Homsexuality
🔞 ALL INFORMATION CLICK HERE 👈🏻👈🏻👈🏻
Homsexuality
Browse
Search
Entertainment & Pop Culture
Geography & Travel
Health & Medicine
Lifestyles & Social Issues
Literature
Philosophy & Religion
Politics, Law & Government
Science
Sports & Recreation
Technology
Visual Arts
World History
On This Day in History
Quizzes
Podcasts
Dictionary
Biographies
Summaries
Top Questions
Week In Review
Infographics
Demystified
Lists
#WTFact
Companions
Image Galleries
Spotlight
The Forum
One Good Fact
Entertainment & Pop Culture
Geography & Travel
Health & Medicine
Lifestyles & Social Issues
Literature
Philosophy & Religion
Politics, Law & Government
Science
Sports & Recreation
Technology
Visual Arts
World History
Britannica Classics Check out these retro videos from Encyclopedia Britannica’s archives.
Britannica Explains In these videos, Britannica explains a variety of topics and answers frequently asked questions.
Demystified Videos In Demystified, Britannica has all the answers to your burning questions.
#WTFact Videos In #WTFact Britannica shares some of the most bizarre facts we can find.
This Time in History In these videos, find out what happened this month (or any month!) in history.
Buying Guide Expert buying advice. From tech to household and wellness products.
Student Portal Britannica is the ultimate student resource for key school subjects like history, government, literature, and more.
COVID-19 Portal While this global health crisis continues to evolve, it can be useful to look to past pandemics to better understand how to respond today.
100 Women Britannica celebrates the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, highlighting suffragists and history-making politicians.
Britannica Beyond We’ve created a new place where questions are at the center of learning. Go ahead. Ask. We won’t mind.
Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century. Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them!
SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies.
Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).
Feedback Type
Select a type (Required)
Factual Correction
Spelling/Grammar Correction
Link Correction
Additional Information
Other
Please select which sections you would like to print:
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies.
Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).
Feedback Type
Select a type (Required)
Factual Correction
Spelling/Grammar Correction
Link Correction
Additional Information
Other
By
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
•
Edit History
Key People:
Frederick William Rolfe
Magnus Hirschfeld
George Weinberg
John Addington Symonds
Harry Hay
... (Show more)
Related Topics:
same-sex marriage
gay rights movement
homophobia
Gay Pride
lesbianism
... (Show more)
Scientists believe fossilized skulls of elephant relatives found by ancient Greeks were the basis for the mythological Cyclops.
Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
homosexuality , sexual interest in and attraction to members of one’s own sex. The term gay is frequently used as a synonym for homosexual; female homosexuality is often referred to as lesbianism .
At different times and in different cultures , homosexual behaviour has been variously approved of, tolerated, punished, and banned. Homosexuality was not uncommon in ancient Greece and Rome , and the relationships between adult and adolescent males in particular have become a chief focus of Western classicists in recent years. Judeo-Christian as well as Muslim cultures have generally perceived homosexual behaviour as sinful. Many Jewish and Christian leaders, however, have gone to great lengths to make clear that it is the acts and not the individuals or even their “inclination” or “orientation” that their faiths proscribe. Others—from factions within mainstream Protestantism to organizations of Reform rabbis—have advocated, on theological as well as social grounds, the full acceptance of homosexuals and their relationships. The topic has threatened to cause outright schisms in some denominations.
Attitudes toward homosexuality are generally in flux, partially as a result of increased political activism ( see gay rights movement ) and efforts by homosexuals to be seen not as aberrant personalities but as differing from “normal” individuals only in their sexual orientation . The conflicting views of homosexuality—as a variant but normal human sexual behaviour on one hand, and as psychologically deviant behaviour on the other—remain present in most societies in the 21st century, but they have been largely resolved (in the professional sense) in most developed countries. The American Psychiatric Association , for example, declassified “ego-syntonic homosexuality” (the condition of a person content with his or her homosexuality) as a mental illness in 1973. Nonetheless, some religious groups continue to emphasize reparative therapy in the attempt to “cure” homosexuality through prayer, counseling , and behaviour modification. Their claims of success, however, are controversial. Wherever opinion can be freely expressed, debates about homosexuality will likely continue.
Psychologists in the 19th and 20th centuries, most of whom classified homosexuality as a form of mental illness, developed a variety of theories on its origin. The 19th-century psychologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing , whose Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) included masturbation, sado-masochism, and “lust-murder” in its list of sexual perversions, saw it as originating in heredity. His contemporary Sigmund Freud characterized it as a result of conflicts of psychosexual development, including identification with the parent of the opposite sex. Others have looked at social influences and physiological events in fetal development as possible origins. It is likely that many instances of homosexuality result from a combination of inborn or constitutional factors and environmental or social influences.
By the 21st century, many societies had been discussing sexuality and sexual practices with increased candour. Together with a growing acceptance of homosexuality as a common expression of human sexuality, long-standing beliefs about homosexuals had begun to lose credence . The stereotypes of male homosexuals as weak and effeminate and lesbians as masculine and aggressive, which were widespread in the West as recently as the 1950s and early ’60s, have largely been discarded.
In the 20th-century United States , a field known as sex research was established among the social and behavioral sciences in an effort to investigate actual sexual practice. ( See sexology .) Researchers such as Alfred Kinsey reported that homosexual activity was a frequent pattern in adolescence, among both males and females. The Kinsey report of 1948 , for example, found that 30 percent of adult American males among Kinsey’s subjects had engaged in some homosexual activity and that 10 percent reported that their sexual practice had been exclusively homosexual for a period of at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55. About half as many women in the study reported predominantly homosexual activity. Kinsey’s research methods and conclusions have been much criticized, however, and further studies have produced somewhat different and varying results. A range of more recent surveys, concerning predominantly homosexual behaviour as well as same-gender sexual contact in adulthood, have yielded results that are both higher and lower than those identified by Kinsey. Instead of categorizing people in absolute terms as either homosexual or heterosexual, Kinsey observed a spectrum of sexual activity, of which exclusive orientations of either type make up the extremes. Most people can be identified at a point on either side of the midpoint of the spectrum, with bisexuals (those who respond sexually to persons of either sex) situated in the middle. Situational homosexual activity tends to occur in environments such as prisons , where there are no opportunities for heterosexual contact.
As mentioned above, different societies respond differently to homosexuality. In most of Africa, Asia , and Latin America , both the subject and the behaviour are considered taboo, with some slight exception made in urban areas. In Western countries, attitudes were somewhat more liberal. Although the topic of homosexuality was little discussed in the public forum during the early part of the 20th century, it became a political issue in many Western countries during the late 20th century. This was particularly true in the United States, where the gay rights movement is often seen as a late offshoot of various civil rights movements of the 1960s. After the 1969 Stonewall riots , in which New York City policemen raided a gay bar and met with sustained resistance, many homosexuals were emboldened to identify themselves as gay men or lesbians to friends, to relatives, and even to the public at large. In much of North America and western Europe , the heterosexual population became aware of gay and lesbian communities for the first time. Many gay men and lesbians began to demand equal treatment in employment practices, housing, and public policy. In response to their activism, many jurisdictions enacted laws banning discrimination against homosexuals, and an increasing number of employers in America and European countries agreed to offer “ domestic partner ” benefits similar to the health care, life insurance and, in some cases, pension benefits available to heterosexual married couples. Although conditions for gay people had generally improved in most of Europe and North America at the turn of the 21st century, elsewhere in the world violence against gay people continued. In Namibia, for example, police officers were instructed to “eliminate” homosexuals. Gay students at Jamaica’s Northern Caribbean University were beaten, and an anti-gay group in Brazil by the name of Acorda Coracao (“Wake Up, Dear”) was blamed for murdering several gay people. In Ecuador a gay rights group called Quitogay received so much threatening e-mail that it was given support by Amnesty International .
Even in parts of the world where physical violence is absent , intolerance of homosexuality often persists. There are, however, some signs of change. In one such instance, Albania repealed its sodomy statutes in 1995, and gay couples in Amsterdam in 2001 were legally married under the same laws that govern heterosexual marriage (rather than under laws that allowed them to “register” or form “domestic” partnerships). In the late 20th century gay men and lesbians proudly revealed their sexual orientation in increasing numbers. Still others, notably those in the public eye, had their sexual orientation revealed in the media and against their will by activists either for or against gay rights—a controversial practice known as “outing.”
One of the issues that loomed largest for gay men in the last two decades of the 20th century and beyond was AIDS . Elsewhere in the world AIDS was transmitted principally by heterosexual sex, but in the United States and in some European centres it was particularly prevalent in urban gay communities. As a result homosexuals were at the forefront of advocacy for research into the disease and support for its victims through groups such as Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York City. Novelist and playwright Larry Kramer , who believed a more aggressive presence was needed, founded the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), which began promoting political action, including outing, through local chapters in such cities as New York , Los Angeles, San Francisco , Washington, D.C., and Paris. The disease also took a heavy toll on the arts communities in these centres, and virtually none of the artistic output of gay men in the late 20th century was untouched by the topic and the sense of great loss.
Lesbians, especially those uninvolved with intravenous drugs and the sex trade, were probably the demographic group least affected by AIDS. However, most shared with gay men the desire to have a secure place in the world community at large, unchallenged by the fear of violence, the struggle for equal treatment under the law, the attempt to silence, and any other form of civil behaviour that imposes second-class citizenship.
The 10-second read: A fascinating nugget of information, delivered to your inbox.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "History of homosexuality" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( September 2016 ) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message )
This section needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( November 2020 ) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message )
^ Gwen J. Broude and Sarah J. Greene, "Cross-Cultural Codes on Twenty Sexual Attitudes and Practices", Ethnology , Vol. 15, No. 4 (Oct. 1976), pp. 409–429.
^ Broude, Gwen J., and Sarah J. Greene, (1980). "Cross-Cultural Codes on Twenty Sexual Attitudes and Practices", In: Cross-Cultural Samples and Codes . Herbert Barry III and Alice Schlegel , eds. pp. 313–334. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
^ Roman Homosexuality , Craig Arthur Williams, p.60
^ ( Foucault 1986 ) harv error: no target: CITEREFFoucault1986 ( help )
^ Thomas K. Hubbard, Review of David M. Halperin, "How to Do the History of Homosexuality" in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2003.09.22
^ Norton, Rictor (2016). Myth of the Modern Homosexual . Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781474286923 . The author has made adapted and expanded portions of this book available online as A Critique of Social Constructionism and Postmodern Queer Theory .
^ Boswell, John (1989). "Revolutions, Universals, and Sexual Categories" (PDF) . In Duberman, Martin Bauml; Vicinus, Martha; Chauncey, Jr., George (eds.). Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past . Penguin Books. pp. 17–36. S2CID 34904667 . Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-03-04.
^ Jump up to: a b c Boswell, John (1980). Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
^ Estrada, Gabriel S. 2011. " Two Spirits, Nádleeh, and LGBTQ2 Navajo Gaze ." American Indian Culture and Research Journal 35(4):167–190.
^ " Two Spirit Terms in Tribal Languages " Archived 2015-01-02 at the Wayback Machine " at NativeOut . Accessed 23 Sep 2015
^ " Two Spirit 101 " at NativeOut : "The Two Spirit term was adopted in 1990 at an Indigenous lesbian and gay international gathering to encourage the replacement of the term berdache, which means, 'passive partner in sodomy, boy prostitute.'" Accessed 6 April 2016
^ de Vries, Kylan Mattias (2009). "Berdache (Two-Spirit)" . In O'Brien, Jodi (ed.). Encyclopedia of gender and society . Los Angeles: SAGE. p. 64. ISBN 9781412909167 . Retrieved 6 March 2015 .
^ Kehoe, Alice B. (2002). "Appropriate Terms" . SAA Bulletin . Society for American Archaeology 16(2), UC-Santa Barbara . ISSN 0741-5672 . Archived from the original on 2004-11-05 . Retrieved 2019-05-01 .
^ Pablo, Ben (2004), "Latin America: Colonial" , glbtq.com , archived from the original on 2007-12-11 , retrieved 2007-08-01
^ Murray, Stephen (2004). "Mexico" . In Claude J. Summers (ed.). glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture . glbtq, Inc. Archived from the original on 2007-11-02 . Retrieved 2007-08-01 .
^ Mártir de Anglería, Pedro. (1530). Décadas del Mundo Nuevo . Quoted by Coello de la Rosa, Alexandre. "Good Indians", "Bad Indians", "What Christians?": The Dark Side of the New World in Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (1478–1557), Delaware Review of Latin American Studies , Vol. 3, No. 2, 2002.
^ Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual Tradition in China by Bret Hinsch; Review by: Frank Dikötter. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 55, No. 1(1992), Cambridge University Press, p. 170
^ Jump up to: a b c d e Hinsch, Bret. (1990). Passions of the Cut Sleeve. University of California Press.
^ "History of Chinese homosexuality" . www.chinadaily.com.cn . Retrieved 2022-03-21 .
^ Bret Hinsch (1992). Passions of the cut sleeve: the male homosexual tradition in China . University of California Press. p. 142. ISBN 0-520-07869-1 . Retrieved November 28, 2010 .
^ Société française des seiziémistes (1997). Nouvelle revue du XVIe siècle, Volumes 15–16 . Droz. p. 14 . Retrieved November 28, 2010 .
^ Manoli, Maria (May 30, 2017). "Sexuality in ancient China, part 2" . GBTimes . Retrieved March 8, 2020 .
^ International Bar Association. Conference (2000 : Amsterdam, Netherlands) (2014-05-22). Sexuality and human rights : a global overview . Graupner, Helmut, 1965–, Tahmindjis, Phillip. Binghamton, NY. ISBN 9781134732579 . OCLC 880877782 .
^ Plato , Phaedrus in the Symposium
^ Plato, Laws, 636D & 835E
^ Douglas Harper (2001). "Lesbian" . Online Etymology Dictionary . Retrieved 2009-02-07 .
3 Hole Sex
Jewel Singer Nude
Pune Sex