After a strenuous two hour session last night playing with and against one another in rotating pairs, eight mature gay men relaxed together for drinks and snacks provided by the weekly hosts of this activity. Conversation turned to issues of language regarding sex and gender, and how it has gradually evolved over the years.
Same-sex desire and behaviour in both males and females is seen in many species, including homo sapiens, and has been considered amusing or undesirable at different times and places. In the culture of the ancient Hebrews, it was specifically condemned by their deity as an “abomination” in the Book Leviticus of the Torah, or Book of Laws. This negative attribute was subsequently adapted by the derived “Abrahamic” religions of Islam and Christianity, and persists to this day.
During the classical ages of Greece and Rome it was not felt to be a major religious issue, according to the learned monograph Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historical Perspective (1988), by Finnish scholar, historian of ideas, and theologian Martti Nissinen.
Following the establishment of Christianity in the early IV century CE in the Roman empire however, the expression of same-sex desire among males was denounced, not only as “sin” but also became a crime. This view persisted until the mid XIX century, when medical science began to recognize it as relatively common in humans.
In China, same-sex affection between males was celebrated early in poetry at the level of the imperial household. This attitude was destroyed in early modern times, mainly by the work of Christian missionaries, though the behaviour, being natural, persisted. A recent scientific study by anthropologist Tiantian Zheng in her researched book Tongzhi Living: Men Attracted to Men in Postsocialist China (2015) describes this in detail.
Early work in Germany in the XIX and first three decades of the XX centuries by physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld to decrease stigma and repression of males with same-sex desire was a harbinger of the now enlightened social attitudes in many countries, though in some places such as totalitarian Russia under Putin and a number of former European colonized states in Africa it remains, if not a crime legally, at least the subject of official condemnation and repression. The story of Hirschfeld and his young Chinese collaborator Li Shiu Tong is retold in the recent work by American professor Laurie Marhoefer, Racism and The Making of Gay Rights (2022).
Appalled by suicides of homosexuals, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and World League for Sexual Reform in 1897. He continued to promote tolerance throughout the Weimar Republic years and later internationally. His institute in Berlin was destroyed in 1933 by the Nazis and his library publically burned. After he died in exile in 1935, Li continued his work until he too died in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1982.
Magnus Hirschfeld set the stage for gay rights, and Li lived long enough to see the rebirth of the movement, beginning in the US with the Stonewall riots in June 1969, provoked by police repression at a bar for gay men in New York City. The cause spread continentally and eventually worldwide. Pressured by its male and female members, the American Psychiatric Association removed the diagnosis of homosexuality from its diagnostic nomenclature by stages, and this was subsequently followed by the World Health Organization in its international classification of diseases.
Scientific support for the public normalization of same-sex desire emerged in 1958 with the publication of work by American sexologist Alfred Kinsey, noting its ubiquity, and documenting 38% of his cohort of adult males admitting to sexual orgasm with another male. Kinsey famously developed a scale of sexual orientation from 1 (exclusively heterosexual) to 6 (exclusively homosexual) to describe same-sex ideation and behaviour, noting there is a range of activity involving partner choice.
Since then, primarily same-sex oriented men have been joined as sexual minorities by lesbian women, as well as others perceiving themselves transsexual, psychologically differently gendered as male or female from that assigned at birth.
English speaking gay men have traditionally been called in gay slang”tops” (anal insertive) or “bottoms” (anal receptive), analogous (no pun intended) to heteronormative vaginal intercourse. However the existence of a relatively large group of same-sex active men eschewing anal sex altogether led to the internet dating contact site for gay men Grindr to recently add a position called “side”, for those finding fulfillment in every kind of mutual sexual act except anal penetration.
This new development was explicitly described in an article in the Guardian on 20 June 2022, citing evidence that a large number in a study by George Mason University in Virginia, which surveyed some 25,000 men self-identified as gay or bisexual, revealed that only 35% of them had participated in penetrative sex during their last sexual encounter.
This subject of language usage arose in an animated conversation among gay men over drinks and snacks after playing games last night. The drinks were coffee or herbal tea, the snacks were strawberry shortcakes, and the playing consisted of 16 hands of bridge.
June 24, 2022
Karhun luola 