'Terzo sesso e democrazia' (`The Third Sex and Democracy') is a third article by
J. Evola on the question of homosexuality. It was published in the paper 'Il
Borghese' in August 1968, at the time of the 'Brianbanti case'. Briabanti, a
leftist intellectual, was condemned to nine years imprisonment for 'plagiarism',
that is for having "submitted physically and psychically" two boys, a crime
earlier introduced in Italian criminal law by Fascism
(http://gnosis.aisi.gov.it/Gnosis/Rivista27.nsf/ServNavig/28) ; Italian
intellectuals and civil libertarians all fought against his conviction ; it was
the first time in Italian history that these advocated as a whole for homosexual
issues.
`Terzo sesso e democrazia' is, so to speak, the first draft of `Il Terzo sesso'
(`The Third Sex') "Some ideas, J. Evola asserts wittily in the former, with
reference to homosexual issues, are like bacteria, like microbes ; it is as
legitimate to neutralise them as it is legitimate to take preventive
prophylactic measures in the field of diseases. The fact that homosexuality is
not considered as a crime in our ('Roman') penal code and that therefore the
propagandising of homosexuality is not a crime either is fair. But, beyond the
penal and juridical sphere, the aforementioned preventive measures remain
entirely valid." On the basis of these premises, the claim that they could be
applied successfully only to the second of the two forms of homosexuality
distinguished in a sexological way in `Metaphysics of sex', that is, that "which
has an acquired character and is conditioned by psychological and sociological
factors influenced by a person's environment", in short, that which is due to
"constitutional mutations", and not to that, far less widespread, which has an
inborn character, is consistent.
Leaving aside that the line between repression and prophylaxis is arguably quite
thin, it should be stressed that J. Evola did not actually reject a priori
coercive measures against the former type of homosexuals : the coercion which is
considered nonsensical by J. Evola is the socially- and moralistically based
one. Drawing on the metaphor he uses to make his point, it could be said that
the only way to hold sand in one's hand without it slipping through one's
fingers is to scoop it with dampened fingers.
No matter how efficient prophylactic measures might be, "it would be necessary,
he writes in `Il Terzo sesso', to move to the plane of root causes, of which all
the rest, in all areas… is only a consequence, and, once there, to act at the
source, to cause a fundamental change. This means that the whole thing should be
based on an overcoming of the current civilisation and society, on the
restoration of a differentiated, organic, well-structured type of social
organisation through the agency of a living formative central force", a
restoration which he deems utopian under the current democratic conditions,
since ""democracy" is not a mere political and social fact : it is a general
climate which cannot but have regressive consequences on the existential level
itself in the long run." As hinted at by studies such as that which was
published a few years ago by K. MacDonald on the influential writings of the
so-called Frankfurt School, the relentless promotion of homosexuality through
more or less subtle psychological and cultural `media' since the 1950's,
especially among male children in western countries, is precisely a key factor
in the fabrication of this general environment, in which one of the most
insidious forms of homosexualisation, of what may be called, on the social
plane, a dissemination of homosexuality and, on the individual plane, an
insemination of homosexuality is the increasing commercial oestrogenisation of
food, water - music - and the feminisation of young White males through the
various chemicals found in plastic, itself a derivative of oil, a substance
whose oxymoric nickname (`black gold') can hardly hide an actual antipodal
inversion of VALUES to qualified observers who are increasingly aware that it is
largely through the commercial, financial, and also concrete use of this
substance that feminine races have been able to take full control of what may
have been then of the traditional patriarchal spiritual, political, and social
system and world-view, after "2000" years of Judeo-Christianity.
--- In evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, "emmanuelparapine" <emmanuelparapine@...>
wrote:
>
> If homosexuality, as the union of two beings sharing the same sexual
characteristics, is theorically contrary to the vision of Evola, in which sex
takes the shape of a tension between two opposite poles (masculine and
feminine), we know that his refusal to reduct gender to a mere biological
subject may introduce some subtleties. As far as I know, Evola twice elaborated
on this point : in "Metaphysics of sex" (in an appendix at the end of the second
chapter - pp. 62-66) and in "L'arc et la massue" (the bow and the club), in the
third chapter, entitled "le troisième sexe" (the third sex). Please don't
hesitate to mention any text that might remain unknown to me.
>
> In "Metaphysics of sex", he begins by reminding Plato's distinction between :
>
> - „Aphrodite Urania" (the „goddess of a noble love which is not carnal and not
concerned by procreation" or the arousal provoked by „incorporeal beauty not
linked to any particular person ; divine beauty in an abstract sense"). After
Evola, there is „no real problem if the accidental starting point is a being of
the same sex".
> - Aphrodite Pandemia or the carnal side of eros. Evola remains that pederasty
in ancient Greece, while being „uranic" in its beginning, became carnal during
the time of decay.
>
> Evola rightly rejects Plato's application of the myth of the hermaphrodite to
homosexuality because „the mythical being of our origin would, in such a case,
have not to be hermaphroditic but homogeneous and of one sex only […] Thus, the
essential [...] loses its meaning, namely, the idea of the polarity and the
complementary nature of the two sexes as the basis of the magnetism of love and
of a transcendency in eros, and of the blinding and destructive revelation of
the One."
>
> Then, he differenciates between an inborn, natural homosexuality and an
acquired one. He links the first one (as would do Weininger) to an incompletion
of sexual development (on biological and psychic levels) : „In that way, the
original bisexual nature is surpassed in a lesser extent than in a „normal"
being, the characteristics of one sex not being predominant over those of the
other sex to the same extent".
>
> But „intermediate sexual forms" nowadays are also likely to derive from the
contemporary egalitarianist and materialistic environment, leading to
neutralization and undifferentiation, and then to the constitution of a „third
sex". The problems of manly homosexuals remains, and according to Evola, „such
homosexuality is hard to explain". However, „there is reason to suppose that it
is merely a matter of „mutual masturbation" and that the conditioned reflexes
are exploited for „pleasure"". Concerning ancient homosexuality, when men had
sex both with women and „epheboi", Evola links it to a simple „desire to try
everything". After distinguishing between hermaphroditic wholeness (which „can
only be sufficiency") and „the pederast who acts both like a man and a woman
sexually", he finally concludes by sustaining that when homosexuality does not
come from an incomplete level of sexual development, it is necessarily a
pathological deviation caused by a „displacement of eros".
>
> What we could logically conclude after this reading is that according to
Evola, homosexuals are either subhumans (incomplete beings by nature who can not
access to the superior, transcendental dimension of sex) or perverts.
>
> But the problem is that in the third chapter „L'arco e la claca", while making
similar statements, Evola sustains that „stigmatise homosexuality as a
corruption is nonsense (because for beings like those we have spoken about,
so-called „natural" intercourses would not be natural, but countrary to their
own nature". Here, in my opinion, Evola fails to consider that „nature" doesn't
design the mere existence of something in the earthly world, but its connection
to normality (the natural order, the normal way the things are in a normal
world), which is here sexual attraction between the two opposite sexes (the only
one which permit procreation and which give an access to the superior dimension
of sex). However, by stating that no repressive policy has a chance to succeed
without getting meanwhile to the primary causes by questioning egalitarianism,
democracy and so on, he is obviously right. More dubious is to me his rejection
of the principle of a repression.
>