by Mario Mieli
'Towards a Gay Communism' was originally the last chapter of Mario Mieli's book 'Homosexuality & Liberation — Elements of a gay critique', first published in Italy as 'Elementi di critica omosessuale' [Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1977]. An English translation of the entire book was made by David Fernbach [London: Gay Men's Press, 1980]. The same year this chapter was reprinted as a pamphlet [London: pirate productions, 1980]
Mario Mieli (1952-1983) was a student in London at the start of the 1970's during which time he took an active part in the London Gay Liberation Front. On his return to Italy he helped found Fuori! (Come Out!), both a collective and a magazine. He was active in the Italian revolutionary gay movement until his suicide in 1983. 'Elementi di critica omosessuale' was published in 1977. Since his death an autobigraphical novel "Il risveglio dei faraoni" [Milan : Cooperativa Colibrì, 1994], and an anthology of unpublished writings, interviews and tributes "Oro, Eros e Armonia" edited by Gianpaolo Silvestri and Antonio Veneziani [Rome: Fabio Croce Editore, 2002], have been published. There was also an anthology of writings from Fuori! — "La politica del corpo", edited by Angelo Pezzana [Rome: Savelli, 1976].
Short biographical notes (in Italian) can be found at :
The latter piece is on the website of the Circolo di Cultura Omosessuale "Mario Mieli" founded after his death.
A short chronology of the Italian Gay Movement in the 1970's and 80's (in Italian) can be found at :
Despite the fact that there are several publications in circulation at the moment which detail the intensity of the 'Italian Situation', from the 'hot autumn' of '69 to the present, precious little is known in the revolutionary movement about the Italian Gay Movement during this period. In fact, while these publications analyse the involvement of specific groups (women, immigrants, marginalised sectors, etc.) only scant reference is made to the Gay Movement. Oversight or not, we still remain quite ignorant of gays in Italy. So when Mario Mieli's book 'Homosexuality and Liberation' was published in Britain ('Towards a Gay Communism' is a chapter taken from this book) it was a pleasant surprise.
Although the Italian and British Gay movements share a similar history, the radical stance that the British section had taken more or less died out after 1973 with the demise of the GLF. The Italian section on the other hand, was able to retain its original character and developed its own ideas, being far more influenced by psychoanalysis and Marxism. Mieli draws on both these influences to provide an interlocking framework for investigating the effects of institutionalised heterosexuality over society which go further than just creating specific problems for gay people. Mieli transposes the argument to demonstrate that homosexuality holds a principle position and that its liberation is an integral and indispensable part of a much wider emancipation. But no sleight of hand or juggling of theoretical schema's merely to fit the argument, is used. Although there is a wideranging usage of theory this hasn't reduced the text to the level of mere metaphysical contemplation, since the theory has been nicely counter-balanced by Mieli's personal experience. The essay combines serious theoretical argument with a gay sensibility and humour. A critical introduction could be made but the limited space available here makes this impossible. We think it suffices to say that the positive aspects of the book far outweigh its shortcomings.
We decided to publish this section of the book for two reasons. Firstly though this chapter represents only 15% of the total length of the book, its relationship to the rest is largely synoptic and outlines the main arguments. Secondly though it says little of the Italian Gay Movement's history, it does indicate the ideas circulating within it. The fact that it is a damning condemnation of the conditions of sexual repression which revolutionaries grow up with but still (passively) reproduce, and that it's done from an explicitly gay perspective makes this, as reading material, quite unique.
In this new format Mieli's argument will hopefully be more accessible. The original book probably encouraged straight revolutionaries to shy away from it because the title is implicitly perverse.
It would be good if its republication generated some discussion — although we're not too optimistic about it. In any event however we remain in agreement with Mieli's basic message — Actions speak louder than words !
One or two of the concepts used in this article may not be familiar — particularly the terms 'trans-sexuality' and 'Schizophrenia' which Mieli uses in his opening paragraphs. We have thus put together the following extracts from Mieli's writing explaining these two concepts. In his use of the term 'Schizophrenia' Mieli is influenced by the Anti-Oedipus school of Anti-psychiatry.
« Today, of course, society as a whole is neurotic and schizoid. Capitalist ideology, phallocentric, heterosexual and Eurocentric, founds and constitutes the world view of one-dimensional man, homo normalis, the fetishistic vision of the human being alienated from himself, from the world and from others by the work of capital. Just like the habitual neurotic condition of people considered 'normal', so the whole logic of capitalism is schizoid. Dissociated or rather riven between ego and non-ego, res cogitans and res extensa, desire and 'non-desire', sense and intellect, public and private, unconscious and conscious, mechanical materialism and teleological spiritualism, this capitalist logic governs the insane equilibrium of the 'sane' individual, more or less adapted to the schizoid social system. (…) »
« Psychiatry often uses the terms 'schizoid' and 'schizophrenic' as synonyms. But if so-called 'normal' life is in fact itself dissociated and schizoid, then the 'schizophrenic' alteration of the process of association is far from being the dissociation it is said to be. It is rather a superior and deeper ability to grasp significant relationships between things and/or events that we normally define as connected only in a fortuitous way, or rather in a way that is obvious and banal. It is also a still more profound faculty to recognise the evident significance that is hidden in apparently casual relations. For this reason (despite the fact that there are undoubtedly certain 'borderline' cases), I use the terms 'schizoid' and 'schizophrenic' essentially in two opposite senses : the former as a synonym for 'normal', and to indicate the dissociated character of the commonly held vision of the world; the latter to denote the decidedly alternative and far less dissociated conception of the world which is customarily considered 'crazy'. (…) »
« ...to quote Wilhelm Reich :
The schizophrenic world mingles into one experience what is kept painstakingly separate in homo normalis. The 'well-adjusted' homo normalis is composed of exactly the same type of experiences as the schizophrenic. Depth psychiatry leaves no doubt about this. Homo normalis differs from the schizophrenic only in that these functions are differently arranged. He is a well-adjusted, 'socially minded' merchant or clerk during the day; he is orderly on the surface. He lives out his secondary, perverse drives when he leaves home and office to visit some faraway city, in occasional orgies of sadism or promiscuity. This is his 'middle layer' existence, clearly and sharply separated from the superficial veneer. He believes in the existence of a personal supernatural power and its opposite, the Devil and hell, in a third group of experiences which is again clearly and sharply delineated from the two others. These three basic groups do not mingle with one another. Homo normalis does not believe in God when he does some tricky business, a fact which is reprimanded as 'sinful' by the priests in Sunday sermons. Homo normalis does not believe in the Devil when he promotes some cause of science; he has no perversions where he is the supporter of his family; and he forgets his wife and children when he lets the Devil go free in a brothel. (Character Analysis, London 1955 p. 399). »
« Any 'normal' person, therefore, is a latent 'schizophrenic' just as much as a latent homosexual. But the manifest 'schizophrenic' experience is in the highest degree something different from the 'normal' everyday life : it reveals what we are 'in reality', the universal history concentrated in us, and the trans-sexual and communist potential with which we are pregnant. »
« Underlying the presence in every individual of an erotic trend directed towards persons of the same sex, psychoanalysis has established an infantile 'perverse' polymorphism. (…) Among the forces that inhibit and restrict the direction of the sexual drive are, above all, 'the structures of morality and authority erected by society'. The repressive society and the dominant morality consider only heterosexuality as 'normal' — and only genital heterosexuality at that. Society forces on children an educastration (…) the objective [of which] is the transformation of the infant, in tendency polymorphous and 'perverse', into a heterosexual adult, erotically mutilated but conforming to the Norm. »
« I shall use the term 'trans-sexuality' (…) to refer to the infantile polymorphous and 'undifferentiated' erotic disposition, which society suppresses and which, in adult life, every human being carries within him either in a latent state, or else confined in the depths of the unconscious under the yoke of repression. 'Transsexuality' seems to me the best word for expressing, at one and the same time, both the plurality of the erotic tendencies and the original and deep hermaphrodism of every individual. (…) ...we call 'transexuals' those adults who consciously live out their own hermaphrodism, and who recognise in themselves, in their body and mind, the presence of the 'opposite' sex. (…) Persecuted by a society that cannot accept any confusions between the sexes, they frequently tend to seduce their effective transsexuality to an apparent monosexuality, seeking to identify with the opposite 'normal' gender to their genital definition. Thus a female transexual feels herself a man, opting for the male gender role, while a male transexual feels himself a woman. (…) Society induces these manifest transexuals to feel monosexual and to conceal their real hermaphrodism. To tell the truth, however, this is exactly how society behaves with all of us. In fact we are all, deep down, transsexuals, we have all been transsexual infants, and we have been forced to identify with a specific monosexual role, masculine or feminine. In the case of manifest transexuals, or those rare persons who have not repressed their transexuality in growing up, the social constraint produces the opposite effect from what it does in 'normal' people, in as much as a male person tends to identify with the feminine role, and vice versa. As we shall see, manifest transexualism does not necessarily involve a propensity for homosexuality. There are many heterosexual transexuals. But when, for example, these are males who feel themselves to be women, but who also sexually desire other women, their heterosexuality is then, in a certain sense, homosexuality. Far from being particularly absurd, transexualism overthrows the present separate and counterposed categories of that sexuality considered 'normal', which it shows up, rather, as a ridiculous constraint. (…) »
« In conclusion, we can say that neither manifest homosexuality nor heterosexuality necessarily correspond to any specific mental, somatic, or hormonal characteristics; both the gay desire and the desire for the other sex are expressions of our underlying trans-sexual being, in tendency polymorphous, but constrained by oppression to adapt to a monosexuality that mutilates it. But the repressive society only considers one type of monosexuality as 'normal', the heterosexual kind, and imposes educastration with a view to maintaining an exclusively heterosexual conditioning. The Norm therefore, is heterosexual. »