> Or put another way: there have always been sexual instincts throughout the animal world (sex). But at a specific point in time, humans attached meaning to these instincts (sexuality). When humans talk about heterosexuality, we’re talking about the second thing.
I think when talking about the term itself, it's more accurate to say that we labeled the phenomenon of heterosexuality (either in the alleged original form of "morbid passion for the opposite sex", or the modern meaning of simply attraction to the opposite sex). This is the exact same process used to label sex, instincts, animals, humans, and virtually every other term used in the article.
There is a strange fascination with rediscovering that words are labels with socially-agreed-upon meanings, that imperfectly describe the underlying reality, but which terms it gets applied to is very selective, even tactical.
> “Prior to 1868, there were no heterosexuals,” writes Blank. Neither were there homosexuals. It hadn’t yet occurred to humans that they might be “differentiated from one another by the kinds of love or sexual desire they experienced.” Sexual behaviours, of course, were identified and catalogued, and often times, forbidden. But the emphasis was always on the act, not the agent.
Nor were there any thieves or farmers or lepers, only the acts of stealing, farming, and being afflicted by leprosy...
> When most people today think of heterosexuality, they might think of something like this: Billy understands from a very young age he is erotically attracted to girls. One day he focuses that erotic energy on Suzy, and he woos her. The pair fall in love, and give physical sexual expression to their erotic desire. And they live happily ever after. Without Krafft-Ebing’s work, this narrative might not have ever become thought of as “normal.”
Before Krafft-Ebing's work, people thought there was a 50/50 chance Billy might go for a boy instead? They were just completely blind to patterns in sexual attraction? Maybe we could check - in how many stories, songs, stage plays, fables, etc. before Krafft-Ebing's 1886 Psychopathia Sexualis is a similar narrative represented, compared to alternative, non-heterosexual narratives? Not just in English in the West, but in Russia, in the Islamic world, in Africa, in China, India, Mongolia... Heterosexuality must have been "invented" much later there as Krafft-Ebing's theories were translated from German, to English, to other languages.
I think when talking about the term itself, it's more accurate to say that we labeled the phenomenon of heterosexuality (either in the alleged original form of "morbid passion for the opposite sex", or the modern meaning of simply attraction to the opposite sex). This is the exact same process used to label sex, instincts, animals, humans, and virtually every other term used in the article.
There is a strange fascination with rediscovering that words are labels with socially-agreed-upon meanings, that imperfectly describe the underlying reality, but which terms it gets applied to is very selective, even tactical.
> “Prior to 1868, there were no heterosexuals,” writes Blank. Neither were there homosexuals. It hadn’t yet occurred to humans that they might be “differentiated from one another by the kinds of love or sexual desire they experienced.” Sexual behaviours, of course, were identified and catalogued, and often times, forbidden. But the emphasis was always on the act, not the agent.
Nor were there any thieves or farmers or lepers, only the acts of stealing, farming, and being afflicted by leprosy...
> When most people today think of heterosexuality, they might think of something like this: Billy understands from a very young age he is erotically attracted to girls. One day he focuses that erotic energy on Suzy, and he woos her. The pair fall in love, and give physical sexual expression to their erotic desire. And they live happily ever after. Without Krafft-Ebing’s work, this narrative might not have ever become thought of as “normal.”
Before Krafft-Ebing's work, people thought there was a 50/50 chance Billy might go for a boy instead? They were just completely blind to patterns in sexual attraction? Maybe we could check - in how many stories, songs, stage plays, fables, etc. before Krafft-Ebing's 1886 Psychopathia Sexualis is a similar narrative represented, compared to alternative, non-heterosexual narratives? Not just in English in the West, but in Russia, in the Islamic world, in Africa, in China, India, Mongolia... Heterosexuality must have been "invented" much later there as Krafft-Ebing's theories were translated from German, to English, to other languages.