Cruising through a Crossroads of Europe

Whereas the rest of the book explains the remarkable discursive silence on homosexuality in Belgium compared to neighboring countries, this first chapter shows how a lively queer subculture thrived regardless in Brussels during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. It demonstrates how rapid urbanization and its modern infrastructure facilitated homosexual encounters. The Belgian capital was more representative of urban growth in Europe than were megacities such as Paris or London. In Brussels too, wage labor, migration, and mass transport fueled a bachelor culture that enabled nontraditional lifestyles, and since no laws explicitly forbade same-sex acts between consenting adults in private, foreigners from Britain, Germany, and elsewhere found opportunities in Belgium not open to them at home. In several ways, then, the country’s comparative silence on homosexuality enabled rather than precluded queer possibilities.