homophobia

[Liza Featherstone]

Sure, there are examples of homosexually-inclined people and of social 
disapproval towards them (as well as total social approval/indifference) 
throughout written history. Check out the contested history of same-sex 
marriage in Early Christian and Middle Ages (John Boswell's Same-Sex Unions 
in Premodern Europe). But neither language nor communities  that defined 
homosexuality as a meaningful social category,either  for homophobic and 
homosexual purposes, existed much before this century. Urbanization made it 
more possible for all kinds of people to exist outside the nuclear family -- not 
only homosexuals but single people, particularly women, began to exist in a 
large-scale socially significant way. to provoke a hostility that they simply 
hadn't when there weren't that many of them. 

Liza

Carl Remick wrote:
> 
> Re Liza's:  "there seems to be a lot of consensus among
> historians (D'Emilio, Katz, the fellow who wrote the excellent Gay New
> York,
> whose name now escapes me) that the communities, lifestyles, hangouts,
> etc.
> that make same-sex desire a viable habit flourished under urbanization,
> and
> barely exisited before. Jonathan Katz argues in The Invention of
> Heterosexuality
> (also v.good), that no sexual identities or categories exisited much
> before the
> last turn of  the century."
> 
> I'm not sure how this squares with the apparently sexual hostility
> contemporaries showed to certain English kings who had a same-sex
> orientation -- notably, Edward II (1307-27) and James I (1603-25).
> 
> Carl Remick
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Liza Featherstone [mailto:lfeather32 at erols.com]
> Sent: Friday, January 22, 1999 7:59 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: homophobia
> 
> The sex acts themselves have of course been around forever (just check
> out those
> medival sculptures of cherubs eating each other.  ancient Greek
> proclivites
> well-known, etc) and Angela's right that there has probably always been
> same-sex desire in some fashion.  But there seems to be a lot of
> consensus among
> historians (D'Emilio, Katz, the fellow who wrote the excellent Gay New
> York,
> whose name now escapes me) that the communities, lifestyles, hangouts,
> etc.
> that make same-sex desire a viable habit flourished under urbanization,
> and
> barely exisited before. Jonathan Katz argues in The Invention of
> Heterosexuality
> (also v.good), that no sexual identities or categories exisited much
> before the
> last turn of  the century.
> 
> Liza
> 
> Jim heartfield wrote:
> >
> > In message <36A6CE4D.E2B5B550 at netlink.com.au>, rc&am
> > <rcollins at netlink.com.au> writes
> >
> > > (this last theory of
> > >the existence - rise? -of homosexuality in the article would be funny
> > >if it were not so obviously wrong, an echo (mirror) of those who want
> > >to 'return to the past' where there were no poofters.)  mode of
> > >production explanations i would like to see, but this does not work
> in
> > >the slightest; and nor does affirming urbanisation for making it
> > >possible to do the dirty with those of the same sex work enough for
> me
> > >as an explanation to now turn to celebrating technology as
> liberatory,
> > >as 'living marxism' would bid us do.
> >
> > I'm surprised that Angela objects to this, fairly routine argument
> that
> > urbanisation creates a cosmopolitanism in which sexuality can develop
> > apart from family ties. See for example John D'Emilio's essay
> Capitalism
> > and Gay Identity.
> > --
> > Jim heartfield