Respectability’s edge: Transnational sex radical René Guyon

Abstract

The writings and life of French sex radical, René Guyon (1876–1963), offer a fascinating opportunity to examine together western European sexological thought, human rights movements, and imperial privilege in Asia. As one of France’s early promoters of sexual rights as a human right, Guyon revealed himself to be a radical advocate for sexual liberation from what he called the ‘hideous bondage of conventional “sexual morality”’ in Europe and America. From his residence in Siam, Guyon penned his magnum opus, Etudes d’éthiques sexueles, a series of nine volumes that he wrote between 1929 and 1944 in which he promoted all consensual sexual acts, regardless of one’s sex, age or race, within ‘ethical limitations.’ His law background earned him a high position in the Ministry of Justice in Siam, where he worked as a legal reformer and judge from 1908 until 1963. His 50-plus years of experience in Siam and sexual adventures in other non-western countries served as an unacknowledged springboard for his views and provided him invaluable credentials in the eyes of his western sexologist peers. I examine the relationships among his excoriation of western sexual mores, his concept of a sexual utopia, and his life experiences in Africa, Asia and other non-western areas of the world. An examination of the life of one of France’s first promoters of sexual rights reveals the fissures within nascent human rights movements in Europe and reflects on the implications of his peculiar defense of the non-western countries where he worked.