Reframing Sexuality. Magnus Hirschfeld's exposition of 'universal' fetishism in his 1930 Bilderteil zur Geschlechtskunde

Abstract

The early-twentieth century German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) was one of the first and most influential theorisers of ‘deviant’ sexual behaviours and identities. In his eyes, sexual variety was both natural (biologically located in the body) and universal (occurring in all cultures). He argued that what is natural should not be condemned, and that as a consequence, sexual ‘deviancy’ should be accepted and embraced. My thesis engages with his highly intriguing publication Bilderteil zur Geschlechtskunde (1930), an exposition of his entire sexological worldview containing over 1,400 highly heterogeneous images. An analysis of the visual discourse as well as a 'biographical' description and a close reading of several images in this visual work shows how Hirschfeld collected and consequently compared images of Western individuals to non-Westerners in order to literally show the universality of fetishistic desires – in the mean time (probably unintentionally) reinforcing stereotypical assumptions about both groups.