Understanding Homosexuality: What is it?
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Topic: Homosexuality

What is a Homosexual?

 

            Homosexuality refers to sexual or romantic attraction between individuals of the same sex.  The prevalence of the concept owes much to the work of the German psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Kraff-Ebing and his book Psychopathia Sexualis, published in 1886.  This book was sectioned into four categories.  Paradoxia, sexual desire at the wrong time of life, i.e. childhood or old age, Anesthesia, insufficient desire, Hyperesthesia, excessive desire, and Paraesthesia, sexual desire for the wrong goal or object.  This included homosexuality otherwise known in the book as “contrary sexual desire”, sexual fetishism, sadism, masochism, pederasty or the wide range of erotic practices between adult males and adolescent boys, and so on.

            Krafft-Ebing believed that the purpose of sexual desire was procreation, and any form of desire that didn’t go towards that ultimate goal was a perversion. 

            As such, the current use of the term has its roots in the broader 19^th century tradition of personality taxonomy.  These continue to influence the development of the modern concept of sexual orientation, gaining associations with romantic love and identity in addition to its original, exclusively sexual meaning.

 

            The adjective homosexual is used for intimate relationships and/ or sexual relations between people of the same sex who may or may not identify themselves as gay or lesbian.  Homosexuality, as an identifier, is usually contrasted with heterosexuality and bisexuality.  The term gay is used predominantly to refer to self-identified homosexuals of either sex.  Lesbian is a gender specific term that is only used for self-identified homosexual females.

           

            Three major forms of homosexual relationships are produced by anthropologists: egalitarian or those who favor social equality, gender-structured, and age-structured.  Of these, one is usually dominant in a given society at a given time.  As there are different biological, historical and psychosocial components to sex and gender, no single label or description will fit all individuals.

 

            The word homosexual is both an adjective and a noun.  The adjectival for literally means “same sex”, being a hybrid formed from the Greek prefix homo-, which means “same” and the Latin root sex-, which means “sex” or “gender”.  Its first known appearance in print is found in an 1869 German pamphlet by the Austrian-born novelist Karl-Maria Kurten, Published anonymously.

 

            The term homosexual can be used to describe individuals’ sexual orientation, sexual history, or self-identification.  Many people reject the term “homosexual” as too clinical and dehumanizing as the word only refers to one’s sexual behavior, and does not refer to non-sexual romantic feelings.  As a result, the terms gay and lesbian are usually preferred when discussing a person of this sexual orientation, whose sexual history is predominated by this behavior, or who identifies as such.  The first letters are frequently combined to create LGBT (which is also written as GLBT, in which B and T refer to bisexuals and transgender individuals).  Some same sex oriented people personally prefer the term “homosexual” rather than “gay”, as they may perceive the former as describing a sexual orientation and the latter as describing a culture or sociopolitical group with which they do not identify.

 

            Although early writers also used the adjective homosexual to refer to any single gender context (such as an all-girl’s school), today the term is used exclusively in reference to sexual attraction and activity.  The term Homosocial is now used to describe single sex contexts that are not specifically sexual.  There is also a word referring to same-sex love, homophilia.

 

            The term Homosocial is used in sociology and denotes same sex relationships that are not of sexual nature.  For example, a heterosexual male who prefers to socialize with men may be considered a Homosocial heterosexual.  Homosociality implies neither heterosexuality nor homosexuality.  Homosocial relationships are not obliged to be sexual relationships, they are merely same-sex social interactions.  The term Homosociality is most often used with reference to male relationships.

 

            New terms are arising for use in situations where specificity is important.  For example men who have sex with men, or MSM for short, is sometimes used in medical community when specifically discussing sexual behavior (regardless of sexual orientation or self-identification).  Same-sex attraction focuses on spontaneous feeling, but de-emphasizes identification with a demographic or cultural group, and also leaves open the possibility for co-existing opposite-sex attraction.  Homoerotic is a synonym for same-sex attraction that is used to refer both to personal feeling and works of art.  Non-straight is another attempt to neutrality that is gaining currency.  Some other terms are now becoming more prevalent, including heteroflexible to refer to a person who identifies as heterosexual, but occasionally engages in same-sex sexual activities, or metrosexual to denote a straight man with stereotypically gay tastes if food, fashion and design.

 

            Heteroflexible is another term for a bisexual.  This is someone who is bi-curious has a sexual orientation, behavior, or self-identification, which is close to but not quite entirely heterosexual or homosexual.  There are several different conventional meanings of this term, some of which are mutually exclusive.

 

            Metrosexuality is, according to the British journalist Mark Simpson, the trait of an urban man of any sexual orientation (usually heterosexual) who has a strong aesthetic sense and spends a great amount of time and money on his appearance and lifestyle.  Simpson coined the term in 1994 in the article in the “The Independent” after writing his book about contemporary masculine identity, Male Impersonators: Men Performing masculinity.  Simpson described the effect of consumerism and media proliferation, particularly the men’s style press, on traditional masculinity.  Metrosexuals often can be seen sporting latest in men’s fashion.  Hetero Meterosexuals, though known to be heterosexual have what’s known as a “camp” factor about them; in general slang terms, they are “camp but straight.”

 

            A variety of negative terms also exist.  Many of these including words like queer and faggot, have been “reclaimed” as positive words by those against whom they were initially used.

 

(Sources: Wikipedia Topic "Homosexuality")