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Historisk tidskrift 129:3 • 2009

Innehåll (Contents) 2009:3

Uppsatser (Articles)

Perversa direktörer och incestuösa pastorer. Skapandet av klass och sexuell normalitet i Populär tidskrift för sexuell upplysning och Stormklockan

Andrés Brink Pinto

Fulltext (pdf)

Summary

Perverse managers and incestuous preachers. The creation of class and norms of sexuality in Populär tidskrift för sexuell upplysning and Stormklockan

The history of sexual reform movements is often portrayed as a slow struggle of enlightenment, entwined in the rise of the social democratic welfare state. But it is also possible to view parts of the movement as a part of a revolutionary socialist spectrum, ranging from radical psychoanalysis to communism. The journal Popu- lär tidskrift för sexuell upplysning was part of such a spectrum, and the purpose of this article is to study how a sexual norm can be changed by its reiterations in texts saturated with class –as well as how class can be shaped by portrayals of a sexually deviant bourgeoisie.

The journal’s articles on ”perverse” or ”deviant” sexualities and desires made clear that the persons having these desires were not members of the working class. The pervert belonged either to the upper class or to the Lum- penproletariat and was never a hard working proletarian. Descriptions like these are common in both the popular medical journal Populär tidskrift and the communist weekly Stormklockan. Through such reiterations of norms of class and sexuality a subject position was brought into being. Even though it is hard to view the texts as direct subjectivations it is clear that the space and boundaries created by such performative reiterations opened up one possible subjectivation of the Swedish working class where class and (non-perverse) heterosexuality came to be necessary parts of each other’s existence.

Keywords

class, communism, deviant desires, sexual reform movement, subjec- tivation, working class history