Former UvA lecturer in gay and lesbian studies Gert Hekma has passed away
Icon of gay, lesbian, queer and sex studies Gert Hekma passed away suddenly yesterday. He was associated with the UvA for more than 30 years as a lecturer and researcher and was a well-known figure in the Amsterdam and international gay world.
Former teacher of gay, lesbian, queer and sex studies Gert Hekma passed away in his hometown of Amsterdam. Through various social media platforms, his husband Mattias Duyves announced this morning that Gert suddenly died at home on Oudezijds Voorburgwal yesterday. He was 71.
Anthropologist and sociologist Gert Hekma (Bedum, 1951) was the university figurehead of the gay and lesbian community from 1984 until his retirement in 2017. As a gay activist student in the 1970s, he went through his homosexual development with the “Rooie Flikkers”, an action and pressure movement whose members wanted to free themselves, but also society as a whole, from heteronormative thinking.
Marquis de Sade
This view was later also reflected in his research and in the education he gave at the UvA. Loved by many students, he was also often considered to be a pain in the neck by fellow scientists and administrators because of his sometimes controversial statements, opinions and publications about (gay) sex in all guises.
His position on paedophilia is considered controversial by many inside and outside the UvA in the current era. For example, during the symposium on the occasion of his farewell, themes were discussed such as “Male Prostitution 1900-1950”, “Fags and Whores – between Slut Shaming and Homophobia” and “The democratic darkroom. Pleasures and risk in Amsterdam's gay sex scene”. He was also fascinated by the ideas of the eighteenth-century libertine Marquis De Sade, who gave his name to sadism. De Sade was a philosopher who thought very differently about the Enlightenment than someone like Voltaire. “De Sade was for sodomites, for women who want sex and for self-gratification," he said in an interview with Folia on the occasion of his retirement.
Marginal Science
Not everyone in “the normative heterosexual world of the UvA” agreed with him over the past 30 years, he said. Take his stance on paedophilia. This is considered controversial by many inside and outside the UvA at the moment, but he thought otherwise. “Relationships between adults and children are usually seen as abusive by the adult, but sometimes it is the young who take the initiative.” This led to him being somewhat marginalised in the final years of his working life.
Hekma didn't really mind that, because according to him a marginal attitude should be inherent in the academic, researching world. “I like fringe science, because innovation comes from the margins.”
In his eyes, the world as it looked in those years was largely back to square one. Looking back on his UvA life, he said in 2017: “How prudish and good everyone has become.” Hekma had been struggling with his health for some time after he suffered a brain haemorrhage a few years ago.
