Comments on: Heterosexuality, the opiate of the people https://decasia.org/academic_culture/2010/05/21/heterosexuality-the-opiate-of-the-people/ critical anthropology of academic culture Mon, 24 May 2010 03:26:09 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.8.1 By: eli https://decasia.org/academic_culture/2010/05/21/heterosexuality-the-opiate-of-the-people/#comment-1272 Mon, 24 May 2010 03:26:09 +0000 http://decasia.org/academic_culture/?p=1477#comment-1272 I don’t think the stats include the PACS. The chart with intolerance data is very interesting… although for a contrary piece of anecdotal evidence to your observations in Scotland, consider that France is a country where it is moderately common to refer to gay people as “pédés.” (IE, a kind of semantic blurring between homosexuality and pedophilia.) That always sounds rather pejorative to me! Or does it have a more… positive… implication for some native speakers?

]]> By: Fr. https://decasia.org/academic_culture/2010/05/21/heterosexuality-the-opiate-of-the-people/#comment-1271 Mon, 24 May 2010 00:18:06 +0000 http://decasia.org/academic_culture/?p=1477#comment-1271 Do the marriage stats include the French civil partnership, PACS, which is open to for heterosexual and homosexual couples alike? PACS couples are divorcing quicker, as far as I know.

As for the perception of homosexuality, my only comparative experience is with Scotland, where my flatmates would use ‘gay’ in (pejorative) ways that none of my French friends would ever dare to do. But that’s anecdotal evidence.

For slightly more robust evidence, check the intolerance data from the EVS.

]]> By: eli https://decasia.org/academic_culture/2010/05/21/heterosexuality-the-opiate-of-the-people/#comment-1270 Sat, 22 May 2010 08:32:11 +0000 http://decasia.org/academic_culture/?p=1477#comment-1270 I have no idea about the marriage stats! It’s something I didn’t really think about, never having given a second’s thought to family demography things before now. The first official stats that I found seem to indicate that divorce happens at a far lower annual rate for a given marriage cohort and peaks around years 4-7, but probably adds up to a substantial fraction over time. I don’t think you can’t just add up these particular figures; as you could probably figure out from glancing at them even if you don’t speak french, the table shows how many people (per thousand) of marriage duration X got divorced during year Y, ie, it’s not following cohorts over time but giving slices of cohorts in a given year. But I saw figures of 1/3-45% total divorce rate mentioned on other sites I came across. This article gave something that seemed like it might be the origin of the claim you’re questioning — apparently the Justice Minister said (probably a while ago) that the rate of divorce for marriages less than 3 years old had risen 50% between 1998 and 2003. I could see this being misinterpreted into the claim I translated above.

On your other question, my sense is that although there is less overt anti-homosexuality here (eg, as a right-wing political issue) there is also less of a public queer (sub)culture than in the US.

]]> By: Michael Bishop https://decasia.org/academic_culture/2010/05/21/heterosexuality-the-opiate-of-the-people/#comment-1269 Fri, 21 May 2010 16:14:51 +0000 http://decasia.org/academic_culture/?p=1477#comment-1269 It is hard to believe that “More than half of heterosexual couples who are geting married this year will get divorced within three years?” I wonder how the divorce rate really compares.

Can you give us a sense of how homosexuality is perceived in France? One would assume that having fewer religious conservatives they would be more accepting.

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