Otsides kvääre lugusid sõdadevahelise Eesti ajakirjandusest
Looking for queer stories from interwar Estonian media: The position of eugenics in discussions about homosexuality and transgender issues

Summary/Abstract: In order to build a better understanding of what sexuality meant in interwar Estonia and how it was expressed, this article focuses on representations of sexual and gender minorities in the Estonian printed media of the 1920s–1930s. On the one hand, seldom if ever, I found immediate voices of the marginalised people in focus, while on the other hand, many of the terms to describe sexual diversity were in the process of being articulated or had not been defined by that time. This lack of definitions, however, creates an epistemological gap between the present day and the interwar period, which I am aiming to reduce with this article. Hence, in order to demonstrate the development of sexuality-related terminology through time, I start with a brief survey of Estonian LGBTQI+ historiography. Next, I map the journalistic and scientific articles on sex and gender minorities in interwar Estonia. Finally, I present a case study of a so-called male-woman A. Oinatski, who was the most frequently and diversely portrayed queer person in Estonia during the interwar era. To systematize and differentiate the found fragmented sources, I apply feminist theorist Karen Barad’s model of agential realism, which helps to notice nuanced relationships between various examples of discourse around sexual minorities during the interwar era. Finally, I look at how the eugenics movement influenced the depictions and concepts of sex and gender in the public discussions held in interwar Estonia.

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