“German occupiers immediately got a list of people who appeared gay”
Journalist Monique Doppert wrote a book about the “pink history” of the gay community in Amsterdam. From secretly meeting under the Palace on Dam Square to sailing along the canals with Pride Amsterdam. “The division we see now within the LGBTQI+ movement is a shame. We could work better together.”
The Gay Capital of the World. A nickname that Amsterdam has had since the 1990s, thanks in part to the growth of gay restaurants, the beginning of gay pride, and the first gay marriage. The days of secretly seeking love or lust - so-called “cruising” - in the open air or under the Palace on Dam Square, out of sight of government officials, are over. It is no longer necessary. The city council has become proud of the city’s pink character. In her book Amsterdam. The Pink History, former Folia editor and journalist Monique Doppert describes how these changes have taken place over a span of some 200 years.
Conforming to the hetero-norm or, on the contrary, maintaining one’s own “rebelliousness” within the gay movement feels like an ongoing contradiction in the book. Did that intentionally become a central theme?
“How nice that you got that from the book. It didn’t come up that way; it grew naturally while researching and writing. In fact, it is entirely accurate. The COC - the first official advocate of the gay movement - explicitly chose to conform, and the Rooie Flikkers - a Dutch gay movement from the 1970s - actually wanted to protect their own identity.”
Before starting this book, were you somewhat familiar with Amsterdam’s “pink history”?
“I knew as much about gay and lesbian history as a good newspaper reader. I did conduct a few interviews on the subject for Folia in the 1990s, during which I got to know every nook and cranny of (the gay scene in) Amsterdam. But after that, I abandoned the subject for a while.”
So what made you decide to write a book about it?
“From the City of Amsterdam and Homomonument, I received an assignment to develop a walk along historically relevant places for gay history in Amsterdam in honor of the 20th anniversary of gay marriage.”
“During my previous research, I discovered that there was no overview of Amsterdam’s gay history at all. I found that very strange. There is a lot of information, but I had to get it from everywhere and anywhere. Then I discovered: this is a great story, this has to be told.”
“Then I started going through different books, documentaries, and scientific studies, beginning with the late Gert Hekma, former UvA lecturer in gay and lesbian studies, among others. But especially from the period before 1900, because you only find the crimes: homosexuals who were arrested because they married illegally or did something else ‘immoral.’ So as a result, you don’t know what did go right at the time, because those people weren’t caught...”
It was also striking to read the role of Amsterdam’s Good Morals Assessment Committee shortly thereafter, at the beginning of the 20th century. They tested for the municipality whether an aspiring civil servant deserved a certificate of good conduct. A person’s sexual preference could be decisive.
“Yes, I had only seen that story as a newspaper reader, for example. But when I looked deeper into it I thought: wow, this is intense. For it was not only the municipality that used such statements, it was also the NS, Fokker, the PTT, and the port authority.”
“You had to be careful that the police didn’t have you in their sights. They regularly checked cafés known to have many gay customers. They would simply look at who was walking around and pass that information on to the review board. It was almost like secret service practices, even though homosexuality was not even punishable at the time!”
“Incidentally, I also found the example of a police commissioner with a list of 4,500 names of persons who ‘appeared to be homosexual’ to be telling. He handed these directly to the German occupiers when they asked for them in 1941. That says something about the registration frenzy in this country. Why do you have to keep such meticulous records of all this? It’s just creepy. It was purely based on social taboo.”
In what ways do you continue to see that social taboo reflected in later years?
“Before the 1960s, there were hardly any meeting spots for homosexuals in the Netherlands, except in illegal cruising spots, such as under the archway of the Palace on Dam Square. That seems like an unpleasant situation to be in with the darkness and loneliness, the feeling that you are the only one.”
“By the way, this situation is still the same in other parts of the world. In the Middle East, you can’t talk openly about your homosexuality. It is a secret there that you carry with you. Despite the fact that there is a lot of room for improvement here in the Netherlands, things really aren’t bad here.”
“What also struck me was the difference between the coming-out of Amsterdammers who were born and raised here and newcomers like me. Someone who had their coming out in the ‘60s or ‘70s, for example, went from Amsterdam-Noord to a gay café in the center. But then he might run into his neighbor on the ferry who would ask, ‘So, where are you going?’”
“Of course, he couldn’t say he was going to ‘t Mandje (a well-known gay café, ed.). So he had to continuously make things up and remember lies. As a newcomer, you are less likely to meet acquaintances, at most your friends or fellow students. For them, there is less social control.”
Fortunately, “homosexuality has now become mainstream in Amsterdam,” you write. What is new is the diversity in the emancipation movement. For example, there are transgender, but also “Black trans” movements. In your opinion, does that raise awareness in society or does that fragmentation actually undermine the message of emancipation movements?
“The fragmentation is unfortunate in a way. It would be better to work together in the emancipation struggle. After all, that division is not constructive. You then work hard for your own group, while your interests might overlap about 80 percent with those of other groups. The municipality is now trying to overcome this by subsidizing the Queer Amsterdam Foundation - in which ideally every interest group within the LGBTQI+ movement is united - in addition to the Pride Amsterdam Foundation.”
“But the fragmentation can also be explained. Sociologists have shown that emancipation movements in their early stages strongly emphasize visibility, claiming your own space and sometimes even provoking, as the Rooie Flikkers and the lesbian-feminist action group Purple September clearly did in the past. You see this now with other groups. They are still in another phase: expressing themselves, claiming their place.”
You end with a brief plea for more research into violence against homosexuals, as there is “ongoing harassment and violence against LGBTQI+ individuals.” The last major study on this dates back to 2008. Why, in your opinion, does further research remain outstanding?
“Honestly, I didn’t want to end the book with such a cliché. But in this case, I found it very striking: why is no further research being done? I really don’t know why. We don’t have any current facts or figures now.”
Could it be that people are afraid of (politically) sensitive outcomes? In the book, you write that the 2008 study showed that a relatively large number of people of Dutch-Moroccan descent were involved in violence against homosexuals.
“If that is still the case, then we should know that too, don’t you think? Then you could do something about it afterwards. Of course, you have to conduct such an investigation very thoroughly and carefully. But if you are anxious about the results of a certain study, as far as I’m concerned you have to do that study right.”
That 2008 study, by the way, was conducted by UvA lecturer Laurens Buijs. In the book, you indicate that you spoke to him “before he was discredited.” Did you think it was important to add that in a footnote?
“I still think this was good research by him. But the publisher (Boom, ed.) thought it better to put such a sentence there in the book to avoid misunderstandings. After all, the conversation with Buijs was completely unrelated to the discussion he has now brought up. A discussion worth having, by the way.”
