QUEER CONFRONTATIONS WITH THE STATE

The ‘Communist regime’ consisted of a number of institutional actors, the state police being a repressive and feared one. While Czech sexology often played an enabling role, actively attempting to help queer people to enact their choices and live out their desires, not surprisingly, the state police always represented a negative threat. According to other historians, the constant presence of the police state in Czechoslovakia and other East European countries during the Communist era played a major role in restricting the degree of agency queer people actually could have had in living their individual lives.³⁸⁸ The queer oral narratives in