queer masculinities

Theo van der Meer: Holland 69
between that populace and sodomites were still rather flimsy yet in the
course of the eighteenth century more recognizable features were given
to sodomites. 46
Remarkably absent from most of these publications in 1730, were
references to the effeminate appearance of sodomites, despite the fact
that trial records from that year show that effeminacy was wide spread
among sodomites. Perhaps the absence of such references was due to
the fact that traditionally, and, despite everything that happened, also
in the literature of a major part of the eighteenth century, effeminacy
was a hallmark of a womanizer, the fop and also of an upper-class libertine,
not of a sodomite. 47
Nonetheless, the discourses that had begun in 1730 soon made the
effeminacy of sodomites its central focus and in the 1750s effeminacy
became the hallmark of the sodomite. ‘One could recognize those
folks,’ a young man who had prostituted himself said in 1752, ‘because
there does not grow a beard on their cheeks, that their eyes are
whorish, their speech is drawling and their movement wriggling.’ 48 A
decade later, a jurist wrote in a similar fashion that sodomy resulted in
‘that effeminate posture, that drawsy eye, those whorish cheeks which
one clearly observes in all those inhuman humans and which in some
even affects their speech.’ 49 Besides, when at first desires were understood
to be mostly corporeal in a psychology that separated the mind
from the body, in the new discourse mind and body became united.
Homosexual behavior became as much attributed to inner proclivities
as to corporeal desires. If anything, it turned sodomites into a recognizable
species, as the same jurist made clear: ‘if the eye is the mirror of
the soul and inner emotions intimate outwardly inner proclivities in
the face, so are those who without prejudice pay attention to physiognomy
not to be blamed.’ 50 While penal reformers in the Republic followed
Beccaria in his objections to the death penalty, in the case of
sodomy they required severe punishments that would stress the gender
deviance of the culprits. Most of these reformers came up with suggestions
such as next to having them incarcerated in women’s prisons,
flogging sodomites while they were dressed as women, and having
them occasionally shown to the public in that attire. 51
Thus, the discourse also created a new psychology that fitted the
emerging ‘modern’ individual. Both inwardly and outwardly,
sodomites were thought to be like women, yet not like any woman.
After all, there was still the effeminate womanizer, who needed to be
distinguished from the sodomite. Sodomites, were like whores, like
lewd women, that despicable species, who had given up their chastity.