Private life and public morals: fascism and the ‘problem’ of homosexuality

Abstract

This article analyses the Fascist attitude towards homosexuals, the strategies and motivations for repressive actions taken against them, and the masculine canon and lifestyle that the Fascist regime tried to disseminate. The emphasis placed on sexual morality and virility permits the expansion of the research to the political use of accusations of ‘pederasty’; this tool was used in personal rivalries to gain positions of power, and proved useful in discrediting opponents or distancing inconvenient figures. The study also illustrates how a person’s private conduct tended to become a visible sign of ideological ‘faith’, and how conformity to the Fascist morality was indispensable in consolidating the meaning of party membership and the image of the ideal militant. As the totalitarian experiment progressed, the boundary between public and private spheres gradually thinned. However, disapproval of homosexuality was not always applied in practice. Individuals who led a double life, yet formally adhered to the standards of respectability, were able to elude the encroachment of politics and repressive actions in their lives. Homosexuality, in fact, was tolerated as long as it remained within the private sphere. Public reputation had to be safeguarded at all costs by concealing ‘unusual’ sexual inclinations within increasingly restricted milieu. Society was able to protect itself from the germ of pederasty by denying the existence of homosexuality, or by making it invisible. The analysis of this thorny relationship between public and private reveals the impact of the Fascist totalitarian experiment on customs and daily life, as well as the difficulties encountered by the regime in implementing its anthropological revolution of the Italian people.