Uranism is always a disease or an inversion. It is sometimes a symptom of degeneracy. It may be caused by disorders during embryonic life.
|
|
"Long-Distance Trade and Foreign Contact". Uganda. Library of Congress Country Studies. December 1990. Retrieved 6 June 2009. In Ethiopia Bieber (1909) “encountered Uranism” among the Semitic Harari people and noted that “sodomy is not foreign to the Harari.
|
|
Johannes Kneppelhout circa 1865 Before the last decades of the 19th century words like uranism, homosexual, sapphism, lesbian and transvestite didn't exist. Being called a true Sappho of Lesbos was a high compliment for female poets, without sexual connotations.Meijer 1998, Introduction pp. 1-23 Words like sodomy, pederast and hermaphrodite existed and had their Dutch-language counterpart, but only very partially covered what would become LGBT (Dutch equivalent: holebi) in a more modern understanding.
|
|
31-35 From 1897 to 1908 Arnold Aletrino published his non-fiction works about uranism, in which he described chaste friendship as a superior form of uranism.Hekma 2004, p. 36-37 Lucien von Römer, who had written love poetry for a man when he was young, published in Hirschfeld's journal in the early 20th century. He was also the first to conduct an inquiry on sexual behavior, and defended the sexual act for homosexuals.
|
|
He strongly believed that same-sex attraction was a natural orientation for people of a third sex. His 1908 book on the subject, The Intermediate Sex, would become a foundational text of the LGBT movements of the 20th century. The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women expressed his views on homosexuality. Carpenter argues that "uranism", as he terms homosexuality, was on the increase marking a new age of sexual liberation.
|
|
The Intermediate Sex (full title: The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women) was a 1908 work by Edward Carpenter expressing his views on homosexuality. Carpenter argues that "uranism", as he terms homosexuality, was on the increase, marking a new age of sexual liberation. Flood, M. (2007) International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities, Routledge: Abingdon, p. 315 The work was an influence on Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, both young war-poets and officers in England's trenches when they met.
|
|
"Edward Carpenter's role in rethinking sexual embodiment and theorizing homosexuality – or 'Uranism' as he termed it – has received welcome attention in the past few decades. The republication of his works by the Gay Men's Press and enlightening studies by the likes of Sheila Rowbotham and Jeffrey Weeks in the late 1970s and early 1980s coincided with the decline of Marxist orthodoxy as attention shifted to alternative radical histories- of gender and sexuality - within the academy and beyond." Livesey, Ruth, Socialism, Sex, and the Culture of Aestheticism in Britain, 1880-1914.
|
|
However, sexologists Richard von Krafft-Ebing from Germany, and Britain's Havelock Ellis wrote some of the earliest and more enduring categorizations of female same-sex attraction, approaching it as a form of insanity (Ellis' categorization of "lesbianism" as a medical problem is now discredited).Faderman (1981), p. 241. Krafft-Ebing, who considered lesbianism (what he termed "Uranism") a neurological disease, and Ellis, who was influenced by Krafft-Ebing's writings, disagreed about whether sexual inversion was generally a lifelong condition. Ellis believed that many women who professed love for other women changed their feelings about such relationships after they had experienced marriage and a "practical life".
|
|
Albeit not as commonly, it also occurs among the Galla [Oromo] and Somal[i].” He also noted mutual masturbation by both sexes and all ages for all three peoples, and specified that among the Harari, Uranism was practiced as often between men as between men and boys. More recently, Gamst (1969) reported homosexual relations among shepherd boys of the Cushitic-speaking Qemant (Kemant) of central Ethiopia. Among Amhara peasants, Messing (1957) found (better-accepted) male transvestites, who they view as “god’s mistakes.” Wändarwäräd (“literally male-female”) with visible male sexual characteristics, but whose structure is popularly believed to be defective. Among the Maale of southern Ethiopia, “a small minority [of men] crossed over to feminine roles. Called ashtime, these (biological) males dressed like women, performed female tasks, cared for their own houses, and apparently had sexual relations with men,” according to Donald Donham (1990).
|
|