When most people talk about the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany, they think of gay men. Actually, gay men were "marked" with a pink triangle to signify their social outcast. But what about lesbians? Did you know that lesbians were grouped with other "anti-socials"? Learn why lesbians wear the black triangles.News: Israel Remembers Gay Holocaust Victims
Gay History: Why the Pink Triangle?
Nazi Germany: Was Hitler Gay?
Modern Germany: Secret Database Still Kept on Gays
I don’t mean this as an insult to my Lesbian friends, but there really isn’t much, if any, evidence to show that Lesbians were targeted by the Nazi’s and forced to wear the Black Triangle of “anti-socials” (Usually given to hardened criminals). The Nazi’s targeted Gay men–and even then focused on German (or sufficiently ‘Aryan’ European) men because of their twisted racial ideas. Generally, they let be non-German Gay men following the logic that, ‘Homosexuals weaken a race, and we want other races weakened.’ As for Lesbians, during the very early years (up to 1934 or so) Gay bars were raided, and Lesbians bars closed but few arrests were made. While we read secondhand accounts of Lesbians and the black triangle in the community, and in women’s studies classes…historians rarely mention it. Anti-Lesbian bias? No. There simply aren’t any accounts to support the Nazi’s targeting Lesbians, nor surviving eye-witness testimonies to support the claim.
It is often argued that Lesbians were not targeted as such, but charged with other crimes (like prostitution). While this may have been the case, and probably happened in some instances, it appears to be speculation. In Nazi Germany, women were second-class citizens; baby-making was their job, and their sexuality was simply not considered. It was alien to the Nazi imagination that a German woman could be Lesbian, indicated by the fact that there was no law in place prohibiting Lesbian sexuality.
While it’s important to remember all those who suffered under the Nazi’s, Lesbians were not as a group targeted as subjects of “Racial Hygiene.” The Black Triangle simply does not speak to the Lesbian experience of persecution in Nazi Germany, though I think more work needs to be done on the specific kind of suffering German Lesbians did in fact experience outside of the camps (forced marriages, secret lives, etc). But to claim the black triangle of people who were sent to the camps as a Lesbian symbol has about as much historical weight as a modern Metrosexual wearing the pink triangle because a handful of effeminate straight men may have been identified as Gay men and sent to the camps. It strikes of bandwagoning of the most distasteful variety.
-aks
Portland OR