You’re Welcome, Heterosexuals!
By idyllicmollusk • Apr 2nd, 2008 • Category: General Sod
You’re Welcome, Heterosexuals
On behalf of homosexuals everywhere, I accept your gratitude for our sexuality making yours possible.
Allow me to explain.
The year was 1868. Karl-Maria Kertbeny (who we now suspect was heterosexual) was inspired to write a pamphlet about human rights violations towards certain individuals in Europe. These individuals had no broadly accepted name- they were called inverts, paraesthesiacs, Urnings, pederasts, sodomites, Uranians. But they did have one thing in common- sweet, illegal same-sex loving. And they could (and did) go to the guillotine for it.
Kertbeny’s pamphlet protested the Prussian law that made this persecution possible. In an attempt to find a single word to describe its unfortunate victims, he coined the term ’homosexual’. A few years later, Doctor Baron Richard von Krafft-Ebing chose this term when writing about same-sex activity in his influential book Psychopathia Sexualis. The awesomeness of this book overwhelmed just about everything on the subject preceding it, making ’homosexual’ the consensus term.
Before the mid-nineteenth century, sexual orientation was not a concept. You did who and what you did in privacy… it was erotic, it was sex, it was romantic, whatever, but it wasn’t an orientation, nor did it define who you were, as it kinda does now. Social norms dictated that you marry and have a family, but that certainly didn’t confine individuals then, nor does it now, in their explorations of sexuality.
Well, Kertbeny and other anthropologists and doctors saw the human rights of same-sex lovers being violated, and they felt they needed a word. But hardly anything exists without its opposite. They needed a word to describe homosexuals’ “opposite”. Homos is the Greek word for same, so they predictably chose the Greek word for different, heteros. Presto, Kertbeny and his followers created straight people from the rib of gays.
Heterosexuality has taken on a life of its own in modern times, though it is a very recent addition to the English language. It wasn’t until the 1934 edition of Merriam-Webster’s dictionary that heterosexual was defined as we know it today: “manifestation of sexual passion for one of the opposite sex; normal sexuality”.
Before that, Merriam-Webster defined ’heterosexual’ like a disease: an unwholesome, preoccupying “sexual passion” for the opposite sex.
(c) idyllicmollusk 4/2/08
idyllicmollusk is a co-founder of Doctor McProfessional’s EZ Parasitic Twin Removal System Inc.
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On behalf of heterosexuals everywhere…thanks?
I actually wish we could go back to this- “Before the mid-nineteenth century, sexual orientation was not a concept. You did who and what you did in privacy… it was erotic, it was sex, it was romantic, whatever, but it wasn’t an orientation, nor did it define who you were, as it kinda does now.”
It seems nice, to not worry publicly about what others do in private, that way we could just be people. But, that’d be too easy…
I need some parasitic twins removed… I hear you might be able to help me?
From now on, any time someone says they are heterosexual, I’ll have to act like they are clearly overly preoccupied with sex and that it is really offensive.
You know, I hear what you’re saying and I think I agree with where you’re going, but technically, don’t heterosexuals have homosexuals to thank for even needing the classification system that you denouce? This is absolute nitpicking, I know. In any case, I may be heterosexual but I don’t know where’d I’d be without the homosexual people I’ve had the pleasure to know.
And thank you for introducing me to the term
“Pyscopathia Sexualis”
I think I have a picture that really illustrates this concept,
but you have to pay $15.99 a month to see it.
Natch, thank you internets
You simply rock! This is killer awesome
Funk mid-nineteenth century, growing up in a fairly small town in South India in the late 20th century, sexual orientation was not a concept for me. I did who and what I did in privacy… it was erotic, it was sex, it was romantic, whatever, but it wasn’t an orientation, nor did it define who I was, as it kinda does here(western or western influenced places, I mean). Social norms dictated that you marry and have a family, but that certainly didn’t confine me then, nor does it now, in my explorations of sexuality.
Thank you for allowing me to reword your beautiful writing!