VARJOELÄMÄÄ JA JULKISIA SALAISUUKSIA.

Abstract

Suomalaisen homoseksuaalisuuden sosiaalihistoria kertoo paitsi piilossa eläneiden, salaa seurustelleiden ja huolta kantaneiden ihmisten tarinoita, myös hellästi rakastuneiden, avoimesti yhdessä asuneiden ja seksuaalisuuttaan juhlistaneiden suomalaisten naisten ja miesten tarinoita. Sotienjälkeisessä Suomessa kansalaisia varoitettiin siitä, että vaarallinen ruotsalaistauti uhkasi avata vankilan portit joka miehelle. Naistenkin oli parasta unohtaa poikamaisuutensa ja siirtyä suosiolla avioliiton satamaan. Sama viesti toistui myös paikallisesti, ihmisten välisessä kanssakäymisessä, kun juorut sellaisista naisista ja miehistä tekivät eroa hyväksyttävän ja paheksuttavan välillä. Homoseksuaalisesti tunteville ihmisille 1950- ja 60-luku oli siksi aikaa, jolloin omat tunteet ja teot oli syytä kätkeä visusti. Nyt he kertovat hauskoja ja koskettavia tarinoita siitä, millaisia tuohon aikaan olivat homoseksuaalisiksi uskotut henkilöt tai millaista oli tajuta omat homoseksuaaliset tunteensa ja silti, paheksunnasta ja ilmitulon pelosta huolimatta, elää urheasti omaa elämäänsä. Tuula Juvonen kirjoittaa näkyville rintamakertomuksista elokuviin, aviovuoteista puistoihin ja ravintoloihin, sekä skandaalilehdistöstä henkilökohtaisiin haastatteluihin ulottuvassa analyysissä vaiettua ja unohdettua rakkauden politiikkaa.

Shadow lives and public secrets. The construction of homosexuality in post-World War II Finland (in Finnish: Varjoelämää ja julkisia salaisuuksia. Homoseksuaalisuuden rakentuminen sotienjälkeisessä Suomessa)

Much of research on lesbian and gay history has been studies about coming out in metropolitan cities. This has coloured our understanding about homosexuality to the extent that homosexuality is understood to be an urban phenomena. This doctoral dissertation, rooted in social sciences, departs along with some recent critical studies from such urban and post-Stonewall assumptions. Instead, it focuses on the aspect of how the concept of homosexuality and the way of life associated with it has been produced from the expressions of same sex interests. In this case the process has been studied in the Finland of the 1950s and '60s, at a time when homosexual deeds, committed by either women or men, were still illegal and urbanisation was just gaining momentum due to the post-war reconstruction as exemplified by Tampere, an industrial town with a growing population of 100 to 125,000.

The discursive analysis used in the study leans theoretically on anti-essentialist readings of Michel Foucault's genealogy and Judith Butler's ideas on performativity. The queer theory perspective applied here allows us to follow how the formation of heteronormative public opinions about homosexuality created different positions and places of identification for both heterosexual and homosexual people.

The homosexual imagery in scandal papers and adult magazines revolved around dangerous and sick homosexual males whose prying on innocent young men jeopardised the health and well-being of the Finnish men. Such vice was often displaced from proper Finnish masculinity by connecting it with Swedishness or with effeminacy and artistic qualities, while female homosexuality was simply bypassed. The same imagery was also reiterated in post-war Finnish films. This simplified negative public view about homosexuality started to crack, however, when one of the most popular scandal magazines started to publish interviews with homosexually identifying men and women in the late 1960s.

The cracks become evident also when we look at same sex intimacy on a local level. The town gossip about "known" or assumed homosexual men and women took up some of the attitudes passed on in the papers, yet it was also combined both with curiosity and sometimes even with admiration. However, neither malicious gossip nor the notorious scandal papers encouraged the identification with homosexuality for young men and women, who were wondering about their queer feelings. Often the young ones were also held captive by the otherwise persistent silence and ignorance about homosexuality, obvious also in the fact that homosexuality was traded off as a secret, even if occasionally a public one.

Nevertheless, some women and men managed to find like-minded companions in Tampere and they created a life in which they could incorporate their homosexual feelings and deeds. Along with flings and long-term relationships it was not uncommon that homosexuality was lived out via extra-marital relationships. For women same-sex relationships started most likely by luck, since there were no "known" places for homosexual women to gather. Men, for their part, could use the hints provided by scandal papers and find other men in certain places where the men led their "shadow lives", such as parks, public toilets or restaurants. Such places also offered some of the men possibilities for homosexual identification something the women were lacking at that time.

It is obvious that there was no single homosexuality in the 1950s and '60s Tampere, but several, depending on the sources used and the gender one is looking at. Scandal papers, adult magazines and films were not talking about the same homosexuality as the court documents. Homosexuality was again different in the reminiscences of heterosexual informants, whose homosexuality was in turn different from that told by such informants who had led homosexual lives themselves regardless of how the interviewed women and men themselves identified their sexuality.

"Swedishness", artistry and male effeminacy were some homosexual possibilities provided for men. Two coupled women were most likely considered to be friends also when one of the partners was showing female masculinity and the other a more feminine appearance. Homosexual possibilities were always imbedded in a heteronormative frame and marked as the Other or as a lesser or a non-option. Especially for women the ignorance about homosexuality meant that they might have thought of themselves as having been born into a wrong body when they desired other women. Many women, as well as men, also married at that time in lack of viable options.

In Finland the virtual silence about female homosexuality and the imagery of abjected male homosexuality helped to reconstruct the dented and confused heterosexual masculinity after a lost war. It is amazing, however, how diligently these homosexualities, which were created in the specific situation of the 1950s and '60s, are still reiterated today. Their strong privileging of heterosexuality and masculinity indicates how intrinsic the fragility of such binary oppositions is.