Existence in law and existence in society are potentially two different things.
Sexuality or preference doesn’t have to be legislated against for it to suddenly exist. Extending the argument to the ridiculous conclusion how do you even get the ball rolling on legislating against a concept that supposedly is yet to exist? For such laws to be passed there has to be the motivation for them to be created, which requires an understanding a priori.
That’s kind of moot anyway. First of all as you’ve said those laws don’t specific homosexuality of sexual preference until the 19th C. But just because they are not mentioned doesn’t mean that no concept or understanding existed separate to the laws. As I said law and society are potentially different, but usually interacting, entities.
To stress again as I’m waffling, just because those laws do not indicate intrinsic sexual preference doesn’t mean that there was a lack of recognition in society as a whole for such preferences, or a lack of homophobia.
Also, we’re being terribly ethnocentric here. Homosexuality and sexual preference is fairly clearly recognised in many cultures, B.C and A.D.
(, Sun 26 Aug 2012, 16:06, Share, Reply)
Good point but I think the new scientific treatment made it more concrete,
the taboo against anal sex as far as I can tell goes back to two cultural sources, on the one hand the pre-Christian pagan, Nordic culture and the Hebraic culture imported by Christianity. On the Nordic side look up "Ragr", to violate someone else was seen as a supremely manly thing to do but to be violated the ultimate shame. Christianity kind of turned the tables and made the aggressor into the villain.
Indian culture is the most interesting on this matter.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Sun 26 Aug 2012, 16:18,
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The diagnostic criteria and treatment was arguably very harmful, that's true. But I don't think it was a direct legitimisation of homophobia...
It was used more in the either/or sense. Someone caught in a compromising position could be threatened with the law, but then they could also be offered the 'but if you get treatment instead...' option. Prison or treatment option. And option really isn't the right word. Especially when the treatment was aversion therapy and/or chemical castration.
In other words the homophobia already existed, was usually part of the social norms and was again usually enacted in law in some format. The homophobia was there but the diagnosis and treatment simply, and shamefully, added another string to a homophobic society's bow. I don't think that constitutes the creation of homophobia, or the legitimising it. It was already there and just inflitrated another area. The shame for Psychology comes from not standing up to it as a discipline.
Don't get me wrong, Psychology has made some massive mistakes and I say that as a Psychologist, but it is very hard to find an instance where it is something that has developed from the discipline or the people within it. Usually it was a result of the more malleable elements and members mirroring the society they were within. And that to a large extent was and is inevitable. As much as I hate the term 'Social Sciences' Psychology does sit within it, which means it examines, studies, tests and hypothesises about human behaviour and social constructs in one way or another.
TL;DR - Not our fault Guv'.
(, Sun 26 Aug 2012, 16:39, Share, Reply)
Every science made some big mistakes in the 19th century, if it's any consolation.
Victorian society was on the whole very prudish, but surely psychology had a hand in the development of the idea of homosexuality as "a thing that some people are" rather than as a hedonistic excess that some people get up to. And as I write this it occurs to me that they were right about that at least; but psychology at the time was also, as a branch of medicine, concerned with making people "normal" and society wasn't ready to accept the normality of men being sexually attracted to other men, until Kinsey et al.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Sun 26 Aug 2012, 16:51,
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It might be a case of arguing for a distinction between prudish and suppressed.
With suppressed indicating it was present. Definitately some Victorian jazz mag equivalents with decidedly homosexual content. So present within a subculture and suppressed in the mainstream.
I think you can make the case for Psychology developing the concept of homosexuality but I think that development was limited in comparison with what already existed. Might be one of those agree to disagree areas. Though obviously I strenuously disagree with the original statement re: homophobia ;)
(, Sun 26 Aug 2012, 17:24, Share, Reply)