Where is Hypocrisy?

Alexandra Kollontai

Before the first meeting of the new Council of People's Commissars, Stalin had a peculiar and revealing encounter with Trotsky.  The two men were in a committee room where, behind a partition, the Bolshevik sailor Pavel Dybenko (at this point Commissar of the Navy) was having an amorous conversation with his mistress, the aristocratic free-love advocate Alexandra Kollontai (whose views on sex Lenin deplored). Stalin gesticulated towards the partition and smirked in a vulgar manner.


Trotsky drew himself up and rebuffed this hail-fellow crudity: "Stalin sensed that he had made a mistake.  His face changed and in his yellow eyes appeared the same glint of animosity that I had noticed even in Vienna. From then on he never attempted to engage me in conversation on personal matters."


—  Robert Conquest, "Stalin," p.70

This incident is interesting because it shows clearly the difference between those who profess a relaxed view of sexuality and those who are actually relaxed in their attitude.  Kollontai, the avowed free love advocate, is perfectly at ease with her sexuality.  Stalin, though accepting sexual propriety as the norm, understands that men will be men and is amused by Dybenko's windfall.  Trotsky, while rejecting bourgeois sexual attitudes, has actually internalized them and is deeply uncomfortable both with the carnality of the lovers and Stalin's vulgar amusement.

This dichotomy persists to the present day.  Though homosexuality is widely approved of in bourgeois circles, most people still find actual homoeroticism disgusting and thus see homosexuals as something of a breed apart.  This leads to a visceral acceptance of the idea that homosexuals were "born that way," as the easiest explanation of why they are so different, and a horror of bisexuals as perversely finding both normal sex and disgusting homoeroticism attractive.