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Homosexuality
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Homosexuality refers to sexual behavior or attraction between people of the same sex, or to a homosexual orientation. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "having sexual and romantic attraction primarily or exclusively to members of one’s own sex"; "it also refers to an individual’s sense of personal and social identity based on those attractions, behaviors expressing them, and membership in a community of others who share them."[1][2] Homosexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality together make up the three main classifications of sexual orientation and are part of the Heterosexual-homosexual continuum. The exact proportion of the population that is homosexual is difficult to estimate reliably,[3] but most recent studies place it at 2–7%.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] However, according to a survey, 12% of Norwegians have had homosexual sex. [13]
Sexual orientation is also distinguished from other aspects of sexuality, "including biological sex (the anatomical, physiological, and genetic characteristics associated with being male or female), gender identity (the psychological sense of being male, female or other), and social gender role (adherence to cultural norms defining feminine and masculine behavior)."[2]
Etymologically, the word homosexual is a Greek and Latin hybrid with homos (sometimes confused with an unrelated Latin word for "man", as in Homo sapiens) deriving from the Greek word for same, thus connoting sexual acts and affections between members of the same sex, including lesbianism.[14][15] The word gay generally refers to male homosexuality, but is sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to homosexuality in general. In the context of sexuality, the word lesbian denotes female homosexuality.
There is much evidence of both acceptance and repression of homosexual behavior throughout recorded history. During the last several decades, there has been a trend towards increased visibility, recognition, and legal rights for homosexuals, including marriage and civil unions, parenting rights, and equal access to health care.
Overview
Homosexuality has been a feature of human culture since earliest history (see History section below). Generally and most famously in ancient Greece, certain forms of erotic attraction and sexual pleasure between males were often an ingrained, accepted part of the cultural norm. Particular sexual activities (such as anal sex in some cultures, or oral sex in others), however, were disapproved of, even as other aspects were accepted and admired. In cultures under the sway of Abrahamic religions, the law and the church established sodomy as a transgression against divine law, a "crime against nature", and subject to severe penalties, up to capital punishment — often inflicted by means of fire so as to purify the unholy action.[citation needed] The condemnation of penetrative sex between males, however, predates Christian belief, as it was frequent in ancient Greece, whence the theme of action "against nature," traceable to Plato, originated.[16]
In the last two decades of the 19th Century, a different view began to predominate in medical and psychiatric circles, judging such behavior as indicative of a type of person with a defined and relatively stable sexual orientation. Karl-Maria Kertbeny coined the term homosexual in 1869 in a pamphlet arguing against a Prussian anti-sodomy law.[17][18] Richard von Krafft-Ebing's 1886 book Psychopathia Sexualis elaborated on the concept.[18]
In 1897, British physician Havelock Ellis published similar views in his influential book Sexual Inversion.[19] Although medical texts like these (written partly in Latin to obscure the sexual details) were not widely read by the general public, they did lead to the rise of Magnus Hirschfeld's Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which campaigned from 1897 to 1933 against anti-sodomy laws in Germany, as well as a much more informal, unpublicized movement among British intellectuals and writers, led by such figures as Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds.
In the course of the 20th Century, homosexuality became a subject of considerable study and debate in Western societies, especially after the modern gay rights movement began in 1969. Once viewed by authorities as a pathology or mental illness to be cured, homosexuality is now more often investigated as part of a larger impetus to understand the biology, psychology, politics, genetics, history and cultural variations of sexual practice and identity. The legal and social status of people who engage in homosexual acts or identify as gay or lesbian varies enormously across the world, and in some places remains hotly contested in political and religious debate.
Etymology and usage
The adjective homosexual describes behavior, relationships, people, orientation etc. The adjectival form literally means "same sex", being a hybrid formed from Greek homo- (a form of homos "same"), and "sexual" from Medieval Latin sexualis (from Classical Latin sexus). Many modern style guides in the U.S. recommend against using homosexual as a noun, instead using gay man or lesbian.[20] Similarly, some recommend completely avoiding usage of homosexual as having a negative and discredited clinical history and because the word only refers to one's sexual behavior, and not to romantic feelings.[20] Gay and lesbian are the most common alternatives. The first letters are frequently combined to create the initialism LGBT (sometimes written as GLBT), in which B and T refer to bisexuals and transgender people. These style guides are not always followed by mainstream media sources.[21]
The first known appearance of homosexual in print is found in an 1869 German pamphlet by the Austrian-born novelist Karl-Maria Kertbeny, published anonymously.[22] The prevalence of the concept owes much to the work of the German psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing and his 1886 work Psychopathia Sexualis.[23] As such, the current use of the term has its roots in the broader 19th 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.
Although early writers also used the adjective homosexual to refer to any single-sex context (such as an all-girls' 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. Other terms include men who have sex with men or MSM (used in the medical community when specifically discussing sexual activity), homoerotic (referring to works of art), heteroflexible (referring to a person who identifies as heterosexual, but occasionally engages in same-sex sexual activities), and metrosexual (referring to a non-gay man with stereotypically gay tastes in food, fashion, and design). Pejorative terms in English include queer, faggot, fairy, poof, and homo. Beginning in the 1990s, some of these have been "reclaimed" as positive words by gay men and lesbians, as in the usage of queer studies, queer theory, and even the popular American television program Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. The word homo occurs in many other languages without the pejorative connotations it has in English.[24] As with ethnic slurs and racial slurs, however, the misuse of these terms can still be highly offensive; the range of acceptable use depends on the context and speaker. Conversely, gay, a word originally embraced by homosexual men and women as a positive, affirmative term (as in gay liberation and gay rights), has come into widespread pejorative use among young people.