Construction of Homosexuality

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Construction of Homosexuality
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Why Construction?

• homosexual acts are a constant in history, but
  not their social significance
• B. a given society may (or may not) construct
  roles and identities related to sexual behavior
• C. In the 19th century, the idea of deviance is
  constructed for homosexuals

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Sodomy law in the English Context

• Variations in enforcement
• sometimes strictly enforced with death penalty
• until the 1840s.
• 2. especially in the military and in times of war
• 3. based on acts, not behavior
• B. No scientific or forensic theory of
  homosexuality
• 1. in sodomy cases up to the 1870s, police have
• no idea of a homosexual type or lifestyle
• 2. common idea was some men were bisexual

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From sodomite to homosexual

• sodomite referred to someone who committed
  certain acts a homosexual was category of person
• 1. defined by medicine, psychology and law
• 2. Change in consciousness of society and of
• homosexuals themselves
• B. Legal changes
• 1. Law in 1861 removes death penalty for
  buggery,
• 2. distinguishing between different sorts of
  buggery
• 3. Criminal Law Amendment of 1885 made gross
  indecency a misdemeanor up to two years of
  prison
• 4. reliance on moral rather than punitive
  discipline

5
From sodomite to homosexual

• C. Genesis of the Criminal Law Amendment Act
  (1885)
• 1. social purity movement against male lust
• 2. born in fight against Contagious Diseases
  Acts (1869)
• 3. sexual/physical purity connected to moral
  strength
• 4. Prevent corruption of the youth, and defend
  marriage and gender system of domesticity

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From sodomite to homosexual

• D. The significance of Laboucheres amendment
  against
• gross indecency
• 1. designed to suppress male prostitution
• 2. less repressive than sodomy law
• 3. but harsher penalties than for female
  prostitutes or
• male customers, and more strictly enforced
• 4. reflects moral outrage at deviant lifestyle

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The Effect of the Wilde Trial

• A. Oscar Wilde trial establishes the public image
  of the
• homosexual personality or invert
• 1. flamboyant, aesthetical, otherwise different
  from
• the bourgeois philistine

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The Effect of the Wilde Trial

• A. Oscar Wilde trial establishes the public image
  of the
• homosexual personality or invert
• 1. flamboyant, aesthetical, otherwise different
  from
• the bourgeois philistine
• 2. physical and moral weakness connected
• 3. connected to the general fears for masculine
• degeneracy (see Forth, chapter 6)

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The Effect of the Wilde Trial

• B. Trial is public attack on homosexual
  personality
• 1. Wilde is a symbol, and he stands up for
  himself
• 2. inspires homosexuals to make a stand for
  themselves
• 3. they begin to see themselves as a different
  sort of
• person a new sense of identity
  emerges