Saturday, February 7, 2009

Early views of homosexuality

For one of my papers I have to review the history of sexual orientation research. Here is how the author of one book from the 1960s summarized the research on lesbians:



"A homosexual female has been characterized by a firm adipose tissue, deficient fat at the shoulders and at the girdle, firm muscles, excess hair on the chest, back and lower extremities, a tendency to masculine distribution of the public hair and a small uterus and over-or underdevelopment of the labia and clitoris. There is also a tendency toward a shorter trunk, a contracted pelvis, underdevelopment of the breasts, excessive hair on the face, and a low pitched voice."

3 comments:

JTL said...

Bea Arthur is a lesbian?

But seriously... did the book talk about how gay people choose to be gay?

ecb said...

Ha ha. Sadly, yes, the book did go into how homosexuality is the result of:

1. An early bad experience with a chick.
2. Bad relationships with parents
3. Low self-confidence
4. Some ego thing that Freud was talking about.

Early research that suggested people are born gay was mostly dismissed. Conversion therapy was recommended which consisted of:

1. Psychoanalysis (guess who suggested that?)
2. Aversion therapy (shocking your balls while looking at gay things)
3. Lobotomies
4. Hysterectomies.

Gay people really got screwed in the 20th century, no pun intended.

JTL said...

You will be happy to know that today I dispelled the "being gay isn't a choice" myth for three more teenagers.

Making the world less dumb, three kids at a time,

JTL.