Tuesday, December 13, 2011

A brief history of homosexuality

Stuff I didn't know. Gleaned from Gotham by (the other) Mike Wallace -- Homosexuality was invented in the 1880s. Before that, no one thought it necessary to have such a concept. In the 1840s and 50s, which is the era I'm reading about, Society was basically organized along gender lines, and men worked together, played together, clubbed together, partied together, and frequently slept together. Women shopped together, lunched together, sewed together, and often slept together. It was pretty much an accepted norm.

It was not entirely an LGBT-friendly world, though -- not to the T part. Cross-dressing was a serious breach, because that was an affront to the social separation of men and women.

1 comment:

Dee said...

The words heterosexual & homosexual didn't even appear in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1901.