• “sin model of homosexuality”
• sexology: scientific, medicalized study of attraction
• contemporary understanding of homosexuality is founded on sexology
  • Michel Foucault, 1978, History of Sexuality: sexology created new categories of mental illnes and identities based on sexuality; instead of condemnation, it was personified by pathologization

historical context

• end of 19thc
  • growing urbanization, middle class, industrialization, imperialism and colonialism
  • emergence of capitalism
    • “in a capitalist culture, it can be helpful to have distinct categories of individuals to whom to market goods and services”
  • scientific renaissance
  • changes in family structures; smaller familial units, romantic friendships
  • women’s rights
  • increased interaction with prostitution and “sexual underground” in urban environments
    • 1890, George Chauncey: “a highly visisble, remarkably complex, and continually changing gay male world”
  • visibility of sex and contraceptives
  • changes in 19thc led to birth of sexology
• “silent sin” of male homosexuality persisted
  • 1885: british criminal law amendment act
  • “sexual inversion” was an illness; described as “gross indecency”
• female sexual desire was pathological and damaging;
  • “nymphomaniac” behavior
  • paroxysm (orgasm) effectively treated hysteria

history of sexology

• 1869, Karl Westphal (1833–1890, physician): “contrary sexual feeling”, later renamed to “invert”
  • inverts believed to be more feminine or masculine than societal norms; “gender confusion”
  • “The supposed link between deviation from sex and gender norms and homosexuality continues as a fundamental assumption underlying many studies throughout the 20th century and into the 21st”
• 1869, Karl Maria Kertbeny (writer): invention of homosexual term for same-sex interest
• 1886, Dr. Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902, psychiatrist): Psychopathia Sexualis — “sexual perversions”, “abnormal congenital manifestations”; same-sex manifestations occur from desire of sexual sensibility for opposite sex
  • later invention of masochism, fetishism, and sadism
  • homosexuality was congenital or caused through other etiologies
  • homosexuality was avoided or pitied; mental illness
  • use of heterosexual as opposite-sex relations that did not aim to cause reproduction
• 1864–1880, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–1895, law/theology student): “third sex” of homosexuals: Urnings
  • urnings result from heredity, not abnormal; attempted normalization of condition, or “reverse discourse”
• before 1903: final edition of Psychopathia Sexualis; homosexuality manifested from sexual desire, not mental illness

Havelock Ellis

• 1859–1939, physician on the 20thc
• Sexual Inversion, 1897: “a fair and scientific representation of homosexuality”
• Studies in the Psychology of Sex, 1937: various sexual practices: inversion and homosexuality
  • male inversion: primarily focused on same-sex attraction
  • female inversion: same frequency; continued theory of inversion (“gender confusion”)
  • homosexuality may be created by “accidental absences” (boarding schools)
  • heterosexuality is “natural”, though “homoerotic attraction” is a phenomenon that occurs in many animals
  • homosexuality is another variation in behavior
  • various myths related to inverts rejected and supposed
    • “mannish” female inverts have naturally large sexual organs; produces paroxysm
    • childlike faces
    • female: good whistlers
    • male: green garments
    • “all avocations are represented among invertss”
  • masturbation had poor side effects, especially for women
  • homoerotic sexual attraction caused by “accidental absences”, disappointment in opposite sex relationships, and same-sex seduction
  • requires “favourable organic predisposition”; congenital predisposition noted
    • “Interestingly, this passage prefigures the “nature versus nurture” debates that would become so important in academic circles throughout the 20th century: are complex behaviors and feelings, such as sexual attraction, biologically innate or the product of social influences or forces”
  • “no cure” for inversion or homosexuality; no need to legislate against it

Sigmund Freud

• theories on sexuality guided 20th century sexology and sex studies which followed historical sexology
• same cultural and intellectual grounds as early sexology
• “healthy” psychosexual development vs. “arrested development”
  • arrested development was normal; resolution of each psychosexual development stage was difficult to achieve successfully
• Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905: “polymorphous perversity” had to be morphed by society to create reproductive heterosexuality
  • natural orientation towards pleasure and erotic satisfaction
  • innate inversion was crude; had to be socially developed
  • separation of sexual practice from gender
  • common share that sex is natural