Jennifer Terry "Medicalizing Homosexuality"

The rejection of homosexuality was a consequent of Judeo-Christian religious practices, until the turn of the 19th century when the rejection of homosexuality became the result of medical theories that renounced homosexuality as either an inborn anomaly, a manifestation of a defunct evolutionary progression or a perversion caused by stress of the modern life. Terry examines the spectrum of theories, and there are two dominant sides 'innate' versus 'nurture'. Naturalistic scientist believed that homosexuals were born with sexual inversions. Most of these congenital theories were negative; however, there were scientists like Hirschfield who saw homosexuals as a natural variation of humans. Degenerate theorists, like Krafft-ebhing, saw homosexuals as unfinished specimen of a “lagging evolutionary process”. This assumption came from the inability for same sex couples to procreate, a threat to the advancing society. Ellis believed that children subjected to "unhygienic" circumstances such as going to a same sex school, would develop homosexual desires. Nurture seemed to lead the more recent research. Freud theorized that homosexuality was caused by an impediment of psychological development. Terry also writes about lesbianism, and the dominant thought was that lesbianism was a result of women gaining independence from men. Freud talks about how women develop "penis envy", which refers to when a woman suffers from the lack of penis/masculinity that causes her to develop hostility towards men.

Homosexuality was seen as a punishable crime until medicalization came along, which shifted the society's perception from criminalizing homosexuality to pitying these "specimen". Today, homosexuals are viewed as an eccentric minority or as characters of entertainment in pop culture. I feel like there seems to always be an extent of marginalizing homosexuals, and this act shows how society still sees homosexuality as a deviance from heterosexuality. Although people have arguably become more open-minded, hetero-normativity (Fausto-sterling’s piece) or compulsive heterosexuality is still the assumed sexual preference. I realize, despite these intensive medical theories on homosexuality, none of the scientists, apart from Hirschfield who started the world's first humanitarian effort for homosexual emancipation, even considered accepting homosexuality as a variation of society. Is recognizing homosexual existence enough? I find this to be invalid. Instead, we should focus on integrating homosexuals into the norm, and understand that homosexuality is just a sexual preference, not a defining characteristic of a person. 

I find myself to be a strong advocator of female rights, and so the theories on lesbianism had the biggest impact on me. There seemed to be an existing belief that men drove the decisions of women and it appeared to be unfathomable that a woman would choose to be a lesbian based on her own prerogative  Yet, when I read the diagnosis for male homosexuals, it was focused on either genetics or environmental pressures, not women. Today, there are still theories that women become lesbians as an act of rebellion against men. I ask, why does there always have to be a 'phallus' involved with women? It bothers me that society thinks that women still have to revolve their decisions around men. This prevailing attitude of male superiority in a woman's sexual life is regressive and sickening, and I feel that society needs advance from sexism at a faster pace.

Questions:

1. Krafft-ebing believed the lesbianism wasn’t as powerful nor threatening to social order as male homosexuality. He claims that this is because female's weaker sex drives means lesbians do not have excessive sexual needs. Why do you think he uses this measurement to define whether one's sexuality is ‘threatening’ or not?

2. Many of these theories are written more than a century ago, to what extent do you think our society has progressed in understanding homosexuality or the queer community in general? Are we a more advanced and sophisticated society, or are there still obsolete, discriminating notions?

3. Psychological theorists stated that homosexuals had a psych inversion - gay men adopted a female mindset. These scientists often define sexuality in terms of gender identification instead of looking at the different variations of sexuality. What measurements would you like scientists to define sexuality? Should there even be measurements to something as fluid as sexuality?