosexuality—an identity that had only recently been named and explored by psychologists like Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud. Willy begins The Third Sex with the grand tour of queer culture, beginning in Germany and describing its “friendship clubs” for gay men. He also mentions Magnus Hirschfeld, head of what Willy calls “the German pederastophile movement” and today considered a pioneer of gay identity. Willy then names the clubs, organizations, and events for gay men in Italy, America (which boasted a sexual entertainment industry), and Asia.
Willy alludes to 1920s theories about the origin and meaning of homosexuality, noting the view of psychologists who believed gay men were a “third sex”—somewhere between male and female. In Paris, such men created a network of nightclubs, salons, Turkish baths, and semi-secret public meeting places where they could avoid opprobrium from the “normals,” as Willy calls heterosexuals. Gay men also founded literary journals and newsletters to advocate for public acceptance of homosexuality.
Problematic Puns
Willy writes in an idiosyncratic style, with liberal use of groan-inducing puns (some of which are untranslatable into English, though Lawrence Schehr tries his best) and quips based on slang. Willy relies on the scholarship of his contemporaries, many of whom are today forgotten or discredited, for the information he imparts about psychology and attitudes; Schehr gamely provides extensive notes to inform the reader of the obscure physician or poet whom Willy quotes at a given time.
The least palatable characteristic of The Third Sex to modern readers, despite its value as a historical record, is Willy’s often condescending language about his subject. Though he aims to shed light on the mysteries of the third sex, and thereby make the case for greater acceptance of it, he can’t resist speaking in then-common vocabulary that today would be insulting. He uses the pejorative terms “pervert,” “invert” and “pederast” interchangeably with the more neutral (though obscure) “uranist” and “ephebe.”
The Third Sex could not be considered a definitive examination of homosexual mores of the early twentieth century—its first-person narration makes its information too subjective. It also excludes lesbians from the picture, though at this time, Willy would have known about and had access to the famous lesbian circle of 1920s Paris (Colette, after all, was a member of Natalie Barney’s artist’s salon).
In conclusion, The Third Sex offers a limited view of male homosexuality in the twenties, valuable to scholars but of little interest to the average reader.
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