Kiernan: "Heterosexual," "Homosexual," May 1892
Heterosexual desire as "Sexual Perversion"
The earliest-known use of the word heterosrxual in the United States occurs in an article by Dr. James G. Kiernan, published in a Chicago medical journal in May 1892.[1] Heterosexual was not equated here with normal sex, but with perversion -- a definitional tradition that lasted in middle-class culture into the 1920s.
Kiernan linked heterosexual to one of several "abnormal manifestations of the sexual appetite" -- in a list of "sexual perversions proper"-in an article on "Sexual Perversion," Kiernan's brief note on depraved heterosexuals attributed their definition (incorrectly) to Dr, Richard von Krafft-Ebing of Vienna.
Kiernan's heterosexuals were associated with a mental condition, "psychical hermaphroditism." This syndrome assumed that feelings had a biological sex. Heterosexuals experienced so-called male erotic attraction to females and so-called female erotic attraction to males. That is, these heterosexuals periodically felt "inclinations to both sexes."[2] The hetero in these heterosexuals referred not to their interest in a different sex, but to their desire for two different sexes. Feeling desire inappropriate, supposedly, for their sex, these heterosexuals were guilty of what we now think of as gender and erotic deviance.
Heterosexuals were also guilty of reproductive deviance, That is, they betrayed inclinations to "abnormal methods of gratification" -- modes of ensuring pleasure without reproducing the species. They also demonstrated "traces of the normal sexual appetite" -- a touch of the desire to reproduce.
Homosexual
Dr, Kiernan's article also included the earliest-known U.S, publication of the word homosexual. The "pure homosexuals" he cited were persons whose "general mental state is that of the opposite sex." These homosexuals were defined explicitly as gender benders, rebels from proper masculinity and femininity. In contrast, his heterosexuals deviated explicitly from gender, erotic, and procreative norms. In their American debut, the abnormality of heterosexuals appeared to be thrice that of homosexuals. NOTE 3
Reproductive Standard
Though Kiernan's article employed the new terms heterosexual and homosexual, their meaning was ruled by an old, absolute reproductive ideal. His heterosexual described a mixed person and compound urge -- at once sex-differentiated, eros-oriented, and reproductive. In Kiernan's essay, heterosexuals' ambivalent procreative desire made them absolutely abnormal. This first exercise in heterosexual definition described an unquivocal pervert.
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