PREJUDICE 4
ist text by Guillaume Apollinaire. The genetic origin or in significant behavioral
1957 Dialogues des Carmelites, about a traits from one's own.
group of nuns condemned to death in the In his classic study of the nature
French Revolution, is one of the few op- of prejudice, Gordon W. Allport stated that
eras of the second half of the twentieth "Prejudgments become prejudices only i f
century to have secured a place in the they are not reversible when exposed to
repertory. Poulenc also wrote concertos new knowledge." This principle implies
for various combinations of instruments, that some irrational, unconscious deter-
incidental music for plays and films, the minant is shaping the feelings and opin-
Mass in G (19371, and the famous "Gloria" ions of the subject. The hostility which
(1959). prejudice (as an umbrella term for antipa-
Although the composer is said to thies of all kinds) engendered and the dis-
have had some flings with Arab boys in crimination to which it may inspire the
North Africa, during the latter part of his dominant segment of the population have
life he lived in an essentially spousal rela- caused so much harm and suffering (the
tionship with Bemac. Apparently he had Hitler era is the supreme example) that
no difficulty reconciling this liaison with many investigators in the social sciences
his return to the Catholic faith. Often have directed their energies toward under-
marked by witty sallies, his music was standing and controlling what they inter-
highly regarded as the outstanding exem- preted as a form of social pathology. A
plar in his time of the distinctive French crucial aspect of the maintenance of preju-
tradition of melodie. Poulenc influenced dice is the transmission of stereotypes
composers of many nations, including the about members of the group-beliefs that
American gay composer and diarist Ned may be true in regard to a small number,
Rorem. but are projected onto one and all. These
notions may be supported by more
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Henri Hell, Francis elaborate myths and fabrications, such as
Poulenc, London: Calder, 1959.
Wayne R. Dynes the fable of the destruction of Sodom be-
cause of the sexual indulgence of its in-
habitants.
PREJUDICE Prejudice is not a monopoly of
The term prejudice and its equiva- any group, as oppressed minorities can
lents in many European languages refer develop their own ethos that includes a
primarily to a negative prejudgment rejection of anything associated with the
reached before the pertinent information race and culture of the oppressor. Yet it
has been collected or examined and there- would be wrong to assume that prejudice
fore based on insufficient or even imagi- is a normal and ineradicable phenomenon
nary evidence. As a rule, prejudice entails of social life; its absence in young children
a negative attitude and an element of who have not undergone acculturation
emotional charge; in addition there is argues that learning rather than nature is
usually, though not invariably, areadiness the crucial factor in its development.
to express in deeds the rejection of others. Sexual Aspects. Sexuality plays a
The resulting actions are also described as leading role in the maintenance of preju-
embodying various degrees of discrimina- dice. The restriction of legitimate sexual
tion. In practice the term prejudice has expression to indissoluble monogamous
been applied primarily, if not exclusively, marriage had its counterpart in the fanta-
to populations distinguished by race, eth- sies of unbridled sexual aggression, of
nic identity, language, or any corn bination demonic instincts lurking in tabooed,
of these. It denotes a negative evaluation outsider groups which could at the same
of human groups perceived as different in time be sexually exploited by the domi-
* PREJUDICE
nant one, as when its younger members ished concern with the attitudes toward
were forced to become concubines, kept sexual "deviates." Toward the end of the
boys, or prostitutes servingthe erotic needs 1960s terms such as racism and sexism
of the male members of the dominant tended to replace the notion of prejudice.
group. Pervasive fear of aggression on the The counterpart to this in the gay move-
part of male homosexuals (but not lesbi- ment was the expression heterosexism,
ans) underlies the accusation that homo- which has achieved only a limited accep-
sexualswillseduceor molest anyone whom tance, and the more widely used homo-
they encounter. Publicopinion polls in the phobia. The word prejudice by contrast
United States have found that 59 percent seemed too weak and indefinite an expres-
of those questioned believed that "homo- sion, and the role of ethnic minorities,
sexuals have unusually strong sex drives," particularly of Third World origin, in shap-
and 35 percent agreed that "frustrated ing the new political ambience contrib-
homosexuals seek out children for sexual uted to the terminological shift.
purposes." Employers deny homosexuals Another relevant point is that
jobs on the ground that they will approach analysts of prejudice in Western Europe
fellow employees with lewd propositions. and the United States tended toward inter-
At the same time a secret glamor pretations derived from depth psychology,
attaches to the forbidden conduct; the which was officially banned in the Soviet
pleasure derived from tabooed sexuality is Union and little known in the revolution-
believed more intense, moreaddictingthan ary Third World. Marxism itself favors a
ordinary heterosexual coitus. The lure of simplistic, strongly economistic explana-
uninhibited, promiscuous sexual gratifi- tion of social phenomena, which cannot
cation hovers over the gay subculture with easily be transposed onto the situation of
its far more relaxed norms of sexual con- the homosexual in a culture whose tradi-
tact. The outgroup represents a threat to tion of intolerance stems from the later
the moral values of Christian society, a Middle Ages. The feminist notions of
force undermining civilization and lead- "patriarchy" and "male domination" have
ing to its downfall, and a violation of the been evoked to explain the hostility vis-
order of nature. Also, the homosexual is ited upon the homosexual in Western
linked with a vast conspiracy, an culture; but conversely the notion of
international freemasonry from which the "homosexuality" was itself created in
"normal" citizen is excluded-to his pro- Western Europe in the late nineteenth
fessional and economic detriment-and century as a political response to the defi-
which (so it is believed) secretly decides nitions of certain forms of sexual activity
the fate of crucial institutions or even of in theology and law. The particular inten-
the whole society. sity with which the taboo on homosexual
Although an extensive literature activity was enforced-the imposition of
on prejudice was produced between the compulsory heterosexuality-went so far
1930s and the 1960s, in no small part in beyond ethnic or racial prejudice, which
reaction to the policies of Nazi Germany, could never deny the existence of the ob-
the subject of antipathy to homosexuals ject of the hatred, as to be in another class
was scarcely mentioned. Even toward the of psychological phenomena altogether.
end of that time the gay movement was Hence the term prejudice finds little appli-
tiny and semi-clandestine, and those who cation in the cunrent discussion of the
advocated a minimum of toleration often attitude of Western society toward homo-
had to mouth the traditional defamatory sexual behavior and those identified by
cliches. The fact that the Communist themselves or others as homosexual.
movement had disowned sexual reform
endeavors in the mid- 1930s also dimin- BIBLIOGRAPHY. Barry D. Adam, The
Survival of Domination: Inferiorization
PRESS, GAY 4
and Everyday Life, New York: Elsevier, books and articles compiled by Eugen
1978; Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Wilhelm under the pseudonym of Numa
Prejudice, Reading, MA: Addison-
Wesley, 1954. Praetorius. A second major journal was
Warren Johansson Der Eigene, which had originally been
devoted to the arts but became the organof
the pederastic wing of t h e German
GAY
PRESS, homosexualmovement, theGemeinschaft
A minority group such as homo- der Eigenen; it was a de luxe publication on
sexuals needs a press of its own for particu- fine paper with illustrations in black and
lar reasons. Only at the end of the nine- white, in sepia, and in color that imitated
teenth century did periodicals meant pri- such foreign models as the Yellow Book.
marily or exclusively for a homosexual or On its pages the adolescent male nude
lesbian readership come into being. Such played a prominent role. With a number of
publications supplemented the mass media significant interruptions, Der Eigene ap-
addressed to a general readership by pro- peared from 1898 to 1930.
vidingnews, commentary, advertisements, France had only two publications
and later personal columns for individuals in the period before World War II: Akade-
with special needs or interests. Thus the rnos, which was issued monthly during
gay press cannot be compared to a Chi- 1909 in Paris by Count Adelsward Fersen,
nese-language or Russian-language peri- and Inversions, which appeared briefly in
odical in the United States, or to an Eng- 1925before it was suppressed by the police
lish-language newspaper in Buenos Aires at the instigation of clerical members of
or Jerusalem, which provides general news the Chamber of Deputies. Because of the
and information to a public that cannot intolerance that prevailed in the English-
read the idiom of the country. In other speaking world, no counterpart could be
respects, however, it has had problems published. In the mid-1920s a few issues of
similar to those of the Lithuanian and Friendship and Freedom were produced
Ukrainian speech communities in Tsarist by Henry Gerber, who was promptly ar-
Russia, which before 1905 were not al- raigned for having created a homophile
lowed to have publications in their own organization. Later, in 1934, he and Jacob
language; these were printed in East Prus- Houser issued a mimeographed newslet-
sia and Austrian Galicia and smuggled ter entitled Chantecleer. At this time only
across the border. Publishing houses in semi-clandestine newsletters and similar
Paris and elsewhere on the Continent ephemeral publications could exist in the
performed an analogous function by issu- United States, while the German move-
ing books in English with homosexual ment of the 1920s had a whole set of
themes, though it was only in the early journals, from Freundschaft und Freiheit
1950s that the Swiss monthly Der Kreisl to Freundin (for lesbians].
Le Cercle began to include English articles In Switzerland a bilingual
on its pages. monthly called Der KreislLe Cercle began
Pioneers. The earliest serial pub- to appear in the mid-1930~~ when the
lication of this kind was the Jahrbuch fur National Socialist seizure of power had
sexuelle Zwischenstufen, edited by obliterated the gay press in Germany
Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin from 1899 to proper. None of these early publications
1923.Modeled on an academic journal, the could appeal to a mass readership; most
Jahrbuch featured long and sometimes existed in the shadows of the world of
ponderous articles abounding in footnotes journalism, dreading the intervention of
and learned references; it also carried a the authorities under one pretext or an-
remarkable annual bibliography of new other, as the sacred freedom of the press