Anticlericalism, effeminacy and homosexuality in early twentieth-century Portuguese and Brazilian anarchism

This article analyses discourses within Brazilian and Portuguese anarchist periodicals on the subject of homosexuality. It shows that many concepts and languages employed by the anarchist movement were what may now be termed both heterosexist and homophobic. Rather than straightforwardly condemn the movement for this approach, however, the article seeks to understand “homosexuality,” often expressed as sexual inversion or pederasty, as a relational category, which formed connections with broader ideological concerns that the anarchist movement held as important. In the early twentieth century, these concerns were often related to the influence of religion. Forging an association between anticlericalism, the denunciation of Church sexual abuse and other issues such as antimilitarism and the promotion of rationalism and sexual science, anarchists developed a position on homosexuality that reinforced their stance against religion and what they perceived as expressions of unjust influence and power. This approach was transnational in nature, being fomented by anarchists who criss-crossed the Atlantic. By the mid-1920s, however, the rather blunt association between Catholicism and homosexuality began to wane as influential voices engaged with scientific thought on the question; such a move also reflected the shift from viewing homosexuality as a practice to one acknowledging emerging same-sex identities.