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G&S Typesetters PDF proof Chapter 1 Origins Can there be any such thing as a history of homosexuality stretching back much beyond the late nineteenth century to the early modern , let alone the medieval or ancient worlds? Or are the terms we employ in discussing homosexuality—gay, lesbian, homosexuality itself—and the meanings we attach to them so much a product of modern Western thought that meaningful comparisons, let alone a sense of continuity, are chancy at best, all but impossible at worst? That, in essence, is the central issue in the theoretical debate surrounding gay history, the debate between the so-called essentialists and the so-called social constructionists. That is not, of course, a problem unique to this field of study. The terminology available to us limits as well as illuminates our understanding. To suggest just one parallel example, social inequality is universal, but the language of social class we employ is little more than two hundred years old and we apply it to earlier and increasingly different social relationships at an ever greater risk of misrepresenting and misunderstanding the past. Even younger than the modern language of class is the term homosexuality, coined by the German-Hungarian advocate of the decriminalization of homosexuality, Karoly Maria Kertbeny, in 1868. Before that, homosexual acts between men were termed sodomy. But sodomy is not synonymous with homosexuality, far from it. Not all same-sex acts were necessarily considered sodomy. Oral sex was not always included; the legal definition was frequently limited to anal penetration, often to the point of emission. Nor was sodomy necessarily limited to same-sex acts. Nonvaginal penetration of women as well as bestiality often fell within the definition of sodomy, the only common denominator of all these varying definitions and descriptions being that they referred to nonprocreative sexual acts. The sodomite, in short, was defined by what he did. The homosexual, on the other hand, is defined by his sexual orientation, by what he is and not by what he| 3 01-V2660 6/19/03 6:50 AM Page 3 G&S Typesetters PDF proof does. Thus, in sharp contrast to the sodomite, the homosexual may engage in heterosexual acts or even be celibate and still be homosexual. As the father of social constructionism, Michel Foucault, put it, “The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species.” Described in such terms, as most proponents of social constructionism do indeed describe it, this shift in terminology involved a shift in Western perceptions of the nature of sexuality so profound as to create an all but unbridgeable discontinuity with the thinking of earlier centuries. From this clearly defined position the social constructionists launched repeated and at first almost wholly successful attacks on their doubters and detractors, the so-called essentialists, who acknowledged the discontinuity with earlier centuries but regarded it as far from unbridgeable and as an admonition to use extreme care rather than as a deterrent to attempting to bridge the gap. Unfortunately , as in most such generalized theoretical debates in history and the social sciences, the lines between the two camps became more and more sharply drawn, both sides tended to caricature the views of the other, and the terms of the debate became increasingly removed from the social realities they purported to explain. The frustrating nature of the debate as it developed during the 1970s and early 1980s led many noncombatants as well as some who joined the conflict late to search out, if not common ground or compromise , at least a way of breaking out of the confines of the debate as it was initially defined, either by appealing to disciplines outside of history such as anthropology or biology or, staying within history, by drawing on the additional evidence that has since become available. From such evidence it is clear that same-sex attraction is very nearly universal in human societies, past and present, while the manner in which it has been understood and expressed, let alone accommodated, regulated, or repressed , is very much a matter of specific time and place. There is also a considerable body of evidence, much of it necessarily literary or anecdotal, to suggest that the more we deal with individuals and their immediate sexual longings and fantasies or with individuals in the company of similar individuals , the closer we come to whatever is essential, transhistorical, and transcultural in the nature of sexual orientation. Conversely, the more we...

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