Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II 1st Edition
by Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon
Queer Places:
Stadhouderskade 97, 1073 AW Amsterdam, Netherlands
Jacobus Schoondermark (August 19, 1849 – October 24, 1915) was a Dutch dentist, publisher, and prolific author of popular medical guides, sexology literature, and hygiene manuals.
Born in Eck en Wiel to a schoolteacher, he was raised in a large family where several siblings entered healthcare professions. Between 1873 and 1881, he studied medicine, physics, and philosophy across universities in Amsterdam, Leiden, and Utrecht, though he never formally completed a medical degree.
Despite lacking a verified doctorate, he frequently wrote under the title "Prof. Dr. Med. Schoondermark," running a practice in Amsterdam offering dental advice, massage therapies, and publishing sex education pamphlets.
Schoondermark occupies a notable, if eccentric, place in the early history of Dutch sexology and same-sex attraction literature:
Schoondermark is listed in Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II (edited by Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon) as one of the prominent late-19th-century Dutch writers who brought discussions of homosexuality into the public sphere.
During the 1880s and 1890s, medical literature surrounding "sexual perversions" (the contemporary term used for same-sex attraction, auto-eroticism, and non-procreative sex) began emerging across Western Europe. Schoondermark became the primary Dutch translator and adapter of foreign texts on public health, sexual hygiene, neo-Malthusianism, and same-sex desire, making these subjects accessible to the Dutch-reading public.
In 1907, Schoondermark authored a dedicated pamphlet addressing homosexuality. While his work blended earnest advocacy for sex education with sensationalized medical claims typical of the era, he was one of the few contemporary figures in the Netherlands attempting to demystify and discuss male same-sex attraction in print.
Prominent Dutch LGBTQ historian and sociologist Gert Hekma analyzed Schoondermark’s role in early gay historiography in his essay, "De windhandel met een hersenschim: J. Schoondermark (1849–1915)" (published in Pijlen van naamloze liefde). Hekma examined how Schoondermark’s sensational yet accessible writings contributed to the early medicalization and naming of homosexuality in turn-of-the-century Dutch culture.
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Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II 1st Edition by Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon |
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