Terminology of homosexuality

Historian and philosopher Michel Foucault argued that homosexual and heterosexual identities didn't emerge until the 19th century. Prior to that time, he said, the terms described practices and not identity. Foucault cited Karl Westphal's famous 1870 article Contrary Sexual Feeling as the "date of birth" of the categorization of sexual orientation.[5] Some scholars, however, have argued that there are significant continuities between past and present conceptualizations of sexuality, with various terms having been used for homosexuality.[6][7]

In his Symposium, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato described (through the character of the profane comedian Aristophanes) three sexual orientations - heterosexuality, male homosexuality, and female homosexuality - and provided explanations for their existence using an invented creation myth.[8]

Although this term refers to a specific sex act between women today, in the past it was commonly used to describe female-female sexual love in general, and women who had sex with women were called Tribads or Tribades. As author Rictor Norton explains:

The tribas, lesbian, from Greek tribein, to rub (i.e. rubbing the pudenda together, or clitoris upon pubic bone, etc.), appears in Greek and Latin satires from the late first century. The tribade was the most common (vulgar) lesbian in European texts for many centuries. ‘Tribade’ occurs in English texts from at least as early as 1601 to at least as late as the mid-nineteenth century before it became self-consciously old-fashioned—it was in current use for nearly three centuries.[9]

Fricatrice, a synonym for tribade that also refers to rubbing but has a Latin rather than a Greek root, appeared in English as early as 1605 (in Ben Jonson's Volpone). Its usage suggests that it was more colloquial and more pejorative than tribade. Variants include the Latinized confricatrice and English rubster.[10]

Though sodomy has been used to refer to a range of homosexual and heterosexual "unnatural acts", the term sodomite usually refers to a homosexual male even though the real meaning is of unreproductive sex.[11][12] The term is derived from the Biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Christian churches have referred to the crimen sodomitae (crime of the Sodomites) for centuries. The modern association with homosexuality can be found as early as AD 96 in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus. In the early 5th century, Jerome, a priest, historian, and theologian used the forms Sodoman, in Sodomis, Sodomorum, Sodomæ, Sodomitæ.[13] The modern German word Sodomie and the Norwegian sodomi refer to bestiality. Sodomy in historical biblical reference may not pertain to the acts of homosexuality, but the acts of bestiality and female and male castration for the purpose of sexual slavery.

Lesbian writer Emma Donoghue found that the term lesbian (with its modern meaning) has been in use in the English language from at least the 18th century. The 1732 epic poem by William King, The Toast, uses "lesbian loves" and "tribadism" interchangeably: "she loved Women in the same Manner as Men love them; she was a Tribad".[14]

Named after the Greek poet Sappho who lived on Lesbos Island and wrote love poems to women, this term has been in use since at least the 18th century, with the connotation of lesbian. In 1773, a London magazine described sex between women as "Sapphic passion".[15] The adjective form Sapphic is no longer commonly used in the English language, but saw a spike in use as LGBT slang during the early 2000s.

Today, pederasty refers to male attraction towards adolescent boys,[16] or the cultural institutions that support such relations, as in ancient Greece. However, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the term usually referred to male homosexuality in general. A pederast was also the active partner in anal sex, whether with a male or a female partner.

Karl-Maria Kertbeny coined the word homosexual in this 1868 letter.

The word homosexual translates literally as "of the same sex", being a hybrid of the Greek prefix homo- meaning "same" (as distinguished from the Latin root homo meaning human) and the Latin root sex meaning "sex".

The first known public appearance of the term homosexual in print is found in an 1869 German pamphlet 143 des Preussischen Strafgesetzbuchs und seine Aufrechterhaltung als 152 des Entwurfs eines Strafgesetzbuchs für den Norddeutschen Bund ("Paragraph 143 of the Prussian Penal Code and Its Maintenance as Paragraph 152 of the Draft of a Penal Code for the North German Confederation"). The pamphlet was written by Karl-Maria Kertbeny, but published anonymously. It advocated the repeal of Prussia's sodomy laws.[17] Kertbeny had previously used the word in a private letter written in 1868 to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Kertbeny used Homosexualität (in English, "homosexuality") in place of Ulrichs' Urningtum; Homosexualisten ("male homosexualists") instead of Urninge, and Homosexualistinnen ("female homosexualists") instead of Urninden.

The term was coined and originally used primarily by German psychiatrists and psychologists. Havelock Ellis in his 1901 Studies in the Psychology of Sex wrote about the evolving terminology in the area, which ended up settling on homosexuality. In the preface to the first edition (1900), Ellis calls it sexual inversion, and volume 2 of the book is entitled "Sexual Inversion". In the preface to the third edition (1927) Ellis referred to it as "the study of homosexuality". On the first page of chapter 1, he discusses the terminology, naming Ulrichs use of Uranian (German: Uranier) from 1862, which later morphed into Urning, and using Urningtum as the name of the condition. Ellis reported that the first accepted scientific term was contrary sexual feeling (Konträre Sexualempfindung), coined by Westphal in 1869, and used by Krafft-Ebing and others. This term was never used outside Germany, and soon went out of favor even there. The term homosexuality was invented by Kertbeny in the same year (1869) but attracted no attention for some time, later achieving prominence, and was easily translatable into many languages, including by Hirschfeld in his 1912 book Die Homosexualität, one of the top authorities in the field. Ellis continued to use both the terms sexual inversion and homosexuality in the 3rd edition, with slightly different meanings.[18]

The first known use of homosexual in English is in Charles Gilbert Chaddock's 1892 translation of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, a study on sexual practices.[19] The term was popularized by the 1906 Harden–Eulenburg Affair.

The word homosexual itself had different connotations 100 years ago than today.

Although some early writers used the adjective homosexual to refer to any single-gender context (such as an all-girls school), today the term implies a sexual aspect. The term homosocial is now used to describe single-sex contexts that are not of a romantic or sexual nature.[20]

The colloquial abbreviation homo for homosexual is a coinage of the interbellum period, first recorded as a noun in 1929, and as an adjective in 1933.[21]

Today, it is often considered a derogatory epithet.[22][2]

• Antipathic sexual instinct: deviant sexual behavior outlined in Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Pychopathia Sexualis[23]
• Sexual inversion[24]
• Psychosexual hermaphroditism: bisexuality. It was believed gay men desired a female body and lesbians desired a male body. Bisexuals desired to become intersex.[25]
• The intermediate sex: similar to sexual inversion, Edward Carpenter believed gay men possessed a male body and a female temperament and vice versa for lesbians[26]
• Similisexualism or similsexualism: homosexuality[27]
• Intersexuality[28]

Popular in the 1950s and 1960s (and still in occasional use today, particularly in writing by Anglican clergy),[29] the term homophile was an attempt to avoid the clinical implications of sexual pathology found with the word homosexual, emphasizing love (-phile) instead.[30] In Norway, Netherlands and the Flemish/Dutch part of Belgium, the term is still widely used.[31]

There are established languages of slang (sometimes known as cants) such as Polari in Britain, Swardspeak in the Philippines, Bahasa Binan in Indonesia, and Kaliardá (Καλιαρντά) in Greece.

A variety of LGBT slang terms have been used historically and contemporarily within the LGBT community.

In addition to the stigma surrounding homosexuality, terms have been influenced by taboos around sex in general, producing a number of euphemisms. A gay person may be described as "that way", "a bit funny", "on the bus", "batting for the other team", "a friend of Dorothy", "wearing comfortable shoes" (for women), although such euphemisms are becoming less common as homosexuality becomes more visible.

Harry Hay frequently stated that, in the 1930s–1940s, gay people referred to themselves as temperamental.[32]

Although the word was originally synonymous with happy or cheerful, in the 20th century it gradually came to designate someone who is romantically or sexually attracted to someone of the same gender or sex.