The Masculinists and the Birth of Bisexual Politics in Germany, 1890–1945

Abstract: This article argues that the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German movement for gay emancipation—subsequently credited as the birthplace of the “modern homosexual”—was shaped by a debate between those who believed they were arguing on behalf of an oppressed minority, and those who believed they were arguing for recognition of the ostensible fact that all men were potentially bisexual. The German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld believed that the best argument for gay emancipation was an argument from minority rights. He harbored skepticism that bisexuals could be effective partners in that movement in part because of his own interactions with men who preferred the theory of universal bisexuality. This article investigates those men, often called the “masculinists,” who reacted furiously to Hirschfeld’s minoritarian position and forwarded their own vision of an explicitly anti-feminist and profoundly hierarchical “bisexual politics.” Recognizing the masculinists’ vision of “bisexual politics” and the conflicts it inspired in the first half of the twentieth century suggests part of why bisexuality was difficult to incorporate into subsequent movements for gay emancipation.