
Before Straight and Gay: The discreet, disorienting passions of the Victorian era - Vigier
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/before-straight-and-gay/513812/?single_page=true
======
Glyptodon
To a certain extent I certainly find the current/modern fixation with
classifying gender and orientation odd. It's not entirely clear to me why it's
important that I know somebody is a "queer sapiosexual" or whatever else. But
there are clearly a lot of people who think such things are very important.

And of course what seems a tendency towards needlessly complicated overly-
expository self-labeling encompasses a lot more than gender these days. It
feels like there's a subtext to a lot of it which sort of suggests that ideas
can only be heard and understood clearly by those who own the appropriate
labels (including gender), and so people seek to have expansive identities
that give them the social bona fides necessary to have their opinions,
thoughts, and ideas treated with respect and presumed relevance.

In other eras perhaps these social credentials came from wealth or class or
other "accomplishments." But the modern world seems to have let an obsession
with the the variously unfair, arbitrary, capricious, and discriminatory
nature of these previous credentials become the basis for inventing new ones
based around constructed identities, since such constructs are available to
all.

In a way we can see this in how protest movements are labeled - it used to be
that they were labeled by their goals or the problems they were trying to
solve, like the "Civil Rights Movement" or the "Conservation Movement." But
now we label things by their identity. Rather than conservation movement, at
some point we ended up with "conservationists" and "environmentalists," which
have given way to things like the "Women's March," "Scientist's March," etc,
which seem to imply that identity necessarily indicates viewpoint - just by
knowing what category/identity is marching I should know what it is trying to
say.

As a lazy human being I find this not an all-together pleasing development,
mostly because it seems to go along with a bit of all-or-nothingism,
particularly for "allies," who, absent the appropriate labels, may only accept
or not accept the broad determinations of those who own the operative label at
risk of being excluded/denounced.

Anyway, I enjoyed the piece. Always enjoy reading about Victorian stuff.

~~~
delecti
It can be difficult to feel normal if there isn't a word to describe how you
feel. If all you see is depictions of a certain kind of person (straight and
cisgender [1]), but you don't feel that way, are you broken, wrong, crazy
even? I've seen countless accounts of people that fit the formula of "I felt
different all my life, and it wasn't until I heard the word <label> that I
understood."

So yes, maybe if you're straight and cisgender you never gave a thought to it,
because the majority of people around you were as well, but to a little
transgender or asexual teen, hearing the label is like finding a community and
comfort blanket all in one.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender)
\- Cisgender (often abbreviated to simply cis) is a term for people who have a
gender identity that matches the sex that they were assigned at birth.
Cisgender may also be defined as those who have "a gender identity or perform
a gender role society considers appropriate for one's sex."[1] It is the
opposite of the term transgender.

Edit: kid->teen, I'm not talking about pre-pubescent children

~~~
logfromblammo
Whenever I see cis- and trans- applied to humans, I get the creeping suspicion
that some subset of ortho-, meta-, para-, dextro-, levo-, gem-, vic-, hom-,
syn-, anti-, exo-, and endo- will be next, and everyone will need to pass an
organic chemistry course just to sign up for a dating service.

    
    
      (In queue at the local coffee shop.)
      Couple-A:  (reading a Quandr-E profile out loud) Orthodisexual
                 dextromasculine cismale seeks polyamorous dyad for
                 exo- addition (or endo- if it feels right)....
      Couple-B:  Awww... dang.  Too bad drhe isn't *para*-disexual.
                 Swipe left.
      Sasquatch:  I know, right?  But gotta respect drhis life choices.
      Couple-A:  Hey, you wouldn't happen to be...
      Sasquatch:  Nope.  I only date unicorns.
      Senior Coffee-Service Engineer:  (surreptitiously applies alicorn wax)
      Dude:  (enters) Any hetero cisfemales in here?
      Chorus:  No!
      Dude:  (exits)
      Dodecagenarian:  One half-liter fair-trade, please.  No saccharoids.
                       Double cannabis-butter shot.
      Senior Coffee-Service Engineer: That will be $6129, sir and/or ma'am.
      Rod Serling:  (appearing from nowhere) Submitted for your approval:
                    Birmingham, Alabama, in the year 2040,
                    just 2 years after the Social Justice War....

~~~
dTal
Beautifully dense satire. A+, would read again.

------
dpark
> _Though sex between men was a criminal offense ..., there was, as yet,
> hardly a homosexual identity defined by same-sex desire. Until the early
> 1950s, a man could have sex with another man without thinking himself in any
> respect “abnormal”_

How do you reconcile the fact that gay sex was a criminal offense with the
claim that it wasn't considered abnormal?

This feels like wishful history rewriting.

~~~
jxf
> How do you reconcile the fact that gay sex was a criminal offense with the
> claim that it wasn't considered abnormal?

Just because something is illegal doesn't mean people consider it abnormal. (I
agree with you that it feels historically revisionist, but I don't agree with
your argument.)

For instance, smoking marijuana isn't considered "abnormal" by many folks. And
yet it is a serious federal criminal offense in the US, punishable by
significant jail time.

~~~
dpark
That's a good point but there is lots of evidence indicating the prevalence
and acceptance of marijuana in spite of its illegality. Where is the evidence
that make homosexuality was largely considered acceptable or normal by before
the early 1950s?

Again, this just feels like historical revisionism. As if gay male sex was
totally acceptable until a ~50 year period starting in 1950. Meanwhile this
whole article is about a family of gay people who (at least the males)
couldn't or didn't engage in this supposedly accepted behavior.

~~~
rsynnott
> Where is the evidence that make homosexuality was largely considered
> acceptable or normal by before the early 1950s?

To be clear, the article's not saying that male homosexuality was largely
considered normal. It's saying that having sex with men was not considered
abnormal, which is a bit different. I think this is probably a bit of an
oversimplification, but certainly, men who had sex with men would have been
less inclined to think of themselves as different at the time than now.

~~~
dpark
I have trouble buying that claim. In a world where gay sex happens but isn't
acknowledged, I don't see how people engaging in gay sex would consider it
"normal". As if it became "abnormal" only when we started labeling it
consistently as homosexuality. Was "furry" sex also considered normal before
we had a name for it?

I can buy that men who had sex with men wouldn't consider themselves gay (or
bisexual or whatever) because that wasn't really a recognized thing. That
doesn't mean that the gay sex itself would have been considered "normal" even
by the people engaged in it.

~~~
wolfgang42
> Was "furry" sex also considered normal before we had a name for it?

Yes, you could make the argument that it was (setting aside the question of
how "furry sex" differs from "normal sex"). Consider the following quote from
an article on Winston Churchill:

> Like other lovers, they invented pet names for each other. Clementine was
> “Cat”, or “Kat”, Winston was “Pug”, then “Amber Pug”, then “Pig”. Drawings
> of these animals decorated the margins of their letters to each other, and
> at dinner parties Winston would reach across the table, squeeze her hand,
> and murmur “Dear Cat”. [...]

> These were not one-offs, taken out of context. Due to Churchill’s odd
> schedule and frequent travels, he and his beloved Kat didn’t see much of
> each other, and even while living in the same house they wrote each other
> frequent letters. Practically all of them are full of love—and they’re
> equally full of what we today would recognize in a heartbeat as typical
> anthropomorphic on-line role-play.

[http://www.adjectivespecies.com/2012/12/28/blood-toil-
tears-...](http://www.adjectivespecies.com/2012/12/28/blood-toil-tears-and-
fur/)

~~~
dpark
> _Yes, you could make the argument that it was (setting aside the question of
> how "furry sex" differs from "normal sex"). Consider the following quote
> from an article on Winston Churchill_

I think you're answering a much different question than what I asked. You seem
to be answering whether it existed before it had a name. I was asking whether
it was _normal_ before it had a name. I have no idea whether Churchill was
actually a "furry" but I don't think giving it a name suddenly made it
_abnormal_. To whatever extend "furry" behavior is normal or abnormal, it was
the same before and after it had a name.

~~~
wolfgang42
Admittedly I did not make this point particularly clearly. [I also realized as
I was writing this reply that I made a possibly unwarranted assumption: that
Churchill's actions were well-known and generally accepted at the time. I took
from the quote that he was doing this at dinner parties, but have no idea what
the public scope was. The remainder of the reply continues with this
assumption, but I would want to do more research before continuing to use this
particular example.]

I'm interpreting "normal" as _considered not out of the ordinary by a
reference group_ (as opposed to e.g. _within one standard deviation of the
mean_ ). This brings the opinions of the group (here the general public) into
play. I argue that giving it a name did, in fact, make it abnormal. It is
difficult to discuss anything without having words to describe it with, in
part because no clear boundaries have yet been defined. As a result, these
sorts of things fall into a grey zone where they can't really be described as
"normal" or "abnormal" (even if individual instances could be called
"unusual"). Once they have been classified, they can be given a name (e.g.
"furry"), and also the group as a whole can then be easily classified as
normal or abnormal.

~~~
dpark
Holding someone's hand and calling them a pet name at dinner is not the same
as having one's private sex/romance practices publicly known. I doubt that if
Churchill was engaging in furry fetishes that it was well known. But even if
it were well-known that wouldn't mean it was generally accepted as normal. But
it's weird debating Churchill since I have no idea if it's even true or if
it's made up or or wildly misinterpreted.

I don't agree with the naming argument. It might be harder to discuss
something without a label on it but the underlying behavior can still be seen
as normal or abnormal. We didn't have a real word for cisgender until recently
but it doesn't seem to have made a difference in how cisgender people are
perceived. We still don't have a word for people who are sexually excited by
Ikea couches but it's pretty unusual/abnormal regardless. (I don't see unusual
and abnormal as meaningfully different here.)

------
h4nkoslo
The implication is that the modern identity of "gay" is a recent, politicized,
Western (& really more like American) construction. The further implication is
that this identity is also deconstructable. Which seemingly refutes the whole
idea of "innate gayness" in as much as it amounts to any particular pattern of
behavior.

~~~
twblalock
> The implication is that the modern identity of "gay" is a recent,
> politicized, Western (& really more like American) construction. The further
> implication is that this identity is also deconstructable.

Yes, that's the implication, and it's one that most people who have studied
historical attitudes to homosexual behavior agree with.

> Which seemingly refutes the whole idea of "innate gayness" in as much as it
> amounts to any particular pattern of behavior.

There is no refutation of that -- behavior and predispositions can be innate,
but basing a person's identity on a certain set of them is a social
construction. We know that is the case because all human societies exhibit
homosexual behavior, but only some have adopted the concept of homosexuality
as a personal identity, frequently as a binary opposite of heterosexuality --
and western society only did so somewhat recently.

------
return0
[nothing]

~~~
sp332
Labels are just an easy way for people to dismiss each other. Let's not.

~~~
lightedman
Categorization is important. Those who wish to use such categorization as a
means to discriminate are not important, and should not be given any services
until they change their ways. If society went back to this simple structure,
(plus our educational system would recognize this instead of co-opting it)
then this would change. But we're now in a more complex age. Good luck with
that.

~~~
tomp
I disagree. I think "description" is important, and some words facilitate
communication.

For example, I consider "heterosexual" and "homosexual" mostly as
_categorization_ words, as they tell you almost nothing about a person.

On the other hand, if we used words like "penis-loving" and "vagina-loving",
which are descriptions, we'd get along much better. I'm pretty sure I have
more in common with vagina-loving women (i.e. bisexual women and lesbians)
than with only-penis-loving men (gay men).

~~~
foldr
>On the other hand, if we used words like "penis-loving" and "vagina-loving",
which are descriptions, we'd get along much better.

I think that would just be confusing, as you're conflating very different
things. I'm gay in terms of who I'm actually attracted to, but I find both
penises and vaginas sexually interesting. Similarly, gay men aren't
necessarily particularly into penises and straight men aren't necessarily
particularly into vaginas. (With regard to the latter, witness all the nasty
misogynistic things straight men are liable to say about them.)

I'd also point out that as a gay man I'm far more attracted to transguys, who
generally have vaginas, than I am to transwomen, who generally have penises.

So in short, describing my sexuality in terms of which genitalia get me going
would be very misleading, and I'm not an isolated case.

------
sp332
Is it just me, or are people who were telling us that homosexuality is a
genetic predisposition the same ones now saying that it's a choice and things
are flexible?

~~~
legodt
First you need to stop seeing it as a binary (being gay isn't a bit that gets
'flipped,' it's more of a range that you are predisposed to fall somewhere
within) and then this will start making more compatible sense. If you're
willing to accept that, here's a really good interview on the subject:
[http://www.salon.com/2012/01/22/the_invention_of_the_heteros...](http://www.salon.com/2012/01/22/the_invention_of_the_heterosexual/)

~~~
sp332
Yeah, but that's always been true. So why was the emphasis on immutability for
a long while?

~~~
M_Grey
Maybe look at the various social consequences in places where the
"immutability" line is or has been sold, versus places and times where it
isn't or wasn't.

~~~
sp332
Could you be more specific?

------
dsfyu404ed
I can't be the only one that read "of all the doings in the Benson household"
as "of all the dongs in the Benson household".

