A website supporting my switchingview YouTube Channel

This webpage defines and explains the various ideas I have used in the project, in much more detail than I can give in the videos.

I also list the definitions I have used. Some of these will be standard defintions already in widespread use. Others will be my own neologisms (newly invented words) created to describe new concepts that I have developed.

In my experience it is vitally important to pay close attention to definitions. It is very easy to create confusion when different people mean very different things despite using the same words.

For example, some people define 'homosexuality' as having sex with somebody of the same sex. For others homosexuality is congenital, an intrinsic disposition. I have a friend who knew he had a profound homosexual disposition but he maried a woman and had children due to social and religious pressures. Is that person homosexual or heterosexual? You get different answers depending on which definition you use.

Similarly, people often use the words 'sex' or 'gender' interchangeably to describe if somebody is male or female. Yet as we shall see, the two words mean very different things.

In the Discussion Definitions and Laws pages I will explore many issues in much more detail than I can in the videos, to avoid these risks of misunderstanding.

Intermediate Types

Intermediate Types, Queer Minstry and Warrior Love - Link

How do you tell the History of Homosexual People?

Homosexual Identity and Orientation - Link

The Essentialist / Social Construct Debate - Link

Intermediate Types, Queer Minstry and Warrior Love

Intermediate Types is an umbrella term used by Edward Carpenter, in the very early years of LGBTQIA+ research, to describe people who appear to fit somewhere between the poles of male and female in some aspect of their being.[Footnote 1.1]

Such people might be labelled LGBTQIA+ in a modern Western culture, but people living in different historical cultures may have had different understandings about their own identity and behaviour, and applied different labels to themselves.

I like to use the label Intermediate Types because it avoids the risk of projecting western constructs such as 'gay' or 'trans' into contexts where it may not be appropriate, and leaves open the question of what intrinsic dispositions such people had.

Queer Ministry is a label I have created to describe the reports across history, and across continents, of Intermediate Type people being valued for their involvement in religion and spirituality - as priests, shamens, teachers, counsellors, and in many other vocations.

Warrior Love is a label I have adopted from the Biblical scholar Theodore Jennings who describes a context in which:

warriors are often accompanied in their exploits by younger male companions who share in the adventures and the dangers of their 'lovers'. [Footnote 1.2]

Warrior Love often exists within a pattern of age structured homosexuality where a young man (typically from puberty through to about age 20) is the junior partner or 'beloved' in a same sex relationship, and then (age 20 to 30) he is the senior partner or 'lover', and then he moves into heterosexual married life. Many military cultures had such relationships embedded within their customs and values.

Such relationships were often valued by these military cultures, and were said to have two benefits:

• The mutual loving support between the partners encourages virtue and courage in battle.
• It provides a teacher/mentor role in which the older partner teaches the skills and values of warfare to the younger apprentice, in return for love and/or companionship, and service as page, armour bearer or whatever.

The relationship between such age structured homosexuality and the more typical Western idea of lifelong homosexual disposition is a contested topic in homosexual scholarship. I will be exploring this in the Talking about Homosexuality theme.

Eight case studies of Queer Ministry and Warrior Love can be found in the Intermediate Types - The Evidence. Stories of Queer People in History YouTube Video.

How do you tell the History of Homosexual People?

The study of homosexual history is a complex and contested field. One big question is this: if we look back in history and study same-sex loving or erotic behaviour, then is this the same thing that we call homosexuality today. Sometimes the behaviours seem similar, sometimes they are quite different. So how can we be sure?

Some people argue that homosexuality has an Essential or congenital nature. Certain people across history had the same inborn homosexual nature as homosexual people have today. They may have had differing beliefs and behaviours relating to to their same-sex attractions, but the underlying cause was the same. We can safely make that link across history.

Others disagree. They argue that homosexuality should be seen as a Social Construct, a set of behaviours and understandings that one learns from the culture around you. We cannot assume that old historical descriptions of same-sex behaviour are related to modern concepts about homosexuality. Any possible biological cause is irrelevant. One shouldn't even use the word 'homosexual' to label people or constructs from before the late 19th century, when modern ideas of homosexuality (and the word "homosexual") were first created.

I set out my own approach to this debate below which combines parts of both arguments. I often use the words Intrinsic and Identity in my own work to avoid using the politically loaded words 'essential' and 'construct'. Having explained my own position I will then discuss this essentialist/constructionist debate, and try and find a constructive way forward.

Homosexual Identity and Orientation - My Own Approach

In simple terms Orientation relates to a person's relationship with another person, whilst Identity relates to how a person labels, describes and understands their own sense of self.

A homosexual person has both an identity and an orientation. The two things are different. Getting these two ideas mixed up has caused great confusion in the study of sexuality.

A homosexual person has a sexual and romantic orientation towards another person of the same sex.

Some scholars define this homosexual orientation only in terms of erotic and sexual behaviour (i.e. who you have sex with). For example is his book "Greek Homosexuality" Kenneth Dover defined homosexuality as

the disposition to seek sensory pleasure through bodily contact with person's of one's own sex in preference to contact with the other sex"[Footnote 1.3]

This is a very poor definition due to the innate flexibility of our sexual urges. It is well known that many people with a homosexual disposition have married women and fathered children, whilst many heterosexual men have engaged in same-sex sexual activity, especially when young or when women were not available. To define homosexuality solely in erotic or sexual or bodily terms is inaccuarate and limited.

A homosexual orientation involves a complex and multi-faceted set of qualities. Homosexuality involves a person's affective feelings (i.e. who you fall in love with) as well as the erotic (who you have sex with). Some scholars argue for additional differences (i.e. the quality of how you fall in love with and relate to other people). We need nuanced definitions of homosexuality that can include all of this complexity [Footnote 1.4]. I will explore this in the Talking about Homosexuality Theme in due course.

I believe there is strong evidence that homosexual orientation is an intrinsic disposition, or congenital. Something one is born with and stable through life. This was the belief of some early scholars studying homosexuality back in the late 19th century. For example Edward Carpenter cited German scholars such as Moll and Kraft Ebbing to say that homosexuality was:

a phenomenon widespread through the human race and enduring in history

and

in a vast number of cases quite instinctive and congenital, mentally and physically, and therefore twined in the very roots of individual life and practically ineradicable.[Footnote 1.5]

This matches modern scientific research which argues that homosexuality is strongly related to genetic and intra-uterine (hormone flow in the womb) factors. People come out of the womb programmed to have a homosexual orientation.[Footnote 1.6]

Such a homosexual orientation will often remain dormant until a person hits puberty or later. These people then begin to realise that they have different feelings and desires to many of their their contemporaries. They look around in their society seeking answers to this puzzle, and hopefully they will find other people who appear like them to question and learn from. They can begin to understand themselves and, after some trial and error, begin to attach a label, or identity, or construct to themself. This can be associated with changes in behaviour, dress and lifestyle. [Footnote 1.7]

They then have both an intrinsic homosexual orientation and will have acquired some form of emerging self-understanding or identity (a "social construct") related to their homosexual orientation. The orientation and the identity/social construct are equal parts of the complete picture.

Although homosexual orientation is stable across history, the labels, identities and constructs that homosexual people choose for themselves (or have imposed on them) vary from culture to culture, and even within cultures.

Living as I do in 21st Century England I regard myself as 'homosexual' by inborn disposition, but I most commonly use the labels 'gay' or 'queer' to describe my identity.

Some contemporary conservative homosexual christians refuse to apply the label gay or queer to themselves because this is associated with a promiscuous sexual lifestyle choice against their faith values. They adopt the construct 'same sex attracted' to describe their homosexual orientation but celibate life.

Had I lived in a different time or place but with a similar homosexual orientation I might have regarded myself as a 'Molly' in Eighteenth Century England, or a 'Kinaidos' in ancient Greece and Egypt.

You might find it interesting to study these 'Molly' and 'Kinaidos' constructs, and ask yourself how different they actually were from British mid-20th Century constructs about homosexuality.

Some scholars argue that the word 'homosexual' can only be applied to people and constructs dating after about 1870 when the word was invented. I think this is misguided. Homosexually oriented people clearly existed back in history. It is appropriate to apply the label homosexual to such people when we are discussing their orientation. But when discussing the social construct they lived within then the appropriate label and description should also be used.

In our scholarship we need to find ways of dealing with this overlap of orientation and identity. In particular we need to be careful about how we label these different concepts. In my own work I have begun to use the word 'homosexual' to refer only to this intrinsic, stable homosexual orientation across history, and then use different labels to refer to the varied tine dependednt cultural identities.

The Essentialist / Social Construct Debate

It has to be said that my approach, outlined above, is very much a minority view within current gender and sexuality related scholarship. There is a strong movement within such circles that rejects the idea of essential homosexual characteristics, and says that only social contruct arguments should be used. My argument for including both aspects is as follows:

Essentialism is the idea that people and things have 'natural' characteristics that are inherent and unchanging. Essentialist ideas about the inborn nature of homosexuality were widely discussed within the early academic debate starting in the late 19th Century. The main question at that time was whether homosexuality was a pathology in need of treatment, or instead (as Edward Carpenter argued) an entirely natural and healthy variation in the normal human condition.

Today some people reject the use of the word homosexual because for them it is still linked to this question of pathology and medicalisation. For others the word is a neutral descriptor in medical terms, but with political overtones, like having black skin.

Social Construct theories began to challenge these esentialist ideas in the late 20th century, mainly in the context of gender and race rather than homosexuality. Feminist scholars such as Judith Butler drew out the distiction between a woman's sex (defined by the shape of their body) and their gender (the role they choose to perform, or are forced to perform by the surrounding culture)

Butler and others criticised beliefs that traditional women's roles roles were "a natural fact or a sociological reality": beliefs that it was the 'essential' nature of women to be defined by their sex as passive nurturing child bearers in the service of dominant men.

"All I was saying is that the sex you're assigned at birth and the gender you are taught to be should not determine how you live your life . . . . one is not born a woman, but rather becomes one - the body is not a fact" [Footnote 1.8]

Gender should instead be seen as a social construct:

an idea, concept, or category that is created and maintained by society rather than existing naturally or objectively, its meaning is determined by collective agreement and cultural context.

Butler herself said that

"Gender is a mix of cultural norms, historical formations, family influence, psychic realities, desires and wishes".

Women had been forced to conform to these passive, nurturing, child-bearing constructs by a patriarchal society. But that was not women's essential, fixed nature. Women should have the choice and freedom to adopt and perform different roles and constructs instead. One could even choose to perform certain roles as a form of social action.

Similarly, there was a pushback against eugenic arguments that it was the 'essential' nature of black African people to be less evolved, or to have a lower IQ than white people.

These arguments about social constructs were taken up into the study of sexuality and queer theory. Much queer theory explores these ideas around performativity and construct as a form of protest. It was said by many that sexuality and sexual orientation was entirely a construct, a personal choice, a performance, a behaviour learned from the surrounding culture, and with no biological or congenital cause.

These social construct ideas are incredibly important, a major addition to academic theory. I have incorporated them into my own ideas (see the discussion around identity above). But there have been two problems.

1. Firstly, and very understandably when you look at the original debate, proponents of essentialist ideas became regarded with great suspicion as people who wanted to push women back into the old patriarchal ideas. Sadly this suspicion has continued. It is almost impossible to present essentialist ideas within academic debate today, 50 years later. It is not that your ideas will be criticised if they are found to be at fault. It is simply considered wrong to present essentialist ideas in the first place, almost as an act of faith.
2. Secondly, it seems to me that anti-essentialist arguments are applied across the board, whereas I would argue that race, gender, and sexuality are different contexts. It is entirely possible that strong anti-essentialist arguments may still be appropriate in the context of race and gender, but are no longer sustainable in the separate context of homosexuality.

I think we now need to move beyond this situation, and move to a healthier academic debate which includes both essentialist and social construct arguments in a balanced way. Even Judith Butler herself said

"We have a whole lot of differences, biological in nature, so I don't deny them, (my emphasis) but I don't think they determine who we are in some sort of final way.

We need to move to a position where biological differences are not denied, but considered alongside constructs and identities as parts of the complete picture.

In the past two decades new evidence has emerged which supports the idea of homosexuality having an intrinsic or essential cause. We should be prepared to analyse this newly emerging evidence with an open mind.

1. Biological and other research in humans suggests that homosexuality is strongly related to biological causes, such as genetic and intra-uterine (hormone flow in the womb) factors. The social environment (a person's upbringing and culture post-birth) has been shown to be much less important. [Footnote 1.5]
2. Much research and experience suggests that a homosexual orientation is intractable and cannot be changed by, for example, conversion therapy, even with the full desire and cooperation of the 'patient'.
3. There is extensive research into widespread expressions of homosexuality within the animal kingdom. Over 1500 separate species exhibit some form of homosexual behaviour, some of which (in monkey species) appears similar to expressions of human homosexual behaviour. This raises questions about the evolutionary causes and benefits of homosexuality (and whether monkeys can be said to respond to social constructs). I will explore this in the'Talking about Homosexuality' theme in due course. [Footnote 1.9]
4. Much research into sexuality looks only within a Eurocentric bubble with unconsciously embedded patriarchal assumptions. Too often the only historical cultures studied are limited to Europe and within the Roman/Greek empires. But if one opens out one's field of view one can see expressions of same-sex erotic and loving behaviour, often linked to spirituality, which are similar right across the continents and right across thousands of years of history. This massively extensive similarity of behaviour and understanding must raise profound questions as to what is "natural".

It seems to me that arguments which reject any idea of homosexuality as a biologicaly caused, historically stable human condition can no longer be sustained in light of this new data.

One constructive way of moving forward with this debate may be to apply the dialectical process of thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

The original late 19th century thesis of homosexuality as an intrinsic, essentialist disposition was valid for it's time.

The late 20th-century antithesis developed the incredibly valuable ideas of social constructs and identities. For entirely understandable reasons there was a strong rejection of essentialist ideas. But now, 50 years later, new research calls for a reappraisal.

We can now develop a synthesis which accepts a complex balance of both both essentialist and social construct arguments as the best way of describing the complete situation. One's total being is a nuanced combination of both intrinsic drive and culturally dependant performance. Both aspects of a person's life need to be included to get the complete story