Taoist sexual practices, literally "Joining Energy" or "The Joining of the Essences", is the way some Taoists practiced sex. Practitioners believed that by performing these sexual arts, one could stay in good health, and eventually, with some other spiritual or alchemical practices, attain immortality.
History
Some Taoist sects during Han Dynasty performed sexual intercourse as a spiritual practice, called "HeQi" ("Joining Energy").
The first sexual texts that survive today are those found at the Mawangdui tombs. While Taoism had not yet fully evolved as a philosophy at this time, these texts shared some remarkable similarities with later Tang dynasty texts, such as the Ishinpō.
The sexual arts arguably reached their peak between the end of the Han dynasty and the end of the Tang dynasty.
After 1000 CE, Confucian puritanism became stronger and stronger, so that by the advent of the Qing dynasty, sex was a taboo topic in public life.
These Confucians alleged that the separation of genders in most social activities existed two thousand years ago, and suppressed the sexual arts. Because of the taboo surrounding sex, there was much censoring done during the Qing in literature, and the sexual arts disappeared in public life. As a result, some of the texts survived only in Japan, and most scholars had no idea that such a different concept of sex existed in early China.
Ancient and medieval practices
Qi (Lifeforce) and Jing (Essence)
The basis of all Taoist thinking is that qi is part of everything that exists. It is related to another energetic substance contained in the human body known as jing (精), and once all this has been expended, you will die.
Jing could be lost from the body in a variety of ways, most notably the bodily fluids. Taoists would use practices to stimulate/increase and conserve their bodily fluids to great extents, and some reportedly recycled and composted their own fecal matter.
The fluid that contained the most Jing was male semen. Therefore the Taoists believed that men should decrease the frequency or totally avoid ejaculation in order to conserve their life essence.
Male control of ejaculation
Many Taoist practitioners link the loss of ejaculatory fluids to the loss of vital life force: where excessive fluid loss results in premature aging, disease, and general fatigue.
While some Taoists contend that one should never ejaculate, others provide a specific formula to determine the maximum amount of regular ejaculations in order to maintain health.
The general idea is to limit the loss of fluids as much as possible to the level of your desired practice. As these sexual practices were passed down over the centuries, some practitioners have given less importance to the limiting of ejaculation.
Nevertheless, the "retention of the semen" is one of the foundational tenets of Taoist sexual practice.
There are different methods to control ejaculation prescribed by the Taoists. In order to avoid ejaculation, the man could do one of two things. He could pull out immediately before orgasm, a method which Joseph Needham termed "coitus conservatus".
The second method involved the man applying pressure on an area between the scrotum and the anus, and cause a retrograde ejaculation into the bladder. While it is now known that this method causes a retrograde ejaculation, the Taoists believed that the semen traveled up into the head and "nourished the brain".
This method is referred to by some Taoist scholars as "The Million Dollar Point" (reference Mantak Chia), regarding it as either a cheap lesson for income or a backup method, believing that it somehow lessened the loss of "jing" from a full ejaculation.
Some modern teachers have come to the conclusion that the method should not be used because of potential dangers.
Another method involves the Taoist to train himself to separate the impulses of ejaculation and orgasmic contraction (the contraction of the pelvic muscles that "pump" the prostate and the ejaculate).
By separating these impulses, at the point of orgasm, the man can halt penetration but remain inside his partner, and forcibly clench his pelvic floor ("stunting" the initial prostate contractions), while simultaneously adopting a meditation like "intention" that these Taoists believe redirect not the physical sperm, but the life energy(jing) it contains up the back and to the center of the brain. This way the man will still have orgasm, but will not ejaculate, and most importantly will not lose his erection.
This formula prescribes the man to climb a "ladder" of escalating orgasms in conjunction with the meditation like "intention", in order to cultivate and store massive amounts of "jing".
If performed successfully the male should have no stagnating pain in the testes, and should have no semen in his urine, as well as the health benefits expected by practitioners. Those that practice this method believe that it is one of the keys to immortality.
Jing (Sexual energy)
Another important concept of "The Joining of the Essences" was that the union of a man and a woman would result in the creation of jing, a type of sexual energy. When in the act of lovemaking, jing would form, and the man could transform some of this jing into qi, and replenish his lifeforce. By having as much sex as possible, men had the opportunity to transform more and more jing, and as a result would see many health benefits.
Yin/Yang
The concept of Yin/yang is important in Taoism, and consequently also holds special importance in sex. Yang usually referred to the male gender, whereas Yin could refer to the female gender.
Man and Woman were the equivalent of heaven and earth, but became disconnected. Therefore while heaven and earth are eternal, man and woman suffer a premature death.
Every interaction between Yin and Yang had significance. Because of this significance, every position and action in lovemaking had importance. Taoist texts described a large number of special sexual positions that served to cure or prevent illness.
Significance of woman
For Taoists, sex was not just about pleasing the man. The woman also had to be stimulated and pleased in order to benefit from the act of sex. Sex could only happen if both partners desired it. If sex were performed in this manner, the woman would create more jing, and the man could more easily absorb the jing to increase his own qi. Women were also given a prominent place in the Ishinpō, with the tutor being a woman.
One of the reasons women had a great deal of strength in the act of sex was that they walked away undiminished from the act. The woman had the power to bring forth life, and did not have to worry about ejaculation or refractory period.
Yet, women were often still given a position of inferiority in sexual practice. Many of the texts discuss sex from a male point of view, and avoid discussing how sex could benefit women.
Men were encouraged to not limit themselves to one woman, and were advised to have sex only with a woman who was beautiful and had not had children. While the man had to please the woman sexually, she was still just an object.
At numerous points during the Ishinpō, the woman is referred to as the "enemy." This was because part of the act of intercourse was an assumption by the male of dominance of the woman's sexual prowess.
In later sexual texts from the Ming, women had lost all semblance of being human and were referred to as the "other," "crucible" or "stove." The importance of pleasing the woman also diminished in later texts.
Women were also considered to be a means for men to extend men's lives. Many of the ancient texts were dedicated explanation of how a man could use sex to extend his own life.
But, his life was extended only through the absorption of the woman's vital energies (jing and qi). Some Taoists called the act of sex “The battle of stealing and strengthening”.
These sexual methods could be correlated with Daoist military methods. Instead of storming the gates, the battle was a series of feints and maneuvers that would sap the enemy's resistance.
When and where to have sex
Another text, Health Benefits of the Bedchamber, indicates that certain times were better for intercourse than others. A person had to avoid having intercourse on quarter or full moons and on days when there were great winds, rain, fog, cold or heat, thunder, lightning, darkness over heaven and earth, solar and lunar eclipses, rainbows and earthquakes.
Having intercourse at these times would harm a man's spirit and would cause women to become ill. Children conceived at these times would be mad, stupid, perverse or foolish; mute, deaf, crippled or blind; unfilial and violent.
Also important was selecting the right day for intercourse if a person desired children. After the woman's period, the first, third or fifth days were the best. If on these days the man ejaculated after midnight, the child would likely be male. If a female child was desired, the man needed to ejaculate on the second, fourth or sixth days after the cessation of the woman's period.
The location of sex was also important. People had to avoid the glare of the sun, moon or stars, the interior of shrines, proximity to temples, wells, stoves and privies, and the vicinity of graves or coffins.
If these suggestions were followed the family's offspring would be good, wise and virtuous. If they were not followed, the offspring would be evil and the family would eventually die off.
Immortality
Some Ming Dynasty Daoist sects believed that one way for men to achieve longevity or immortality is by having intercourse with virgins, particularly young virgins. This has been disapproved and criticized by most other Daoist schools as "Pseudo-Tao".
Daoist sexual books, such as the Hsuan wei Hshin ("Mental Images of the Mysteries and Subtleties of Sexual Techniques") and San Feng Tan Cheueh ("Zhang Sanfeng's Instructions in the Physiological Alchemy"), written, respectively, by Zhao Liangpi and Zhang Sanfeng, call the woman sexual partner ding (鼎), originally a large, three-legged bronze cauldron used in the practice of alchemy, and state that the most desirable ding is a girl about 14, 15, or 16 years old just before or after menarche.
Zhang Sanfeng went further and divided ding into three ranks: • the lowest rank, 21- to 25-year-old women; • the middle rank, 16- to 20-year-old menstruating virgin girls; • the highest rank, 14-year-old premenarche virgin girls.[15]
All of these various precepts were believed by some in those sects to be able to serve to help people attain immortality.
According to Ge Hong, a 4th century Daoist alchemist, "those seeking immortality must perfect the absolute essentials. These consist of treasuring the jing, circulating the qi and consuming the great medicine".
The sexual arts concerned the first precept, treasuring the jing. This is partially because treasuring the jing involved sending it up into the brain. In order to send the jing into the brain, the male had to refrain from ejaculation during sex.
According to some Daoists, if this was done, the semen would travel up the spine and nourish the brain instead of leaving the body. Ge Hong also states, however, that it is folly to believe that performing the sexual arts only can achieve immortality and some of the ancient myths on sexual arts had been misinterpreted and exaggerated.
Indeed, the sexual arts had to be practiced alongside alchemy to attain immortality. Ge Hong also warned it could be dangerous if practiced incorrectly. (Iman)
The Kama Sutra (Sanskrit: कामसूत्र), (alternative spellings: Kamasutraṃ or simply Kamasutra), is an ancient Indian text widely considered to be the standard work on human sexual behavior in Sanskrit literature written by the Indian scholar Mallanāga Vātsyāyana.
A portion of the work consists of practical advice on sex.
Kāma means sensual or sexual pleasure, and sūtra means formula, the word itself means thread in Sanskrit.
The Kama Sutra is the oldest and most notable of a group of texts known generically as Kama Shastra (Sanskrit: Kāma Śhāstra).
Traditionally, the first transmission of Kama Shastra or "Discipline of Kama" is attributed to Nandi the sacred bull, Shiva's doorkeeper, who was moved to sacred utterance by overhearing the lovemaking of the god and his wife Parvati and later recorded his utterances for the benefit of mankind.
Historian John Keay says that the Kama Sutra is a compendium that was collected into its present form in the second century CE.
Content
The Mallanaga Vatsyayana's Kama Sutra has 1250 verses, distributed in 36 chapters, which are further organized into 7 parts.
According to both the Burton and Doniger translations, the contents of the book are structured into 7 parts like the following:
1. Introductory
Chapters on contents of the book, three aims and priorities of life, the acquisition of knowledge, conduct of the well-bred townsman, reflections on intermediaries who assist the lover in his enterprises (5 chapters).
2. On sexual union
Chapters on stimulation of desire, types of embraces, caressing and kisses, marking with nails, biting and marking with teeth, on copulation (positions), slapping by hand and corresponding moaning, virile behavior in women, superior coition and oral sex, preludes and conclusions to the game of love. It describes 64 types of sexual acts (10 chapters).
Artistic depiction of a sex position. Although Kama Sutra did not originally have illustrative images, part 2 of the work describes different sex positions.
3. About the acquisition of a wife
Chapters on forms of marriage, relaxing the girl, obtaining the girl, managing alone, union by marriage (5 chapters).
4. About a wife
Chapters on conduct of the only wife and conduct of the chief wife and other wives (2 chapters).
5. About others' wives
Chapters on behavior of woman and man, how to get acquainted, examination of sentiments, the task of go-between, the king's pleasures, behavior in the women's quarters (6 chapters).
6. About courtesans
Chapters on advice of the assistants on the choice of lovers, looking for a steady lover, ways of making money, renewing friendship with a former lover, occasional profits, profits and losses (6 chapters).
7. On the means of attracting others to one's self
Chapters on improving physical attractions, arousing a weakened sexual power (2 chapters)
Pleasure and spirituality
Some Indian philosophies following the "four main goals of life", known as the purusharthas:
1). Dharma: Virtuous living.
2). Artha: Material prosperity.
3). Kama: Aesthetic and erotic pleasure.
4). Moksha: Liberation.
Dharma, Artha and Kama are aims of everyday life, while Moksha is release from the cycle of death and rebirth.
The Kama Sutra (Burton translation) says:
"Dharma is better than Artha, and Artha is better than Kama. But Artha should always be first practised by the king for the livelihood of men is to be obtained from it only.
Again, Kama being the occupation of public women, they should prefer it to the other two, and these are exceptions to the general rule." (Kama Sutra 1.2.14)
Of the first three, virtue is the highest goal, a secure life the second and pleasure the least important. When motives conflict, the higher ideal is to be followed.
Thus, in making money virtue must not be compromised, but earning a living should take precedence over pleasure, but there are exceptions.
In childhood, Vātsyāyana says, a person should learn how to make a living; youth is the time for pleasure, and as years pass one should concentrate on living virtuously and hope to escape the cycle of rebirth.
The Kama Sutra is sometimes wrongly thought of as a manual for tantric sex. While sexual practices do exist within the very wide tradition of Hindu tantra, the Kama Sutra is not a tantric text, and does not touch upon any of the sexual rites associated with some forms of tantric practice.
Also the Buddha preached a Kama Sutra, which is located in the Atthakavagga (sutra number 1).
This Kama Sutra, however, is of a very different nature as it warns against the dangers that come with the search for pleasures of the senses.
Translations
The most widely known English translation of the Kama Sutra was privately printed in 1883. It is usually attributed to the notorious traveler and author Sir Richard Francis Burton, but the chief work was done by the pioneering Indian archeologist, Bhagvanlal Indraji, under the guidance of Burton's friend, the Indian civil servant Foster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot, and with the assistance of a student, Shivaram Parshuram Bhide.
Burton acted as publisher, while also furnishing the edition with footnotes whose tone ranges from the jocular to the scholarly. Burton says the following in its introduction:
It may be interesting to some persons to learn how it came about that Vatsyayana was first brought to light and translated into the English language. It happened thus. While translating with the pundits the `Anunga Runga, or the stage of love', reference was frequently found to be made to one Vatsya.
The sage Vatsya was of this opinion, or of that opinion. The sage Vatsya said this, and so on. Naturally questions were asked who the sage was, and the pundits replied that Vatsya was the author of the standard work on love in Sanskrit literature, that no Sanscrit library was complete without his work, and that it was most difficult now to obtain in its entire state.
The copy of the manuscript obtained in Bombay was defective, and so the pundits wrote to Benares, Calcutta and Jaipur for copies of the manuscript from Sanskrit libraries in those places.
Copies having been obtained, they were then compared with each other, and with the aid of a Commentary called `Jayamangla' a revised copy of the entire manuscript was prepared, and from this copy the English translation was made. The following is the certificate of the chief pundit:
`The accompanying manuscript is corrected by me after comparing four different copies of the work. I had the assistance of a Commentary called "Jayamangla" for correcting the portion in the first five parts, but found great difficulty in correcting the remaining portion, because, with the exception of one copy thereof which was tolerably correct, all the other copies I had were far too incorrect.
However, I took that portion as correct in which the majority of the copies agreed with each other.'
In the introduction to her own translation, Wendy Doniger, professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago, notes that Burton "managed to get a rough approximation of the text published in English in 1883, nasty bits and all".
The philologist and Sanskritist Professor Chlodwig Werba, of the Institute of Indology at the University of Vienna, regards the 1883 translation as being second only in accuracy to the academic German-Latin text published by Richard Schmidt in 1897.
The English translation by Wendy Doniger and Sudhir Kakar, the Indian psychoanalyst and senior fellow at Center for Study of World Religions at Harvard University is becoming regarded as the standard text; it was published by Oxford University Press in 2002. Doniger contributed the Sanskrit expertise while Kakar provided a psychoanalytic interpretation of the text.
A noteworthy translation by Indra Sinha was published in 1980. In the early 1990s its chapter on sexual positions began circulating on the internet as an independent text and today is often assumed to be the whole of the Kama Sutra.
Alain Daniélou contributed a noteworthy translation called The Complete Kama Sutra in 1994. This translation, originally into French, and thence into English, featured the original text attributed to Vatsayana, along with a medieval and A modern commentary. Unlike the 1883 version, Alain Danielou's new translation preserves the numbered verse divisions of the original, and does not incorporate notes in the text.
He includes two essential commentaries: • The Jayamangala commentary, written in Sanskrit by Yashodhara during the Middle Ages, as page footnotes.
• A modern commentary in Hindi by Devadatta Shastri, as endnotes. Daniélou translated all Sanskrit words into English (but uses the word "brahmin"). He leaves references to the sexual organs as in the original: persistent usage of the words "lingam" and "yoni" to refer to them in older translations of the Kama Sutra is not the usage in the original Sanskrit; he points out that "to a modern Hindu "lingam" and "yoni" mean specifically the sexual organs of the god Shiva and his wife, and using those words to refer to humans' sexual organs would seem irreligious". (Iman)
The seeming contradictions of Indian attitudes towards sex can be best explained through the context of history. India played a significant role in the history of sex, from writing the first literature that treated sexual intercourse as a science, to in modern times being the origin of the philosophical focus of new-age groups' attitudes on sex.
It may be argued that India pioneered the use of sexual education through art and literature. As in all societies, there was a difference in sexual practices in India between common people and powerful rulers, with people in power often indulging in hedonistic lifestyles that were not representative of common moral attitudes.
Depictions of Apsarases from the Khajuraho temple
Ancient times
Indian civilization can be considered amongst the most ancient with the ancient Indus Valley civilization being contemporary to ancient Egypt and Sumer, spreading across modern India and Pakistan at its peak, 4000 years ago.
During this period, not much is known about social attitudes toward sex. One thing that has been observed about sexuality in the Indus Valley civilization is the practice of fertility rituals. Early philosophy and theology related to sexuality may have developed during this time.
The first evidence of attitudes towards sex comes from the ancient texts of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, the first of which are perhaps the oldest surviving literature in the world. These most ancient texts, the Vedas, reveal moral perspectives on sexuality, marriage and fertility prayers.
The epics of ancient India, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, which may have been first composed as early as 1400 BCE, had a huge effect on the culture of Asia, influencing later Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan and South East Asian culture. These texts support the view that in ancient India, sex was considered a mutual duty between a married couple, where husband and wife pleasured each other equally, but where sex was considered a private affair, at least by followers of the aforementioned Indian religions.
It seems that polygamy was allowed during ancient times. In practice, this seems to have only been practiced by rulers, with common people maintaining a monogamous marriage. It is common in many cultures for a ruling class to practice polygamy as a way of preserving dynastic succession.
It is likely that as in most countries with tropical climates, Indians from some regions did not need to wear clothes, and other than for fashion, there was no practical need to cover the upper half of the body. This is supported by historical evidence, which shows that men and women in many parts of ancient India mostly dressed only the lower half of their bodies.
Whilst this has changed in modern times, it is likely that taboo against nudity was not present in many Asian, African and South American civilisations and the taboo in Europe is a matter of climatic necessity.
The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana
As Indian civilisation further developed over the 1500 years after the births of Buddha and Mahavira, and the writing of the Upanishads around 500 BCE, further historical evidence, art, and literature shows that ancient Indian society was perhaps as sexually tolerant as many modern European and East Asian countries.
It was somewhere between the 1st and 6th centuries that the Kama Sutra, originally known as Vatsyayana Kamasutram ('Vatsyayana's Aphorisms on Love'), was written. This philosophical work on kama shastra, or 'love science', was intended as both an exploration of human desire, including seduction and infidelity, and a technical guide to pleasing a sexual partner within a marriage.
This is not the only example of such a work in ancient India, but is the most widely known in modern times. It is probably during this period that the text spread to ancient China, along with Buddhist scriptures, where Chinese versions were written.
The Tantric school of Indic/Hindu philosophy formed at some point in this period, and part of the philosophical system was the idea that sex, as a basic and powerful desire experienced by all humans, could be utilised as a way of achieving enlightenment.
Some ardent devotees of this system for example might deliberately break sexual taboos that were ridiculed, such as extramarital sex, to master human nature and achieve greater understanding of the universe, their soul. The Tantric tradition spread throughout Asia as far as Japan.
An ancient fresco from the Ajanta cave complex
It is also during this period that some of India's most famous ancient works of art were produced, often freely depicting nudity, romantic themes or sexual situations. Examples of this include the depiction of Apsarases, roughly equivalent to nymphs or sirens in European and Arabic mythology, on some ancient temples, which were used to remind people of the romantic duty that married couples should perform as part of dharma.
The best and most famous example of this can be seen at the Khajuraho temple complex in central India. Other examples of this classical art include the ancient frescos of various cave temples, such as those at Ajanta.
Colonial era
At the end of the medieval period in India and Europe, colonial powers such as the Portuguese, British and French were seeking ways of circumventing the Muslim controlled lands of western Asia, and re-opening ancient Greek and Roman trade routes with the fabled rich lands of India, resulting in the first attempts to sail around Africa, and circumnavigate the globe.
Various European powers eventually found ways of reaching India, where they allied with various post-Mughal Indian kings, and later managed to annex India.
Although the Portuguese and French had managed to set up some small enclaves in India, such as Goa, where the Catholic inquisition forcibly converted some of the population of the small region to Catholicism, it was the arrival of the British, who managed to annex the entire Indian subcontinent through alliances with various monarchs, that had the largest effect on the culture of India and its attitudes to sex.
Early British exposure to India occurred at a time when Europe was entering the Age of Reason, and so, whilst there was a lot of Protestant discrimination of Hindu beliefs and Indian society along the lines of early Muslim invaders, there was also a significant number of orientalists who saw India as a great civilization, and invented the field of Indology.
However the main moral influence that led to stigmatisation of Indian sexual liberalism by Indians within India itself was the effect of the ideas of the Victorian era, in which other cultures, from European view, were seen as primitive if they did not conform to the ideas of European culture.
The pluralism of Hinduism, and its liberal attitudes were condemned as 'barbaric' by a colonial Europe and proof of inferiority of the East. The effects of British education, administration, scholarship of Indian history and biased literature all led to the effective 'colonization' of the Indian mind with European values. This led some Indians wanting to conform their religious practices and moral values to Victorian ideas of "high" civilization.
A number of movements were set up by prominent citizens, such as the Brahmo Samaj in Bengal and the Prarthana Samaj in Bombay Presidency, to work for the 'reform' of Indian private and public life. Paradoxically while this new consciousness led to the promotion of education for women and (eventually) a raise in the age of consent and reluctant acceptance of remarriage for widows, it also produced a puritanical attitude to sex even within marriage and the home.
The liberality of precolonial India had allowed individuals sexual latitude within the home while imposing strict seclusion from public life. This hid sexual abuses such as intimidating relatives into incest and the rape of spouses from public view, but it also left individuals comparatively free to explore their sexual identities.
With the influence of colonial morality, women were comparatively freer to mix with men not related to them, but the rules for what could or could not be done in their presence were far harsher. These new ideas of 'temperance' and good conduct overlay and reinforced ancient ideas of asceticism and yogic self-containment, the 'brahmacharya' of ancient tradition.
Countries such as India became more conservative after being influenced by European ideas. At the same time, translations of the Kama Sutra and other 'exotic' texts became available in Europe, where they gained notorious status, and ironically may have triggered early foundations of the sexual revolution in the west.
Modern India
Conservative views of sexuality are now the norm in the modern republic of India, and South Asia in general. This is partly related to the effect of European occupation of the Indian subcontinent, as well as to the puritanical elements of Islam (e.g. the new Islamic fundamentalist Wahabi movement, which has influenced many Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and also many Muslim organisations within India).
While during the 1960s and 1970s in the west, many people discovered the ancient culture of sexual liberalism in India as a source for western free love movements, and neo-Tantric philosophy, India itself is currently the more prudish culture, embodying Victorian sensibilities that were abandoned decades ago in their country of origin.
However, with increased exposure to world culture due to globalisation, and the proliferation of progressive ideas due to greater education and wealth, India is beginning to ironically go through a western-style sexual revolution
Current issues
Modern issues that affect India, as part of the sexual revolution, have become points of argument between conservative and liberal forces, such as political parties and religious pressure groups. Many sexual issues are used as ways of political parties garnering votes amongst conservative Indians. These issues are also matters of ethical importance in a nation where freedom and equality are guaranteed in the constitution.
Sexuality in popular entertainment
Sex in Indian entertainment
The entertainment industry is an important part of modern India, and is expressive of Indian society in general. Historically, Indian television and film has lacked the frank depiction of sex; until recently, even kissing scenes were considered taboo.
Currently, some Indian states show soft-core sexual scenes and nudity in films, whilst other areas don't. Mainstream films are still largely catered for the masses of India, however art films and foreign films containing sexuality are watched by middle-class Indians. Because of the same process of glamourisation of film entertainment that occurred in Hollywood, Indian cinema, mainly the Hindi speaking Bollywood industry, which is the largest film industry in the world, is also beginning to add sexual overtones.
Sex industry
Prostitution in India
While trade in sex was frowned upon in ancient India, it was tolerated and regulated so as to reduce the damage that it could do. However, stigmatisation in modern times has left the many poor sex workers with problems of exploitation and rampant infection, including AIDS, and has allowed a huge people-trafficking industry like that of Eastern Europe to take hold.
Many poor young women are kidnapped from villages and sold into sexual slavery.
There have been some recent efforts to regulate the Indian sex industry. (Iman)
Homosexuality refers to attraction and/or sexual behavior between people of the same sex, or to a sexual orientation.
As an orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions primarily to" people of the same 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."
Homosexuality is one of the three main categories of sexual orientation, along with bisexuality and heterosexuality, within the heterosexual-homosexual continuum.
The number of people who identify as homosexual — and the proportion of people who have same-sex sexual experiences — are difficult for researchers to estimate reliably for a variety of reasons.
In the modern West, major studies indicate a prevalence of 2% to 13% of the population.
A 2006 study suggested that 20% of the population anonymously reported some homosexual feelings, although relatively few participants in the study identified themselves as homosexual.
Homosexual relationships and acts have been admired as well as condemned throughout recorded history, depending on the form they took and the culture in which they occurred. Since the end of the 1800s, there has been a movement towards increased visibility, recognition and legal rights for homosexual people, including the rights to marriage and civil unions, adoption and parenting, employment, military service, and equal access to health care.
Terminology of homosexuality
Zephyrus and Hyacinthus
Attic red-figure cup from Tarquinia, 480 BC (Boston Museum of Fine Arts) 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.
Gay generally refers to male homosexuality, but is sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to all LGBT people. In the context of sexuality, lesbian denotes female homosexuality.
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.
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.
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 bisexual and transgender people. These style guides are not always followed by mainstream media sources.
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, arguing against a Prussian anti-sodomy law.
In 1879, Gustav Jager used Kertbeny's terms in his book, Discovery of the Soul (1880). In 1886, Richard von Krafft-Ebing used the terms homosexual and heterosexual in his book Psychopathia Sexualis, probably borrowing them from Jager. Krafft-Ebing's book was so popular among both layman and doctors that the terms "heterosexual" and "homosexual" became the most widely accepted terms for sexual orientation.
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, activity, and orientation.
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.
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.
Sexuality and gender identity
The American Psychological Association states that sexual orientation "describes the pattern of sexual attraction, behavior and identity e.g. homosexual (aka gay, lesbian), bisexual and heterosexual (aka straight)."
"Sexual attraction, behavior and identity may be incongruent. For example, sexual attraction and/or behavior may not necessarily be consistent with identity. Some individuals may identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual without having had any sexual experience.
Others have had homosexual experiences but do not consider themselves to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Further, sexual orientation falls along a continuum. In other words, someone does not have to be exclusively homosexual or heterosexual, but can feel varying degrees of both. Sexual orientation develops across a person's lifetime — different people realize at different points in their lives that they are heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual."
People with a homosexual orientation who do not identify as gay or lesbian are often referred to as closeted.
Homosexual activity can also occur in situations where large groups of persons of the same sex are confined together for some length of time, as in prison, the military, single-sex boarding schools, or other sex-segregated communities, where members of those communities might engage in homosexual behaviors but otherwise identify as heterosexual.
Sexual identity development: "coming-out process"
Many people who feel attracted to members of their own sex have a so-called "coming out" at some point in their lives. Generally, coming out is described in three phases. The first phase is the phase of "knowing oneself," and the realization or decision emerges that one is open to same-sex relations. This is often described as an internal coming out.
The second phase involves one's decision to come out to others, e.g. family, friends, and/or colleagues. This occurs with many people as early as age 11, but others do not clarify their sexual orientation until age 40 or older. The third phase more generally involves living openly as an LGBT person.[25] In the United States today, people often come out during high school or college age. At this age, they may not trust or ask for help from others, especially when their orientation is not accepted in society. Sometimes their own parents are not even informed.
According to Rosario, Schrimshaw, Hunter, Braun (2006), "the development of a lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) sexual identity is a complex and often difficult process. Unlike members of other minority groups (e.g., ethnic and racial minorities), most LGB individuals are not raised in a community of similar others from whom they learn about their identity and who reinforce and support that identity.
Rather, LGB individuals are often raised in communities that are either ignorant of or openly hostile toward homosexuality."
Outing is the practice of publicly revealing the sexual orientation of a closeted person.
Notable politicians, celebrities, military service people, and clergy members have been outed, with motives ranging from malice to political or moral beliefs. Many commentators oppose the practice altogether,[28] while some encourage outing public figures who use their positions of influence to harm other gay people.
Gender identity
The earliest writers on a homosexual orientation usually understood it to be intrinsically linked to the subject's own sex. For example, it was thought that a typical female-bodied person who is attracted to female-bodied persons would have masculine attributes, and vice versa.
This understanding was shared by most of the significant theorists of homosexuality from the mid 19th to early 20th centuries, such as Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Magnus Hirschfeld, Havelock Ellis, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, as well as many gender variant homosexual people themselves.
However, this understanding of homosexuality as sexual inversion was disputed at the time, and through the second half of the 20th century, gender identity came to be increasingly seen as a phenomenon distinct from sexual orientation.
Transgender and cisgender people may be attracted to men, women or both, although the prevalence of different sexual orientations is quite different in these two populations (see sexual orientation of transwomen).
An individual homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual person may be masculine, feminine, or androgynous, and in addition, many members and supporters of lesbian and gay communities now see the "gender-conforming heterosexual" and the "gender-nonconforming homosexual" as negative stereotypes.
However, studies by J. Michael Bailey and K.J. Zucker have found that a majority of gay men and lesbians report being gender-nonconforming during their childhood years.[31] Richard C. Friedman, in Male Homosexuality published in 1990,[32] writing from a psychoanalytic perspective, argues that sexual desire begins later than the writings of Sigmund Freud indicate, not in infancy but between the ages of 5 and 10 and is not focused on a parent figure but on peers.
As a consequence, he reasons, male homosexuals are not abnormal, never having been sexually attracted to their mothers anyway.
Social construct
Because a homosexual orientation is complex and multi-dimensional, some academics and researchers, especially in Queer studies, have argued that it is a historical and social construction.
In 1976 the historian Michel Foucault argued that homosexuality as an identity did not exist in the eighteenth century; that people instead spoke of "sodomy", which referred to sexual acts.
Sodomy was a crime that was often ignored but sometimes punished severely.
The term homosexual is often used in European and American cultures to encompass a person’s entire social identity, which includes self and personality. In Western cultures some people speak meaningfully of gay, lesbian, and bisexual identities and communities.
In other cultures, homosexuality and heterosexual labels don’t emphasize an entire social identity or indicate community affiliation based on sexual orientation.
Some scholars, such as David Green, state that homosexuality is a modern Western social construct, and as such cannot be used in the context of non-Western male-male sexuality, nor in the pre-modern West.
Forms of relationships
People with a homosexual orientation can express their sexuality in a variety of ways, and may or may not express it in their behaviors.
Some have sexual relationships predominately with people of their own gender identity, another gender, bisexual relationships or they can be celibate.
Research indicates that many lesbians and gay men want, and succeed in having, committed and durable relationships. For example, survey data indicate that between 40% and 60% of gay men and between 45% and 80% of lesbians are currently involved in a romantic relationships.
Survey data also indicates that between 18% and 28% of gay couples and between 8% and 21% of lesbian couples in the U.S. have lived together ten or more years.
Studies have found same-sex and opposite-sex couples to be equivalent to each other in measures of relationship satisfaction and commitment.
Gay and lesbian people can have sexual relationships with someone of the opposite sex for a variety of reasons including the desire for family with children and concerns of discrimination and religious ostracism.
A mixed-orientation marriage is when one partner is non-heterosexual.[45][46] While some hide their orientation from their spouse, others develop a positive gay or lesbian identity while maintaining a successful marriage.
Coming out of the closet to oneself, a spouse and children can present unique challenges compared to gays and lesbians who are not married or do not have children.
Demographics
Reliable data as to the size of the gay and lesbian population is of value in informing public policy.
For example, demographics would help in calculating the costs and benefits of domestic partnership benefits, of the impact of legalizing gay adoption, and of the impact of the U.S. military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy.
Further, knowledge of the size of the "gay and lesbian population holds promise for helping social scientists understand a wide array of important questions—questions about the general nature of labor market choices, accumulation of human capital, specialization within households, discrimination, and decisions about geographic location."
Measuring the prevalence of homosexuality may present difficulties. The research must measure some characteristic that may or may not be defining of sexual orientation. The class of people with same-sex desires may be larger than the class of people who act on those desires, which in turn may be larger than the class of people who self-identify as gay/lesbian/bisexual.
Studies to determine the proportion of individuals who have had a homosexual experience may misleadingly overstate the prevalence of homosexuality (as not all those who have had homosexual experiences necessarily have a homosexual preference) or understate it (as not all those with a predominantly homosexual orientation are necessarily sexually active or have physically acted on it).
In 1948 and 1953, Alfred Kinsey reported that nearly 46% of the male subjects had "reacted" sexually to persons of both sexes in the course of their adult lives, and 37% had had at least one homosexual experience.
Kinsey's methodology was criticized.
A later study tried to eliminate the sample bias, but still reached similar conclusions.
Estimates of the occurrence of exclusive homosexuality range from >1% to 10% of the population, usually finding there are slightly more gay men than lesbians.
Estimates of the frequency of homosexual activity also vary from one country to another. A 1992 study reported that 6.1% of males in Britain had had a homosexual experience, while in France the number was 4.1%.
According to a 2003 survey, 12% of Norwegians have had homosexual sex. In New Zealand, a 2006 study suggested that 20% of the population anonymously reported some homosexual feelings, few of them identifying as homosexual. Percentage of persons identifying homosexual was 2–3%.
According to a 2008 poll, while only 6% of Britons define their sexual orientation as homosexual or bisexual, more than twice that number (13%) of Britons have had some form of sexual contact with someone of the same sex.
In the United States, according to exit polling on 2008 Election Day for the 2008 Presidential elections, 4% of electorate self-identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, the same percentage as in 2004.”
Psychology
Most lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who seek psychotherapy do so for the same reasons as heterosexuals (stress, relationship difficulties, difficulty adjusting to social or work situations, etc.); their sexual orientation may be of primary, incidental, or no importance to their issues and treatment. Whatever the issue, there is a high risk for anti-gay bias in psychotherapy with lesbian, gay, and bisexual clients.
Psychological research in this area has been relevant to counteracting prejudicial ("homophobic") attitudes and actions, and to the LGBT rights movement generally.
History
Wikinews has related news: Dr. Joseph Merlino on sexuality, insanity, Freud, fetishes and apathy
Psychology was one of the first disciplines to study a homosexual orientation as a discrete phenomenon. The first attempts to classify homosexuality as a disease were made by the fledgling European sexologist movement in the late 19th century. In 1886 noted sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing listed homosexuality along with 200 other case studies of deviant sexual practices in his definitive work, Psychopathia Sexualis. Krafft-Ebing proposed that homosexuality was caused by either "congenital [during birth] inversion" or an "acquired inversion".
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. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, pathological models of homosexuality were standard.
Today, none of the major medical and scientific professional organizations classify homosexuality as a mental illness. In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed homosexuality as a disorder from the Sexual Deviancy section of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-II, stating that "...homosexuality, per se, does not meet the requirements for a psychiatric disorder since many homosexuals are quite satisfied with their sexual orientation and demonstrate no generalized impairment in social effectiveness or functioning", and replaced it a new disorder called "Sexual orientation disturbance" for homosexuals who were bothered by or wished to change their sexual orientation.
The World Health Organization's ICD-9 (1977) listed homosexuality as a mental illness; it was removed from the ICD-10, endorsed by the Forty-third World Health Assembly on May 17, 1990.[64] Like the DSM-II, the ICD-10 added ego-dystonic sexual orientation to the list, which refers to people who want to change their gender identities or sexual orientation because of a psychological or behavioral disorder (F66.1).
Groups that advocate reparative therapy, including both secular organizations such as NARTH and religious organizations such as Exodus International, do not accept this position.
Fluidity of sexual orientation
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has stated "some people believe that sexual orientation is innate and fixed; however, sexual orientation develops across a person’s lifetime".
In a joint statement with other major American medical organizations, the APA says that "different people realize at different points in their lives that they are heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or bisexual".
A report from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health states: "For some people, sexual orientation is continuous and fixed throughout their lives. For others, sexual orientation may be fluid and change over time".
One study has suggested "considerable fluidity in bisexual, unlabeled, and lesbian women's attractions, behaviors, and identities".
In a 2004 study, the female subjects (both gay and straight women) became sexually aroused when they viewed heterosexual as well as lesbian erotic films. Among the male subjects, however, the straight men were turned on only by erotic films with women, the gay ones by those with men. The study's senior researcher said that women's sexual desire is less rigidly directed toward a particular sex, as compared with men's, and it's more changeable over time.
However, the APA also says that "most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation".[71] American medical organizations have further stated therapy cannot change sexual orientation, and have expressed concerns over potential harms.
The director of the APA's LGBT Concerns Office explained: "I don't think that anyone disagrees with the idea that people can change because we know that straight people become gays and lesbians ... the issue is whether therapy changes sexual orientation, which is what many of these people claim".
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) states, in a 2000 position statement, that they oppose "any psychiatric treatment, such as "reparative" or conversion therapy, which is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that a patient should change their sexual orientation.
Similarly, United States Surgeon General David Satcher issued a report stating that "there is no valid scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed".
Etiology
There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation.
The main reasons cited include genetic and environmental factors, likely in combination.
Other factors that may play a role include prenatal hormone exposure, where hormones play a role in determining sexual orientation as they do with sex differentiation; and prenatal stress on the mother.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has stated that "sexual orientation probably is not determined by any one factor but by a combination of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences".
The American Psychological Association has stated that "there are probably many reasons for a person's sexual orientation and the reasons may be different for different people". It stated that, for most people, sexual orientation is determined at an early age.
The American Psychiatric Association has stated that, "to date there are no replicated scientific studies supporting any specific biological etiology for homosexuality. Similarly, no specific psychosocial or family dynamic cause for homosexuality has been identified, including histories of childhood sexual abuse".
Research into how sexual orientation may be determined by genetic or other prenatal factors plays a role in political and social debates about homosexuality, and also raises fears about genetic profiling and prenatal testing.
Innate bisexuality (or predisposition to bisexuality) is a term introduced by Sigmund Freud, based on work by his associate Wilhelm Fliess, that expounds that all humans are born bisexual but through psychological development - which includes both external and internal factors - become monosexual, while the bisexuality remains in a latent state.
In a 2008 study, its authors stated that "there is considerable evidence that human sexual orientation is genetically influenced, so it is not known how homosexuality, which tends to lower reproductive success, is maintained in the population at a relatively high frequency".
They hypothesized that "while genes predisposing to homosexuality reduce homosexuals' reproductive success, they may confer some advantage in heterosexuals who carry them". Their results suggested that "genes predisposing to homosexuality may confer a mating advantage in heterosexuals, which could help explain the evolution and maintenance of homosexuality in the population".
A 2009 study also suggested a significant increase in fecundity in the females related to the homosexual people from the maternal line (but not in those related from the paternal one).
Parenting
Many LGB people are biological parents. Biological parents of some children may be both LGB, or LGB and heterosexual.
Fertility rate of LGB people may be above or below the average.
At the time of conception, parents may be open or closeted about their sexuality. Some children do not know they have an LGB parent; coming out issues vary and some parents may never come out to their children. Some LGB people also become parents through adoption and foster parenting. In the future, it may be possible for 2 people in a same-sex relationship to have biological children from each other thanks to stem cell research.
In the 2000 U.S. Census, 33 percent of female same-sex couple households and 22 percent of male same-sex couple households reported at least one child under eighteen living in their home.
LGBT parenting in general, and adoption by LGBT couples in particular, are issues of ongoing political controversy in many Western countries.
In January 2008, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that same-sex couples have the right to adopt a child. In the U.S., LGB people can legally adopt in all states except for Florida.
The American Psychological Association has stated that "there is no scientific evidence that parenting effectiveness is related to parental sexual orientation: lesbian and gay parents are as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive and healthy environments for their children."
Same-sex parenting is supported by the positions of a number of organizations, including the American Psychological Association, the Child Welfare League of America, the American Bar Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the North American Council on Adoptable Children, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychoanalytic Association, and the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Health
These safer sex recommendations are generally agreed upon by public health officials for women who have sex with women to avoid sexually transmitted infections (STIs):
• Avoid contact with a partner’s menstrual blood and with any visible genital lesions. • Cover sex toys that penetrate more than one person’s vagina or anus with a new condom for each person; consider using different toys for each person. • Use a barrier (e.g., latex sheet, dental dam, cut-open condom, plastic wrap) during oral sex. • Use latex or vinyl gloves and lubricant for any manual sex that might cause bleeding.[102]
These safer sex recommendations are generally agreed upon by public health officials for men who have sex with men to avoid sexually transmitted infections (STIs)
• Avoid contact with a partner’s bodily fluids and with any visible genital lesions. • Use condoms for anal and oral sex. • Use a barrier (e.g., latex sheet, dental dam, cut-open condom, plastic wrap) during anal–oral sex. • Cover sex toys that penetrate more than one person with a new condom for each person; consider using different toys for each person and use latex or vinyl gloves and lubricant for any sex that might cause bleeding.[103][104]
Men who have sex with men (MSM) and women who have sex with women (WSW) refers to people who engage in sexual activity with others of the same sex regardless of how they identify themselves as many choose not to accept social identities as lesbian, gay and bisexual.
These terms are often used in medical literature and social research to describe such groups for study, without needing to consider the issues of sexual self-identity. The terms are seen as problematic, however, because it "obscures social dimensions of sexuality; undermines the self-labeling of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people; and does not sufficiently describe variations in sexual behavior".
MSM and WSW are sexually active with each other for a variety of reasons with the main ones arguably sexual pleasure, intimacy and bonding.
Sex between men has many health benefits including relieving stress, boosting the immune system, increasing self-esteem, intimacy, and promoting good sleep.
Same-sex sexual activity between women likely has similar benefits. In contrast to its benefits, sexual behavior can be a disease vector. Safe sex is a relevant harm reduction philosophy.
The United States prohibits men who have sex with men from donating blood "because they are, as a group, at increased risk for HIV, hepatitis B and certain other infections that can be transmitted by transfusion."
Many European countries have the same prohibition.
Mental
Since it was first described in medical literature, homosexuality has often been approached from a view that sought to find an inherent psychopathology as its root cause.
Much literature on mental health and homosexual patients centered on their depression, substance abuse, and suicide. Although these issues exist among non-heterosexuals, discussion about their causes shifted after homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) in 1973.
Instead, social ostracism, legal discrimination, internalization of negative stereotypes, and limited support structures indicate factors homosexual people face in Western societies that often adversely affect their mental health.
Stigma, prejudice, and discrimination stemming from negative societal attitudes toward homosexuality lead to a higher prevalence of mental health disorders among lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals compared to their heterosexual peers.
Evidence indicates that the liberalization of these attitudes over the past few decades is associated with a decrease in such mental health risks among younger LGBT people.
Gay and lesbian youth
Gay and lesbian youth bear an increased risk of suicide, substance abuse, school problems, and isolation because of a "hostile and condemning environment, verbal and physical abuse, rejection and isolation from family and peers".
Further, LGB youths are more likely to report psychological and physical abuse by parents or caretakers, and more sexual abuse. Suggested reasons for this disparity are that 1) LGBT youths may be specifically targeted on the basis of their perceived sexual orientation or gender non-conforming appearance, and 2) that "risk factors associated with sexual minority status, including discrimination, invisibility, and rejection by family members...may lead to an increase in behaviors that are associated with risk for victimization, such as substance abuse, sex with multiple partners, or running away from home as a teenager."
Crisis centers in larger cities and information sites on the Internet have arisen to help youth and adults.
The Trevor Helpline, a suicide prevention helpline for gay youth, was established following the 1998 airing on HBO of the Academy Award winning short film Trevor.
History
Societal attitudes towards same-sex relationships have varied over time and place, from expecting all 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 a detailed compilation of historical and ethnographic materials of Preindustrial Cultures, "strong disapproval of homosexuality was reported for 41% of 42 cultures; it was accepted or ignored by 21%, and 12% reported no such concept.
Of 70 ethnographies, 59% reported homosexuality absent or rare in frequency and 41% reported it present or not uncommon."
In cultures influenced by Abrahamic religions, the law and the church established sodomy as a transgression against divine law or a crime against nature. These were subject to severe penalties, including death, often by fire (so as to purify the unholy action).[citation needed] The condemnation of anal sex between males, however, predates Christian belief. It was frequent in ancient Greece; "unnatural" can be traced back to Plato.
Many historical figures, including Socrates, Lord Byron, Edward II, and Hadrian, have had terms such as gay or bisexual applied to them; some scholars, such as Michel Foucault, have regarded this as risking the anachronistic introduction of a contemporary construction of sexuality foreign to their times, though others challenge this.
A common thread of constructionist argument is that no one in antiquity or the Middle Ages experienced homosexuality as an exclusive, permanent, or defining mode of sexuality. John Boswell has countered this argument by citing ancient Greek writings by Plato, which describe individuals exhibiting exclusive homosexuality.
Africa
Though often ignored or suppressed by European explorers and colonialists, homosexual expression in native Africa was also present and took a variety of forms.
Anthropologists Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe reported that women in Lesotho engaged in socially sanctioned "long term, erotic relationships" called motsoalle.
E. E. Evans-Pritchard also recorded that male Azande warriors in the northern Congo routinely took on young male lovers between the ages of twelve and twenty, who helped with household tasks and participated in intercrural sex with their older husbands.
The practice had died out by the early 20th century, after Europeans had gained control of African countries, but was recounted to Evans-Pritchard by the elders to whom he spoke.
The first recorded homosexual couple in history is commonly regarded as Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, an Egyptian male couple, who lived around the 2400 BCE. The pair are portrayed in a nose-kissing position, the most intimate pose in Egyptian art, surrounded by what appear to be their heirs.
Americas
Dance to the Berdache
Sac and Fox Nation ceremonial dance to celebrate the two-spirit person. George Catlin (1796-1872); Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC Among indigenous peoples of the Americas prior to European colonization, a common form of same-sex sexuality centered around the figure of the Two-Spirit individual.
Typically this individual was recognized early in life, given a choice by the parents to follow the path and, if the child accepted the role, raised in the appropriate manner, learning the customs of the gender it had chosen. Two-Spirit individuals were commonly shamans and were revered as having powers beyond those of ordinary shamans. Their sexual life was with the ordinary tribe members of the same sex.
Homosexual and transgender individuals were also common among other pre-conquest civilizations in Latin America, such as the Aztecs, Mayans, Quechuas, Moches, Zapotecs, and the Tupinambá of Brazil.
Balboa setting his war dogs upon Indian practitioners of male love in 1513; New York Public Library
The Spanish conquerors were horrified to discover "sodomy" openly practiced among native peoples, and attempted to crush it out by subjecting the berdaches (as the Spanish called them) under their rule to severe penalties, including public execution, burning and being torn to pieces by dogs.
East Asia
In East Asia, same-sex love has been referred to since the earliest recorded history. Early European travelers were taken aback by its widespread acceptance and open display.
Homosexuality in China, known as the pleasures of the bitten peach, the cut sleeve, or the southern custom, has been recorded since approximately 600 BCE. These euphemistic terms were used to describe behaviors, not identities (recently some fashionable young Chinese tend to euphemistically use the term "brokeback", or duanbei to refer to male homosexuals, from the success of director Ang Lee's film Brokeback Mountain).
The relationships were marked by differences in age and social position. However, the instances of same-sex affection and sexual interactions described in the classical novel Dream of the Red Chamber seem as familiar to observers in the present as do equivalent stories of romances between heterosexuals during the same period.
This same-sex love culture gave rise to strong traditions of painting and literature documenting and celebrating such relationships.
Similarly, in Thailand, Kathoey, or "ladyboys," have been a feature of Thai society for many centuries, and Thai kings had male as well as female lovers. While Kathoey may encompass simple effeminacy or transvestism, it most commonly is treated in Thai culture as a third gender.
They are generally accepted by society, and Thailand has never had legal prohibitions against homosexuality or homosexual behavior.
Europe
Further information: Homosexuality in ancient Greece, Homosexuality in ancient Rome The earliest Western documents (in the form of literary works, art objects, and mythographic materials) concerning same-sex relationships are derived from ancient Greece.
They depict a world in which relationships with women and relationships with youths were the essential foundation of a normal man's love life. Same-sex relationships were a social institution variously constructed over time and from one city to another. The formal practice, an erotic yet often restrained relationship between a free adult male and a free adolescent, was valued for its pedagogic benefits and as a means of population control, though occasionally blamed for causing disorder. Plato praised its benefits in his early writings[136] but in his late works proposed its prohibition.
Roman man penetrating a youth, possibly a slave, middle of the 1st century AD. Found in Bittir (?), near Jerusalem
In Ancient Rome the situation was reversed. Though the young male body remained a focus of male sexual attention, free boys were off limits as sexual partners. All the emperors with the exception of Claudius took male lovers.
The Hellenophile emperor Hadrian is renowned for his relationship with Antinous, but the Christian emperor Theodosius I decreed a law on August 6, 390, condemning passive males to be burned at the stake.
Justinian, towards the end of his reign, expanded the proscription to the active partner as well (in 558), warning that such conduct can lead to the destruction of cities through the "wrath of God".
Notwithstanding these regulations, taxes on brothels of boys available for homosexual sex continued to be collected until the end of the reign of Anastasius I in 518.
During the Renaissance, wealthy cities in northern Italy—Florence and Venice in particular—were renowned for their widespread practice of same-sex love, engaged in by a considerable part of the male population and constructed along the classical pattern of Greece and Rome.
But even as many of the male population were engaging in same-sex relationships, the authorities, under the aegis of the Officers of the Night court, were prosecuting, fining, and imprisoning a good portion of that population.
The eclipse of this period of relative artistic and erotic freedom was precipitated by the rise to power of the moralizing monk Girolamo Savonarola. In northern Europe the artistic discourse on sodomy was turned against its proponents by artists such as Rembrandt, who in his Rape of Ganymede no longer depicted Ganymede as a willing youth, but as a squalling baby attacked by a rapacious bird of prey.
The relationships of socially prominent figures, such as King James I and the Duke of Buckingham, served to highlight the issue, including in anonymously authored street pamphlets: "The world is chang'd I know not how, For men Kiss Men, not Women now;...Of J. the First and Buckingham: He, true it is, his Wives Embraces fled, To slabber his lov'd Ganimede;" (Mundus Foppensis, or The Fop Display'd, 1691.)
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. The 1749 edition of John Cleland's popular novel Fanny Hill includes a homosexual scene, but this was removed in its 1750 edition.
Also in 1749, the earliest extended and serious defense of homosexuality in English, Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplified, written by Thomas Cannon, was published, but was suppressed almost immediately. It includes the passage, "Unnatural Desire is a Contradiction in Terms; downright Nonsense. Desire is an amatory Impulse of the inmost human Parts."
Around 1785 Jeremy Bentham wrote another defense, but this was not published until 1978. Executions for sodomy continued in the Netherlands until 1803, and in England until 1835.
Between 1864 and 1880 Karl Heinrich Ulrichs published a series of twelve tracts, which he collectively titled Research on the Riddle of Man-Manly Love. In 1867 he became the first self-proclaimed homosexual person to speak out publicly in defense of homosexuality when he pleaded at the Congress of German Jurists in Munich for a resolution urging the repeal of anti-homosexual laws.
Sexual Inversion by Havelock Ellis, published in 1896, challenged theories that homosexuality was abnormal, as well as stereotypes, and insisted on the ubiquity of homosexuality and its association with intellectual and artistic achievement.
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.
Beginning in 1894 with Homogenic Love, Socialist activist and poet Edward Carpenter wrote a string of pro-homosexual articles and pamphlets, and "came out" in 1916 in his book My Days and Dreams.
In 1900, Elisar von Kupffer published an anthology of homosexual literature from antiquity to his own time, Lieblingminne und Freundesliebe in der Weltliteratur. His aim was to broaden the public perspective of homosexuality beyond its being viewed simply as a medical or biological issue, but also as an ethical and cultural one. Middle East, South and Central Asia
Dance of a bacchá (dancing boy)
Samarkand, (ca 1905 - 1915), photo Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Among many Middle Eastern Muslim cultures egalitarian or age-structured homosexual practices were, and remain, widespread and thinly veiled. The prevailing pattern of same-sex relationships in the temperate and sub-tropical zone stretching from Northern India to the Western Sahara is one in which the relationships were—and are—either gender-structured or age-structured or both.
In recent years, egalitarian relationships modeled on the western pattern have become more frequent, though they remain rare. Same-sex intercourse officially carries the death penalty in several Muslim nations: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mauritania, northern Nigeria, Sudan, and Yemen.
A tradition of art and literature sprang up constructing Middle Eastern homosexuality. Muslim—often Sufi—poets in medieval Arab lands and in Persia wrote odes to the beautiful wine boys who served them in the taverns. In many areas the practice survived into modern times, as documented by Richard Francis Burton, André Gide, and others.
In Persia homosexuality and homoerotic expressions were tolerated in numerous public places, from monasteries and seminaries to taverns, military camps, bathhouses, and coffee houses.
In the early Safavid era (1501–1723), male houses of prostitution (amrad khane) were legally recognized and paid taxes. Persian poets, such as Sa’di (d. 1291), Hafez (d. 1389), and Jami (d. 1492), wrote poems replete with homoerotic allusions. The two most commonly documented forms were commercial sex with transgender young males or males enacting transgender roles exemplified by the köçeks and the bacchás, and Sufi spiritual practices in which the practitioner admired the form of a beautiful boy in order to enter ecstatic states and glimpse the beauty of god.
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 do live in Iran, but most keep their sexuality a secret for fear of government sanction or rejection by their families.
South Pacific
In many societies of Melanesia, especially in Papua New Guinea, same-sex relationships were an integral part of the culture until the middle of the last century.
The Etoro and Marind-anim for example, even viewed heterosexuality as sinful and celebrated homosexuality instead. In many traditional Melanesian cultures a prepubertal boy would be paired with an older adolescent who would become his mentor and who would "inseminate" him (orally, anally, or topically, depending on the tribe) over a number of years in order for the younger to also reach puberty. Many Melanesian societies, however, have become hostile towards same-sex relationships since the introduction of Christianity by European missionaries.
Law, politics, society and sociology
Legality
Homosexuality legal Same-sex marriage1 Other type of partnership (or unregistered cohabitation)2 Foreign same-sex marriages recognized No recognition of same-sex couples Homosexuality illegal Minimal penalty Large penalty Life in prison Death penalty ________________________________________ 1Vermont (USA) effective 1 September 2009, Maine (USA) effective 14 September 2009 2Hungary effective 1 July 2009, Colorado (USA) effective 1 July 2009 v • d • e Most nations do not impede consensual sex between unrelated persons above the local age of consent. Some jurisdictions further recognize identical rights, protections, and privileges for the family structures of same-sex couples, including marriage. Some nations mandate that all individuals restrict themselves to heterosexual relationships; that is, in some jurisdictions homosexual activity is illegal.
Offenders can face the death penalty in some fundamentalist Muslim areas such as Iran and parts of Nigeria. There are, however, often significant differences between official policy and real-world enforcement. See Violence against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and the transgendered.
Although homosexual acts were decriminalized in some parts of the Western world, such as Poland in 1932, Denmark in 1933, Sweden in 1944, and the United Kingdom in 1967, it was not until the mid-1970s that the gay community first began to achieve limited civil rights in some developed countries.
A turning point was reached in 1973when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, thus negating its previous definition of homosexuality as a clinical mental disorder.
In 1977, Quebec became the first state-level jurisdiction in the world to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. During the 1980s and 1990s, most developed countries enacted laws decriminalizing homosexual behavior and prohibiting discrimination against lesbians and gays in employment, housing, and services.
Even so, many countries today—all of them in Africa, Asia, and South America—outlaw homosexuality. In six countries, homosexual behaviour is punishable by life imprisonment; in ten others, it carries the death penalty.
Sexual orientation and the law
The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.
• Employment discrimination refers to discriminatory employment practices such as bias in hiring, promotion, job assignment, termination, and compensation, and various types of harassment. In the United States there is "very little statutory, common law, and case law establishing employment discrimination based upon sexual orientation as a legal wrong."
Some exceptions and alternative legal strategies are available. President Bill Clinton's Executive Order 13087 (1998) prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation in the competitive service of the federal civilian workforce, and federal non-civil service employees may have recourse under the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Private sector workers may have a Title VII action under a quid pro quo sexual harassment theory, a "hostile work environment" theory,a sexual stereotyping theory, or others.
• Housing discrimination refers to discrimination against potential or current tenants by landlords. In the United States, there is no federal law against such discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, but at least thirteen states and many major cities have enacted laws prohibiting it.
• Hate crimes (also known as bias crimes) are crimes motivated by bias against an identifiable social group, usually groups defined by race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, gender identity, or political affiliation. In the United States, 45 states and the District of Columbia have statutes criminalizing various types of bias-motivated violence or intimidation (the exceptions are AZ, GA, IN, SC, and WY). Each of these statutes covers bias on the basis of race, religion, and ethnicity; 32 of them cover sexual orientation, 28 cover gender, and 11 cover transgender/gender-identity.
Political activism
Since the 1960s, many LGBT people in the West, particularly those in major metropolitan areas, have developed a so-called gay culture. To many, gay culture is exemplified by the gay pride movement, with annual parades and displays of rainbow flags. Yet not all LGBT people choose to participate in "queer culture", and many gay men and women specifically decline to do so. To some it seems to be a frivolous display, perpetuating gay stereotypes.
To some others, the gay culture represents heterophobia and is scorned as widening the gulf between gay and non-gay people.
With the outbreak of AIDS in the early 1980s, many LGBT groups and individuals organized campaigns to promote efforts in AIDS education, prevention, research, patient support, and community outreach, as well as to demand government support for these programs. Gay Men's Health Crisis, Project Inform, and ACT UP are some notable American examples of the LGBT community's response to the AIDS crisis.
The bewildering death toll wrought by the AIDS epidemic at first seemed to slow the progress of the gay rights movement, but in time it galvanized some parts of the LGBT community into community service and political action, and challenged the heterosexual community to respond compassionately.
Major American motion pictures from this period that dramatized the response of individuals and communities to the AIDS crisis include An Early Frost (1985), Longtime Companion (1990), And the Band Played On (1993), Philadelphia (1993), and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989), the last referring to the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, last displayed in its entirety on the Mall in Washington, D.C., in 1996.
Publicly gay politicians have attained numerous government posts, even in countries that had sodomy laws or outright mass murder of gays in their recent past. Examples include Peter Mandelson, Business Secretary in Gordon Brown's cabinet and close friend of Tony Blair, and former Norwegian Minister of Finance Per-Kristian Foss.
LGBT movements are opposed by a variety of individuals and organizations. Supporters of the traditional marriage movement believe that all sexual relationships with people other than an opposite-sex spouse undermines the traditional family and that children should be reared in homes with both a father and a mother.
There is concern that gay rights may conflict with individuals' freedom of speech, religious freedoms in the workplace,the ability to run churches,charitable organizations and other religious organizations in accordance with one's religious views, and that the acceptance of homosexual relationships by religious organizations might be forced through threatening to remove the tax-exempt status of churches whose views don't align with those of the government.
Critics charge that political correctness has led to the association of sex between males and HIV being downplayed.
Military service
Policies and attitudes toward gay and lesbian military personnel vary widely around the world. Some countries allow gay men, lesbians, and bisexual people to serve openly and have granted them the same rights and privileges as their heterosexual counterparts. Many countries neither ban nor support LGB service members. A few countries continue to ban homosexual personnel outright.
Most Western military forces have removed policies excluding sexual minority members. Of the 26 countries that participate militarily in NATO, more than 20 permit open lesbians, gays, and bisexuals to serve. Of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, two (United Kingdom and France) do so.
The other three generally do not: China bans gays and lesbians outright, Russia excludes all gays and lesbians during peacetime but allows some gay men to serve in wartime (see below), and the United States (see Don't ask, don't tell) technically permits gays and lesbians to serve, but only in secrecy and celibacy. Israel is the only country in the Middle East region that allows openly LGB people to serve in the military.
While the question of homosexuality in the military has been highly politicized in the United States, it is not necessarily so in many countries. Generally speaking, sexuality in these cultures is considered a more personal aspect of one's identity than it is in the United States.
Religion
Though the relationship between homosexuality and religion can vary greatly across time and place, within and between different religions and sects, and regarding different forms of homosexuality and bisexuality, current authoritative bodies and doctrines of the world's largest religions generally view homosexuality negatively.
This can range from quietly discouraging homosexual activity, to explicitly forbidding same-sex sexual practices among adherents and actively opposing social acceptance of homosexuality. Some teach that homosexual orientation itself is sinful, while others assert that only the sexual act is a sin.
Some claim that homosexuality can be overcome through religious faith and practice. On the other hand, voices exist within many of these religions that view homosexuality more positively, and liberal religious denominations may bless same-sex marriages. Some view same-sex love and sexuality as sacred, and a mythology of same-sex love can be found around the world. Regardless of their position on homosexuality, many people of faith look to both sacred texts and tradition for guidance on this issue.
However, the authority of various traditions or scriptural passages and the correctness of translations and interpretations are hotly disputed.
Prejudice and homophobia
In many cultures, homosexual people are frequently subject to prejudice and discrimination. Like members of many other minority groups that are the objects of prejudice, they are also subject to stereotyping, which further adds to marginalization.
The prejudice, discrimination and stereotyping are all likely tied to forms of homophobia and heterosexism, which is negative attitudes, bias, and discrimination in favor of opposite-sex sexuality and relationships.
Heterosexism can include the presumption that everyone is heterosexual or that opposite-sex attractions and relationships are the norm and therefore superior. Homophobia is a fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexual people.
It manifests in different forms, and a number of different types have been postulated, among which are internalized homophobia, social homophobia, emotional homophobia, rationalized homophobia, and others.
Similar is lesbophobia (specifically targeting lesbians) and biphobia (against bisexual people). When such attitudes manifest as crimes they are often called hate crimes and gay bashing.
Negative stereotypes characterize LGB people as less romantically stable, more promiscuous and more likely to abuse children, but research has generally contradicted such assertions. Research suggests LGB people develop enduring romantic relationships.[181] Gay men are often alleged as having pedophilic tendencies and more likely to commit child sexual abuse than the heterosexual male population, a view rejected by mainstream psychiatric groups and contradicted by research.
Claims that there is scientific evidence to support an association between being gay and being a pedophile are based on misuses of those terms and misrepresentation of the actual evidence.
Violence against gay and lesbian people
In the United States, the FBI reported that 15.6% of hate crimes reported to police in 2004 were based on perceived sexual orientation. Sixty-one percent of these attacks were against gay men.
The 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay student, is one of the most notorious incidents in the U.S. (Iman)
Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, both or neither.
According to the American Psychological Association sexual orientation also refers to a person’s sense of "personal and social identity based on those attractions, behaviors expressing them, and membership in a community of others who share them.
Sexual orientation is usually classified according to the sex or gender of the people who are found sexually attractive. Though people may use other labels, or none at all.
sexual orientation is usually discussed in terms of three categories: heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual.
These orientations exist along a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexual to exclusive homosexual, including various forms of bisexuality in-between.
Sexologists see this linear scale as an oversimplification of a more nuanced notion of sexual identity.
Most definitions of sexual orientation include a psychological component, such as the direction of an individual's erotic desire, or a behavioral component, which focuses on the sex of the individual's sexual partner/s.
Some definitions include both components. Some people prefer simply to follow an individual's self-definition or identity.
Some scholars of sexology, anthropology and history have argued that social categories such as heterosexual and homosexual are not universal.
Different societies may consider other criteria to be more significant than sex, including the respective age of the partners, whether partners assume an active or a passive sexual role, and their social status.
Sexual identity and sexual behavior are closely related to sexual orientation, but they are distinguished, with identity referring to an individual's conception of themselves, behavior referring to actual sexual acts performed by the individual, and orientation referring to "fantasies, attachments and longings."
Individuals may or may not express their sexual orientation in their behaviors.
People who have a homosexual sexual orientation that does not align with their sexual identity are sometimes referred to as closeted.
Sexual identity may also be used to describe a person's perception of his or her own sex, rather than sexual orientation.
The term sexual preference has a similar meaning to sexual orientation, but is more commonly used outside of scientific circles by people who believe that sexual orientation is, in whole or part, a matter of choice.
Sexual orientation is a concept that evolved in the industrialized West and there is a controversy as to the universality of its application in other societies/ cultures.
As Michel Foucault put it, "'Sexuality' is an invention of the modern state, the industrial revolution, and capitalism."
Non-westernized concepts of male sexuality differ essentially from the way sexuality is seen and classified under the system of Sexual Orientation. The validity of the notion of 'sexual orientation' has also been questioned within the industrialized Western society.
Sexual orientation, identity, behaviour
The American Psychological Association states that sexual orientation "describes the pattern of sexual attraction, behavior and identity e.g. homosexual (aka gay, lesbian), bisexual and heterosexual (aka straight)."
"Sexual attraction, behavior and identity may be incongruent. For example, sexual attraction and/or behavior may not necessarily be consistent with identity.
Some individuals may identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual without having had any sexual experience.
Others have had homosexual experiences but do not consider themselves to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual.
Further, sexual orientation falls along a continuum. In other words, someone does not have to be exclusively homosexual or heterosexual, but can feel varying degrees of both.
Sexual orientation develops across a person's lifetime-different people realize at different points in their lives that they are heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual."
The earliest writers on sexual orientation usually understood it to be intrinsically linked to the subject's own sex.
For example, it was thought that a typical female-bodied person who is attracted to female-bodied persons would have masculine attributes, and vice versa.
This understanding was shared by most of the significant theorists of sexual orientation from the mid nineteenth to early twentieth century, such as Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Magnus Hirschfeld, Havelock Ellis, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, as well as many gender variant homosexual people themselves.
However, this understanding of homosexuality as sexual inversion was disputed at the time, and through the second half of the twentieth century, gender identity came to be increasingly seen as a phenomenon distinct from sexual orientation.
Transgender and cisgender people may be attracted to men, women, or both, although the prevalence of different sexual orientations is quite different in these two populations (see sexual orientation of transwomen).
An individual homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual person may be masculine, feminine, or androgynous, and in addition, many members and supporters of lesbian and gay communities now see the "gender-conforming heterosexual" and the "gender-nonconforming homosexual" as negative stereotypes.
However, studies by J Michael Bailey and KJ Zucker have found that a majority of gay men and lesbians report being gender-nonconforming during their childhood years.
The majority of transgender people today identify with the sexual orientation that corresponds with their gender; meaning that a transwoman who is solely attracted to women would often identify as a lesbian.
Female-attracted transmen often consider themselves straight men, yet some participate in the lesbian community.
For these reasons, the terms gynephilia and androphilia are occasionally (but increasingly) used when referring to the sexual orientation of transgender and intersex people (and occasionally, cisgender people), because rather than focusing on the sex of the subject, they only describe that of the object of their attraction.
The third common term that describes sexual orientation, bisexuality, makes no claim about the subject's sex or gender identity.
Sexual orientation sees greater intricacy when non-binary understandings of both sex (male, female, or intersex) and gender (man, woman, transgender, third gender, or gender variant) are considered. Sociologist Paula Rodriguez Rust (2000) argues for a more multifaceted definition of sexual orientation:
...Most alternative models of sexuality...define sexual orientation in terms of dichotomous biological sex or gender.... Most theorists would not eliminate the reference to sex or gender, but instead advocate incorporating more complex nonbinary concepts of sex or gender, more complex relationships between sex, gender, and sexuality, and/or additional nongendered dimensions into models of sexuality.
Fluidity of sexual orientation
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has stated "some people believe that sexual orientation is innate and fixed; however, sexual orientation develops across a person’s lifetime".
In a joint statement with other major American medical organizations, the APA says that "different people realize at different points in their lives that they are heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or bisexual".
A report from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health states: "For some people, sexual orientation is continuous and fixed throughout their lives. For others, sexual orientation may be fluid and change over time".
One study has suggested "considerable fluidity in bisexual, unlabeled, and lesbian women's attractions, behaviors, and identities".
In a 2004 study, the female subjects (both gay and straight women) became sexually aroused when they viewed heterosexual as well as lesbian erotic films. Among the male subjects, however, the straight men were turned on only by erotic films with women, the gay ones by those with men.
The study's senior researcher said that women's sexual desire is less rigidly directed toward a particular sex, as compared with men's, and it's more changeable over time.
However, the APA also says that "most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation".
American medical organizations have further stated therapy cannot change sexual orientation, and have expressed concerns over potential harms.
The director of the APA's LGBT Concerns Office explained: "I don't think that anyone disagrees with the idea that people can change because we know that straight people become gays and lesbians.... the issue is whether therapy changes sexual orientation, which is what many of these people claim".
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) states, in a 2000 position statement, that they oppose "any psychiatric treatment, such as "reparative" or conversion therapy, which is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that a patient should change their sexual orientation.
Similarly, United States Surgeon General David Satcher issued a report stating that "there is no valid scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed".
In his 1985 book The Bisexual Option, Fritz Klein developed a scale to test his theory that sexual orientation is a "dynamic, multi-variable process" — dynamic in that it may change over time, and multi-variable in that it is composed of various elements, both sexual and non-sexual. Klein took into account sexual attraction, sexual behavior, sexual fantasies, emotional and social partners, lifestyle, and self-identification.
Each of these variables was measured for the person's past, present, and ideal.
Other organizations disagree with Fritz Klein. The American Psychological Association has stated that homosexuality "is not changeable."
In 2001, the United States Surgeon General David Satcher issued a report maintaining that "there is no valid scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed."
Measuring sexual orientation
Varying definitions and strong social norms about sexuality can make sexual orientation difficult to quantify. Researchers may use different markers of sexual orientation, including self-labeling, sexual behaviour, sexual fantasy or a pattern of erotic arousal. A clinical measurement may use penile or vaginal photoplethysmography, where genital engorgement with blood is measured in response to exposure to different erotic material.
In 1995, two researchers argued that due to a lack of research on change over time, there is a limitation on current conceptualizations of sexual orientation.
They did not abandon the concept of sexual orientation, but concluded that "given such significant measurement problems, one could conclude there is serious doubt whether sexual orientation is a valid concept at all," and warned against increasing politicization of this area.
From at least the late nineteenth century in Europe, there was speculation that the range of human sexual response looked more like a continuum than two or three discrete categories.
28-year-old Berlin sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld published a scheme in 1896 that measured the strength of an individual's sexual desire on two independent 10-point scales, A (homosexual) and B (heterosexual).
A heterosexual individual may be A0, B5; a homosexual individual may be A5, B0; An asexual would be A0, B0; and someone with an intense attraction to both sexes would be A9, B9.
Fifty years later, American sexologist Alfred Kinsey wrote in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948): Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories... The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.
While emphasizing the continuity of the gradations between exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual histories, it has seemed desirable to develop some sort of classification which could be based on the relative amounts of heterosexual and homosexual experience or response in each history... An individual may be assigned a position on this scale, for each period in his life.... A seven-point scale comes nearer to showing the many gradations that actually exist.
The Kinsey scale measures sexual orientation from 0 (exclusively heterosexual) to 6 (exclusively homosexual), with an additional category, X, for those with no sexual attraction to either women or men.
Unlike Hirschfeld's scale, the Kinsey scale is one-dimensional. Simon LeVay wrote, "it suggests (although Kinsey did not actually believe this) that every person has the same fixed endowment of sexual energy, which he or she then divides up between same-sex and opposite-sex attraction in a ratio indicative of his or her own sexual orientation."
Demographics of sexual orientation
The multiple aspects of sexual orientation and the boundary-drawing problems already described create methodological challenges for the study of the demographics of sexual orientation. Determining the frequency of various sexual orientations in real-world populations is difficult and controversial.
In the oft-cited and oft-criticized Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), by Alfred C. Kinsey et al., people were asked to rate themselves on a scale from completely heterosexual to completely homosexual.
Kinsey reported that when the individuals' behavior as well as their identity are analyzed, most people appeared to be at least somewhat bisexual – i.e., most people have some attraction to either sex, although usually one sex is preferred.
According to Kinsey, only a minority (5-10%) can be considered fully heterosexual or homosexual. Conversely, only an even smaller minority can be considered fully bisexual (with an equal attraction to both sexes).
Kinsey's methods have been criticized as flawed, particularly with regard to the randomness of his sample population, which included a large number of prison inmates.
Nevertheless, Paul Gebhard, subsequent director of the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, reexamined the data in the Kinsey Reports and concluded that accounting for major statistical objections barely affected the results.
Most modern scientific surveys find that the majority of people report a mostly heterosexual orientation.
However, the relative percentage of the population that reports a homosexual orientation varies with differing methodologies and selection criteria.
Most of these statistical findings are in the range of 2.8 to 9% of males, and 1 to 5% of females for the United States[34] — this figure can be as high as 12% for some large cities and as low as 1% percent for rural areas). In gay villages such as The Castro in San Francisco, California, the concentration of self-identified homosexual people can exceed 40%.
Estimates for the percentage of the population that are bisexual vary widely, at least in part due to differing definitions of bisexuality. Some studies only consider a person bisexual if they are nearly equally attracted to both sexes, and others consider a person bisexual if they are at all attracted to the same sex (for otherwise mostly heterosexual persons) or to the opposite sex (for otherwise mostly homosexual persons).
A small percentage of people are not sexually attracted to anyone (asexuality).
Influences on sexual orientation
The American Academy of Pediatrics has stated "Sexual orientation probably is not determined by any one factor but by a combination of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences."
Debate continues over what biological and/or psychological variables influence sexual orientation in humans, such as genes and the exposure of certain levels of hormones to fetuses. Freud and other psychoanalysts maintain that sexual orientation is influenced by numerous factors including formative childhood experiences in some cases.
Environmental factors
Prenatal hormones on developing fetus
Main article: Prenatal hormones and sexual orientation The hormonal theory of sexuality holds that, just as exposure to certain hormones plays a role in fetal sex differentiation, such exposure also influences the sexual orientation that emerges later in the adult.
Fetal hormones may be seen as either the primary influence upon adult sexual orientation, or as co-factor interacting with genes and/or environmental and social conditions.
Birth order
Fraternal birth order and sexual orientation
Recent studies found an increased chance of homosexuality in men whose mothers previously carried to term many male children. This effect is nullified if the man is left-handed. No similar effect was found in women.
Genetic factors
Research has identified several biological factors which may be related to the development of sexual orientation, including genes, prenatal hormones, and brain structure. No single controlling cause has been identified, and research is continuing in this area. At one time, twin studies appeared to point to a major genetic component, but problems in experimental design of the available studies have made their interpretation difficult, and one recent study appears to exclude genes as a major factor.
Innate bisexuality
Innate bisexuality, or predisposition to bisexuality, is an idea introduced by Sigmund Freud, based on work by his associate Wilhelm Fliess.
According to this theory, all humans are born bisexual but through psychological development, which includes both external and internal factors, become monosexual while the bisexuality remains in a latent state.
Choice
There is disagreement among scientists about whether choice could play any role in the development of sexual orientation.
Dr. Angela Pattatucci, a clinical biologist, said "'Lifestyle' is idiotic when applied to sexual orientation – would you refer to lefthandedness as an 'alternative lifestyle'? – but the problem is that through misuse by the media and in political rhetoric it's become ubiquitous.... When reporters use it, it is simply intellectual laziness. But some people adore that word, and the reason is probably in many cases, I'm very sorry to say, that it is such an inaccurate description of homosexuality, implying that sexual orientation is something one chooses, something frivolous or faddish, determined by what you do, as opposed to an internal orientation that is a component of what you are."
Simon LeVay, a neuroscientist, has argued against scientists, including Dean Hamer, who claim that genetic research has proven that sexual orientation is not a choice. Referring to Hamer's testimony at a 1993 trial challenging Colorado's Amendment 2, which would have rescinded anti-discrimination laws prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals, LeVay wrote, "...the pressures of the trial drove the expert witnesses to take somewhat more extreme or simplified positions than they might otherwise have done.
Hamer, for example, said at one point: "Since people don't choose their genes, they couldn't possibly choose their sexual orientation. The same goes for the question about changing. People can't change their genes.
So that part of sexuality that is genetically influenced, of course, cannot be easily changed." This goes beyond the data in two respects.
First, it seems to deny any possibility of choice even if the genetic influence is only partial. Yet it is possible to construct a hypothesis whereby both "gay genes" and a desire to be homosexual are necessary for a person actually to become homosexual.
Second, it equates genetic loading with immutability, a connection that is open to challenge."
Sexual orientation as a social construct
Because sexual orientation is complex and multi-dimensional, some academics and researchers, especially in Queer studies, have argued that it is a historical and social construction.
In 1976 the historian Michel Foucault argued that homosexuality as an identity did not exist in the eighteenth century; that people instead spoke of "sodomy", which referred to sexual acts.
Sodomy was a crime that was often ignored but sometimes punished severely.
Foucault further argued that it was in the nineteenth century that homosexuality came into existence as practitioners of emerging sciences and arts sought to classify and analyze different forms of sexuality.
Finally, Foucault argues that it was this emerging discourse that allowed some to claim homosexuality as a human identity.
Heterosexuality and homosexuality are terms often used in European and American cultures to encompass a person’s entire social identity, which includes self and personality.
In Western cultures some people speak meaningfully of gay, lesbian, and bisexual identities and communities. In other cultures, homosexuality and heterosexual labels don’t emphasize an entire social identity or indicate community affiliation based on sexual orientation.
Some historians and researchers argue that the emotional and affectionate activities associated with sexual-orientation terms such as gay and straight change significantly over time and across cultural boundaries.
For example, in many English-speaking nations it is assumed that same-sex kissing, particularly between men, is a sign of homosexuality, whereas various types of same-sex kissing are common expressions of friendship in other nations.
Also, many modern and historic cultures have formal ceremonies expressing long-term commitment between same-sex friends, even though homosexuality itself is taboo within the culture.
Perceived sexual orientation
One person may assume knowledge of another person's sexual orientation based upon perceived characteristics such as appearance, clothing, and tone of voice. Perceived sexual orientation may affect how a person is treated. For instance, in the United States, the FBI reported that 15.6% of hate crimes reported to police in 2004 were "because of a sexual-orientation bias."
Under the UK Employment Equality Regulations, "workers or job applicants must not be treated less favourably because of their sexual orientation, their perceived sexual orientation or because they associate with someone of a particular sexual orientation". (Iman)
