Society celebrated the invert once his vice was embraced as experience

Evidence

Proust describes how Monsieur de Charlus, who had formerly been tolerated, “notwithstanding his vice,” for his personal charm and old name, now rose to social heights. He no longer needed to lead a double life and hide his dubious acquaintances, but was encouraged to bring them into the fashionable houses. Topics of conversation which he formerly would have avoided—love, beauty, jealousy—lest somebody suspect his anomaly, were now welcomed avidly “in view of the experience, strange, secret, refined and monstrous upon which he founded” his views. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 259

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: The inversion of shame into celebrated authenticity mirrors how the ethnic/religious Other can be exoticized and consumed by the very society that excludes them.

Related

• Social acceptance of vices begins by finding them attractive and secret (similarity 0.87)