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Homosexuality throughout history
Homosexuality throughout history
Homosexuality throughout history
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The LGBT Community has made a revolutionary transition, but how did we conceive this level of acceptance? There is many considerable LGBT heroes that have made a remarkable effort in helping the community, with different sexualities through the Kinsey Scale, and the journey of admitting gay marriage in the US.
I researched an assortment of articles online, a conglomeration of books and films, and many different news sources. The development brought from my research includes my primary topic; the heroes of the LGBT. The embarkation of this topic sets us off back to 356 BC. The birth of Alexander the Great. Surprised? Well, Alexander the Great was one of the first queer heroes, as he had sexual interactions with men and women. To this day we do not know if he is really gay, but it appears so.
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Barbara Gittings was a lesbian, who was conjointly a gay rights activist in 1958. There are an abounding amount of activists in the history of our world, but in coterminous to the gay rights activist is the one who helped an abundance of people, and that is Alfred Kinsey; one of the creators of the Kinsey Scale, along with Wardell Pomeroy and Clyde Martin. According to the Kinsey Institute of Indiana University, the Kinsey Scale shows the level of homo or heterosexuality in a person, scaling from 100% heterosexual to 100% homosexual, and all in between on a scale from 1-6.
That transcends to our next topic, how all of the sexualities were discovered. All of these sexualities were discovered by Alfred Kinsey through the Kinsey Scale. Furthermore, the Kinsey Scale has helped an abundance of people figure out their sexualities. With us coming a long way, comes the first state to legalize gay marriage; Massachusetts. In 2003, Massachusetts legalized gay marriage adjacent to their highest court comprehending how the ban violates the rights of same-sex
In Vicki L. Eaklor’s Queer America, the experiences of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people in the years since the 1970s gay liberation movement are described as a time of transformation and growth. The antigay movement, threatened, now more than ever, created numerous challenges and obstacles that are still prevalent today. Many of the important changes made associated with the movement were introduced through queer and queer allied individuals and groups involved in politics. Small victories such as the revision of the anti discrimination statement to include “sexual orientation”, new propositions regarding the Equal Rights Amendment and legalized abortion, were met in turn with growing animosity and resistance from individuals and groups opposed to liberal and
Gay male, lesbian, and transsexual networks/communities, and cultural practices often had their own differences that coincided with meshing similarities. From the late 1940s to the 1960s, these identities were shaped through experiences of “the closet” and living a “double life,” among other factors. Alan Berubé explores the war’s impact on homosexual identity, speaking for both gay males and lesbians in “Marching to a Different Drummer: Lesbian and Gay GIs in World War II.” In “We Walk Alone,” Ann Aldrich helps identify the varying types of lesbians, addressing their intimate relationships with each other that are becoming more visible. Harry Benjamin touches more on the medical and scientific side of transsexualism and the obvious fact that
In the past decades, the struggle for gay rights in the Unites States has taken many forms. Previously, homosexuality was viewed as immoral. Many people also viewed it as pathologic because the American Psychiatric Association classified it as a psychiatric disorder. As a result, many people remained in ‘the closet’ because they were afraid of losing their jobs or being discriminated against in the society. According to David Allyn, though most gays could pass in the heterosexual world, they tended to live in fear and lies because they could not look towards their families for support. At the same time, openly gay establishments were often shut down to keep openly gay people under close scrutiny (Allyn 146). But since the 1960s, people have dedicated themselves in fighting for
creation of the Gay Rights Movement. The power and respect given to a “movement” allowed
For many generations, especially in North America, homosexuality was not accepted in any way, shape, or form. Many believed that it was a medical illness that was curable, when in reality, people were, and still are, ignorant and could not come to terms that everyone in this world is different from one another. For many instances of being treated unjust, many individuals in the gay community did not want to “expose” themselves and remained in the “closet”. As means to make gays and lesbians proud and take a stand for who they are, a movement spread across internationally. This movement is known as “The Gay Liberation” movement which occurred between the late 1960s and the early to mid 1970s (“Gay Liberation”). The Gay Liberation movement urged individuals of the gay community to “come out,” revealing their sexuality to their loved ones as a form of activism, and to counter shame with gay pride (“Gay Liberation”). The Stonewall Riots are believed to have been the spark that ignited the rise of the Gay Liberation movement; it influenced the way the gay community is viewed socially and how their rights are politically present day.
Homosexuality has existed since the beginning of recorded human history and yet, attitudes towards gay and lesbian individuals vary extensively. Some societies tolerate them; others openly welcome and encourage them; and most blatantly condemn them (Bates, 46). Throughout our country’s history, homosexuals have been misunderstood and discriminated against, leading many to acquire an irrational fear of gays and lesbians. Known as homophobia, this fear has prompted heterosexual individuals with a feeling a superiority and authority when using the word “homosexual” interchangeably with the words pervert, faggot, sodomite, and so on. Homophobes typically perceive homosexuality as a threat to society. Nonetheless, the Gay Rights Movement has achieved impressive progress since 1973 when the American Psychological Association (APA) eradi...
While many historical figures are known or are speculated to have had romantic or sexual relationships with people of the same sex, scholars avoid applying terms such as gay or lesbian to them because the use of modern terminology falsely projects modern concepts of sexuality onto historical figures (Gibson, Alexander, and Meem xxi). When discussing the problems with labeling historical figures as autistic, Straus says "... to the extent that autism is a social and cultural phenomenon rather than (or in addition to) a medical diagnosis- the central contention of this essay- it simply did not exist, or at best, existed in an entirely different form" (464). Both scholars discussing sexual orientation and Straus assert that care should be taken to avoid implying false equivalencies between historical and modern identities. It is usually considered acceptable to refer to historical figures as homosexual, bisexual, or transgender and to discuss their same sex relations as related to modern lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identities, whereas Straus suggests that in the case of autism "... the search for ancestors must either be abandoned or pursued in an appropriately tentative way"
“The unprecedented growth of the gay community in recent history has transformed our culture and consciousness, creating radically new possibilities for people to ‘come out’ and live more openly as homosexuals”(Herdt 2). Before the 1969 Stonewall riot in New York, homosexuality was a taboo subject. Research concerning homosexuality emphasized the etiology, treatment, and psychological adjustment of homosexuals. Times have changed since 1969. Homosexuals have gained great attention in arts, entertainment, media, and politics. Yesterday’s research on homosexuality has expanded to include trying to understand the different experiences and situations of homosexuals (Ben-Ari 89-90).
Despite the large collection of literature of sexuality that has been accumulating, human asexuality has been largely ignored. Asexuality is controversially considered to be a sexual orientation and people who identify as asexual are people who typically do not experience sexual attraction (Asexuality Visibility and Education Network, 2013). Though research on sex and sexual orientations has been done for centuries, the first real suggestion that there might be people who fall outside of the heterosexual – homosexual orientation spectrum came from Kinsey and colleagues in 1948. These individuals were put into a separate category and were identified as having no erotic response to hetero- or homosexual stimuli, but otherwise they were largely ignored by the researchers (Kinsey, 1953). Later, researchers linked asexuality with negative traits and pathologies, including depression and lower self-esteem (Masters, Johnson, & Kolodny, 1986; Nuius, 1983). An issue with these studies, however, is that the researchers defined asexuality in a way that most current asexuals do not agree with. For example, in a study done by Bell and Weinberg (1978), there were references made to asexual homosexuals who simply hid their homosexuality. Many asexuals, otherwise known as Aces, would struggle with this definition because homosexuality implies a type of sexual attraction: attraction to your same sex. Because Aces typically do not feel sexual attraction to anyone or anything, they should not be classified under the same label as a closeted homosexual. Another issue is that none of these studies actually focused on asexuality. Instead, they were added on the side and generally ignored.
Our understanding of the way we think is perhaps one of the most crucial aspects of understanding our own society. It is for this reason that the fields of psychotherapy, psychology, psychiatry, and sociology are so incredibly important. Within these areas of study, the boundaries of normative life must fall away in order for us to truly understand our minds. When there is discrimination in a field as extensive as the understanding of the human psyche, we run the risk of wholly alienating entire segments of the population. Until about the 1980s, there was systematic and overt discrimination against gay members of the psychological field who wanted to either get help, or pursue a career. A major advocate for LGBTQ acceptance into this arena,
Szymanski, Dawn, Barry Chung, and Kimberly Balsam. ?Psychosocial Correlates of Internalized Homophobia in Lesbians.? Measurement & Evaluation in Counseling & Development Apr 2001: 27-34 Academic Search Elite. EBSCOhost. SCCC Library, St. Peters. 18 Sept 2001 .
The sexual orientation of a person has been a critical debate over the past several centuries. For several...
An issue that has, in recent years, begun to increase in arguments, is the acceptability of homosexuality in society. Until recently, homosexuality was considered strictly taboo. If an individual was homosexual, it was considered a secret to be kept from all family, friends, and society. However, it seems that society has begun to accept this lifestyle by allowing same sex couples. The idea of coming out of the closet has moved to the head of homosexual individuals when it used to be the exception.
When one hears the words “LGBT” and “Homosexuality” it often conjures up a mental picture of people fighting for their rights, which were unjustly taken away or even the social emergence of gay culture in the world in the1980s and the discovery of AIDS. However, many people do not know that the history of LGBT people stretches as far back in humanity’s history, and continues in this day and age. Nevertheless, the LGBT community today faces much discrimination and adversity. Many think the problem lies within society itself, and often enough that may be the case. Society holds preconceptions and prejudice of the LGBT community, though not always due to actual hatred of the LGBT community, but rather through lack of knowledge and poor media portrayal.
Society has shaped the thoughts and minds of many individuals and because of this personal beliefs towards LGBT people came into play. Society was constantly telling people that there was something wrong with them if they were LGBT and that they would go to hell for it because God did not approve of it and it was a sin. I would like to say that because society was judging people and denying them, that they were committing a sin. It is not their place to decide the fate of certain people, the only person that can make those decisions is God. God is the one that decides whether we are deemed worthy to go to Heaven or not. With that being said, I grew up in a family that is very religious on one side and the other side had their person beliefs