queer masculinities

Michael Sibalis: France 221
Despite the tone of disgust evident in their reporting and in spite of the
formal harshness of the law, policemen almost never turned sodomites
over to the courts, except in the most unusual circumstances involving
abduction, rape or murder. The one (unexplained) exception is the case
of Jean Diot and Bruno Lenoir, two hapless wretches (both working-class)
burned by way of example in July 1750 after the night watch caught
them one evening having sex in the street. 51 Although the police had the
authority to deport to the colonies (a clergyman, intervening for the
release of his servant, arrested for sodomy in 1723, suggested: ‘If he does
it again, either burn him or ship him to the Mississippi’ 52 ), they applied
even this punishment rarely. They ordinarily detained an arrested pederast
for a period ranging from a week to several months, while releasing
others (generally nobles or those socially well connected) with no more
than a warning. In 1725, an inspector tried to arrest the Marquis de
Bressey in the Tuileries Gardens. The nobleman threatened to kill himself
because of the shame, invoked his social relations and generally made
such a fuss that the inspector let him off ‘so as not to be compelled to
[use] violence against a man of rank.’ 53 More ordinary men could win
release by giving up the names of other sodomites or by getting family,
friends, neighbors or employers to petition on their behalf. Foreigners
risked expulsion from France, clergymen might be reported to their superiors,
who often then transferred them to a distant parish, and repeat
offenders might be forcibly enrolled in the army or expelled from Paris
(which did not keep them from returning without authorization).
The sodomitical identity
The eighteenth-century sodomites tracked by the police undoubtedly
participated in a semi-clandestine subculture centred on the satisfaction
of their shared sexual inclinations. Whether or not they also
shared a distinct identity that set them apart from ‘normal’ men is more
problematic.
In his memoirs of Louis XIV’s court, Primi Visconti, Count de Saint-
Mayol (1648–1713), recounted how, in the mid-1670s, his friend, the
Marquis de la Vallière (1642–76), made a pass at him:
He approached me saying: ‘Monsieur, in Spain the monks [do it]; in
France, the grandees; in Italy, everybody.’ I pulled back, and I
replied jokingly that I was far from any such thought, that I was 25-
years-old and had a beard. He replied that Frenchmen of good taste
paid no attention either to age or to body hair; in short, it was not