Reappraising the Queer Falsetto. Magnus Hirschfeld, Sexology, and the Gendered Vocality of Gay “Men”, 1900–1914

Abstract

Filling a gap in falsetto history, this article unearths several mentions of male high-voice singing in Berlin’s homosexual subculture before World War I. Using the theories of the physician and liberationist activist Magnus Hirschfeld, a contemporary medical explanation for this phenomenon is discussed, especially with regard to Hirschfeld’s attitudes towards the singers’ gendered and queered bodies. His medical approach, which reinforces the singers’ performative agencies, is brought into conversation with more (post-)modern ideas of queer theory and voice studies, the concepts of embodiment, medicine, and gender providing for interesting points of contact between the two.