History of homosexuality
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Societal attitudes towards same-sex relationships have varied over time and place. Attitudes to male homosexuality have varied from requiring males to engage in same-sex relationships to casual integration, through acceptance, to seeing the practice as a minor sin, repressing it through law enforcement and judicial mechanisms, and to proscribing it under penalty of death. In addition, it has varied as to whether any negative attitudes towards
Homosexuality was generally accepted in many ancient eastern cultures such as those influenced by Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism.[1][2] It is thought that ancient Assyria (2nd millennium BC to 1st millennium AD) viewed homosexuality as negative and at least criminal,[3] with the religious codes of Zoroastrianism forbidding homosexuality,[4] and the rise of Judaism, Christianity and Islam supplanting homophobia in much of the western world; the majority of the ancient sources prior to the onset of the Abrahamic religions present homosexuality in the form of male domination or rape.[5][6] The LGBTQ rights movement is associated with the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York.[7]
Many male historical figures, including
The Americas
Pre-colonization Indigenous societies
Among
Homosexual and gender-variant individuals were also common among other pre-
The Spanish conquerors were horrified to discover sodomy openly practiced among native peoples, and attempted to crush it out by subjecting the
Post-colonization
East Asia
In East Asia, same-sex love has been referred to since the earliest recorded history.
China
Homosexuality
With the rise of the Tang dynasty, China became increasingly influenced by the sexual mores of foreigners from Western and Central Asia, and female companions began to replace male companions in terms of power and familial standings.[23] The following Song dynasty was the last dynasty to include a chapter on male companions of the emperors in official documents.[23] During these dynasties, the general attitude toward homosexuality was still tolerant, but male lovers started to be seen as less legitimate compared to wives and men are usually expected to get married and continue the family line.[24]
During the Ming Dynasty, it is said that the
The Qing dynasty instituted the first law against consensual, non-monetized homosexuality in China. However, the punishment designated, which included a month in prison and 100 heavy blows, was actually the lightest punishment which existed in the Qing legal system.[23]: 144 Homosexuality started to become eliminated in China by the Self-Strengthening Movement, when homophobia was imported to China along with Western science and philosophy.[27]
Japan
Homosexuality in Japan, variously known as shudo or nanshoku, has been documented for over one thousand years and had some connections to the Buddhist monastic life and the samurai tradition. This same-sex love culture gave rise to strong traditions of painting and literature documenting and celebrating such relationships. [28]
Siam
Similarly, in
Europe
Antiquity
The earliest Western documents (in the form of literary works, art objects, and mythographic materials) concerning same-sex relationships are derived from ancient Greece.
The formal practice, an erotic yet often restrained relationship between a free-born (i.e. not a slave or
Aristotle, in his Politics, dismissed Plato's ideas about abolishing homosexuality (2.4); he explains that barbarians like the
In
The Middle Ages
This section needs additional citations for verification. (November 2020) |
Through the medieval period in Europe, homosexuality was generally condemned and thought to be the moral of the story of
Also during the medieval period, there were legal arrangements called
The Renaissance
During the
Modernity
Early Modernity
The relationships of socially prominent figures, such as
The anonymous Love Letters Between a Certain Late Nobleman and the Famous Mr. Wilson was published in 1723 in England and was presumed by some modern scholars to be a novel.[47]
The 1749 edition of
Late Modernity
These developments suffered several setbacks, both coincidental and deliberate. For example, in 1895, famed playwright
Middle East
There are a handful of accounts by Arab travelers to Europe during the mid-1800s. Two of these travelers, Rifa'ah al-Tahtawi and Muhammad al-Saffar, show their surprise that the French sometimes deliberately mis-translated love poetry about a young boy, instead referring to a young woman, to maintain their social norms and morals.[54]
Among modern Middle Eastern countries, same-sex intercourse officially carries the death penalty in several nations, including Saudi Arabia and Iran.[55]
Today, governments in the Middle East often ignore, deny the existence of, or criminalize homosexuality. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during his 2007 speech at Columbia University, asserted that there were no gay people in Iran. Gay people may live in Iran, however they are forced to keep their sexuality veiled from the society, funded and encouraged by government legislation and traditional norms.[56]
Mesopotamia
Some ancient religious Assyrian texts may have contained prayers for divine blessings on homosexual relationships, though the same source acknowledges that homosexuality was regarded has reprehensible, and no less than criminal.
South Asia
South Asia has a recorded and verifiable history of homosexuality going back to at least 1200 BC. Hindu medical texts written in India from this period document homosexual acts and attempt to explain the cause in a neutral/scientific manner.[60][61][62] Numerous artworks and literary works from this period also describe homosexuality.[63][64][65][66] The Pali Cannon, written in Sri Lanka between 600 BC and 100 BC, states that sexual relations, whether of homosexual or of heterosexual nature, is forbidden in the monastic code, and states that any acts of soft homosexual sex (such as masturbation and interfemural sex) does not entail a punishment but must be confessed to the monastery. These codes apply to monks only and not to the general population.[67][68] The Kama Sutra written in India around 200 AD also described numerous homosexual sex acts positively.[69]
The
South Pacific
In many societies of
Africa
Egypt
Homosexuality in ancient Egypt is a passionately disputed subject within Egyptology: historians and egyptologists alike debate what kind of view the Ancient Egyptian society fostered about homosexuality. Only a handful of direct hints have survived to this day and many possible indications are only vague and offer plenty of room for speculation.
The best known case of possible homosexuality in Ancient Egypt is that of the two high officials
Egyptologists and historians disagree about how to interpret the paintings of Nyankh-khnum and Khnum-hotep. Some scholars believe that the paintings reflect an example of homosexuality between two married men and prove that the Ancient Egyptians accepted same-sex relationships.[74] Other scholars disagree and interpret the scenes as an evidence that Nyankh-khnum and Khnum-hotep were twins, even possibly conjoined twins. No matter what interpretation is correct, the paintings show at the very least that Nyankh-khnum and Khnum-hotep must have been very close to each other in life as in death.[73]
It remains unclear what exact view the Ancient Egyptians fostered about homosexuality. Any document and literature that actually contains sexually orientated stories never name the nature of the sexual deeds, but instead uses stilted and flowery paraphrases. While the stories about Seth and his sexual behavior may reveal rather negative thoughts and views, the tomb inscription of Nyankh-khnum and Khnum-hotep may instead suggest that homosexuality was likewise accepted. Ancient Egyptian documents never clearly say that same-sex relationships were seen as reprehensible or despicable. And no Ancient Egyptian document mentions that homosexual acts were set under penalty. Thus, a straight evaluation remains problematic.[73][75]
Uganda
In the 19th century
Post-World War II
The Western world
After World War II, the history of homosexuality in
In 1948, American biologist Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, popularly known as the Kinsey Reports. In 1957, the UK government commissioned the Wolfenden report to review the country's anti-sodomy laws; the final report advised decriminalizing consensual homosexual conduct, though the laws were not actually changed for another ten years.
Homosexuality was deemed to be a psychiatric disorder for many years, although the studies this theory was based on were later determined to be flawed. In 1973 homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness in the United Kingdom. In 1986 all references to homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder were removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association.[citation needed]
LGBT rights movements
During the
The
Historiographic considerations
In an 1868 letter to
Historical personalities are often described using modern sexual identity terms such as straight, bisexual, gay or queer. Those who favour the practice say that this can highlight such issues as discriminatory historiography by, for example, putting into relief the extent to which same-sex sexual experiences are excluded from biographies of noted figures, or to which sensibilities resulting from same-sex attraction are excluded from literary and artistic consideration of important works, and so on. As well as that, an opposite situation is possible in the modern society: some LGBT-supportive researchers stick to the homosexual theories, excluding other possibilities.
However, many, especially in the academic world, regard the use of modern labels as problematic, owing to differences in the ways that different societies constructed sexual orientation identities and to the connotations of modern words like queer. For example, in many societies same-sex sex acts were expected, or completely ignored, and no identity was constructed on their basis at all. Other academics acknowledge that, for example, even in the modern day not all men who have sex with men identify with any of the modern related terms, and that terms for other modern constructed or medicalized identities (such as nationality or disability) are routinely used in anachronistic contexts as mere descriptors or for ease of modern understanding; thus they have no qualms doing the same for sexual orientation. Academic works usually specify which words will be used and in which context. Readers are cautioned to avoid making assumptions about the identity of historical figures based on the use of the terms mentioned above.
Ancient Greece
Greek men had great latitude in their sexual expression, but their wives were severely restricted and could hardly move about the town unsupervised if she was old enough that people would ask whose mother she was, not whose wife she was.[citation needed]
Men could also seek adolescent boys as partners as shown by some of the earliest documents concerning same-sex pederastic relationships, which come from Ancient Greece. Though slave boys could be bought, free boys had to be courted, and ancient materials suggest that the father also had to consent to the relationship. Such relationships did not replace marriage between man and woman, but occurred before and during the marriage. A mature man would not usually have a mature male mate (though there were exceptions, among whom Alexander the Great); he would be the erastes (lover) to a young eromenos (loved one). Dover suggests that it was considered improper for the eromenos to feel desire, as that would not be masculine. Driven by desire and admiration, the erastes would devote himself unselfishly by providing all the education his eromenos required to thrive in society. In recent times, Dover's theory suggests that questioned in light of massive evidence of ancient art and love poetry, a more emotional connection than earlier researchers liked to acknowledge. Some research has shown that ancient Greeks believed semen to be the source of knowledge and that these relationships served to pass wisdom on from the erastes to the eromenos. [citation needed]
Ancient Rome
The "conquest mentality" of the
"Homosexual" and "heterosexual" were thus not categories of
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Further reading
- Campbell, David A., ed. (1982). "Introduction". Greek Lyric I:Sappho and Alcaeus. Cambridge, Mass. )
- D. L. Davis and R. G. Whitten, "The Cross-Cultural Study of Human Sexuality", Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 16: 69–98, October 1987,
- ISBN 0-394-41775-5
- 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.