Modernising Sexualities: Towards a Socio-Historical Understanding of Sexualities in the Swiss Nation (review)

Modernising Sexualities analyzes the history of the criminalization of homosexuality in Switzerland as compared to other European countries. In examining discourses on same-sex desire and intimacy in Switzerland between the years 1890 and 1937 Gerodetti gives the reader a thorough view of Swiss discussions about the age of consent, the moral deterioration of cities, the protection of youth, and, not least, the ways in which feminists engaged with debates on sexuality.

Theoretically, she follows the work of Michel Foucault, Jeffrey Weeks, and Steven Seidman. Gerodetti uses their work critically, however. Especially where their work is insensitive toward issues of sex and gender, Gerodetti delivers a nuanced contribution to the historiography of sexuality. In those sections where she approaches the historiography of sexuality with a gendered perspective her analysis is fascinating. One of those subtle reinterpretations, for instance, is her examination of the concept "sexual freedom." Bypassing the classical historiography on sexuality, she shows how whereas nowadays sexual freedom is understood as a freedom to engage in sexual encounters, at the turn of the twentieth century sexual freedom was understood as a freedom from sexual encounters (57).

If anything, Gerodetti approaches sexuality and corresponding notions as an "empirical philosopher." She is in constant search of historical understandings for such concepts as sodomy, uranism, inversion, and homosexuality. Through her study of parliamentary discussions on the penalization of "unnatural indecency" she shows that the concept of "homosexuality" is anything but transhistorical. Contemporary legislators in Switzerland discussed same-sex acts, which incorporated homosexuality as only one form, since bisexuality and pseudohomosexuality were delineated as well. The latter was seen as the real danger to society (77–78). Furthermore, Gerodetti shows how different groups in the Swiss society linked the state's concerns with sexuality in different manners. Catholic conservatives linked sexuality and the state through "the family," which had to be protected against the danger of same-sex acts. Other groups linked the two with sexual and moral hygiene arguments, arguments concerned with the protection of young people and arguments about the degeneration of the nation (87).

Female same-sex desire and intimacy are discussed mainly through postwar literature on its penalization. Unfortunately, Gerodetti fails to corroborate the perception of female sexuality as "passive" in the years despite her scrutiny of the primary sources (78–81, 85). Still, the thematic manner in which she unfolds the involvement of different actors within the debate justifies the description of her book as a gendered analysis. She touches upon both the themes of the protection of the youth against seduction and of the involvement of women's social purity movements in discussions of criminalization.

Gerodetti does leave the reader with unanswered questions, however. Although she firmly places her analysis of the Swiss debate within a European context, it is puzzling why she left out the German history of National Socialist amendments to the criminalization of homosexuality in the 1930s. After all, she does mention legal changes in Vichy era France toward same-sex acts and the fact that Basel became a haven for homosexuals during the persecutions of World War II (respectively, 64 and 90).

In contrast, the peculiar forms of direct democracy in Switzerland are discussed in some detail. She mindfully shows the way in which discussions of the criminalization of same-sex acts dragged on for dozens of years and involved all sorts of representations of Swiss professional associations and social purity organizations. Yet we are not told whether this direct form of democracy was used in other instances, and we are not informed about the regularity with which parliamentary debates were stalled because of democratic involvement.

Furthermore, by focusing upon one of the subsections of the criminal code, that of Verbrechen gegen die Sittlichkeit (crimes against morality), namely, the subsection dealing with same-sex acts, called Verbrechen auf die geschlechtliche Freiheit und Ehre (crimes of sexual license and honor), she bypasses the wider...