History of the Term "Homosexual"

A Chronology of the Term "Homosexual"

1868, May 6: Kertbeny: "Homosexual," "Heterosexual"

1869, Fall: Kertbeny: "Homosexual"

1914, November 22: New York Times: first use of term "homosexual"

1923, June 24: New York Times: second use of "homosexual" and first use of "heterosexual"

Questions

Why does the history of the term "homosexual" matter? Does it?

In The Invention of Heterosexuality, Jonathan Ned Katz argues that the invention and distribution of the terms "heterosexual' and "homosexual" caught on in the early 20th century because they were well equipped to express and further a middle-class supported fundamental change in the social-historical organization of sexual behavior, desire, and identity. This was the change from a fundamentally procreative order to a sex-gender system organized around male-female sexual pleasure, gender propriety, and a married man and woman. He argues that the distribution of the terms both reflected and helped to usher in and consolidate the 20th-century system of heterosexual supremacy and homosexual domination that was seriously challenged by the rebirth of the feminist movement in the 1960s, and the gay and lesbian movements after 1969. What do you think of that argument?

OutHistory.org: Helping Us Think Historically