Tardieu
Diagnoses "Pederasty"
France, 1857 - Ambroise Tardieu (1818-1879) published Etude
medical-legale sur les attentats aux moeurs (Medico-legal studies on offenses against
public decency) in which he described the symptoms and diagnosis of "pederasty" (the then current term for male-male
sex). The Second Empire was a conservative time in France. The government was
dominated by a law-and-order attitude and a restriction on some freedoms (cross-dressing was criminalized, for example). Physicians, among them
Ambroise Tardieu, participated in this process by becoming involved in forensic medicine
with the intent of bringing medical influence to bear on legal issues and, some historians
have argued, in order to enhance the prestige and power of doctors.
Tardieu's Etude was read well into the 20th Century and did much
to define the prevailing view of "pederasts". In his study, Tardieu reported
male-male rape and he described pederasts as especially prone to criminality, though to
his credit, he recognized that they were as often the victims as the perpetrators of
crime.
In keeping with his conservative times, Tardieu classified sexual desire
as either focused on the same or the opposite sex, in an apparent effort to
de-legitimize
the amorphous sexual libertinism which had flowered in France before the Second Empire. He
further classified pederasts as either true pederasts who desired other men or as tante
who really preferred women, but would engage in sodomy for money, or out of desperation
when in prison. True pederasts were further divided into active or passive, depending on
their preferred role in anal intercourse.
While he was primarily a classifier and a clinician, he guessed that
pederasty probably was caused by seduction and sexual debauchery. He applied his clinical
skills to distinguishing pederasts from the healthy population. Tardieu claimed to have
examined over 200 pederasts, and found physical signs that distinguished them from others.
Most notably, the active pederast had either a long skinny penis (like a dog) or a tapered
penis which nicely fit the passive pederast's funnel shaped anus. He was so sure of his
ability to physically identify pederasts that he served as a medical expert on the subject
in the courts. He didn't spare masturbators either: He claimed to have observed that they
suffer from club-shaped penises.
Tardieu's Impact
As absurd as it sounds today, Tardieu's work was taken seriously by his
contemporaries. Some courts even allowed medical testimony about "pederastic"
penises into evidence. In his History of Sexuality, Volume 1 the late
philosopher Michel Foucault recognized Tardieu as a pioneer in the process of the
medicalization of sex between men. Instead of
condemning "pederasts" as sinners, Tardieu claimed to have scientifically
determined that they are sick and that their bizarre penises prove it.
Sources and Further Reading
Foucault, Michel, 1978. The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An
Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon.
Mendes-Leite, Rommel, 1993. "Introduction: 'It's Only a Word'"
in Journal of the History of Sexuality, v.25 nos. 1 and 2.
Peniston, William, 1996. "Love and Death in Gay Paris: Homosexuality
and Criminality in the 1870s" in Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant Ragan, eds., 1996. Homosexuality
in Modern France. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rosario, Vernon, 1996. "Pointy Penises, Fashion Crimes, and
Hysterical Mollies: The Pederasts Inversions" in Merrick and Ragan's Homosexuality
in Modern France.
Thompson, Victoria, 1996. "Creating Boundaries: Homosexuality and the
Changing Social Order in France, 1830-1870". in Merrick and Ragan's Homosexuality
in Modern France.
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© 1998
Andrew Wikholm
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