What was the nineteenth century’s worst invention? Choosing just one isn’t an easy task, but one that should be near the top of the list is . . . sexual identity. Few modern creations have wreaked as much havoc on individuals and culture as this medical concept.
In a fascinating interview at Patheos, cultural anthropologist Jenell Paris discusses the history and implications of this relatively recent invention:
Was it also the 19th century when these labels gained currency in the broader culture?
Those didn’t really influence the general public until the 1930s, when those words became a more common part of American discourse. So in thinking about even my own family, just to take an example, we could say that my grandfather who came of age in the 1910s probably didn’t have a sexual identity. He was a fundamentalist minister, but he was a man, he was a Christian, and his sexuality got wrapped around those concepts, not his identity understood in terms of his sexuality.
My parents remember getting a sexual identity in the 1960s. So these ideas came a little late for them but they both can talk about realizing, “Oh, I am heterosexual; there is such a thing and I am going to claim one of those labels for myself.” I, growing up in the ‘80s, always had a sexual identity. So we can see across the 20th century there has been a deeper and deeper entrenchment of that concept in American self-understandings.
And these changes correspond to how different generations have understood the role and meaning of sex in human life?
Right. If anything, sex was considered a more communal element of life. It had to do with reproduction, with family, with extended family, and with church and community. Sexual identity categories radically individualized the meaning of sex in the human experience. So the meaning of sex is now located primarily within the individual and her private, innermost feelings.
October 4th, 2011 | 10:16 am
“So the meaning of sex is now located primarily within the individual and her private, innermost feelings.”
There’s that. It’s also found in our innermost nature–how God made us. People in the 19th century wouldn’t have had an inkling that a human being could be born with an XXY chromosome. They might have attributed such a person as a commodity for a freak show, or as a sign of God’s retribution.
I think all people should be able to stand up and find the fullest measure of life in their work and relationships without the labels. For some oppressed or abused persons, that might mean standing tall where others are uncomfortable. Personally, I don’t feel the need for it. But I can respect someone who takes a principled stand.
October 4th, 2011 | 10:37 am
Well, the growing sense of individual worth and dignity also helped start the erasure of one of the worst and most ancient and durable of identities: that of the slave.
October 4th, 2011 | 11:47 am
Jenell Williams Paris and Melinda Selmys are, to my mind, the two most important authors talking about homosexuality today. Kudos to First Things for picking up on their work and introducing them to a new audience.
October 4th, 2011 | 12:35 pm
Except the historical examples actually indicate the opposite: people didn’t think that they had a sexual identity, because what we would now term as male homosexuality was comparatively commonplace (sometimes much more commonplace than now). It’s true that most of the participants in male homosexuality were not exclusively homosexual and many (even most) were married and had children. So, it’s true that there was no “sexual identity” in terms of our current formal usage which makes people exclusively heterosexual or homosexual, but only in a trivial sense.
There were numerous men (reaching into the highest possible ranks of royalty) who were quite well known to prefer men over women, though they also had wives and families. In some cases, that fact was extremely well-known to the population. Usually the public’s complaints were not solely about the homosexuality per se but usually also involved complaints that the king’s boyfriends were not suitable, corrupt, wasted the king’s time, etc.
October 4th, 2011 | 1:16 pm
A remarkable change occurred in the 19th century.
Traditionally, sodomy had been regarded as a crime and, specifically, as a crime against religion. It is no coincidence that the three crimes of blasphemy, sodomy and witchcraft were abolished by the same resolution, passed, without a debate, by the National Constituent Assembly on 25 September 1791 – Deorum iniuria diis cura [Injuries to the gods are the gods’ business]
Michel Foucault has, rather drolly described the change that took place in the public perception:
“Sodomy, that of the old civil or canon laws, was a category of forbidden acts. Their perpetrator was nothing more than the juridical subject of them. The nineteenth-century homosexual became a personage: a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a character, a life-style and a morphology, with an over-inquisitive anatomy and, possibly, a mysterious physiology. Nothing that he was, escaped his sexuality… It was consubstantial with him, less as an habitual sin than as a singular nature…. The sodomite had been a lapse; the homosexual was now a species.” [My translation]
From being a sinful action to be repented, or a vice to be overcome, “homosexuality” became a condition to be treated. Now, of course, it is an identity to be validated. Whether this change amounts to a growth in respect for a person, with a mind that reflects on its own activity and a will that determines the acts it initiates, may be doubted.
October 4th, 2011 | 1:57 pm
[...] Continue… 0 [...]
October 4th, 2011 | 11:44 pm
Well, the growing sense of individual worth and dignity also helped start the erasure of one of the worst and most ancient and durable of identities: that of the slave.
Don’t be silly.
There’s as much buying and selling of people going on now as there ever was.
Sex slavery is alive and well, and has found new and creative ways of expressing itself.
What constitutes “wage slavery” is up for debate, but certainly there are still just as many people deprived of personhood as there ever were.
In fact, there are new industries opening up – the buying and selling of children as pets.
Compare the arguments gay rights advocates use for why it’s okay to strip rights away from the children they purchase: “They’re happy. They’re well-taken-care-of. And they’d be happy to say so – hey! You! Tell the nice man how happy you are!” – not so very different from what plantation owners were saying two hundred years ago (as long as they are unbruised and well-dressed, don’t owners have a RIGHT to determine whether their chattel is or is not “happy”???)
October 5th, 2011 | 9:52 am
[...] Some thoughts on sexual identity and the history of the notion. [...]
October 5th, 2011 | 12:07 pm
[...] Invention of Sexual Identity – This is a critical piece that you absolutely should take the time to read. Ever wonder where the term, “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” came from? Well, I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t Adam. (H/T) [...]
October 5th, 2011 | 2:08 pm
Right. If anything, sex was considered a more communal element of life. It had to do with reproduction, with family, with extended family, and with church and community
Note the interesting verb here, ‘considered’. Reading quickly one would think this was about reality but it isn’t, its about perceptions. If you cornered a man on the street in 1899, he very well might have given you the above answer (assuming he didn’t take offense at such an impolite subject being raised in public). But then how does one explain the fact that prostitution, brothels, pornography seems to have existed from day 1 in our history? What people say they do ( or should do) has always varied from what they actually do. Likewise, what people say they are also has always varied from what they actually are.
‘Sexual identity’ may have been invented in the 20th century, but only in the same way that relativity was invented in the 20th century by Einstein. ‘Invented’ in that case simply means a convention for talking about something very real. Relativity existed in Newton’s time too, it was simply not discussed because we lacked the words and concepts for discussing it. The real question is does sexual identity exist or is it simply a cultural artifact particular to our current time and place?
October 6th, 2011 | 2:11 pm
And I don’t think we should exclude from our consideration how “sexual identity” has harmed or undermined our understanding of eros as a whole. That is, “sexual identity” has harmed heterosexuals as well – many people simply believe that only homosexuality is wrong, but any type of heterosexual behavior is therefore acceptable. But we can see that lust, promiscuity, perversion and so on can be just as much (and very often more so) a problem for the heterosexual as for the homosexual.
October 7th, 2011 | 6:10 am
I’m not really sure what’s being asserted here? That ‘sexual identity’ doesn’t define an entire person? Who ever said it did? That sexual identity doesn’t exist? Does anyone really believe that?
October 7th, 2011 | 11:06 am
I’m not really sure what’s being asserted here? That ‘sexual identity’ doesn’t define an entire person? Who ever said it did? That sexual identity doesn’t exist? Does anyone really believe that?
Sexual identity is as ridiculous as hair color identity or shoe size identity.
October 7th, 2011 | 12:44 pm
And what does that mean? People who (still) have hair have a hair color. People who have feet have a shoe size.
October 7th, 2011 | 12:52 pm
And more importantly, hair color and shoe size are quite objective, real properties that individuals have. In most contexts, though, they are trivial (I suppose they aren’t if you make a living as a model for footware or hair styles).
But its absurd for you to assert sexual identity can be objective but trivial. You may not care what size shoe your wife is but its hardly a trivial matter if she has no sexual attraction to the entire male gender! Or vice versa. While not all humans will act on their sex drive, for most of us our sex drive will drive many decisions that are quite fundamental to how we live our life (for example, who we partner with). Hair color and shoe size don’t seem to be very analogous.
October 7th, 2011 | 5:03 pm
But its absurd for you to assert sexual identity can be objective but trivial.
Well, those of you who prioritize your own pleasure as one of “THE” primary reasons for living certainly have reason to feel the need to categorize yourselves into different types of “sexualities”, and certainly you do derive your identity from it.
But to those of us who don’t worship at that particular have no need to build an identity out of which form of sexual pleasure we most enjoy.
Perhaps a better analogy would be, not with basic physical facts (you wear X size shoe and prefer X type sexual pleasure), although “gay pride parades”, if they were really about celebrating homosexual tendencies, would be as ridiculous as having a “big shoe size pride” parade. (Fortunately for all of us, we know it isn’t really homosexuality being celebrated, but the values of promiscuity – and we know it isn’t really pride, but dominance).
A more apt comparison would be people who are overly concerned with foods, categorizing themselves into preferred types of eating, and trying to build an “identity” out of their preferred gluttony-temptation.
October 8th, 2011 | 1:42 am
A more apt comparison would be people who are overly concerned with foods, categorizing themselves into preferred types of eating, and trying to build an “identity” out of their preferred gluttony-temptation.
I agree with what you are saying. On a parallel note, there is another analogy that can be made. After homosexuals started claiming there was nothing wrong with homosexuality, the very next group that started doing exactly the same thing were the morbid obese, saying “fat was beautiful” and that they should be proud of being fat.
For both of these groups, instead of dealing with their profound psychological problems which leads homosexuals to be incapable of having a healthy heterosexual sexuality and prevents many of the obese to have a healthy diet and life, they prefer to work tireless to make society deform its own knowledge of what is healthy and wholesome. It is a crusade for degenerating our understanding of what is healthy.
What started out with a sometimes justified call for addressing issues of undue harassment against homosexuals or fat people then gets turned into a reverse cult-like and repressive movement to institute such degenerate ideologies as not only normal, but desirable (and this is much truer for homosexual activists than for “obesity” activists).
Having a Gay Pride Parade is as deformed and warped as having a Morbid Obese Pride Parade.
October 9th, 2011 | 6:02 pm
[...] [From The Invention of Sexual Identity » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog] [...]
October 10th, 2011 | 11:05 am
Well, those of you who prioritize your own pleasure as one of “THE” primary reasons for living certainly have reason to feel the need to categorize yourselves into different types of “sexualities”, and certainly you do derive your identity from it.
Except there’s a difference between what provides pleasure for a person and what priority pleasure has for a person. Because you are attracted to women doesn’t mean you treat sex the way, say, Hugh Hefner, a fellow heterosexual, does. The *priority* you put on acquiring pleasure can range from ascetic, to modest, to quite hedonistic. That doesn’t mean that its a trivial thing. Your marriage ‘works’ at some fundamental level because you are attracted to women. This does not mean, though, that your marriage is about nothing other than a way for you to get free and easy sex with a woman.
A more apt comparison would be people who are overly concerned with foods, categorizing themselves into preferred types of eating, and trying to build an “identity” out of their preferred gluttony-temptation.
This, though, contradicts your earlier comparision to objective factors like hair color and shoe size. Most people recognize that foods they like is a pretty mallable set of preferences which they can change. In other words, you can teach yourself to like mushrooms, even if you currently hate them. But most likely you won’t because why bother? Isn’t it easier to just order your pizza sans mushrooms? But do you really think you could just as easily teach yourself to prefer sex with men rather than women?
While sexual orientation may not be as fundamental an aspect to one’s identity as gender, its probably pretty high up there. One does not ‘build an identity’ out of that, it is part of one’s identity. To use an analogy, a woman may ‘build an identity’ about being a woman by going to various ‘women’s pride’ parades, events, speeches etc. But even if she rejects all of that (and there are many more gays than just ‘gay pride day parade gays’), she still would remain a woman. While being a woman may motivate her in ways that are 180 degrees opposite than any other particular woman, the fact remains being a woman is a very important aspect of her identity and hardly a trivial one like her shoe size.
I think we would agree that a woman shares a very imporant aspect of her identiy with other women, but that doesn’t create a ‘cookie cutter’ mold that means she will or must be exactly like other women. If you were to say to me that simply being gay does not mean one has to join various activist organizations, vote a certain way etc…. Well that makes quite a bit of sense. I think you’re distorting that easily agreeable truth, though, by pretending that sexual orientation is just something we all invented in the late 70′s to annoy Joe Carter. While annoying Joe Carter is clearly an objective good, I decline to give myself credit/blame for the creation of human nature.
October 11th, 2011 | 8:18 am
So as I often do, I was considering monastic rules last night. As you no doubt know, almost all monastic communities had/have rules segregating based on sex. This applies not only for Christian monastic communities but other ones in Buddhist, Hindu and other traditions. Why?
Well the first answer that leaps out is gender identity. But this doesn’t really fly. Yes most traditional religions have set down different roles for men and women, but many monastics have the same roles….leading a life of silent prayer and contemplation with simple work. So gender roles doesn’t work as an explanation, what does?
Easy, sexual identity. The creators of monastic communities worked with sexual identity as a fundamental and immutable individual trait. More precisely, they assumed that men are generally attracted to women and women to men. Now if they thought that this trait was malleable then there would be no need for gender segregation. Men and women upon entering a monastic community would simply be required to ‘change’ themselves so as not to be too aroused by each other’s presence. But this idea was, to my knowledge, never ever given even half serious consideration. Why? Because they saw sexual identity as relatively immutable. Yes a man (or woman) may decide to not cultivate their sexuality, they may decide to not act on it, but they did recognize that it isn’t mutable. Men and women living together could not so easily put their sexuality on hold in close quarters hence even though they may all have good intentions sexual identity was and is a major aspect of an individual’s character.
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