Whatever Happened to the Homosexual?

The term "homosexual" really seems to have fallen out favour these days, and I think that's a pity.

I've noticed it for quite a while, but it really came home when I saw someone comment on a post on Facebook that attacks a right-wing politician's views on us, asking "Who uses that word to describe us anymore?"

I admit it's not my go-to term, but I think the word deserves a bit more love.

"Homosexual" as a term to describe same-sex attraction and activity was invented in 1869, by Karl-Maria Kertbeny, an Austrian novelist.  He coined the word at least ten years before anyone came up with the word heterosexual. 

Kertbeny was protesting a proposed anti-sodomy law. Imagine how brave you'd have to be to even raise that topic back then. 

It was a revolutionary term at the time. 

It was the first time in Western culture (and many others) there was a term to describe us that wasn't linked with judgemental and derogatory religious and social prejudices. 

It was intended to describe, and be scientific, which was a huge advance on what had gone before.

It was also revolutionary because the argument that sat behind the word "homosexual" was that being attracted to and having sex with people of the same sex is perfectly natural, and not something that people would be judged and punished for. Basically it's the first time in the West anyone really said "It's not a sin, a sickness, or a personality flaw - it's just part of what people are." And that's the truth.

And it is a word that has been picked up and used in many other languages. Initially being used by a German speaker, it crossed into Western languages very easily, and is used in many others as well. 

Before this. in the West we were known and named of course, but with terms like "sodomite" "catamite" "molly" and the catch-all "pervert". Women who love women got the term "lesbian" a little later, but homosexual was also used to include them. Then of course, it became a term of abuse to use against us too. "Homo" is still thrown around as an insult pretty often.

It's a word that has upset the pedants too, some saying you shouldn't mix Classical Greek and Latin eras, or that it can only be correctly used to describe activity, that it's not an identity. Whatever. 

But without homosexual, we wouldn't have the word "homophobic" to describe people like Gerry Brownlee would we? So it's useful for that. 

Something else I like about the word is that it reminds us that we have ancestors who were fighting for our rights long before Stonewall and Gay Liberation came along. 

The past is easily forgotten, especially in our communities where we don't have any customary ways of sharing our history. Kertbeny was one of them, and even more so was Karl Heinrich-Ulrichs. Go look him up.

I know words go in and out of fashion but let's give this one a little love and respect, even if it ends up in the museum. It's part of our past, and once upon a time it was a shining light.