infamous letter that Engels sent Marx which supposedly proves his homophobia
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https://joanofmark.blogspot.com/2009/11/regarding-infamous-letter-that-engels.html
News And letter also published an articles on Queer notes indicating that Engels was sexist and against homosexuality, and there are not evidences about that, they only cite Engels book on the Family, Private Property and the State
* Even one of the foremost proponents of the “Homophobic Engels” theory admits that the work, which Marx and Engels were discussing in their letter above, was precisely the pamphlet, Incubus, and not one of Ulrich’s other works on the actual theory of Urning (see below).
So Engels made crude jokes about male homosexuality that might have gone down well in the gentleman’s club he frequented when he worked in Manchester and were probably echoed in working men’s clubs up and down the country.
So what? Does that invalidate his writings on politics, economics and history? At the time — and for many decades after — most people were against it. I am sure Darwin would have been and I dare say Einstein too. Are their scientific findings to be rejected too? It’s a classic ad hominem argument.
Even as late as 1953 C. L. R. James (who I think was associated with News and Letters) in his book on the author of Moby Dick Herman Melville, Mariners, Renegades and Castaways, saw homosexuality as a vice of a degenerate ruling class.
Even Blacks and white standing up comedians make crude jokes on themselves, and the Mexican Americans comedian George Lopez and Paul Rodriguez make a lot of jokes about the Mexican living in Los Angeles, and the audiences laugh about it
Many Stalinist groups did not admit homosexuals in their membership because it was considered a degeneration of the ‘petty bourgeois class” and they might become internal spies or talk about the internal affairs to any man.
Marxist humanists have rejected Engels book on Lewis Morgan, but they do not see the important anthropological contents of the book, one expression is enough to reject the whole research on the family, the state and private property and they call it Engels legacy only, but Marx and Engels wrote several books together, and they have questioned Engels publication of volume 2 and 3 of Capital, but the daughter of Marx, Eleanor Marx asked him to compiled all the manuscripts left by her father
Most of these groups believe that we are going to liberate ourselves based on race, gender, ethnic groups and sexual orientation, the Jewish Question written by Marx clearly indicate that we are going to liberate ourselves as human beings, and we are not exploited based on race, sex, or sexual orientation, we are exploited as a class, at the point of production we are economical exploited as members of the working class
Some writers have viewed Marx as an anti semitic because an expression that he used on the Jewish Question, and they missed all the other important aspects of the book regarding the liberation of the Jews, Christians, Muslim, as integral part of mankind
That’s not the impression George Orwell had of the ILP of which he was a member for a while. This is what he writes of them in The Road to Wigan Pier:
“One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.
One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus.
The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured ‘Socialists’, as who should say, ‘Red Indians’. He was probably right–the I.L.P. were holding their summer school at Letchworth.”Your old dad must have been the odd one out if he didn’t wear sandals.
I don’t think there was even a word for same sex desire before the 1870s. Was it Magnus Hirschfeld who invented the word Homosexual? Or Edward Carpenter or someone. I wonder if there will be more or less same sex love in Socialism. Maybe a free for all.
https://kevin-anderson.com/wp-content/uploads/anderson-article-unkown-marx-capital.pdf
This is another rejection of Engels, the obsession with the French version of Das Capital. The best translation of Das Capital has been done in Spain ( and Mexico ) by Siglos XXI, Editorial Grijalbo, and Fondo de Cultura Economica, and they have used all the versions of Das Capital and they are good experienced translators, and they are saying that the French edition is incomplete and it is not as good as the German version.
” I don’t think there was even a word for same sex desire before the 1870s.”
*****
I think lesbians used to be called Sapphists, after the poet of Lesbos.
“Pederast” was a word too. And of course “sodomite”, which is very old. 18th century use included “catamite” and “tribade.”
Homosexuality was a topic that existed during the time of the Greek and the Roman. Some historians are saying that there was a homosexual relationship between David and Jonathan, but probably it was just a friendship
Greek and Roman morality was homosexual. Women were for reproduction purposes.
The Lovers’ Battalion of Thebes was composed of men who were lovers, and was the front line force in war, since it was reasoned they would fight more ferociously to protect one another.
It was more or less required in all Greek city states that mature men would have catamites: young boys who were both students of the elder’s philosophy and also his lover.
Were David and Jonathan real?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/29/in-search-of-king-davids-lost-empireThe Hebrews were again oddities, with their Unknown God and their anti-sodomy.
I don’t know who thought it up but “homophobia” is an absurd word. Both its parts are wrong or misleading.
If “homo” comes from Greek, like “phobia”, it means “same”. So “homophobia” would mean “fear of the same”, the exact opposite of what it is intended to mean.
If “homo” comes from the Latin it means “human”. So “homophobia” would mean “fear of other humans”. Some people do suffer from this but psychiatrists call it “anthropophobia”.
“Phobia” means “fear” in Greek but psychiatrists use it to mean an irrational or obsessive fear of something, as in “acrophobia” (fear of open spaces) or “arachnophobia” (fear of spiders).
So “phobia” is not the right ending as those who don’t like or want to discriminate against those who engage in homosexual behaviour don’t (at least most of them don’t) have a morbid fear of them. The same applies to “Islamophobia”, “Germanphonia”, “transphobia”, etc.
But, as linguistic conservatives on this forum are always being reminded, language changes and words whatever their etymology come to mean how they are used. So we are lumbered with “homophobia” to describe dislike of homosexuals (or is it dislike of homosexual behaviour by anybody?).
In any case, whatever it is called, it is something to be opposed and instances called out, as today generally is the case in Europe and parts of the USA where what consenting adults do is up to them. As it should be.
” So we are lumbered with “homophobia” to describe dislike of homosexuals (or is it dislike of homosexual behaviour by anybody?).”
*****
Or, instead of being lumbered, you can make up your own words, as Nicolas Restif did, and as I often do (although I like to choose the archaic. It still annoys people, which I like to do. Especially professors).
Both terms, homosexuality and homophobia are incorrect, heterosexuals feared to be called gay
But now we cannot use the word gay in its original sense without qualification.
For instance, when quoting the troubadours calling their music the gay science, one has to qualify whilst others stupidly chuckle at you, and adults are turned into giggling children.And since “homo” means man, and not men and women, homosexual is a perfectly good word for males who desire other males, whereas Sapphist is good for women who desire women. (The inhabitants of Lesbos today have lost their geographical pronoun and also their adjective – which the Pride folk, normally very defensive of pronouns, have no sympathy with at all. Of course, there will also be lesbian Lesbians, but most Lesbians are not lesbians). 😀
Ain’t language a hoot?
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