My SSM title is the "history of the medicalisation of homosexuality."
While I've been writing this, I've discovered a lot of things that were very interesting, and quite often shocked me. While I knew homosexuality was not agreed with in the past, the depth of things that happened, and views of homosexuals, was incredible to me and often very shocking.
Because of this, and in light of the fact that (unbelievably) a "gay cure" conference is being held in London today, I thought I'd publish a few facts for people to see.
Feel free to ask me more detail, or enter into debate :-p
(Warning- some of this is very shocking)
Homosexuality was not seen as wrong until the monotheistic religions came about: Judaism, Christianity, Islam.
(Although being the receiving male partner was seen as shameful)
Sodomy (normally taken to mean anal sex) was illegal from the mid-15th century until 1967 in england.
The first person to label homosexuality as a mental illness was Richard Von Kraft Ebing in 1886. By the early 1890's, he had changed his opinion dramatically enough to sign a petition to abolish the anti-homosexuality laws in his country.
Darwin due to his theories of evolution, thought homosexuality was a problem in "object choice" of mating.
Freud never developed a coherent theory of homosexuality- he thought it was due to a problem with development, but also that it was no disadvantage. He also noted that it was very difficult to "cure".
It is estimated that around 50,000 homosexuals were convicted by the Nazi regime during World War II.
5,000-15,000 died in concentration camps.
Treatments were tried on homosexuals such as castrating them and injecting them with testosterone.
During WWII, the American Army rejected ~5000 applicants, and dishonorably discharged 4000 sailors and 5000 soldiers for being homosexual.
Alfred Kinsey published a paper in 1948 on the sexual behaviours of men, and 1953 on women. Two of my favourite quotes:
"the data in the present study indicate that at least 37 per cent of the male population has some homosexual experience between the beginning of adolescence and old age.”
“28 percent [of women] had erotic experiences to other women by the age of 45; 19 percent had some type of lesbian sexual contact by age 40.”
The American diagnostic and Statistical Manual listed homosexuality as a "sociopathic personality disturbance" from when it was published in 1952 until 1973.
In the 1960's attempts were made to cure homosexuals with aversion therapy- treatments included making subjects have homosexual fantasies and then switch to disgusting images, electric shock treatment and apomorphine to induce nausea. (One man died from choking on his own vomit.)
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/328/7437/427Current consensus is that these treatments were nearly always unsuccessful, and often very damaging to the patients.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10627791?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=4&log$=relatedreviews&logdbfrom=pubmedNearly all focus on homosexuality was male-male homosexuality- lesbianism was mostly ignored.
More and more research is being undertaken to prove a biological cause of homosexuality (have you seen the circular emails at KCL?)
Although how useful this is in the long run is to be debated.
Today a "gay cure" conference is to be held in London:
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-12074.htmlA protest is being held against this:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=71287658602&ref=tsLet me know what you think.
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