Terminology of homosexuality
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The terminology of homosexuality has been a contentious issue since the emergence of homosexual social movements in the mid-19th century. As with racial terms in the United States such as negro, black, colored and African American, the choice of terms regarding sexual orientation may imply a certain political outlook, and different terms have been preferred at different moments in history and in different places. In the English language, some terms in widespread use have been sodomite, pederast, Sapphic, Uranian, homophile, lesbian, gay, queer, LBGT, two-spirit and same-sex attracted, in addition to a countless number of words which never gained prominence.
Not all of the many terms that have been used to describe same-sex sexuality are synonyms for the modern term "homosexuality". Indeed, the word "homosexual" itself had different connotations for those who used it 100 years ago to what it does today; Anna Rüling, one of the first homosexual women to publicly defend homosexual rights, considered homosexuals a third gender, different from both men and women. Terms such as androphile and gynephile have tried to simplify the language of sexual orientation by making no claim about the individual's own gender identity (see homosexuality and transgender).
In addition to the stigma of social disadvantage, the terminology of homosexuality has been influenced by taboos around sex in general, producing a number of euphemisms; someone may be described as "that way", "a bit funny", "on the bus", "batting for our team", "a friend of Dorothy", or "wearing comfortable shoes" (for women), although such euphemisms are becoming less common as homosexuality becomes more visible. Within homosexual/transgender communities, complex vocabularies for a range of topics have developed (see gay slang). The most established, sometimes known as cants, include Polari in Britain, Swardspeak in the Philippines, Bahasa gay in Indonesia and Kaliardá in Greece.
[edit] Currently prescribed usage
The term homosexual can be used as a noun or adjective to describe same-sex oriented persons as well as their sexual attractions and behaviors. However, some recommend that the terms homosexual and homosexuality be avoided lest their use cause confusion or arouse controversy. In particular the description of individuals as homosexual may be offensive, partially because of the negative clinical association of the word stemming from its use in describing same-sex attraction as a pathological state before homosexuality was removed from the American Psychiatric Association's list of mental disorders in 1973. Even as late as the 1990s, the "Read code" system, used by the National Health Service in Great Britain, classed male homosexuality and lesbianism under mental disorders, as conditions E2200 and E2201 respectively, although this system has since been replaced. The use of the word homosexual in describing individuals and same-sex relationships may also be inaccurate.
Same-sex oriented people seldom apply these terms to themselves, and public officials and agencies often avoid them. For instance, the Safe Schools Coalition of Washington's Glossary for School Employees advises that gay is not the "preferred synonym for homosexual," and goes on to advise avoiding the term homosexual as it is "clinical, distancing and archaic":
- Sometimes appropriate in referring to behavior (although same-sex is the preferred adjective). When referring to people, as opposed to behavior, 'homosexual' is considered derogatory and the terms 'gay' and 'lesbian' are preferred. Homosexual places emphasis on sexuality and is to be avoided when describing a person. 'Gay' man or lesbian are the preferred nouns with stress cultural and social matters over sex.
The Guardian Style Guide, Newswatch Diversity Style Guide, American Heritage Dictionary, and the Committee on Lesbian and 'Gay' Concern of the American Psychological Association's Avoiding Heterosexual Bias in Language all agree that "gay" is the preferred term.
Likewise, the use of homosexuality to describe sexual behaviors between people of the same sex may be inaccurate, although it is not perceived as being as offensive as homosexual.
People with a same-gender sexual orientation generally prefer the terms gay, lesbian and bisexual. "Lesbian" refers specifically to women; gay can apply to both men and women, although unqualified usage would more often be referring to men. Other terms include same-gender-loving and same-sex-oriented.
Among some sectors of black homosexual sub-culture, same-gender sexual behavior is sometimes viewed as solely for physical pleasure. Men on the down-low (or DL) may engage in regular (although often covert) sex acts with other men while pursuing sexual and romantic relationships with women.
[edit] History of homosexual terminology
[edit] Early history
Poststructuralist theorist Michel Foucault has argued that homosexual and heterosexual identities didn't emerge until the 19th century; before that time terms described practices and not identity. Foucault cites "Westphal's famous article of 1870 on 'contrary sexual sensations'" as the "date of birth" of the categorization of the homosexual (Foucault 1976).
In his Symposium the ancient Greek philosopher Plato described three sexual orientations (through the character of the profane comedian Aristophanes) and provided explanations for their existence using an invented creation myth. [1] Aristophanes' fable is only one of many perspectives on love in the Symposium, and should not be considered identical with Plato's own ideas. Most of the Symposium's speeches are intended to be flawed in different ways, with the wise Socrates coming in at the end to correct their errors.
[edit] Tribadism
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. 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.
[edit] Sodomy
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. 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 96 A.D in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus. Jerome in the early 5th century uses the forms Sodoman, in Sodomis, Sodomorum, Sodomæ, Sodomitæ (Hallam 1993). The modern German word Sodomie and the Norwegian sodomi refer to bestiality.
[edit] Lesbianism
Lesbian writer Emma Donoghue found that the term lesbian (with its modern meaning) was in use in the English language from at least the 17th century. A 1732 book 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’.
[edit] Sapphism
Named after the Greek poet Sappho who lived on the island Lesbos 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’. The adjective form 'Sapphic' is still commonly used in the English language.
[edit] Fricarelle and fricatrice
These French terms for lesbianism (which refer to rubbing) were also used in English from the 17th to the 19th century.
[edit] Tommies
From the late eighteenth century through the late nineteenth century lesbians were called Tommies or Toms, possibly not unconnected to the term "tomboy".
[edit] Molly
18th century Britain.
[edit] Pederasty
Today, pederasty refers specifically to the sexual orientation of an adult male towards male youths, 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.
[edit] Buggery
Very similar in meaning (though not derivation) to 'sodomy', the term buggery often implies anal sex, but has been used to describe a range of "unnatural sex acts" including bestiality. Derived from the French word Bougrerie, which in turn came from the medieval Latin term bulgarus, meaning "Bulgarian". The association was inferred by the Roman Catholic Church, who supposed the sex lives of the 'heretical' Cathars of southern France were similar to the Bogomils in Bulgaria. Cognates include the Spanish bugarrón, the Italian buggerone, and the German puseran(t), a word which survives in Eastern Europe.
[edit] Urningtum
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs invented the term Urning in Germany in the 1860s for a male-bodied person with a female psyche, who is sexually attracted to men and not women. He expanded this system to cover a range of sexual appetites and gender variance in both males and females.
[edit] Homosexual
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 appearance of the term homosexual in print is found in an anonymous 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") written by Karl-Maria Kertbeny. This pamphlet advocated the repeal of Prussia's sodomy laws (Bullough et al. ed. (1996)). Kertbeny had previously used the word in a private letter written in 1868 to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Kertbeny used Homosexualität in place of Ulrichs's Urningtum; Homosexualisten instead of Urninge, and Homosexualistinnen instead of Urninden.
The first known use of "homosexual" in English is in Charles Gilbert Chaddock's 1895 translation of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, a study on sexual practices. The term was popularized by the 1906 Harden-Eulenburg affair.
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 specifically sexual.
[edit] Homogenic love
Used by Edward Carpenter in "Homogenic Love: and its Place in a Free Society", 1894.
[edit] Other late 19th and early 20th century sexological terms
- 'Antipathic Sexual Instinct' (used by Richard von Krafft-Ebing in "Psychopathia Sexualis, with Special Reference to the Antipathic Sexual Instinct: A Medico-Forensic Study", 1886).
- 'Sexual inversion' (Used by Krafft-Ebing and also Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds in "Sexual Inversion", 1897.)
- 'Psychosexual hermaphroditism' (used by Krafft-Ebing and later Ellis to mean bisexuality, as opposed to complete inversion (exclusive homosexuality). Freud uses the term in "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" (1905) to refer to male homosexuality.)
- 'The Intermediate sex' (used by Edward Carpenter in "The Intermediate Sex", 1908)
- 'Similisexualism' or 'similsexualism' (used by Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson [writing as Xavier Mayne] in "The Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as a Problem in Social Life", 1908)
- 'Third sex'
- 'Intersexuality' (used around 1900 as a synonym for "inversion"; the term now has a different meaning — see intersexuality)
These terms describe individuals for whom the sex of the psyche is the opposite of that of the genitals (as with Ulrich's Urnings). The female invert is therefore masculine and the male invert is feminine. Traits of inversion include homosexual erotic attraction, temperament, and behavior; sometimes inversion can affect career choice and even anatomic structure. Krafft-Ebing, drawing on the earlier writings of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, described male inverts with varying degrees of effeminacy, from Effemination in which a man has a distinctly feminine demeanor, to Androgyny in which a man is so effeminate that he can even has feminine bodily characteristics like rounded hips.
[edit] Homophile
Popular in the 1950s and 1960s (and still in occasional use today, particularly in writing by Anglican clergy), the term "homophile" was an attempt to avoid the clinical implications of sexual pathology found with the word "homosexual", emphasising love (-phile) instead.
[edit] Homogenital
In the late twentieth century, this word was coined by Christian groups opposed to homosexuality.[citation needed] In contrast to "homophile," the word focuses solely on the sexual acts which some churches believe to be sinful, side-stepping the associated issues of romantic or family love, community, and personal identity. The term's use remains confined mostly to anti-gay religious groups, but it is occasionally seen in the writings of their opponents, such as DignityUSA.
[edit] Androtrop and Gynäkotropin
In the years from 1946 to 1966, homosexual activist Kurt Hiller published a number of poems and articles in Swiss journal Der Kreis (The circle). In one of them he joined the ongoing debate on terminology by suggesting the terms "Androtrop" and "Gynäkotropin" for male and female homosexuals, respectively. Hiller coined these German terms from the Greek words "tropos" (turning [to]) combined with "andro-" (male) and "gynaiko-" (female), with the addition of the German feminine ending "in." Neither term was adopted, though the first briefly gained some favor.
[edit] Gay
[edit] Queer
[edit] LGBT
[edit] Slang or pejorative terms
- See also Gay slang.
Many of the following terms are considered acceptable in a casual register when used by queers and their allies, but are considered pejorative or inappropriate when used in formal contexts or by outsiders. Many also imply masculinity in women (e.g. "bull dyke") or effeminacy in men (e.g. "fairy").
[edit] English
- Female
- Dyke (varations: bull dyke, bull dagger), from 1920s black American slang
- Carpet muncher
- Lezzie/Lesbo/Leso (abbreviation for lesbian)
- The Game of Flats (an 18th century English term for sex between women)
- Male
- Faggot (varation: fag) (U.S., recorded from 1914)
- Poof (variation: poofter, pouf, poove, pooff, puff) (U.K, Australia and New Zealand)
- Fairy
- Fruit
- Snapper
- Pansy
- Queen
- Another pejorative term, which has fallen out of use since the 1930s, is 'Turner'. There are two theories as to the origins of this slang word for homosexual: 1. Late 19th century east London slang in homosexual circles, signifying an ostensibly heterosexual young man who may be induced to experiment with homoeroticism and ultimately to ‘turn’ (i.e. to become a fully-fledged practicing homosexual). A more discreet version of the slang pejorative ‘bender’, signifying a homosexual male. ‘Turn’ here signifies ‘turning around’, or ‘turning one’s back’ in order to receive phallic penetration.
- Backgammon player (late 18th century Britain)
- Gentleman of the back door (late 18th century Britain)
- Both
- Kamp/Camp
- Homo (abbreviation for homosexual)
- Queer
[edit] German
- Male
- Warmer Bruder (moderately pejorative) - meaning "warm brother"
- Schwuler - As a noun, related to the adjective "schwül" (meaning "sultry"), usually translated as "gay". The related adjective is "schwul"
- Schwuchtel (pejorative)
- Homosexueller - As a noun, meaning "homosexual". The related adjective is "homosexuell".
- Female
- Lesbe - As a noun, meaning "lesbian". The related adjective is "lesbisch"
- Lesbierin (obsolete)
- Sapphistin (obsolete) - referring to Sappho
- Homosexuelle - As a noun, meaning "homosexual". The related adjective is "homosexuell".
[edit] French
- Female
- Femme Damnee - literally, "damned woman." Not in common usage today, this term is found in several works of French literature of the late 19th and early 20th century, including the poem by Charles Baudelaire.
[edit] Spanish
- Female
- Mal-flor, Manflora
- Marimacho
- Pantalonuda
- Tortillera, Chiluda, Machorra (Mexico)
- Arepara
- Male
- Maricon - still in common usage
- Pajaro, Joto, Puto, Quebrado, Trolo (Argentina)
[edit] Russian
- гей (gay) - a transliteration of the English "gay".
- гомосексуал (gomosexual) - homosexual (as a noun applied to a man).
- лесбиянка (lesbiyanka) - lesbian.
- голубой (golooboi) - as an adjective, "light blue". Used as a noun it carries the meaning "gay" or "queer", and is usually described as lightly to moderately offensive.
[edit] Serbian
- peder- Male homosexual (from pederasty)
- seka-Persa -Male homosexual (seka='sis')
