Mieli writes on the abnormalisation of homosexuality within parent-child relationships, societal ideologies, and within the psychoanalytic field itself. Whilst Mieli critiques the homophobic interaction of ‘mainstream psychiatry’ with non-normative sexualities,[1] when it comes to Freudian ideas (of repression, the unconscious, and the universal potential for homosexual desire) Mieli endeavours to utilise psychoanalysis for the aforementioned liberation of homosexuality. He believes that heterosexual society engages purely within its hatred of its own homosexual repression,[2] and that we may deconstruct heteronormativity by turning its abnormalising gaze upon itself.

 

Mieli criticises the abnormalising viewpoint of psychoanalysis: that homosexuality is a response to heterosexuality, as an inversion of heterosexuality, instead of a normalising viewpoint: that heterosexuality and homosexuality are equally normal, as determinations of each other.[3] Inversion implies that there is something to be inverted from, and so we must explore where that predetermination of normal sexuality comes from. There is no preconceptual sexuality other than sexuality itself – whether this sexuality itself be named ‘transsexuality’, ‘bisexuality’, or whatever else. As we have already stated, Mieli appreciates Freud for not concretely casting homosexuality as the ‘aberration’ many other psychoanalysts do.[4] For instance, in ‘Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria’ Freud insists that there is much to say ‘about the infantile germs of perversion […] and about our predisposition towards bisexuality,’[5] or in ‘The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman’ where Freud can be quoted in saying, ‘in all of us, throughout life, the libido normally oscillates between male and female objects,’[6] among a great many other potential quotations of note. Nonetheless, Mieli critiques Freud for overlooking the reasons for which society ‘transform[ed] so radically its attitude towards homosexuality.’[7] Secondly, Mieli compares Freud with a few other heteronormative psychoanalysts, such as Ferenczi, who refuse to deny that there may be some form of congenital homosexuality despite believing that homosexuality is pathological.

 

Simply put, Freud lightly critiqued the idea that heterosexuality is not perverted – a criticism that Mieli develops through an analytic section of Towards, notwithstanding the abnormalisations within Freud at large. Mieli’s criticisms question Freud’s inactivity, his refusal to say anything specific in denying heteronormativity. In particular, when Freud states that he does not use perversion to mean immoral, he nonetheless names homosexuality as a perversion whereas heterosexuality is not – heterosexuality is merely a default sexuality, wherein perverted sexualities lie.[8] Referencing Freud’s ‘Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality’, Mieli explains that heterosexuality is only considered the ‘non-perverted’, moral outcome from childhood due to ‘repressive society and dominant morality.’[9] Heterosexuality is the only normal form of sexuality, and he emphasises: ‘only genital heterosexuality at that.’[10] Rather than aid homosexual liberation, psychoanalysis has ‘fomented illusions’ and ‘reinforced the prevailing ideology’ of heteronormativity – appointing all homosexuals as incorrectly formed, to have faltered through key stages in childhood.[11] Furthermore, Freud lacks any interest in discussing the ‘specific causes and mechanisms of’ the transformation into being homosexual, and if Freud believed that homosexuality is congenital – ‘there is clearly no sense in exploring its genesis.’ We must instead seek out the reasons for the repression of homosexuality in those who do not express it.[12] Mieli highlights the importance of understanding the relationship between subjects and their objects of desire as a whole – not merely towards homosexual relationships. He suggests that we perform an ‘all-round aetiological research,’ wherein we may find the reasons for homosexual persecution.[13] For Mieli, homosexuality is a repressed universality, and manifest homosexuals are somehow able to avoid this repression. We must therefore move on to discuss how Mieli iterates Freudian concepts. Analysis of the categorisation and typification of homosexuality/ies by psychoanalysis makes up a large part of Towards. Mieli utilises these categorisations to build on potential self-consciousness, or in understanding the validity of homosexuality, and so on.

 

One area of categorisation within homosexuality is the idea of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ homosexuality. This typification may be understood as reflecting traditional binary gender roles in heterosexual society,[14] onto the homosexual relationship, where there is thought to be a lack. There is also the definition of types of homosexuality through age,[15] through sexual interaction (whether you lick the anus, the clitoris, the penis; whether you suck on the penis with a part of your mouth or your whole mouth; whether you penetrate the introitus, the anus, the mouth (and with what); et cetera),[16] and through level of emotional connection.[17] There is also the concept of ‘emergency’ homosexuality, where people ‘resort’ to homosexuality due to there being no persons of the opposite sex in the vicinity – of course, for Mieli this is a form of latent homosexuality.[18] These and other categorisations, for some psychoanalysts such as Tullio Bazzi, determine whether you are a real homosexual or a pseudo-homosexual. According to Mieli, citing Bazzi’s ‘L’omosessualita e la psicoterapia’, a pseudo-homosexual  is a ‘masculine’ man who lusts for a ‘feminine’ man.[19] A real homosexual on the other hand is a ‘feminine’ man who lusts for a ‘masculine’ man – the positioning of the feminine being important, as when the ‘masculine’ man lusts for the ‘feminine’ man with a ‘feminine’ body, the relationship becomes impossible (because then surely the ‘masculine’ man would merely lust for a ‘woman’).[20] Mieli points out that this makes it impossible for there to be any real homosexual relationship, since the only real homosexual here is the female man,[21] a man who is not a man, who is therefore a woman or a non-binary gendered person. Mieli proposes that all men, therefore, are pseudo-homosexuals, as ‘the type of homosexual situation they define as “true” homosexuality is that which most closely resembles heterosexuality.’[22] The heterosexual man, a ‘masculine’ man, lusts for a ‘feminine’ figure. Mieli’s own definition of homosexuality is when ‘people of the same sex’ interact with ‘any kind of desire, act or relation’, taking care to include those who only occasionally or involuntarily interact in this way.[23] The problem with defining sexualities through terms of ‘the nature of the overt sexual relations,’ is that contemporary persons cannot necessarily understand this nature – owing to the heteronormative repression of sexuality.[24]

 

Not only do we here see a more complicated but nonetheless rigid layout of gender roles, we also see an application of ‘perversion’ to performances of gender – or in the very least, gendered performances. After all, one cannot choose which gender one is performing when one is sexually interacting in a cisheteronormative society, as Mieli states here, gender (and therefore sexuality) is enforced upon the person performing. Wherein cisnormativity situates itself as ‘normal’, devoid of ‘perversion’, and trans* people as ‘abnormal’ and ‘perverted’, we see a similar pattern. Cis gender, as we have already discussed, is regarded as the default gender – but we must not neglect that even within this normativity, there are ‘perversions’ of a sort: ‘tomboys’, ‘butch’ lesbians, ‘effeminate’ men, and so on. In fact, one might point out that there is always a ‘perversion’ in being cisgender (much as Freud states about heterosexuality): one is cisgender first, then some form of ‘different’ second – as consequence of one’s peculiarities in being cisgender, i.e., even the ‘masculine’ cisgender man is therefore a masculine man, rather than merely a man (though this is a simplification). The transgender person, therefore, is similar to the homosexual insofar as their being transgender is the perversion in consequence to cisnormativity. The transgender person is regarded as already ‘perverted’ for existing, forbidden to become any more ‘perverted’ in their gender – the transgender woman cannot be ‘masculine’, the transgender man cannot be ‘feminine’ – and it is important to note that, hence, we see a struggle to recognise non-binary trans* people, such as genderfluid, agender, and non-binary people.

 

Heteronormative society, Mieli states, suffers from ‘taboo sickness’, ‘neurosis’, or ‘paranoia’. In other words, heteronormative society is obsessed with the difference between heterosexuality and homosexuality. Where heterosexuality recreates itself as ‘not homosexual’, its ‘not homosexuality’ being reproduced in its educastrated generations.[25] It creates the fear of a person’s unconscious sexual desires that, for Mieli, are latent in all of us, homosexual or not.[26] Mieli adds that homosexual ‘neurosis’, as psychoanalysts such as Ferenczi call homosexuality, is purely a response to societal homophobia (or heterosexual ‘neurosis’), in which the homosexual is forced to repress themselves.[27] Mieli states that for Ferenczi to accept this, he would first need to accept the possibility of a happy homosexual.[28] The idea that homosexuality is ‘neurotic’, for Mieli, can be rebutted thus: instead of imagining one or the other, homosexuals or heterosexuals, ‘neurotic’ or ‘normal’, we can imagine the ‘neurotic’ as a person who is obsessed with their sexuality. The heterosexual that is obsessed with being heterosexual is, consciously or not, a ‘closet queen’ (a latent homosexual), and therefore sexually neurotic.[29] As psychoanalysts have repeatedly found homosexuality cannot be ‘cured’ by conversion therapy, the ‘cure’ for both the ‘neurotic’ hetero and homosexual is self-acceptance. Mieli suggests that ‘we homosexuals don’t suffer from “inversion” but from the social persecution perpetrated against us,’[30]  that ‘you can’t be cured of a disease that you haven’t got.’[31] It is the imposition of illness that is the illness itself, and if heteronormativity decides that homosexuality is a pathological illness, so too is heterosexuality. Indeed, the transgender person does not suffer from being transgender, but from living in a cisnormative society. The transgender person cannot be cured of their suffering, if that suffering is assumed to be being-transgender: they can only be cured of cisnormativity. The assumption that the cisgender person cannot suffer under the same area of oppression – under gender roles, dysphoria, and the alienation of gender exploration – may be a simplification of cis- and trans- gender itself.

 

In a heteronormative, ‘neurotic’ society, heterosexuality finds purpose in the damnation of homosexuality – for example, the response of the heteronormative individual to homosexuals may be ‘do not feel guilty that you’re different,’ or something such. Mieli, on this imposition that homosexuals must feel guilty as if their sexuality must impose guilt, writes that ‘they are blamed [guilt-tripped] by society,’ it does not come from within – as these heteronormative people believe.[32] This links back to the guilt complex stirred in the child as they are forced into educastration: Mieli continues, ‘many gays indulge in the fantasy of having the father system forgive sins that they have not in fact committed.’[33] Ultimately, we find that this guilt complex leads homosexual individuals to accept their abnormalisation in society if it will grant them society’s tolerance of their existence, society’s tolerance of their sins,[34] the acceptance of which we refer to as assimilation.  For the transgender individual, the guilt of being ‘different’ (of being transgender) is much the same: the guilt is presented as being ‘natural’ to the transgender person’s existence, despite any guilt that may arise being from cisnormative society. In much the same way as with homosexual guilt, we find once again that the guilt complex leads transgender individuals to not only accept but spread transphobia/abnormalisations amongst their own communities. We may see such effects in online transgender (transphobic) figures, such as Kalvin Garrah,[35] or in much less problematic but nonetheless harmful Othering tweets from celebrity academics such as Natalie Wynn, also known as ContraPoints.[36] The actions of these trans* figures are not to be analysed here, but the reaction within the trans* community must be: the acceptance of Kalvin Garrah’s trans* guilt-inducing rhetoric, and the Othering ‘jokes’ of Natalie Wynn made at the expense of other trans* people, indicate a need amongst individuals of the trans* community to accept abnormalisation (or perhaps they are merely used to it) in order to be able to enjoy a space that is supposed to be safe.

 

We see educastration’s Freudian basis in its necessary interaction with the unconscious, the development through childhood, and its conceptual need to be analysed through some form of psychoanalytic lens. Within application to Marx, we may develop educastration through its interaction from the educastrated individual to their material circumstances in production, and in real domination. Wherein the real domination of ‘the capitalist spectacle represents the maximum estrangement reached by the human species in the stage of its prehistory,’[37] the assimilation of homosexuality into capitalist circles (via laws, rights, advertisements, and so on) engages homosexuals into their own estrangement. Homosexuals, when ‘protected’ under capitalism – Mieli specifies under the real domination of capitalism (‘with its real domination, capital seeks to take possession of even the unconscious,’ the unconscious being here the capitalist control of where a homosexual recognises ‘protection’)[38] – they are so ‘protected’ only on the basis of consumerism, specifically on the homosexual’s ability to participate in their real domination. By this latter point, we mean that the homosexual must participate in the appropriation of their own desires, materialities and immaterialities. Capital profits off of our unconscious by both creating it and profiting from its creation.[39] Educastration performs a part in real domination, insofar as educastration ‘mutilates’ the worker’s unconscious, in perpetuating a support for real domination – most certainly in relations of sexual production (where educastration ensures the suffering of the family under heteronormativity), in denying self-consciousness (as the person is forced to conform in development), and in developing generations of abnormalising discourse. Of course, educastration and real domination go somewhat hand-in-hand, they support each other in their roles upon the individual and society at large. However, Mieli specifies the real domination of capital – where educastration, albeit influenced by and an influencer of capital, relies upon more socio-cultural factors. Real domination is a category that is built-upon the relationship between institutions and people, where educastration is a term to describe the relationship between heteronormativity (an idea: influenced by institutions, cultures, histories, etc.) and the individual.

 

For instance, where Mieli states that ‘gay movements have developed in countries where capital has reached the stage of real domination,’[40] Mieli is specifying the significance of autocoscienza under the sublimation of real domination – hence why, ‘with its real domination, capital seeks to take possession of even the unconscious.’[41] With reference to our previous definition of real domination, this would mean that gay movements have developed in countries where (un)conscious lives, desires, and dreams of queer people are controlled by capital. Real domination takes ‘possession of the unconscious’ through those precise processes that define this domination as real rather than formal. This would mean that homosexuals are not just under ‘economic marginalization (poorly paid or lacking jobs) and deprivation of an adequate material standard of living,’[42] but are also under the state’s domination of their (un)conscious: whether that consciousness be ‘the nature of one’s being in the world,’[43] or one’s relationship to it, the state then appropriates that which is able to determine one’s self-consciousness (autocoscienza). Where this self-consciousness is at risk, the dominated individual’s consciousness has no power over ‘its very object,’ (itself, the individual’s consciousness), they cannot ‘change [their] very reality,’ or consider themselves ‘to belong to the ranks of the proletariat,’ [44] or the oppressed as a whole. If the state subsumes homosexuals under real domination, the homosexual is unable to consider itself as an individual in struggle or oppression – as real domination encourages or conditions the homosexual’s (un)conscious towards the belief that they are accepted, that they are not oppressed, and that assimilation into the state is the only option for liberation. In response, we must ‘forge instruments’ of our own to dissociate ourselves from capitalism: for example, Mieli specifies that of queer theory.[45] One of these instruments is ‘an intersubjective project conscious’ created by gays and projected onto ‘the whole of humanity,’[46] in which we must ‘reinterpret everything from our own vantage point,’ to strengthen ourselves and our instruments.[47] Tying into Mieli’s history, we find that an homosexual reconstruction of history is one such instrument, alongside understanding real domination, educastration, transsexuality, and so on. As we have noted, it is important to highlight this distinction as it emphasises Mieli’s theory of homosexual liberation – that we must raise self-consciousness by deconstructing the capitalist control of homosexual life (materialities, potentialities, desires, dreams, and so on). Real domination of the homosexual is the replacement of their formal non-normativity with a real (replaced) non-normativity.

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[1] Ivi, p. 2.

[2] Ivi, p. 3.

[3] Ivi, p. 20.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Sigmund Freud, The Freud Reader, ed. by Peter Gay, (London: Vintage, 1995), p. 233.

[6] Mieli, op. cit., p. 3.

[7] Ivi, p. 21.

[8] Ivi, p. 24.

[9] Ivi, 4.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ivi, p. 25.

[12] Ivi, p. 45.

[13] Ivi, p. 39

[14] Ivi, p. 25.

[15] Ivi, p. 28.

[16] Ivi, p. 29.

[17] Ivi, p. 30.

[18] Ivi, p. 33.

[19] Ivi, p. 30.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ivi, p. 31.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ivi, p. 32.

[24] Ivi, p. 33.

[25] Ivi, p. 65.

[26] Ivi, p. 66.

[27] Ivi, p. 24.

[28] Ivi, p. 25.

[29] Ivi, p. 33.

[30] Ivi, p. 39.

[31] Ivi, p. 34.

[32] Ivi, p. 91.

[33] Ivi, pp. 94-5.

[34] Ivi, p. 85.

[35] A ‘famous’ transgender YouTube figure who spread hateful rhetoric online against their own community, causing many younger transgender viewers to explore this same hatred – amongst themselves and towards others – in reflection of an ‘ideal’ way to be transgender.

[36] Another famous YouTuber who delves into critical theory and political/philosophical topics: she has published some alienating tweets towards non-binary and non-normative trans* people, though apologising every time.

[37] Mieli, op. cit., p. 58.

[38] Ivi, p. 107.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Ivi, p. 1.

[41] Ivi, p. 107.

[42] R. L. Platero, ‘Redistribution and Recognition in Spanish Transgender Laws’, Politics and Governance, 8.3 (2020), 253–65 (p. 255).

[43] Murray Smith, ‘Consciousness’, in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film (London: Routledge, 2012), ed. by Paisley Livingstone and Carl Plantinga, pp. 39-51 (p. 42).

[44] Slavoj Zizek, How to Read Lacan (London: Granta Books, 2006), p. 17.

[45] Ivi, p. 107.

[46] Ivi, p. 108.

[47] Ibid.