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Sullivan, N. (2003). A critical introduction to queer theory. New York:…
Sullivan, N. (2003). A critical introduction to queer theory. New York: New York University Press. Chapter#1
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Havelock Ellis
A British sexologist and author of Sexual Inversion and Studies in the Psychology of Sex, played an important role in rethinking the notion of degeneration that was central to Krafft-Ebing's writings.
Whilst Ellis clearly dismissed the suggestion that inversion - the term he used to refer to same-sex love, was purely acquired, he nevertheless seemed to be of the opinion that both nature and nurture had a hand in the construction of (homo)sexuality.
Ellis posited the notion of a congenital predisposition which he regarded as an anomaly or an abnormality, but not as a disease.
In short, Ellis believed that since inversion was congenital, it could not be cured and should not be punishable: it was neither a sickness nor a crime. However, he was also of the opinion that since the innate predisposition to inversion was aroused by culturally and historically specific practices and forms of social life, it may be responsible to lessen the potential for homosexuality by eliminating, or at least discouraging things like sex-segregated schools.
Karl Westphal
is another sexologist like Ulrichs, Krafft-Ebing, and Ellis also believed that homosexuality was congenital and therefore should not be punished.
However, Westphal took a position closer to Krafft-Ebing than to Ulrichs or Ellis, and suggested that whilst homosexuals should not be imprisoned, they would benefit from medical treatement since homosexuality was a deviation from 'normal' sexual development.
In fact, many commentators have clamimed that Westphal's work, first published in 1869, marks the beginnings of the medicalisation of homosexuality.
Magnus Hirschfeld
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was a medical doctor, Jewsh sociologist and advocate of homosexual rights, believed that the scientific study of homosexuality would destroy 'millenia-old religious superstitions and traditional morals.'
In his early publications Hirschfeld, following Ulrichs, developed the notion of a third sex, who rather than being punished for their biologically determined drives, should be tolerated and treated justly.
He later abandoned this idea and outlined instead a notion of what we might now call sexual pluralism which radically contravened the rigid nineteenth-century paradagim of sexual plarity.
What Hirschfeld advocated though was a form of 'adjustment therapy' in and thorough which homosexuals would come to accept, embrace, and perhaps even celebrate their sexuality. In a sense, then, Hirschfeld's work could be said to be central to the development of what in the mid-late twentieth entury came to be known as gay pride.
Edward Carpenter
a British contemporary of Hirschfeld's who was also a socialist pioneer, went one step further than Hirschfeld, suggesting at least in a roundabout way, that inverts were superior to heterosexuals.
Sigmund Freud
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Given this, Freud, unlike Kraff-Ebing, concluded that it is 'impossible to regard inversion as a sign of degeneracy.
Freud was also skeptical of the claim that inversion is simply innate and therefore fixed and unchanging. Rather, according to Freudian theory, the (sex) drive is shaped in and through the (social) development of human being.
Consequently, as Jeffrey Weeks notes, Freud's work was ground-breaking in that it pointed to the fact that heterosexuality (as a culturally and historically specific institution) may well be a cultural necessity, but it is not something that is naturally preordained.
Moreover, Freud was also aware of the impact of culturally specific ways of understanding sexuality on the lived experience of erotic life.