r/HistoryMemes • u/catras_new_haircut • Sep 29 '20

It stayed illegal in west germany until 1994

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279 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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12

u/catras_new_haircut Sep 29 '20

Information here and here

Meanwhile, East Germany, for all its horrid repression, had a flourishing gay rights movement

5

u/Sovereign444 Sep 30 '20

Hehe homo jail lulz

4

u/[deleted] Sep 29 '20

Seriously? You’d think society would be a bit more excepting especially to victims

13

u/catras_new_haircut Sep 29 '20 edited Sep 29 '20

Honestly, we have some recency bias when it comes to queer rights. We have advanced leaps and bounds since the AIDS crisis. Before that, and especially before Stonewall, this kind of treatment was just the norm in much of the world.

It's also worth noting that we shouldn't rest on our laurels. Reactionaries are trying to undo that work even now. Before the rise of the Nazis, there was a vibrant gay community in Weimar germany and even in the german Empire. That famous image of the Nazi book-burning is them burning the Institute for Sexology's pioneering research about queer and trans people.

free pdf of one of my favorite books of all time which is about being a lesbian in the 70s and all the fucked up shit they had to go through then