Just in case people don't know. Marx never says anything on LGBT, and Engles has one line criticising the Greeks that is commonly translated as "They fell into the abominable practice of sodomy and degraded alike their gods and themselves with the myth of Ganymede."
Sounds bad, right? well turns out the translation sucks, it might be the most common English edition but it's not translated from German but from the Russian edition.
The actual phrase is “sie versanken in die Widerwärtigkeit der Knabenliebe und ihre Götter entwürdigten wie sich selbst durch den Mythus von Ganymed.”
The astute will note that "Knabenliebe" is not "Sodomie" and that a correct translation is "boy-love". Engles here is dunking on the Greeks for Pederasty.
Hey weird how literary references to pederasty in the ancient Mediterranean world keep getting translated into English incorrectly as "sodomy" and "homosexuality" 🤔 weird 🤔 so strange 🤔 wonder why that keeps happening 🤔🤔🤔
The original translation's probably correct. Marx and Engels were massive homophobes:
"That is really a very odd 'Urning' you just sent me. Those are just unveilings being extremely against nature. The pederasts begin counting themselves and find that they are forming a power within the state. Only an organisation was missing, but according to this it seems to be already existing in the secret. And as they are counting so important men within all the old parties and even in the new ones, from Rösing to Schweitzer, their victory is inevitable. 'Guerre aux cons, paix aux trous de cul' it will go now. It is only a luck that we personally are too old to have to fear, this party gaining victory, to have to pay bodily tribute to the victors. But the young generation! By the way, only possible in Germany that a guy like that appears, translates the dirt into a theory and invites: introite, and so on. Unfortunately he was not yet as courageous as to confess openly being 'That', and still has to operate coram publico 'from the front' even though not ,from the front into as he once says by mistake. But first wait until the new North-German penal law has acknowledged the droits de cul then it will turn out quite differently. As for poor people from the front like us, with our childish favour for women, things will be going badly enough. If one could make use of that Schweitzer, it was to elicit from this strange man of honour the personal details of the high and the highest ranging pederasts, what surely would not be difficult for him as a congenial person...."
(Marx Engels Werke vol.32 -German edition - p. 324/5. Engels to Marx, June 22, 1869)
Sorry to be the one to share this with you. There's a lot of other nasty shit in their letters as well. Kill your heroes and all that.
As somebody whose first language is German, i can attest that Knabenliebe would correctly be translated as pederasty, not sodomy. Just putting this out for the sake of accuracy, though - these terms were routinely conflated up until a few decades ago, and homophobes still deliberately conflate homosexuality and pedophilia to this day. Saying "they were dunking on pedos, not gays" doesn't work as an excuse when it's common to believe these to be one and the same.
The passage you quote is completely in line with homophobic discourses of their time. When you were a raging homophobe in 19th century Germany, it was a common fear to view queer rights advocacy as something that would lead to a "gay state" where straight men would be forced to "pay bodily tribute to the victors".
Your quote also shows that there were people around who already knew better, both in bourgeoise liberal and socialist parties.
Engles has one line criticising the Greeks that is commonly translated as “They fell into the abominable practice of sodomy and degraded alike their gods and themselves with the myth of Ganymede.”
The myth was a model for the Greek social custom of paiderastía, the socially acceptable romantic relationship between an adult male and an adolescent male.
TIL, Engles was the original QAnon Save The Children guy.
Just in case people don't know. Marx never says anything on LGBT, and Engles has one line criticising the Greeks that is commonly translated as "They fell into the abominable practice of sodomy and degraded alike their gods and themselves with the myth of Ganymede."
Sounds bad, right? well turns out the translation sucks, it might be the most common English edition but it's not translated from German but from the Russian edition.
The actual phrase is “sie versanken in die Widerwärtigkeit der Knabenliebe und ihre Götter entwürdigten wie sich selbst durch den Mythus von Ganymed.”
The astute will note that "Knabenliebe" is not "Sodomie" and that a correct translation is "boy-love". Engles here is dunking on the Greeks for Pederasty.
tl:dr, Homophobic TERF-y brits ruin Communism again.
Hey weird how literary references to pederasty in the ancient Mediterranean world keep getting translated into English incorrectly as "sodomy" and "homosexuality" 🤔 weird 🤔 so strange 🤔 wonder why that keeps happening 🤔🤔🤔
Also weird how Sodom was really bad because GAY, the fact of which was discovered after reading the Bible for like 2 millennia and no earlier.
It's actually a mistranslation of the original Greek that reads "Fuck Sodom. All my homies hate Sodom."
The original translation's probably correct. Marx and Engels were massive homophobes:
"That is really a very odd 'Urning' you just sent me. Those are just unveilings being extremely against nature. The pederasts begin counting themselves and find that they are forming a power within the state. Only an organisation was missing, but according to this it seems to be already existing in the secret. And as they are counting so important men within all the old parties and even in the new ones, from Rösing to Schweitzer, their victory is inevitable. 'Guerre aux cons, paix aux trous de cul' it will go now. It is only a luck that we personally are too old to have to fear, this party gaining victory, to have to pay bodily tribute to the victors. But the young generation! By the way, only possible in Germany that a guy like that appears, translates the dirt into a theory and invites: introite, and so on. Unfortunately he was not yet as courageous as to confess openly being 'That', and still has to operate coram publico 'from the front' even though not ,from the front into as he once says by mistake. But first wait until the new North-German penal law has acknowledged the droits de cul then it will turn out quite differently. As for poor people from the front like us, with our childish favour for women, things will be going badly enough. If one could make use of that Schweitzer, it was to elicit from this strange man of honour the personal details of the high and the highest ranging pederasts, what surely would not be difficult for him as a congenial person...."
(Marx Engels Werke vol.32 -German edition - p. 324/5. Engels to Marx, June 22, 1869)
Sorry to be the one to share this with you. There's a lot of other nasty shit in their letters as well. Kill your heroes and all that.
As somebody whose first language is German, i can attest that Knabenliebe would correctly be translated as pederasty, not sodomy. Just putting this out for the sake of accuracy, though - these terms were routinely conflated up until a few decades ago, and homophobes still deliberately conflate homosexuality and pedophilia to this day. Saying "they were dunking on pedos, not gays" doesn't work as an excuse when it's common to believe these to be one and the same.
The passage you quote is completely in line with homophobic discourses of their time. When you were a raging homophobe in 19th century Germany, it was a common fear to view queer rights advocacy as something that would lead to a "gay state" where straight men would be forced to "pay bodily tribute to the victors".
Your quote also shows that there were people around who already knew better, both in bourgeoise liberal and socialist parties.
Absolutey, I know nothing about German. What I meant to point out was Engels and probably Marx conflated the two.
Thanks for saying it better than I did ❤️
Actually a lot of biblical texts on the subject probably had similar contexts, I’ve heard that argued.
TIL, Engles was the original QAnon Save The Children guy.
he "reposted" some research that was being done at the time