S


Sackville-West, Vita (1892-1962)
British novelist, poet, biographer, and travel writer. The granddaughter of a Spanish dancer, and daughter of the impe­rious Lady Victoria Sackville, Vita Sackville-West was brought up on the family's palatial estate at Knole. In 1913 she married the homosexual diplomat Harold Nicolson. The partners agreed that the institution of marriage was "unnatu­ral," but with care, frankness, and deep mutual affection theirs lasted forty-nine years.
In 1918 Sackville-West "redis­covered" Violet Keppel whom she had known as a child. Both were immediately smitten and embarked on a tempestuous affair, which Vita presented in fictional­ized form in her novel
Challenge, pub­lished in 1924 in the United States but not in England. She wrote a franker account for the drawer (which was not published until it was included in her son's memoir of 1973). In 1919 Violet contracted a mar­riage - which was not intended to be con­summated - with Denys Trefusis, but she and Vita continued to escape for love trysts at various locales in Britain. Harold, for his part, was preoccupied with the peace negotiations at Versailles.
At the end of 1922 Vita met Virginia Woolf, ten years her senior, who enchanted her. Prompted by caution on both sides, their affair was slow to ripen, but it proceeded intermittently through much of the 1920s. Woolf wrote
Orlando (1928), her novel of androgyny, as an act of homage to Vita; Sackville-West's Letters to Virginia Woolf was published in 1984.
Although Vita Sackville-West's books achieved considerable popularity in her day (as did those of Violet Trefusis), it cannot be said that she ranks as a major writer. Her life showed, however, the va­rieties of experience open to a privileged woman in an era in which social controls were gradually lifting.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Victoria Glendenning, Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West, New York: Knopf, 1983; Nigel Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, New York: Atheneum, 1973.
Evelyn Gettone

Sade, Donatien Alphonse Francois, comte de, known as Marquis de (1740-1814)
French writer and thinker. A play­boy in his youth, Sade was imprisoned in Vincennes and in the Bastille for twelve years while a cabal of relatives prevented his release. Here he did most of his writing. Liberated by the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, he served for a time in Paris as a minor official. Having fallen afoul of the Napoleonic regime, he spent the last years of his life in the insane asylum at Charenton.
In the popular mind Sade is sim­ply a scribbler of pornography who lent his name to the paraphilia known as sadism. Closer study of his writings reveals not only their elegant style and inventive plotting, but an astute, bitingly corrosive analysis of society and human motivation, which was forged by his solitary medita­tion and reading during his long years of confinement. The philosophy he evolved stems in large measure from the ancient Epicurean stress on the maximization of personal pleasure and the minimizing of pain. He adds the corollary that to the extent that one's own pleasure can be increased by the pain of others so much the better for the beneficiary. Cruel as they may seem, such views accord with a recurring trend in human thought to find the ultimate motor of human action in self-interest. Applied to sexual conduct they link up with the ancient contrast between the active (enjoying) vs. the pas­sive (suffering) partner. Denying the exis­tence of God, he sees no barrier to the pursuit of self-interest as the goal of human life. A century before Friedrich Nietzsche, Sade anticipated most of his key insights about power and motivation. He also provided a striking example of the "transvaluation of values." As Lester Crocker has shown, Sade is the most radical and disturbing of all the Enlighten­ment thinkers. Yet because his books were hard to obtain until the 1960s, aware­ness of their importance has come late.
It is not generally realized that Sade was personally bisexual. In actual life - the murderous scenes in his books are not to be taken as records of real expe­rience - one of his favorite sexual posi­tions was to be penetrated by his valet as he penetrated a woman. He commended anal intercourse both for contraception and for (male) pleasure. Not surprisingly, in view of his prison years, he was also a connoisseur of masturbation.
Sade is sometimes taken to be misogynistic. Yet several of his books feature strong-willed women who are just as adept as the most ruthless man, if not more so, in obtaining their way. The di­dactic dialogue
Philosophy in the Bed­room, which is perhaps the best introduc­tion to his work, has a character (Dolmance) who defends male homosexuality. His masterpieces are the novels fuhette and Justine, the one showing the mani­fold satisfactions of those who follow his precepts of self-interest, the other the endless sufferings that are the lot of one who obstinately clings to virtue.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography, New York: Random House, 1978; Lester G. Crocker, Nature and Culture, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963; Gilbert Lely, The Marquis de Sade: A Biography, New York: Grove, 1970; Jean-Jacques Pauvert, Sade vivant: une innocence sauvage, 1740-1777, Paris: Robert Laffont, 1986.
Wayne R. Dynes

Sa'di (ca. 1213-1292)
One of the most famous Persian poets and writers. Sa'di ("f elicity") was his poetical name. He was born in Shiraz and attended the University in Bagdad. There­after he studied the mysticism of the Sufis and educated himself by traveling for years through almost the whole Islamic empire. In or about 1255 he settled in Shiraz where he earned himself a great reputation as a writer. His most famous works are the Guhstan (Rose Garden) and the Bustan (Orchard), both consisting of stories and poems which are moralistic, didactic, mystical, and amusing.
An important theme in the works of Sa'di is the love for beautiful young boys, which he describes in all its facets, ranging from purely platonic and spiritual in the mystical love poems to obscene and lustful in what can be called his "pornographic" works. In his mystical love poems Sa'di invokes chaste love for boys as a way to transcend the self and ul­timately achieve union with God. Beauti­ful boys can serve as mediators because they are considered as witnesses
[shahid] of God's beauty on earth. In his more worldly poems and stories he is more cynical and down to earth about the prob­lems and joys of loving boys. Love ended, of course, when the boy's facial hair be­smirched him: "Sa'di admires the fresh down of youth and not hairs rigid like a packing needle."
In general, Sa'di shared the atti­tude of his contemporaries toward homo­sexuality and consequently showed a strong aversion to passive homosexual behavior of older boys and men. Typically, he had a low opinion of women and mar­riage. His own wife and children are ne­glected in his writings. As friends and companions men were important, and for love there were boys. In a poem he says of himself: "Sa'di's fame has spread every­where for his love of boys
[shahid bazi). In this there is no blame among us, but rather praise."
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Minoo S. Southgate, "Men, Women and Boys: Love and Sex in the Works of Sa'di," Iranian Studies, 17 (1984), 413-52.
Maaiten Schild

Sadomasochism (S/M)
This term is conventionally de­fined as the giving or receiving of pain for erotic gratification. However, nonphysical elements, such as verbal abuse and humiliation, often play a large role. Bond­age (restraint) is also common. A more comprehensive definition situates physi­cal and nonphysical aspects in a larger framework of dominance and submission that engages the fantasy life of the partici­pants. S/M differs from mere cruelty in that it is - expressly or implicitly - con­sensual: the partners define limits that must not be transgressed. The activities found in S/M are not radically different from the "horseplay" that sometimes occurs in ordinary lovemaking: teasing, biting, pinching, and wrestling. But in the S/M scene there is, superimposed on these ordinary behaviors, a range of specific S/M activities in a continuum ranging from harmless play to the most elaborate ritual "torture."
Clinical Theories. The first ele­ment of the compound sadomasochism derives from the Marquis D. A. F. de Sade (1740-1814), whose works depict the in­flicting of pain for the erotic enjoyment of the active partner. The term masoch­ism stems from writings of the German Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895), which concentrate on the element of humiliation experienced by the passive partner, notably the novel Venus im Pelz (Venus in Furs), in which Wanda and Gregor are the active and pas­sive participants in flagellation. From clini­cal evidence nineteenth-century psychia­trists - above all Richard von Kraf ft-Ebing, author of Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) - created an analysis of sadism and maso­chism as pathology. Modern S/M practi­tioners hold that what they do has very little in common with the compulsive patterns analyzed by psychiatrists. Instead, they employ their techniques as symbolic interpersonal play that deals in intensi­ties that approach the actual pain thresh­old and may surpass it, but generally avoid crossing the level of tolerance.
In modem street parlance the two complementary aspects are described as "top" and "bottom" or "S" and "M." In keeping with the dichotomy cherished by abnormal psychology, sadism and maso­chism are often regarded as diametrically opposed capacities, yet this dichotomy is belied in practice by the fact that individu­als can exchange roles. Many S's actually began their involvement as M's, for this is often the best way for a novice to learn.
Homosexual Aspects of S/M. Culturally, the practice of S/M is a com­mentary on the dominance - submission pattern inculcated by the gender roles of advanced industrial society. Hence it is not surprising that women willing to take the role of dominatrix should be in de­mand, for reversal of the "normal" roles of dominance and submission offers not only a temporary relief from expectations im­posed by patriarchal social traditions, but constitutes a kind of symbolic restitution. In like fashion, gay and lesbian S/M prac­tices incorporate culturally defined ideas of active and passive. Here, however, there is a paradox, for S/M adepts will often insist that the M, who in theory is com­pletely subservient, actually controls the pace, direction, and intensity of the expe­rience by communicating his or her needs and limits. In such a dynamic, the S is often "on trial" to demonstrate true com­petence and sensitivity. From this criss­cross effect many participants derive stimu­lation and, they believe, insights into human relationships in general.
In most gay and lesbian S/M circles today, the wearing of leather gar­ments, together with chains and other accoutrements, is common. Such apparel is often the focus of fetishistic attach­ments. It also emphasizes the element of theatre and performance, so that the S&M scene - and more broadly one's presenta­tion of self as a "leather person" in social contexts - becomes a matter of enactment.
Entering the S/M subculture is not a matter of a simple one-time conver­sion. Some individuals flirt with the idea for years before taking the plunge. Once the novice has decided to enter the subcul­ture, he may progress through several stages of increasing depth of involvement as experience grows and inhibitions about particular acts wane. This stagelike pro­gression has led sociologists to speak of S/ M "careers" - the individual trajectories of those who sustain their commitment. Some observers have noted increasing "tolerance levels" on the part of adepts who find that previous levels of involve­ment no longer deliver the intensity they once did, requiring progression to deeper levels.
In addition to flagellation, bond­age, verbal abuse, role playing,
genitorture, use of hot wax, and abrasion, S/M scenes may include "watersports," urinat­ing on the M or causing him to swallow urine. Depending on the relationship, this may be regarded either as a gift, a hu­miliation, or a degradation. Much less com­mon is the similar use of faeces ("scat"). Handballing or fisting, in which the hand or even the lower arm is inserted in the anal passage, formerly enjoyed some popu­larity, but with the spread of safer sex techniques it has become less common. Handballing is not necessarily an S/M activity any more than fellatio or mastur­bation; it depends entirely on the atti­tudes and intentions of those engaging in it. Although S/M practices have the repu­tation of being "far out," many of them are less risky in terms of disease transmission than the penetrative practices that are the central feature of the mainstream male gay world. In S/M scenes, sexual toys of various kinds - whips, straps, handcuffs, tit clamps, etc. - are freely used. Those who are seriously involved may have their nipples or genitals pierced and adorned with small rings; although quite popular, this practice is not universal. In ordinary S&.M practice, however, there is almost invariably an avoidance of any activity that would lead to permanent marking or bodily harm.
As with any other subculture, S/
M people tend to socialize with others who share their tastes. Most big cities in North America and northern Europe have at least one "leather bar," usually for gay men only. Prominent among the icons displayed in such establishments are tro­phies and photographs relating to motor­cycle clubs, to which many serious S/M enthusiasts belong. There are also artists who have created imagery that is clearly S/ M in its appeal; among the best known of these are Cavello, Etienne, Rex, Sean, and Tom of Finland (though some of the latter's work is not relevant).
Sociological studies have shown that in North America most S/M partici­pants are of northern European ancestry, rather than from Mediterranean or Afri­can stock. Contrary to the stereotype that associates them with conservative or even quasi-Nazi views, surveys in the United States have shown that a majority are politically liberal. On the whole, they are well educated and hold upscale profes­sional jobs. Few S/M people share the obsessive preoccupation with youth that is found in other sectors of the gay world; with a very few exceptions, boy lovers are not found among them. In fact, older in­dividuals are notably visible at S/M gath­erings, which are relatively free of ageism. The premium placed on technical expertise seems to cancel out ageism with its attendant privileging of youth.
While some S/M practitioners seek new partners constantly, others may wish to form a more-or-less permanent relationship. In this case the M becomes the "slave" of his S, who will symbolize the ownership in various ways, such as the shaving of body hair, or the slave's wearing of a prominent dog collar, or being required to perform various services for the master and the master's friends. The appeal of the slave relationship is ostensi­bly the freedom from the crushing burden of responsibilities and decisions that modem urban life imposes. In some in­stances, however, the slave role is much less demanding and may even be carried out in an almost humorous fashion. There is a large range of activity between these two extremes of total slave-master bond­ing and playfulness, whereby the two par­ticipants limit the enactment to specific occasions, in the bedroom or elsewhere, when they perform their tasks with the utmost seriousness.
Seemingly objective presenta­tions of the nature of S/M almost invari­ably slight the less tangible elements that are of supreme importance to those who are seriously committed. In the view of some who are experienced in the scene the real appeal of S/M is that it promotes a state of consciousness that transcends ego. Such "egoless" states are inherently bliss­ful. Moreover, participants have the sense that they are involved in a form of magic or alchemy. In a state of perfect trust, their "vibrations" become perfectly attuned to one another, and blows that would nor­mally be unwelcome are transmuted into a choreography of pleasure.
Literary Manifestations. The pioneering novels of the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch have been noted above. William Carney's The Real Thing (New York: Putnam, 1968) presents a historically accurate picture of the now-vanished scene in the United States in the late 1950s and 1960s. It is cast in the form of a series of letters from an experi­enced S to his nephew, a novice whom he is instructing in the traditions of the sub­culture he wishes to enter. Although Carney's view of S/M is ultimately nega­tive, it offers theorizing that is still of interest. Terry Andrews' The Story of Ha­rold (New York: Holt Rinehart and Win­ston, 1974), of unusual literary quality, is revealing because S/M is integrated with other themes. The novels of "A. N. Roquelaire" (a pseudonym of Anne Rice) are ostensibly heterosexual, but include con­siderable relevant psychological specula­tion. Story collections by Phil Andros {Stud, Boston: Alyson, 1982; repr. of 1966 issue; and Below the Belt, San Francisco: Per­ineum) and Jack Fritscher [Corporal in Charge of Taking Care of Captain O'Malley, San Francisco: Gay Sunshine, 1984; and Stand by Your Man, San Fran­cisco: Ley land Publications, 1984) offer material of varied interest.
Parallels. Analogies for the physi­cal side of the S/M relationship have been found in some tribal societies, where warriors must undergo trials of pain before being admitted to the military elite. (Fra­ternity hazings are a faded modern version of these customs.) In ancient Thessaly the all-women rites of Aphrodite Anosia in­cluded erotic flagellation. The Romans delighted in gladiatorial shows and in watching condemned criminals devoured by lions in the arena. Yet these were not voluntary submissions to pain, and they seem - despite assertions to the contrary - to have no direct connection with eros.
The beautiful frescoes of the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii, which have never been completely interpreted, show women's flagellation in the context of a religious and erotic initiation. Paintings of the martyrdom of the Christian saints - Catherine tormented by her wheel, Agatha suffering the assault on her breasts - are more explicit in their depic­tion of pain. In one instance, that of the handsome St. Sebastian pierced by arrows, a Christian image has acquired (since at least the end of the nineteenth century) a secondary status
as the focus of contem­plation by gay men. Of course it was not the aim of Christian hagiography and art to stimulate S/M thoughts. It may be, however, that these legends of fortitude under suffering were one of the elements that helped, however unintentionally, to prepare for the modern S/M sensibility.
The adage "spare the rod and spoil the child" attests to the use of flogging by parents and schoolmasters. In the English
public school this practice became a veri­table cult, with masters and pupils alike developing erotic feelings in conducting it. Through this imprinting some mem­bers of the upper classes developed a life­long flagellomania,- hence the expression "English vice" for erotically stimulating caning.
There may even be phylogenetic sources for the connection between corpo­ral pain and sexual performance, as with cats where the male cat bites the neck of the female during intercourse. Some stu­dents of the question hold that the human experience of erotic release of pain is governed by a distinctive physiological process, characterized by the release of certain endorphins; this physiological dynamic is, however, still imperfectly understood.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ian A. Gibson, The English Vice: Beating, Sex and Shame in Victorian England and After, London: Duckworth, 1978; Michael Grumley and Ed Gallucci, Hard Corps: Studies in Leather a) Sadomasochism, New York: Dutton, 1977; John A. Lee, "The Social Organization of Sexual Risk," Alterna­tive Lifestyles, 2 (1979), 69-100; Geoff Mains, Urban Originals: A Celebration of Leather Sexuahty, San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1984; Michael Rosen, Sexual Magic: The S/M Photographs, San Francisco: Shaynew Press, 1986; Samois Collective, Coming to Power: Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S/M, 3d ed., Boston: Alyson, 1987; Andreas Spengler, Sadomasochisten und ihre Subculturen, Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verfag, 1979; Larry Townsend, The Leatherman's Handbook 11, New York:
Modernismo Publications, 1983; Thomas Weinberg and G. W. Levi Kamel, eds., S and M: Studies in Sadomasochism, Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1983.
Wayne R. Dynes

Safe Sex
Safe sex refers to activities with no risk, or very small risk, of undesirable consequences. Safe sex need not be conser­vative or monogamous sex, and it cer­tainly does not mean less sex. Sex can indeed be "safe," not just "safer."
Disease. Partners who are free of sexually transmitted diseases can engage in any sexual activities they wish. Since there are diseases which can be transmit­ted sexually although the carrier is symp­tom-free and is even unaware he or she has been exposed - hepatitis and AIDS are by far the most serious - such a disease-free state can be known only through medical examination. In the case of ADDS, since it takes months before tests can detect anti­bodies to the HTV virus, testing indicates the subject's infectious state as of several months previously. For a result valid at the time of the test, the test must follow a period of no potential exposure. As a prac­tical matter, activities which can trans­mit disease can only be safe within a rela­tionship monogamous so far as those activities are concerned.
There are, however, many ways of having enjoyable sex, even kinky and adventurous sex, with little if any risk of disease and without need for examina­tions and tests.
Masturbation in pairs and groups is totally without risk. Among consenting partners, dirty talk, exhibi­tionism, and photography are safe. No one has gotten a disease from an odor, from fantasy, role-playing, erotic clothing, or bondage. One can safely be promiscuous with such activities, if desired, and those who are HIV-positive can fully participate.
Kissing and licking of unbroken skin cannot transmit AIDS. Intercourse with a barrier, such as a strong condom (extra-strength condoms are available and recommended for
anal sex), is safe as long as the barrier remains unbroken. Ample use of a water-based lubricant reduces the risk of breakage.
The activities which can trans­mit disease are those in which one re­ceives orally, anally, vaginally, or through broken skin a substance from inside someone else's body: semen, seminal fluid (pre-cum), vaginal secretions, blood, urine, feces. Sexual toys can harbor micro­organisms, and if they cannot be cleaned thoroughly or covered with a condom they should not be shared. A finger or penis can transfer disease organisms from one ori­fice to another, or one partner to another; washing before changing to a different orifice or partner is sensible. If fingers are inserted into the anus, a rubber glove is recommended; it also prevents dangerous internal scratches from fingernails. While the HTV virus is absorbed through the colon or breaks in the skin, and there are few known cases of its transmission via oral-genital sex, the hepatitis viruses, gonococcus, and other microorganisms are hardier and are readily transmitted orally. A condom or (for women) a dental dam makes oral sex safe.
Injury. Sexual play, like other recreations, has various additional haz­ards; pornography tends to ignore these. The colon is easily injured, and such inju­ries require immediate medical atten­tion. Sharp or breakable objects should never be inserted into the anus, and any anal play should be slow and careful, with lots of lubricant. While restraint (bondage) can be very erotic, for safety it should be limited to partners one knows and trusts. Ropes can injure the skin or nerves, and specialty stores sell safer hardware, such as padded cuffs. Abnormal weight distri­bution, as in suspension, can cause injury. Restriction of breathing is potentially fatal, and gagging or any other type of restraint requires constant monitoring and provision for immediate release in an emergency.
Planning, negotiation, and com­munication are essential components of safe erotic play. An agreed-upon "safe word" can be used to signal the need to lessen or stop activity which is undesir­able. The use of alcohol or other drags increases risk.
Eroticism and Danger. For many people a touch of danger enhances a sexual encounter, and there are those for whom sex without danger is uninteresting. One may rationally decide that the enjoyment an activity offers makes its possible nega­tive consequences acceptable. Some be­haviors have such a high risk, however, that they must be considered self-des­tructive, and may indicate the need for psychotherapy; these include unsafe sex with partners not checked for disease, public or semi-public sex without concern for possible legal consequences, and ex­posing oneself to assault from unstable partners (e.g., rough trade). It is possible, though, to incorporate limited and con­trolled danger in sexual activities. The presence of a caring and vigilant third party reduces risks. Some semi-public sex involves only minimal risk, and for will­ing partners to enact fantasies of danger - a pretended assault and rape, for example - can be very enjoyable.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Pat Califia, ed., The Lesbian S/M Safety Manual, Denver: Lace, 1988; Richard Locke, In the Heat of Passion: How to Have Hotter, Safer Sex, San Francisco: Leyland, 1987.
Daniel Eisenberg

Saikaku, Ihara (1642-1693)
Japanese novelist. The novels and short stories of Ihara Saikaku rank among the masterpieces of the literature of Japan. His work is a product of the urban towns­man class that developed in the cities of Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo (modern Tokyo) in the early decades of the Tokugawa period ¡1603-1868). Saikaku was known formost of his life as a poet of comic linked verse, but in the last decade of his life he turned to writing prose fiction. One of his favorite topics was male homosexual love, which in his day always took the form of a relationship between an adult man and a teen­age boy. In The Great Mirror of Male Love (1687), his longest collection of short sto­ries, Saikaku divided his discussion of boy love into two parts: the non-professional love exemplified in relations between samurai men and boys; and the love of professional actor/prostitutes in the kabuki theatre. He establishes a romantic ideal for boy love in his own townsman class based on the loyalty and self-sacrifice of samurai man-boy relations. Saikaku takes a deliberately misogynistic stance in the book in order to dramatize the single-minded dedication demanded of male lovers, but the stance is full of irony and may have had humorous appeal for his readers.
In addition to
The Great Mirror of Male Love, Saikaku treated the topic of male love in the story of "Gengobei, The Mountain of Love," the last of five stories in Five Women Who Loved Love (1685). The heroine of the story, Oman, manages to seduce Gengobei, a confirmed lover of boys, by dressing as a handsome youth. By the time Gengobei realizes the error, it is too late, for he has fallen madly in love. The humor of the discovery scene must have appealed greatly to Saikaku's readers. In The Man Who Loved Love (1682), the hero, Yonosuke, is a man of insatiable sexual appetites, meant obvi­ously to be understood as a plebeian ver­sion of the courtly lover Prince Genji in the Tale of Genji. At the end of Yonosuke's life of love, he numbers over 3,000 women and almost 900 men and boys among his lovers. One story tells how Yonosuke as a young boy surprised and confused a samurai by aggressively at­tempting to seduce him, a reversal of the normal" pattern. The story implies that Yonosuke was ultimately successful.
Saikaku dealt with female homo­sexuality only once in his writing, and only briefly, in a scene in
Life of an Amo­rous Woman. The book is a parody of Buddhist confessional literature from the fourteenth century, and records the tale of the heroine's progress through respectable married life, high-class courtesanship, low-class harlotry, further degradation, and ultimately spiritual enlightenment. At one point in her checkered career, she took work as a housemaid. The mistress of the house was impressed with her beauty and summoned her to her bed. The he­roine is shocked to discover that the woman wants to make love to her, but cannot protest. After a night of love-mak­ing, the scene concludes with the woman's comment, "When I am rebom in the next world, I will be a man. Then I shall be free to do what really gives me pleasure!"
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Robert Lyons Danly, In the Shade of Spring Leaves, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981; Howard Hibbett, The Floating World in Japanese Fiction, London: Oxford University Press, 1959.
Paul Gordon Schalow

Sailors
See Seafaring.

Saint-Pavin, Denis
Sanguin de (1595-1670)
French poet and libertine writer. The son of a counselor in the Parlement, he studied with the Jesuits and thought of becoming a priest, but soon renounced this career and lived without a profession as writer, poet, and freethinker. In his lifetime he enjoyed the title of "The King of Sodom" and made no bones about his sexual interests in his poetry. Unlike such contemporaries as Théophile de Viau, he was more a sensualist than a philosopher - and therefore less of a threat to the Church and its orthodoxy. Too indecent for the press, his poems circulated only in manu­script, and it was not until 1911 that a French scholar named Frédéric Lachèvre ventured to publish some of the least of­fensive,- others still await their editor. Lachèvre had the naïveté to deny Saint-Pavin's homosexuality, claiming that it was a literary pose, a mere imitation of Martial, an expression of displeasure at the frivolity of the opposite sex which he inwardly loved, or simply a wish to scan­dalize the conventionally minded. The poet seems in fact to have preferred the active role in anal intercourse, and - when he had sexual relations with women at all - to have practiced this only, so that he indig­nantly rejected the imputation that he had fathered the child of a woman of whom he had carnal knowledge. His interest in women was Umited to those whose an­drogyny awakened the genuine attraction which he felt for the male sex.
His poems express a fondness for pages and their costumes, and in parti­cular for a youth who is named
"Tiréis" - who later entered a monastery, inspiring the poet to allude to the pederastic prac­tices of the monks by claiming that "in the same place he can find both his salvation and his pleasures!" Saint-Pavin evidently had contact with contemporary les­bian circles, as he wrote verses likening women's fondness for their own sex to his male-male attachments. In his imitations of Martial he defended homosexual love against the accusation of being "unnatu­ral. " Intimate with the homosexual cliques of his day, he revealed his inner thoughts in verses addressed to their members with a frankness that anticipated no censure or incomprehension. With the great Conde he was on such familiar ground that he could send him a poem declaring that "Caesar was as a great a bougie as you, but not so great a general." He was in modern terms a self-proclaimed homosexual who made no secret of his identity, even in an age when death at the stake was not a wholly remote possibility for one of that persuasion. The publication of his com­plete corpus will shed much light on the homosexual subculture of France in the mid-seventeenth century and on the ante­cedents of the Enlightenment.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Maurice Lever, Les büchers de Sodome, Paris: Fayard, 1985; Numa Praetorius (pseudonym of Eugen Wilhelm), "Ein homosexueller Dichter des 17. Jahrhunderts: Saint-Pavin, der 'König von Sodom,'" Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, 5 (1918) 261-71.
Waiien Johansson

Samurai
The samurai class developed in Japan from what were originally soldiers who served courtiers and great aristocratic families in defending and managing their country estates, which in some cases were far from the capital in Kyoto, during the Heian period (794-1185). By the end of the Heian period, the soldiers had in many cases usurped their employer's landholdings and carved out large territories where they ruled by the sword. During military campaigns, soldiers were accompanied by boy attendants who saw that their physi­cal needs were met. From this probably followed the tradition of man-boy bond­ing that seems to have been a feature of samurai Ufe almost form its inception.
The Ashikaga shoguns, who ruled Japan's heartland from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, seem to have brought the homosexual ethos of the samurai to the seat power in Kyoto from which they ruled, for there was a marked "homosexualization" of court culture during this period, particularly in the aesthetics of the Noh theatre. When Francis
Xavier and the Jesuits came to Japan in the sixteenth century to proselytize, they were horrified by the openness with which homosexual­ity was practiced among the ruling samu­rai class and condemned it furiously, ap­parently with Uttle effect.
Homosexual love was a major component of samurai sexuality right up until the samurai class was abolished in the early years of the Meiji period (1868-1912), after which it was deliberately suppressed by the Meiji government as part of its effort to modernize Japan. The novelist Mishima (1925-1970) sought to revive samurai traditions in order to revi­talize Japan spiritually, and respect for the homosexual bond was apparently part of the revitalization he envisioned.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Caryl Ann Callahan, trans., Tales of Samurai Honor, Tokyo: Monumenta Nipponica, 1981; Edward Carpenter, "The Samurai of Japan and their Ideal," in Intermediate Types Among Primitive Polk, reprint, New York: Amo Press, 1975, pp. 137-60; E. Powys Mathers, trans., Comrade Loves of the Samurai, Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1972.
Paul Gordon Schalow

San Francisco
It may seem surprising that for the first hundred years after its incorpora­tion in 1850 as a city of the new State of California, San Francisco (population ca. 700,000) was not particularly noted as a homosexual center. Certainly, as in the case of other cosmopolitan port cities such as Boston and New Orleans, gayness was not absent. With the rise of the modern homosexual rights movement in the 1960s, however, San Francisco assumed a para­mount status, highlighting the triumphs as well as the setbacks of homosexual affirmation in the United States Early History. San Francisco be­gan as a Spanish settlement in 1776 as Yerba Buena, passed into Mexican hands in 1821, and was conquered by the United States and renamed in 1846. The Gold Rush days of 1848-49 brought prosperity to the city - and a typically Western dis­proportion of numbers of men and women. The red-light district was the Barbary Coast, but thus far little infor­mation has come to light on specifically homosexual activities there (the cata­strophic 1906 earthquake and fire destroy­ed many records from earlier days). The more genteel atmosphere of the century's later decades, with the presence of gay people in the arts, is subtly evoked in Charles Warren Stoddard's novel For the Pleasure of His Company: An Affair of the Misty City (1903).
After the turn of the century, travelers reported the availability of serv­icemen for sexual purposes (the Presidio was a major army center). Harry Hay, who later was to start the American homo­sexual movement, enrolled in Stanford University in 1930. He recalls being helped to come out by his visits to friendly speak­easies in the city. Joe Finocchio's estab­lishment featured drag entertainment; after the repeal of prohibition it moved to new quarters at 506 Broadway, becoming the city's premiere nightspot and gathering place for homosexuals. Such female enter­tainers as
Rae Bourbon, Walter Hart, and Lucian Phelps played an important role as focal points of the gay identity at that time. Finocchio's location in the North Beach area, a Bohemian redoubt, was also important, and the neighborhood later became noted for its beat population.
World War II and After. During the war San Francisco was the chief port of embarkation for the Pacific Theatre of War. While awaiting their orders or return­ing from battle many American service­men and -women from less sophisticated regions had their first taste of some sexual freedom. After being mustered out, a cer­tain number of gay men and lesbians de­cided to settle in the Bay City, where they often became involved in a coupled situ­ation, rather than return to their home towns.
Understandably, then, shortly after the American homosexual rights movement began in Los Angeles it spread to San Francisco. In January 1955, the
Mattachine Review began to appear, pa­tiently watched over by Hal Call, the guid­ing spirit of the San Francisco chapter of the Mattachine Society. At the end of the year, eight Bay Area women formed the Daughters of Bilitis, which became the national organization with its own monthly, The Ladder. Two of the found­ers, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, remained significant figures in San Francisco into the eighties.
Gay-baiting charges lodged by an unscrupulous candidate in the 1959 may­oral election introduced a phase of un­precedented public discussion of homo­sexuality. Public talk about a hitherto taboo subject, including revelation of po­lice payoffs, in turn engendered a back­lash in which the police arrested large numbers of gay men and lesbians in sweeps in the bars. Gay organizations, including the Society for Individual Rights (SIR) and the Tavern Guild, found an unexpected source of support in sympa­thetic members of the clergy, who formed the Council on Religion and the Homosex­ual in 1964. The gay leaders and church people combined to monitor and eventu­ally stem the homophobic backlash.
Maturity. Although San Fran­cisco's gay community was well advanced in many respects by the late sixties, New York's Stonewall Rebellion of 1969, com­ing in the wake of the Civil Rights move­ment and the anti-Vietnam War move­ment, represented a national watershed which can also be used to divide historical periods in San Francisco. Attention in the mainstream media was reinforced by the brash input of new "underground" Counterculture publications such as the Berkeley Barb, as well by a series of newspapers written by and for homosexu­als. In the late 1970s San Francisco alone boasted four gay newspapers. Under the direction of Winston Leyland the journal Gay Sunshine turned into a major gay press, issuing books of all kinds. In the scholarly realm Professor John De Ceceo established a center for the study of sexu­ality at San Francisco State University, where he edited a research tool of great prestige, the Journal of Homosexuality.
Three neighborhoods emerged as gay zones. Polk Street gulch was the oldest and most traditional of these. Eventually it was surpassed by the Castro, with its stereotypical clone type. Finally, Folsom Street became the center for those committed to, or dabbling in, the leather and S/M subculture. Backrooms and glory hole establishments for impersonal sex proliferated, and the income generated by tourists soared. Yet old-line politicians continued to deplore San Francisco's repu­tation as "Sodom by the Bay."
For their part gay men and lesbi­ans had not neglected politics, but this realm was galvanized and transformed by the energies of an outsider from New York, Harvey Milk (1930-1978), who owned a shop on Castro Street.
the dismay of the city's established gay leaders, Milk forged an improbable but solid alliance with the city's blue-collar unions. His methods were often amateurish, sometimes even unethi­cal, but they worked, and he was elected Supervisor on his third try in 1977.
Triumph turned to tragedy when Milk was murdered a year later, together with Mayor George Moscone, by a resent­ful former colleague and police officer, Dan White. When a jury acquitted White of the most serious charges after an inept prosecution, widespread riots erupted in the vicinity of City Hall, and some gay activists were seen setting fire to police cars. Milk was replaced by Harry Britt, another gay officeholder, and the lesson dawned on the city's straight establish­ment that gay power had come to stay.
After 1981 the AIDS crisis hit San Francisco particularly hard, but new or­ganizations and coalitions arose to cope with the medical emergency. A prolonged controversy led to the closing of San Francisco's gay bathhouses. Even without these events, some dimming of the exu­berance and sheer craziness of the 1970s was probably inevitable. Despite bicker­ing, however, San Francisco's gay infra­structure held firm and seemed destined to remain a major part of the city's life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. John D'Emilio, "Gay Politics, Gay Community: San Francisco's Experience,"
Socialist Review, 55 (1981), 77-104.
Ward Houser

Santayana, George (1863-1952)
American poet and philosopher. Born in Madrid, he came to the United States at the age of nine. He graduated from Harvard College summa cum laude in the class of 1886. From 1889 he taught philosophy at Harvard, and in 1907 was appointed professor there. In 1912 he re­tired and spent the remainder of his life abroad, mainly in France and Italy.
Having had to leam English at the age of nine, Santayana had a firm com­mand of the literary language, but not the spontaneity in diction that marks the true poet in his mother tongue. His verse dic­tion was a pastiche of Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, and Tennyson, together with Victorian translations of the classics. The poetic outcome was sentimental, insincere, and abstract. As a philosopher Santayana was unoriginal in logic, taking his ideas from Plato and Leibniz. He re­belled against the tradition of American philosophy with its Calvinist back­ground, which made the philosopher the moral guide of the community, a clergy­man without a church. Santayana created no school of philosophy, though he was appreciated by his pupils at Harvard; he was an excellent lecturer, his voice even and melodious, his diction perfect, his whole manner aristocratic.
The content of his philosophy was that reality has different levels that cannot be forced into a comprehensive, universally valid scheme. For the purpose of giving his thought a realistic basis, he located that particular form of reality at the material level, but claimed that vital, spiritual, and ideal entities have qualita­tive traits of their own and cannot be reduced to material elements. The mate­rial realm of facts is wholly independent of the ideal realm of essences, as well as of their specific modes of apprehension. Beauty is a pure essence, whose contem­plation cancels out the struggle for exis­tence and forms the noblest and happiest human experience. Human reason is un­able to penetrate intuitively into the re­gions of exister e beyond the senses, but from this skeptical position Santayana developed a pragmatic attitude which he judged one of "common sense," one that accepts the possibilities and limits that its material origin imposes upon the human mind. Human institutions are tokens of the progress of the human spirit that is realized thanks to the growth of conscious­ness, from the primitive forms of human experience to its highest stages, a growth that is based in human nature itself.
In a genteel society where all sexuality was suspect, Santayana frankly preferred homosexuality to heterosexuality. He referred scornfully to the outcome of heterosexuality as "breeding," while studiously maintaining a facade of cold­ness and detachment that hid his true feelings from a scornful world. His first love was a Harvard undergraduate named Ward Thoron, seventeen, and three years younger than himself. All his love poems, beginning with a sonnet to Thoron, betray an origin in genuine homosexual emotion usually veiled in Christian imagery and allusion, or by the convenient fiction that the love object belonged to the opposite sex. He later admitted that he must have been homosexual in his Harvard days, like A. E. Housman, although he was "uncon­scious of it at the time." This may simply mean that the new concept of homosexu­ality, which reached the general public only after 1886, did not become part of his self-definition until later. Certainly no one of his urbanity and familiarity with the Greek and Roman classics could have been ignorant of the pederastic moods of the ancient world. Writing of this at the age of twenty-four, he asserted that paiderasteia "has been often preferred by impartial judges, like the ancients and orientals, yet our prejudices against are so strong that it hardly comes under the possibilities for us." Later he could speak of the profound irrationality of love in terms that reflect his homosexual experience. Outsiders like Charles W. Eliot, the President of Harvard, suspected the abnormality of Santayana's character, though they veiled their criti­cisms in disapproval of his "unworldliness." His gradual withdrawal and then departure from a still puritanic America was an immersion in a warm humanity and Old World wisdom that American culture and simple prudence both forbade. His novel
The Last Puritan (1935) has a character who is washed out of mid­shipmen's training school in the Royal Navy for being implicated in a homosex­ual scandal aboard ship. Today Santayana's reputation has considerably faded, yet he retains interest as a homosexual academic philosopher who after inner struggle against the intolerance of the American society in which he lived, then sought a more congenial atmosphere in the urban­ity of the Old World.
BIBLIOGRAPHY^ John McCormick, George Santayana: A Biography, New York: Paragon House, 1988.
Warren Johansson

Sappho (ca.
612-ca. 560 b.c.)
Classical Greek poet. Celebrated in antiquity as the "tenth Muse," Psappha, as she styled herself in the Aeolic dialect, was born at Eresus on the island of Lesbos, or according to others, in Mytilene. The daughter of Scamandronymus, she had three brothers, one of whom, Larichus, was appointed cupbearer in the prytaneum of Mytilene because of his remarkable beauty. Political struggles on Lesbos forced Sappho into exile in Sicily, but in time she returned to her homeland and there became mistress of a school for daughters of the aristocracy that achieved such fame as to attract pupils from distant parts of the Hellenic world of the early sixth century b.c.
To understand Sappho's life and creative personality is especially difficult for the modern reader because of the enormous cultural distance that separates the milieu in which she loved and immor­talized her love in poetry from that of the lesbian of today. In antiquity, and perhaps in all of historic time, she ranks as the outstanding singer of woman's love for her own sex, but this was expressed as an age-asymmetrical relationship that exactly paralleled the paidon eros, the love of a man for an adolescent boy. It was not an unconventional, bohemian passion, but was inspired by the eros paidagogikos, the attachment of the teacher for the protege. And so far from being reproved by religion, the affection was consecrated to Aphro­dite, the goddess of love.
Sappho's poetry, edited by the Alexandrian scholars in nine books, has survived only in fragments, some preserved in quotations in later authors, some recov­ered on papyri buried for two thousand years in the Egyptian sands. It is an in­tensely personal lyric poetry, saturated with the unutterable happiness of love and also the unbearable pain of rejection. Of all her girls the dearest was Atthis, and even from the imperfect remains of her poetry the love of the woman for the girl emerges with crystal splendor. Out of the anguish of her heart the poet invokes Aphrodite to float down from heaven and relieve her sorrow. Sappho was drawn to her pupils when they were barely emerging from girlhood, when the hour of their betrothal and marriage was still far distant. When they had outgrown this stage in their lives and were on the threshold of womanhood, Sappho composed epithalamia. Assembled in the ninth and last book of her poems, they symbolize her acquiescence in their passage to a new life as mistresses of aris­tocratic households. A whole set of poems is devoted to the theme of her resigna­tion to the loss of her beloved pupil, her
eromene.
Lesbian love played the same role in Sappho's circle as did Dorian paiderasteia in Sparta. It was the younger partner's first experience with love, and a step in her initiation to womanhood through intimacy with an older member of her own sex, but also a stage that she would leave behind when she passed on to her adult role as wife and mother. The circle of girls with their headmistress and lover formed a ihiasos, a cultic union that recited the myths which had already received concrete form in the Homeric poems and performed rites in honor of their divine patroness. The mythical is the collective, the shared ele­ment of Sappho's poetry and the counter­poise to her individual outpourings of emotion.
Even if Sappho's poetry comes at a comparatively early stage of Greek liter­ary history, it stems ultimately from a long tradition in the Aegean and Near Eastern worlds. The artistic perfection of her writing was made possible by thou­sands of years of poetic composition in Akkadian, Egyptian, and other languages in which men had sung the beauty of women. In the annals of civilization Sap­pho stands almost midway between the absolute beginning and the modern era, and the legacy of the past brought her craft to its peak of greatness.
Posterity has dealt ambiguously with Sappho's life and work. Leaving aside the dishonesty and hypocrisy of later crit­ics under the influence of the
Judeo-Christian tradition, comic authors of antiquity, who in a manner incomprehensible to moderns equated the woman attracted to her own sex with one who takes the ag­gressive role in relations with men, had Sappho marry Cercylas (from cercos, "penis") of Andros ("the city of men"), and invented the story that she committed suicide when rejected by Phaon, the man whose love she craved, by leaping into the sea, a literal interpretation of the meta­phor "to spring from the Leucadian rock into the sea, " meaning to purify the soul of passions. Generations of classical scholars abused these bits of ancient wit to con­struct the preposterous image of a hetero­sexual Sappho whose unconventional love was a legend fabricated by slander or even by misogyny, and their falsehoods con­tinue to be parroted in standard reference works.
For the more discerning, Sappho's poetry has been a perennial inspiration to literary creation. The Latin poets, who could read the entire corpus of her work, often imitated it. The frankly homoerotic component of her poems ultimately, in the nineteenth century, made "lesbian" the designation for a woman enamored of her own sex, and Magnus Hirschfeld ap­propriately entitled his first pamphlet (1896) on the homosexual question
Sap­pho and Socrates.
The significance of Sappho's leg­acy for the modern lesbian movement is another issue. To identify the Lesbian writer's korophilic affection for her school­girls with the love of two adult women for each other is as misleading as to equate Greek pederasty with modern androphile homosexuality. The one and the other throve in a cultural context that be­longed to their time and place - not that of the resurgent homophile movement of the twentieth century. But to disavow the heritage of ancient Greece is impossible, because it is one of the wellsprings of Western civilization, and every one of its values is a latent value capable of being revived and reinstituted, even if in a differ­ent form. A creative figure of Hellenic and Mediterranean civilization, Sappho gave lesbian love its classic literary expression, and her work is an enduring part of the poetic treasure of humanity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Bruno Gentili, "La veneranda Saffo," Quaderni Urbinati, 2 (1966), 37-62; Giannes Kordatos, He Sappho kai hoi koinonikoi agones ste Lesbo [Sappho and the Social Struggles on Lesbos], second ed., Athens: Epikaroteta, 1974; Hans Licht, Sexual Life in Ancient Greece, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1932; Reinhold Merkelbach, "Sappho und ihr Kreis," Philologus, 101 (1957), 1-29.
Evelyn Gettone

Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905-1980)
French philosopher, novelist, playwright, essayist, and political activist. Sartre, who enjoyed a life-long partnership with Simone de Beauvoir (herself a major contributor to modern feminism), never had a homosexual experience, as far as is known. Yet as the dominant figure in French intellectual life in the third quarter of the century, his thoughtful attitude toward the phenomenon, in combination with his sympathy for other marginalized groups, helped to prepare the way for the flourishing of France's gay community after 1968.
Sartre's understanding of homo­sexuality, like his perception of the situ­ation of women, evolved slowly. His early story "Childhoood of a Leader" (1938) portrays a spoiled upper-class boy who is seduced in preparatory school by an older student, and then joins a parafascist or­ganization by way of compensation. Al­though not directly homophobic, this pre­sentation did tend to lend some support to the theory (reflected also in Alberto Moravia's
The Conformist) that there is a link between early homosexual experi­ence and right-wing commitment: the fascist perversion. Included in the play No Exit (1944) is an articulate lesbian, Inès Serrano. In Sartre's novel sequence Les chemins de la liberté ( 1945-49), the homo­sexual character Daniel shows a fascina­tion with militarism and fascism: he wel­comes the German occupation.
His one major nonfiction study of a minority,
Anti-Semite and few (1946), offers a number of interesting perspec­tives; in fact, inasmuch as it views the Jews as fundamentally defined by the environing hostility of society, his analy­sis may be (mutatis mutandis) better appli­cable to homosexuals than to its osten­sible subject. However, Sartre's major involvement with homosexual questions arose from his association with Jean Genet, to whom he had been introduced by Jean Cocteau. Sartre's project of writing a pref­ace to one of his friend's works grew into a sprawling 600-page book [Saint-Genet: comédien et martyr, 1952), in which the philosopher discusses issues of freedom and self-understanding from an existen­tialist standpoint. Genet's atypical experi­ence, as foundling, thief, and worshipper at the shrine of the dominant male, may have skewed Sartre's view of an identity in which he had no immediate personal stake.
In 1971 Sartre assumed, at some risk to himself, responsibility for publish­ing the manifesto of the Front
Homosexuel d'Action Révolutionnaire, a radical gay-liberation group. Nine years later he gave an interview to two French gay journalists. In the colloquy he acknowledged that some key characters in his work, such as Math­ieu in Chemins delà hberté and Roquentin in Nausée, were uncertain of their mascu­linity, an uncertainty that corresponded to the writer's own sense of self. He likened becoming homosexual to becoming a writer as two creative responses to other­wise intolerable pressure. As regards the status of homosexuals in France in 1980 ("this prudish society"), he held that they should renounce the hope of blending in and remain aloof, seeking "a kind of free space, where they can come together among themselves, as in the United States, for example."
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre: A Life, New York: Pantheon, 1987; Jean Le Bitoux and Gilles Barbedette, "Jean-Paul Sartre: The Final Interview," The Christopher Street Reader, New York: Coward-McCann, 1983, pp. 238-44.
Ward Houser

Satiation Theory
The traditional critique of luxury holds that indulgence in one vice, even a relatively mild one, sets the tyro on a path toward ever more serious involvement. In the modern language of addiction, one develops a tolerance to the intake of the entry-level stage, causing one to increase the dose, to which one then develops a new tolerance, and so on. For writers of nine­teenth-century popular medical tracts, masturbation was the first step toward ruin; the practiced pervert, in this view, always began by laying "violent hands" on himself.
In the Old Testament, Ezekiel 16:49 links the sodomites with other forms of luxurious indulgence. This notion has a current folk version which maintains that older men and women turn to same-sex relations when they can no longer experi­ence the pleasures of "normal" love or have supposedly become impotent with the opposite sex. Such a view was sus­tained in the otherwise remarkably toler­ant remarks of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The common belief, which has little foundation, that prostitutes are often lesbian in their own preferences is ascribed to the fact that they have had too many men. Oddly enough, this notion of homosexual orientation as the outcome of surfeit and repletion is the mirror opposite of the psychoanalytic claim that homo­sexuality is a type of arrested develop­ment. For critics, the appetite governing same-sex love is always too Utile or too much, but never "just right."
There seems to be Uttle empirical support for this folk view. Some people do change their sexual orientation, but usu­ally for other reasons than satiation with their previous mode of erotic fulfillment. They may be responding more fuliy to feelings that they have always had, but have been suppressing; or they may wish to explore a side of their nature that has been neglected through lack of opportu­nity. But such a shift is rarely undertaken out of a mere sense of "jadedness." It is possible that for some individuals sado­masochistic practices have the function of restoring interest in sexual pleasures that have become too anodyne.
Wayne R. Dynes

Saunas
See Bathhouses.

Scandinavia, Medieval
In this article Scandinavia has the extended sense that includes not only the three European countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, but also Iceland. The extant sources for the history of homo­sexuality in the Scandinavia of the Middle Ages, which is to say the period just before the introduction of Latin Christianity (about the year 1000) and the three centu­ries following, record no positive attitudes toward the phenomenon. There are no accounts of comradely love, of fidelity and heroism on the battlefield, of institution­alized pederasty such as have been trans­mitted by the literature of other peoples at a similar stage of cultural development. The textual material that has come down to us - undoubtedly reflecting a process of selection and editing - stigmatizes the passive-effeminate homosexual as sloth­ful, cowardly, and unmanly - as the object of other males' sexual aggression and humiliation.
Folk Attitudes and Customs. There is no word in Old Norse or in other Germanic languages for what came to be called sodomy in Medieval Latin, so that the criminal offense owes its inception to Christian teaching. Yet there was a term aigt which was broader in its meaning: the Roman writer Tacitus in the twelfth chap­ter of the Germania had to paraphrase it in Latin as ignavos et imbelles et corpore infames, "slothful and unwarlike and sexually infamous," specifying that such individuals were punished by drowning in a swamp. And in later vernacular sources the word argr (with the variant ragi) is mentioned alongside strocbnn/sordinn and sannsoiSinn as one of three fullrettisord, "words whose utterance amounts to a capital offense." The man who is the ob­ject of such insults has the right to bring whoever uttered them to court or even to assault and kill him so as to avenge his honor. The three latter terms are past participles applied to One who has been used sexually by another male. In the same category of heinousness were insults lik­ening a man to a female animal (beiendi). The argr carried the further stigma of prac­ticing sorcery [seiSi), which was in prin­ciple a female art, as the Ynglinga saga says, "such eigi [aigr conduct] accompa­nies this sorcery that it was deemed shame­ful for men to busy themselves with it; therefore this art was taught to the priest­esses. " The disgraceful component of both the sexual and the ritual aspect of ergi was the taking of a female role by a male,- it constituted the behavioral expression of a character type that was held in contempt by a warrior society. Such was the moral judgment of the people of the age of the sagas and even of later times. Conversely, when applied to a woman the feminine of aigi meant manngjqin, that is to say, "man-crazy," aggressive in pursuing men, a quality as much despised in a woman as passivity and unmanliness in a man. It should also be mentioned that these cus­toms applied only to free men, just as the laws against rape protected only free women: slaves were the property and re­sponsibility of the master, and while sex­ual intercourse between two free men in which one had to take the passive role was considered shameful, no such feeling seems to have prevailed toward a slave's playing that part. In this respect the atti­tude of the pagan Scandinavians did not differ significantly from that of the an­cient Greeks and Romans.
A further concept that bears upon this complex of beliefs is
nict, a form of ridicule or insult that exposes the object to the contempt of the whole community. The laws distinguished between tungunid" (tongue nid] and tienid (carving nict). The former was the spoken insult; the latter a carving or statue that represented the in­jured party in a humiliating position, that of the passive party in anal intercourse. The erection of such a statue was a re­proach that called for vengeance - hence the proverb "Only a slave retaliates at once, an aigr never" \Grettis saga, chapter 15). By implication the free man defends his honor, but not impetuously, rather in accordance with an Arab proverb that says "He who waits but forty years for revenge is a man of little patience." The feminine behavior of a free man, whether in a sexual or in a magical function, is an act of base­ness; and if he is not guilty, he must be­have in a manner that will restore his honor. In another saga the carved nid takes the form of a pole with a man's head carved at one end and a runic inscription on the shaft which is then thrust into the body of a dead mare - the symbol of the feminine, implying that the abused party has taken the female role in an obscene act. In all these instances the sexual need not be the exclusive object of the reproach, as in Finnish and Estonian the loan word from aigi is a complete inventory of the traits ascribed to the passive-effeminate homo­sexual, while in Modem German the word aig means simply "bad." A semantic par­allel is Medieval Latin felo/fello, "evil­doer, criminal," stemming from Classical Latin fellare, "to perform fellation."
Legal Aspects. The only written law against homosexual behavior from medieval Scandinavia is Chapter 32 of the Norwegian Gulathinglog, a part of the new legislation introduced by King Mag­nus Erlingsson and Archbishop Eysteinn in 1164: "And if two men enjoy the pleas­ures of the flesh and are accused and con­victed thereof, they shall both suffer per­petual outlawry. But if they deny the charge while common report affirms it, let them deny it with the hot iron. And if they are convicted of the charge, the king shall have one-half of their goods and the bishop one-half." This law was the out­come of collusion between the archbishop and Erlingr skakki, the father and guar­dian of the King. The provision against male homosexual acts was a convenient tool to rid the Church and the state of their enemies and dispossess them of their property, and was probably modeled on a similar provision in the Code of Jus­tinian which prescribed banishment with confiscation of half of their property for those guilty of an "abominable crime with persons of the male sex."
In conclusion, the material of the sagas and law codes from medieval Scandi­navia shows that pre-Christian custom and belief severely stigmatized the free man who took the passive role in a homo­sexual relationship - a role that was equated with cowardliness and want of manhood.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Kari Ellen Gade, "Homosexuality and Rape of Males in Old Norse Law and Literature," Scandinavian Studies, 58 (1986), 12/M1, Joaquín Martinez Pizarro, "On Nict against Bishops," Mediaeval Scandina­via, 11 (1978-79), 149-53; Preben Meulengracht S0rensen, The Unmanly Man: Concepts of Sexual Defamation in Early Northern Society, Odense: Odense University Press, 1983; Folke Strom, Nict, Ergi and Old Norse Moral Atti­tudes, London: Published for University College by the Viking Society for Northern Research, 1973.
Warren Johansson

Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)
German philosopher. Through a large inheritance from his father the cele­brated misanthrope enjoyed financial in­dependence so that he could devote his life completely to philosophy. Even today Schopenhauer's ethic of compassion pos­sesses great philosophical significance. In the third edition of his magnum opus The World as Will and Idea, Schopenhauer analyzed the the phenomenon of "ped­erasty" in an addendum to Paragraph 44 on the metaphysics of sexual love. At that time (1859), the technical term homo­sexuality had not yet entered scientific discourse. Nonetheless one must proceed from the assumption that in this adden­dum Schopenhauer was seeking to find the cause of homosexuality from the philosophical standpoint. In a historical survey he showed that homosexuality has occurred at all times and among all the peoples of the globe. From this finding Schopenhauer concluded that homosexu­ality could not be unnatural, as his great model Immanuel Kant had held. Schopenhauer's teleologically oriented conception of nature therefore had to as­sume in male homosexual behavior - the only form he discussed - a "stratagem of nature" (in the words of Oskar Eichler).
Referring to Aristotle he hypothesized that young men [supposedly boys just past puberty) and likewise men who are too old (the magic boundary is here the age of 54) are not capable of begetting healthy and strong offspring, because their semen is too inferior. As nature is interested in perfecting every species, in men older than 54
"a pédérastie tendency gradually and imperceptibly makes its appearance." When he formulated this argument Schopenhauer himself was 71 years old, so that he could have harbored a homo­sexual tendency for some years. His ethi­cal evaluation of homosexuality is consis­tent: What is in the interest of nature cannot be bad. Schopenhauer considered only the seduction of minors as problem­atic, "since the unlawfulness consists in the seduction of the younger and inexperi­enced partner, who is thereby physically and morally corrupted." Therefore homo­sexuality as such is not reprehensible, solely the alleged seduction of minors.
Schopenhauer was himself the father of at least two illegitimate children and had many unhappy affairs with wo­men. He passionately admired Lord Byron and like him came to the conclusion that women could be considered beautiful only by "the male intellect clouded by the sexual instinct." In intellectual and aesthetic respects Schopenhauer had homosexual preferences. In a letter to his admirer Ju­lius Frauenstadt he stressed that "even their [women's] faces are nothing along­side those of handsome boys. " Bryan Magee hypothesizes that the philosopher system­atically suppressed his gay tendencies, a view shared by Oskar Eichler and others. Thirty years after the publication of the third edition of
The World as Will and Idea Oswald Oskar Hartmann adopted Schopenhauer's teleological explanation of homosexuality, suggesting that the first champions of homosexual rights volun­tarily followed Schopenhauer's arguments.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Oskar Eichler, Die Wurzeln des Prauenhasses bei Arthur Schopenhauer: eine psychanalytische Studie, Bonn: Marcus &. Weber, 1926; Oswald Oskar Hartmann, Das Problem der Homosexualität in Lichte der Schopenhauer'schen Philosophie, Leipzig: Max Spohr, 1897; Bryan Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983; Udo Schüklenk, "Arthur Schopenhauer und die Schwulen," Widerspruch: Münchener Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 16-17(1989), 100-16.
Udo Schüklenk

Schubert, Franz (1797-1828)
Austrian composer. Franz Schubert was the only great Viennese composer native to the city. While he did not enrich every department of music with a masterpiece, he did create supreme works in orchestral, piano, and chamber music, but above all in song, where he is preem­inent because his rich vein of melody and expressive harmony reached the heart of the text as no one before him had done.
Schubert was the son of a Catho­lic schoolmaster descended from Moravian peasant stock. From an early age he dis­played oustanding musical gifts, effort­lessly outstripping his father, his elder brother, and his teacher, the organist at the parish church of Liechtental. Toward the end of 1808 he was accepted as a choirboy in the imperial court chapel, and simulta­neously as a scholar in the Imperial and Royal City College. Here he impressed everyone with his musical gifts, and he was accorded the privilege of leaving the building for his lessons with Antonio Salieri, the friend of Haydn and rival of Mozart.
From 1810 onward Schubert be­gan to compose music, and in 1811 he attended his first opera. His first settings of Schiller date from this period. Too short for the army, and with poor vision, he was rejected by the military authorities, and by the autumn ofl814hewas teaching at his father's school, but he felt the irksome duties of the classroom as an insuperable barrier between him and the freedom to compose. But 1815 was one of his most productive years in sheer volume: in one year he composed 145 songs with a tre­mendous range. He also became acquainted with Franz von Schober, a wealthy and cultured young law student who urged him to abandon teaching and devote him­self to composition. This he did only at the end of the following year, after his first commissioned work had been performed. In time, after another depressing stint as schoolmaster, Schubert was appointed music master to the children of Count Tohann Esterhazy at Zseliz in Hungary, but there he was bored and unappreciated, and longed only for the stimulus of life in the capital, to which he returned in No­vember 1818.
Here he encountered new friends and new patrons, and there is circumstan­tial evidence that he gravitated to the Viennese
bohème of the Metternich era, where he became the central figure in a coterie of homosexual and bisexual lovers of the arts. Despite continued and enthu­siastically received performances of his songs and vocal quartets, he still found publishers reluctant to issue his work. In the autumn of 1822 he composed his eighth, "Unfinished" symphony in B minor, which dwarfed virtually all his compositions until that time. The reason why he did not finish the work is that he had contracted syphilis, and by the spring of 1823 he was dangerously ill. Despite this handicap and a pressing need for money that forced him into a bad deal with his publishers, he continued to compose. He was never able to fulfill his ambition to write a successful opera, but in other musical genres his fame and re­putation were growing. He had a circle of friends at whose social gatherings his pieces were performed, and the press outside of Vienna gave him ever more notice. But by 1828 his health had been fatally under­mined by the syphilitic infection and by the feverish pace with which he composed in the last eleven months of his life. His death - in the Romantic tradition - at an early age was followed by decades of negleet and oblivion, and only much later was he recognized as one of the great Austrian composers.
What is known of Schubert's life­style, his bachelorhood, his intense and loving relationships with other men, and manifold accounts of his disorderly sexual conduct - all this points to a homosexual orientation. His biographers have inter­preted unflattering references to the sen­sual side of his nature in contemporary sources as meaning that he frequented prostitutes, but hedonism of this kind was perfectly acceptable in the "Old Vienna" of his day, and the veiled allusions are probably to a far more unconventional form of sexuality. Schubert never achieved a fulfilled love relationship with a wo­man; his rejection of marriage was deeply rooted, and Schober recalled his friend's desperate and pathological reaction to the suggestion that he take a wife. Contempo­raries ascribed this attitude to misogyny, which was the most that the heterosexual society of the nineteenth century could make of some individuals' failure to be magnetized by the opposite sex.
A modern psychoanalytic biogra­pher of Schubert has concluded, from the study of a brief tale written By Schubert in 1822 entitled "My Dream," that the composer's creativity was fully unleashed by his mother's death on May 28, 1812, when he was in mid-adolescence. Within a month his enormous musical productiv­ity began and continued almost without respite until his final illness and death. Self-conscious both as man and as artist, Schubert knew and treasured his distinc­tive sexual orientation, even if it had to be hidden from the obscurantist Catholic society of official Vienna. A poem of August von Platen dated January 31,1823 proves that a well-defined homosexual sub­culture existed in the German-speaking world by that time, and in such a milieu Schubert could find comradeship and ac­ceptance, while submitting to the out­ward conformity of the "quiet years" of Austrian history.
A psychoanalytic interpretation of Schubert's personality has found the clue to his life in the dialectical irony of homosexuality itself. In this view rebel­lion and submission are two sides of the same coin, as the subject oscillates be­tween a passive, masochistic stance vis-a-vis the father and other male rivals, and competitive aggression against them. Schubert's creativity expresses the rebel­lious side of the complex, for although the homosexual refusal to be dominated is undermined by the need to propitiate the father and similar authority figures, the rebellion itself is perpetual. The homosex­ual aestheticism of the Romantic period defended brotherhood - with political overtones - against authority, creativity against submission to routine, beauty against the ravages of time and reality. In such an emotional and cultural setting Schubert lived out a brief but intensely creative life as one of the great composers of the early nineteenth century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Maynard Solomon, "Franz Schubert's 'My Dream,'" American Imago, 38 ¡1981], 137-54.
Warren Johansson

Science
Assessing the contribution of male homosexuals and lesbians to science is complicated by the fact that it is no longer clear what science is. Until the middle of the twentieth century, it was generally accepted that scientific progress occurred through slow incremental accu­mulation of factual data, a process requir­ing periodic revision of theories to accord with the data. Through the work of such thinkers as Thomas Kuhn and Karl Pop­per, however, it has become clear that, examined as a whole, scientific change is discontinuous, even erratic and willful, and often guided by external and contin­gent factors. These factors include the overall world view (not excluding reli­gious components), social and economic determinants, and the whims and idiosyncracies of individual scientists. In its more extreme versions, the new scepticism discards the ideas of progress and rational­ity altogether, discerning an almost ran­dom succession of paradigms. Thus Paul Feyerabend, the gadfly of the field, has commended a Dada concept of science, in which "anythinggoes." It is not necessary to subscribe to this extreme view to ac­knowledge that as a result of ongoing reex­amination the boundaries between sci­ence, on the one hand, and ideology on the other, are blurred. In a recent American educational controversy, for example, most scholars hold that the so-called "creation science" - which seeks to reaffirm the traditional picture of the origin of the cosmos given in the book of Genesis - is mistaken, but they seem unable to offer a conclusive argument as to why this is so.
At the end of the nineteenth century when the homosexual rights move­ment began in the optimistic climate of Wilhelmine Germany, it was confidently held that the emancipation of homosexu­als would be achieved by the spread of "science." Increase of knowledge, erected on objective, incontrovertible founda­tions, would inevitably sweep away lin­gering "medieval" sources of bigotry and discrimination. The cataclysmic political developments of the twentieth century eroded these high expectations in every sphere. This more sober mood is fortu­nate, because the impact of the natural and social sciences in the first half of the twentieth century on homosexuality was decidedly mixed. Some fair-minded scientists helped to refute older stereo­types, it is true, but other researchers addressed themselves to schemes for the eradication of homosexuality through social engineering.
Antiquity. It is generally acknowl­edged that the emergence of critical ra­tionalism in ancient Greece in the sixth century b.c. was the prerequisite for all subsequent scientific progress. This his­toric breakthrough depended on earlier advances in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, which pioneered in many areas of technology and scientific measurement. The birth of the critical rationalism of the pre-Socratics did not occur in a social vacuum: the absence of a powerful priest­hood and of a central despotic government created zones of freedom in which inde­pendent thinkers could flourish. The sixth century also saw the emergence to full historical view of the institution of ped­erasty, the love of an older man for a youth. The Greeks regarded pederasty as itself a contribution to civilization. Hence the be­lief that, like scientific discoveries them­selves, it had an "inventor," Orpheus and Laius being the two leading candidates.
Unfortunately, the life records of the pre-Socratics are too scanty to permit much conjecture about the dynamics of sexuality in their personalities. However, the writings of Plato and Xenophon indi­cate that Socrates, who has become syn­onymous with the very spirit of Greek inquiry, was a joyous pederast, who reach­ed some of his most important conclu­sions in colloquy with a bevy of handsome disciples. In later Greek philosophy there is some indication that doctrines were transmitted from one generation to the next by being imparted by an older master to a beloved pupil. Aristotle, and after him, the Greek medical writers, attempted to determine biological mechanisms that might determine same-sex preference.
Greek science continued during the Hellenistic age, but declined under the Romans. It is probably not accidental that it revived again among the Arabs, under whose rule pederasty flourished almost as strongly as it had among the Greeks.
The Renaissance Tradition. It was largely from the Arabs that Western Eu­rope of the Renaissance received its knowlege of Greek science. In Florence (dubbed both the New Athens and the New Sodom) the humanist Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) championed Neoplatonism, together with hermeticism and astrology. From the modern point of view these last two elements might be thought of as anti-scientific. Yet recent research has estab­lished that the boundaries between sci­ence and the occult were often fluid, and hermetic ideas played a major role in the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century.
By common consent the most comprehensive Renaissance genius was Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), scientist, engineer, military expert, writer, painter, sculptor, and architect. The accusation of sodomy that was lodged against him in 1476 seems to have reinforced impres­sions derived from early life to make Le­onardo both reclusive and self-reflective. Apart from the quality of his inventions - he designed a bicycle and a parachute, as well as perfecting the use of chiaroscuro in painting - the enigma of Leonardo's per­sonality has continued to fascinate.
The English Renaissance found its own universal genius in the person of Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the creator of the
Novum Organum and inspiration of the Royal Society. Holding that those who have wives and children give hostages to fortune, he was known for his partiality to handsome youths. Other English scien­tists who may have been homophile are Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), Edmund Halley (1656-1742), and Robert Boyle (1627-1691). In France, René Descartes ¡1565-1650) was author of the Discourse on Method, and thereby the pioneer of modem rationalism. In his last years he was tutor to the bisexual Queen Christina of Sweden. Descartes composed some letters to her which have been interpre­ted as discrete advocacy of freedom of sexual orientation. In America the bache­lor Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806) was probably the first notable black scientist.
Modern Times. The great ex­plorer, geologist, and ethnographer Alex­ander von Humboldt ( 1769-1859) received his formation in the Berlin of Frederick the Great. Often accompanied by handsome young men on his travels, Humboldt left his fortune to a servant who was also his favorite. Other notable explorers who were homosexual were the Canadian David Thompson (1770-1857) and the Russian Nikolai Mikhailovich Przhevalsky (1839-1888). The sexuality of Sir Richard Burton remains obscure, but he certainly used his observations to making notable contributions to the study of same-sex behavior in the tropics (his "Sotadic Zone").
In the twentieth century the in­ventors Nikola Tesla and Wilbur and Orville Wright may have been homophile. Study of the psychobiography of scientists is just beginning, and we may expect fur­ther breakthroughs. Two cases are of par­ticular interest. The Austro-English phi­losopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), who had been trained as an engi­neer, was given to furtive homosexual encounters with men he met in parks. Enigmatic and ascetic in his personal life, he was largely successful in concealing his secret, which his executors tried also to keep, fearing that its revelation would damage his standing as a philosopher. The obstacles placed in the effort to open the door to this aspect of the creativity of one of the twentieth century's most influen­tial figures constitute a revealing and all-too-typical instance of the difficulties of this kind of biographical inquiry. Much better documented is the case of one of the founders of computer science, the English­man Alan Turing (1912-1954). Appre­hended by the police, Turing was forced to be injected with hormones which resulted in chemical castration. He died of cyanide poisoning.
It is often asked, with wonder or disdain according to taste, why so many artists, poets, and painters, so many ac­tors, dancers, and musicians, have been homophile. In the face of the massive evidence, however, it tends to be assumed that there is some nexus between creativ­ity in the arts and same-sex orientation. Inasmuch as the "scientific personality" counts as the opposite of the artistic one, stereotypical thinking assumes that sci­ence is a pursuit somehow inherently "normal." The relative paucity of famous homosexual scientists probably stems from the fact that one does not have much information on the affective lives of inves­tigators of natural phenomena, because such aspects are thought irrelevant to the "objectivity" of science. Yet, as indicated at the outset, the older picture of science as a seamless web of dispassionate inquiry is yielding to a more nuanced picture, in which science draws closer to the arts. As this newer approach takes hold, one may expect to learn more about the emotional commitments of individual scientists and the way in which these commitments in turn interacted with their creativity and the larger world in which they live.
Richard Dey

Science Fiction
Although the definition of "sci­ence fiction" has eluded any real consen­sus either inside or outside the field, for present purposes science fiction will be treated as a literary (and lately, cinematic, television, and musical) genre which ei­ther speculates on life in the future (or "alternative universes" of the present or past) or in which the extrapolated or specu­lated effects of advances (or declines) in science and technology are important ele­ments to the story. With this definition the article excludes the major genres of fantasy and horror.
General Considerations. Some­times called "speculative fiction," "sf" (as it is commonly referred to) is a genre of the modern age of science, though some would trace its roots back to such "fantasy travel" writers as the second-century (a.d.) Greek Lucian, whose True History takes him to a homosexual kingdom on the moon. A wider circle of opinion credits Mary W. Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) with being the first sf work, showing a genuine con­cern for the effects of science on human­ity. Jules Verne (1828-1905) and H. G. Wells (1866-1946) are other oft-cited found­ers of the genre.
As a self-conscious body of litera­ture, sf arose in the Anglo-American world in the 1920s and 1930s, when it found a vehicle for short stories in pulp magazines and an audience among male adolescents. As such sf "predictions" as the atomic bomb became reality in the 1940s, the genre became increasingly respectable, developed an adult readership, and be­came able to economically sustain book-length works by talented writers. This expansion continued at a slow but steady pace into the 1960s, when an explosion of interest in space travel (accompanying the moon landing program) and science in general raised interest in sf to the point where it became a major part of popular culture, generating films of mainstream circulation (such as
2001: A Space Odys­sey), television series (such as "Star Trek"), and scholarly scrutiny. Today it is one of the most popular genres of fiction in the English-speakingworld, has spread to many other languages (notably Russian), and is the subject of hundreds of academic courses. Sf also boasts a highly organized and very vocal fandom constituting what almost amounts to a subculture in itself.
By its nature, sf tends to posit alternatives to contemporary societies, their assumptions, and their mores, while remaining rooted in the cultures of its writers and readers. It should not be sur­prising, then, that sf has on the one hand dealt imaginatively with issues of sexual­ity, sexism, and sexual orientation, por­traying contemporary assumptions about these topics as time-and-culture-limited rather than universal, and on the other hand has had its share both of invisibility for non-heterosexual characters and of homophobic stereotypes. Since the 1970s, the former tendency has become domi­nant, aided by a good number of acknowl­edged gay, lesbian, or bisexual writers; it is not too much to say that in the 1980s, homophobia is no longer considered "good form" in sf.
Historical Development. During the "pulp period," sexuality in general was largely neglected, the subject not being considered suitable for adolescent litera­ture, and the magazine editors serving as effective censors. As the demographics of the readership broadened, it became pos­sible to include characters who were more or less undisguised homosexuals, but these, in accordance with the attitudes of the times, tended to be villains: evil, demented, or effeminate stereotypes. The most popu­lar role for the homosexual was as a deca­dent slaveholding lordling whose corrupt tyranny was doomed to be overthrown by the young male heterosexual hero. Lesbians for good or bad remained nearly invisible.
It fell to Theodore Sturgeon, one of the most noted sf writers of the 1950s, to provide the first positive portrayal of homosexuals in a 1953 story "The World Well Lost," published in the June issue of
Universe. Coming at the height of the homophobic hysteria of the McCarthyite period, this story featured a pair of homo­sexual-androgynous aliens who, exiled from their homeworld, arrive on earth. At first their gender remains unknown and Earth's population fawns on them, dub­bing them "lovebirds," but when the truth is discovered they are sent back where they would face execution. In the end, however, the pair is rescued by a spaceman who is a closet homosexual. This land­mark story is typical sf in criticizing con­temporary mores (here, homophobia) while undermining the threat to the reader (and the current censors) by recasting the pro­tagonists as aliens.
A step backwards to homophobic attitudes was Charles Beaumont's 1955 story "The Crooked Man," a
Playboy piece which inaugurated a long line of stories in which homosexuality is portrayed as the social norm for one reason or another. Sturgeon came back in 1957 with "Affair with a Green Monkey," examining social stereotyping of homosexuals (again with an alien as the subject).
By 1960 Pyramid was ready to publish the book-length Venus Pius
X, in which Sturgeon posits a one-gender soci­ety; the homophobic attitudes of a hetero­sexual male brought into this society are unfavorably depicted.
There matters rested until 1967, when Samuel R. Delaney, a black gay writer and winner of four Nebula Awards and one Hugo Award, started playing with alter­native sexuality in his Ace novel
The Einstein Intersection (using semi-alien, semi-human hermaphrodites) and the Nebula-winning short story "Aye, and Gomorrah," which posits the develop­ment of neutered human "spacers" and then depicts the "frelks" - people who become sexually oriented toward the spacers. In this work the concept of sexual orientation is examined with the desired distance attained by imagining a new one.
Delaney followed this in Novem­ber, 1968, with the dazzling Hugo- and Nebula-winning short story, "Time Con­sidered as a Helix of Semi-precious Stones." This picaresque tour de force featured two human males, H. C. E. and the teenage sexually masochistic singer Hawk, who are still friends after having once been intimates.
Enter Ursula K. Le Guin, a mildly feminist writer, who in 1969 startled the sf world with her Ace-published novel The
Left Hand of Darkness. This book, which won both major awards and quickly gained the stature of an all-time classic of the genre, broke all previous molds in depict­ing a planet whose people are sexually neuter most of the time, but who ran­domly turn male or female for a few days each month.
After Le Guin's searching exami­nation of sex roles and orientations, the field was wide open for further explora­tion; the coming of the "gay liberation" period starting with the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion led to a relative flood of works looking at unconventional sexualities.
It remained only for Delaney to break the last barrier, depicting homosex­ual lovemaking on the part of his bisexual male hero, the Kid, in his 1975 Bantam novel,
Dhalgren.
In the cinema, where science fic­tion has been flourishing commercially since at least 1969, the absence of homo­sexuality has been nearly complete. Logan's Run (1976), depicting a future city in which homosexuality is casually ac­cepted, stands out as an exception.
Authors. A number of the most prominent writers working in the field of sf have been publicly identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Two of these, William S. Burroughs and Gore Vidal, made their reputations in mainstream literature but have contributed important novels to the genre, such as Burroughs' The Wild Boys (1971) and Vidal's Kalki (1978). Writers working primarily in sf who have reached the very top of their field include Marion Zimmer Bradley (b. 1930, prolific author of the Darkover series of novels and also a frequent contributor to gay and lesbian periodicals), Samuel R. Delaney (b. 1942 in Harlem, author of the Neveryon series and a frequent writer on gay themes), and Joanna Russ (b. 1937, a radical lesbian feminist and occasional contributor to lesbian and gay journals). Edgar Pangborn ¡1909-1976) wrote a number of widely read works and consistently dealt with same-sex love. Less well known are Nikos A. Diaman, the Englishman Henry Fitz­gerald Heard, Elizabeth A. Lynn, Tom Reamy, Sally M. Gearhart, and (in this field) the Frenchwoman Monique Wittig.
There is also a body of gay male pornography with sf settings; authors in this area include Felix Falkon, Dave Gar­rett, Peter Harnes, Peter Hughes, Rex Montgomery, Charles Piatt, and the more widely known Larry Townsend.
Novels of Interest. A large num­ber of sf novels are of substantial gay or lesbian interest. The largest category of these are works in which the hero(ine) or a major protagonist is either homosexual or bisexual, usually males; books of particu­lar interest to women are so noted. These works include Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books The Heritage of Hastur (1975) and The Forbidden Tower (1977), which link homosexuality to telepathy; William S. Burroughs' The Wild Boys (1971) and Blade Runner (1979); the classic sf writer Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth (1975), in which the hero brings back from Earth a clone of his lost lover; Joan Cox's Mindsong (1979); Delaney's hallucinogenic Dahlgren (see above); Thomas M. Disch's On Wings of Song (1979); Zoe Fairbairns' Benefits (1979), a feminist work set in Britain; M. J. Engh's Arslan (1976), in which the title character, a modern Alexander the Great, is bisexual and develops a long-lasting affair with a schoolboy; Sally M. Gearhart's The Wanderground (1978), a set of feminist stories with a common background; David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself (1973), in which the hero uses time travel to make copies of himself which turn out to be ideal lovers; Leo P. Kelley's Mythmaster ¡1973), whose bisex­ual protagonist opts for heterosexuality,-Elizabeth A. Lynn's A Different Light (1978), in which another bisexual protago­nist opts this time for homosexuality, and The Dancers of Arun (1979), which fea­tures fraternal incest complicated by te­lepathy; a set of novels by Michael Moorcock: The Final Programme (1968), featuring a bisexual hermaphrodite, The English Assassin (1972), whose female characters are lesbian or bisexual, Break­fast in the Ruins (1972) about a gay male, and The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Corneliusin the Twentieth Cen­tury (1976), two bisexual lesbians; George Nader's Chrome (1978), the first sf novel published by a major house (Putnam) spe­cifically geared for the gay male market; Frederick Pohl's Gateway (1977), a Neb­ula and Hugo winner about a repressed homosexual; Thomas N. Scortia's Earthwreck! (1974); popular writer Robert Silverberg's The Book of Skulls (1972), in which two of the four heroes are gay; the great sf philosopher Olaf Stapledon's Odd John (1936), whose hero goes through a homosexual phase shortly after puberty;
best-selling sf writer John Varley's The
Ophiuci Hotline (1977), whose heroine is bisexual, and his Gaia series starting with Titan ¡1979) and continuing with Wizard (1980) and Demon (1984), featuring a pair of women, one bisexual and one lesbian, who become closer and closer lovers as the trilogy progresses; Paul Welles' Project Lambda (1979), depicting concentration camps for male homosexuals in a police-state United States; and John Wynne's The Sighting (1978), a coming-out story.
Homosexual villains can be found in numerous books,- an interested reader might consult Barry Malzberg's
The Sodom and Gomorrah Business and Tactics of Conquest (both 1974), Fred M. Stewart's Star Child (1975), or Kate Wilhelm's Hugo-winning Where Latethe Sweet Birds Sang (1976).
Novels set in worlds which ac­cept homosexuality as a normal and inte­grated part of the environment, but with­out a focus on a major character, include John Brunner's multiple award-winning (Hugo, British Science Fiction Award, Prix Apollo) classic
Stand on Zanzibar (1968); Delaney's Babel-17 (1966) and Triton (1976); Marta Randall's fourney (1978) and Dangerous Games (1980); and John Varley's "Eight Worlds" series of books. The pau­city of novels projecting homosexuality as a not-very-remarkable, accepted part of the landscape, is noteworthy; authors seem either to make homosexuality a major element of their story or to omit it alto­gether.
A significant number of novels posit a world or society in which homo­sexuality is the only option, there being but one gender present. The feminist vi­sion of a world without males has no doubt inspired several of these; in short-story form they are represented by James Tiptree's (pseudonym of Alice Sheldon) Hugo-winner "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" (1976), in which a plague has wiped out men and three male astronauts hurled into the future have to deal with the situ­ation. Novels in this category include Suzy M. Charnas'
Motherlines (1978), in which women have set up societies completely outside of the men's world, the novel containing no male characters; Charles E. Maine's Alph (1972), showing a future Earth in which men have been extinct for half a millennium and civil war erupts over a plan to bring back males; Joanna Russ' The Female Man (1975), where the all-woman world is called Whileaway; Joan Slonczewski's Door Into Ocean (1986), where an all-female race on a water planet must deal with male invaders,- the French­woman Monique Wittig's Les Guerilleres (1969) and The Lesbian Body (1973), which posit all-female lesbian societies; her col­laboration with Sande Zeig, Lesbian Peoples (1976), which does the same in the far future; and Donna J. Young's Retreat: As It Was! (1979), which has an entire lesbian galaxy subjected to warfare by an unknown species: men.
All-male environments have been a staple since the pulp days of sf, but these have usually been limited situations such as spaceships rather than entire cultures. Novels which depict entire all-male socie­ties include: A. Bertram Chandler's
False Fatherland (1968), in which the arrival of a mixed-crew spaceship precipitates a miraculous conversion to heterosexuality; Auctor Ignotus' AE: The Open Per­suader (1969), in which gay men have set up their own society; and the Italian Virgilio Martini's homophobic The World Without Women (1969), where gay men invent a disease which kills off all the females.
Theodore Sturgeon's oft-cited
Venus Plus X (see above) sets out a single-sex world which is defined as neither male nor female, while Philip Wylie's The Dis­appearance (1951) separates males and females into two parallel worlds, each of a single gender, where homosexuality is adopted out of necessity.
Another large category of stories involves societies in which both sexes are present but homosexuality is either com­pulsory or socially favored. These works could be written out of an author's desire to hold a satirical mirror up to the homo­phobia of his culture, but in practice seem to reflect the writer's own paranoia about homosexuality. The classic tale of this type was the short story by Charles Beaumont, "The Crooked Man" (see above). In this story, however, the "genu­ine" homosexuals are cruel and depraved. Novels dealing with this theme include Anthony Burgess'
The Wanting Seed (1962), in which homosexuality is required for official employment in Britain and violent warfare breaks out between the sexes, while Nature goes on strike: crops fail and animals will not reproduce; Suzy M. Charnas' Walk to the End of the World (1974), which sets out an Earth of sexual apartheid and the subjugation of females; the Frenchman Robert Merle's The Viril­ity Factor (1974), in which men are hit by a disease which leaves a despotic lesbian tyranny in charge and the remaining men become second-class citizens,- Naomi Mitchinson's Solution Three (1975), basi­cally an expansion of the Beaumont set­ting; and Eric Norden's The Ultimate So­lution (1973), in which homosexuality is the social norm in a Nazi America.
Settings in which sexuality in­volves more than two genders have been presented in the venerable Isaac Asimov's
The Gods Themselves (1972), which de­picts a three-sexed race, two of whom are more or less male; Samuel R. Delaney's seminal The Einstein Intersection (1967), also trisexual; and John Varley's Gaia se­ries, in which the native intelligent spe­cies undergoes extremely complex pat­terns in order to reproduce.
A final major category of novels does away with gender distinctions alto­gether, presenting worlds of androgyny. Ursula Le Guin's
The Left Hand of Dark­ness (see above) is the classic of this type. Other novels in this area include the leg­endary Robert Heinlein's / Will Fear No Evil (1970), which puts a man's brain into a woman's body through a transplant operation; Robert Silverberg's Son of Man (1971), where the inhabitants of a future Earth can change sex at will; Frederick Turner's A Double Shadow (1978), whose hero is a hermaphrodite; and John Varley's "Eight Worlds" series, in which human beings can and do change gender as easily as haircuts.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Camilia Decamin, Eric Garber and Lyn Paleo, eds., Worlds Apart, Boston: Alyson Publications, 1986; Samuel R. Delaney, The Motion of Light in Water, New York: Arbor House/ Morrow, 1988; Eric Garber and Lyn Paleo, Uranian Worlds: A Reader's Guide to Alternative Sexuality in Science Fiction and Fantasy, Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1983.
Stephen Donaldson

Scientific-Humanitar­ian Committee
The Wissenschaftlich-human­itäre Komitee, the world's first homosex­ual rights organization, was founded in Berlin on May 14,1897, the twenty-ninth birthday of Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935), a physician of Jewish origin who became the leading authority on homo­sexuality in the first third of the twentieth century. Under the pseudonym of "Dr. Ramien," Hirschfeld had in 1896 published a book entitled Sappho und Sokrates, oder wie erklärt sich die Liebe der Männer und Frauen zu Personen des eigenen Gesch­lechts! (Sappho and Socrates, or How Is the Love of Men and Women for Persons of Their Own Sex to Be Explained?). Moved by the suicide of a young homosexual officer on the eve of a marriage into which his family had pressured him, Hirschfeld went on to create an organization that would campaign for legal toleration and social acceptance for what he called the third sex.
Writing in an era when biology and medicine uncritically accepted the notion of "inborn traits" of all kinds, Hirschfeld maintained that homosexuals were members of a third sex, an evolutionary intermediate (or intergrade) between the male and the female, and he bolstered his thesis with data of all kinds showing that the mean for the homosex­ual subjects whom he studied by interview and questionnaire fell almost exactly be­tween those for male and female respec­tively. Accordingly the journal which the Scientific-humanitarian Committee pub­lished from 1899 onward was entitled the
Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Homosexualität (Annual for Sexual Intergrades with Special Reference to Homo­sexuality).
Aims and Methods. The first and foremost goal of the committee was legal reform, as following the establishment of the North German Confederation and then of the German Empire, a new penal code was adopted that went into force on the entire territory of the Reich on January 1, 1872. Its Paragraph 175 made criminal widernatürhche Unzucht zwischen Män­nern (lewd and unnatural acts between males), with a maximum penalty of two years. The repeal of this paragraph was the main object of the Committee's endeavors during its 36 years of existence. For this purpose it drafted a petition "to the Legis­lative Bodies of the German Empire" that was ultimately signed by some 6000 Ger­mans prominent in all walks of Ufe. But it also sought to enlighten a public that as yet knew nothing of the literature that had been appearing sporadically in the psychi­atric journals since 1869, or of the earlier apologetic writings of Heinrich Hoessli and Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. By means of pamphlets, public lectures, and later even films, the Committee sought to convince the world that homosexuals were an un­justly persecuted sport of nature, who could not be blamed for their innate and unmodifiable sexual orientation. Because they lived in a society that was wholly intolerant of homosexual expression, they had to hide their orientation and their sexual activity, and so were peculiarly exposed to blackmail if their true nature came to the knowledge of members of the criminal underworld. As early as January 1898 August Bebel, the leader of the Ger­man Social Democratic Party, spoke on the floor of the Reichstag in favor of the petition, while the other parties denounced it in horror. Among the educated elite Hirschfeld's views soon won a large meas­ure of support, but they were totally re­jected by the churches and by the conser­vative jurists of the Wilhelmstrasse en­gaged in drafting a new criminal code.
The Committee was in practice the world's first center for the study of all aspects of homosexuality. Though ignored by academic scholars, Hirschfeld collected material from various sources on the fre­quency of homosexual behavior in the population and the psychological profile of the homosexual personality. In 1904 Hirschfeld concluded that 2.2 percent of the population was exclusively homosex­ual, and that the figure was surprising only because so many of his subjects success­fully hid their inclinations from a hostile world. The private lives of his subjects he examined from numerous aspects, in ev­ery one of which he found evidence that supported his theory of an innate third sex.
Difficulties and Rivals. As the years passed, the Committee was beset with problems from within and without. Hirschfeld's theories placed undue em­phasis on the effeminate male and the viraginous female as the homosexual types par excellence, a standpoint that alienated the pederasts who fell into neither cate­gory and were often bisexual as well. Benedict Friedlaender, an independent scholar, denounced Hirschfeld's views and contrasted them with the Hellenic ideal of man-boy love which was a virile, state-building phenomenon in his Renaissance des Eros Uranios (Renaissance of Eros Uranios; 1904). A rival organization, the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (Community of the Exceptional), was founded in 1902, and adopted as its journal Der Eigene, edited by Adolf Brand, which had been publishing literary and art work on the subject of pederasty since 1898. The incompatibility of the two approaches shows that the umbrella concept of "homosexu­ality" united biological and psychological phenomena which had only this in com­mon, that they both ran afoul of the Tudeo-Christian taboo on same-sex relations; socially and politically they were - and still are - incompatible. The Committee had even anticipated the split by propos­ing in its petition an age of consent of 16 for homosexual relations - which would in effect have excluded the boy-lover from the benefit of law reform.
The other critical juncture in the history of the Committee was the Harden-Eulenburg affair, which began in Novem­ber 1906 with accusations by Maximilian Harden, a sort of Walter Lippmann of the Second Reich, in his journal
Die Zukunft, to the effect that two of the Kaiser's inti­mates, Prince Philipp zu Eulenberg and Count Kuno von Moltke, were members of a homosexual clique whose inner sanc­tum had been penetrated by another of their ilk, the First Secretary of the French Legation in Berlin, Raymond Lecomte, who had then revealed to the Quai d'Orsay that Germany was bluffing during the Morocco crisis of January-April 1906 that ended in a diplomatic victory for his country at Germany's expense. A series of scandal­ous trials ensued in which Hirschfeld tes­tified as an "expert witness," Harden was victorious, and Eulenburg was disgraced and ruined, spending the last years of life in isolation on his estate. But the whole series of events associated homosexuality with espionage and treason in the eyes of the press and the public, and the Committee's fortunes took a turn for the worse. Interestingly enough, it was the newspapers' use of the term homosexual during the Harden-Eulenburg affair that made it a household word and displaced the medical coinages current until then in the specialized literature of the subject.
The reaction to the Committee's endeavors went so far as a proposal for extending the sanctions of Paragraph 175 to women in Paragraph 250 of a draft penal code published late in 1909. This elicited a statement in support of the Committee from the Deutsche Bund für Mutterschutz (German League for the Protection of Motherhood), an organization devoted to the welfare of the unwed mother, whom public opinion in Germany stigmatized almost as cruelly as it did the male homo­sexual. In this way the various groups advocating reform in the sphere of sexual morality were brought closer together by the moves of the opposition.
Scholarly Achievements. Aided by the experts in various disciplines who had been attracted to the Scientific-Hu­manitarian Committee, Hirschfeld set about writing a major work that was pub­lished in January 1914 under the title Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes (Male and Female Homosexual­ity). This vast tome summarized every­thing that had been learned from the lit­erature of the past, and especially of the preceding decade and a half, as well as the 10,000 case histories that Hirschfeld had taken in that time. All its arguments were directed toward proving that homosexual­ity was inborn and unmodifiable and that the reasoning (including early psychoana­lytic writings) in favor of acquired homo­sexuality was untenable. As a scientifi­cally documented, carefully argued plea for toleration, it remains along with the 23 volumes of the Jahrbuch the committee's principal legacy to the later movement.
Later History. World War I inter­rupted the committee's work, and for a time some of its publications were sup­pressed by wartime censorship. Hirschfeld took a patriotic stance on the pages of the committee's journal, which also carried letters from homosexual servicemen in the field. The end of the Empire and the proclamation of the Republic in Novem­ber 1918 gave new hope to the committee's aspirations, but the postwar drafts of a new penal code were no more acceptable than the previous ones.
To propagate the Committee's views, a film entitled
Anders als die An­dem (Different from the Others) was made in 1919 and shown in almost the whole of Germany before it was banned by a revived censorship. It was the first use of the cin­ema to promote the cause of homosexual liberation, and a second film called Gesetze der Liebe was produced in 1927. Under the Weimar Republic the committee carried on extensive propaganda, but by now or­ganizations of a primarily or purely social character far exceeded the committee in membership. The postwar era saw an ex­tensive gay subculture thrive in Berlin and other large German cities.
The growing anti-Semitic move­ment in Germany made Hirschfeld one of its targets. He was assaulted in Munich in 1920 and again in 1921, the second time receiving a fractured skull and being pre­maturely reported dead. On the other hand,, the Social Democrats and Communists supported the Committee's demands in the Reichstag, and in 1929, a 15-13 vote of a committee approved the striking of the "homosexual paragraph" from the draft penal code. However, this victory was premature: no action was taken by the Reichstag, and the mounting economic crisis not only made other issues more urgent, but led to the phenomenal rise of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis), which despite the presence of some homosexuals in its own ranks denounced the homosexual liberation movement, in part because it was identi­fied with such Jewish figures as Hirschfeld and Kurt Hiller, who had participated in a coalition of groups seeking reform of vari­ous sex laws in Germany and edited its critique of the official draft of the new code.
After the Vienna Congress of the World League for Sexual Reform on a Sci­entific Basis (1930), Hirschfeld did not return to Germany, fearing for his life at the hands of the Nazis. His collaborators continued the work of the committee, but the growth of the extreme right doomed its efforts. With the appointment of Hitler as Reichschancellor on January 30, 1933 the Committee sought a modus vivendi with the new regime, as did many others who hoped that by adopting a nationalist line they could placate the National Socialists. However, the accession to full power by Hitler and his supporters meant the end of the Committee and the destruction of the Institute for Sexual Science which Hirschfeld had founded in 1918.
Conclusion. Little known except in homosexual circles, the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was all but forgotten by the end of World War n, but its publications survived in a few learned libraries and private collections. The homophile movement that began in the 1950s perhaps unjustly neglected this brave and pioneering effort to change the preju­dice and intolerance of Western society in regard to homosexuality, and future stu­dents of the subject are well advised to consider how it conceived its mission and set about fulfilling it. Small as it was, it was the forerunner of the vast interna­tional gay rights movement of today.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. John Lauritsen and David Thorstad,
The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935), New York: Times Change Press, 1974; James D. Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipa­tion Movement in Germany, New York: Amo Press, 1975.
Warren Johansson

Sculpture
See Art, Visual; Nude in Art.

Scythians
Scythia is the general name given by ancient authors to the whole area ex­tending from the Danube to the frontiers of China. It was occupied by a warlike, nomadic people who came from what is now southern Russia in the first millennium b.c. Before the ninth century b.c they formed a kingdom in the eastern Crimea, and in the seventh century they invaded Syria, Mesopotamia, and the Bal­kan peninsula. Though attacked by Darius I of Persia (512 b.c.) and then by Alexander the Great (ca. 325 b.c.), they survived but were driven back to southern Russia, where in the following centuries they were dis­placed by the related Sarmatians. Russian and Ukrainian scholars of today regard the Scythian culture, known from extensive archeological finds that supplement the scattered references in classical literature, as part of the prehistory of their country.
What links the Scythians with homosexuality is the long debate over the meaning of a Greek passage in Herodotus'
Histories which, brief as it is, seems to provide evidence for a sexual culture that was widespread in antiquity, though un­known among the Greeks themselves. Herodotus (I, 105) reports the dire conse­quences of the fact that some stragglers from the Scythian army violated the temple of Aphrodite Urania at Ascalon, on the coast of Palestine. "On such of the Scythi­ans as plundered the temple at Ascalon, and on their posterity for succeeding gen­erations, the goddess inflicted the iheleia nusos ("feminine disease"). And the Scythi­ans say themselves it is for this cause they suffer the sickness, and moreover that any who visit the Scythian country may see among them what is the condition of those whom the Scythians call enarees." Else­where (IV, 67) Herodotus credits the enaiees - he translates the term as androgynoi, "men-women" - with a special method of divination which they have from Aphrodite. The Hippocratic work On Airs, Waters and Places, 22, ascribes the "disease" of the anarieis, understood as a form of impotence, to divine retribu­tion, which struck the wealthy in parti­cular. Finally, Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics (VTI, 7) speaks of a malakia, "effeminacy" - also defined as to thely, "the feminine" - that was a hereditary trait of the Scythian kings. Such is the scanty but significant evidence that survives from antiquity.
Julius Rosenbaum, in an omnium gatherum of texts and comments on the sexual life of the ancients entitled
Ges­chichte der Lustseuche im Altertume (History of the Plague of Lust in Antiquity; 1839), argued that the "feminine disease" meant a proclivity to pederasty. In 1882 the Russian historian Vsevolod Miller opened a new chapter in the discussion by pointing to survivals of Scythian myth and custom among the Ossetians. Subse­quently, Georges Dumézil analyzed an Ossetian legend in which the hero Hamyc offends the god of the sea Don Bettyr and is punished by having to endure pregnancy and childbirth. He concluded that Hero­dotus had confounded two phenomena, a genuine Scythian tradition from the northern coast of the Black Sea and a piece of folk belief associated with the shrine at Ascalon. This city on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean remained pagan (Canaanite) even after the interior of Palestine had been conquered by the in­vading Israelites, who because they had no navy could not blockade the port and compel its surrender.
The two elements
in this tangle of legends deserve closer analysis. The Scythian element is the variety of shaman­ism with symbolic change of sex, includ­ing the wearing of women's clothing, a custom associated with the practice of divination among the peoples of the far north of the Eurasian continent and one that reputedly serves to enhance the magical powers of the shaman. In modern times the practice of gender change was studied among the Chukchees of eastern Siberia by the anthropologist Waldemar Bogoras, who emphasized that no physical hermaphroditism was involved, but rather the adoption in full of the clothing, speech, manners and even marital status of a woman. These Customs are believed to be remnants of a once-vast Eurasian cultural realm, which may well have embraced the Scythians.
Turning
to the Canaanite element identified with Ascalon, this would lie in the indigenous religion of the country, more specifically in the practices forbid­den in Deuteronomy 22:5 and 23:18. The latter form part of the profession of the kadesh and the kelebh, who donned women's clothing and prostituted them­selves to male worshippers at the temples of Ishtar/Astarte, of which the oldest, as Herodotus specifically mentions, was the one at Ascalon. The rendering of the word kadesh in the Septuagint by pomeuon and teliskomenos, which are glossed in the lexica by terms indicating that these servi­tors of Ishtar performed both erotic and priestly functions for the devotees of the goddess, suggests that the hierodules of the Canaanite-Phoenician religion were the counterpart of the shamans in the archaic cultures of sub-Arctic Eurasia. This conclusion reinforces what is known from other sources: the kedeshlm engaged in homosexual activity as part of their reli­gious calling, which provoked the rivalry and hatred of the priests and Levites in ancient Israel. Hence the Greek observers of Palestinian and Eurasian sacrosexual customs were struck by the similarity between them.
Soviet commentators on the pas­sages in Herodotus and the Hippocratic corpus have preferred to stress the pur­ported survival of matriarchal customs: the male who practiced divination had to adopt the gender of a woman in order to exercise a function that had previously belonged only to women. However, it is more consistent with the whole body of ethnographic data on divination and magic to see in the Scythian institution (and its Canaanite analogue) another instance of the peculiar gift for extrasensory percep­tion that is often linked with inversion of gender role and sexual orientation. The religious culture of the Scythians institu­tionalized this phenomenon in the guise of a shamanism which survived among the remote Ossetians until comparatively recent times, when the mounting influ­ence of Islam and Christianity led to its disappearance.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. M. I. Artamonov, "Antropomorfnye bozhestva v religit skifov" (Anthropomorphic divinities in the religion of the Scythians), Arkheologicheskiï sbomik Gosudars tvennogo Ermitazha, 2 (1961), 85-87, S. S. Bessonova, Religioznye predstavleniia skifov (The Religious Conceptions of the Scythians), Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1983, pp. 56-59; Georges Dumézil, Romans de Scythie et d'alentour, Paris: Payot, 1978; W. R. Halliday, "A Note on the ihelea nousos of the Skythians," Annual of the British School at Athens, 17 (1910-11), 95-102; Karl Meuli, "Scythica. 2. Enarees. Schamanentum verwandter Volker," Hermes, 70 (1935), 127-37.
Warren Johansson

Seafaring
As a closed environment usually involving only one gender, maritime life offers objective conditions favoring situa­tional homoerotic behavior. Nonetheless, at the present stage of research, documen­tation remains incomplete. Historical evidence, which comes mainly from western civilization, is generally of two types: on the one hand, the official policies of the maritime authorities, and their enforce­ment; on the other, folklore and oral tradi­tion, most commonly sailor songs or sea shanties.
In addition to shipboard sexual­ity, there is a long and reasonably well attested history of sexual interaction be­tween seafaring men in port and homo­sexuals attracted by a certain "sexual mystique" attributed to sailors at large. As a result, seamen and their images have assumed a role in the gay subculture out of all proportion to their miniscule presence as permanent members of that subculture.
Naval Policy and Discipline. Although Greco-Roman culture was suf­fused with same-sex relations, little has been recorded of this activity in a mari­time context, probably because it was taken for granted. In a fourth-century text from Athens, Aeschines notes that one Timarchus, who had ostensibly gone to the port of Piraeus to learn the barbering trade, had actually prostituted himself to sailors there.
The introduction of Tudeo-Christian norms created the presuppositions for a new and problematic attitude, for the taboo on homosexual relations was sup­posed to apply everywhere. Nonetheless, evidence of enforcement is patchy, proba­bly because shipboard activities were out of sight of land-based guardians of official ideology and pirates paid them no heed anyway. In early modern Europe, three nations - the Venetian Republic, the United Provinces [Holland), and England - felt themselves at risk, because their very prosperity depended on seaborne com­merce. Sermons and pamphlets warned against the vengeance an angry god would inflict on a nation that tolerated sodomy. Nonetheless, the only evidence of sus­tained persecution comes from English naval history. During the eighteenth-cen­tury wars, heavy punishment with the lash as well as hanging were inflicted for buggery, reaching a peak during the con­flict with Napoleon. From 1806 to 1816, 28.6 percent of all executions in the Royal Navy were for buggery. The punishments abated, but the practice evidently did not. Sir Winston Churchill, for a time First Lord of Admiralty, was to remark that the three traditions of the Royal Navy were "rum, sodomy, and the lash." Although homosexual conduct has been decrimi­nalized in the United Kingdom for con­senting adults (1967 and after), this liber­alization does not apply to the navy or merchant marine, where it remains sub­ject to discipline.
In the United States, a kind of witchhunt was conducted among naval personnel in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1919-21, but this local action had no immediate sequel. Court records of testi­mony, however, demonstrate the sailors' casual attitudes. Some Navy men and women were discharged in the late stages of World War II as part of a campaign to rid the armed services of "sex perverts." Intro­duction of women aboard ship has caused some shifts in emphasis. In the USS
Nor­ton Sound case in Long Beach, California (1980), women in the ranks were subjected to investigation for both heterosexual and lesbian activity. Naval discharges for "homosexual involvement" are still occa­sionally handed out today, though courts-martial for sodomy are extremely rare. Since the mid-1970s administrative dis­charges have usually been characterized as "Honorable," especially if the "involve­ment" in question was off-ship and off-base. Admitted homosexuals are not eli­gible for enlistment or commissioning in the United States Navy. Naval policy toward homosexuality has been under attack from the gay and civil liberties move­ments since the 1960s, when less-than-honorable discharges were common.
Attitudes of the Sailor. The cus­tom of speeding work through singing - the sea shanty - probably goes back to the days of oars when keeping an exact beat was critical. Surviving sailor songs, how­ever, go back to the nineteenth and some­times eighteenth centuries, handed down from generation to generation in uncensored form and eventually written;down by folklorists and collectors. These songs provide a quite different viewpoint on shipboard sexuality from that of the offi­cial establishment.
The attitude reflected in these songs is one of casual acceptance of sex among the sailors at sea, though homo­sexual adventures in port are not des­cribed. Thus, the Royal Navy sang "Back­side rules the Navy,/ backside rules the sea./ If you wanna get some bum [arse],/ better get it from your chum/ 'cause you'll get no bum from me." An American Navy enlisted man's song, "Turalai," celebrated the navy "for buggering whatever it can" and went on to state flatly that from this activity "comparative safety on shipboard/ is enjoyed by the hedgehog alone." Mer­chant mariners commonly characterized the cabin boys as sexual recipients.
It is interesting to note that the sailor songs frequently accompanied tales of heterosexual adventures in port with woeful endings involving venereal disease and vengeful husbands, but the songs describing sex at sea among themselves are good-humored and without such warn­ings.
Sailor slang characterized the passive sexual partner on ship as "sea pussy," implying he was a legitimate substitute in the female-deprived circum­stances of an ocean voyage. Thus does the proverbial seaman's expression "any port in a storm" find direct physiological outlet.
Sailors in general have long been noted for a relatively casual attitude to­ward the standards of sexual "morality" held by landlubbers; this relative toler­ance also applies to same-gender sexual activity. Most seamen are of the working class and widely share the attitude com­mon among working-class men that only the passive partner's activity is "homosex­ual" or "unnatural," while the active, insertive partner's role is not stigmatized.
In the American navy (until pay was substantially raised with the end of the draft in the early 1970s), and in less-well-paid navies to this day, male prostitu­tion in port was quite common among enlisted sailors, sometimes for nominal sums as an excuse for a desired sexual contact. The active, "male" role had to be preserved, however. Not infrequently, the poverty-stricken sailor would first earn some money offering himself for fellatio with a homosexual male, then take the money so earned and spend it on a female prostitute.
While it is clear that sailors in general are more tolerant of homosexual­ity than a cross-section of the land-dwelling population from which they come, the maritime subculture is not immune from the homophobia of that population. Sig­nificant numbers of sailors can also be found to endorse the strictly homophobic norms established by naval (if not mer­chant marine) authorities. While some captains ignore the official policy, and others enforce it only when inescapably brought to their attention, still others have been known to conduct vigorous witchhunting. As with many other mat­ters of shipboard
Ufe, the atmosphere with regard to homosexuality can vary enormously from one ship to another.
It should not surprise that signifi­cant numbers of young men who prefer the companionship of other males and feel little or no need for females have for centu­ries gone to sea. Those inclined toward passive roles have often found themselves welcomed by sexually frustrated crew-mates, while those inclined toward active roles have found it relatively easy to camouflage themselves as "straight" while practicing the sex they like best.
The Mystique of the Sailor. For the landlubbing civilian, sailors have of­ten had a romantic aura, and for homosex­ual males this has been supplemented by an uncommonly strong erotic mystique. This mystique is promoted by many sail­ors, who traditionally pride themselves on their erotic prowess, their experience of sexual variations from all over the world, their revealing skin-tight uniforms, and their abundant sexual energy stored up over weeks or months at sea. Some sea­men speculate that the constant vibra­tions of the powerful engines on ship make them especially horny. Perceived by homosexuals as hypersexual, relatively casual about homosexual contact, and easily plied with inhibition-loosening al­cohol, it is no wonder that even apparently heterosexual sailors were sought out and highly prized as sexual partners. The sail­ors, of course, were usually aware of this and often played up to it, resulting in a curious symbiosis of maritime and homo­sexual subcultures. In gay slang, sailors are called "seafood," probably reflecting their well-known (if scientifically undocu­mented) fondness for oral sex, and the men who are particularly drawn to them are called "seafood queens." In major ports, where the interaction of the two subcul­tures is strong, there are well-known places, times, and means of making contact. In Norfolk, Virginia (headquarters of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet), for example, there are so many available sailors that many of the "seafood queens" become specialists, adopting one particular ship and its crew or one occupational speciality (such as radarman or boatswain's mate) to the exclusion of others.
Not well known is the fact that a great deal of the motivation for those generally heterosexual sailors who become repeatedly involved with gay men as
trade is not sexual or financial at all. The young common sailor, generally at the bottom of the shipboard hierarchy and often dis­missed with contempt by civilians at large, finds himself treated like royalty, his male ego enhanced, his gripes given sympathetic attention. Instead of taking orders all the time, he finds himself in a position to give them. Instead of the usual sterile environ­ment of cramped shipboard quarters, he gets to relax in a home environment where he can kick back, watch television, and have his every need attended to.
Literary and Artistic Images. The sexual fascination with sailors was often expressed, though sometimes cryptically, in literary works. Major monuments are the sea novels of Herman Melville; in White-Jacket (1850) the title character declares, "sailors, as a class, entertain the most liberal notions concerning morality ... or rather, they take their own views of such matters." In 1895 Adolfo Caminha published a novel, Bom-Crioulo, offeringa frank view of an interracial affair between two Brazilian sailors. Among twentieth-century novels, Jean Genet's Querelle of Brest (1947) is outstanding for its transpo­sition of the sailor image into the author's own powerful moral universe. In its turn the book was made into a film by the German gay director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The multitalented Jean Cocteau offered a dual homage to sailors in poetry and drawings. Christopher Bram's novel Hold Tight (1988) portrays the spy-catching career of a sailor in a male brothel in New York City during World War II. The American painters Paul Cadmus and Charles Demuth showed sailors on shore leave as the object of the attention of gay men. Depictions of sailors, often empha­sizing the characteristic contours of the bell-bottom trousers and the jaunty set of the cap, have been a staple of pornographic drawings, photographs, and films.
Much research remains to be done, especially as regards homosexual behavior among Muslim, Chinese, Japa­nese, and other non-Western sailors. There can be no doubt, however, that seafaring, with its characteristic appeal to escape from the constraints of land-based civili­zation, has been a major focus of male homosexual imagination.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. E. Lawrence Gibson,
Get Off My Ship: Ensign Berg v. the U.S. Navy, New York: Avon, 1978; Arthur N. Gilbert, "Buggery and the British Navy, 1700-1861," Journal of Social History, 10 (1977), 72-98; Lawrence R. Murphy, Perverts by Official Order: The Cam­paign Against Homosexuals by the United States Navy, New York: Harrington Park Press, 1988; Jan Oosterhoff, "Sodomy at Sea and at the Cape of Good Hope During the Eight­eenth Century," Journal of Homosexual­ity, 16:1/2 (1988), 229-35; Thomas W. Sokolowski, The Sailor 1930-45: The Image of an American Demigod, Norfolk, VA: The Chrysler Museum, 1983.
Stephen Donaldson

S
elf-Esteem
Self-esteem refers to the evalu­ative dimension of the self-concept: the attitude that an individual adopts and customarily maintains with regard to the self as good or bad. It reflects the extent to which an individual believes the self to be capable, significant, and worthy. Self-es­teem thus implies an overall attitude of self-acceptance, self-respect, and self-worth independent of context. Rosenberg notes that "A person with high self-esteem is fundamentally satisfied with the type of person he is" while a person with low self-esteem "lacks respect for himself, consid­ers himself unworthy, inadequate, or oth­erwise seriously deficient as a person." In many ways; self-esteem is the quintessen­tial individual characteristic for Western society.
Theories Viewing Homosexual Persons as Deficient in Self-Esteem. Tra­ditional psychological and sociological theories frequently view the homosexual person as living a lonely, depressed life, conceiving and despising the self as infe­rior. This state exists, it is believed, be­cause of longstanding developmental handicaps that the homosexual condition imposes or because of the negative effects that a homophobic social world has on one's sense of identity. In either case, it appears inevitable and, to some, even jus­tifiable that the homosexual individual will devaluate the self, resulting in self-contempt and a negative self-image.
A plethora of theoretical and empirical work has appeared to explain the purported deficient self-esteem level of the gay and lesbian population. Most theories of gay and lesbian self-esteem focus on the etiological connection be­tween self-evaluation and sexual orienta­tion. For example, some psychoanalytic theorists attribute to homosexuality, by definition, a wide range of neurotic prob­lems that relate to how an individual evaluates himself or herself. Because of their developmental history, which is purported to be responsible for both the sexual orientation and the negative self-image, homosexual persons have (in this view) serious personality disturbances, engendering feelings of self-inadequacy, sadistic and masochistic behavior, and suicidal gestures.
Varying the theoretical perspec­tive but not the fundamental conclusions, sociological theorists are far less concerned with inner psychological dynamics. Rather, this perspective emphasizes the state of the external world and its subsequent impact on self-evaluation among homo­sexual persons. Low self-esteem is the result of internalizing negative values and attitudes - the reflected appraisals - of significant others in her or his world dur­ing the childhood years, especially those of parents, siblings, and teachers. There is a clear message given to the growing child: sexual minority youth often feel bad about themselves, have a poor self-image and low self-esteem and, especially during their teenager years, feel totally alone.
One need not necessarily experi­ence the negative social reactions di­rectly - say, by being harassed by peers or fired from a job; the imagined sense or expectation of negative sanctions can be more powerful than a direct assault on one's self-image. The mass media fre­quently incorporate anti-homosexual cul­tural meanings and behaviors; apprehen­sions of discrimination that can emanate from this exposure may have serious re­percussions for one's self-image as a gay or lesbian person.
More
Balanced Approaches. Empirical studies testing these theoretical assumptions concerning the negative self-esteem felt by gay men and lesbians were first stimulated by Evelyn Hooker's (1957) research with non-pathological homosex­ual individuals. She concluded that homó^ sexual persons are not necessarily malad­justed individuals filled with self-loathing and low self-esteem who experience diffi­culty in functioning. In a review of subse­quent empirical studies that compared the self-esteem level of gay and lesbian sub­jects with that of heterosexual men and women, Savin-Williams (1990) found that eight of the 16 studies comparing lesbians with heterosexual women found no differ­ence in mean self-esteem level; six, higher scores for lesbians; and two, higher scores for straight women. Eighteen of the 30 studies comparing males reported no dif­ference in self-esteem level; five, higher scores for gay men; and seven, higher scores for straight men.
Empirical research on the self-esteem of gay men and lesbians not only fails to substantiate the theoretical specu­lations of a number of writers, in the case of lesbians the findings tend to contradict
the psychological and sociological theo­rists. Apparently, despite the "develop­mental handicaps" of growing up alien­ated and alone within a heterosexual home and an alien society, most gay men and lesbians manage to evolve a healthy and positive self-image in the process of com­ing out.
Research Perspectives. It is not particularly profitable to focus on group differences in self-esteem level between gay and straight subjects. More important are investigations that explore the devel­opmental experiences of those gay and lesbian individuals who maintain a nega­tive self-image in contrast with those who view the self as a positive entity, thus apparently insulating themselves against societal messages to the contrary. If this focus becomes primary, then there is hope that the social sciences will be in a better position to address the fundamental issues of self-esteem among gay men and lesbi­ans. As a result, policies and programs that attempt to assist those gay and lesbian individuals who experience negative self-feelings and self-images will be better in­formed and thus more effective.
Equally critical is the need to expand the self-esteem literature beyond the evaluative aspect to embrace percep­tual and cognitive dimensions of the self. Especially needed are in-depth longitudi­nal studies that trace the evolving sense of self as a gay or lesbian person from the first moments of cognition in infancy and child­hood to full recognition - and acceptance - during maturity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Evelyn A. Hooker, "The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual,"
Journal of Projective Techniques, 21 (1957), 17-31; M. Rosenberg, Conceiving the Self, New York: Basic Books, 1979; R. C. Savin-Williams, Gay and Lesbian Youth: Expressions of Identity, Washington, DC: Hemisphere, 1990; Martin S. Weinberg and Colin J. Williams, Male Homosexuals: Their Problems and Adaptations, New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
Ritch Savin-Williams

Semiotics, Gay
In general usage semiotics denotes a scholarly discipline concerned with the interpretation of signs. Although the roots of the field go back at least to the time of John Locke (1632-1704), semiotics first drew notice from a larger public with the spread of the structuralist vogue in the 1960s and 1970s.
The expression
gay semiotics has been proposed with the more limited sense of the repertoire of symbols and artifacts displayed on the person to signal one's membership in the homosexual commu­nity or some sector of it - in short, tokens of sexual preference or allegiance. Typi­cally, these attributes of nonverbal com­munication have been chosen so that the meaning is evident to initiates but obscure to outsiders. In this respect gay semiotics recalls the symbolism of freemasonry, with the important difference that it is not decreed or regulated from above by some central authority, but disseminated by piecemeal invention from below. Abso­lute secrecy is not a necessity: in the case of the lambda pendant and the pink tri­angle button, the wearer may seek to elicit questions from the curious, which then give the gay person a cue to present his or her explanatory "rap."
Among sadomasochists, or those flirting with the idea, keys are worn exter­nally on the right or left to indicate the S or M respectively (though in some circles the laterality may be reversed). A similar func­tion is served by the red handkerchief protruding from the right or left back pocket. Urban folklore - assisted by com­mercially produced cards - maintains that there is a whole range of different hanky colors identifying different preferences, but the suggested guidelines do not seem to be followed very closely. As the key and handkerchief codes have spread to outsiders - a common feature of the diffu­sion of mass culture - the meaning has become blurred.
In the early 1980s some gay men took to carrying a small teddy bear in their back pocket to indicate their fondness for gentle personalized sex as distinct from what they perceived as the mechanical, unloving, sometimes brutal encounters of the time.
In the late 1980s the immense quilt sponsored by the Names Project and carried out by scores of local projects, all commemorating thousands who died of AIDS, produced a fascinating array of vis­ual iconography. The images of the indi­vidual panels were chosen and sewn by surviving friends and relatives. Some panels show emblems of favorite places where the person memorialized had lived; another shows an image - of Moscow - that the deceased had wished to visit; still others carry the insignia of the schools from which the deceased had received degrees. Passionate avocations, such as music and dance, are represented by appro­priate symbols, such as a clef, a piano keyboard, or the outline of a tapdancer. The use of sequins and bright, glittering colors reflects characteristic aspects of the gay image. Some have quotations alluding to the interests or the character of the in­dividual commemorated. In terms of the world history of funerary iconography, the symbols are usually "retrospective" - referring to joys and accomplishments during life - rather than "prospective" - directed toward a future life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Hal Fischer, Gay Semiotics: A Photographic Study of Visual Coding Among Gay Men, San Francisco: NFS Press, 1977; Cindy Ruskin, The Quilt: Stories from The Names Project, New York: Pocket Books, 1988.
Wayne R. Dynes

S
ensibility
In eighteenth-century English, under the stimulus of the proto-Romantic trend, the word "sensibility" acquired the meaning of "sensitive or ready capacity for emotional response, as distinct from intel­lect or will; acuteness of feeling," overlay­ing the earlier sense of "physical response to stimuli." More recently, the word has served to designate dimensions of feeling that are conceived as flourishing in certain groups, such as "feminine sensibility," "artistic sensibility." Although the possi­bility has often been canvassed, it seems unlikely that there is any single homosex­ual or lesbian sensibility, or mode of ex­pressing the group's way of looking at the world (which is scarcely unitary among the members of these groups). What may exist, however, are more restricted sensi­bilities cultivated by certain groups or schools of homosexual writers and artists, as in Bloomsbury or lesbian Paris in the 1920s.
This problem is related to the question of whether homosexual individu­als are endowed with a greater creative potential than other people. It might be thought that over the centuries the very stigmatizing of homosexuals and lesbians has fostered the development of inventive ways of dealing with the world. Thus far, however, such a phenomenon seems to have been shown only for certain types of wit, and then for limited periods of time (as in camp). It has not been possible to glean any empirical data supporting the folk belief in special homosexual creativity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Jean H. Hagstrum, Sex and Sensibility, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

S
eparatism, Lesbian
In its strongest form, lesbian separatism means social, cultural, and physical separation from all who are not lesbians. As society is now constituted this option is possible only for a very few. Many lesbians who regard themselves as separatists seek to live and work in cir­cumstances that are as far as possible "women's space," without insisting on the absolute exclusion of men. The term "lesbian separatist" is also sometimes used within the gay/lesbian movement for those who do not wish to work with gay men.
The Amazons, figures of Greek mythology rather than historical reality, are supposed to have lived in an all-female society, rejecting men and making war upon them. Aristophanes' play
Lysistrata (411 b.c.) shows Athenian women seced­ing from their city in a "sex strike," but only temporarily - until the men agree to make peace. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), a pioneering American so­cialist and feminist, wrote a novel, Herland (1915; reprinted 1979), depicting a Utopia in Africa populated only by women. In her own life Gilman's closest bonds were with other women, and she transmit­ted her distillation of the women-centered aspects of the first wave of feminism to the second.
In 1971 the New York group Radicalesbians published an essay, "The Woman Identified Woman," coining an expression that was to have considerable resonance. Discarding the exclusively sexual identification of the word lesbian, the essay proposed to identify the concept with a woman who chooses to place her energies with other women.
Outsiders tend to label lesbian separatists as "women who hate men." In their defense, separatists often say that what they are opposed to are the domi­neering, aggressive aspects of male behav­ior, rather than men themselves. They wish to make a clear statement that will set them apart from the ambivalent stance of heterosexual women, even those who profess feminism. Separatists believe that such straight women enter too readily into complicity with the power structure of patriarchy; by continuing to meet the sexual and emotional needs of men, these women give aid and comfort to the enemy.
Some women choose to form communes on "women's land," setting themselves apart from all males, includ­ing male children and animals. In so doing they hold that they are creating liberated zones in which their natures can grow unhampered by the dictates of patriarchy. They also affirm their protest against the practices of the society from which they have seceded. This solution, which never attracted large numbers of women, seemed to ebb in the late 1980s in the United States, though it has found advocates in other countries, notably West Germany.
Other women who identify as separatists have remained in physical proximity to men, while making their position known. They feel that, like members of ethnic minorities, they must be free to go anywhere, while remaining themselves. Some gay men, who assert that they are seeking to strengthen the feminine elements of their own personal­ity, are drawn to seek association with lesbian separatists, but they are usually told that they can make their best contri­bution through educating other men.
Some women have entered les­bian separatism for a number of years as part of a process of personal growth, only to emerge later with a more complex posi­tion. This seems to have been the experi­ence of a principal theorist of the move­ment, Charlotte Bunch, who remains a radical lesbian feminist.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Charlotte Bunch, Passionate Politics: Feminist Theory in Action, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987; Sarah Lucia Hoagland and Julia Penelope, eds., For Lesbians Only: A Separatist Anthology, London: Only-women Press, 1988.
Evelyn Gettone

S
ettembrini, Luigi (1813-1876)
Italian patriot and writer. Born in Naples, Settembrini took an active role in the movement for Italian unity. In 1851 the Bourbon regime condemned him as a conspirator, first to death, and then to prison. In 1859 he was helped to escape by his son, who diverted to Ireland the ship that was deporting him and others to America. He became an exile in England and then in Florence, where he continued to write and work for the cause. After the 1860 proclamation of the kingdom of Italy, he taught in the University of Naples. In 1876 he became a senator of the king­dom of Italy.
Settembrini was the author of the autobiographical
Ricoidanze della mia vita and many other works, including Lezioni di letteratura italiana and a translation of the works of Lucian of Samosata from the Greek, which is still used.
His homosexual side was first revealed in 1977, with the unexpected publication of a novella, Il
neoplatonici, a homoerotic fantasy set in ancient Greece. Written inl858-59whilehewasinprison, just after he completed the Lucian transla­tion, he sent the manuscript to his wife in the guise of a translation of an ancient Greek text. Remaining in his unpublished papers at the time of his death, the text was examined by Benedetto Croce, who counseled against publication.
1 neoplatonici is a short work, but one that conveys the author's intimate fantasies. Devoid of any real plot, it fol­lows the experiences of two boys who fall in love with one another and become lov­ers, concluding with a double (heterosex­ual) wedding. The story includes descrip­tions of sexual acts (anal) which have no parallel in Italian literature of Settembrini's time. Although the modest ambitions of the work place it outside the canon of the author's major works, it is nonetheless a dignified and serious text, written in a fresh, lively style, and endowed with a certain elegance.
Also noteworthy is the wholly positive and serene picture presented of homosexual relations. The author deliber­ately returned to a pre-Christian concept of (homo)sexuality, presenting same-sex love as an element of human life that is capable of giving joy and satisfaction. Moreover, the novella treats the link as both emotional and erotic - a rare accom­plishment for the period.
When the book was published a hundred years after the author's death, some hailed it as a "revelation" that Set­tembrini had homosexual relations while in prison. This suggestion remains a hy­pothesis, which as yet has no documen­tary support.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Luigi Settembrini, I neoplatonici (with introductory note by Giorgio Manganelli and preface by Raffaele Cantarella), Milan: Rizzoli, 1977.
Giovanni Dall'Orto

S
exism
Sexism is the assumption that the members of one sex collectively are superior to those of the other, together with the resultant differentiation prac­ticed against members of the supposed inferior sex, especially by men against women. The term is also used to designate conformity with the traditional stereo­typing of social roles on the basis of sex (social sex roles).
Conceptual Foundations. Mod­eled on racism and racist, the terms sex­ism and sexist do not seem to have been used before the mid 1960s. Unlike racists, some sexist males profess to cherish and admire members of the other sex, with whom they have intimate and family rela­tions. However, such admiration - the "pedestal theory" - is not incompatible with discrimination, as when it is held that women must be barred from certain occupations "for their own protection." The purported admiration of women by sexist men is also linked to sexual objectification - the reductive vision of women as simply bodies which are the object of lust rather than as full human beings. Although the matter remains controver­sial, some hold that overarching biological differences require difference of treatment in a few areas between men and women. Pregnancy leave is one example. More problematic is the question of differences in temperament, and even in styles of thought, between women and men. In any event, an increasing body of opinion in Western industrial society holds that women deserve equality of respect, to­gether with full access to positions of economic and political strength.
In the view of many feminists, sexism is rooted in an age-old system of patriarchy, the institution and ideology of male domination. Usually couched in the form of a blanket condemnation, this dis­course fails to allow sufficiently for grada­tions, which may be all-important to the situation of the individual. Because most positions of power are held by men in Sweden as well as Iran, we may conclude that both are subject to patriarchy, yet few would deny that the situation of women today in the first country is far better than in the second.
The spread of the term sexism has fostered the coinage of
ageism, classism, and even looksism, alongside the well-established elitism. Despite their seeming usefulness, all these terms have the qual­ity of epithets. In the usage of some they reveal a certain smugness, a confidence that "we" are superior to "them." Another term that has had some circulation is heterosexism, defined as the assumption that heterosexuality and its institutional forms are the only valid and socially beneficial arrangement, and that hetero­sexual values must prevail, without modi­fication. Unfortunately, in the political practice of gay advocacy organizations the term tends to be divisive, alienating poten­tial allies in the civil rights struggle who happen to be heterosexual. It ill behooves a group seeking pluralistic tolerance of its values and lifeways to appear to de­fame those of the majority.
Effects on Lesbians and Gay Men. Be this as it may, a good case can be made for the point that prejudice against male homosexuals and lesbians is rooted in the sense that they are not behaving in accor­dance with the norm appointed for their sex, and that they are in fact inverting this norm. Victorian society and its twentieth-century prolongation had a strong interest in promoting gender-role conformity and in censuring "sissies" and "tomboys."
Still, the effects of the practice of sexism are different for lesbians from what they are for gay men. Traditionally, lesbi­ans [who are often not perceived as such) have suffered discrimination as women. This existence of this pattern leads lesbi­ans to make common cause with hetero­sexual women in the feminist movement. On the other hand, insofar as there are benefits to women from sexist discrimina­tion these benefits may be endangered by the recasting of existing assumptions. Until recently, it has been assumed that, unless she is clearly unfit, the mother should receive custody of the children in divorce cases. Yet the questioning of this piece of traditional wisdom has been one of the legal strategies used, in many cases surely hypocritically, to deny lesbian mothers their children. On the whole, however, lesbians are willing to risk any complications that might ensue from dis­mantling discrimination against women, which affects them more severely. This is the case with lesbian couples, where both typically have low-paying jobs, as con­trasted with heterosexual couples, where the man at least receives the salary which in his profession is deemed adequate for the male head of a household.
Gay men hold that they too are victims of sexism inasmuch as they are regarded as womanish and not deserving of the same privileges as "true men." Yet discrimination in hiring and housing usu­ally takes the form of outright barring of homosexuals; that is to say, a gay man might be refused a j ob or an apartment that a woman would receive. Conversely, in an all male social club, gay men would be admitted. In both situations gay men and women are not equated. In promotions, however, gay men may be passed over because they are held to be wimpish, unstable, and unfitted for executive jobs. Here their situation approximates to that of women, whose "flightiness" and "sus­ceptibility to emotional moodswings" ostensibly bar them from positions in the upper echelons of business and govern­ment. According to some feminists, such complaints on the part of gay men are trivial, inasmuch as gay men benefit qua men from the privileges accorded to a whole gender class. However, these bene­fits are differently apportioned, as the category of race shows, for black men do not benefit (if at all) to the same degree as white men. These are only a few of the complexities involved, and they suggest that, as an analytical tool, "sexism" is rather blunt.
Modern industrial society is undergoing rapid technological and social change, and in the course of this transition it is impossible to foresee what the ulti­mate arrangements will be. While the discussion of sexism has often been heated and rhetorical, thoughtful observers of social policy must remain indebted to it for raising essential questions of human dignity and power.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. David L. Kiip, Mark G. Yudloff, and Marlene Strong Franks, Gender Justice, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
Wayne R. Dynes

S
ex Negative, Sex Positive
This polarity owes its inception to Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957), who sought to synthesize Freud and Marx in a style acceptable to the leftist intelligentsia in Central Europe of the 1920s. The basic hypothesis is that some societies accept the inherent value of sexual expression and indeed insist on it as a prerequisite of mental health, while other human groups despise sexuality and are ceaselessly in­ventive in devising austerities and prohi­bitions as a means of social control.
Despite its seeming radicalism, the exaltation of "sex positivism" per­petuated the sentimental idealism of some eighteenth-century explorers and ethno­graphers who contrasted the supposed sexual paradise of the South Seas (for ex­ample, theTamoe of the Marquis de Sade's
Aline et Valcour [1791]) with the ascetic regimes of pre-Enlightenment Europe, in which Catholic and Protestant vied in cul­tivating stringent codes of sexual moral­ity. In our own day, some homophile writ­ers such as Wainwright Churchill charac­teristically see ancient Greece as a "sex positive" culture because it tolerated and even fostered pederastic relation­ships among males of the upper classes. The situation of Greek women these writ­ers pass by in silence. Popular authors of books on "the sexual history of mankind" have reveled in depicting the joys of life in temporally and spatially remote but uninhibited societies where the burdens of chastity are unknown and sexual bliss is the lot of one and all. Such golden-age fantasies are part of the the discourse of utopianism.
In truth, all cultures regulate sexual behavior in one way or another. No human society allows its members, what­ever their age, sex, or social status, to interact sexually with one another with­out restriction. Indeed, there are not a few in which heterosexual intercourse, even with the full consent of the adult partici­pants, can be punished by ostracism, mutilation, or even death if it involves, say, a liaison between a male of a lower caste and a female of a higher one. Also, the concern with the legitimacy of one's offspring causes the sexual freedom of the nubile or married female to be severely restricted in nearly all cultures, as no society wants a horde of children with no assignable father deposited "on its door­step."
If the myth of complete sexual freedom, however appealing it may be to critics of Western sexual mores, is un­founded, what factors promoted its accep­tance? One is the greater licence accorded by many cultures to the foreigner - the tourist or anthropologist - for a variety of psychological and economic reasons, in­cluding the undeniable appeal of the ex­otic partner and the practical demand in tourist resorts for prostitutes and hustlers to serve the guests, even though similar behavior would not be tolerated in a native village fifteen miles away. Also, the availa­bility of teenaged partners to the foreigner may reflect only the circumstance that children are virtually forced into prostitu­tion by families for whom this form of exploitation is a lucrative source of in­come. Such a situation has nothing in common with the "sexual freedom" on which the leaders of the sexual reform movement liked to expatiate, it is rather a survival of slavery and feudalism in the Third World. Also, even if certain prac­tices are tolerated, the circle of persons who may engage in them without being repudiated by their families or punished by the civil authority is much narrower than Westerners - furnished with a for­eign passport and a source of income from outside the country - can ever be aware. Everywhere wealth and power do impart a degree of freedom to gratify one's sexual desires, including even those tabooed by the larger society, but this is not an egali­tarian right, it is a privilege of the elite in a hierarchical, class regime of the kind that the left would abolish if it could - at least in theory. The concrete practice of the states in the socialist bloc is another matter. Finally, many cultures have pu­berty rites that entail exceedingly painful practices such as circumcision, subincision, clitoridectomy ("female circumci­sion"), tattooing, mutilation, and the like - scarcely the Western ideal of an unin­hibited adolescence.
What probably forms a line of demarcation is whether asceticism ranks as an ideal of behavior for everyone, or only as a norm for those with a religious voca­tion that does not affect the rest of the community. Medieval Christianity did profess an ascetic ideal that would forever place homosexual activity outside the pale of morality, since it can never serve the end of procreation within lawful mar­riage, and all other forms of attachment were denied the right of sexual expression.
Other cultures have seen pleasure as a good in itself, quite apart from the procreative aspect, but the pursuit of pleasure, as in the case of the prostitute, could also entail becoming a social outcast with no prospects of conventional marriage. So the freedom of one was purchased at the price of another's degradation or servitude.
All these considerations reveal only how far modern Western civilization is from a solution to the "sexual problem," a solution that must take into account the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, the possibility of unwanted preg­nancy, and similar misfortunes. Even if a future society adopts a wholly positive attitude toward sexual pleasure, the need to shield both the individual and the col­lective from the negative consequences of unregulated sexual practice poses a prob­lem that cannot be wished away.
Warren Johansson

S
exual Liberty and the Law
Sexual liberty has been of par­ticular interest in Anglo-Saxon thought. The reception of the Enlightenment from the Continent, from Beccaria, Filangieri, the French philosophes, and the Code Napoléon mandated a reexamination of common law traditions that long resisted the wave of criminal law reform.
The ideas of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) have been enormously influ­ential in this sphere. Perhaps unaware of his father James' friend Jeremy Bentham's incisive unpublished treatises arguing for the decriminalization of sodomy, Mill defended individual liberties and in the tradition of the
philosophes urged mini­mal state interference with speech and conduct of individuals. Mill's ideas have not gone unchallenged. Champions of traditional Judeo-Christian morality, in­cluding Sir fames Fitzjames Stephen in 1874 and Baron PatrickDevlin in the 1960s, argued that a society that failed to control the morality of individuals would disinte­grate.
Hart's Defence of Liberty. In Law, Liberty and Morality (1963) Professor Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart sets forth the best analytical argument against the suppression of victimless sexual offenses: the criminal law itself inflicts suffering by requiring that some persons repress their "anti-social" urges. This is of particular importance in the case of the laws enforc­ing a sexual morality that may create misery of a special degree. For both the difficulties involved in the repression of sexual impulses and the consequences of repression are quite different from those involved in the abstention from "ordinary crime." The imposition of sexual morality by state power interferes with the person­ality of the individual far more than do laws simply meant to curb the criminal underworld.
As to the outrage of tradition-minded and religious individuals Hart replied: "For offence to feelings, it may be said, is given not only when immoral ac­tivities or their commercial preliminaries are thrust upon unwilling eyewitnesses, but also when those who strongly con­demn certain sexual practices as immoral learn that others indulge in them in pri­vate." The law can offer no relief to those who experience moral outrage at the thought that others may be engaging in conduct which they deem immoral. "To punish people for causing this form of distress would be tantamount to punish­ing them simply because others object to what they do; and the only liberty that could coexist with this extension of the utilitarian principle is liberty to do things to which no one seriously objects. Such liberty is plainly quite nugatory." Individ­ual liberty entails the right to engage in conduct which others find objectionable or distasteful; this is inseparable from the very notion - "unless, of course, there are other good grounds for forbidding it. No social order which accords to individual liberty any value" could also confirm the adherents of the Judeo-Christian tradition in the right to live in a society free of behavior which that tradition condemns. They may rightly insist on being protected from public display of such behavior, but not from private.
Rebuttal of Devlin. In reply to Devlin's assertion that a society requires a shared morality, Hart claims that "(t]here seems, however, to be central to Lord Devlin's thought something more inter­esting, though no more convincing, than the conception of social morality as a seamless web. For he appears to move from the acceptable proposition that some shared morality is essential to the exis­tence of any society to the unacceptable proposition" that any change in the moral code of a society is coterminous with its destruction.
Devlin's views evidently reflect the wish to restate the sexual morality of medieval or Reformation
Christianity in the guise of an abstract concept of moral­ity as tantamount to the loyalty which the citizen owes to the modern state: "It is clear that only this tacit identification of a society with its shared morality supports Lord Devlin's denial that there could be such a thing as private immorality and his comparison of sexual immorality, even when it takes place 'in private,' with trea­son. No doubt it is true that if deviations from conventional sexual morality are tolerated by the law and come to be known, the conventional morality might change in a permissive direction, though this does not seem to be the case with homosexual­ity in those European countries where it is not punishable by law." For the Christian moralist, though not the liberal thinker, any departure from a moral code held revealed and immutable is divine lèse-majesté, which a secular state must con­vert into the notion of "treason" to find an equivalent.
Devlin upholds the view now totally disavowed by reputable historians that "history shows that the loosening of moral bonds is often the first stage of [social] disintegration." This kind of gen­eralization about the dangers of deca­dence filled the moralizing history text­books of past generations, and was even the standard explanation of the fall of Rome. Today this myth lies buried under the weight of the accumulated mass of anthropological, sociological, historical, and other scholarly evidence and is in­voked only by the half-educated when they need a generalization to support their resistance to change - which is an ines­capable characteristic of human institu­tions. Devlin's wish to confer immutabil­ity upon the Tudeo-Christian condemna­tion of homosexuality through claiming that morals do not change, only the degree of society's toleration of their violation, amounts to a play on words. The increased toleration is a proof that people's ideas about the validity of the principle have in fact changed, even if religious conserva­tives who believe in the divine origin of moral norms would like to maintain that having once been "revealed" they cannot change throughout eternity.
Legislation and Public Opinion. Hart next takes up the argument - a seri­ous one when one considers the motives of legislators who must submit their voting records to the approval of their constitu­ents - that the irrational aversion and dis­gust caused by homosexuality justify the retention of penal sanctions: "The convic­tion that such practices [homosexuality] are morally wrong is surely inseparable in the mind of the majority from instinctive repulsion and the deep feeling that they are 'unnatural.'" Devlin maintained that English law had a standard of its own - the reasonable man, the right-minded man, "the man in the Clapham omnibus" - who should not be obliged to argue why conduct that he instinctively feels to be abominable is abominable." Such think­ers as Kurt Hiller in his legal dissertation on The Right Over One's Self (1908) and Coenraad van Emde Boas in his thesis on Shakespeare's Sonnets and the Double Disguise Plays ( 1952) had earlier discussed this issue of the subjective response to homosexual behavior ("the vital aversion") which exists quite independent of any­thing in the book of Leviticus or in the canon law of the Christian church, freely admitting that the barely educated "masses" still shared the medieval beliefs and attitudes, and that only an enlight­ened minority of intellectuals were ac­tively promoting the new credo of sexual freedom. In this matter Hart seems to retreat into the defense that the minority should be allowed the right to its tolerant views, even if the majority persists in re­jecting them.
Intellectual Liberty. The freeplay of ideas in the marketplace, Hart pointed out, has undermined traditional platitudes: "The real solvent of social morality, as one critic of Lord Devlin has pointed out, [Richard Wollheim, Crime, Sin, and Mr. Justice Devlin, p. 40] is not the failure of the law to endorse its restrictions with legal punishment, but free critical discus­sion. It is this - or the self-criticism which it engenders - that forces apart mere in­stinctive disgust from moral condemna­tion. If in our own day the 'overwhelming moral majority' has become divided or hesitant over many issues of sexual mo­rality, the main catalysts have been mat­ters to which the free discussion of sexual morals, in the light of the discoveries of anthropology and psychology, has drawn attention." This amounts to little more than saying that because the sexual reform movement has called the traditional be­liefs into question by undermining the complacency with which they were ac­cepted - since this rested in the last analy­sis on their supposed divine origin - they should no longer be enforced even if the majority still upholds them. Moreover, Hart replicates Mill's and the eighteenth-century liberals' fear of the tyranny of the majority: "It seems fatally easy to believe that loyalty to democratic principles en­tails acceptance of what may be termed moral populism: the view that the major­ity have a moral right to dictate how all should live. This is a misunderstanding of democracy which still menaces individ­ual liberty." In other words, if the authori­tarian state of the Middle Ages had the right to legislate personal morality, it has not bequeathed it to the majority in a modern democratic one, though conserva­tives may in this case appeal to the tradi­tion-minded majority against the reform­ers.
Hart summarized: "Whatever other arguments there may be for the en­forcement of morality, no one should think even when popular morality is supported by an 'overwhelming majority' or marked by widespread 'intolerance, indignation, and disgust' that loyalty to democratic principles requires him to admit that its imposition on a minority is justified."
Conclusion. Although National Socialist and Communist totalitarians have repressed both religion and sexual freedom, the history of the struggle for homosexual rights within democratic societies has been in some sense a duel between the sexual reform movement on the one hand and the church and its heirs and allies on the other. The latter have been able to win not a few victories at the polls and in the legislatures by appealing to the residue of medieval "intolerance, indignation, and disgust" in the elector­ate. Gay liberation is confronted with the task of fighting an uphill battle against the defenders of traditional sexual moral­ity, in no small measure because in the English-speaking world classical liberal­ism long shirked its task of reforming criminal laws of sexual offenses.
On the positive side, President Reagan's nominee, Robert Bork, failed to gain confirmation by the Senate to the Supreme Court (1987) in large part because he was regarded as the leading exponent of attempts to legislate morality in the Judeo-Christian tradition of Stephen and Devlin, against the pragmatic tradition of minimizing societal control over the indi­vidual embodied in the American Bill of Rights and later amendments, and so elo­quently supported by Bentham and Mill in the nineteenth century and Hart in the twentieth. Modifying his views, Devlin himself was later to write in The Judge (1979): "It is generally agreed that there was no consensus, probably not even a bare majority,... for the reformation of the laws against homosexuality. Nevertheless [the change was made and] has surely helped to promote a more tolerant attitude to homosexuals." He thus conceded that legislative reform could justifiably be enacted in advance of changes in public opinion, and that the effect of such legisla­tion might feed back onto that public opinion in a salutary way.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Carl F. Cranor, "The Hart-Devlin Debate," Criminal Justice Ethics, 2:1 (1983), 59-65; Patrick Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals, London: Oxford University Press, 1965; Coenraad van Emde Boas, Shakespeare's sonnetten en hun verband met de travesti-double spelen: een medisch-psychologische Studie, Amsterdam: Wereld-Bibliothek, 1952; H. L. A. Hart, Law, Liberty, and Morality (The Harry Camp Lectures), London: Oxford University Press, 1963; Kurt Hiller, Das Recht über sich selbst: eine strafrechtsphilosophische Studie, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1908; Richard D. Mohr, Gays/Justice: A Study of Ethics, Society and Law, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988; David A. J. Richards, The Moral Criticism of Law, Encino, CA: Dickenson Publishing Company, 1977. William A. Percy and Arthur C. Wamer

S
exually Transmitted Diseases
Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), also called venereal diseases, are among the most common infectious disor­ders in the world at the end of the twenti­eth century. They affect men and women of all backgrounds and economic levels. However, they are most prevalent among teenagers and young adults; nearly one-third of all cases occur in teenaged sub­jects. Homosexual men suffer dispropor­tionately from STDs, while lesbians are scarcely affected by them, for reasons having to do with the anatomical and physiological differences in their manner of sexual intimacy and greater male promiscuity.
The incidence of STDs in the general population is rising; after World War IT young people began to cross the threshold of sexual maturity earlier, be­coming sexually active at an earlier age, and having multiple sexual partners. The tendency of homosexual men to engage in promiscuous sexual activity was rein­forced by the freedom that came in the liberal 1970s, when much of the illegality and clandestinity attached to the search for partners of the same sex vanished. But the new condition called Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), first reported in the United States in 1981, struck down thousands of homosexual men until studies of the etiology and trans­mission identified the specific practices that were responsible for its spread. Since then, the greater number of new cases has shifted to intravenous drug abusers. However, no effective immunizing agent or therapy for the condition had been discovered as of 1989. Lesbians, on the other hand, were no more subject to AIDS than they had been to the classical STDs.
Gonorrhea. The classic venereal disease is gonorrhea, attested since classi­cal antiquity; it was, down to the appear­ance of AIDS, the most common STD among homosexual men. It is caused by the gonococcus, a bacterium that grows and multiplies rapidly in moist, warm areas of the body such as the urinary tract or the rectum (it does not survive long in the mouth, but can sometimes lodge in the throat), while in women the cervix is the most common site of infection. Gonor­rhea is usually localized; however, the disease can spread to the ovaries and fallo­pian tubes, resulting in pelvic inflamma­tory disease, which can cause infertility and other serious conditions. The early symptoms of gonorrhea are mild, and some infected individuals display no symptoms of the disease; this is one rea­son why it is so readily transmitted. Men infected in the urinary tract usually have a discharge from the penis and a burning sensation during urination that may be severe. Symptoms of rectal infection include discharge, anal itching, and sometimes painful bowel movements. The disease is treated with antibiotics such as penicillin, though there is increas­ing concern about the emergence of new strains of penicillin-resistant gonorrhea. Regardless of the drug prescribed, the pa­tient should take the full course of me­dication and then return to the clinic for a follow-up test to determine whether the infection has been completely elimi­nated. In the 1970s, because of the ease with which gonorrhea could be treated, not a few homosexual men developed a nonchalance about the frequency with which they contracted gonorrhea and an indifference to prophylactic measures, so that the incidence of the disease was far higher than among heterosexuals of the same race and social class.
Syphihs. The disease of syphilis made its appearance in the first stage of the formation of the global metasystem, which is to say, the network of economic and political relations that includes all of the regional subsystems. This initial stage occurred in the years 1480-1520, when the voyages of discovery reshaped the image of the world and laid the foundation for the global economy that was to be created in the following centuries. Although the matter is still disputed by medical histori­ans, the weight of the evidence inclines to the view that syphilis was confined to the Caribbean until the sailors of Columbus brought it back to Spain on their return voyage in 1493. Carried by sailors and soldiers - even today high-risk groups for STDs - syphilis rapidly spread to the other end of the Old World, so that by 1522, when Magellan's ships arrived at the Phil­ippine Islands, it was already known there as "the Frankish [= European] disease."
Syphilis is today readily treated with antibiotics, but if left untreated, in its tertiary stage it can cause mental disor­ders, blindness, and death. It is caused by a corkscrew-shaped bacterium called
Treponema pallidum. The systemic in­fection is acquired by direct contact with the sores of someone who has an active in­fection. Though usually transmitted through the mucous membranes of the genital area, the mouth, or the anus, the bacterium can also pass through lesions on the skin of other parts of the body. A pregnant woman with syphilis can give the disease to her unborn child, who may be bom with serious damage to the central nervous system. Also, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the practice of bleeding was common, syphilis was occasionally transmitted by shared cupping glasses, much as AIDS is now contracted by the shared needles of IV-drug users.
Because the early symptoms of syphilis may be quite mild, many people fail to seek treatment when they first become infected. Such untreated carriers can infect others during the primary and secondary stages of the disease, which may last as much as two years. The first symp­tom of
primary syphilis is an open sore called a chancre, which can appear from 10 days to 3 months after exposure (usually 2-6 weeks). Ordinarily painless and some­times even inside the body, the chancre may go unnoticed. It is usually found on the area of the body exposed to the bacte­ria, such as the penis, the vulva, or the vagina. A chancre may also develop on the cervix, tongue, lips, or fingertips. Within a few weeks it disappears, but the disease continues its progress, and if not treated in the primary stage, may evolve through three further stages.
Secondary syphilis is marked by a skin rash that appears from 2 to 12 weeks after the chancre disappears. The rash may extend to the whole body or be con­fined to a few areas such as the palms of the hands or the soles of the feet. In these sores active bacteria are present that may spread the infection through contact with the broken skin of the infected party. The rash may be accompanied by influenza-like symptoms such as mild fever, fatigue, headache, sore throat, and patchy hair loss, swollen lymph glands throughout the body, and other disorders. The rash usually heals within several weeks or months, and the other symptoms subside as well. The signs of secondary syphilis occasionally come and go over a period of one to two years; like those of the previous stage, the symp­toms of the secondary one may be mild enough to go unnoticed.
If untreated, syphilis lapses into a latent stage during which the patient is no longer contagious. Many individuals who are not treated will suffer no further conse­quences of the disease. However, 15 per­cent to 40 percent of those infected go on to develop the complications of late, or tertiary syphilis, in which the bacteria inflict damage on the heart, eyes, brain, nervous system, bones, joints, or almost any other part of the body, sometimes causing paralysis. This stage can run into years or even decades.
There are three ways of diagnos­ing syphilis: a physician's recognition of its symptoms, microscopic identification of syphilitic bacteria, and blood tests, of which the last are not always reliable, as they can result in false positive results in people with autoimmune disorders or certain viral infections.
Syphilis is treated with penicil­lin, administered by injection; for pa­tients allergic to penicillin other antibiot­ics can be used. Twenty-four hours after beginning therapy a carrier of syphilis usually can no longer transmit it. A small number of patients fail to respond to the standard doses of penicillin, so that it is necessary for patients to have periodic repeated blood tests to ascertain that the infectious agent has been completely destroyed and that there is no further trace of the disease in his organism. Proper treatment will cure the disease at any stage, but in late syphilis the damage done to body organs is irreversible.
AIDS. Acquired Immunodefi­ciency Syndrome made its appearance in the last phase of the formation of the global metasystem - the period after 1960. Somewhat hypothetically, scientists have reconstructed its origins as follows. When the former African colonies were emanci­pated from the tutelage of the metropoli­tan countries and a network of commer­cial air lines was established that brought hitherto remote areas of Central Africa within 36 hours' flying time of the major cities of the globe, a rare condition that had been found in isolated cases in the neigh­borhood of Lake Victoria began to spread to the United States, Brazil, and Western Europe.- Others dispute this theory of Afri­can origin.
Individual cases occurred in the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s, but only in 1981 was the condition recog­nized and named. The majority opinion was that it was caused by a virus (Human Immunodeficiency Virus; HIV) that de­stroys the body's ability to fight off infec­tion, so that the victim becomes suscep­tible to many fatal diseases, called oppor­tunistic infections, and to certain forms of cancer, as well as a characteristic malig­nant form of Kaposi's sarcoma.
At the outset, most victims of the condition in the United States were homo­sexual men in their late twenties or thir­ties, though in Central Africa it is princi­pally an affliction of heterosexuals. After some floundering, researchers ascer­tained that passive
anal intercourse was at the highest risk in sexual transmission, though many continued to assere that all exchange of bodily fluids must be avoided. Health officials, the media, and gay organi­zations vigorously promoted "safe sex" techniques as a means of avoiding AIDS. The gay community voiced urgent de­mands for more funds for research, ther­apy, and care for people with AIDS, but an effective cure eluded the best efforts of medical science. Other victims of AIDS were intravenous (IV) drug users, hemo­philiacs, and children born to women who had contracted the condition mainly by sharing needles with other IV-drug users. Lesbians remained essentially un­touched by the epidemic because of the different techniques which they employed to achieve sexual gratification.
OtherSTDs. Other sexually trans­mitted diseases include chlamydial infec­tions, genital herpes, and genital warts. Chlamydial infections are now the com­monest of all STDs, with some three to four million new cases occurring each year. They often have no symptoms and are diagnosed only when complications de­velop. Occurring in both men and women, they are treated with an antibiotic drug such as tetracycline. Genital herpes is a disease primarily of heterosexuals that has remained incurable; the major symptoms are painful blisters or open sores in the genital area. Even though the sores disap­pear in two or three weeks' time, the virus remains in the body and the lesions may recur. Genital warts are caused by a virus related to the one that causes common skin warts. They are generally treated with a topical drug applied to the skin, or by freezing. If the warts are very large, surgery may be needed to remove them.
Infectious hepatitis, a disorder of the liver, may be transmitted through poor sanitation and infected food. For this rea­son its additional status as a sexually trans­mitted disease, was for a long time ig­nored. Yet it was commonly acquired by gay men, sometimes through oral-anal contact ("rimming"). In fact, until the introduction of a vaccine in the early 1980s, the gay male rate of hepatitis was ten times the United States national average.
Prevention. The danger posed to the gay male community - and to a sexu­ally more permissive society - by STDs has led to the adoption of "safe sex" guide­lines for intimacy with casual partners or complete strangers, and to the revival of the condom, a sheath for the penis which was invented in England about 1705. Origi­nally it was made of animal intestine, but now it is usually fashioned of very thin rubber. As a simple, cheap, and largely effective if not aesthetically pleasing de­vice it was used in heterosexual inter­course earlier in this century mainly to prevent conception, but found little appli­cation in homosexual pairing since the chance of impregnation was non-existent. In the 1980s this attitude changed, and the gay media paid much attention to con­doms. Special models appeared that are claimed to be superior for anal (as distinct from vaginal) penetration, and fear of dis­ease has inspired the use of the sheath even for oral-genital contact. In any event, the sexual abandon that characterized much homosexual life in the 1970s has become fraught with danger, and the adage "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" has gained renewed meaning.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. King K. Holmes and Per-Anders Mardh, et al., eds., Sexually Transmitted Diseases, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983; M. Laurence Lieberman, The Sexual Pharmacy: The Complete Guide to Drugs with Sexual Side Effects, New York: NAL Books, 1988; Pearl Ma and Donald Armstrong, eds., The Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and Infections of Homosexual Men, Brooklyn, NY: Yorke Medical Books, 1984; David G. Ostrow, ed, Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Homosexual Men, New York: Plenum, 1983.
Warren Johansson

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hakespeare, William (1564-1616)
Playwright and poet, often con­sidered to be the greatest writer in the English language. Of tenant farmer stock and the son of a glover, Shakespeare was bom in the provincial town of Stratford-upon-Avon in England; however, the very few facts known about his life are derived from various legal documents. In 1582, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children within the next three years; the following five years are unac­counted for, but by 1594 he was involved in the theatre world in London as both an actor and a playwright. He enjoyed an increasingly successful theatrical career until his retirement in 1612 and his return to Stratford.
With so few substantiated facts about his biography, one can only turn with some reservation to his works for insight into the man. An undisputed master of both poetry and human nature, Shakespeare is the author of some of the most enduring classics in world literature:
Richaid III (1591), Romeo and Juliet (1595), As You Like It (1599), Hamlet (1600), Twelfth Night (1601), Othello (1604), King Leai (1605), Macbeth (1606), and The Tem­pest (1611), among his 3 7 plays. Given the almost complete range of human- experi­ence chronicled in these works, one can state little about the author's own charac­ter and personality without conjecture.
Shakespeare's prolonged separa­tion from his wife and the stipulation in his will that she inherit his "second best bed" has, however, sparked much debate about his sexuality.
The Plays. A search of the plays reveals little advocacy for homosexuality, if much tolerance and compassion for all types of benign variations of human be­havior. While his plays are peopled with many passive and introspective men (such as Hamlet and Richard II) as well as aggres­sive and independent women (such as Rosalind in As You Like It and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing), no distinctly gay characters are evident. Some critics have singled out the sensuous and seem­ingly asexual Enobarbus of Antony and Cleopatra, the effete fop who incites the aggressively masculine Hotspur in Henry IV, or the doting and infatuated Sebastian of Twelfth Night as prototypes, but such designations are inconclusive.
Historically, however, theatrical companies of Shakespeare's time did not employ women; instead, their roles were played by boys, apprentices to the compa­nies. In adherence to the laws and sympa­thies of the times, the plays were, there­fore, unable to display any overtly sexual behavior, but one of Shakespeare's most frequent plot devices was to have his hero­ines disguise themselves as boys, particu­larly in the comedies. Thus, what in real­ity was a boy pretending to be a woman pretending to be a boy leads to some psy­chologically acute and complex scenes with homoerotic suggestions, such as the en­counters between Rosalind (as Ganymede, a name rich in suggestiveness) and Orlando in
As You Like It and Viola (as Caesario) and Orsino in Twelfth Night.
The Sonnets.
For more substan­tive evidence, one must turn instead to Shakespeare's sequence of 154 poems in the form of sonnets, published surrepti­tiously in 1609 and immediately protested by their author. Probably intended as a personal exercise for private circulation, the sonnets may be the works that reveal something of the man himself; in them, Shakespeare names the persona "Will," an obviously personal and intimate dimi­nution of William, and, as in most of the Renaissance sonnet sequences, their subject is erotic love.
Dedicated to "Mr. W. H.," who has been variously identified as the Earl of Southampton, a boy actor named Willy Hewes, Shakespeare himself (in a misprint of his initials), someone unknown to his­tory, or someone invented, the first 126 are clearly homoerotic, while most of the others concern a woman conventionally called"theDarkLady." Historically, those scholars who begrudgingly admit to their subject matter try to discount their mes­sage. Most claim that the attraction the persona feels for the fair young man is either platonic or unconsummated; others assert that the poems are only examples of the Renaissance male friendship tradition. Still others insist on the fallacy of equating the persona with the poet and confusing literature with autobiography.
However, a close reading reveals a genuine emotional bond quite clearly consummated physically, one that grows and develops over a period of time, one threatened by a rival poet as well as the Dark Lady herself, also the mistress of the persona and also in pursuit of Mr. W. H. If not homosexual, the sensibility behind the poems is decidedly bisexual, and if not William Shakespeare, "Will" is a voice that speaks with convincing experience. Those who minimize the homoeroticism of the sonnets fail to consider why a hetero­sexual poet would choose homosexual love and desire as his subject matter. They also fail to give credit to the persona, in Sonnet 121, when he says "I am that I am."
Conclusion. Shakespeare's sexual identity will probably always be specula­tive, but this in no way diminishes the achievement of a playwright who could sensitively chart the full range of human involvement in a compassionate portrait of human diversity. But without question, Shakespeare is the author of some of the finest lyric poems to describe gay love and passion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Alan Bray, Homosexu­ality in Renaissance England, London: Gay Men's Press, 1982; Marilyn French, Shakespeare's Division of Experience, New York: Ballantine, 1981; Joseph Pequigney, Such Is My Love: A Study of Shakespeare's Sonnets, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985; Samuel Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Rodney Simaid

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hamanism
In the strict sense, shamanism is a phenomenon of the magical and reli­gious life of Siberia and Central Asia. At its core lies a specific technique of ecstasy of which the shaman alone is the master, specializing in a trance during which his soul is believed to leave his body and either ascend to the heavens or descend to the underworld. The shaman further controls his spirits in the sense that as a human being, he is able to communicate with the dead, with demons, and with nature spirits without becoming their instrument. He is invested with power over fire and enjoys a unique method of healing. Shamans be­long to the elect who have access to a region of the sacred that is closed to other members of the community.
Siberia. The connection of homo­sexuality with shamanism was noted by the classic investigators of the subject. Waldemar Bogoras mentions that, under the influence of a Siberian shaman, a Chukchi lad at sixteen years of age will suddenly relinquish his sex and imagine himself to be a woman. He adopts female dress, lets his hair grow, and devotes himself entirely to female occupations. Disclaiming his sex, he takes a husband into the hut and performs all the work usually incumbent upon the wife. This change of gender identity is strongly en­couraged by the shamans, who interpret such cases as an injunction of their indi­vidual deity. The gender shift coincides with entry into shamanhood, and nearly all the shamans are individuals who have left their sex.
There are three degrees of eff emination of the male. The lowest grade con­sists simply in the feminine style of the hairdo. The second is marked by the adop­tion of female clothing, which can be for shamanistic or therapeutic purposes; it need not entail a complete change of sex. That is the third stage, in which the sub­ject, aided by the spirits, learns all the female handicrafts, begins to speak in a feminine mode, and even acquires the physical weakness and helplessness of a woman. He becomes a woman with the physical appearance of a man. He con­tracts a marriage with a man which is then solemnized in the usual fashion, and the couple lives together as man and wife, with the "wife" taking the passive role in sexual relations. The shaman also has a special protector among the spirits who functions as a kind of supernatural hus­band, regarded as the real head of the family who gives orders through the "wife," which the husband is duty-bound to exe­cute. The effeminate shaman is feared by other shamans who have not undergone the change of sex, because he alone has the spirit protector who can avenge any wrong done to his
protege.
In speaking of the Koriaks, Stefan Krasheninnikov refers to men who occupy the position of concubines, comparing them in turn to the "men transformed into women" of the Kamchadale. Every one of the latter is regarded as a magician and interpreter of dreams, wears women's clothes, does women's work, and has the status of a concubine. The homoeroticism of the Koriaks was interpreted by Bogoras and Waldemar Jochelson as an outgrowth of the shamanic, but in turn as a monopoly of the profession of shaman held by the homosexual. In olden times, according to Jochelson, shamans "transformed" into women were not rare among the Koriaks, and were even regarded as the most pow­erful of their ilk. They entered into mar­riages with men, or became second wives when a female wife was already present. Professional shamans have guardian spir­its who appear to them in the guise of animals or birds, typically as wolves, bears, seagulls, eagles, or lapwings. The future shamans are often nervous youths who suffer from attacks of hysteria during which the spirits order them to devote themselves to shamanism. Those in the process of becoming shamans pass through a stage of fits of wild paroxysm alternat­ing with states of total exhaustion. The phenomenon was declining among the Koriaks early in the twentieth century following their conversion to Russian Orthodoxy.
The Broader Context. Edward Carpenter understood the shaman as the precursor of a higher stage of cultural evolution, a variation of the human type that sprang from a variant of the sexual orientation itself, or rather of the germ plasm that underlies that orientation. Such classes of men and women, diverging as they do from the norm of sexuality, be­come repositories and foci of new kinds of lore and new techniques of control over the world of spirits and divinities feared and adored by the rest of their tribe. The primitive development of the intellectual, as opposed to the purely physical, aspects of culture was first embodied in the shamanistic type, which rejected the custom­ary activities of the hunter and warrior in favor of a sacral occupation. The supersti­tious belief that the spirits had conferred supernatural powers upon them reinforced their commitment to the profession of trance medium and healer - one exercised by many homosexual men and women in different cultures, even'in the high civili­zations of later centuries. In the whole process the homosexual-transvestite ori­entation is primary, the shamanic calling secondary. Shamanism is a distinctive feature of the archaic paleoarctic cultures that has fascinated students of primitive religion, though not all have acknowl­edged the homoerotic component of the phenomenon.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Waldemar Bogoras, "The Chukchi of Northeastern Asia," American Anthropologist, 3 (1901), 80-108; Edward Carpenter, Intermediate Types Among Primitive Polk, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1919; Ferdinand Karsch-Haack, Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Naturvölker, Munich: Reinhardt, 1911; Ake Ohlmarks, Studien zum Problem des Schamanismus, Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1939.
Warren Johansson

S
hawn, Ted (1891-1972)
American dancer and choreogra­pher. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, to a father who was a successful newspaper­man and a mother related to the famous Booth family of actors, Shawn at first planned to be a Methodist minister. But while at the University of Denver he con­tracted diphtheria and the experimental serum that saved his life left him tempo­rarily paralyzed from the waist down. As he began to recover, he turned to therapy, to exercise, and then to dance. When he decided upon a dance career, he appraised the potential of his own body and found it incompatible with the demands of ballet, but he surmised that he could infuse the decorativeness and technical polish of the ballet into a contemporary dance style that was still rather trivial. This gave him a new vision of dance in America whose culture was then scarcely receptive to such an innovation, and he devoted his life to realizing it.
His first partner was a dancer named Norma Gould, but she was soon eclipsed in Shawn's life by Ruth St. Denis, a star of the day. They met in 1914, and not long afterwards he proposed to her, although at 22 he was some fourteen years the younger, and despite her objec­tions they were married on August 13. The union was not consummated until some time in October, and then only after she had convinced herself that contraceptive methods would shield her from pregnancy and childbirth, which, she felt, would destroy the beauty of her body. During much of their marriage, however, she was unfaithful to him; he did not disapprove of her conduct on moral grounds but took it as an affront to his vanity.
As a teacher and employer of male dancers he was paternalistic and generous. Shawn paid his dancers higher wages than the union demanded, even during the lean depression years. He sought never to in­vade the privacy of his boys, or to impose himself on them. He required only that they maintain an unbroken facade of masculinity and never display any sign of effeminacy. He was fighting an uphill battle in the America of the interwar pe­riod to prove the manliness of dance. If in his instructional readings he touched upon the Greek ideal of male love, he never tried to convert anyone to homo­sexuality. He himself was bisexual, and not a few of his male dancers were bisexual or homosexual, but he did not make ad­vances to them. Unlike his wife he was not promiscuous, but sought an enduring re­lationship with his partners. Had she not been unfaithful to him, he might not have chosen a life of homosexual liaisons de­spite his own erotic ambivalence.
Together Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis founded the Denishawn school, an academy of dance and the related arts with classes in as many dance techniques as they could offer, music, drama, stage, and costume design. It created and propagated an entirely new concept of American dance that was to circle the globe and end America's provincial backwardness in this branch of art. Conversely, their tours of other areas of the world, particularly the Far East, gave their art a cosmopolitan quality. Shawn had the gift of transmuting something that had stimulated him intel­lectually and spiritually into theatrical terms whose surface sheen even untu­tored audiences could appreciate. After the Ted Shawn Dance Theater, the first theatre designed especially for dance, opened in 1942, the debuts and premieres acquired national and even international significance. Shawn was thus an Ameri­can pioneer in the choreographic art, and a major figure in the dance culture of the twentieth century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Walter Terry, Ted Shawn, Father of American Dance, New York: Dial Press, 1976.
Warren Johansson

S
iberia
See Paleo-Siberian Peoples,- Sha­manism.

S
icily
Dividing the Mediterranean into eastern and western basins, Sicily, largest of its islands, became pivotal when the Phoenicians opened the West to maritime trade after 1000 b.c.
Antiquity. In the eighth century Greeks began colonizing eastern Sicily and southern Italy, to control the straits be­tween the island and the toe of Italy, and to establish farms to which to export their burgeoning population. To control the western passage around the island, their Phoenician rivals colonized Western Sic­ily, their greatest foundation being Pa­lermo, opposite Carthage, their main African site. Until the Roman conquest in the third century these two great mer­chant peoples contended for Sicily. Both early introduced pederasty; Phoenicians with temple prostitutes [kelabhim), eu­nuchs, and effeminate boys, Greek warri­ors with young aristocratic athletes.
Greek settlements, beginning with Cumae (ca. 750
b.c), occurred before the Hellenes institutionahzed pederasty about 650 on Crete. Shortly afterwards Zaleucus introduced pederasty for the colony at Locri on the toe of Italy. While colonists sometimes all came from one "metropolis" (mother-city), often found­ers of a single colony came from various old cities. The need for constitutions was imperative and many were written. Zaleucus, the earliest known colonial lawgiver and author of a constitution, composed the laws for Locri using the even then prestigious Cretan models. He was the student of Onomacritus or Thaletas, the Cretan "musicians" (poets- states­men) who first institutionalized pederasty and may have antedated "Lycurgus," as the reformers at Sparta who introduced the Eunomia ("good order") institutional­izing pederasty on Cretan models styled themselves. Whether Zaleucus antedated the Spartan reform institutionalizing ped­erasty or not, it soon spread to all the Greek poleis of Sicily and Magna Grecia and to all other western outposts of Hellen­ism, including Massilia (the modern Mar­seilles; founded ca. 600), where it did not shock the Celts who practiced their own version of it. Too little is known about the sexual practices of Sicels and Siculs, the aboriginal Sicilians, to form a judgment of their attitudes toward pederasty before the arrival of Greeks and Phoenicians.
Frequent interchange of popula­tion and travel fostered a common Hel­lenic civilization with only local variations, but Sicilian Greeks, partly because of the Carthaginian menace, retained tyrants after most were overthrown in the home­land. Most Sicilian tyrants were pederasts. In the sixth century Phalaris of Acragas (Agrigentum) roasted his enemies alive in a bronze bull which seemed to bellow with their agonizing death screams. At Syracuse, Hiero (died 467/6) competed in the Olym­pic Games and patronized Pindar, greatest of the
pédérastie poets, and Dionysius patronized Plato along with his mentor Socrates, the principal theoretician of pe­dagogical pederasty. Hiero's older brother Gelon, who defeated the Carthaginian attempt to take over the island in 480, had made Syracuse the greatest western polis. First of the homosexual exiles and émigrés, Pythagoras founded at Croton ca. 530 the pédérastie school of philoso­phy that flourished in Magna Grecia. At the end of the sixth century Parmenides of Elea in southern Italy founded the pédérastie Eleatics. Both bucolic poets, Theocritus (fl. ca. 250), who migrated to Alexandria, and Moschus (fl. ca. 150) were bom at Syracuse.
After the Roman conquest, dur­ing which in 212 a soldier sacking Syra­cuse slew the scientist Archimedes, Greeks from Southern Italy and Sicily introduced Hellenism including pede­rasty to the more cultivated members of the Roman aristocracy, and Latin writers such as Vergil and Petronius often placed their
pédérastie scenes there. In addition, latifundia (great estates) filled Sicily with gangs of slaves and other impoverished ag­ricultural workers, normally isolated from women. With inordinately high female infanticide, lower-class males must also have often satisfied their drives homosexually or with farm animals. Under the Romans Sicily became an intellectual backwater and declined further in the fifth and sixth centuries of our era with Vandalic piracy and Byzantine reconquest.
Islamic and Medieval Sicily. Seiz­ing Sicily from the Byzantine Empire be­tween 827 and 902, Arabs turned the Mediterranean into a Muslim lake, thereby isolating and accelerating the decline of Western Europe. They reinvigorated Sicily with new crops, often irrigated, such as sugar, cotton, and citrus fruits, and indus­tries such as silk and cotton textiles. The Arabs reestablished its position as an en­trepot of international trade, lost when the Roman Empire crumbled. Though the subject has hardly been studied, polyg­amy, eunuchs, seclusion of women in harems, and female infanticide must have encouraged both male and female homo­sexuality in Muslim Sicily, and a high proportion of Arabic poetry is pederastic.
The Normans, who conquered Sicily between 1061 and 1090, and their descendants and successors, the Hohenstaufen kings (1194 - 1266), were rightly regarded by the papacy with suspicion as having imbibed too deeply of Islam, which they tolerated. They played off one group of subjects against another: Muslim, Jew, Greek, and Lombard (in southern Italy, which they also ruled). His Guelph (pro-papal) enemies accused Frederick II (r. 1198-1250; so well depicted by Ernst Kantorowicz) of keeping a harem and practicing pederasty with his black slaves. Brother of the fanatic St. Louis, the greedy and bloodthirsty Charles of Anjou (r. 1266-1285), who beheaded Frederick
ITs 16-year-old grandson Conradin and his coeval "friend" when they tried to regain the Sicilian throne, finally stamped out Sicil­ian heterodoxy. The bloody rising against tyranny and overtaxation known as the Sicilian Vespers (1282), plunged the cen­tral Mediterranean into a century of wars between the islanders, who called in the Aragonese dynasty to protect them from the Angevins, Charles' descendants, who kept the mainland provinces of the former kingdom of Sicily. This conflict created the "two Sicilies," albeit they were reu­nited by Alfonso the Magnanimous of Aragón in 1437. Sexual imbalance on the island persisted, with 136 males for 115 females and 40 percent of adult males unmarried in some areas during the fif­teenth century, indicating the persistence of female infanticide, which other evi­dence likewise indicates for England, France, and Tuscany.
Antonio Beccadelli (1394-1471), a humanist of the early Renaissance, was bom in Palermo. In 1434 he was called to Naples, where he served king Alfonso as ambassador, secretary, and historian. He is best known, however, for his learnedly scurrilous
Hermaphroditus, which con­tains a number of homosexual epigrams modeled on Martial and other Latin poets.
Modem Times. By the fifteenth century Sicily had become a colonial econ­omy owned by a few aristocrats supply­ing - with the backbreaking labor of land­less proletarians and slaves who made up the bulk of the population - grain, sugar, cotton, and other commodities to Genoa, Barcelona, and other Mediterranean ports. Aragonese Inquisitors relentlessly sup­pressed dissent and non-conformity, but tried in vain during the second half of the sixteenth century to obtain a papal bull so that they could "relax" pederasts, a veri­table "social plague," as they stated, to secular courts. Sicilian sodomites were therefore tried and punished in the local secular courts rather than by the Inquisition as in Aragon. The Greek lan­guage and Arabic pederastic traditions persisted among the lower classes, where males greatly outnumbered females.
The Spanish Bourbons ceded the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (1759-1860) to their cadet Neapolitan branch, which misgoverned the island as badly as had its Habsburg predecessors, so that the Mafia and a general disrespect of all authority, including clerical, flourished. One of the chief opponents of Bourbon misrule was the bisexual patriot Luigi Settembrini (1813-1877), who was fascinated by an­cient Greek pederasty.
After Garibaldi liberated Sicily and southern Italy in 1860, but turned it over to the House of Savoy, northern in­dustrialists began a new form of exploita­tion of the mezzogiorno (south of Italy) and Sicily. Millions escaped poverty by emigrating to the Americas as well as to northern Italy. Americans tended to stere­otype Italians as oversexed and morally loose. Sicilians and Neapolitans brought Mediterranean homosexuality to the United States, but adjusted their sexual mores rapidly to the new transatlantic climate conditioned by Protestantism. A significant contribution of the Italian underworld to the American gay subcul­ture was its ownership of gay bars and speakeasies during Prohibition at a time when no respectable businessman would touch such an ill-famed enterprise. A Sicilian-American, the fine gay novelist Robert
Ferro, died of AIDS together with his lover in 1988.
Like Capri in the bay of Naples, favorite resort of homosexual exiles and
emigres, Taormina in Sicily became in the nineteenth century and remains today a resort for gay tourists, along with the seed­ier violence-prone large cities of Palermo and Naples, abounding as they are even now with dashingly attractive scugnizzi (street urchins), often available at a price. Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden just after 1900 published provocative pictures of nude Sicilian boys from the region of Taormina, and continued to reside there until his death in 1931. Since World War IT even ordinary gay tourists have frequented these once exclusive enclaves, driving those seeking greener pastures to Mykonos, Ibiza, and increasingly, as those have also become overrun, to Muslim sites in North Africa.
William A. Percy

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issy
A diminutive of "sister," the term "sissy" originated in mid-nineteenth-cen­tury America as an epithet for a weak, cowardly, or effeminate boy or man. Popu­lar works, such as the novel, Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) by Frances H. Burnett, and H. T. Webster's cartoon strip, "The Timid Soul," featuring Caspar Milquetoast, helped to solidify the stereotype. The sissy, it was held, was not bom but made, through pampering or mollycoddling in childhood by well-meaning, but overprotective fe­male guardians. Such mistakes of training could in many cases be corrected (it was believed) by strict discipline and exercise in such manly pursuits as athletics, hunt­ing, and military life. The great exemplar of the redeemed sissy was Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), the delicate youth who turned into the roughrider and flourisher of the symbolic big stick.
Twentieth-century America con­tinued to be preoccupied by the contrast between the rugged frontiersman, the stal­wart embodiment of the country's abiding strength of character, as against the effete, overcultivated, sissified European. In lit­erature, such expatriates as Henry James and T. S. Eliot, with their recondite allusiveness, were contrasted with such standard bearers of the forthright native tradi­tion as Jack London, William Carlos Wil­liams, and Jack Kerouac. Ernest Heming­way, both an expatriate and a he-man, was an exception - though perhaps he protested too much.
While the word sissy may be rela­tively recent, the sissy concept takes up the older tradition of attacks on luxury as a solvent of manly virtue. Like the dandy before him, the sissy was not necessarily homosexual, but this status was often implied - particularly in the first half of the twentieth century when the word was a favorite stand-in or euphemism for the harsher "queer" or "fairy." In their hey­day, Hollywood films made considerable use of the ambivalent image of the sissy, as personified by such players as Franklin Pangborn and Clifton Webb.
Significantly, theterm "tomboy," the female counterpart, never bore a comparable negative charge, inasmuch as imitation of the male in the young female was considered essentially harmless and transitional.
In the 1970s the popularity of ideals of androgyny did something to sof­ten the negativity of the sissy stereotype. Through writings and face-to-face discus­sions promoting ideas of the women's movement, men learned that it was ac­ceptable to show emotions and sensitiv­ity, and even to cry. The he-man role, though conferring status in a patriarchal society, now seemed a barrier to personal expressiveness and creativity. Many ac­cepted, in principle at least, the idea that there was a range of types between the male and female poles, rather than a stark opposition. Although these arguments made some impact on many men, particu­larly those who entered sensitivity-train­ing groups influenced by feminist ideas, the concept of sissihood has shown a remarkable capacity to survive; it largely retains its negative aura. In the yuppie eighties the appropriate symbol of this survival was the updated version of the milksop, the trendy quiche eater;
Real Men Don't Eat Quiche (1982) was the title of a goof book by Bruce Feirstein.
Recently the word "wimp" has become popular as a derisive epithet, conveying a sense of insufficient maleness, but it lacks connotations of overt effeminacy or homosexuality despite its origins as a slang term for a female.
See also Macho.
Wayne R. Dynes

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ituational Homosexuality
This term refers sociologically to widespread same-sex behavior in total institutions where no partner of the oppo­site sex is available. In some cases, as in prisons, jails and reformatories, the in­mates are there involuntarily; in others, as ships at sea, monasteries and nunneries, and mines in southern Africa, participa­tion has been freely chosen. The term is also applied to cultures where adolescents are gender-segregated. The assumption be­hind the notion of psychological situa­tional homosexuality is that the individual's behavior is dependent on the heterosexually deprived situation, and that those performing homosexual acts faute de mieux under these circumstances will revert to heterosexual behavior once they regain access to the opposite sex, while the "true" homosexual prefers his own sex even when the other is freely accessible.
The situation of deprivation does not affect all people equally. Even late nineteenth-century authors realized that some individuals never engage in homo­sexual activity no matter how long or how intense the deprivation from heterosexual contact they endure. Similarly, many homosexuals fail to take up heterosexual activity even though homosexuality may be so severely repressed as to be practically unavailable. Nevertheless, cross-cultural evidence abundantly documents higher incidences of homosexual activity in si­tuations of heterosexual deprivation, and markedly so for males in their sexual prime.

S
iwa Oasis
A town in the Libyan desert of western Egypt, Siwa is the site of an an­cient civilization which retained a form of institutionalized homosexuality into the modern era. The oasis was the location of an oracle consulted by Alexander the Great and modern observers have stressed how the Berber population conserved its own language, religious rites, and sexual cus­toms despite the later overlay of Islam and Egyptian administration.
Sexual relations among men fell into the ancient pattern of pairing between usually married adult men and adolescent bachelors. In the nineteenth century, families lived within the walls of a town constructed rather like a single large adobe "beehive" while all unmarried men lived together on the edges of town where they made up a warrior class
[zaggalah) protect­ing the oasis from desert marauders. In the twentieth century, as the military func­tion declined and the townspeople have moved out of the walled center, the zagga­lah have become agricultural laborers re­taining their customs and clubhouses. The anthropologist Walter Cline, writing in 1936, found "All normal Siwan men and boys practice sodomy. . . . Among them­selves the natives are not ashamed of this; they talk about it as openly as they talk about love of women, and many if not most of their fights arise from homosexual competition."
Among the zaggalah, man-boy relationships were formally recognized when the man offered the boy's father a gift (or brideprice) as in heterosexual mar­riage. Abd Allah notes that "Siwan cus­toms allow a man but one boy [vs. four wives] to whom he is bound by a stringent code of obligations." In the zaggalah club­house "laborers come together on any occasion for communal rejoicing and as­semble on moonlight nights for drinking, singing, and dancing to the merry rhythm of flute and drum" (Cline). This festive and erotic tradition culminates in a three-day bacchanal dedicated to the medieval sheik, Sidi
Solimán, following the Islamic fast of Ramadan. The various accounts of Siwa agree on the openness and fluidity of sexuality, in that divorce is casual and serial polygamy common, men having as many as a dozen wives over time. Male and female prostitution was noted and Cline remarked that the role in homosex­ual relations was variable and voluntary.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Mahmud Mohammad 'Abd Allah, "Siwan Customs," Harvard African Studies, 1 (1917), 1-28; C. Dalrymple Belgrave, Siwa: The Oasis of fupiter Amman, London: Lane, 1923; Walter Cline, Notes on the People of Siwah and El Garah in the Libyan Desert, Menasha, WI: George Banta Publishing, 1936; Robin Maugham, Journey to Siwa, London: Chapman and Hall, 1950.
Barry D. Adam

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ixteenth-Century Legislation
This era brought to completion the trend toward criminalization of homo­sexuality throughout Christendom. The Jewish and Christian antihomosexual tra­dition that goes back to the fifth century b.c. had crystalized in the canon law of the Christian church, whence it passed - from the end of the thirteenth century onward - into the criminal codes of the various European jurisdictions. The imposition of a Christian sexual morality that saw in homosexual acts a violation of the order of nature went hand in hand with the church's expansion of its organizational and spiri­tual control over a recalcitrant or even heretical population. The only conflict with the secular power was over the juris­diction of its courts as opposed to the ecclesiastical ones.
The Reformation did not break with this trend or reverse it. By the close of the sixteenth century the whole of Chris­tian Europe - Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox - held sodomy a capital offense. The English statute of 25 Henry VIII c. 6 (1533) imposing the penalty of death by hanging for "the detestable and abomi­nable Vice of Buggery committed with mankind or beast" is but a single example of the laws enacted by the Christian states and principalities in that era.
Central Europe. A condemnation of sodomy committed by "eyn mensch nut eynem vihe, mann mit mann, weib mit weib" (a human being with a beast, man with man, woman with woman) appears in Article 141 of the Constitutio criminalis Bambergensis (criminal code for the German city of Bamberg) of 1507, in the same article of the Constitutio crimi­nalis Brandenburgensis (criminal code of Brandenburg) of 1516, in Article 122 of two drafts of a penal code for the Holy Roman Empire dating from 1521 and 1529, and finally in Article 116 of the Constitu­tio Criminalis Carolina that was formally adopted at the session of the Diet (Reich­stag) in Regensburg on July 27, 1532. This was the end result of the work of codifica­tion that had been begun at the Diet in Freiburg in 1498 and was completed only in the reign of the Catholic emperor Char­les V, who was one of the bitterest oppo­nents of the Reformation. The time span involved - starting 19 years before the division of the Western church and ending 15 years after it - proves beyond a doubt that the rise of Protestantism had nothing to do with the enactments in question. The Carolina had an enormous impact on European criminal law, both substantive and procedural, in countries as far apart as France and Russia, from the time of its enactment to the end of the Ancien Re­gime; even the widernaturliche Unzucht (unnatural lewdness) of the notorious Paragraph 175 of the Penal Code of the German Empire (1871) merely rephrases theunkeusch, so wider dienaturbeschicht (unchastity contrary to nature) of the German codes of the early sixteenth cen­tury. The earlier German code had no force or influence, however, in England, which had already gone far down the path of developing its own distinctive legal tradi­tion - the so-called common law.
The origin of all these statutes is probably to be sought in the writings of the Italian jurists of the fifteenth century who are cited as sources of the imperial law which displaced the local codes of the individual German cities. What happened was simply that offenses which had been crimes in canon law were now made crimi­nal in the secular courts as well. In this whole process of criminalization of sod­omy the teaching of the Christian church is primary; the legal enactments and social attitudes are secondary and tertiary devel­opments, so that the English statute of 1533 independently parallels the Conti­nental enactments.
England. Monks - against whom accusations of sodomy had been voiced since the ninth century - were of course targets of the Reformers. Henry VIII's let­ter of April 4,1543 to his agent in Scotland, Ralph Sadler, envisages what one would nowadays call a "covert action" in that country that would dispossess the monas­teries of their holdings in a more effective manner than a publicly decreed statute might have allowed. With respect to his own realm there is no evidence that the statute of 1533 (included as it was in a group of miscellaneous statutes having nothing remotely to do with this subject) was motivated by the Reformers' intent to prosecute the monks for "crimes against nature" and then to dissolve the monaster­ies and confiscate their property. Dissolu­tion of monasteries and enactments against sodomy were two different issues.
The unique features of the Eng­lish tradition in this sphere are first, the use of the term buggery as the legal desig­nation for the crime, though in ordinary speech in England the word was long considered obscene and offensive; and second, the frequent commutation of the penalty of death by hanging (not burning at the stake, as some wrongly assume) to exposure in the pillory, which was de­scribed by contemporary observers as worse than death because of the ferocity with which mobs, and particularly women eager to punish enemies of their sex, pelted the defenseless sodomites with missiles and filth of every kind. It is uncertain just how and when this penalty began, but there is evidence that the pillory was used to punish sexual immorality well before the reign of Henry VIII, possibly even as early as the time of Richard II (late four­teenth century). The standard histories of English law begin in medias res by relating the abuses to which the pillory led in the mid-eighteenth century and then its aboli­tion for all offenses except perjury in 1816. In Great Britain it was finally abandoned in 1837, and the United States Congress followed suit in 1839.
The sixteenth-century sodomy statutes remained on the books until the thinkers of the Enlightenment, beginning with Cesare Beccaria in 1764, denounced the death penalty as a relic of medieval superstition and intolerance.
The number of persons executed for "buggery," "crime against nature," and the like in jurisdictions subject to the British crown was probably no more than three a year for the whole period from 1561 to 1861, when the death penalty was abol­ished in favor of life imprisonment. Thus the scores of victims of the law cannot be compared with the hundreds and thou­sands who were executed or simply killed just for holding "heretical" beliefs during the Reformation conflict in the sixteenth century. In fact, the really significant fea­ture of the English legal development is its lateness in both directions: the criminali­zation of sodomy only in 1533, the aboli­tion of the death penalty only in 1861, and the retention of the offense in the criminal codes of the English-speaking world long after the influence of the Enlightenment and of classical liberalism had reshaped almost every other area of the law. But few as the executions may have been, they left an enduring stamp on public opinion. And the United States Supreme Court's fateful decision in
Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) denying the right of privacy to consensual adult homosexual behavior keeps alive the legal tradition that stems from the law of 1533, reinforced by the unrelenting hostility of religious conservatives and fundamentalists.
See also Canon Law; Law, Feudal and Royal; Law, Municipal.
Warren Johansson

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lang Terms for Homosexuals in English
The several national varieties of English offer hundreds of slang terms for homosexuals, a few of them traceable to the seventeenth century, but most dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centu­ries. Some may be heard wherever English is spoken (e.g., gay, queer); many more are limited in their area of use ("jasper," "poofter," "moffie"). Nearly all these terms were devised by heterosexuals and so tend to express in their meaning or derivation the hostility, the contempt, the hatred, and the fear that straight people have felt toward gay sex and those who practice it.
The corpus of slang also reflects long-standing and still prevalent misun­derstandings of homosexuality. Recent exposures of and challenges to these mis­conceptions have made as yet little im­pression on the language, and although individuals may have modified their us­age, offensive, misconceived, and other­wise objectionable terms continue to be used.
Gay people have themselves adopted many of these terms, because until recently their understanding of themselves and their sexuality differed little from the views of the society in which they lived.
Basic Categories. Almost all terms for male homosexuals fall into four simple categories: first, those taking or assumed to take the "active," masculine role, the insertor role, in anal intercourse; secondly, the "passive," feminine role, the receptor role, in anal intercourse; thirdly, effeminate men who may be gay (there is some overlap between the latter two categories). Finally, for United States English, a category of fellator (cocksucker engaged in oral activity) is needed.
A similar typonymy, without a fourth category corresponding to fellator, applies to terms for lesbians. First, mascu­line, "active"; secondly, (ultra-) feminine, "passive"; and, thirdly, mannish women who may be lesbian. Again, there is some overlap between the first and third catego­ries. Even though early sexology distin­guished cunnilinctrixes from tribades, calling the former "sapphists" and "Les­bian lovers" (this original sense became obscured when these terms became ge­neric for female homosexuals), English slang does not seem to have developed similar categories. There are many slang terms for those who perform oral sex on women ("cuntlapper," "-licker"; "muffdiver," "plater"; "gamahucher," "gamahucker," "gamarucker," and so forth) but none is specifically homo­sexual in application.
These categories mirror the tradi­tional equation of biological sex and gen­der role, whereby male anatomy entails masculinity and female anatomy feminin­ity. From this psychobiological determin­ism flow crude popular notions of male and female sexuality generally and an erroneous conception of homosexuality that has not yet been completely dis­pelled. It is the belief that for a man to renounce the "active," definitively male role of penile penetration and submit to the "passive," female role of accepting the intromission of a penis, he must be a female, either psychically or both men­tally and behaviorally.
Slang embodying this simple ac­tive vs. passive categorization according to roles in sexual activity can be found reduplicated again and again, in different English-speaking countries, in different periods, and in specific close knit or exclu­sive groups. In particular, whenever men are kept in isolation from women, it is likely that a system of slang corresponding to this pattern will arise. Examples of such masculine worlds in which situational homosexuality occurs are prisons, navies (and other armed forces to a lesser extent), boarding schools, among seafarers and ho­boes. Even today there are relatively few slang terms that do not assign or imply a role in sexual activity, and these - "queer," "homo," "poof(ter)," "les," "lez," "lezzie," "gay" - have usually become general only recently. A few other words are sometimes neutral when used by homosexuals: fag(got), queen, dyke.
Male Terms. By far the largest number of male slang terms fall into the categories of male passivity and effemi­nacy, which imply the renunciation of one's maleness. By contrast, the active insertor terms seldom imply femininity or the loss of masculinity. Very often they refer expressly to taking the active role in anal intercourse: "arse-king," "arse/ass-bandit," "arse-burglar," "booty-bandit," "bud sallogh" (Irish, "shitten prick," obso­lete), "backdoor('s) man," "gentleman of the backdoor," "backgammoner," "inspec­tor of manholes," "dirt-trackrider," "turd-packer," "dung-pusher," "poo-jabber." The Australian prison slang for the active part­ner "hock" has the same implication, for it is rhyming slang on "cock." One of the equivalent American terms, "jocker," is likewise probably derived from "jock," which means "fuck" as a verb and "cock" as a noun. In the case of the synonym "wolf" the association is the same but metaphoric rather than direct.
The key to understanding a large number of passive/effeminate terms is the supposed reversal of gender and sex roles: the adoption of behavior deemed "natu­ral" or appropriate to the opposite sex. A man who is passive must in some sense be a woman; even one who is raped is judged to have "lost his manhood" and becomes
de facto a woman. Many slang terms for the passive homosexual directly personify him as a vagina or an anus: "gash," "pussy," "gentleman pussy," "sea-pussy," "boy-pussy," "boy-snatch," "boy-cunt," "bum-boy," "poonce" (from Yiddish for "cunt"), "brownie-queen," "browning-sister" or "-queen," "mustard-pot," "jere."
Another common procedure is to apply a word that has female reference. The most direct method is to use a female name. The oldest known slang term "Molly" is an example, and "Marjery," "Mary-Ann," and "Charlotte-Ann" are further obsolete instances. Other nine­teenth-century examples still survive: "Miss Nancy," "Nance," "Pansy" (and other flowers), "Mary," "Betty," "Dinah," "Ethyl," "Nola" have been recorded in the United States and in Australia the (obso­lete?) "Gussie" (from Augusta). Or it may be any one of the large number of words normally used of females: "aunt(ie)," "chicken," "fem(me)," "girl," "bitch," "belle," "mother," "queen," "sis(sie)," "sister," "wife," and the like. Or it may be a word that refers to stereotypically femi­nine behavior: "limp-wrist," "broken-wrist," "flit," "mince," "prissy," "swish."
(See Women's Names for Male Homo­sexuals.)
Another way of seeing male homosexuals as women is to view them as hermaphrodites. This confusion has seen the word "hermaphrodite" corrupted into "morphodite," "morphydite," "morphrodite," and in South Africa "moffie." It has also yielded "freak."
One of the most prolific sources of feminine words has been male prostitu­tion. Evidence of this phenomenon in Lon­don exists from the Middle Ages, and late nineteenth-century writers on homosexu­ality such as Havelock Ellis and "Xavier Mayne" (E. I. Prime-Stevenson) state that it was widespread throughout Europe and the United States. The prostitution took two main forms. Highly masculine men, especially soldiers, who were poorly paid, made themselves available as "active" partners. The older tradition involved very effeminate men, often cross-dressers, who frequented certain taverns or bars; some­times their activity was outright arse-peddling, but often it seems to have been sex in return for a good time paid for by the masculine male. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such effeminate men were called mollies (from "Moll," the pet-form of Mary, which meant "harlot" or "hussy") and the places where they oper­ated were molly-houses.
The semantic transition from "harlot" and/or "slatternly woman, hussy" to "effeminate passive homosexual" and hence "homosexual" generally is the source of some of the most common terms for homosexuals. Such words include fairy, "nancy" or "nance," "queen/quean," and, contrary to popular myth, "fag" and "fag­got." Above all there is the term "gay" itself, which in its present sense has not been traced earlier than the 1920s but which clearly derives from the earlier slang sense of "sexually dissolute, promis­cuous, libertine," a sense often applied to female prostitutes. Other less familiar examples of this shift include "aunt(ie)" (originally meaning "brothel-keeper, old prostitute"), "ginch," "hump," "kife," "twidget," and "skippy."
The long tradition of male prosti­tution in London has meant that working-class Londoners have had a long exposure to it. London slang, particularly Cockney rhyming slang, is very rich in terms for effeminate homosexuals, many of which live on in Australian slang. One nine­teenth-century term was "sod," which survives as a mild term of abuse, its origi­nal sense largely forgotten. It in turn gave rise to the rhyming slang "Tommy Dodd," shortened to "Tommy." More important is "poof" ("pouf"), attested from 1833, which has yielded the elaborated Austra­lian form "poofter" (now spread to New Zealand and Britain) and the rhyming slang "horse's hoof" or "horses" (Australian variant, "cow's hoof") and "iron hoof" or "iron." The variant form "puff," attested from 1902, may have originally been only a spelling variant rather than representing a different pronunciation; however that may be, it has spawned "collar and cuff" or "cuff" and "nigh enough" or "enuff." "Queer" has yielded "Brighton Pier," "gingerbeer," shortened to "ginger," "King Lear," and, some have argued, "jere" and "gear." In Australian English "queen" has given rise to "pork and bean" and (poor example) "submarine."
United States English is rich in terms for homosexual fellators. Other varieties of English have no such slang, although associated terms such as "blow-job" and "head" (neither necessarily homosexual) have recently begun to pene­trate other Englishes. The earliest written record of the word "cock-sucker" occurs in John S. Farmer and W. E. Henley's
Slang and its Analogues, vol. 2 (1891), and inter­estingly they define it as "fellatrix." In the United States, however, the word applies to a homosexual, is one of the most taboo of words, and is also one of the strongest terms of abuse. The American homo­sexual's predilection for fellatio is long-established, for already in 1915 Havelock Ellis recorded the slang term "head-worker." Later synonyms include "blow-boy," "flute(r)," "cannibal," "gobbler," "larro" (back-slang), "mouser," "muzzier," "dick-sucker," "dick(ie)-licker," "skin-diver," "nibbler," "lapper," "lick-box."
Lesbianism. Terms for lesbians are far less common than those for homo­sexual men, a fact that is consonant with the greater invisibility of the lesbian in the past. No term now current can be traced earlier than the 1920s. In the eighteenth century lesbian practices were referred to as "the game of flats," but there was appar­ently no term for the practitioners. In the late nineteenth century two spinsters living together were referred to, in parts of the United States, as being in a Boston mar­riage. The phenomenon of "tomboyishness" was widely recognized and far less deprecated than the male equivalent "sissihood," yet it was not commonly or usu­ally associated with lesbianism.
The word lesbian itself has given rise to many shortenings: "les(s)," "lessie," "lez," "lezzie," "lezzo," "lesbie" and the associated pun "lesbie-friends," "lesbo," "lesley"; and the jocular elaboration "lesbyterian." All of these are generic. Most other terms fall into the butch-fem/"fluff" categories and most seem to be of United States origin.
The oldest term seems to be "bull-dyke(r)" or "bull-dyking woman." The latter was also shortened to "B. D. woman." These terms first appear in black circles in the 1920s, and "bull-dyking" and "B.D." occur in the blues. The most plausible etymology of the "-dyke" element, which later became an independent word with the same sense, is that it derives from the late nineteenth-century slang "dike" meaning "to dress up formally or ele­gantly." This derivation would suggest the priority of "bull-dyker" over "bull-dyke," which accords with the evidence. There are also corrupt forms "bull-dagger" and "boon-dagger," and "bull" too has become an independent word. "Dyke" has spread to other English-speaking coun­tries, and is often reinforced with the word
"diesel."
Other masculine-lesbian terms include "butch," "amy-john" (from "amazon"), "jasper," "stud," "baby-stud," "tootsie."
The feminine, "passive" lesbian is a "fem(me)," "fluff," "fairy-lover," and "lady-lover." This last is used generically.
Conclusion. Language and par­ticularly slang mirrors salient facts about the society in which it is used, and this is true of all the slang names for homosexu­als that have accumulated over the past two centuries. They show in their mean­ing and derivation the popular understand­ings of homosexuals and homosexual behavior and sexual activity. That the understanding and perceptions involved are so frequently wrong makes the task of overcoming prejudice and ill-will so much harder, for the detritus remains embedded in the language. It is no accident that English has so few slang terms that mean homosexual, pure and simple, without reference to sexual roles and acts.
Studies of the slang vocabularies of other Western European languages have shown that they are as rich as English. In all modern languages, apparently, money, inebriation, and sex are all especially pro­ductive of popular terms. However, homo­sexual vocabularies are highly insular: even Spanish and Portuguese, so similar in other ways, show hardly any commonality in their slang terms for gay men and lesbians. Nonetheless, the whole group of Western languages displays some common seman­tic elements: gender reversal (imputation of effeminacy to gay men and masculinity to lesbians); use of women's names as generic terms for male homosexuals; in­heritance of medieval Christian words of the "bugger" and "sodomite" families; and adaptations of psychiatric and medical terms. Occasionally slang terms migrate from one language to another, as French
tante to German (also variant: Tunte], and (probably) in loan-translation form to English as aunt(ie). In recent years the English word "gay" has entered these languages, and others as well.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Wayne R. Dynes, Homolexis: A Historical and Cultural Lexicon of Homosexuality, New York: Gay Academic Union, 1985; Gershon Legman, "The Language of Homosexual­ity: An American Glossary," in George W. Henry, Sex Variants, New York: P. B. Hoeber, 1941; Guild Dictionary of Homosexual Terms, Washington, D.C.: Guild Press, 1965; Bruce Rodgers, The Queens' Vernacular, San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1972.
G. S. Simes

S
lavery
The institution of slavery, under which one human being was the property of another and his labor power could be exploited by the owner with no remunera­tion beyond bare subsistence, existed from the dawn of history down to modern times. In some countries of the New World the agricultural sector abandoned slavery only in the second half of the nineteenth cen­tury. Most studies of slavery have concen­trated on the economic aspect, fewer on the social and political. Only a very few have entered into the sexual exploitation that slavery entailed, and these tended to focus on the problems of marriage and childbearing rather than on the homo­sexual side.
General Considerations. The person of the slave belonged to the master, and could be used for sexual gratification as well as for economic gain. The slave could not in most cases refuse the master's advances, whether they were heterosexual or homosexual. The inferior status of the slave translated into the passive role in homosexual intercourse, which was al­ways assigned to the party of lowerrank. In ancient city-states the free citizen was forbidden to prostitute himself without loss of status, so that the profession of prostitute could be exercised only by slaves or foreigners and sometimes by freedmen. For this reason handsome young males captured in battle or in slavehunting raids were likely to find their way into brothels, a fate preferable to the hard labor imposed on slaves in the mines and latifundia of the magnates and great landowners. It was no disgrace for the slave to be subordinated sexually to the master, but simply part of his function as an "animated tool," an instrument of pleasure. The slave in an­cient Greece was forbidden to be a ped­erast, that is, to take the active role with a boy. In situations of this kind, as in rela­tionships between male slaves and upper-class women, the law and society could be harshly punitive.
So extensive was the sexual abuse of captives and slaves that it was assumed, tacitly and even explicitly in law codes, that any woman who had been in a city taken by force or had been a slave had been sexually violated. The same was to a lesser extent true of males taken prisoner, who were exposed to the aggression of their captors in a world where homosexual ac­tivity was considered part of everyday life. The slavemonger engaged in practices typical of the modem call-boy service, grooming and depilating his wares, con­cealing their physical blemishes as best he could, and falsifying their ages and other personal data. Such behavior earned the slave dealer the contempt of polite society, an inferior status that lingered as long as slavery itself.
At the same time intimacy with the master could afford a slave a relatively comfortable existence, the superiority of the personal or household servant over the one who toiled in the fields or in the mines. In the ancient world particularly, slaves were educated for all occupations, even the highest in the administrative hierarchy, so that the condition of slave did not imply intellectual inferiority or lack of culture. It has even been asserted that the market in slaves provided for a rational distribution of labor power in ancient society, and the ability to provide "intimate personal services" must have contributed to the overall value of a boy offered for sale.
The status of the slave set the parameters of the sexual activity that was obligatory, permitted, or forbidden. The overriding principle in the ancient world was that the active role was reserved to the superior partner and forbidden to the infe­rior one, while the passive role was pre­scribed for the inferior partner and forbid­den to the superior one. In ancient Athens slaves and boys were often classed and treated similarly, but with this crucial difference: for the upper-class Athenian boy the status was temporary and transi­tional, the homosexual liaison partook of a rite de passage rather than of an obliga­tion contingent upon the servile role.
Historical Development: Ancient Greece. Among the Greeks the pederastic relationship - the legally and socially sanctioned form of male homosexuality par excellence - did not occur between equals. In Greek vase paintings the passive partner shows no sign of pleasure, has no erection, and usually faces straight ahead during intercourse. For an adult member of the aristocracy, dalliance with a hand­some slave boy was a fleeting pleasure, not a serious involvement. On the other hand, the passion of the erastes (lover) for the eromenos (beloved) could be as intense and enthralling as any of which the indi­vidual was capable. In Plato's Symposium Parmenides likens the obsession of erastai to their young boy friends to that of men "wishing to endure slavery as no slave would," while in the Phaedrus Socrates speaks of the lover's soul as "ready to be a slave, to sleep wherever allowed, as near as possible to the beloved." Xenophon's Socrates, in the Memorabilia, calls a man such as Critobulus, who has dared to kiss Alcibiades' beautiful son, likely to become a slave forthwith instead of a free man, and in the Symposium the eromenos who uses his physical beauty may rule the erastes. So for the youth in possession of the pride of his adolescence the pederastic relation­ship could entail a reversal of the role that was imposed upon him as a child; his physical beauty gives him power over his adult lover - the first experience of domi­nating another male. The slave can never have such power, and Aeschines cites a law forbidding slaves to frequent the palestra - a favorite trystingplace for young Athenians and their admirers. A second law prohibited slaves from using free boys as sexual partners at all. Plutarch ascribed the authorship of both laws to Solon, with the significant proviso that he did not ban relations between slaves and free women - as the Roman emperors were later to do.
Rome. Roman pederasty never had the educational role which Greek society had assigned to the phenomenon. The same aspect of dominance and sub­mission prevailed: the behavior that is obligatory for the slave is unworthy and demeaning when practiced by a free man. But a Roman of the upper class had abun­dant opportunity to acquire a male slave as a bed partner if he so chose. The noncha­lance with which Roman society judged such matters is demonstrated by Catullus' wedding poem in honor of Manlius Torquatus and his new bride Junia, which alludes at length to the groom's liaison with a young male slave of the household in the jocular manner typical of Roman straightforwardness in dealing with sexu­ality. However, for the Roman, marriage and procreation were duties,- homosexual affairs were casual matters or opportuni­ties for relaxation. The male prostitute must have been a characteristic figure of the night life of the metropolis, as during the reign of Augustus such hustlers had their own specially designated holiday, duly recorded in the State Calendar. But the mentor-pupil relationship that was the hallmark of Greek paidezasteia at its best never found entry into Roman mores, which always fell short of the Hellenic ideal.
From the Introduction of Christi­anity to Early Modern Times. Christianity influenced the sexual life of slaves by making a breach in the distinction between matrimonium, the legal marriage of citi­zens, and contubernium, the union of convenience between slaves. In principle Christian morality upheld a single stan­dard for all, slave or free - which implied that the slave could not be compelled to take the passive role in a homosexual rela­tionship. Byzantine historians record that after the legislation of Justinian on sod­omy, it became "the crime of those to whom no crime could be imputed," and that convictions were obtained solely on the word of a child or a slave. In this way the incipient Christian norms of sexual behavior played into the hands of those who needed a political weapon to strike at their enemies. In a society where overt homosexuality had been a matter of every­day life, the adherents of the "old life­style" now exposed themselves to the death penalty if the authorities got wind of what was happening inside their households. The innovation of Christian moralists and legislators lay, in a sense, in equalizing master and slave: extending the old prohi­bitions on the active homosexual role from the slave to the free man, and those on the passive role from the free man to the slave. It was the former act that led Friedrich Nietzsche to characterize Christianity as having a "slave morality," since it reduced the whole population to the lowest com­mon denominator, even if in practice the slave had little opportunity to bring charges against his master unless he found politi­cal protectors outside the household.
It is sometimes alleged that the anti-sexual animus of primitive Christi­anity stemmed from its being a religion of slaves and of the "oppressed" who were forced to submit to their owners, but this view is now being abandoned. The sexual morality of Hellenistic Judaism which the Church ratified and reinforced with an ascetic bias had nothing to do with the institution of slavery, in fact the Mosaic Law held that Israelites should not keep other Israelites in permanent bondage, j ust as Plato taught that Hellenes should not enslave other Hellenes. The coincidence of the two doctrines led ultimately to the abolition of slavery in the center of Chris­tendom, though not on its periphery, where "barbaric" peoples continued to be en­slaved and to be utilized as the labor force of a slaveholding economy from the early middle ages until the suppression of the slave trade in the nineteenth century.
In the eighth to tenth centuries Jewish slave dealers transported Slavic captives from Itil and Kiev in Khazaria to the slave markets of Moorish Spain, but en route at Verdun the males were castrated, with the result that in Arabic the word saqaliba meant not just "Slavs" but "eunuchs," who had their own special role in the sexual economy of the time. The eunuchs were employed as harem guards and as part of the military force of the Moorish rulers, but a feminized eunuch could also be the passive partner in a homosexual relationship. The Arab world preserved vestiges of slavery down to the twentieth century, and only international pressure and intervention have terminat­ed the practice in quite recent times.
Relatively little study has been made of homosexual activity among the
black slaves of the New World. In the seventeenth century Portuguese sources show, however, that homosexuality was common among the peoples of Angola, from which many Brazilian slaves were recruited. Inquisition reports beginning at the same time show considerable interra­cial sodomy, in most cases involving free white men and black slaves. There is also evidence of direct transfer of the social forms, including transvestism, docu­mented in Angolan homosexuality to the slave population of Brazil.
Conclusion. In various cultural contexts, slavery augmented the element of dominance and submission implicit in many traditional homosexual relation­ships, and also enhanced the economic value of offspring in societies where par­ents could for mere financial gain sell a child into slavery knowing full well that it was destined for a brothel in some distant city. Even today the "sexual paradises" of Western tourists in Southeast Asia con­tinue practices such as these that have survived from pre-modern societies, so that the champions of "sexual freedom" are profoundly wrong in imagining them as utopias of any sort. Rather they perpetuate a legacy of sexual exploitation and bond­age that is incompatible with modern notions of liberty and self-determination.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Mark Golden, "Slavery and Homosexuality at Athens," Phoenix, 38 (1984), 308-24; Beert C. Verstraete, "Slavery and the Social Dynamics of Male Homosexual Relations in Ancient Rome," [ournal of Homosexuality, 5 (1980), 227 6.
Warren Johansson

S
myth, Ethel, Dame (1858-1944)
British composer and memoirist. The daughter of a Frenchwoman and a British general, Smyth obtained her musi­cal training in Germany. She also spent some time in the multisexual foreign col­ony in Florence, where she came under the influence of Henry Brewster, who wrote the librettos for some of her compositions. From him she derived a quasi-mystical Neoplatonic philosophy. Her symphonic choral work The Prison (1930) bears the epigraph: "I am striving to release that which is divine within us, and to merge it in the universally divine." Her first major work, the Mass in D Major (1893), was hailed for its expansive construction, ro­bust enunciation, and rich orchestration - all qualities that were then unexpected in a woman composer. From 1898 to 1925 she wrote and produced six operas. She also composed choral and orchestral works, chamber music, and songs.
An extroverted and even flam­boyant personality, Smyth made a signifi­cant contribution to the British move­ment for women's suffrage. For this cause she wrote a "March of the Women," which was much used in demonstrations. Her opera
The Boatswain's Mate (1916) re­volves around a strong female personality, that of the landlady. She battled for equal treatment of women as artists, tirelessly canvassing conductors and executants, and staging grand scenes of temperament when her exacting performance requirements were not met. Smyth also cultivated royalty and golf. In 1922 she was made a Dame of the British Empire.
She fell in love with a number of women, most notably with Virginia Woolf, whom Ethel Smyth met when she was seventy-one. "I don't think I have ever cared for anyone more profoundly," she noted in her diary. "For eighteen months I have thought of little else." By this time she was suffering from deafness, and had to stop composing. She shifted her energy to her autobiographical volumes, which became renowned for their frankness and excellent prose style. Always forthright, she declared in 1935: "I am the most inter­esting person I know, and I don't care if anyone else thinks so." Her own summa­tion of the three reasons for her remaining undefeated was: "An iron constitution, a fair share of fighting spirit, and, most important of all, a small but independent income."
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Christopher St. John, Ethyl Smyth: A Biography, London: Longmans, 1959.
Evelyn Gettone

S
ocial Construction Approach
In the 1980s a seemingly new approach to the study of homosexual behavior arose, which its advocates termed social construction. Denying the exis­tence of any "transhistorical" definition of same-sex behavior, the social con­structionist scholars hold that sexual behavior is, in all significant aspects, a product of cultural conditioning, rather than of biological and constitutional fac­tors. Thus same-sex behavior would have an entirely different meaning, say, in ancient Egypt or Tang China from what it would have in nineteenth-century Europe. In the view of some proponents of this approach, the "modern homosexual" is sui generis, having come into existence in Europe and North America only about 1880; hence it is vain to conduct compara­tive research on earlier eras or non-West­ern societies.
The social constructionists con­trast their own approach with that of the "essentialists" (a term of their own devis­ing), who ostensibly believe in an eternal and unchanging homosexuality. Yet most critics of social construction are not essen­tialists, and to label them as such amounts to a caricature that has proved tactically useful for polemical purposes but has advanced understanding very little. One should also bear in mind that the discus­sion is not current in the gay/lesbian community as a whole, but is confined to scholars.
Strengths and Weaknesses. What is valuable about the social construction approach is the fact that it alerts research­ers to the dangers of anachronism. It makes no sense, for example, to refer to such ancient Creek figures as Socrates and Alexander the Great as gay without noting that their erotic life was conducted in a framework in which pederasty, the love of an adult man for an adolescent boy, was the rule, and not the androphilia - male adult-adult relationship - that is dominant today.
Granting this point, social con­struction errs too far on the side of differ­ence in denying any commonality what­ever among same-sex love in ancient Greece, in the Middle Ages, and in con­temporary Western society. This denial of commonality and continuity would de­prive scholars of the fruits of cross-cul­tural study of same-sex behavior. Another consequence of social construction ortho­doxy is to exclude biological factors from any role in the shaping of sexual desire. Some extreme adherents claim that the body itself is a mere social construct - implying a rejection of material reality itself.
Sources. It has been suggested that the conflict between social construction and its opponents is another version of the old debate about nature versus nurture, between those who believe that human conduct is largely conditioned by biologi­cal forces and those who attribute the leading role to culture (the environmen­talists). One's first response is to say that human behavior is the result of a conflu­ence of the two forces, but this compro­mise is usually rejected by those in the environmentalist camp. In similar fash­ion, the social constructionists hold that culture is supreme, and are little prepared to concede biological constants. The so­cial construction debate has also been compared to the medieval philosophical dispute between the realists and the nominalists, those who believed that the world contained real essences as against those who believed that we know only names for primal qualities. The parallel is inexact, however, since few social con­structionists would be willing to adopt the nominalist views they are said to hold. Indeed, thoroughgoing nominalism would make the social constructionist claims meaningless, since there would be no stable social categories to contrast with the pur­portedly labile ones of sexual orientation.
The actual roots of social con­struction as a theory are twofold. First is the heritage of German historicism, which (emerging in the late eighteenth century), saw successive historical epochs as each having a distinct character, radically dif­ferent from those that precede and follow. This trend, which posits a series of histori­cal eras almost hermetically sealed from one another, accounts for the social con­structionist belief that there is a "modern homosexual," a type that has existed only since ca. 1880. This eighteenth-century source shows that the social construction approach is not as new as its proponents suggest.
The second source is the tendency of modern sociology and anthropology to attribute human behavior solely to cul­tural determinants. In some social con­structionists this tendency is tinged with late Marxism - which may itself be re­garded as a sociological doctrine. These two main sources were given focus by the writings of the French social thinker and historian Michel Foucault, who though not self-identified as a social construction­ist seminally influenced such proponents of social construction as Kenneth Plummer and Jeffrey Weeks. These and other adherents picked up Foucault's ideas of historical discontinuity, of "ruptures" radically segmenting periods of historical development.
Two Key Questions. A major objection to the social constructionist position is that homosexual behavior ex­isted in Western society during the hun­dreds of years in which its existence was formally denied by the dominant culture; the authorities imposed obligatory heterosexuality upon the entire population and subjected anyone known for "sodomitical" behavior to economic boycott and social ostracism, if not to criminal prose­cution. A curious outcome of these centu­ries of oppression is that when the first writings on homosexuality reached the general public at the end of the nineteenth century, some individuals revealed to psychiatrists that, although they had re­sponded solely to members of their own sex since adolescence, until then they imagined themselves unique in the whole world. They had "constructed" their own sexual consciousness without any social input - a feat that should be impossible according to social constructionist postu­lates.
Another fact that contradicts the social constructionists is the abundant evidence for gay subcultures in Europe and the United States for at least a hundred years before the modern, political phase of homosexuality began - a subculture whose participants, however, merely thought of themselves as members of an erotic free­masonry from whose forbidden pleasures the vulgar mass was excluded. (While the evidence becomes sparser as one goes back in time, in some sense these subcultures can be traced back to the twelfth century in the Middle Ages.)
The "modern homosexual" is a
political concept; the phenomenon began when individuals oriented toward their own sex, in the wake of trials such as those of Oscar Wilde and Prince Philipp zu Eulenburg, came to regard themselves as part of an oppressed minority cherishing a grievance against late Victorian society and its norms of sexual morality, and demanding their own "place in the sun." This trend was for a long time characteris­tic of northern Europe (where generally homosexual conduct was criminalized) and was foreign to the dwellers of Medi­terranean lands. Since the 1960s, the "gay" identity has had an undeniable compo­nent of political activism; it was the badge of the individual who proclaimed his sex­ual nature openly and campaigned for the liberation of himself and others like him from the unjust prohibitions and discri­minations of "straight" society. One can readily grant that in ancient Greece and Rome no one was "gay" in this sense. Such a political stance arose only in dialectical opposition to the Judeo-Christian atti­tude toward homosexual behavior and those who engaged in it. Even today many of those who participate in homosexual activity far from the mass meetings and rallies of the "gay ghettoes" are heedless of this political aspect of homosexuality, which they perceive as irrelevant to their desires for erotic gratification.
Conclusions. As has been noted, social construction theory has made a contribution in warning against anachro­nism, the tendency to project back into the past one's own familiar experiences and life ways. Yet the idea that cultural cli­mates shift, changing the expression of sexuality with them, is scarcely a new discovery. What is disappointing about social contraction is that it offers no expla­nation of the "grounding" of such change. What mechanisms - economic, political, intellectual - cause a society to move from one dominant cultural climate to another? Moreover, social construction has gone too far in seeking to discourage transhistorical and cross-cultural investigations of homosexual desire. Implied roadblocks of this kind must not stymie the investiga­tor, for comparative studies across time and across social systems are a vital pre­requisite to the emergence of a satisfactory concept of human homosexual behavior in all its fullness and complexity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. John Boswell, "Revolutions, Universals and Sexual Categories," Salmagundi, 58-59 (1982-83), 89-113; Wayne R. Dynes, "Wrestling with the Social Boa Constructor," Out in Academia, 2:1-2 (1988), 18-29; Robert Padgug, "Sexual Matters: On Conceptualizing Sexuality in History," Radical History Review, 20 (1979), 3-23; Kenneth Plummer, ed., The Making of the Modern Homosexual, Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1981; Will Roscoe, "Making History: The Challenge of Gay and Lesbian Studies," Journal of Homosexuality, 15:3/4 (1988), 1-40.
Wayne R. Dynes

S
ocial Democracy
This term has acquired various meanings in the course of the past century and a half. Late nineteenth-century Eu­rope saw the formation of Marxian work­ing-class parties that called themselves Social Democrats. These gained in num­bers and influence, but were beset by the unresolved problem of whether to limit themselves to parliamentary maneuver­ing, or else to resort to such extra-parlia­mentary means as general strikes and working-class violence to achieve power.
The Bolshevik Revolution of
1917 triggered a major crisis within the left, in which the parliamentary and reformist elements sided with Social Democracy, while those committed to violent revolu­tion joined Communist Parties organized on the Leninist model. This splitting of the left provoked internecine struggles that weakened it in the face of the emerging fascist and National Socialist movements in the years of the Great Depression. So­cial Democracy tended to become the party of the petty bourgeoisie and the intellectu­als, while the working class proper rallied to its Communist rivals.
Germany. The first party to wel­come the new homosexual emancipation movement was German Social Democ­racy. In January 1898 August Bebel, the leader of the party in the Reichstag, took the floor in defense of the first petition submitted by the newly founded Scien­tific-Humanitarian Committee, while - with the exception of a single National Liberal - the representatives of the other parties expressed outrage and disgust at the subject of the petition. In the wake of this intervention, Magnus Hirschfeld was personally received by Secretary Nieberding, the head of the Imperial Office of Justice, who cautioned him that the gov­ernment could do nothing until the public had been reeducated as to the justice of abolishing the antihomosexual Paragraph 175. The Social Democrats - with a few exceptions in their own ranks - continued to be the only party that supported the demands of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, while the opposition was spearheaded by the Catholic Centrist Party. At first the whole issue was limited to Germany, as the Social Democratic par­ties in other nations, for a variety of rea­sons, had no "homosexual question" to debate.
As happened elsewhere, German progressives took notice - often uncriti­cally - of Soviet Russia. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 not only swept away the old order in a cataclysm of blood and violence, it gave the appearance of turning the new Soviet Russia into a huge experi­mental laboratory in which official sup­port was accorded all kinds of pioneering social innovations. The penal codes of the RSFSR in 1922 and 1926 omitted all refer­ence to voluntary homosexual acts com­mitted in private, and among reformers in the West the myth arose that the Soviet Union was the "country of the future" in which the injustices and inequalities of the past were being overcome. This stance naturally affected the leftist parties abroad.
In 1922 a highly progressive penal code was drafted by the German Minister of Justice, Gustav Radbruch, who had been the teacher of Kurt Hiller at the University of Heidelberg, but Radbruch did not suc­ceed in bringing his draft before the Reich­stag. The Communist Party, with its prin­ciple of strict intraparty discipline, made support for law reform part of its platform. The Communist lawyer Felix Halle for­mulated its approach to the issue by writ­ing: "The class-conscious proletariat, uninfluenced by the ideology of property and freed from the ideology of the churches, approaches the question of sexual life and also the problem of homosexuality with a lack of prejudice afforded by an understanding of the overall structure of society."
On October 16, 1929, decrimi­nalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults was voted by a commit­tee of the Reichstag 15 to 13, with the Communists, Social Democrats, and Ger­man People's Party (classical liberal] sup­porting the change. However, the Ameri­can stock market crash a week later - heraldinga world-wide depression - provoked a crisis in which law reform was shelved as the Reichstag struggled with the dete­riorating economic situation and the mounting polarization of political forces within the country.
The Social Democratic Party supported the demands of the homosexual organizations less out of any principled commitment than because of its devotion to the principle of individual liberty which it had taken over from the classical liberal parties of the nineteenth century, but for just this reason it countenanced defection within its own ranks.
Other Countries. In countries other than Germany the Social Demo­cratic parties and their equivalents often had no clearly defined "sexual politics," suffered embarrassment by the issues which sexual reform raised, and were in­timidated by the negative response of the uneducated and religious strata of the population. The only country where law reform was realized under Social Demo­cratic leadership in this period was Den­mark, which repealed its sodomy law in 1930 (followed by Sweden in 1944 and Norway in 1948).
In the Soviet Union, Stalin set about repudiating all concessions to liber­alism as he consolidated his power in a one-party state. A law dated March 7, 1934 - a year after the National Socialist seizure of power - restored criminal sanc­tions against male but not female homo­sexuality. Various contradictory pretexts were offered for the change, but in practice it meant that - even as the myth of the "humanist Stalin" was propagated abroad in the interest of the Popular Front formed to halt the rising tide of reaction in Central and Western Europe - the Communist parties lost all interest in sexual reform, and Social Democracy had to carry the ball alone.
The World League for Sexual Reform on a Scientific Basis itself col­lapsed after Hirschfeld's death on May 14, 1935, as the two wings - one desiring a centrist approach with the cooperation of the bourgeois parties and the other seeking an open alliance with the Communist Party, even at that late date - could not work together. The movement of the pre­ceding twenty-five years had pursued a number of different goals which now proved ideologically incompatible. The sexual reform aspect tended to become the province of the left, while the birth control movement and sex education were an­chored in the center and the eugenics movement became identified with the right, particularly after the Nazi accession to power in Germany, where Hitler forced upon his cabinet a series of negative eu­genic measures, including compulsory sterilization. The Soviet Union relentlessly dismantled progressive social laws, pro­hibited homosexuality, forbade abortion and the sale of birth control materials, and conformed to the model of the clerical-fascist states with their pronatalist poli­cies. Some leftist scholars have argued that such retrograde policies were a tem­porary aberration under Stalin. Yet long after his death, the Communist regimes of China, Cuba, and Vietnam - not to men­tion that of the Soviet Union itself - have continued to adhere rigidly to these poli­cies, with antihomosexuality prominent among them.
In Western Europe after 1945 the Social Democratic parties sympathized with the homosexual liberation movement but were often timid in defending it, while the conservative parties were solid in their opposition to law reform and quite willing to use homosexuals as scapegoats in the anti-Communist furor of the 1950s. It was only in 1969 that Paragraph 175 was fi­nally repealed under a Social Democratic government in Bonn.
In Britain a special situation pre­vailed. Much of the Labour Party's rank and file persisted in regarding homosexu­ality as a product of the elite public schools, as (in effect) an aristocratic vice. Initially it was easier to obtain support for the work of the Wolfenden Committee from Liberals and even Conservatives than from Labour stalwarts. When George Brinham, who had been chairman of the Labour Party from 1959 to 1960, was murdered by a hustler in 1962, the party offered no sympathy, only silence.
Nonetheless, in Parliament the chief support for the AbseBill (1967), which decriminalized homosexual conduct among consenting adults in England and Wales, came from Labour Party members. Yet this step was taken in the form of a private member's bill not officially sup­ported by the Labour government of Ha­rold Wilson.
Subsequently, homosexuality emerged as an issue in dispute between the "modem" sector of the party, consisting of intellectuals and elements of the upper middle class, as against the old-line trade unionists. The latter remained deeply suspicious of the championing of gay rights and other progressive social issues by the modem faction. In the 1980s Thatcherite electoral successes caused frustration that
heightened cleavages over social questions. In theBermondsey by-election of February 1983, when openly gay Peter Tatchell sought to be returned to Parliament as the official Labour candidate, his campaign suffered to systematic vilification at the hands of party stalwarts. In 1988 many Labour M.P.s voted for Clause 28, the notorious measure banning "promotion" of homosexuality.
Despite the checkered record in some countries, on the whole the growth of Social Democracy promoted a climate of
liberalism in which, other factors per­mitting, a visible gay movement could flourish. In the early 1980s the French Socialist Party of Francois Mitterand proved receptive to a number of requests from the homosexual movement, elimi­nating the last vestiges of the Vichy re­strictions on homosexual conduct. The Spanish Socialists under Felipe González enormously increased the whole sphere of sexual freedom. In Greece, however, the Socialist regime of Andreas Papandreou continued to repress homosexuality.
Conclusion. On the whole, the ideology of Social Democratic parties has been eclectic rather than doctrinaire, ab­sorbing traits of nineteenth-century liber­alism repudiated by the conservatives. At the same time they have been gingerly about offending lower middle-class defer­ence to sexual "respectability," and they loathe to engage in a vigorous defense of gay rights in crucial electoral contests where the right (and sometimes the left) openly appeals to anti-homosexual preju­dice. Despite these reservations, the prog­ress achieved by the gay movement in Western and Central Europe would have been unimaginable without the interven­tion and support of the Social Democracy, however qualified in particular situations it may have been.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Bob Cant and Susan Hemmings, eds., Radical Records: Thirty Years of Lesbian and Gay History, London: Routledge, 1988; W. U. Eissler, Arbeiterparteien und Homosexuellen­frage: Zur Sexualpohtik von SPD und KPD in der Weimarer Republik, Hamburg: Verlag Rosa Winkel, 1980; Harry Oosterhuis, "The Guilty Con­science of the Left," European Gay Review, 4 (1989), 72-80; James D. Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipa­tion Movement in Germany, New York: Amo Press, 1975; Peter Tatchell, The Battle for Bermondsey, second ed., London: GMP/Heretic Books, 1984.
William A. Percy

S
ocial Work
This umbrella term comprises a range of professional services, activities, and methods concretely addressing the investigation, treatment, and material assistance of those perceived to be eco­nomically disadvantaged and socially maladjusted. Social work began in late Victorian England as a volunteer response to the wide disparity between the "two nations" - the comfortable class and the poor - and spread quickly to America and northern Europe. In the course of the twentieth century the field became pro­fessionalized, and today most social workers are state employees. Large claims have sometimes been made for social work: that it can cure society of its ills, and that it represents the conscience of a people, but these assertions are usually rejected as grandiose. Lacking a methodol­ogy of its own, social work has sometimes seemed a prisoner of the varying mixtures of economics, sociology, andpsychoanalysis that have been imported to sustain its practice. Social work should probably be viewed not as a science but as a humanistic endeavor, though one in which the imperatives of bureaucracy loom large. At its best, however, social work avoids ascriptions of pathology, seek­ing to build on the strengths of clients so that they may take an active part in reclaiming their own lives.
Social Work and Homosexual­ity. The rise of the modern gay and lesbian movement after World War II has exposed the inadequacy of the publicly supported social services for members of sexual minorities. It is not so much that profes­sional social workers are homophobic - surveys have shown that they are less so than most segments of society - as that they are ignorant of the special needs of gay and lesbian clients, and hence prone to insensitivity, however unintentional. In part this situation reflects the earlier preva­lence of the cultural norm of Western society which decreed heterosexual mar­riage to be the only acceptable, recognized form of sexual relationship; other types of liaison had to be hidden from the prying gaze of the neighbors, social workers, and the police. Moreover, most gay and lesbian clients, not being members of economi­cally deprived families, or having severed conventional family ties, are seen as middle class, and hence outside the area of the social worker's concern. Of course not all students of social work are the same, and some individuals attend schools of social work as a prerequisite to the practice of psychotherapy with middle-class clients.
Gay Self-Help. Almost from the beginning of the Mattachine Society, America's first successful homosexual rights organization, the need to organize volunteers to supply counseling and - as far as possible - jobs and temporary eco­nomic assistance was recognized. Today this need is particularly acute with youth, with the elderly, and with people with AIDS. Many gay and lesbian teenagers feel compelled to leave home ("runaways"), or may even be pushed out by intensely homophobic parents ("throwaways"). If they are to escape the self-destructive subculture of drug abuse and prostitution, they need positive assistance. This has sometimes proved a sensitive issue, as caregivers may incur suspicion of impure motives. As regards older gay men and lesbians, research has shown that the stere­otype of a lonely, desperate, unhappy old age is false. Nonetheless, older gay people have special needs, and these are the focus of such organizations as New York's Sen­ior Action in a Gay Environment (SAGE).
The AIDS crisis has caused new organiza­tions to be created in major cities in North America and western Europe. The remark­able social response of the gay community to this baffling disease contrasts with the situation of the intravenous-drug-user group of AIDS patients, where dependence on public sources of therapy and counsel­ing is total.
Even gay-organized social serv­ices may display inadequate attention to some sectors of their population. Because most gay volunteers are middle class, they may not have a full understanding of those from poor backgrounds; put differently, commonness of sexual orientation may mask difference in social class. It is often forgotten that many lesbians and gay men are parents, and their concern for their offspring is a central aspect of their lives. Finally, gay men and lesbians of color may have not only economic problems but psychological ones as well; the latter stem not only from the racism of the larger society but from lack of understanding within their own ethnic communities.
Experience has shown that the gay community need not continue to rely mainly on its own largely volunteer ef­forts, but that real successes can be gained in sensitizing social workers employed by the state, either during their training pe­riod or in the course of their professional activity. After all, homosexuals are en­titled to a return on their tax dollars just as much as any other group, and the social disorganization caused by prejudice against them ultimately impacts the larger com­munity. In some cases much may be ac­complished by sitting down with the (presumably) heterosexual social workers and patiently explaining the problem. However, the bureaucratic constraints of public agencies can make progress slow. Here external pressure, including lobby­ing efforts and voting drives, is required. The success of gay groups in organizing is known to politicians and can be used to advantage in changing the social-work profession from the top.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. A. Elfin Moses and Robert G. Hawkins, Counseling Lesbian Women and Cay Men: A Life-Issues Approach, St. Louis: C. V. Mosby, 1982; Robert Schoenberg, Richard S. Goldberg, and David A. Shore, eds., With Compas­sion Toward Some, New York: Harring­ton Press, 1985; Natalie Jane Woodman and Harry R. Lenna, Counseling with Cay Men and Women: A Cuide for Facihtating Positive Life-Styles, San Prancisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980.
Wayne R. Dynes

SOCIOBIOLOGY
Sociobiology is the study of be­havior (in human beings and animals) from the point of view of its evolution by natu­ral selection. The term was popularized in 1975 (the field is sometimes also called "behavioral ecology"). Narrowly, sociobi­ology has come to mean the study of the "why" questions of behavior: why does a particular species of fish have males that act like females do just before they lay their eggs? Broadly, it can also take in the "how" questions: how do the fish's central nervous system and hormones collaborate to produce this behavior?
Nature and Nurture. There are, of course, other approaches that have been called "biological." To the lay mind, if a trait "is" biological then it cannot be changed; if the trait "is" environmental then it can be. This is a false dichotomy, and is self-contradictory. For example, an "environmental" event like a car accident can have very fixed and unchangeable consequences (such as permanent injury), while a "biological" trait such as the grow­ing of a beard can be routinely overridden by a cultural mandate (shaving). Establish­ing the steps leading up to a trait helps one to understand the trait and perhaps to change it, regardless of whether the causa­tion turns out to "be" biological, environ­mental, or some combination. The sizes, shapes, and spatial distributions of foot­prints are all socially determined within certain limits set by the biology of walk­ing. But if the footprints are in sand, they are easily changed; if they are in wet con­crete, they are unchangeable (short of jack-hammering) after just a few hours.
Unfortunately, this naive nature-nurture dichotomy has been widely taken up in the social sciences. The most common view is to say that biology has an influence in the womb and very early in life, but that soon after birth the family and society socialize the infant and make the influence of biology negligible. A vari­ation of this view maintains that biology sets the limits but socialization sets the precise outcome. A few social scientists, including a few in sexology, believe so strongly in the power of socialization that they claim that students of behavior should not bother with biology at all.
This point of view is rapidly crum­bling, even within the narrow confines of sexology itself. The massive Kinsey Insti­tute study of male and female homosexu­ality in blacks and whites (Bell, Weinberg, and Hammersmith, 1981) attempted to correlate hundreds of environmental fac­tors (number and age of siblings, childhood rearing practices, social class, and the like) with adult homosexual outcome and came up with almost nothing. They very nearly found that the only powerful predictor of adult homosexuality is childhood gender nonconformity, a finding that has been replicated often, both retrospectively and prospectively. This predictor is so strong that the authors of the study considered it evidence that such nonconformity is closely linked to homosexuality develop-mentally - i.e., that the commonest type of adult homosexuality is just the adult expression of the childhood nonconform­ing trait. That is a reasonable conclusion, though one cannot thereby assume that biology has been shown to be the likely cause of sexual orientation differences.
Yet sexual orientation does run in families, according to a study conducted by Richard Pillard and James D. Weinrich. If the results are extendible to the popula­tion at large, then about 20 to 25 percent of the brothers of gay men are also gay, and 20 to 25 percent of the sisters of lesbian women are lesbian or bisexual. These findings per se do not show the reasons for the trait running in families. But it is interesting that in recent history, social scientists have not conducted studies like this one, even though they would quite properly point out that they would use socializa­tion theory to explain the results.
When homosexuality and biol­ogy have been discussed together before the advent of sociobiology, results have been mixed. Alfred Kinsey approached homosexuality and biology just as he approached heterosexuality and biology: by considering the natural evolutionary heritage of our species. Heterosexually, he noted that a sense of smell is extremely important in the courtship rituals of many mammalian species, and so he thought it not surprising that some human beings would be sexually excited by particular smells. Likewise, he found sexual activi­ties between members of the same sex to be common enough in other mammals to conclude that homosexuality, too, was within the evolutionary heritage of the human mammal. However, he resisted finer distinctions (might something be natural for mountain sheep but unnatural for human beings?) and seemed to be unin­terested in the Why questions, even though he was a well-enough regarded expert in evolutionary biology to write a textbook about it.
Genetic Basis for Homosexual­ity! The Kinsey group's surveys did, how­ever, find an incidence of homosexuality among men and women that was very high, evolutionarily speaking. This sig­nificance of Kinsey's statistics was picked out by the pathbreaking evolutionary bi­ologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson, who read the Kinsey statistic that roughly 10 per­cent of American males had only or mainly homosexual ey írience for 3 or more years of reproductive Ufe, and argued that there might be a genetic predisposition to such behavior. This number is evolutionarily extremely large if one assumes that homo­sexuality is merely an evolutionary "mis­take." Had the actual incidence of homo­sexuality turned out to have been what biologists consider the normal range for evolutionary mistakes - very rare, say one in 10,000 - Hutchinson would not have taken note of it, because (rightly or wrongly) he could have assumed that if there were a genetic mechanism promoting homosexu­ality it was no commoner than any of several genetically transmitted diseases. But 10 percent is at least 100 times as high a level as 1 in 10,000 is, and so Hutchinson had to ask why natural selection would have "allowed" the evolution of a species that had sexual learning patterns in which 10 percent of its male members reproduce at a level significantly lower than they otherwise seemed able to - not because of some incurable defect but because they are not attracted to women. After all, attrac­tion to the opposite sex is one of the first things one might expect evolution to ar­range. So if there were any genetic predis­position to even a portion of male homo­sexuality, then Kinsey's statistics pose a puzzle: how could a genetic mistake come to be so common? Even if one takes an estimate as low as 4 percent, this is still 40 times higher than the highest mutation rates.
Hutchinson's answer was to find the sense in which homosexuality is not an evolutionary mistake, and in following this radical (for 1959) line of thought he showed a preference that was also shared by the earliest sociobiological investiga­tors of homosexuality. When sociobiologists see variation in a trait in nature, they tend to look not for what went wrong, but rather for what went right. In Hutchinson's day, the way to see something "right" in a trait that lowered reproductive success was heterozygote advantage. This was the first in a number of theories developed in an attempt to explain the evolutionary value of homosexuality.
Heterozygote Advantage. This is commonly illustrated in textbooks by the example of sickle-cell anemia, but there is no reason why the principle has to be illustrated with a disease. The essential point is that sometimes an organism can need two different genes to maximize its reproductive success. Owing to genetic recombination, a parent usually passes only one of these two genes on to any particular offspring, and so only some of that organism's children will get one of each kind of gene [i.e., be heterozygous like the parent), even if both parents have both genes (i.e., are are heterozygous them­selves). Some children will get two copies of one and others will get two copies of the other (i.e., they will be homozygous). Natural selection will be unable to elimi­nate either of the two kinds of homozygote, even if one of them (as in sickle-cell anemia) is extremely deleterious to the carrier's reproductive success, because there is natural selection for heterozygo­sity.
Hutchinson's idea could be loosely applied to homosexuality as fol­lows. If there were a gene which predis­posed its carriers to be heterosexual, and another one at the same locus that predis­posed them to be homosexual, and if those who got one of each gene on average raised more children than those who got two of either kind, then there could well be a number of nonreproductive, homozygous individuals who got two copies of the homosexuality-predisposing gene - a number much higher than the levels of 1 in 10,000 or so discussed above, and quite possibly in the 4-10 percent range. So Hutchinson viewed homosexuality not as an out-and-out mistake but perhaps as the inevitable result of selection for heterozy­gosity in sexual preference.
It was evolutionary biologists John
Kirsch and James Rodman who put flesh onto this idea in 1982 by proposing that people with one copy each of the hypothetical homosexuality- and heterosexuality-predisposing genes might be bisexuals with a higher average reproduc­tive success than either the average "pure" homosexual or the average "pure" hetero­sexual. There are, for example, many so­cieties in which everyone is expected to marry but in which male members are expected to engage in extensive homosex­ual relationships before marriage (or throughout life). These relationships can be of profound benefit throughout the men's lives. A "pure" heterosexual might have more difficulty forming such bonds, and a "pure" homosexual might have trouble forming a marital bond, and thus both groups might not fare as well reproductively as the man with bisexual poten­tial. How this might apply to societies in which extramarital homosexuality was disadvantageous was not explained in detail.
An entirely different model of homosexuality in sociobiological thought concerns certain so-called "cross-gendered" individuals such as the berdache among American Indians, the mukhannath (or
khanith) among the Arabs of Oman, and the hijra in India. In certain societies [with endless variation in detail), boys (and sometimes girls] with marked childhood gender nonconformity are chan­neled into specialized adult roles. In the case of berdaches, these specialized posi­tions often combine the roles of drag queen, healer, psychotherapist, and teacher. The theory proposed to account for such people is called kin selection, and in its previous application to insect societies it consti­tutes one of sociobiology's theoretical triumphs.
Kin selection theory points out that Darwin was wrong when he proposed that, as a result of natural selection, indi­vidual animals will act so as to maximize their reproductive success (or RS; the number of offspring one has which survive to reproductive adulthood). Instead, says kin selection, natural selection acts to maximize individuals' inclusive fitness (IF), which is the number of surviving offspring plus the' number of relatives' surviving offspring, with each such off­spring being devalued by a fraction that reflects the percentage of genes shared
with the individual by direct descent. One's own children are valued at 1, a full sibling's children at 1 /2, one's half-sibling's children at 1/4, and so on. Accordingly, some people might maximize their IF even if they have an RS of zero - which means that one can no longer automati­cally assume that an animal without off­spring is acting contrary to how evolution has selected it to act. Accordingly, the homophobes' most smug argument- - that homosexual acts are unnatural because they cannot produce children - collapses at its foundation.
In 1976 Weinrich pointed out that this model might be applicable to the cross-gendered berdaches (following sug­gestions made by Robert Trivers, Herman Spieth, and Edward O. Wilson). For kin selection to take hold and allow the evolu­tion of such reproductively altruistic traits, a certain mathematical relationship must hold between the cost to the individ­ual of not reproducing (the cost measured in terms of lost RS) and the benefit to that individual's kin of having a nonreproducing relative (the benefit likewise meas­ured in RS units). Under some conditions, an individual might reproductively be considered "damaged goods," and thus have a lower than average cost of not re­producing. Under others, an individual might just happen to be particularly gifted in a given society's nonreproductive role, and might thus maximize her or his IF by taking up the role - even if taking up the role would require one to forego personal reproduction.
The damaged goods argument often meets with acceptance, perhaps because it does not challenge the cultural assumption that homosexuality should turn out to be below heterosexuality in some sense. But the special-talent expla­nation often meets with the following question: if the people supposedly covered by it are so talented, why do they not apply their talents to reproduction?
Berdaches. A good answer to this legitimate (even if unfortunately-phrased) question had to wait until 1987. Recent anthropological research suggests that people like the berdaches are not so much cross-gendered as they are mixed-gendered, and that they serve(d) important roles in their societies as arbitrators in the battle between the sexes. Here, once again, the unique sociobiological perspective [or obsession) of reproductive success steps in with a surprising theoretical argument. If mixed-gender individuals are valuable because they can arbitrate different points of view on gender issues, why is it to the advantage of each side to take the ber­daches' advice? Why would they be con­sidered less biased than others in the tribe? If a society is willing to reward them (and their families) for settling gender disputes, arranging marriages, and the like, because they are not particularly biased for or against (say)menwho abandon their wives and 20 children or women who cuckold their husbands, it would behoove them not to be men who had abandoned their wives and 20 children themselves or women who had cuckolded their husbands themselves.
Sociobiological theory suggests that these people would in fact be less likely to be biased only if they renounced their sex's point of view, which sociobiologically is seen to result from the different actions each sex is selected to use in its reproductive strategy. If they pursue a nonreproductive strategy, then sexual dimorphism suddenly loses its point, and (according to kin selection) their side in the battle of the sexes would depend not upon their own sex but upon the sex of their relatives. But on average (and cer­tainly on average over time!) one's rela­tives are about equally divided between males and females. So by renouncing indi­vidual reproduction, such people make it possible for their advice in fact to be less biased. This in turn makes their advice more likely to be taken (even if, as is the fate of arbitrators, it is taken grudgingly).
Marriage and Homosexual Be­havior. With both the kin selection and heterozygote-advantage theories in mind, in 1987 Weinrich proposed a new theory that put forth a better evolutionary raison d'etre for homosexuality in societies in which everyone is expected to marry. In such societies, sexual attraction is often not high on the list of reasons to marry; pure lust is expected to be gratified in extramarital liaisons or not at all. Ancient Greece, modern urban Mexico, medieval Japan, and the United States in several of the past few centuries may well constitute such societies. "Being homosexual" in such a society, as opposed to "being heterosex­ual," means being inclined to having homosexual relations outside of marriage instead of heterosexual ones outside of marriage. Obviously, this kind of homo­sexuality can be considered a form of bisexuality, and interestingly such a bisex­ual or homosexual person has two repro­ductive advantages over a pure heterosex­ual when viewed in sociobiological terms: he or she would be less likely to have children out of wedlock, and she or he would be less likely to protest a marriage arranged by the parents (i.e., one would be less likely to be already in love with a member of the opposite sex to whom one might have wished to become married). Both of these traits had previously been proposed by sociobiologists as reproductively altruistic acts (in work published before this theory was circulated).
Conclusion. Of course, any socio­biological theory worth its salt must be highly aware of social and environmental influences on the traits being considered, because natural selection is extremely sensitive to the social forces at work in the society which sets the rules. If your soci­ety offers no berdache role, you can try to improvise one (as modem "drag queens" seem sometimes to do) but it is unlikely that your IF will thereby increase. Socio­biological theories help to explain why imprinting of sexual object choices could have evolved in some species to be fixed (like footprints in concrete) and in others to be easily changeable (like footprints in sand). Indeed, it is even conceivable that "fixed" types may have begun evolving in some societies and "changeable" types in other societies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Alan C. Bell, Martin S. Weinberg, and Sue Kiefer Hammersmith, Sexual Preference: Its Development in Men and Women, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981; G. G. Gallup, Jr., and S. D. Suarez, "Homosexuality as a By-product of Selection for Optimal Heterosexual Strategies," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 26 (1983), 315-22; G. Evelyn Hutchinson, "A Speculative Consideration of Certain Possible Forms of Sexual Selection in Man," American Naturalist, 93 ¡1959), 81-91; John A. W. Kirsch and James Eric Rodman, "Selec­tion and Sexuality: The Darwinian View of Homosexuality," in Homosexuality: Social, Psychological, and Biological Issues, W. Paul, J. D. Weinrich, J. C. Gonsiorek, and M. E. Hotvedt, eds., Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE Publications, 1982, pp. 183-95; Richard C. Pillard and James D. Weinrich, "Evidence of Familial Nature of Male Homosexuality," Archives of General Psychiatry, 43 (1986), 808-12; Michael Ruse, "Are There Gay Genes? Sociobiology and Homosexuality," Journal of Homosexuality, 6:4 (1981) 5-34; James D. Weinrich, Human Reproductive Strategy: The Importance of Income Unpredictability, and the Evolution of Non-Reproduction, Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University Department of Biology, 1976; idem, "Is Homosexuality Biologically Natural!" in W. Paul, et al., op cit., pp. 197-211; idem, "A New Sociobiological Theory of Homosexuality Applicable to Societies with Universal Marriage," Ethology and Sociobiology, 8 (1987), 37-47; idem, Sexual Landscapes: Why We Are What We Are, Why We Love Whom We Love, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1987.
James D. Weinrich

S
ociology
The term sociology was coined by Auguste Comte in 1836. Since his time sociology has developed into a major disci­pline, with particular resonance in Eng­lish-speaking countries.
Yet academic sociology is in some respects a codification of knowledge that has always been available. In all societies individuals have some view of what is shared by other individuals known to them. Folk theories exist everywhere about what is common to members of a human group as well what contrasts with qualities found in other groups. Programs for scientific comparison of the evolution of social ar­rangements were stimulated by reports of social arrangements at variance with Eu­ropean ones made available during the Age of Discovery (after 1492). The Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution helped to augment this stimulus and chan­nel it.
Among those trying to make sense of those changes and their place as part of a process of social evolution were the three architects of sociology's "grand theory": Karl Marx (1818-1883), Emile Dürkheim (1858-1917), and Max Weber (1864-1919). None of them was professionally trained in sociology, and their precursors in theo­rizing about social order and structure included Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Vico, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau.
The Basic Problem. The central concern of sociology elaborating this pat­rimony is world-historical changes in systems of domination. Its aim is to ex­plain how one system (e.g., capitalism) functions at a particular time and how one system arises from another (e.g., capital­ism succeeding feudalism). To those en­sconced at the discipline's center, others chronicling the lifeways of "queers" have seemed to be engaged in a dubious enter­prise unlikely to contribute to the building of a unified theory of society. Indeed, de­scription of how people actually live has often struck those concerned with abstract, general theories of society as a diversion from the path to knowledge. And when the people described are homosexual, motives such as voyeuristic titillation or special pleading are imputed. Yet the macrohistorical processes projected by Marx and Dürkheim from their consideration of European history have not been enacted elsewhere as predicted, nor have subse­quent events in Europe followed their scenarios of primordial loyalties eroding with increasing industrialization.
Even the builders of American sociological traditions, who focused on smaller social units over briefer periods of time, expected contrasts of race, ethnicity, and gender to wane. The classic work (1913-18) of W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki on Polish peasants emigrating to the United States exemplified Durkheim's conception of the (necessary) breakdown of traditional (peasant) society with accompanying individual pathology which reflected social disorganization - both of which were expected to disappear with integration into the modem world of, say, Chicago. Empirical work in the Chi­cago School tradition treated ethnic sub­cultures under the rubric of "social disor­ganization," an anomaly destined to be resolved as contact with dominant Ameri­can society reduced differences. This pro­cess - variously termed assimilation, ac­culturation, accommodation - was sup­posed to eliminate hostility and, by the same token, conflict. Since conflict was regarded as a product of individual atti­tudes and values rather than of structured inequalities, it was expected to diminish as contact dissolved stereotypes and cul­tural differences - the sources of inter-group conflict. Ascribed characteristics (such as race, gender, and possibly sexual orientation) have taken on an importance quite out of keeping with the confident expectations of those in the "grand tradi­tion" that these need not be considered, because their significance would decline eventually and disappear.
Historical reality has proved to be quite different. Groups based on charac­teristics which classical theory regarded as already anachronistic a century ago have not merely "assumed political functions comparable to those of a subordinate class,-they have in important respects become more effective than social classes in mobi­lizing their forces in pursuit of collective ends" (Parkin, p. 622). Insofar as sociology aims to analyze what is actually occurring rather than to invoke the tarrying of the messiah, it must endeavor to explain the continued strength and/or emergence of social movements based on consciousness
óf shared ascribed characteristics. The emergence of a group consciousness and subsequent mobilization of a "people" who could not seriously have been designated a "group" three decades ago contrasts mark­edly with the erosion of class conscious­ness and the increasing impotence of or­ganized labor. Not just Marxist theory, but classical bourgeois social theory, includ­ing the two major American perspectives descended from Durkheim and from Tho­mas, functionalism and symbolic interactionism respectively, have ill prepared the investigator to understand the quite unpredicted emergence and successes of ra­cial and ethnic, women's and gay move­ments. Although understanding homosex­ual socialization has not been a central theme for sociological theory, prominent attempts to encompass American (male) homosexuality in the mid-to-late twenti­eth century will be discussed below.
Functionalism. The structuralist-functionalist tradition included some rec­ognition that moral consensus requires some target: norm-drenched individuals need before them the cautionary example of negative role models. To be certain that they are within the bounds of propriety, someone else must be condemned to oblo­quy outside the boundaries. Blatant speci­mens of inadequate masculine socializa­tion can be tolerated as a butt for jokes (among other things), because such per­sons serve as a horrible warning of what boys must avoid becoming. Possibly, public punishment of. sodomites served the same "function" in Europe during the Middle Ages, in Aztec Mexico, and in the pre-Columbian Andes. Ridicule was suffi­cient in North American Indian tribes and in the Pacific cultures of Polynesia. To define the moral unit "us" of a society there must be others beyond the moral pale. Durkheim wrote of "normal" rates of deviance and crime necessary to provide occasions for exemplary punishments to affirm the moral order, publicly fixing the line between acceptable and unaccept­able behavior. Durkheim's intellectual heirs have been concerned with boundary maintenance both between and within societies. Of course, to serve an exem­plary role as a moral counterexample a deviant (of whatever sort) must be gener­ally recognized as such. Prior to the Kinsey findings concerning incidence, when it was assumed a homosexual was a rara avis (the village queer) and that one could be readily recognized by everyone (because of their obvious gender non-conformity), homosexuality seemed consistent enough with a moral consensus model of society, i.e., it was "normal deviance" rather than subversion of the moral order.
The landmark study that showed how widespread homosexuality could re­inforce rather than challenge the moral order was that of Reiss on hustlers and their clients (1961). For trade individuals, masculinity was defined by insertor be­havior. In their view, the "queers" were the insertees, so their participation did not erode trade masculine status, so long as they gave nothing more than their cocks (and possibly an occasional beating), i.e., so long as they "never took it." Prostitu­tion was not perceived as demasculinizing as such; apparently this stigmatizing defi­nition was evaded along with that of "queer." Such a system could persist only with the collusion of clients willing to enact the role of the "queer" by not chal­lenging the valuation and self-image of those whose behavior was that of homo­sexual prostitution. So long as this system's script for the dominance of the masculine actor and the submission (and optimally feminization) of the "queer" was credited, validation of masculinity and depreciation of homosexuality were actu­ally supported by "deviant" acts. The "queers" kneeling to worship the symbols of trade's masculinity quarantined the stigma, protecting the masculine self-conceptions of their sexual partners. Be­yond the financial rewards, sexual release, and the reassurance of masculinity, the trade participants were exposed to the dangers of succumbing to any tempta­tions toward passivity. Most presumably "learned" they weren't "queer" - and did not have to be such to get off with men. Reiss' study did not assess the degree of "role distance" of those enacting the "queer" role versus the degree of self-hatred, but to whatever extent those play­ing the "queer" role credited its truth (and justice), the moral order in general and the superiority of heterosexual males in par­ticular were reinforced by "deviant" acts.
How far men could venture into homosexuality - beyond adolescence and even beyond exclusively insertor behav­ior - without considering themselves implicated as "queers" either by them­selves or by their partners was demon­strated by the preponderance of married men observed by Laud Humphreys in his study of toilet sex,
Tearoom Trade. Not only was homosexuality compatible with the existing moral order, so were homo­sexuals, for it was not just "trade" who "compensated" for suspect sexual behav­ior with hyper-conformity in espousing traditional social values (especially in regard to sex and gender). The stratifica­tion of sexual encounters (with the "mas­culine principle" on top in every sense), along with the "consent" to stigmatization of those seeking "real men" as part­ners was perfectly consistent with the Durkheimian vision.
Blumstein and Schwartz' rich comparative study of married, non-mar­ried cohabiting, gay male, and lesbian couples follows the functionalist tradition into a social world in which such stratifi­cation is mostly obsolete - although both lesbians and gay men in their sample remain sensitive to being fit into the oppo­site gender role. Functionalists delineated complementary instrumental (the husband oriented toward the world outside the family) and affective (the wife oriented inward to the family) roles necessary to the functioning of small groups (not just families). Blumstein and Schwartz substi­tute a new polarity - work-centered/relationship-centered - for the instrumental/ affective one. They contend that for a relationship to endure, at least one partner must be oriented inward toward keeping the relationship going well, but do not try to sort out whether relationships work better when both partners are relation­ship-centered, or if there is some advan­tage to one partner being oriented outward from the relationship to the work world (i.e., whether the roles are genuinely complementary, not merely different).
Symbolic Interactionism. In the pre-contemporary period of relative ne­glect, most sociological research dealing with homosexuality was done, however, within another, indigenous tradition which rivaled functionalism for hegemony in postwar American sociology: symbolic interactionism. The Chicago School in­cluded a tradition of studying "unconven­tional" careers (e.g., the typical patterns of taxi-hall dancers, jack-rollers, hoboes] in the same way as the subcultures built by practically every imaginable social cate­gory that could be found in Chicago, ex­cept homosexuals. Like Dürkheim, the founders of the Chicago School believed the all too visible social pathology they saw around them would first fade, then gradually disappear (a process to be accel­erated by sociological knowledge itself] as a modern moral order emerged, to be con­solidated and expanded. The modern soci­ety envisioned from Chicago was more ethnically diverse than was the Gesellschaft conceived by European theo­rists. Still, Chicago sociologists believed that the knocking together of those with different cultural backgrounds would break down, or at least wear off the rough edges of culturally distinctive differences. And, for whatever reason, this tradition was far more concerned with documenting the stages in what they were certain was the evolution of antagonistic groups into a future unity (moral order) than with dis­cussing the overall process: the forest of the evolution to a more integrated social/ moral order often disappeared from view in Chicago descriptions of particular trees (roles, groups, etc.). Nevertheless, the Chicago tradition focused on socialization decades before functionalists turned to trying to account for the actual transmis­sion of social order. The Chicago model of socialization held that an identity (i.e., a self) is an internalization of the view of significant others. If a behavior (say a boy playing with dolls) is interpreted by others (e.g., parents) as instancing a category (say, sissy), they will treat the boy as if he is that kind of person. By recognizing their con­ception of what he is, the boy will learn who (what) he is, and if this self is credible, the behavior will be transformed into a stable pattern (conduct) and a defining feature of self.
According to symbolic interactionist theory, the self is a product of social definition. What transforms behavior into conduct is labeling by others. In the social system of "trade" and "queers" discussed above, the homosexual behavior of the "trade" is not transformed into homosex­ual conduct (or identity), because the "queers" who know about the behavior do not so label them. Unless the police chance upon them in the act, no homosex­ual label is applied. But what of the "queers"? Who labeled them? Within encounters with the "peers," "trade" of course did, but most encounters began with someone already set in the "queer" role, so explanation must look back before the particular occasion to locate the manu­facture of the "queer." Unfortunately for the theory, most people with homosexual, gay, or lesbian self-identities report never having been labeled. In his pioneer study of 182 men who considered themselves homosexual, Dank (p. 123) found "no cases in which the subject had come out in the context of being arrested on a charge in­volving homosexuality or being fired from a job because of homosexual behav­ior. 4.5 percent of the sample came out in the context of public exposure." Al­though labeling theory posits labeling by agents of the state [policemen, judges) in official records, those trying to rescue the theory might extend "labeling" from official acts to internalization of everyday epithets. Such a tack does not, however, salvage the theory, for even in this broader sense, labeling does not account for the data which have been gathered. Even those explaining adult homosexuality on the basis of childhood effeminacy do not find more than half of those with the effect reporting the sup­posed cause, even if labeling as effeminate is widened to self-labeling.
That homosexual conduct is generally reached without ever being la­beled by others should suffice to discredit "labeling theory," and some men report having come out (and have in some cases joined gay organizations) before having had any homosexual encounters. That is, identity (secondary deviance) sometimes precedes behavior (primary deviance). For lesbians, Ponse (p. 125) lists a series of elements in the process of identity forma­tion that reverses the primary-secondary deviance order. The first element is that the individual has a subjective sense of being different from heterosexual persons and identifies this difference as feelings of sexual-emotional attraction to her own sex. Second, an understanding of the homosexual or lesbian significance of these feelings is acquired. Third, the indi­vidual accepts these feelings and their im­plications for identity, i.e., the person comes out or accepts the identity of lesbian. Fourth, the individual seeks a community of like persons. Fifth, the individual becomes involved in a sexual-emotional lesbian relationship.
Rather than those with a gay identity being a subset of those engaged in some homosexual behavior, the sets inter­sect with most of those with gay identity within the intersection and most of those with some homosexual behavior not in the intersection. Whether the tinier sub­set of those labeled is wholly in the inter­section of these sets is unknown.
Stigma Theory and the Rejection of the Deviant Role. Having explored adult males who engaged in homosexual behav­ior, and whose denial of homosexuality correlated with social and political tradi­tionalism, Laud Humphreys became the first sociologist to give sustained atten­tion to the puzzles homosexual reality posed to sociological theory. In Out of the Closets Humphreys set out to analyze the then-young gay liberation movement, which was comprised increasingly of those who had never been labeled, yet openly proclaimed their gayness, adopted various idioms of the counterculture, and sought coalitions with other groups challenging the status quo. Humphreys did not at­tempt to fit the emergence of the gay liberation movement into the functional­ist or labeling frameworks discussed above. Instead, he built on Goffman's rambling, but suggestive book, Stigma.
Erving Goffman (1922-1982), whose major concern is specified in the title of his first book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), was inter­ested in how individuals manage poten­tially discrediting information. He started with the assumption that in a large-scale, mobile society, no one is quite what he or she seems to be, that is, everyone has some things to hide; "deviance" involves not a few "deviants," but everyone (albeit to varying extents, depending on the social standards for the gravity of what they have to hide). For Goffman, everyone who is not discredited is (to some degree) dis­creditable. The discreditable must cope with anxiety about being found out, the discredited with anxiety about being re­jected on the basis (which they them­selves may consider legitimate) that they are "that kind of person" (whatever kind does not deserve to be treated as a whole human being). For Goffman, feeling one­self discredited does not require labeling by anyone else, nor for that matter do such feelings require any objective basis (such as "primary deviance"). Since labels are selectively self-applied, being frozen in the naming glare of some representative of Society (parent, teacher, policeman) is far from the only path to a sense of spoiled identity. Goffman's extension of the con­cept of managing discrediting informa­tion from exotic "deviants" to everyone led him to glimpse another way of being in the world: accepting that one is indeed an instance of a discredited category, but challenging the legitimacy of that category's opprobrium - that is, neither trying to deny a category ("I'm not like them") nor living in disgrace ("We deserve it"; "We brought it on ourselves"; and so forth), but instead affirming "I'm fine anyway" (e.g., gay and proud).
Goffman glimpsed the possibil­ity of organizing to challenge the very stigma that is the only common feature of a group, and Humphreys provided an ex­emplar in his case study of a movement committed to transvaluing the negative valuation of homosexuality. "Normaliza­tion" of deviance can be a group strategy, but it required a group. Organization of a movement, in Humphreys' view, had two prerequisites: recognition that present treatment of one's kind is intolerable, and conviction that change is possible. Both conceptions now seem so obvious that one is tempted to forget they were once widely unrecognized, when the sinfulness or sickness that was homosexuality was perceived to be inevitable and just.
Conceiving the existing reality as intolerable and changeable was clearly necessary for the formation of a social movement. Undoubtedly the Kinsey data and the example of the Negro civil rights movement encouraged the early homophile movement. The formation of a criti­cal mass of people who viewed themselves as defined to some extent by homosexual desires was the central precondition for change, and was itself disproportionately facilitated by even tiny organizations challenging the legitimacy of the domi­nant society's picture of homosexuals. There were other fostering circumstances. Wartime homosociality was one, whether or not World War II sped urban migration for those who became involved in the homosexual subculture, and even if offi­cial labeling was not part of their experi­ence. Another material change abetting the postwar expansion of public settings for meeting others interested in homo­sexuality was the introduction of penicil­lin, and the concomitant reduction of anxiety about venereal diseases. Cultural factors which were important to what the critical mass did include the North Ameri­can tradition of printing dissident views and some general valuing of freedom of the press - a value missing everywhere else in the Western hemisphere, and a value that was not sufficient in itself for the exten­sion to the homophile press - the tradi­tion of voluntary associations derived from the religious pluralism of the United States, and the welfare state's takeover of insurance against disaster (the "safety net" function formerly discharged by the family).
Growth and Diversification of Gay Culture. Early social science discus­sions of the "homosexual community" treated it as static, rather than recently-emerged (post-World War II). Since at least the mid-1970s, sociologists writing about North American gay culture and gay communities have given nominal recog­nition to changes, particularly more as­sertive demands for social respect and the diversification of institutions catering to an open, self-accepting gay market. How did the institutionally elaborated gay communities of the 1970s come about? Obviously, some of the same factors, no­tably the coalescence of a critical mass, the conception that change was possible, the "mobilization of symbolic resources" (including an embryonic gay press, dis­torted mass media coverage, and public examples), and other factors adduced in the discussion of the "evolution" of gay political organizations, apply to the "evo­lution" of gay culture at the same time in the same places.
In folk conceptions of the past, it is well known that "in the beginning was the bar" - or more exactly, temporal and spatial segments of bars. Before the rise of the present range of gay institutions, what most lesbians and gay men seeking fellow lesbians and gay men did between work­ing, sleep, and sex was to drink. The gay bar was the first gay institution, and for most members of the "pre-Stonewall gen­eration" was often the only one. Before gay people demanded acceptance and forged their own institutions, profitable gay bars provided a modicum of anonymity and protection from official and unofficial interference with gay sociation. Of course, bars provided a setting for arranging sex­ual liaisons, but their historical impor­tance for the development of a gay people has more to do with revealing to many in­dividuals that they were not unique: not only were there similarly-homosexually-inclined others, but these others were not (all) monsters, and were numerous enough to have meeting places (of varying degrees of furtiveness and friendliness).
"In the beginning was the bar" will strike some as sociology again dis­covering the obvious. However, what is noteworthy about bars' being the first gay institutions to develop is that it holds true in other cultures (e.g., Latin America, the Philippines) in which only embryonic challenges to the equation of homosexual­ity with female gender behavior have been made. In cultures where homosexuality is age-defined, neither gay bars nor gay iden­tity have developed. Not that alcohol is a necessary catalyst for the crystalization of gay identity, but drinking together repre­sents a degree of solidarity which is lack­ing where one is expected to "graduate" from the receptor role with age. Solidarity with peers is what is important, not alco­hol dissolving inhibitions and generating addiction. Another reason to consider the (historical) primacy of gay bars is that, given the generally higher prices of drinks, undesirability of locales, and poor service, gay bars are also the prototype of busi­nesses selling their patrons to each other. Manifestly, the business of a bar is to sell drinks, and the central importance of the bar (followed by the institution of the cocktail party) likely explains the high rates of lesbian and gay alcoholism. As Nardi put it, "Drinking is not used to escape from something; rather it is used to join something. Initial socialization into a gay community often occurs by attending gay bars and enacting the drinking roles perceived as essential to gay identity" (p. 28). As a result, "Getting drunk ... is normal trouble in the gay community, rather than deviance" (Warren, p. 58 ). Other preconditions create other institutions.
Organs for communicating a positive view of a group are essential to positive self-identification, as well as to political organization and social coordina­tion. In the United States early homophile organizations produced periodicals, and ONE, Inc. in particular fought a protracted legal battle ( 1954-58) for the use of the U.S. mail. In Latin America gay periodicals continue to be seized as subversive even when there is no conceivable prurience to interpret as obscene, as in Mexico, where the
Ley de Impienta gives a judge discre­tion to condemn printed, written, or dupli­cated materials as "apologias de un vicio" (vice advocacy). Outside metropolises with gay ghettoes, many people learn that homosexuality is a possible way of life from print media, the existence of which is now taken for granted by those living in gay worlds (including gay scholarship).
State provision of insurance against disaster (Medicaid, worker's com­pensation, unemployment insurance) and old age (Social Security) is perhaps the most important replacement of the tradi­tional family function, and increases the likelihood of residential concentration of homosexually inclined persons. Parental control was eroded by the inability to guarantee a livelihood for the next genera­tion and by increased geographical mobil­ity - opportunity was beyond the reach and often beyond even the view of parents. Partner choice then became a more per­sonal decision. Welfare state protection of individuals clearly reduced the necessity of reliance on the family and may well be a prerequisite to gay society (contrast Latin America).
Whether geographical mobility was necessary to populate contemporary gay ghettoes has been questioned. Simi­larly, while newly created public places such as railway stations and parks pro­vided anonymous meeting places in the nineteenth century, there had been recog­nized trysting places in pre-capitalist mercantile centers, such as
Venice, Paris, and Seville. Welfare protection, geo­graphical mobility, voluntary relation­ships, all releasing individuals from de­pendence on and control by the family, were at least foreshadowed by monasticism and the military in Western history - locales in which widespread homosexu­ality occurred or has been posited.
The timing of the emergence of persons recognized by others in terms of homosexual preference is a major point of contention in the
social constructionist position formulated at the University of Essex and elsewhere ca. 1981. Suggested dates for this transformation range from the fourteenth century until as recently as the end of the World War II. The flux of possible human desire has so impressed advocates of this view that they have ig­nored the very limited number of known social organizations of homosexuality (by age differences, gender differences, or egali­tarian comradeship), historically attested labels for roles (e.g., sodomite and cat­amite), and the necessary economy of schematization in all cognitive categori­zation. Actual comparisons of social con­structions across space or time have not generally been made by ostensible social constructionists, who seem more intent challenging the legitimacy of the domi­nant society's picture of homosexuals. There were other fostering circumstances. Wartime homosociality was one, whether or not World War II sped urban migration for those who became involved in the homosexual subculture, and even if offi­cial labeling was not part of their experi­ence. Another material change abetting the postwar expansion of public settings for meeting others interested in homo­sexuality was the introduction of penicil­lin, and the concomitant reduction of anxiety about venereal diseases. Cultural factors which were important to what the critical mass did include the North Ameri­can tradition of printing dissident views and some general valuing of freedom of the press - a value missing everywhere else in the Western hemisphere, and a value that was not sufficient in itself for the exten­sion to the homophile press - the tradi­tion of voluntary associations derived from the religious pluralism of the United States, and the welfare state's takeover of insurance against disaster (the "safety net" function formerly discharged by the family).
Growth and Diversification of Gay Culture. Early social science discus­sions of the "homosexual community" treated it as static, rather than recently-emerged (post-World War II). Since at least the mid-1970s, sociologists writing about North American gay culture and gay communities have given nominal recog­nition to changes, particularly more as­sertive demands for social respect and the diversification of institutions catering to an open, self-accepting gay market. How did the institutionally elaborated gay communities of the 1970s come about? Obviously, some of the same factors, no­tably the coalescence of a critical mass, the conception that change was possible, the "mobilization of symbolic resources" (including an embryonic gay press, dis­torted mass media coverage, and public examples), and other factors adduced in the discussion of the "evolution" of gay political organizations, apply to the "evo­lution" of gay culture at the same time in the same places.
In folk conceptions of the past, it is well known that "in the beginning was the bar" - or more exactly, temporal and spatial segments of bars. Before the rise of the present range of gay institutions, what most lesbians and gay men seeking fellow lesbians and gay men did between work­ing, sleep, and sex was to drink. The gay bar was the first gay institution, and for most members of the "pre-Stonewall gen­eration" was often the only one. Before gay people demanded acceptance and forged their own institutions, profitable gay bars provided a modicum of anonymity and protection from official and unofficial interference with gay sociation. Of course, bars provided a setting for arranging sex­ual liaisons, but their historical impor­tance for the development of a gay people has more to do with revealing to many in­dividuals that they were not unique: not only were there similarly-homosexually-inclined others, but these others were not (all) monsters, and were numerous enough to have meeting places (of varying degrees of furtiveness and friendliness).
"In the beginning was the bar" will strike some as sociology again dis­covering the obvious. However, what is noteworthy about bars' being the first gay institutions to develop is that it holds true in other cultures (e.g., Latin America, the Philippines) in which only embryonic challenges to the equation of homosexual­ity with female gender behavior have been made. In cultures where homosexuality is age-defined, neither gay bars nor gay iden­tity have developed. Not that alcohol is a necessary catalyst for the crystalization of gay identity, but drinking together repre­sents a degree of solidarity which is lack­ing where one is expected to "graduate" from the receptor role with age. Solidarity with peers is what is important, not alco­hol dissolving inhibitions and generating addiction. Another reason to consider the (historical) primacy of gay bars is that,
on avoiding being labeled themselves than in exploring differences and commonali­ties of social processes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, American Couples, New York: William Morrow, 1983; Barry Dank, "Coming Out in the Gay World," Psychiatry, 34 (1971), 180-97; Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959; idem, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963; David F. Greenberg, The Construc­tion of Homosexuality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988; Laud Humphreys, Tearoom Trade, 2nd ed., Chicago: Aldine, 1975; idem, Out of the Closets, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972; Stephen O. Murray, Social Theory, Homosexual Reahties, New York: Gay Academic Union, 1984; Peter M. Nardi, "Alcoholism and Homosexuality," fournal of Homosexuality, 7 (1982), 9-25; David Parkin, "Social Stratification," in R. Nisbet and T. Bottomore, eds., History of Sociologi­cal Analysis, New York: Basic Books, 1978, pp. 599-632; Barbara Ponse, Identity in the Lesbian World, Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1978; Albert J. Reiss, "The Social Integration of 'Queers' and 'Peers,'" Social Problems, 9 (1961), 102-20; Carol A. B. Warren, Identity and Community in the Gay World, Boston: Wiley, 1974.
Stephen O. Murray

S
ocrates (469-399 b.c.)
Athenian philosopher. The son of a well-to-do sculptor or stonemason, he was later reduced to poverty. Late in life he married Xantippe, who became proverbial in subsequent ages for her bad temper and shrewishness, though the stories about her may have been exaggerated. In early life he was interested in the scientific philosophy of his time and is said to have associated with Archelaus the physicist, but in the period best known to posterity he had abandoned these interests and was concerned solely with the right conduct of life, a quest which he conducted by the so-called "Socratic" method of cross-examin­ing the individuals whom he encountered. While serving in the army he gained a great reputation for bravery, and as one of the presidents of the Athenian Assembly at the trial of the generals after the battle of Arginusae, he courageously refused to put an illegal motion to the vote despite the fury of the multitude. In 399 he was brought to trial before a popular jury on the charge of introducing strange gods and of "corrupting the youth." There has been considerable dispute over the precise meaning of the indictment, but the first part seems not to have been serious, while the second amounted to a charge that he had a "subversive" influence on the minds of the young, which was based on his known friendship with some of those who had been most prominent in their attacks on democracy in Athens. He made no attempt to placate the jury and was found guilty and sentenced to die by drink­ing a cup of hemlock. Though his friends could have enabled him to escape, he acquiesced to the sentence.
Socrates left no writings of his own: knowledge of his lif e and work comes from Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle. He probably never formulated a precise phi­losophy. His legacy to his disciples and to later generations consisted in the method by which he analyzed and criticized the fundamental assumptions of existing sys­tems. He probably rejected the conven­tional Greek religious beliefs of his time, yet professed or created no heterodox reli­gious doctrines. From time to time he had paranormal experiences, signs, or warn­ings which he interpreted as guideposts to his own conduct.
His sexual life, apart from the unhappy marriage, reflected the Greek custom of
paiderasteia to the fullest. He was both the teacher of the young men who frequented his circle and the lover of at least some of them. As a boy of seven­teen he had been the favorite of Archelaus, because he was in the bloom of youthful sensuality, which later gave place to seri­ous intellectual concerns. As an adult he given the generally higher prices of drinks, undesirability of locales, and poor service, gay bars are also the prototype of busi­nesses selling their patrons to each other. Manifestly, the business of a bar is to sell drinks, and the central importance of the bar (followed by the institution of the cocktail party) likely explains the high rates of lesbian and gay alcoholism. As Nardi put it, "Drinking is not used to escape from something; rather it is used to join something. Initial socialization into a gay community often occurs by attending gay bars and enacting the drinking roles perceived as essential to gay identity" (p. 28). As a result, "Getting drunk ... is normal trouble in the gay community, rather than deviance" (Warren, p. 58). Other preconditions create other institutions.
Organs for communicating a positive view of a group are essential to positive self-identification, as well as to political organization and social coordina­tion. In the United States early homophile organizations produced periodicals, and ONE, Inc. in particular fought a protracted legal battle ( 1954-58) for the use of the U.S. mail. In Latin America gay periodicals continue to be seized as subversive even when there is no conceivable prurience to interpret as obscene, as in Mexico, where the
Ley de Imprenta gives a judge discre­tion to condemn printed, written, or dupli­cated materials as "apologias de un vicio" (vice advocacy). Outsidemetropolises with gay ghettoes, many people learn that homosexuality is a possible way of life from print media, the existence of which is now taken for granted by those living in gay worlds (including gay scholarship).
State provision of insurance against disaster (Medicaid, worker's com­pensation, unemployment insurance) and old age (Social Security) is perhaps the most important replacement of the tradi­tional family function, and increases the likelihood of residential concentration of homosexually inclined persons. Parental control was eroded by the inability to guarantee a livelihood for the next genera­tion and by increased geographical mobil­ity - opportunity was beyond the reach and often beyond even the view of parents. Partner choice then became a more per­sonal decision. Welfare state protection of individuals clearly reduced the necessity of reliance on the family and may well be a prerequisite to gay society (contrast Latin America).
Whether geographical mobility was necessary to populate contemporary gay ghettoes has been questioned. Simi­larly, while newly created public places such as railway stations and parks pro­vided anonymous meeting places in the nineteenth century, there had been recog­nized trysting places in pre-capitalist mercantile centers, such as Venice, Paris, and Seville. Welfare protection, geo­graphical mobility, voluntary relation­ships, all releasing individuals from de­pendence on and control by the family, were at least foreshadowed by monasticism and the military in Western history - locales in which widespread homosexu­ality occurred or has been posited.
The timing of the emergence of persons recognized by others in terms of homosexual preference is a major point of contention in the social constructionist position formulated at the University of Essex and elsewhere ca. 1981. Suggested dates for this transformation range from the fourteenth century until as recently as the end of the World War II. The flux of possible human desire has so impressed advocates of this view that they have ig­nored the very limited number of known social organizations of homosexuality (by age differences, gender differences, or egali­tarian comradeship), historically attested labels for roles (e.g., sodomite and cat­amite), and the necessary economy of schematization in all cognitive categori­zation. Actual comparisons of social con­structions across space or time have not generally been made by ostensible social constructionists, who seem more intent loved good and noble boys with a passion that he asked only to be requited, but he was never given to a coarse and purely sensual pederasty; if the beauty of the young Alcibiades made an intense and lasting impression on him, he never forgot his duty as a teacher to guide his youthful pupils toward perfection. He was capable of self-willed abstinence and held this power up to others as an ideal; to have sought to impose it on all others was for­eign to the Greek mentality. As a bisexual Hellene Socrates was always responsive to the beauty of the male adolescent and craved the companionship of young men; as a philosopher he practiced and taught the virtues of moderation and self-control. He endures as one of the outstanding ex­amples in antiquity of a teacher for whom eros was an inspiration and a guide.
Because Socrates is a major figure in Western tradition, his sexual nature posed a continual problem. From Ficino to
Johann Matthias Gesner (1691-1761) schol­ars sought to address the question dis­creetly. The Marquis de Sade was bolder, using socratiser as a verb meaning "to sodomize." Even today, however, many classicists choose to evade the problem.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Hans Licht, Sexual Life in Ancient Greece, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1932; V. de Magalhâes-Vilhena, Le problème de Socrate, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952; idem, Socrate et la légende Platonicienne, Paris: Presses Universi­taires de France, 1952; Herbert Spiegelberg, éd., The Socratic Enigma, New York: Liberal Arts, 1964.
Warren Johansson

S
odom and Gomorrah
These legendary cities have been traditionally located in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, where they constituted two members of a pentapolis, the Cities of the Plain. According to the Old Testament account in Genesis 14, 18, and 19, God overthrew four of the five cities in a rain of brimstone and fire. The names of Sodom and Gomorrah, especially the former, have become proverbial. Echoes of the episode recur in the Bible and in the Koran, as well as in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic exegetical and homiletic writings. From the first city, Jewish Hellenistic Greek formed the derivative sodomites, from which medieval Latin obtained the noun of agent sodomita-, as a result the connection with male homosexuality is for many axiomatic. However the matter is more complex.
A number of main constituents of the Sodom legend emerge from the central passages and fragmentary allusions in the Old Testament and the intertestamental literature, together with the midrashic writings of later centuries:
(1) the geographical legend that sought to explain the peculiarly barren terrain around the shores of the Dead Sea. The ancient world's rudimentary science of geology correctly related this barren­ness to the circumstance that the water level of the Dead Sea had in prehistoric times been far higher; the sinking of the water level had exposed the previously inundated, now strikingly arid and sterile region to the gaze of the traveler.
(2) the theme of sterility by which the ancient mind sought to explain the origins of this condition; to the Bedouin living east and south of the Dead Sea it suggested the etiological inference that at one time the area surrounding this salinized body of water had been a fruitful garden belt. Yet the inhabitants of the cities of the plain had even in the midst of their abundance and prosperity denied hospitality to the poverty-stricken and the wayfarer, while the luxury in which they wallowed led them inevitably into effemi­nacy and vice (the parallel in the Hellenis­tic world was the city of Sybaris, whose proverbial self-indulgence gave the Eng­lish language the word sybaritic). For this reason they were punished by the destruc­tion of their cities and the conversion of the whole area into a lifeless desert.
(3) a Bedouin folk tale on the perils of city life, of which Lot is the hero who must be rescued again and again by the intervention of others. In Genesis 14:12 Lot is taken captive when Sodom is con­quered by the four kings who have allied themselves against the Cities of the Plain; Abraham saves him by military interven­tion in the manner of a tribal sheikh with his retinue of 318 warriors. In 19:4 - 9 the Sodomites threaten Lot's guests with gang rape, but are miraculously blinded and repelled, and in 19:13, 15 the angelic visitors warn Lot of the imminent destruc­tion of the city so that he and his family can leave just in time to escape the rain of brimstone and fire. This underlying motif explains why Lot later "feared to dwell in Zoar" (19:30), even though God has spared the place as a reward for his model hospitality toward the two visi­tors. Over the centuries Sodom and Gomor­rah, along with the Babylon of the Book of Revelation, came to symbolize the corruption and depravity of the big city as contrasted with the virtue and inno­cence of the countryside, a notion cher­ished by those who idealized rural life and is still present, though fading in twen­tieth-century America.
(4) the occurrence in the region east and south of the Dead Sea of volcanic activity that persisted throughout antiq­uity and subsided only after the thir­teenth century. These volcanic eruptions, which have left traces still to be seen at the present day, inspired the "rain of brimstone and fire" (burning sulfur) of Genesis 19:24, which supplemented the notion that the four cities had been "over­thrown" (destroyed by an earthquake) that figures in Genesis 19:25.
(5) the presence in the geographi­cal vicinity of the tribe of Benjamin, which belonged to the pre-Israelite population of Canaan and had for centuries lived by marauding and plundering at the expense of its more civilized neighbors. The culmi­nation of this brigandage in the period of the judges was the outrage at Gibeah re­corded in Judges 19, with its explicit motifs of sexual aggression and gang rape.
(6) the currency in antiquity of world destruction legends, in which the earth is annihilated either by water
[kataklysmos) or by fire [ekvyrosis). The story of Noah and the deluge is the rendering of the first in the book of Genesis, while the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is a localization of the second, in which the catastrophe is limited to four cities in the vicinity of the Dead Sea (Sodom, Gomor­rah, Admah, and Zeboiim) even though the epilogue involving Lot and his daugh­ters clearly derives from a universal con­flagration myth.
(7) world destruction legends that actualize elements of fantasy wishfulfill­ment. If the human race were annihilated with the exception of a single family, the earth could be repeopled only by means of sexual unions ordinarily condemned as incestuous. Thehandful of virtuoushuman beings preserved from the catastrophe by the gods are the chosen seed of a new mankind.
(8) world destruction fantasies associated in modern clinical experience with the early stages of schizophrenia. These fantasies reveal a key component of the Sodomy delusion: the subject cher­ishes the belief that particular actions would expose the world to this awful fate, and that only by refraining from them is he virtuously warding off the catastrophe. Astrological literature supplied the an­cients with an entire list of calamities that betokened divine wrath, as in Luke 21:11, all of which were later ascribed to retribu­tion for "sodomy." Fear of homosexual aggression plays a role in these paranoid fantasies, of the sort analyzed by Freud in the classic Schreber case.
The Sodom legend and its gradual expansion into the delusional form that obsesses the Christian mind were there­fore overdetermined; the conscious and unconscious associations of the compo­nent themes blended to form the later complex of Christian beliefs that may be designated the "sodomy delusion." Its priority in the Old Testament sequence notwithstanding, the more prosaic story in fudges 19 served as the model for the mythical narrative in Genesis 19, where Lot's angelic visitors are miraculously saved from homosexual assault. The whole account, reinforced by the enduring geo­graphical features of the Dead Sea region (the supposed "statue of Lot's wife"), underlay the theological dogma that the destruction of the Cities of the Plain had been divine retribution for the homosex­ual depravity of the former inhabitants. And so the "sin of Sodom" became syn­onymous with homosexual activity and then with "unnatural vice" - a Hellenic, not a Judaic concept - in general, and the scriptural fate of the cities and prophecies of future doom made their barren site linger as an eternal warning to any people that tolerated such depravity in its midst.
The notion of
sodomy is an inno­vation of Latin Christianity toward the end of the twelfth century; it is not found in Jewish or Byzantine writings. Legal usage in various countries has given the word broader or narrower definitions, particu­larly in regard to the character of the ac­tions that "constitute the offense." In the late Middle Ages the tendency of the alle­gorizing mind to parallelism led to the notion that Gomorrah, the twin city of Sodom, had been a hotbed of lesbianism, even though there was nothing in either Testament that would suggest such a construction. The hold of the legend on the mind of Christian Europe has been such that even in the twentieth century literary works have been composed on the subject, and the less sophisticated part of the population still believes that the de­struction of Sodom exemplified the wrath of God that is revealed from heaven (Romans 1:18] against those who practice homosexuality.
Warren Johansson

S
odoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, called "II Sodoma"; 1477-1549)
Italian painter. Born at Vercelli, Sodoma studied under a minor Lombard artist (Martino Spanzotti) in Milan, where he sustained a more crucial influence - that of the innovative work of Leonardo da Vinci. Between 1505 and 1508 he executed a series of frescoes in the Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto near Siena. He then became Siena's leading artist. He was also summoned to Rome, where he painted part of a ceiling in the Vatican's Stanza della Segnatura, as well as some handsome frescoes in the Villa Farnesina. Today his works are less appreciated than those of his Sienese rival, Domenico Beccafumi.
Despite some nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars who have sought to deny it, his nickname is de­served. According to his biographer Gior­gio Vasari, Sodoma loved unchaste enter­tainments and merrymaking; he sur­rounded himself with an entourage of boys and beardless youths. Cherishing them greatly, "he acquired the name of Sodoma, which he did not take with annoyance or disdain, but rather gloried in it, making jingles and verses on the subject, which he pleasantly sang to the accompaniment of the lute." Once, while in Florence, his horse won a race, and on being asked what name should be proclaimed, he insisted "Sodoma, Sodoma!" This effrontery earned him a session of fagbashing by themob. He was moreover an eccentric, keeping a menagerie of animals so that "his house resembled Noah's Ark" (Vasari). In his early years at Siena he did marry, siring a daughter, but his wife left him in disgust after a year. In a tax return of 1531 Sodoma facetiously claimed to have three mis­tresses and thirty grown children - an assertion that is no more indicative of basic heterosexuality than was Walt Whitman's comparable declaration three and a half centuries later.
Vasari, who furnishes most of the information on Sodoma's personal life, taxes him not with immorality, but with lack of industry and imprudent manage­ment, as a result of which he passed his last years in want.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Elisärvon Kupffer, "Giovan Antonio - II Sodoma, der Maler der Schönheit," fahzbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, 9 (1908), 71-167; Mario Masini, "Gli immorali nell'arte: Giovanni Antonio Bazzi detto il Sodoma," Aichivio di Antiopologia Criminale, 36 (1915), 129-51, 257-77.
Wayne R. Dynes

S
odomy
As an overarching term for sexual deviation, the word sodomy today has an archaic, somewhat obsolescent ring, though it still figures in some legal dis­course ("the sodomy laws"). Sodomite, having shrunk to one syllable in early modern British slang ("sod"), has faded further, so that it is little more than a jocular term of mild abuse. Historically, however, the concept of sodomy has been of immense importance. Moreover, it had several nuances of meaning, which it is essential to distinguish in order to inter­pret older written evidence.
The term
sodomia originated in Medieval Latin about the year 1180 as a designation for the "crime against nature" that could be committed in one of three ways: (1) ratione modi, by obtaining vene­real pleasure with a member of the oppo­site sex, but in the wrong manner, e.g., by fellation; (2) latione sexus, with an indi­vidual having the genitalia of the same sex; or (3) ratione generis, with a brute animal. The abstract noun sodomia (for the sin) derives from the noun of agent sodomita (for the sinner), which had origi­nally been used in the Septuagint and Vulgate to mean an inhabitant of the city of Sodom (from Old North Arabic sudum-matu = the [Dead] Sea). According to Genesis 19, Sodom had been destroyed because of the sexual depravity of its male population, which had attempted a gang rape on the two angels who came to deliver Lot and his family from the impending destruction. In time the expressions peccatum sodomitae or crimen sodomitae came to be used to designate a variety of "unnatural" sexual acts, but only in Latin Christianity did the new derivative sod­omia take hold and become a theological and legal concept; it remained alien to Byzantine Greek and Medieval Hebrew. From Latin the term passed into the modern languages of Western and Central Europe as the technical expression for the crime which was punishable by death everywhere until the second half of the eighteenth century, when the Enlightenment began to attack this sacral offense as a relic of the medieval superstition that divine retribu­tion would overtake any community that tolerated "sodomy" in its midst.
The terms sodomy and sodomite thus spread until they embraced a far larger semantic sphere and a higher pitch of affectivity than the later terms (sexual) in­version and homosexuality, and in reading a medieval or later legal text one must not immediately assume that homosexual behavior is meant thereby. Most prosecu­tions, it is true, were for either male homosexuality or bestiality; criminal proceedings against lesbians and hetero­sexuals guilty of fellation or anal inter­course were rare at all times, though an occasional case figures in the (admittedly fragmentary) reports from the pre-modern era. The legal definition of the term - what constituted an "indictable offense" - has also differed from country to country and from century to century down to our own time. Eighteenth-century Poland even recorded an instance in which sexual in­tercourse between a male serf and a girl of noble birth was punished as "sodomy" - because it had supposedly resulted in a crop failure on the estate where it oc­curred. As a practical definition one may say that a "sodomite" was one whose aberrant sexual activity had become known to the Christian community and its authorities; the word should not be confounded with the later psychiatric notion of "homosexual," which stems from a different conceptual scheme strongly in­fluenced by the writings of the homophile apologists Ulrichs and Kertbeny in the 1860s. However, the lay public on learning the new term then superimposed it upon the semantic field occupied by the familiar expression "sodomite," so that the after­glow of the older set of associations has never been fully dispelled.
The verb
to sodomize, which was rare in European languages until the last third of the nineteenth century, usually has the meaning of anal penetration, whether homosexual or heterosexual. In England it is a more learned variant of the common verb to bugger.
Historically, the legend of the des­truction of the Cities of the Plain served to tinge sodomy with the aura of a fathom­less abyss of depravity, of the unspeakable, the monstrous, of "unnatural vice" that provokes the wrath of God against its perpetrators. The associations were rein­forced by the sight of the barren terrain on the shores of the Dead Sea which genera­tion after generation of pilgrims from Western Europe described in their travel accounts. As has been mentioned, the scope of the term expanded to include "unnatu­ral" heterosexual activity and intercourse with animals - not even implied in the tale in Genesis 19 from which it derived. As a result of these manifold enhance­ments, the diabolical intimations of the notion came to seem perversely glamor­ous for a few wayward spirits.
Even now sodomy evokes from the unsophisticated a shudder of horror, though Biblical criticism long ago demol­ished the credibility of the composite narrative in Genesis, analyzing it as the Judaic amplification of a local myth that explained the barrenness and salinization of the shores of the Dead Sea. From the time of Justinian (reigned 527-565) on­ward, however, the legend was deployed as a theological and pseudo-historical justifi­cation for laws intended to stamp out "ungodly practices" that would expose Christian society to divine retribution. Recent legislation has tended to avoid the term because of its ambiguity, its older definitions, and strongly affective charac­ter, not to mention the archaic ties with the Bible that would ill become a secular code of law.
Warren Johansson

S
olicitation
American law contains various provisions for the action of soliciting, or seeking to obtain by earnest request, en­treaty, petition, or diligent and importu­nate asking, of the person of the opposite or same sex for sexual favors. The concept derives from English law.
Basic Fea tures. Statutes have been employed to make arrests for solicitation to commit sexual acts in private between consenting adults which are no longer ille­gal in those American states that have decriminalized sodomy. This practice on the part of the police results in inconsis­tency vis-á-vis the consenting adult acts, violates the First Amendment, and is often supported solely by the uncorroborated testimony of a plainclothes member of the vice squad. If such solicitation contains no offer of or request for money and thus does not involve prostitution or the corruption of minors, its criminalization nowhere antedates the English act of 1898. This act punished with a maximum of two years' imprisonment any "male person who in any public place persistently solicits or importunes for immoral purposes," and thus does not specifically mean homosex­ual conduct. It was aimed originally at pimps and procurers, but soon became the recognized English vehicle against all forms of homosexual solicitation. A number of American jurisdictions soon adopted the concept. The provision of the old New York Criminal Code (superseded in 1965 by Section 722) was representative, pun­ishing as a "disorderly person" anyone "who, with intent to provoke a breach of the peace... frequents or loiters about any public place solicitingmen for the purpose of committing a crime against nature or other lewdness." The English statute had required "persistent" importuning, intend­ing to limit its criminal sanctions to those who refused to take "no" for an answer and thereby threatened a breach of the peace, thus extending the common law concept that underlay the notion of "open or public lewdness," a danger because it could incite violence.
Modern legislators such as those of New York in 1965 have conveniently forgotten that the maintenance of public peace was the purpose of the older laws. They do not insist that the importuning be persistent or continued, rather they em­phasize the affront and disgust experienced by the "innocent" bystanders to homosex­ual solicitation. They meant to protect the public from offensive behavior. Yet it is inconsistent that the iocus
per se (the place itself) converts a conversation other­wise private into a public one unless over­heard by others. Rather, most men cruis­ing for partners employ ambiguous glances, gestures, and words, often not even no­ticed by a disinterested heterosexual, to evoke a receptive response before un­equivocally soliciting. If not encouraged, they usually desist and seek another part­ner. Circumspect and cautious as it usu­ally is, homosexual solicitation subtly using innuendo and subterfuge belies the myth of flagrant homosexuals brazenly accosting defenseless and abashed respon­dents. Instead it is normally plainclothes decoys who entice and entrap those alleg­edly so open and brazen as to constitute an affront to public decency. Most convic­tions are secured exclusively on the ar­resting officer's allegation, particularly in past decades when pocket recording de­vices did not exist at all; complaints by private citizens are rare, indeed virtually non-existent for solicitation, in contrast with indecent exposure. Such unsavory practices encourage shakedowns and ex­tortion.
Solicitation and Sexual Crimi­nalization. Where sodomy committed in private between consenting adults has been decriminalized, as it has been in 25 of the 50 states, solicitation to commit it should ipso facto have also been decriminalized. But this has not always been the case. In Illinois, the first state to decriminalize sodomy in 1961, arrests actually increased in the next year or so. Over 95 percent of those convicted for sex-related crimes are not convicted of sodomy or of other felo­nies difficult to prove such as rape, statu­tory rape, gross indecency, or incest, but for prostitution or lesser crimes and mis­demeanors such as solicitation, public or open lewdness, battery, indecent exposure, gross indecency between males, and (until its limitation in recent years) loitering.
Need for Reform. The crime of "solicitation for sexual activity" should be stricken from the codes in its entirety. It flies in the face of modern legal thought, is inconsistent with the remainder of most penal codes, and is of doubtful con­stitutionality. On many occasions it has been argued that if someone who is solic­ited, so long as the behavior involves only consenting adults in private, is not inter­ested in the proposal, he need only say "no" to the solicitor. In punishing solicita­tions to commit crimes, the law may even infringe freedom of speech. It might be a matter for the legislature to decide "whether the punishment of solicitations should be curtailed in order to protect free speech," and allow sexual liberty. If "a solicitation to commit a crime" consti­tutes "a substantial step in a course of conduct planned to culminate in" the "commission of the crime," the solicita­tion in those 25 states that have not de­criminalized sodomy is treated as a crimi­nal attempt and is punished accordingly. But some codes limit the "definition of crimes of attempt to those situations where the offense attempted is a crime." "An attempt to commit a disorderly persons offense is ... not sufficiently serious to be made the object of the penal law. Many disorderly persons offenses are too innocu­ous or themselves too far removed from the feared result to support an attempt offense." Codes punish solicitations to commit prostitution, but prostitution, by definition, is an offense, while private sexual activity between consenting adults is in 25 states no offense at all. Under some codes, any young man loitering on a park bench who asks a girl to go to bed with him could be sent to prison.
A number of states, including Illinois, Connecticut, Hawaii, and North Dakota, have eliminated such provisions in the course of adopting new criminal codes. New Mexico has managed to live quite comfortably without ever having had a sexual solicitation law on its statute book. These changes are the result of a growing recognition that such laws are nothing but relics of a puritanical past and serve merely to make criminals of other­wise law-abiding people without carrying out any useful social purpose. "To remove criminal sanctions from the conduct it­self, yet to continue to punish solicita­tions to engage in the now licit conduct is not only a masterpiece of inconsistency, but provides blackmailers, extortionists, and others disposed to violence against homosexuals with a substantive vehicle for their operations."
A solicitation to commit a lewd act may be lewd or not depending on its character, not on the nature of the act solicited. Speech is not automatically rendered obscene by its subject matter. More than 30 years ago, Mr. Justice Brennan said: "Sex and obscenity are not syn­onymous." Neither is a solicitation auto­matically "fighting words" and hence a threat to public peace and order. Solicita­tions are thus neither automatically legal or illegal and should not be indiscrimi­nately punished. The crime of solicitation is a relic of attempts by the state to sup­press sexual activity on the part of its citizens, attempts legitimate enough under the Old Regime, but without justification in the modern liberal state whose constitution guarantees freedom of con­science and of action to those who reject the tenets of an ascetic morality.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Thomas E. Lodge, "There May Be Harm in Asking: Homosexual Solicitations and the Fighting Words Doctrine," Case Western Reserve Law Review, 30 (1980), 461-93; Arthur C. Warner, "Non-Commercial Sexual Solicitation: The Case for Judicial Invalidation," SexuaLawReporter, 4 (1978), 1, 10-20. William A. Percy and Arthur C. Warner

S
olon
Poet, lawgiver, and chief archon (magistrate) of Athens in 594-93 b.c. Overpopulation had caused the exploita­tion of Attica's poor, who were enserf ed or even sold abroad into slavery for debt. Solon canceled all debts secured by land or liberty and ended serfdom but did not redistribute all land as the radicals de­manded. He standardized coinage, weights and measures, extended citizenship to immigrant craftsmen, encouraged export of olive oil, and took other measures to improve the economy. He divided the citi­zens into four classes according to wealth, apportioning political power so that only the rich could serve as archons and areopagitici (councilors and judges), but also strengthened the ecclesia (assembly of citizens).
Having visited Crete to study its laws, Solon institutionalized pederasty in Athens. Copying the spectacularly suc­cessful reforms recently introduced to Sparta from Crete by Lycurgus to limit the increase of their
hoplites (foot soldiers) so that their estates would not become overly subdivided, Solon ordained that men should marry between ages 28 and 35, in the fifth seventh of their lifespan. Set­ting the example himself, he copied the Cretan and Spartan system of having each aristocratic young man at about age 22, when released from alert for military serv­ice, take a 12-year-old upper-class boy as ezomenos (beloved) and train him until he was 18 and with a beard. Then ready for military service, he was often stationed in barracks. At this time the erastes (lover), nearing 30, was eligible for mar­riage. Solon also imported gymnasia and palestra, where citizens exercised nude; the seclusion of upper-class women, which later in Athens was to become more pronounced than elsewhere in Greece; and symposia, all-male dinner clubs that encouraged pederastic affairs and, in Athens, became, like the gymna­sia, foci of learning. He invited the Cretan "musician" (i.e., sage, lover of the Muses) Epimenides to Athens to quell the plague and perhaps to promote the reforms. When one of Solon's eiomenoi, his cousin Peisistratus, overthrew his reforms and estab­lished a tyranny, Solon traveled abroad for a decade, visiting Crete again.
Peisistratus and his sons Hippias and Hipparchus ruled from about 545
b.c. until the revolution of 510, which was headed by an old family, the Alcmeonidae. This family produced Cleisthenes, Per­icles, and Alcibiades. The Peisistratids furthered Solon's economic and social reforms. After the collapse of Samos, when the Persians in 522 crucified the pederastic tyrant Polycrates, who out of fear of plots hatched in them had ordered all gymnasia burned, the Peisistratids enhanced Athens' economic and political rise to dominance in the Aegean. Hipparchus had Homer re­cited annually at the Panathenaion, estab­lishing the text, emending it to emphasize the importance of Athens. Hipparchus also patronized immigrant poets, exiles and emigres from Samos and the Ionian states seized by the Persians, including Anacreon, and others fleeing tyranny in Magna Grecia. Some of these myth-makers may have invented the fable that Theseus, after slay­ing the Minotaur, abandoned Ariadne in Naxos and took an eromenos, thus creat­ing a "founder" of pederasty for Athens. Most Peisistratids were eiomenoi and eias­tai in turn, but Hipparchus, the chief pa­tron, was exclusively drawn to boys. When Harmodius, beloved and cousin of the poor but honest citizen Aristogiton, spurned Hipparchus' persistent advances, the pair decided to assassinate the tyrant brothers. The desperate lovers, intent on overthrow­ing the overbearing tyrants, succeeded in slaying only Hipparchus and were in turn killed (514). Four years later, when the tyranny was overthrown with Spartan help, these "tyrannicides" (Harmodius and Aris­togiton) remained heroes of the democ­racy, and were always toasted at symposia. Their descendants were accorded the right to dine for all time at public expense at the Prytaneum, and their statues in bronze with an inscription composed by Simonides were prominently displayed as mod­els of civic virtue. Thus male lovers became associated with tyrannicide and the defense of self-government.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Antony Andrewes, The Greek Tyrants, London: Hutchinson, 1956; Charles W. Fomara, "The Cult of Harmodius and Aristogeiton," Philologus, 114(1970), 155-80.
William A. Peicy

Sotadic Zone
In an attempt to sketch the geog­raphy of the prevalence of homosexual relations, Sir Richard Burton introduced the expression "sotadic zone" in the fa­mous Terminal Essay appended to his translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (commonly known as the "Arabian Nights"; 1885-88). Some­what arbitrarily, Burton took his term from Sotades, an Alexandrian poet of the third century b.c. who wrote seemingly innocu­ous verses that became obscene if read backwards.
In Burton's words, "There exists what I shall call a 'Sotadic Zone,' bounded westwards by the northern shore of the Mediterranean (N. lat. 43) and by the south­ern (N. lat. 30), including meridional France, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and Greece, with the coast-regions of Africa from Marocco to Egypt. Running eastward the Sotadic zone narrows, embracing Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and Chaldea, Af­ghanistan, the Sind, the Punjab and Kash­mir. In Indo-China, the belt begins to broaden, enfolding China, Japan and Turkistan. It then embraces the South Sea Is­lands and the New World.... Within the Sotadic Zone, the [pederastic] Vice is popu­lar and endemic, held at worst to be a mere peccadillo, whilst the races to the North and South of the limits here defined, prac­tice it only sporadically amid the oppro­brium of their fellows who, as a rule, are physically incapable of performing the operation." Possibly Burton's exclusion of sub-Saharan Africa contributed to the er­roneous modern belief that black people were originally innocent of the "vice," having been corrupted to it by their slave masters.
Burton's theory was an attempt to give a theoretical framework to his own observations of sexual mores in various parts of the far-flung British Empire to which he was posted as a diplomat. Trained as a classicist, he considered ped­erasty the only form of homosexuality worth investigating. He did not, however, come up with a plausible theory as to the factors responsible for this Sotadic Zone.
The explanation for much of Burton's zone, at least, probably lies in the persistence of ancient Mediterranean pederasty and its diffusion eastwards by Islam; this however does not account for China, Japan, Indo-China, the South Sea Islands and the pre-Columbian New World.
This further extension may in­deed lend some credence to Burton's the­ory if one looks for climatological factors prevalent in his zone. Northern Europe­ans, seeking to explain the differences between their own sexual mores and those of the southern Europeans, often pointed to the temperature difference between the two areas and ascribed sexual excitement to the warm climate of the South. Terms such as "sultry" and "tor­rid" have a primary meaning of "hot" but acquired the secondary sense of "passion­ate"; the German terms
"schwul/schwül" associate hot-humid conditions with homosexuality directly. As yet, there has been little or no scientific investigation of such notions, which remain largely in the realm of folklore.
Wayne
R. Dynes

South America
See Brazil; Latin America.

Soviet Union
See Russia and ussr.

Spain
Spain is one of the countries with the richest homosexual history, which is gradually becoming better known. An appreciation of same-sex love, along with a cult of beauty and poetry, has been pres­ent during many periods of Spain's history.
Antiquity. The rich and mysteri­ous civilization of the pre-Roman south of Spain is known to have been sexually permissive, although evidence on homo­sexuality in that period is lacking. Hispania was one of the most Romanized provinces, and shared Rome's sexual morality; per­haps it is no coincidence, though, that Martial, one of the most homosexual Latin authors, and Hadrian, one of the best and gayest emperors, were from Spain. That a special term [hawi; see Encyclopedia of Islam, "Liwat,"pp. 776and 778)existedin Western Arabic for male prostitutes sug­gests that such were particularly prevalent there before Islam. The Christian Visi­goths, who ruled Spain after the disappear­ance of Roman authority, were in contrast strongly opposed to homosexuality. Sod­omy was outlawed in the seventh century, with castration and exile the punish­ments; at the same time one finds the emergence of legal measures against Jews. (See Law, Germanic.)
Islam. In the eighth century most of Spain became Islamic; the inhabitants were glad to be rid of Gothic rule. Andalu­sia or al-Andalus, which occupied more of the Iberian peninsula than does the mod­em Andalusia, was an Islamic country from the eighth through the early thir­teenth centuries, and in the kingdoms of Granada and Valencia, Islam survived well into the sixteenth century. Al-Andalus is a missing chapter in the history of Europe. During the caliphate and taifas periods (tenth and eleventh centuries), cosmopoli­tan, literate, prosperous Andalus was the leading civilization anywhere on the coast of the Mediterranean - with the possible exception of Byzantium. It has also been described as the homeland of Arabic phi­losophy and poetry. The closest modern parallel to its devotion to the intellect (philosophy, literature, arts, science) and beauty is Renaissance Italy. The roots of this cultural supernova are the subject of dispute, as is the related question of the ethnic makeup of the Andalusian popula­tion. While the culture was officially Arabic, the number of pure Arabs was small; there was a much larger number of North African Berbers mixed with a native population of Iberian, Phoenician, or other origin. Women captured during raids on the Christian states were also an important demographic element.
Al-Andalus had many links to Hellenistic culture, and except for the Almoravid and Almohade periods (1086-1212), it was hedonistic and toler­ant of homosexuality, indeed one of the times in world history in which sensuality of all sorts has been most openly enjoyed. Important rulers such as Abd al-Rahman
in, al-Hakem II, Hisham II, and al-Mutamid openly chose boys as sexual part­ners, and kept catamites. Homosexual prostitution was widespread, and its cus­tomers came from higher levels of society than those of heterosexual prostitutes. The poetry of Abu Nuwas was popular and influential; the verses of poets such as Ibn Sahl, Ibn Quzman, and others describe an openly bisexual lifestyle. The superior­ity of sodomy over heterosexual inter­course was defended in poetry. Some of the abundant pederastic poetry was col­lected in the contemporary anthologies Dai attiiaz of Ibn Sana al-Mulk and Ray at almvbarrizin of Ibn Said al-Maghribi (The Banneis of the Champions, trans. James Bellamy and Patricia Steiner, Madison, WI: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Stud­ies, 1988). Under the Muslim rulers of al-Andalus, Jewish culture reached its high­est peak since Biblical times; the poetry of Sephardic Judaism suggests that pederasty was even more common among the Jews than among the Muslims.
Medieval Christian Spain. The small northern kingdom of Castile viewed itself as the inheritor of the Visigothic claim to rale over Spain. With en­couragement from France, French-born queens of Castile, women elsewhere in Europe, and the papacy, it gradually won economic and then political control over the entire peninsula. In contrast and to some extent in reaction to the hedonism of al-Andalus, Castile was puritanical, al­though its puritanism was very reluctantly and half-heartedly accepted in the southern and eastern sections of the country. Even within Castile, there was much re­sistance to the imposition of clerical celi­bacy at the end of the eleventh century, which Spain had until that time resisted. This change, not fully implemented for 500 years, was from the beginning seen as unwanted meddling from the other side of the Pyrenees.
The
Fueio ieal, an early medieval law code, ordered that the "sin against nature" be punished with public castra­tion, followed by death by hanging from the legs and without burial (the corpse, thus, eaten by animals). The Sietepaitidas of King Alfonso the Wise (later thirteenth century) also specified the death penalty, except for those under 14 or victims of rape. Documented executions of sodomites begin in the fifteenth century,- the cases known are from Aragon and Mallorca, although this may simply reflect better records in those kingdoms. In fifteenth-century Castile Juan II, his administrator Alvaro de Luna, and his son Enrique IV were primarily homosexual, and homo­sexuality was predictably used by their enemies as a political issue. Writers of Juan II's court created Castilian lyric po­etry, which was absent, ascetically, from previous Castilian literature.
The Renaissance. With the incor­poration of Naples into the crown of Ar­agón in 1443, Aragón came into close contact with an Italian city in which homosexuality was treated indulgently, at least in aristocratic circles. The great king and patron Alfonso V, who moved his court to Naples, was at the very least tolerant. He employed as secretary, librar­ian, and historian the famous Sicilian bi­sexual Antonio Beccadelli, as falconer the founder of Catalan poetry Ausias March, who is linked with homosexuality in a single document, and Pere Torroella, fif­teenth-century Iberia's archmisogynist, also spent time in his court. Naples was not just the center for Renaissance Latin poetry but a major Aragonese political center, through which passed "Spain's best nobles, politicians, and soldiers." Yet there is no evidence of any reform of what in Spanish are called costumbres until the introduction of the Inquisition - seventy years after it had been introduced in Spain - brought widespread revolt against Spanish authority.
Several decisive steps in the for­mation of modern Spain were taken by Isabella with her husband Ferdinand, "the Catholic Monarchs"
(1474-1516). Through their marriage Castile and Aragón became ruled by the same sovereigns, and Catholi­cism became even more linked with mar­riage in the nation's consciousness. Chris­tianity was seen in Castile, more strongly than elsewhere, as a system for controlling sexual behavior. Female prostitution, however, was always tolerated; it was located in the Moorish quarter, a predeces­sor of the "zona de tolerancia" of the modem Hispanic city.
Granada was conquered in
1492; its baths, described as the citizens' enter­tainment, closed shortly thereafter. (Al­fonso VI had destroyed Castile's baths two centuries before, believing that the "vices" practiced there made for poorer soldiers.) Jews were expelled the same year, although a majority chose conversion to Christian­ity and remained in Spain; anti-Jewish propaganda shortly before the order of expulsion identified Jews with sodomy ("sodomy comes from the Jews"). In 1497 Ferdinand and Isabella, presumably re­sponding to the continued existence of sodomites in Spain, ordered that those found be burned, with confiscation of possessions by the crown.
The Hapsburg Era. Hapsburg Spain of the next two centuries was simi­larly repressive, and records survive of many public executions of sodomites, intended to instill terror into the popu­lace. Yet there were ups and downs, with more freedom in Catalonia, Aragón, Valen­cia, and Andalusia than in Castile, and more among the economically privileged than among the peasantry. The most op­pressive period was the reign of Felipe II (1555-1598), which saw arenewed empha­sis on marriage; the prudish Counterreformation, which he championed, opposed sensual pleasure of any sort. Just before his death Felipe II reaffirmed the death penalty for sodomy, and made conviction easier. Felipes III and rv (1598-1665) were more liberal, though only by comparison. Testimony in legal cases, among them those of Felipe II's secretary Antonio Pérez and the Count of Villamediana, is the largest body of information that survives on homosexual life in Spain during the period. In Valencia, Inquisition testimony reveals the existence in the seventeenth century of a clandestine homosexual ghetto. It should be remembered, in study­ing modern Spanish society, that pres­sures toward marriage were so strong that except for ecclesiastics, most of those who engaged in homosexual activities did marry. At the same time, opposition to the Catholic church could be so intense as to make anything Catholicism opposed, such as non-procreative sexuality, seem especially appealing. It should also be noted that homosexuality could be ascetic, rejecting all sexual activity, a purity of which, according to misogynist literature, men were thought more capable.
As Castile took on a world role for the first time, the official morality inter­preted the world in terms of sexual behav­ior and religion. Protestants instituted divorce and clerical marriage, and closed monasteries. New World Indians were sodomites
[see Andean Societies), and needed Christianity. The Turkish empire, of which the Spaniards were terrified, was likewise seen as a land of sexual license, where Christians were slaves. Italy was decadent and effeminate, and Spain under­took its defense. There were substantial colonies of expatriate Spaniards in Italy, the Turkish empire, France, and Holland. Just as those who rejected medieval Castile's sexual morality could and did emigrate to the Islamic south and east, in the Hapsburg period there were many among the expatriates who left in search of greater sexual as well as religious freedom. The expatriates were sometimes influential in reinforcing the sexual free­dom and anti-Catholicism of their new countries.
Homosexuality appears in classi­cal Spanish literature in subtle forms. In the world of sixteenth-century pastoral and chivalric romance an atmosphere of freedom was established, and sex-variant characters, especially women in male roles, appear. Anonymous chronicles of famous homosexuals
(Juan II, Alvaro de Luna, very possibly also the "Gran Cap­itán" Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba) were published in the sixteenth century. Cer­vantes presents, through same-sex friend­ships, relationships with many homosex­ual overtones. In drama, a wide variety of interpersonal and psychological problems were examined. Female roles were some­times played by boys. Female characters often used male disguise, and men in female dress are not unknown,- Tirso de Molina is especially noted for the use of cross-dressing and female protagonists.
Homosexuality was also treated through the use of classical mythology. The most important, difficult, and inno­vative poet of seventeenth-century Spain is
Luis de Góngora y Argote. In his mas­terpiece, the Solitudes, the alienated young protagonist is described at the out­set as more beautiful than Ida's ephebe ("garzón"); the allusion is to Ganymede. The Solitudes started a furious contro­versy; the tormented conservative Quevedo repeatedly called Góngora a sodomite and Jewish, although he is not known to have been either. An important follower of Góngora was Pedro Soto de Rojas, author of a lengthy poem on Adonis; another was Villamediana; another was the brilliant feminist Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. On homosexuality in religious literature and monastic institutions much work remains to be done. In some of the most famous poems in Spanish, San Juan de la Cruz took the female role in fantasized mystical lovemaking with Christ, and the Mercedarian order, to which Tirso de Molina belonged, had the reputation, at least in some quarters, of enjoying sodomy.
Executions of sodomites contin­ued, through in reduced number, into the eighteenth century. The death penalty for homosexual acts was removed in 1822 with the first Spanish penal code, which referred only to "unchaste abuses"
[abusos deshonestos). In 1868 the crime of causing public scandal was added, but no homo­sexual cases have been discussed.
The Nineteenth and Early Twen­tieth Centuries. New contact with main­stream Europe, especially Germany, ex­posed Spain in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to ideas from which it had long been sheltered. There ensued a great campaign of intellectual and cultural renewal; this movement was anti-Catholic, libertarian, and often Arabophile; some of the leading figures spent time in Granada. The founder is the re­vered, celibate educator Francisco Giner de los Ríos, called "the Spanish Socrates," whose Institución Libre de Enseñanza had a great influence until its demise with the Spanish Civil War. The Hellenism of Giner and his disciples remains unstudied.
A focus of homosexual
Ufe was the liberal Residencia de Estudiantes, an offshoot of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza and much more than what its name would imply. Its small campus, with buildings in Hispano-Arabic style, opened in 1915, and it was in the 20s and 30s a center of the artistic vanguard in Madrid. Among its residents were Federico García Lorca, the poet Emilio Prados, and the painter Salvador Dalí.
In the early twentieth century there was little open or published discus­sion of homosexual topics, but there were many coded allusions. Figures interested in homosexuality, at least during part of their lives, include Giner's nephew and disciple Fernando de los Ríos, the Greek professor, essayist, and fiction writer Unamuno, the novelist Baroja, and the poets Manuel Machado and Rubén Darío (the former the foremost Spanish dandy; the latter, a Nicaraguan, the author of the first published discussion in Spanish of Lautréamontj. The Biblioteca Rena­cimiento, whose literary director was the playwright Gregorio Martínez Sierra, published the works of Spanish homo­sexual authors along with translations of Freud.
Writers more openly homosexual were not able to deal with the topic in their works. These include the conservative dramatist Jacinto Benavente (Nobel Prize, 1922), the chronicler of Madrid life Pedro de Répide, the short story writer Antonio de Hoyos y Vinent, and the music critic and historian Adolfo Salazar. Many Span­iards escaped to Paris, among them Grego­rio and María Martinez Sierra and the composer Manuel de Falla. Little maga­zines, such as Grecia of Adriano del Valle, Mediodía of Joaquín Romero Murube, and Renacimiento of Martinez Sierra, remain incompletely studied. Even into the 1920's the situation for homosexuals was oppres­sive, as can be seen from the reticence of the Espasa-Calpe encyclopedia and the comments of Gregorio Marañón. It was foreigners living in Spain, the Uruguayan Alberto Nin Frías [Marcos, amador de la belleza, 1913; Alexis o el significado del temperamento mano, 1932; Homosexual­ismo creador, 1933), the Chilean Augusto d'Halmar (Pasión y muerte delcura Deusto, 1924), and the Cuban Alfonso Hernández Cata (El ángel de Sodoma, 1928) who pubüshed the first books on the topic.
One type of covert treatment of homosexuality was study of Andalusian culture or homosexual figures, among the latter the Count of Villamediana. An important event was the tercentenary of the
Góngora in 1927; the commemoration gave the name to the famous "generation of 1927." This was a celebration of poetry, of Andalusia (Góngora was from Córdoba), an exuberant revolt against Spain's cul­tural establishment, and also an affirma­tion of Spain's homosexual tradition. Among those participating were the poets Lorca, Prados, Luis Cernuda, Vicente Aleixandre (Nobel Prize, Í977), and the bisexual poet and printer Manuel Altolaguirre; Altolaguirre and Prados published in Málaga the magazine Litoral (1926-29). Especially important was the role of the great bisexual love poet Pedro Salinas, called the "inventor" of that poetical generation. Salinas, who introduced his student Cernuda to Gide's writings, was translator of and much influenced by Proust.
Pressures for liberalization were building. Besides Freud, Oscar Wilde's works were available in Spanish, as was Frank Harris'
Ufe of Wilde and Iwan Bloch's Vida sexual contemporánea. Gide's Corydon and an expurgated version of Lautréamont's Cantos de Maldoror ap­peared in the 1920's, translated by Julio Gómez de la Serna,- Ramón Gómez de la Sema wrote a long prologue to the latter. Young Spaniards studied in Germany, returning with knowledge of its sexual freedom. Contact with the writings of Magnus Hirschfeld is certain. Emilio García-Gómez's Poemas arábigo-andalu­ces, which included pederastic poetry, caused a stir when published in 1930. Also contributing to a much changed climate were the lectures and publications on gender identity by Spain's most famous physician, Gregorio Marañón. Marañen believed that homosexuality was a con­genital defect, and claimed that "Latin races" were superior because they alleg­edly had less of it than did Germany and England. Yet he strongly and publicly advocated tolerance, and "treatment" was to be just as voluntary as for any other medical condition. (Impressed by the newly discovered role of hormones in sexual desire, Marañón expected a hormonal therapy to be developed.) Besides Los esta­dos intersexuales en la especie humana (1929) and other writings on sexual medi­cine, Marañón wrote an introduction for Hernández Catá's Ángel de Sodoma, a prologue for the translation of Bloch, an "antisocratic dialogue" accompanyingthe second Spanish edition of Cory don (1931), and a historical diagnosis of the homosex­ual king Enrique IV.
The pressures came to fruition in 1931 with the proclamation of the liberal Second Republic. The fervently anti-Catho­lic Manuel
Azaña was president; minister of education and later ambassador to the United States was Fernando de los Ríos,-and the author of Spain's new constitution, Luis Jiménez de Asúa, had published in defense of sexual and reproductive freedoms Libertad de amar y derecho a morir (1928; an epilogue to Hernández Catá's Ángel de Sodoma). The first few years of the republic were very happy times. The Chilean diplomat Carlos Morla Lynch kept a cultural salon, but published only heavily censored excerpts from his diary. A Hispano-Arabic institute was created and it launched the journal Al-Andalus; surprisingly, both survived the Civil War. Even more surprising, they produced as offshoots, in fascist Spain at the peak of Nazi Germany's campaign to free Ger­many and the world of Jews, a Hispano-Jewish institute and its journal Sefarad.
Homosexuality moved toward open appearance in Spanish literature: while the Ode to Walt Whitman of Lorca was privately published in Mexico (1933), Cemuda published Where Oblivion Dwells in 1934, The Young Sailor and The Forbid­den Pleasures in 1936, and Lorca's Sonnets of Dark Love and The Public were being read to friends shortly before his assassi­nation. As with the Nazis, a motive of the Catholics who began the Civil War in 1936 was to free Spain of homosexuals, although one of their heroes, the assassi­nated José Antonio Primo de Rivera, is reputed to have been a homosexual and a friend of Lorca.
Toward the Present. From 1939 to 1975 Spain was ruled by the joyless clerical-fascist regime of Franco, during which all nonprocreative sexuality was again furtive, although there was liberali­zation in the 60s. Any positive treatment of homosexuality in the media would it­self have been a criminal offense. A re-criminalization of "homosexual acts" in 1970 produced an embrionic gay move­ment, and the first gay magazine in Spanish, Aghois (1972-73). Founded by Armand de Fluvià, Aghois was prepared in Barcelona, then sent clandestinely to Paris, where it was reproduced and mailed. The Franco criminalization was itself repealed in 1978.
Poetry, especially difficult poetry, attracted the least attention and was, there­fore, the preferred homosexual genre. Lit­erary figures of this period are Aleixandre, Aleixandre's
protégé the poet and critic Carlos Bousono, the poets and literary scholars Luis Rosales and Francisco Brines, and the less secretive, and thus more marginal, poets Jaime Gil de Biedma and Juan Gil-Albert {Heracles, written 1955, publ. 1981). From voluntary exile in Paris came the major voice of Juan Goytisolo, who in his novel Count Julian presents an Arabophile interpretation of Spanish his­tory and a trip through the vagina of Queen Isabella. His En los reinos de taifas is the first public discussion by a Spanish author of his arrival at a homosexual identifica­tion.
After the death of Franco in 1975, Spain entered its most liberal period since the end of the Middle Ages; Catholicism has again been deposed from its position as state religion. While there is not a self­consciously or publicly gay culture, a gay movement is now well-established. It is primarily based in Barcelona, home of the Institut Lambda. Bilbao has had a gay center since 1980, and
Gay Hotsa, the most important gay magazine in Spain, is published there.
Major cultural figures are more or less openly gay-identified. Authors emerg­ing or flourishing during this period in­clude, besides Goytisolo, the novelist Terenci Moix, the playwright Antonio Gala, the poet and essayist Luis Antonio de Villena, translator of the Greek anthol­ogy
[La musa de los muchachos, Madrid, 1980), the Bohemian, self-publishing poet Manuel Gámez Quintana [Apuntes sobre el homosexual, Madrid, 1976), the bisex­ual philosopher Femando Savater, and, from Paris, the novelist Agustín Gómez-Arcos (The Carnivorous Lamb, Boston, 1984). A film renaissance has produced two major gay filmmakers, Eloy de la Igle­sia (Hidden Pleasures; The Deputy; Pals) and Pedro Almodóvar (Law of Desire; Dark Habits), both of whom have been ac­claimed abroad; also gay is the country's leading and most admired pop singer, Miguel Bosé. Spain has become a favorite destination of gay tourists, with gay re­sorts located in Ibiza, Sitges, and the Costa del Sol. Gay tourists also go to Barcelona and Valencia, and to a lesser degree Madrid and Seville. AIDS has not had a large impact in Spain, and the majority of re­ported cases are intravenous drug addicts.
Lesbians. Little is known about Lesbianism in Spain. Female-female sexu­ality is believed to have been enjoyed, along with many other forms of pleasure, by the eleventh-century courtesan and poet Wallada; presumably it flourished among the concubines and multiple wives of Andalusia, but other documentation is lacking. (Later Turkish practice would suggest that eunuchs served as coopera­tive partners for lengthy sessions of cunnilingus and intercourse.) In Christian Spain, the protagonist of the very popular Celestina of Fernando de Rojas (1499) enjoyed lovemaking with women. There is a single report of a woman sentenced to exile for "attempted sodomy" in 1549, and there is also mention of women in prison who strapped on a phallus. Women were simply less cause for concern, perhaps because, as an inquisitor said, they did not have the "instrument" with which to commit sodomy. Women were able to live for years in male dress without detection, even serving in the army. Two well-known cases, Catalina de Erauso (1592-1650) and Elena/"Eleno" de Céspedes (late sixteenth century) - the second, possibly a true her­maphrodite, married first as a woman and then as a man - were only discovered by chance.
The role of lesbians in the early twentieth century and Civil War remains to be examined. The actress Margarita Xirgu was at the center of a sympathetic body of theatre people. The
Songs of Bihtis were published in Spanish translation by 1913; that they were the work of Pierre Louys was not yet known. In the contem­porary period a number of women writers have dealt with lesbian topics, without, however, making public their own sexual orientation. Among the most important of these are the novelists Esther Tusquets, who also directs a libertarian publishing house, and Ana Maria Moix.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Gail Bradbury, "Irregular Sexuality in the Spanish Comedia," Modern Language Review, 76 (1981), 566-80; Rafael Carrasco, Inquisición y represión sexual en Valencia. Historia de los sodomitas (1565-1785), Barcelona: Laertes, 1985; Ana M. Gil, "Rosa i lila a la literatura catalana," El Temps, October 24, 1988, pp. 104-06; El homosexual ante la sociedad enferma, Barcelona: Tusquets, 1978; Victoriano Domingo Loren, Los homosexuales frente a la ley: los juristas opinan, Barcelona: Plaza y Janes, 1978; Antoni Mirabet i Mullol, Homosexuali­dad hoy, Barcelona: Herder, 1985; Mary Elizabeth Perry, "The 'Nefarious Sin' in Early Modem Seville," Journal of Homosexuakty, 14:1/2 (1988), 67-89; Ramon Rosselló, L'homosexualitat a Mallorca a l'edat mitjana, Barcelona: Calamus Scriptorius, 1978; Angel Sahuquillo, Federico García Lorca y la cultura de la homosexualidad: Lorca, Dalí, Cernuda, Gil-Albert, Prados y la voz silenciada del amor homosexual, Stockholm, 1986; Phyllis Zatlin, "Homosexuality on the Spanish Stage: Barometer of Social Change," España Contemporánea, 1:2 (Spring 1988), 7-20.
Daniel Eisenberg

Sparta
Ancient Greek Sparta was the chief city-state of the Peloponnesus in the archaic and classical ages. Inspired by the Dorian ancestral hero Heracles, who loved Iolaus and taught him to hunt and fight, Spartans developed the strongest Hellenic society under the Eunomia (good order), laws given by an oracle to the semi-mythi­cal regent Lycurgus, but actually promul­gated just after the Second Messenian War. Victorious under its peculiar constitution that early provided for two hereditary kings but evolved during the First (735-715 b.c.) and Second (635-615 b.c.) Messenian Wars, Sparta enslaved its neighbors, assigning a certain number of these helots to work the 9,000 cleroi (plots of land), each assigned to a Spartan. Thus relieved of work, each male citizen devoted his days from six to sixty to gymnastics and military training to become a perfect hoplite, as the new-style warrior for the phalanx was called.
Pederasty. The semilegendary Lycurgus banned money except for iron spits and ordered periodic redistribution of cleroi. Faced with the need to limit the population of "equals" so that each would possess a cleros, the reformers after 615 b.c. imported the Cretan customs of de­layed marriages for men, training nude in gymnasia, common messes for citizens, and pederasty. Provided only with one rude cloak annually, boys roved in herds (agelai), as in Crete, each under an older boy - an "ciren" of 20-22 - slept outdoors, stole food from helots and harassed and even murdered them. If caught stealing they were flogged publicly, not infre­quently to death in order to teach them to steal more craftily and to endure greater physical hardship. At 12 each boy was taken by a 22-year-old "inspirer," who trained him for the next eight years. Then, as the "listener" began to sprout facial and body hair, he went on active full-time military duty and was assigned to a barracks where he had to sleep until he was 30, continuing to return to dine with his messmates until the age of 60. At 30 the inspirer married a girl of 18, who on her wedding night lay face down in a dark room in boy's attire with close-cropped hair, and henceforth he slept at home. Eighteen- to 20-year-old ephebes and 20-to 22-year-old eirens, being constantly together, made the transition from "lis­teners" to "inspirers."
That Lycurgus borrowed Cretan institutions is attested not only by Ephorus, Herodotus,
Plato, and Plutarch, who state that he traveled in Crete to study its constitution, but also by the fact that common messes in Sparta were at first called by the Cretan term andreia (men's house) before it became the classical syssitia. The Spartan gymnasia and palestra, from which, as in Crete, helots were excluded and citizens trained nude, were modeled on Cretan dromoi, running tracks. Also Thaletas, the Cretan musi­cian (devotee of the Muses, hence poet and scholar) and disciple of the Cretan Onomacritus, who had institutionalized pederasty on Crete ca. 650, came at Lycur­gus' request to help improve the Spartan constitution and introduced there from Crete the Dance of the Naked Youths. After institutionalizing pederasty and the related reforms, neither Sparta nor Crete sent out any colonists, unlike the other poleis.
The Spartan Apogee.
After imple­menting the eunomia, Spartans became the greatest warriors and athletes in Greece. Their earlier poets, like Tyrtaeus (fl. ca. 630), had not described pederasty (nor had any other earlier surviving authors) but afterwards other Greeks, except those in the most backward areas such as Macedonia, quickly adapted Spartan insti­tutions though in a less severe form. So­lon, for example, with the help of the Cretan musician Epimenides, institution­alized pederasty in Athens.
All famous Spartans personally practiced pederasty, but much debate raged in antiquity as in modern times over whether inspirers physically loved their boys. Defenders of the so-called "pure" Dorian form [because Cretans and Spar­tans were the most famous branch of the Dorians, they and other modern scholars assumed pederasty to be a prehistoric in­stitution common to the "Dorian race") of pederasty range from Xenophon to Karl Otfried
Müller (1797-1840) and the con­temporary Harald Patzer. The majority, however, adhere to the skepticism of Cicero: "Only a thin veil [the tunic sepa­rating the lovers who reclined side by side on a couch at symposia] preserves their virtue" (De República IV, 4). Many charged the Spartans with homosexual and/or even heterosexual promiscuity because Spar­tans secluded their women far less than did other Greeks, even letting them exer­cise nude in public as the males did and not marrying them until they were 18 whereas most other Greeks of 30 took brides of 15. Aristotle accused the Spar­tans, like the Celts and other "warlike" races, of being dominated by their women and given to pederasty. Alcman's Partheneia indicates that corerasty (love of maidens) was practiced betw een women and girls, both classes of the population less restricted than elsewhere and, ac­cording to Aristotle, women owned two-fifths of the property in Sparta as a result of inheritance from warriors slain in its constant wars.
As the Spartans heroically led in repelling the Persians in 480-479
b.c., their reputation soared. Even at their maritime rival Athens, a pro-Laconian, anti-demo­cratic party, mainly composed of aristo­crats, existed during the bitter Peloponnesian War (431-404 b.c.), pitting Sparta's Peloponnesian League against Athens' Delian League. Socrates' most famous pupils allied en masse with him in praise of Sparta: Alcibiades, Critias, who had headed the "Thirty Tyrants" installed by the Spartans after their victory to control Athens, Plato, and Xenophon. This factor plus his questioning the wisdom of the war and the existence of the gods led an Athenian jury to condemn Socrates to death.
Dechne. After Sparta's victory, its commanders and harmosts (gover­nors) often became corrupt, taking bribes and ravishing boys in the territories they controlled. Great inequality of wealth re­sulted from such plunder as well as from inheritances and many unable to contrib­ute as required to syssitia lost their status as equals. At battles in 371 and 362 b.c. Thebans led by the "Sacred Band" of lovers organized by Epaminondas over­threw Spartan hegemony and liberated Messenia, slaying so many Spartan warri­ors that the city never fully recovered, hampered, some say, by a low birth rate caused by pederasty. Two pederastic kings, Agis III ¡244-241 b.c.) and Cleomenes 111 (235-219 b.c.), revived the old constitution, redistributing wealth and restoring disci­pline, but they were defeated by the Romans, in alliance with the Achaean League, in 222 b.c.
Conclusion. The Spartan system of education discouraged intellectual de­velopment and fostered "Laconic" brevity of speech. But when the mercantile socie­ties of Ionia, the Aegean Islands, and Athens, following Sparta's lead, copied and intellectualized pederasty, it became the driving force of the Greek miracle.
Each boy
eromenos had as a distinguished private tutor his erastes or lover.
Sparta was to the Greeks them­selves and remains the eternal model of an aristocratic warrior society whose unwrit­ten law combined male bonding with an especially virile, austere form of homo­sexuality. Neglecting the cultural en­deavor that was the particular glory of Athens, Sparta nonetheless made its own contribution to the Greek miracle. Inspi­red by man-boy love, the heroism of Spar­tan warriors shielded nascent Hellenic civilization from the menace of Persian despotism.
See also Greece, Ancient.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Paul Cartledge, "The Politics of Spartan Pederasty," Proceed­ings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 207(1981), 17-36; idem, Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta, London: Duckworth, 1987; Elizabeth Rawson, The Spartan Tradition in European Thought, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
William A. Percy

S
picer, Jack (John Lester; 1925-1965)
American poet. Stemming from a Minnesota family, Spicer spent most of his life in California. As a freshman at the University of Redlands (1944) Spicer be­came interested in Calvinism,- later he took a Ph.D. in linguistics. Glimpses of his personal life are found in his letters, whose whimsical style attests his keen sense of language, and in recollections of friends.
The earliest published verses date from 1946, when poems appeared in
Occi­dent, the Berkeley student magazine. In later years Spicer repudiated his early verses, calling them "beautiful but dumb." They are tender and lyrical, qualities at­tributable to Spicer's study of Yeats.
For the poet Robin Blaser, his close friend and literary executor, Spicer's poetic career actually begins in 1957 with the appearance of
After Lorca. This is the first of the books written after he changed his approach to creativity and accepted the notion of "divine poetic infusion," a method he traced to the Greek writer Longinus. Blaser writes, "It is indicative of a new consciousness of the power and violence of language, and in Jack's work, it becomes an insistent argument for the performance of the real by way of poetry." With the publication of After Lorca in 1957, Spicer began a steady production of verse in his new style. During this creative phase Spicer exercised a charismatic sway over his San Francisco circle. Among the poets he influenced are Robin Blaser, Harold Dull, Robert Duncan, and Richard Tagett.
The dozen volumes he wrote are gathered in the posthumous
Collected Books (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow, 1975). Uncollected items appear in One Night Stand and Other Poems (San Francisco: Grey Fox, 1980). His 1965 Vancouver lec­tures remain unpublished.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Paul Mariah, ed., [Jack Spicer Issue], Manroot (Fall/Winter 1974/ 75).
George Klawitter

S
ports
See Athletics.

S
tein, Gertrude (1874-1946)
American writer. Born in Al­legheny, Pennsylvania, Stein spent much of her youth in Oakland, California, where her father had business interests. As an undergraduate at Harvard's Radcliffe Col­lege she was influenced by the psychology classes of William James. She then pur­sued medical studies in Baltimore, where she had an affair with a woman named May Bookstaver. This experience provided the basis for the novel Q.E.D., the only work in which Stein wrote explicitly of a lesbian relationship; she did not allow the book to be published during her lifetime.
In 1903 Gertrude Stein left for Europe, in due course settling into a Paris apartment with her brother Leo. The two had a keen interest in avant-garde art, and began a pioneering collection of contem­porary paintings. Gertrude became friends with Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso - then regarded as an enfant terrible, but about whom she wrote with insight. In 1905 her Baltimore friend Etta Cone came to Paris for some months; she and Ger­trude had an affair, while Cone typed the manuscript for Stein's book
Three Lives. Etta soon came to share the Steins' passion for contemporary art, and after her return to America she and her sister Claribel built up a collection of modern master­pieces, which later entered the Baltimore Museum of Art. Etta continued to rely implicitly on the aesthetic advice and judgment of Gertrude Stein, and in this way the bonding of the two women was to play a role in the introduction of modern art to the United States.
At the end of 1907 Alice B. Toklas arrived in Paris. Toklas, who came from a similar upper-middle-class Jewish family of the Bay Area of California, had an al­most immediate rapport with Stein. They were to be together for 38 years. Their relationship was a version of the
butch-fem dyad: Alice did the cooking and kept house, while Gertrude concentrated on her writing. When heterosexual couples would visit, Gertrude would talk to the men, while Alice made the women feel at home. In her forties Stein wrote love po­etry reflectingherrelationship with Toklas; although sexual particulars are noted in a private code, this can be deciphered with­out too much difficulty. Like Q.E.D., these poems were not published in her lifetime.
After World War I, Stein's Rue de Fleurus apartment - in competition with the nearby establishment of Natalie Clifford Barney - became a favorite gath­ering place of the American and English writers of the so-called "Lost Generation," including Robert McAlmon, F. Scott Fitz­gerald, and Ernest Hemingway. Although Hemingway acquired some of his own style through studying Stein's more ex­perimental work, he was later to write harshly about her - as she seemed to have struck a tender nerve in his own sexual self-concept. For a fellow Harvard gradu­ate, the homosexual composer Virgil Thomson, Stein wrote an opera libretto,
Four Saints in Three Acts in 1927; it was successfully produced in Hartford in 1934 with sets by Florine Stettheimer.
In 1933 Stein published
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, deliber­ately composed in an accessible style. The next year she followed this book with a triumphant tour of America - her only trip home. While her literary eminence was assured, her artistic judgment in this pe­riod seemed less certain,- she became very interested in a minor English gay painter Francis Rose, and acquired a number of his undistinguished works.
During the Occupation years of World War II, Stein and Toklas lived un­disturbed at their country home in the south of France. After the liberation Ger­trude Stein was able to return to her Paris apartment, where she delighted in receiv­ing the visits of American soldiers. She died of cancer in 1946, leaving her manu­scripts to Yale University, where they have been gradually brought to publication.
Continuing to live in the Paris apartment surrounded by the paintings, Alice B. Toklas became renowned for her cookbook. After converting to Roman Catholicism, perhaps in the hope that somehow it would assist her in being reunited with Gertrude, Toklas died in 1967.
Stein's writings have acquired a reputation for being difficult and opaque. She sought to develop a literary parallel to her cherished Cubist paintings, with their fragmented presentation of reality. An early interest in automatic writing, which grew out of her classes with William James, fused with the stream-of-consciousness techniques that she shared with James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, and Virginia Woolf to produce work of striking moder­nity. Apart from these innovative con­cerns, the obscurity of much of her writing is probably also linked with her desire to advert to aspects of her lesbianism, but without openly avowing it. While Ger­trude Stein will probably never become a popular writer, she was a pivotal figure in the development of literary modernism, and as such has exercised considerable indirect influence. Her first-hand re­sponses to the work of modem artists, and the little museum of major works that so many saw in her Paris apartment, earned her a secondary role as a tastemaker in the field of modem painting.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Richard Bridgman, Gertrude Stein in Pieces, New York: Oxford, 1970; James R. Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company, New York: Praeger, 1974; Linda Simon, The Biography of Alice B. Toklas, New York: Avon, 1977.
Evelyn Gettone

Stereotype
The term stereotype had its ori­gin in the printing trade, where it meant a solid metal plate, a printing surface that could be used for thousands of identical impressions without need of replacement. The American journalist Walter Lippmann introduced the concept to the social sci­ences in his book Public Opinion (1922), in which he argued that in a modern democracy political leaders and ordinary voters are required to make decisions about a variety of complex matters which they do not understand, but judge on the basis of stereotypes acquired from some source other than direct experience. The inflow of new empirical data fails to correct the situation because the individual who has embraced a stereotype sees mainly what he expects to see rather than what is really present.
The esteem in which Lippmann was held by Americans in public life fur­thered the adoption of the term essentially in the meaning he gave it. When a concept is designated a stereotype, it is implied that (1) it is simple rather than nuanced or differentiated, (2) it is erroneous rather than accurate, (3) it has been acquired through secondhand rather than direct experience, and (4) it resists modification by later experience. Very little systematic investigation of the dimensions of stere­otyping has been done, apart from the dimension of resistance to change. In empirical research the term has usually been restricted to a pejorative designation for commonly held beliefs about ethnic groups. This "group concept" usage was established in a classic study by Katz and Braly of 1933. The questionnaire asked the subject to select from a list of 84 traits the ones he considered characteristic of each of ten ethnic groups, then to choose the five "most typical" traits for each group. This procedure has been repeated many times, for many ethnic groups, and in many different countries. While most of the studies have dealt with beliefs about eth­nic groups, a considerable number have probed attitudes toward occupational groups, social classes, the differences be­tween the sexes, and like topics.
One conclusion that may be drawn from this research is that most individuals are willing to make at least a guess about the traits of almost any de­fined social group on the basis of informa­tion that a social scientist would consider inadequate. Opinions are derived first of all from the mass media, which today by electronic means reach even the unedu­cated and barely literate masses in back­ward countries, as well as educated pub­lics in advanced ones. Other individuals and fortuitous personal contact supply further bases for opinion-forming. The circumstances under which stereotypes are likely to be accurate or inaccurate are the object of many hypotheses. A widely held belief which Lippmann himself propa­gated is that the stereotypes of the edu­cated are in general more accurate than those of the uneducated, and that concepts formed by social scientists are the most accurate of all. This view, however plau­sible, has never been demonstrated. A secondary problem is a group's self-image, which may be as stereotypical as any other. If the self-image of a collective and a second group's image of it largely coin­cide, this fact is usually taken as evidence for a "kernel of truth" in both sets of stereotypes.
Stereotypes of Homosexuality. Research on attitudes toward homosexu­ality is relatively recent, and the dimen­sions of the stereotyping of homosexuals are not fully defined. Several general ob­servations may, however, be made on the basis of the extant findings and of more theoretical presuppositions. The first is that there are diachronic layers of stere­otypes. In the West, the oldest layer, in­herited from antiquity and the early Middle Ages, is that homosexuals behave like members of the opposite sex, or con­versely that they violate the appropriate norms of behavior for their genital sex. Thus terms like "effeminate" and "swish" are applied to male homosexuals by some if not always many of the subjects ques­tioned. Conversely, lesbians are perceived as mannish, crude, and aggressive. An­other archaic layer, attested in the Greek comedies of Aristophanes, is that male homosexuals and bisexuals are constant­ly thinking about sex, and even (in many cases) almost indiscriminate in their choice of sex objects. The third layer derives from the central and late Middle Ages, when the church systematically defamed homosex­ual activity and those who engaged in it, with the outcome that terms such as "immoral," "repulsive," "dangerous," and "sinful" are stereotypical responses to questionnaire studies. The fourth layer is the one propagated by psychiatry and psy­choanalysis from the late nineteenth cen­tury onward, to the effect that the homo­sexual is "sexually abnormal," "per­verted," "mentally ill," "maladjusted," "insecure," and "lacking self-control." The most recent layer, and the one characteris­tic of individuals who have overcome the traditional social distance from homo­sexuals, holds them to be "sensitive," "in­dividualistic," "intelligent," "imagina­tive," "sophisticated," and "artistic." Un­doubtedly the standard movement pro­paganda about the homosexuality of great men and women, and also the image of the creative writer or artist as homosex­ual, have contributed mightily to the dif­fusion of the last layer. Although it would appear to be a rare example of positive stereotyping (and to a considerable extent it is), the notion of creativity has been traditionally associated - at least in Ameri­can culture - with lack of manliness.
Such stereotypes are harbored and propagated not only by members of the host culture (the "heterosexual maj ority"), but also - to a degree that may seem sur­prising in the era of homosexual libera­tion - by many homosexuals themselves. As part of the coming-out process, the tyro homosexual or lesbian may display "obvi­ous" mannerisms and dress, even in an exaggerated form, to gain adhesion to the group. Later these flaunting signals are likely to be toned down, as the need for them decreases. In a more subtle way, traits redolent of stereotypes may be selec­tively unfurled in order to signal one's orientation nonverbally to other gay people. Such communication serves a specific function, but it also lends a specious valid­ity to the more baneful stereotypes. Di­lemmas of this kind are probably insepa­rable from the experience of a stigma­tized minority as such.
Class Differences. There is a class aspect to stereotyping: the lower social classes, being less educated andmore given to concrete than abstract thinking, incline more to stereotypic responses because their thinking is in imagery rather than in logical concepts, and their mental life more affective than intellectual. More­over, the uneducated may cherish a ran­dom set of stereotypes that contradict one another, as when the male homosexual is thought inordinately aggressive and "a danger to every boy on the streets," but also timid and wanting in masculinity. Also, in the lower classes far more impor­tance is attached to sex roles that are rigidly and unequivocally defined. A man must be masculine, a woman feminine, and there is a relatively low level of tolera­tion for deviant behavior. In this situ­ation, if a man is homosexual and there­fore behaves sexually "like a woman," his whole personality is expected to conform to this model. Hence the stereotype - or more precisely the most archaic layer of stereotypes - is reinforced by the majority of lower-class homosexuals who opt for a female identity and then project that identity through overtly effeminate be­havior. Conversely the upper-class indi­vidual exposed to homophile propaganda may form his stereotypical notion from the biography of a famous novelist or painter, or from literature that stresses the "positive achievements" of homosexuals in history. In general, the more educated part of the population in a society that prides itself on its individualism can to­lerate - if not accept - a deviation in sex­ual character so long as it is not patently disharmonious or incongruent with other societal norms.
Correlations of Stereotypes. A further question is the correlation of nega­tive stereotypes of the homosexual with attitudes toward other outsider, minority groups. In the wake of the findings of Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno and his associates in The Authoritarian Personal­ity (1950), investigators have sought a common denominator in a personality type that relies on authority, is unable to toler­ate ambiguity, and is deeply immersed in the specific value system of the ethnic group and social class in which it has been reared. A heterosexual having such traits is likely to be even more intolerant of the homosexual than of other deviant groups, and to perceive homoerotic behavior as threatening to his own sexual identity and potentially harmful to society. That is why the effeminate homosexual may be disliked because he violates the norm of masculinity, but conversely the mascu­line homosexual may provoke even more anxiety because of the ambiguity which his even subtler departure from maleness entails. It is also a fact that homosexual behavior is often believed to have origi­nated with, or to be characteristic of, another ethnic group, as when Frenchmen call homosexuality "le vice allemand" (the German vice). The very terms sodo­mite and bugger are in English the legacy of such labeling of a people or dissident sect as guilty of "unnatural vice." This general tendency to ascribe undesirable characteristics to disliked groups is termed ethnophaulism.
The centuries-long stigmatization of the sodomite as a criminal and an out­cast in Western civilization has left behind a negative residue of stereotypes that only an equally lengthy process of education and positive-image building can efface. A conference of gay movement leaders held in 1988 placed the creation of a positive image of the homosexual at the head of its agenda for future activity.
See also Authoritarian Per­sonality; Discrimination; Homophobia,-Myths and Fabrications.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ronald A. Farrell and Thomas J. Morrione, "Social Interaction and Stereotypic Responses to Homosexuals," Archives of Sexual Behavior, 3 (1974), 425-42; Robert Gramling and Craig J. Forsyth, "Exploit­ing Stigma," Sociological Forum, 2 (1987), 401-15; Sharon B. Gurwitz and Melinda Marcus, "Effects of Anticipated Interaction, Sex, and Homosexual Stereotypes on First Impressions," Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 8 (1978), 47-56; Gregory R. Staats, "Stereotype Content and Social Dis­tance: Changing Views of Homosexuality," Journal of Homosexuality, 4 (1978), 15-27; Alan Taylor, "Conceptions of Masculinity and Femininity as a Basis for Stereotypes of Male and Female Homosexuals," Journal of Homosexuality, 9 (1983), 37-53.
Warren Johansson

Stevenson, Edward Irenaeus Prime-("Xavier Mayne"; 1868-1942)
American novelist and scholar. Born in Madison, New Jersey, and edu­cated in the United States, he began to write for the press while still in school. He was admitted to the New Jersey bar but never practiced. Stevenson was a member of the staff of the Independent, Harper's Weekly, and other magazines, and gained a wide reputation as musical, dramatic, and literary critic. He specialized in for­eign, including European and Oriental lit­eratures and claimed fluency in nine lan­guages. Down to 1900 he divided his time between the United States and many parts of Europe, then settled permanently abroad out of dislike for the homophobia of contemporary American society, ulti­mately dying in Europe in 1942. He wrote many novels and short stories, several of which broach the homosexual theme but in the innocuous guise of "male friend­ship." In a boys' book about Bonnie Prince Charlie, White Cockades (1887), there is "half-hinted" an erotic liaison between the prince and a rustic youth.
Under the pseudonym "Xavier Mayne" he published in Naples in 1908 what was perhaps the first explicit homosexual novel by a native-born American:
Imre: A Memorandum. The novel's simple plot describes the love af­fair between the thirty-year-old Oswald who is spending a leisurely summer of language study in Hungary and the twenty-five-year-old Imre, a Hungarian cavalry officer.
More important was his nonfiction book
The Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as a Problem in Social Life (Rome, 1908), the first large-scale survey in the English language of the sub­ject of homosexuality from all aspects. It was based not just upon his reading of nearly everything that had been published until then in the homophile movement press and in the psychiatric literature, but also upon his first-hand observations of the homosexual scene in the major cities of Europe and the United States, with much folklore and gossip thrown in for good measure. The author describes the mores of the gay subculture of that era, from the nobleman in his salon to the hustler on the street, with an objectivity that is free of both polemic and condemna­tory bias. He alludes to many all-but-for­gotten incidents and scandals that made the metropolitan newspapers, and names scores of illustrious figures of the past and present as Uranians or Uraniads (lesbians). Stevenson adheres to the line of Magnus Hirschfeld and the Scientific-humanitar­ian Committee that homosexuality is inborn and unmodifiable, that homosexu­als should not be forced to don "masks" to hide from would-be persecutors, and that religion and the law are powerless to extir­pate a predisposition of human nature. So thorough is the volume that not a few of the topics broached on its more than 600 pages have yet to be investigated by mod­ern scholars. As the work of a participant observer, The Intersexes remains a pre­cious collection of fact and commentary that anticipates Donald Webster Cory's The Homosexual in America of 1951, its first American successor.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Roger Austen, Playing the Game: The Homosexual Novel in America, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977; Noel I. Garde, "The Mysterious Father of American Homophile Literature," ONE Institute Quarterly, 1:3 (Fall 1958), 94-98.
Warren Johansson

Stoicism
Founded by Zeno of Citium (335-263 b.c.), Stoicism became the lead­ing philosophical school under the Roman emperors, until the triumph of Neoplatonism in the third century. Insisting in the trying times of the Hellenistic monar­chies that even poverty, pain, and death are as nothing to the eternal soul, Stoics vanquished their materialistic rivals, the Epicureans, who stressed pleasure rather than virtue as the aim of life.
Almost all earlier Stoics, some­times labeled the First Stoa, praised homo­sexual love and shocked most Greeks by claiming that, contrary to the convention that one should cease loving a boy once he sprouted a beard, one should keep one's
eromenos until he reached his twenty-eighth year. Paenatius and other Greeks introduced Stoic doctrines, which appealed to the Latin sense for gravitas and endur­ance of hardships, to the Scipionic circle in Rome. Perhaps fearing the wrath of old-fashioned patresfamilias, who disap­proved of Greek love and arranged the marriage of their sons during their teens to girls of 12 or 13, in contrast to the practice of upper-class Greeks to postpone mar­riage to 30 and then take brides whose ages ranged from 15 to 19, they omitted the emphasis on boy-love. Aristocratic Ro­man women lived with their husbands and circulated in society, in contrast to Greek women who were secluded, shut away in gynaikeia (women's quarters). Aristocratic Roman women thereby attained a far higher status than Greek women had and fostered the emphasis of later Stoics on marriage. Often designated the Second Stoa, most of the later Stoics deemphasized homosexual love and some, notably the Roman Musonius Rufus in the first century, demanded reciprocal fidelity to one's wife. Others, however, like the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (reigned 161-180), remained bisexual. The slave phi­losopher Epictetus (ca. 50-ca. 135) demon­strated the Stoic doctrine that one's sta­tion in life was indifferent, only one's virtue mattered.
Many have seen Stoic emphasis on the soul and on virtue and restraint of appetites as a harbinger of Christianity. Indeed, Patristic writers from Clement of Alexandria (150-215) to St. Augustine (354 - 430) dressed up Christian doctrine in Stoic phrases to convert the upper classes. But while Stoic philosophers, like pagan physicians, recommended moderation in sexual activity as in diet and exercise to improve the body and mind, most Chris­tian Fathers advocated complete chastity and total sexual abstinence. Christians wished to transcend nature, while Stoics preferred to live in harmony with it. To control sexual urges, Christians mortified the flesh, often in the deliberate attempt to achieve male impotence and female frigid­ity, states that Greco-Roman physicians treated as diseases to be cured. Christians condemned sodomy with the Stoic phrase, "against nature." The evolution from uninhibited pagan sexuality through Stoic restraint to Christian asceticism and chas­tity that some philosophers and historians claim to detect is thus more apparent than real, more superficial than fundamental, one of vocabulary rather than essence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Daniel Babut, "Les Stoiciens et l'amour," Revue des Etudes Gricques, 6 (1963), 55-63, G. w. Bowersock, Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969, Michel Foucault, The Caie of the Self, New York: Random House, 1986, J. M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969, Aline Rousselle, Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity, New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988.
William A. Percy

Stonewall Rebellion
This event, which took place in New York City over the weekend of June 27-30, 1969, is significant less for its in­trinsic character than as a symbol of self-assertion for the gay liberation movement. So successfully has the symbol been propa­gated that it has largely, though not com­pletely, obscured the history of the preced­ing century of heartbreakingly slow and arduous work on behalf of homosexual emancipation. The Stonewall Rebellion was a spontaneous act of resistance to the police harassment that had been inflicted on the homosexual community since the inception of the modern vice squad in metropolitan police forces, but it sparked a much greater, indeed national phenome­non - a new, highly visible, mass phase of political organization for gay rights that far surpassed the timid, semi-clandestine homophile movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
What Occurred. The event began with a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar at 51-53 Christopher Street just east of Sheridan Square in New York's Greenwich Village on the night of June 27-28. A police inspector and seven other officers from the Public Morals Section of the First Division of the New York City Police Department arrived shortly after midnight, served a warrant charging that liquor was being sold without a license, and announced that employees would be arrested. Over the preceding two decades such raids had become almost routine for the police, and they were confident that with a little strong-arm and menace the "queers" would go quietly, as usual. The Stonewall was a dimly lit dance bar in a neighborhood that abounded in homosexu­als with flamboyant, unconventional life­styles, including transvestites known as "street queens." Partly because their overt non-conformity gave them little to lose, as the patrons were being ejected from the bar by the police others lingered outside to watch the proceedings, and were joined by passers-by, including many street people. Some were attracted from the nearby MacDougal Street entertainment area. It was the arrival of the paddywagons that changed the mood of the crowd from pas­sivity to defiance. The first vehicle left without mishap, though there came a chorus of catcalls from the crowd. The next individual to emerge from the bar was a woman in male costume who put up a struggle which galvanized the bystanders into action. As if prompted by a signal, the crowd erupted into heaving cobblestones and bottles. Some officers had to take refuge inside the bar, where they risked being burned to death. Others turned a firehose on the crowd, while they called reinforcements which in time managed to clear the streets. During the day the news spread, and the following two nights wit­nessed further violent confrontations be­tween the police and gay people.
Underlying Causal Factors. To understand why this riot occurred, and why it came to have such resonance, it is necessary to recall that the nationwide wave of opposition to the American inter­vention in Vietnam, which had culmi­nated in the student uprising at Columbia University on April 23, 1968, and in riots in the streets of Chicago during the Demo­cratic National Convention in the sum­mer of 1968, had replaced the conserva­tism of the Eisenhower era with a mood of radicalism that through the "youth cul­ture" of the late 1960s fed into the subter­ranean world of the hippies and beatniks of the bohemias in the large cities. There was among the young, the outsiders, the ag­grieved of the land a sense of mounting opposition to an establishment headed by President Richard M. Nixon that persisted in maintaining an American presence in Indo-China, but also embodied "straight" society and everything that stood in the way of the liberation for which the rebel­lious generation of the late 1960s yearned.
Why did the event occur in New York City? After all, Los Angeles had been the birthplace of the American gay move­ment, and other significant social distur­bances took place in the 1960s in San Francisco and Berkeley, California. Rein­forced by creative exiles and emigres, New York City during the 1940s had be­come a major center of avant-garde cul­ture, which had brought with it from Europe a bohemian tradition of mockery of authority, revivifying Greenwich Village's reputation for innovative non­conformity. The paintings of New York's Abstract Expressionists, championed by poet-critic Frank O'Hara, horrified the establishment with their seemingly anar­chic "drip" style. Pop art appeared with its principal shrine in Andy Warhol's "fac­tory." New York was also the home of the experimental New American Cinema, whose "Baudelairean" films, some of them made by gay directors, explored aspects of the underground in a highly disjunctive, poetic style. MacDougal Street, the vi­brant, often raucous center of the folk music scene, was only two blocks away from the Stonewall Inn. Finally New York, together with London, was the home of a new spirit of innovation in the theatre; scores of Off-off-Broadway theatres, some accommodating only a score of patrons, sprang up as sites of sometimes daring excursions into novelty, including nudity and obscenity. The Stonewall Rebellion, which involved some of the same transvestites who hovered around the avant-garde theatre, reflected the confluence of these cultural trends.
Although it had played virtually no role in the first fifteen years of the American homophile movement, New York City - as perhaps nowhere else in the country - sheltered a long radical tradi­tion. In the late 1960s this tradition merged with a counterculture - whose geographi­cal center and symbol was Greenwich Village - that openly rebelled against the values of "respectable" American middle-class society and fostered a state of mind that could successfully challenge even so long-standing and unquestioned a taboo as the intolerance of homosexuality. That youthful nonconformity, reinforced by the growing sexual freedom and the drag cul­ture that had taken firm hold of the college generation in the mid-1960s, led to the loss of inhibitions and unreflecting bra­vado which inspired the spontaneous re­sistance to police harassment. The experi­ence of having their privacy invaded and their civil rights violated, of being the victims of entrapment and of perjured testimony brought home to many hetero­sexuals the kind of injustice that homo­sexuals had long suffered at the hands of the police. This overall pattern of assaults - not simply the arrest of bar patrons - was the grievance against the police shared by the youth culture and the homosexual subculture alike, both sensing the officers of the law as villains because of their persecution of drug users, student radi­cals - and gay people.
Significance. If the Stonewall Rebellion was not self-consciously politi­cal, it was still an intensely felt refusal to endure any longer the humiliation, the constant insults, the rightlessness that had been the traditional lot of the homosexual in Western society as long as anyone living could remember. Craig Rodwell, who stumbled upon the crowd in front of the Stonewall Inn - named after the legendary Confederate General "Stonewall" Jackson - tried to set up a chant of "Gay Power!" but almost no one joined in.
But times were changing rapidly. Partisans of the New Left saw an opportu­nity to enlist homosexuals for their move­ment, and the homophile activists of such groups as the Mattachine Society began to rethink their positions in the light of the left's critique of the oppressive and ex­ploitative character of American society. After two days, members of New York Mattachine were in the West Village hand­ing out leaflets hailing "the Christopher Street Riots" as "the Hairpin Drop Heard around the World," echoing Emerson's
Unes of 1835 on the patriots at Lexington who "fired the shot heard round the world."
The American media, centralized in New York City, diffused and reshaped the image of the event. And the Stonewall Rebellion, however brief and local, how­ever apolitical it may have been, did echo around the globe. Enveloped in legend like the Easter Sunday Uprising of 1916 in Dublin, it has been commemorated by a parade held each year in New York City on the last Sunday in June, foliowing a tradi­tion that began with the first march on June 29, 1970, and by parallel events throughout the United States. From a score of organizations cowering in the shadowy
bohemias of the large cities, the gay move­ment expanded into the Gay Liberation Front, Gay Activists Alliance, and many other groups with chapters the length and breadth of the land. Stonewall became the symbol of an oppressed and invisible mi­nority at last demanding its place in the sun and the freedoms which Americans had been taught since childhood were the right and heritage of everyone. The gay subculture that outlasted this radical epi­sode in American politics - a radicalism which quickly faded once the Vietnam War ended, at least provisorily, in 1973 - has been the archetype of a wave of politi­cal and cultural innovation throughout the world, so that the modern phase of the gay movement can truly be said to have begun on those June nights in Greenwich Village outside the Stonewall Inn.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Toby Marotta, The Politics of Homosexuality, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981; Donn Teal, The Gay Militants, New York: Stein and Day, 1971.
Warren Johansson

Strachey, (Giles) Lytton (1880-1932)
English biographer and critic. The son of a general in the Indian Army, Strachey attended Abbotshulme School, Leam­ington College, Liverpool University Col­lege, and Trinity College, Cambridge. As a boy at Leamington he experienced homo­sexual crushes, which left him with an abiding vision of his need for ideal male companionship. At Cambridge Strachey, whose gawky and unattractive figure was no bar to recognition of his brilliance, was elected a member of the exclusive Apostles group, together with John Maynard Keynes and Leonard Woolf. He embarked on his first grand passion, with the painter Duncan Grant, whom he was shortly to lose to Keynes.
After taking his degree at Cam­bridge, Strachey settled in London, where he was almost immediately integrated into the Bloomsbury group. The first years of his literary career were difficult and, apart from reviews, produced only a textbook,
Landmarks in French Litera­ture (1912). In 1917 he settled into a coun­try house with the painter Dora Carrington, who had fallen in love with him. After the war, they were joined by an ex-officer Ralph Partridge in a menage a trois. This arrangement gave Strachey the serenity and support he required to complete his biographical works, Eminent Victorians (1918), Queen Victoria (1921), and Eliza­beth and Essex (1928). Written with great panache, these books effected a revolution in biography through their ironic, often mocking distance from their subjects. Strachey's last years were enlivened by several successful affairs with young men, notably Roger Senhouse. After his death from cancer, his companion Carrington committed suicide.
As a result of the reaction against aestheticism occasioned by the Depres­sion and World War II, Strachey's work went out of fashion, along with Bloomsbury itself. In the freer climate of the 1960s, however, this attitude changed, and Strachey's sexual unorthodoxy, which had been largely hidden, became an asset. The major factor in the restoration of his repu­tation came in the 1,200-page life story by Michael Holroyd, the homage of one major biographer to another.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography, 2 vols., New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.
Wayne R. Dynes

Students, Gay
Until the end of the 1960s the plight of the gay college student on an American college campus was a difficult, sometimes even a tragic, one. Confronted with the growing consciousness of his own sexual orientation, he found himself inasociety where negative attitudestoward homosexuality were reinforced by peer pressure, where the obligations and oppor­tunities of undergraduate life were all cast in a heterosexual mold, and where confi­dences made to a psychologist or psychia­trist could be betrayed to the college au­thorities. Such betrayal would entail dis­astrous consequences: further disclosure to his parents and family, forced psychiatric treatment, or even expulsion. The few courses in which homosexuality might have been mentioned usually treated the subject with evasion or disdain; the books available in the college library relegated the topic to the realm of the pathological or criminal. If the student was fortunate, he could make the acquaintance of an­other individual who had accepted his homosexuality, found a modus vivendi in the midst of an intolerant society, and begun the arduous task of fashioning a mask to deceive the unfriendly hetero­sexuals around him. If he failed to make contact with the gay subculture that ex­isted on some campuses or the nearby bohemian milieu, he could be doomed to lead a lonely life of silent alienation from the world of the rest of the undergraduates. Opportunities for social-sexual contact with others of his age such as the dances and fraternity-sorority life offered the heterosexual were unavailable to the homosexual student.
The introduction of war veterans on American campuses in the late 1940s (through legislation known as the "GI Bill of Rights") might have changed matters, for many of these older students had expe­rienced freer sexual lifestyles in North Africa, Europe, and the Pacific. Though generally credited with pioneering a new seriousness that competed with the pre­war model of late adolescent hedonism ("Joe College"), the veterans were gener­ally too preoccupied with economic struggles and grades to accomplish much social innovation on campus.
The First Campus Groups and Their Vicissitudes. Only toward the end of the 1960s did this situation begin to change, reflecting a new mood among American youth. Robert A. Martin (b. 1946), a stu­dent at New York's Columbia University (which in 1945 had suspended undergradu­ate Allen Ginsberg for suspected homo­sexuality), conceived the idea of a student group that would create a movement pres­ence on the campus. Martin, better known under the name Stephen Donaldson, had been a member of the Mattachine Society of New York since the spring of 1965 and had spent the summer of 1966 living with Mattachine Society of Washington presi­dent Frank Kameny.
Returning to the campus as a bisexually-identified sophomore in Sep­tember 1966, Donaldson discussed the idea with interested students and, finding re­sistance within New York Mattachine to an autonomous group on campus, he chose the name Student Homophile League (SHL). The incipient group, which mixed both gender and orientation, found a pro­tector in the courageous Episcopal Chap­lain of the University, John Dyson Can­non. In October 1966 the chaplain arranged a meeting in Earl Hall to introduce the organization to the administration and the religious and psychological counselors. A certain amount of opposition was voiced, and to gain official standing the group was required to submit a list of names of members to the university administra­tion - which could have been ordered to disclose them to the government. This proved an insuperable barrier until a set of prominent student leaders agreed to be­come the official charter members in April 1967.
With this list in hand, the univer­sity capitulated, and when the resultant story printed in the
Columbia Spectator came (a week later) to the attention of the New York Times, on May 1, 1967 the front-page news was broken to an aston­ished world: "COLUMBIA CHARTERS HOMOSEXUAL GROUP." The reaction was all the more violent in that college administrations had everywhere clung to the concept of in loco parentis, that they replaced the parents as moral guardians of the students and their sex lives, and often held that students needed "protection" from such corrupting influences as homo­sexuality. The Columbia administration was flooded with letters from indignant alumni, many of whom assured the school that they would never give it another penny.
The newly recognized Student Homophile League was primarily inter­ested in educating the campus, in promot­ing gay rights, and in counseling. Lectures and panels drew hundreds, while some 15 to 30 people attended the business meet­ings, and informal parties were held, though at first no public dances. Many students still in the process of "coming out" needed peer counseling, while frequent, informal discussions in the dormitories had the aim of enlightening the rest of the student body. A series of leaflets taking uncom­promising positions foreshadowing gay liberation ideas was issued.
Two other SHL chapters were formed at New York University (under Rita Mae Brown, later author of the lesbian novel
Rubyfruit Jungle) and at Cornell University (under Jearld Moldenhauer, subsequently an editor of Toronto's The Body Politic, and with the sponsor­ship of well-known anti-Vietnam War activist Rev. Phillip Berrigan), and in the fall of 1968 an independent organization called FREE was established at the Uni­versity of Minnesota. The fledgling gay student movement participated in the North American Conference of Homo­phile Organizations (NACHO) and its Eastern Regional Conference as a radical­izing force, with Donaldson holding several offices at various times.
On April 23,1968 (coincidentally the same day radical students began a week-long occupation of campus build­ings), the SHL, denied participation on a psychiatric panel on homosexuality held at the Columbia medical school, picketed the event and distributed over a thousand multipage statements to members of the audience, many of whom turned over their tickets to the protesters, who proceeded to dominate the question period. This was the first demonstration against the psy­chiatric establishment's "medical model" of homosexuality.
The Columbia uprising of April 1968 did not involve the gay movement immediately, as the radical groups on campus - following the Old Left and Maoist rejection of sexual reform - kept their political distance from it. The Co­lumbia SHL did, however, join the student strike after a few days and issued its own set of demands.
By the spring of 1969 the gay student organizations were beginning to integrate school dances and sponsor their own, while their ideological positions, originally heavily influenced by Kameny through Donaldson, who broke away in 1968, became even more assertive in enun­ciating what were to become known as "gay liberation" doctrines.
Then the radical wave of the late 1960s, within which the Columbia revolt had become a worldwide symbol of the rebellion of alienated youth, sparked the Stonewall Rebellion of June 1969, which marked the beginning of a new, far more aggressive and activist phase of the homo­sexual emancipation movement. Follow­ing the lead of the antiwar protestors who occupied campuses, marched through the streets with huge banners, and constantly agitated for their cause, the supporters of the Gay Liberation Front defied centuries-old conventions and taboos and "came out" for gay rights. With this model, the student groups multiplied across the coun­try, and by the end of the 1970s virtually every major campus in the country had one. To be sure, the end of the draft for the Vietnam War in 1973 saw student activ­ism fade, but the gay student movement remained, constantly renewed as new generations of homosexual students en­tered the colleges and universities. The activities of the groups were mainly social, with a certain amount of peer counseling as a sideline. Gay dances became a feature of campus
Ufe, the organizations were able to sponsor lectures and public discussions, and each year on Gay Pride Day in June the groups would march behind their banners in the parades held in major cities from Boston to San Diego.
Stabihzation. By 1975 at least 150 gay and lesbian groups had been established on American college campuses. They tended to be concentrated in the Northeast and on the West Coast and to be most vigorous in older private universities and major state institutions. A decade later the number had at least doubled, and the groups were well represented in the mid­west and south as well as the older areas. Even many religious colleges had their groups, though the gay students at George­town University in Washington DC (Catholic) had to take their case to the federal courts. Although the gay groups were sometimes resented by insecure heterosexually identified students (and feared by administrations as a potential focus of alumni grumbling), the new asso­ciations fit well enough into the existing kaleidoscope of campus clubs which ca­tered to blacks and Asians, to vegetarians and chessplayers. A new factor is diversifi­cation: twenty years after the founding of the Student Homophile League, Columbia University boasted fifteen separate groups spread out among the affiliated institu­tions on Morningside Heights instead of just one. Some schools even provided special counseling services for gay and lesbian students, though funding short­ages tended to make the future of these uncertain.
Gay student groups sprang up in other English-speaking countries, notably Canada and Australia. On the European continent the American model did not take root, because European universities do not usually have campuses as such. In a few countries gay youth groups fulfilled some of the same functions.
A number of North American campus groups sponsored annual confer­ences attended by hundreds of students from their respective areas, which were an opportunity to hear talks by prominent activists and leaders of the national gay movement, as well as to discuss the prob­lems of coping with enemies on the cam­pus and around it. In recent years regional conferences with a long list of workshops and speakers have been held at major schools in the Northeast and elsewhere.
In the history of the gay move­ment, the student groups have been sig­nificant as pioneers of intellectual innova­tion, as seminars for leaders who went on to mainstream organizations, and as a source of "out front" militants willing to take risks their job-holding seniors were reluctant to undertake.
Gay studies as a unified academic discipline have not fared so well; after some promising beginnings in the 1970s they largely disappeared from college cur­ricula, and the Gay Academic Union founded in New York City in 1973 was unable even to produce a textbook for an introductory course, while in the same time women's studies were able to take root and create institutes for research and teaching. In 1987 two separate projects for similar institutions that would promote academic investigation of homosexuality were launched at Yale University and the City University of New York; the future of both is problematic. While the social needs of the gay undergraduate and graduate student are far better served than before the late 1960s, the academic side of the movement faces many tasks and challenges in coming decades.
See also Education,- Public Schools; Youth.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. J. Lee Lehman, Gays on Campus, Washington: United States National Student Association, 1975; Robert A. Martin, "Student Homophile League: Founder's Retrospect," Gay Books Bulietin, 9 (1983), 30-33.
Warren Johansson

Subculture, Gay
The term "subculture" (intro­duced as recently as 1936 by the sociol­ogist Ralph Linton) applies to ethnic, regional, economic, and social groups showing special worlds of interest and identification which serve to distinguish them within the larger culture or society.
Basic Features of the Subculture Concept. A subculture differs from a cate­gory of people or a common behavior by virtue of its heightened sharing of values, artifacts, and identification. It is intensi­fied by the degree of social separation between its members and the rest of the larger society. This formulation implies a two-level analysis, society and subculture, but in fact there are multiple layers, so that subcultures themselves have what might cumbersomely be labeled subsubcultures, subsubsubcultures, and so on, almost ad infinitum; in practice the definition of a particular subculture must be seen as rela­tive to the larger context in which it is set by the def iner.
There is, furthermore, a range of emotional attitudes between the larger society and the subculture; for the former they range from acceptance (e.g., of yachts­men) through disdain (gamblers) to hostil­ity (heroin addicts). This range appears also in the response of the subculture, which may support the larger society (radio hams) or actively oppose it (bikers). In the latter case, the term "counterculture" is often used; here the sense is of a more broadly applied and more conscious em­phasis on an alternative to the larger soci­ety rather than an enclave within it. In general, there seems to be a relationship between the degree of alienation from the larger society and the relative powerlessness of the subculture members. Social separation tends to correlate with aliena­tion, so that the more emotional distance between the subculture and the larger society, the stronger the subculture be­comes, developing independent values, beliefs, roles, status systems, communica­tions networks, and even economic struc­tures. Conversely, as a larger society at­tenuates its hostility to a subculture and becomes more accepting (in modern con­sumer societies often exploiting the sub­culture as a ready-made market), the hold of the subculture on its members tends correspondingly to weaken,- at some point an expanding subculture crosses the line over into mass culture.
It has also been noted that subcul­tures play major roles in the process of social change, being both powerful agents for change and bulwarks against it. Ex­amples of the latter would include reli­gious fundamentalists and ecological conservationists. The concept of the sub­culture remains, however, a somewhat amorphous one, and for that reason per­haps, has resisted attempts to provide a general theoretical explanation accepted by a wide range of scholars.
Sexual Imphcations. The homo­sexual subculture is often regarded as constituting the individuals who have come out or emerged from the closet and are openly pursuing a gay lifestyle, often in the setting of the urban gay ghetto. In keeping with the preceding discussion, emphasis should, however, be laid rather on the self-identification of the partici­pants (as "gay" or "lesbian") and on their common interests (same-gender sex, op­position to homophobia), artifacts (publi­cations, jewelry, buttons), and values (sexual autonomy, social pluralism). In this sense, the homosexual subculture is much smaller than the aggregate of those engaging in homosexual acts, or even those who consciously define themselves as homosexual, inasmuch as many of these do not participate in group activities or acquire artifacts. Sociological theory also has difficulty in accounting for people who identify themselves not as homosexual but as bisexual (or even, in some cases, such as with many male prostitutes, as heterosexual), but who are otherwise seen to participate widely in major aspects of the "homosexual subculture."
Even conceding these limitations, it is apparent that the description of an overall "gay subculture" remains prob­lematic, particularly in respect to com­mon values and interests, and retains va­lidity primarily when placed in the con­text of social separation from the majority (heterosexual) society. The gay subculture or community is far from homogeneous, its members have widely varying individ­ual power positions and attitudes toward the larger society, and the latter displays a considerable spectrum of attitudes (com­pare those toward, say, a pair of macho cowboys and those toward promiscuous pedophiles). An even stronger argument can be made against the grouping of lesbi­ans and gay males in the same subculture. For many purposes it seems more helpful to think of the gay or lesbian social worlds as collections of subcultures or subsubcultures: participants in the leather "scene," street transvestites (drag queen), bar-goers, call boys, opera buffs, and so forth.
Stephen Donaldson
Historical Perspectives.
Some light is thrown on the origins of European homosexual subcultures by a debate be­tween the social constructionist scholars and their opponents. A major thesis of the social constructionist school is that the "modem homosexual" began only in the last two decades of the nineteenth century in response to the psychiatric concept of homosexuality as a psychological state differentiating a minority of individuals from the remainder of the population.
This view can be challenged on a number of grounds. The major argument against the social constructionist thesis is that there is sound evidence for homosex­ual cliques and groupings as far back as the Middle Ages. The question is rather, how did they define themselves in relation to the environing society? This question can best be answered in three time segments:
(1) 1280-1780. In this period the homosexual groupings probably defined themselves, or would have been defined by Christian society, as part of a heretical or criminal subculture. In not a few respects they paralleled such historical phenom­ena as the
Marranos, the crypto-Jews in Spain and Portugal after the Reconquista,-the Recusants, who were secret Catholics in Elizabethan England; the Nicodemites, secret Protestants in countries where the Counterreformation triumphed over the opponents of the Church; the crypto-Christians in the Ottoman Empire after the conquest of the former Byzantine posses­sions and the Balkan peninsula; and the crypto-Catholics in Japan between 1630 and 1865. All these are instances of clan­destine rejection of the official religion of the state and obstinate adherence to pro­scribed beliefs and practices - often, if not always, at the risk of death if their covert activities came to the attention of the secular authorities.
(2) 1780-1880. Following the penal reforms of the Enlightenment and the granting of religious tolerance, the death penalty for heresy receded into the past, but the homosexual subculture now took on the character of an erotic freema­sonry, with its rites, passwords, and tradi­tions known only to a limited circle of initiates. Their counterparts in the politi­cal macrocosm were the Freemasonic lodges, the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati, and similar bodies that played a signal role in the modernization of European life at the end of the eighteenth century - as nuclei of the "new society" within the old. This is the situation attested by the
Don Leon poems in England, and by Au­gust von Platen's poem of January 31, 1823, with the line "Was Vemünft'ge hoch verehren/ Taugte jedem, der's verstünde" ("What gay people greatly honor/ Well served all who understood it"); in this poem vernünftig, "rational" was a code word meaning "gay."
(3) 1880-present. This so-called modem period was inaugurated not by the work of the psychiatrists, but by the van­guard of homophile propagandists begin­ning with Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and Károly Maria Kertbeny in the 1860s, and continu­ing with Magnus Hirschfeld and the Scien­tific-humanitarian Committee in the late 1890s. The "new homosexual" saw him­self as a member of an aggrieved minority, and therefore as a political activist, one who not simply gratified his sexual drive with members of his own sex, but openly called for the emancipation of all individu­als so oriented from the taboos and preju­dices of Christian society, and above all from its restrictive laws. From 1918 on­ward, the view formulated by Kurt Hiller, that such individuals were a minority entitled to the same protection accorded ethnic groups in Central and Eastern Eu­rope by the "minority treaties" appended to the peace settlement in the spirit of President Wilson's Fourteen Points, gained sway among politically conscious homo­sexuals first in Germany and then in other countries. (Psychiatrists - apart from those who endorsed the homosexual eman­cipation movement - did little or nothing to encourage or promote this view, as they preferred to argue that homosexuals were mentally ill and should be compelled to undergo treatment, not that they had rights of any kind.) The gay liberation organiza­tions that sprang up in the English-speak­ing countries inherited this political tradi­tion, in many cases in the indirect form adopted by racial and ethnic groups strug­gling for equality, and on it have based their own demands and aspirations for justice, to which only a few countries have thus far adequately responded.
It can be stated categorically that always, even in times of the worst intoler­ance, beneath the surface of society there has lurked a gay subculture, for the simple reason that the anathemas of the church could no more abolish homosexual activ­ity than they could have altered the func­tion of an internal organ of the human body. Such matters are the outcome of human macroevolution, which probably ended some 57,000 years ago, and cer­tainly would not undergo major change even in a hundred generations. The his­torical differences lie in the mode of adap­tation to the religious and political beliefs and practices of the environment, hence they belong to social and cultural history rather than to sexual psychology.
Warren Johansson
Conclusion.
As currently being conducted, the debate between the social constructionists and their opponents masks problems of definition that have been insufficiently addressed. It is ne­cessary to distinguish whether one is deal­ing with (a) homosexual networking - pat­terns of association and meeting places, together with a rudimentary argot and "semiotics" as facilitators; or (b) conscious­ness of belonging to a distinctive segment of society, of being in short a "homosex­ual" (or "sodomite" in earlier days); or (c) a complementary sense of not belonging to the larger society with its obligatory heterosexuality.
It is evident that (a) can precede (b) and (c), and almost certainly did. Those in quest of the origins of subculture, look­ing for earlier versions of the contempo­rary gay scene, tend to confuse these sepa­rate aspects. Moreover, what is termed the homosexual subculture in the first sense was, in early modem Europe, immersed in the larger sphere of deviance or marginalization, so that homosexuals formed part of an underground comprising thieves, vaga­bonds, entertainers, cardsharps, sorcerers, and so forth.
Even in recent years the degree of social separation (c, above) exhibited by gay people has displayed considerable fluc­tuation. Until the late 1960s, the general tint of social rejection was considerably attenuated by the widespread practice of "passing," and this worked against the development of a strong subculture. In the "gay liberation" period of the seventies, social separation increased as large num­bers of homosexuals "came out," joined gay baseball teams, attended gay churches, read gay periodicals, marched in gay pa­rades, voted against homophobic politi­cians, and swelled the "gay ghettoes." The proliferation of gay special interest groups and the radical stance of movement activ­ists in this period tended to push the sub­culture toward the counterculture pole. In the latter part of the decade, however, the pull of greater acceptance by the larger society and the attractions of increased power (political and financial) for the members of the subculture acting together were already evident. We may expect that a continuation of that trend, once the AIDS crisis has ebbed, will tend to under­mine the cohesion of the gay subculture further, while conversely strengthening the internal unity of such emerging subcultural-type groupings as sadomasochists and pederasts.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Giovanni Dall'Orto, "La fenice del Sodoma," Sodoma, 4 (1988), 31-53; Claude S. Fischer, To Dwell among Friends: Personal Net­works in Town and City, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982; Joseph Harry and William B. Devall, The Social Organization of Gay Males, New York: Praeger, 1978; John Allen Lee, "The Gay Connection," Urban Life, 8 (1979), 175-98.
Stephen Donaldson

Suetonius (born ca. 69)
Roman biographer. Suetonius led a largely uneventful life as a bureaucrat, but his access to the records of the imperial palace lends his writings authenticity. Of the books that he wrote the only one to survive in full is the Lives of the Twelve Caesars, presenting biographies of Roman emperors from Julius Caesar through Domitian.
Suetonius'
Lives have been criti­cized for their lack of chronological or­ganization, making it hard for later histo­rians to date the anecdotes he presents. In comparison with his contemporary Taci­tus, whose powerful moral vision caused him to edit and shape the material to make points, Suetonius presents facts without any particular tendency.
Of the rulers he profiles, only one, Claudius, seems to have been purely heterosexual. Often criticized by earlier generations for the profusion of racy de­tails, his sexual material is used to illus­trate the character of his subjects. In the case of Julius
Caesar, his affair with Nicomedes of Bithynia shows his charm and resourcefulness. But in the Life of Nero, the "marriages" with Sporus and Doryphorus reveal the wilful profligacy of that emperor's later years. In a period in which imperial power was absolute, it is not surprising that the emperors should have been tempted to have their way with the attractive bodies that surrounded them at every turn. The mores presented are those of the highest society rather than of the people, whose lives must have remained more prosaic and conventional. Refrain­ing from making such contrasts, in his attitudes Suetonius is a naturalist rather than a moralist.
Much read through the centuries, Suetonius' portraits have - probably con­trary to his intention - contributed to the image of the
decadence of Rome. In fact he treats the rising age of Roman rule, with its very height - the second century - still to come. The material he provides therefore represents sidelights on an era of exuber­ant prosperity and imperial ostentation, rather than object lessons of the decline that was to come two centuries later.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. K. R. Bradley, Suetonius' Life of Nero: An Historical Commentary, Brussels: Latomus, 1978; Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Suetonius: The Scholar and His Caesars, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1983.
Ward Houser

SUFISM
Sufism, Islamic mysticism, is that aspect of Islamic belief and practice in which believers seek to find the truth of divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God. A difficult term to define, it consists of a great variety of mystical paths that give rise to different kinds of personal feelings and experiences. All paths are aimed at culmination in the ultimate union of lover and beloved, signi­fying the abandonment of the personality (or self) of the mystic in the Absolute Reality. The western term "Sufism"
(Arabic
tasawwuf) derives from the Arabic word for mystic [sufi], which in its turn is derived from 'wool' \suf), referring to the woolen garments of early Islamic ascetics. Sufis are also known as "the poor," yield­ing the words "dervish" and "fakir."
Basic Features. The origins of Sufism can be found in Islamic asceticism, which developed in the seventh and eighth century in reaction to the increasing worldliness of the expanding Muslim commu­nity and to the purely dogmatic and non-emotional trend of orthodox Islam. Love mysticism took the place of asceticism in the ninth century and reached its height in the thirteenth century. Sufism still exists among the Muslim communities around the world, often organized, as in earlier days, in mystical orders centering on a mystical guide (shaykh or master).
Strict obedience to the religious law, especially to the inner aspects, is basic to Sufism, although some mystics attracted public contempt by acting out­wardly contrary to the law, while hiding their inner devotion to God. The absolute indifference of some Sufis to socially ac­cepted norms and values led to a mostly unjustified reputation for Sufism in gen­eral as being licentious and libertinistic, which was further strengthened by the use of intoxicants (wine and hashish) and il­licit love as symbols in Sufi writings and talk.
Because mystical and intuitive feelings and experiences were hard to express and therefore difficult to convey to others, Sufis used metaphors derived from worldly experiences, especially those of love and intoxication. Love and wine both led to drunkenness, to loss of reason, to an absolute indifference to the world, and ultimately to a loss of self. The cupbearer
[saki], of ten a beautiful youth, symbolized the spiritual guide, who helped the lover on his way by making him drunk with love. The use of worldly images in Sufi-symbolism led to a fascinating ambiguity, intensified by the fact that non-mystical writers, such as the famous Persian poet Hafiz (ca. 1325-1390), tended also to use mystical symbols. It is especially this ambiguity, combined with the dominat­ing theme of love, which continues to make Sufi literature so attractive and charming.
Forms of Love. Love was essen­tial for all mystics. Some Sufis even ex­plained themselves solely in terms of love, and that is why they have been called the "School of Love," of which Rumi is the most famous example.
Mystical reasoning about love and beauty was somewhat like the following: because God in his Absolute Essence could not be known, he created the world as a reflection of it, shining through forms so that lovers could realize part of his Essence through its manifestation in forms. The most perfect manifestation of the Divine Reality on earth was man, "created after His own image," and especially the beard­less boy was considered to be the purest witness
(shahid) of God. As in a saying of the Prophet: "I have seen my Lord in the form of greatest beauty, as a youth with abundant hair." Looking at beautiful faces was considered a religious activity, as Rumi said: "Behold that face on whose cheeks are the marks of His face, contem­plate him on whose brow shines the Sun." Looking at beauty would inevitably lead to love, "wherever beauty dwelt in dark tresses, love came and found a heart entangled in their coils."
Some Sufis practiced
shahid bazi, the game of love with the witness of God's beauty on earth, in which contemplation of its beauty was a central form of medita­tion. Shahid bazi consisted primarily of looking at the face and form of the beloved, with possibly some embracing and kiss­ing, while the meditation was sometimes accompanied by music and dance, which could lead to ecstatic experiences. Famous Sufi shaykhs who practiced shahid bazi were Ahmad al-Ghazzali (d. 1126), Awhad ad-Din Kirmani (1164-1238), and Fakr ad-Din Iraqi (1213-1289).
The ideal witness was generally a beardless youth because of his almost perfect beauty and purity. His beauty was often described in Sufi literature in lyrical terms: He was as beautiful as Joseph, with a face for love of whom the moon turned upside down, and for which the sun trembled like an epileptic before the new moon. One look at him and day would break in the midst of the night. The fresh down on his cheeks was like calligraphy, and his curls like ambergris rolling over the face of the moon. The lasso of his locks cast over the earth, while his hps caused confusion into the heavens. His eyes were like two Negro children caught in a snare; each Negro child with a bow to shoot arrows in the hearts of desperate lovers. In short, he was the paragon of God's beauty and creative power. Sufis often were misogynistic, and looked upon women as symbols of the material world, caught up in forms, while boys were seen as innocent and pure, unconscious of their attraction, and of course much more available.
Worldly love, also known as the love of outward forms, was considered an education experience which prepared the lover for his path of passion and yearning, suffering and submission, and could serve as a bridge to Real Love. In Sufi literature, stories of worldly love relationships were used to teach mystics what kind of behav­ior and feelings were expected of real lov­ers. Apart from some male-female couples, one of the exemplary loves was the legen­dary relation between Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna (969-1030) and his faithful slave Ayaz (d.1057).
Shahid bazi and worldly love in general were considered positively when chaste and spiritual, and striving for the higher love of God; aimed at the Reality that was reflected, and not at the beautiful form itself, which was only illusory and relative. Mystics were not supposed to linger on the bridge of worldly love, while they should definitely not become en­tangled in sensual love. The latter was rejected as a desecration of love, leading to unlawful sex, for example with boys. Feel­ings of lust and desire, the so-called "sinful self," were sometimes designated as "the menstruation of men," signifying the uncleanliness resulting from such feel­ings, which would make union with God impossible. Therefore the "sinful self" had to be shackled and controlled, struggling against the seductive snares and devilish temptations of worldly entanglements, which diverted from the road to God. Only those mystics who had conquered their "sinful selves" were capable of enduring the irresistable beauty of beardless boys or the seductiveness of women, while loving them. Shahid bazi was therefore only al­lowed to masters and advanced mystics. Paradise was promised for those who stayed chaste, but were not able to cope with their passionate feelings, and died because of them as "martyrs of love."
Controversial Aspects. There were also mystics, however, who fell vic­tim to sin, and although some of them repented and mended their ways, for which God had promised forgiveness, it gave Sufism a bad name. Even worse for the reputation of mysticism were people who behaved as if they were mystics, but did not follow the rules at all, and only reaped the fruits of behaving indifferently to the world. All this confirmed the orthodox in their criticism of Sufism, and was cleverly exploited.
Because a mystical current devi­ates from the established, dogmatic path, and therefore threatens the authority of orthodoxy, a clash will become inevitable, often leading to accusations of immorality and heresy. According to orthodox Mus­lims, the only way to seek knowledge of God was through his words (the Koran) and through the example of the Prophet
{hadith, Tradition); their path was one of obedience and not one of love.
Looking at and loving beautiful forms was considered immoral and sinful, and a devilish diversion of real love, be­cause it would inevitably lead to passion­ate love that, in its turn, would give rise to
sexual desire and unlawful sex. They maintained it was common knowledge that no healthy man was capable of resist­ing the seductiveness of a beautiful boy.
Even when chaste, the orthodox argued, passionate love led to an idoliza­tion of the beloved, which was blasphe­mous because there was only one God, and besides, all worldly love had to be subordi­nated to real love. The orthodox viewed practices like shahid bazi as typical of the hypocrisy of Sufism, which used religion as a cover for sexual debauchery and lust­ful and perverse activities. The continuing self-criticism among Sufis about the paths taken, intensified out of fear of persecu­tions because of seemingly heretical ideas, gradually led the mystics to become more careful in their expressions and practices. The path of love became more hidden and discrete, which it still is.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Joseph Norment Bell,
Love Theory in Later Hanbalite Islam, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1979; Ahmad Ghazzali, Sawanih, trans. N. Pourjavady, London: KPI, 1986; Fakruddin Iraqi, Divine Plashes, trans. W. C. Chittick and P. L. Wilson, London: SPCK, 1982; Awhaduddin Kirmani, Hearts Witness, transl. B. M. Weischer and P. L. Wilson, Teheran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, 1978; Hellmut Putter, Das Meer der Seele, Leiden: Brill, 1955; Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975; idem, "Eros, Heavenly and Not So Heavenly, in Sufi Literature and Life," in A. L. al Sayyid Marsot, ed., Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam, Malibu: Undena, 1979; Mir Valiuddin, Love of God, Famham: Sufi Publ., 1972; Peter Lambom Wilson, Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy, New York: Autonomedia Inc., 1988.
Maarten Schild

Suicide
Suicide is the voluntary termina­tion of one's own life, either to escape unbearable pain or humiliation, or because one's toleration of grief or disappointment is exhausted. Both types of suicide are known in homosexuals. The constant need to hide and falsify one's sexual identity, the burden of leading a double life, the gnawing fear of discovery and social ruin, if not actual prosecution, were motives enough for the homosexual to think of ending his own existence.
Earlier Data. In 1914 Magnus Hirschfeld claimed that of the ten thou­sand homosexual men and women whose case histories he had collected, no fewer than 75 percent had thought of suicide, 25 percent had attempted it, and 3 percent had actually taken their own lives. Similar figures, albeit more fragmentary, were reported by other investigators from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu­ries. Hirschfeld frequently observed wounds left by suicidal attempts, such as knife wounds on the wrists or bullet wounds in the vicinity of the heart or the temples. Many homosexuals, he indicated, carried poison on them at all times so that they could end their lives on the spot if arrested or similarly compromised.
The chief cause of suicide in Hirschfeld's time was threat of legal prose­cution, double suicides of lovers were second in frequency, and blackmail was third. Other motives were family conflicts, depression over one's homosexual orien­tation, grief at the loss of a lover, and the situation of being pressured by one's fam­ily into a heterosexual marriage that en­tailed an impossible sexual role. Hirschfeld conceded that in many cases the threat was exaggerated and the situation not so hopeless as the homosexual subject imag­ined, and he did his best to console his patients and make them feel that their lot was at least bearable. However, in his propaganda for repeal of Paragraph 175 he laid great stress upon suicide as a conse­quence of the legal plight of the exclusive homosexual, and the theme became a usual one in subsequent homophile literature. Today it is seldom mentioned, even if suicides by AIDS patients have figured in the history of that affliction in the gay male community.
The Present Situation. Eric E. Rofes, in his book of 1983, brings Hirschfeld's findings up to date. He men­tions that of the respondents to the ques­tionnaire analyzed in The Cay Report (1977), 40 percent of the men and 39 per­cent of the women stated that they had attempted or seriously considered suicide, and 53 percent of the men and 33 percent of the women who had considered or at­tempted suicide said that their sexual ori­entation was a causal factor. For many years there was a virtual convention that any novel with a homosexual character had to show him committing suicide, if not being murdered by one of his partners. Since the homosexual had sinned in the eyes of the world, his death was a fitting retribution.
Young homosexuals confronted with the trauma of the discovery that their sexual interests set them apart from others of their age and unable to find trustworthy or sympathetic counsel are especially prone to suicide. The late adolescent years, when one's sexual orientation forces its way into consciousness, despite the indoctrination for obligatory heterosexuality, are often a time of major crisis. The thought of being alienated from one's family and one's peers, of having to lead a perilous and uncertain existence to gratify one's sexual desires, even of loving someone who is totally unable to respond, creates unbearable tensions compounded by guilt and self-hatred.
Even gay activists are not exempt from feelings of alienation and isolation. Rofes recounts several case histories of activists who turned to the movement to resolve their personal conflicts but found these as intense as ever, while the radical­ism which they encountered, if not in gay politics, then in the radical organizations that overlapped for a time with the Gay Liberation Front and similar groups, only intensified their sense of helpless rage at a society that inflicted so much suffering and injustice on its homosexual members. The ultimate resolution of the crisis was - suicide. Alcoholism and narcotics abuse can play a role in homosexual suicide, much as in the case of heterosexuals who have become dependent upon addicting substances. To combat such tendencies programs are needed specifically oriented toward the homosexual with problems of this kind, since a program that does not face the special situation of the individual who must cope with a homosexual orien­tation will often miss the crux of the de­pendency.
Prevention. Suicide prevention and suicide intervention are strategies for alleviating the distress associated with homosexuality. The first is the long-range planning that will decrease a population's risk for suicide, the second is the immediate counseling and other services that will deter a subject from taking his own life. The homosexual in need of psychological counsel must find a trained individual who is knowledgeable about his special problems and difficulties and not bent upon exacerbating them for religious or other reasons. Hotlines and crisis intervention agencies can be a good source of advice for gay people beset with suicidal tendencies; such services have developed in many parts of the country, though specifically homo­sexual-oriented ones are confined to urban areas and college towns.
More important in the long run is eliminating the ramifications of intoler­ance and discrimination that impose in­tolerable burdens upon the homosexual trying to lead his life within a society that is implacably hostile to his whole person­ality. Real as this burden is, the conven­tions of Christian morality until recently forced the subject to endure it in silence, or even to interpret it as his own moral fail­ure that justified the hatred and contempt to which he was exposed. In demanding that society recognize the existence of gay people and the problems that their homo­sexuality engenders, the gay movement has taken a major step toward ending the silence and the hypocrisy of the past - potent factors in isolating homosexuals and driving them to self-destruction.
Comparative Perspectives. Social attitudes toward suicide have varied greatly over the centuries. Severely condemned by Christianity, suicide has been in other cultures regarded as a heroic way of ending one's earthly existence, almost as a defi­ance of the fate that would have doomed the subject to prolonged unhappiness or physical pain. In circles such as the Japanese samurai, with a strongly homocrotic ethos, suicide could even be part of the warrior's code of honor, in particular when a page did not wish to survive the knight whom he had accompanied on the field of battle, or vice versa. Suicide might therefore also be reckoned for situations in which one of a pair of lovers has sought death in war or some especially dangerous mission with the implicit wish that his sacrificial act should reunite him with the other. Suicide missions undertaken for patriotic or ideo­logical motives are the heroic and self-sacrificing facet of the subject, and one that fills the pages of history with deeds of glory.
The literature on suicide includes some classic sociological writings in which the topic of homosexuality never appears, but the invisibility of the motive to outsid­ers did not mean that it was inoperative. Of course, homosexuals could commit suicide for reasons wholly unrelated to their sexual orientation, just as could others overwhelmed by the difficulties and sorrows of life, or simply the desire not to be a burden to one's family and friends. Suicide is part of the tragedy and the hero­ism of human existence, and as a resolu­tion of life's dilemmas it will remain a finale of the human condition chosen by homosexuals and heterosexuals alike.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Magnus Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes, Berlin: Louis Marcus, 1914; Eric E. Rofes, "/ Thought People Like That Killed Themselves": Lesbians, Gay Men and Suicide, San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1983.
Warren Johansson

Sullivan, Harry Stack (1892-1949)
American psychiatrist. Through­out his life Sullivan had to struggle with emotional problems in his relationships with other human beings, and these struggles in turn had a marked effect on the psychiatric concepts that he evolved. But for just this reason he was never de­tached from the problems of the patients he was studying.
Born in Norwich, a small town in upstate New York, to an Irish Catholic family, he had a shy, inept father who dwelt on the margin of his son's life, while his mother poured out on the boy all of her resentment at her unhappiness and low social status. Sullivan was a socially awkward boy who felt rejected and ostra­cized by other children. Scholastic excel­lence won him esteem, but it further iso­lated him from those around him. At the age of eight and a half he formed a close relationship with a boy some five years older who introduced him to sex. Neither Sullivan nor the older boy, who also be­came a psychiatrist, ever developed into heterosexuals. In 1908 he entered Cornell as an undergraduate, but in June of 1909 was suspended for failure in all academic subjects. He may have had a brief schizo­phrenic illness, but the result of this ob­scure episode was that he lost his scholar­ship and never thereafter attended any college. His lack of a college education handicapped him in later life.
In 1911 he entered the Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery, a di­ploma mill that was closed down some six years later as part of a campaign to raise the standards of American medicine. As a struggling medical student he lived in poverty, taking odd jobs in order to make ends meet. Only in 1922 did he enter psychiatry through an appointment to St. Elizabeths, a large federal psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C. There he learned psychiatry in a haphazard, inaccu­rate manner, more from contact with the patients themselves than from any book or teacher. He was greatly influenced, how­ever, by Edward J. Kempf, who had written the classic paper on homosexual panic, named after him "Kempf's disease." In early 1929 Sullivan organized at the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital the special ward for treating schizophrenics where his success elevated him to the status of a prominent figure in American and then world psychiatry. His therapeutic method focused on fostering comfortable interper­sonal relationships with these patients that would enable them to return from the psychotic world into which they had re­treated.
Between 1929 and 1933 he com­posed a book, never published, that ac­knowledged his own homosexuality, and his belief that a prolonged period of active homosexuality in adolescence is neces­sary if a person is to have sound mental health in later life. This phase is moreover essential for the later development of heterosexuality, and may protect the indi­vidual from other psychiatric disorders. Presumably he had stumbled upon the positive aspect of Greek
paideiasteia, though to the American society of his lifetime his views were totally unaccept­able.
From 1931 to 1939 Sullivan prac­ticed psychiatry privately in New York, and underwent psychoanalysis (300 hours in all) by Clara Thompson, who stopped the sessions because she was overawed by Sullivan's intellect. He had ever less pa­tience with colleagues who clung to Freu­dian concepts in preference to his own. He founded in 1938 the journal
Psychiatry, and after much bitter quarreling with the other editors made it a personal journal. He also elaborated his "interpersonal" the­ories to emphasize that society itself need­ed to change in order to create a healthy environment for its members. In 1947 his lecture series, Conceptions of Modern Psy­chiatry, was published in book form and sold essentially on the basis of word-of-mouth advertising. After 1942 he wrote little, but lectured and taught extensively, and after the war ended, he devoted much time to optimistic efforts at decreasing international tension and avoiding another war. He died in Paris on January 14, 1949.
Sullivan did not have a positive attitude toward adult homosexuality. He felt that the therapeutic task in treating a homosexual was to remove the deep-seated psychic barriers that kept him from geni­tal contact with the opposite sex - a goal he himself seems not to have attained. With this irrational dread removed, the patient would no longer seek partners of his own sex but gravitate toward the oppo­site one. However, his concepts are useful for evaluating and solving the problems of social groups, since they were developed in the context of social settings and ex­pressed in interpersonal terms. He stressed the removal of interpersonal barriers be­tween hostile groups in order to make close, harmonious contact possible. His work therefore has implications not only for the reduction of ethnic conflicts and the gap between generations, but also for coping with the alienation and isolation of homosexuals in a society that has been taught for centuries to hate and fear them. So, however biased his thinking may have been by the tragic circumstances of his early life, he may yet have bequeathed a psychiatric legacy that can contribute toward the reintegration of the gay com­munity into the environing society.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. A. H. Chapman, Hatty Stack Sullivan: His Life and Work, New York: G. P. Putnam, 1976.
Warren Johansson

Sweden
The Scandinavian kingdom of Sweden lies in Northern Europe between Norway and Finland and contains over 8 million citizens, who enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world. Having adopted Christianity as its official religion in the twelfth century, Sweden participated in all the social and intellec­tual currents of Europe. For the earlier centuries of the country's history our in­formation bears chiefly on the legal situ­ation of same-sex conduct. Only after considerable struggle and educational progress was the country's present envi­able state of social enlightenment attained.
Legal Developments. For a long period in its history, Sweden lacked any specific laws against same-sex relations. The all-Swedish law codes from 1350 and 1442 contained no prohibitions concerning sodomy between men (orwomen). Instead, the newly established Catholic Church exercised its moral (and economic) power through penitential and local statutes. The bishop of Skara, for instance, proclaimed in 1281 that "a person who sins against nature, must pay a fine of nine marks to the bishop."
Thus, "sodomy" between males was not officially a crime worthy of death (but a sin serious enough) when St. Bridget in a politically motivated attack accused King Magnus in 1361: "You have the most indecent reputation inside and outside this land that any Christian male can have, namely that you have had intercourse with men. This seems likely to us, because you love men more than God or your own soul or your own wife."
Despite such religious and politi­cal attacks on heretical sexual behavior, it was in fact not the Catholic Inquisition, but the Protestant Reformation that would impose severe punishment for sodomy between men in Sweden.
The Protestant King Erik XIV in 1563 made a list of crimes that had to be punished by death to avoid the "wrath of God" (which implied not earthquakes but "plagues, hunger, poverty and other troub­les"). Among such crimes worthy of death were "bestiality with dumb animals and other such vices."
"Other such vices" were proba­bly interpreted as sodomy between men. But the fact that no such cases were brought to trial in Stockholm until the seventeenth century seems to imply that this vague reference served more as a warning than as effective new legislation.
It was not until 1608, when the Swedish law code was published in a new version, that the climate became really severe. The old laws were not changed, but Charles IX added as an "appendix" to the 1608 lawbook a new list of crimes "ab­stracted from the Holy Scriptures." The appendix stated in section IV (on "fornica­tion," and other like offenses): "Thou shalt not sleep with a boy as with a woman, for this is an abomination. And they both shall die, their blood be upon them." This text, echoing the prohibitions in Leviticus, was assumed to include sodomy between adult males.
It was, however, bestiality and not sodomy between men that mostly occupied the imagination of rural Swedish society. Extremely few court cases of sod­omy between men are known. There is no evidence of a sodomitical subculture in Stockholm at this time, and official cam­paigns against "sodomites" are unknown.
On the female side, the courts had, as in other European countries, some difficulties with cross-dressing women, who supported themselves as soldiers and even married other women. The fact that the courts failed to see any "sodomitical" dangers in such same-sex marriages, but instead concentrated on marriage legisla­tion and the religious crime of cross-dress­ing, shows that "homosexuality" as such was not yet the concern of the authorities. (Sodomy between women, according to Swedish courts, demanded some physical hermaphroditical peculiarity in the sex organs.) At the highest level, Queen Christina was involved with same-sex sentiments, if not acts.
From 1734 onwards, the official Swedish policy toward sodomy between males became one of total silence. The new law code of 1734 contained no such references at all, despite the fact that sod­omy in the form of bestiality was still a crime worthy of death. The law commis­sion stated that it was "not advisable to mention more sodomitical sins; it is in­stead better to keep silent as if they were not known, and if such a bad thing happens that they occur, let them be punished anyway."
This peculiarly lawless state of affairs seems to have led to a paradox: the scope of punishable sodomitical sins wid­ened, and a few very unclear (and very secret) court cases with only one person involved may imply that also individual sins like masturbation from that point on were punished, if found out.
Very few death sentences for sodomitical acts between males are known from this "silent" period in Sweden. And in 1778 King Gustav
in, the "enlightened" king who opposed capital punishment as such, issued a new order that all death sentences had to be confirmed by His Majesty. In practice this means that from 1778 on no executions for sexual crimes were carried out in Sweden.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Sweden lacked any laws directly applicable to sexual relations between males (orfemales), and under the impact of the French Revolution and Code Napoleon, an era of limited and conditional legal freedom for "sodomitical sinners" seems to have begun, and lasted until 1864 (the period is poorly researched, however). There are no traces of a "sodomitical" or "pederastic" subculture, despite this for­mal freedom. And even if the regime of Gustav
m at the end of the eighteenth century, with its Hellenic-classisist ide­als, directly or indirectly may have intro­duced the Greek term "pederasty" into Swedish language, the term surely had lost its Hellenist and poetic overtones by the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The "radical" anti-Gustavian military coup in 1809, directed against the son of Gustav III, was followed by anti-pederastic gossip about the old regime. Such propagandistic gossip of course also discredited "pederasty" as such, referring it to the former sodomitical and "unnatu­ral" context.
Sweden soon also followed the example of many of the German states, which about the middle of the nineteenth century reintroduced old or obsolete laws against "unnatural behavior" between males. A Swedish law commission in 1832 stated that even if bestiality was a disgust­ing crime, it was not as dangerous to soci­ety as "other unnatural ways of commit­ting fornication, when committed be­tween persons." In 1864 (at the same time as the Swedish parliament was reformed and democratized) a new law against "un­natural" behavior between persons was issued. The new law book stated in para­graph 18:10: "If anyone, with another person, engages in fornication against nature, or if anyone engages in fornication with an animal, he shall be punished with hard labor in prison up to two years."
Paragraph 18:10 was also appli­cable to relations between women, which however was not officially recognized until 1943, when a few women in a les­bian network were sentenced.
Emergence of Modernity. During the 1880s, when Stockholm (the capital) reached about 200,000 inhabitants, we have the first signs (police records) of a "sod­omitical" subculture in parks and public places. At the same time there are on the cultural level expressions of an emerging homosexual identity. In 1879 the popular and highly respected Swedish philosopher, Pontus Wikner (1837-1888), secretly wrote a pamphlet, called "Psychological Confes­sions, " which demands the right for people of the same sex to marry and to have sexual relations on the same terms as men and women.
Wikner unfortunately never pub­lished his pamphlet, but a famous lecture he held in Uppsala in 1880 about male and female "borderline people," "The Sacrifi­cial System of Our Culture," was a subtle attack on sexual/religious hypocrisy and prescribed gender-roles, which caused some alarm in conservative circles.
The author and national poet Viktor Rydberg (1828-1895), who was a friend of Wikner, at the end of the nine­teenth century also published poems and essays, where disguised homoerotic Hellenist ideals were brought to a newly formed mass audience of bourgeois read­ers (who mostly preferred not to under­stand his homoerotic hints). Vilhelm Ekelund (1880-1949), who was inspired by Count von Platen, wrote brilliant, if enig­matic, poems and essays.
The real "homosexualization" of Sweden does not begin until 1906, when a certain Paul Burger Diether, contact man for the German Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in Stockholm, announced a lecture on homosexuality with the title "The Revolution of the Twentieth Cen­tury." The lecture was treated as a public nuisance and was silenced. But the revolu­tion was not to stop: a "scandal" in Stock­holm in 1907, involving a well-known factory-owner and designer, Nils Santesson, gave broad circulation to the term "homosexuality," providingthe homosex­ual cause with its first public martyr in Sweden.
Artists such as Eugen Jansson ("blue painting" and athletes),
Gósta Adrian Nilsson ("GAN": modernistic and cubistic paintings of sailors and sports­men), and Nils Dardel ("decadent" dan­dyism) also expressed hidden and open homoerotic sentiments during and after this period.
A sign of backlash was the book of Martin Koch in 1916,
Guds vackia valid ("God's Beautiful World"), which was a crusade not only against social misery, but also against the "sodomites" who seduced, exploited, and corrupted the young.
In 1916, however, Mauri tz Stiller and Axel Esbensen also produced the first film with a homoerotic theme,
Vingarne ("The Wings"), based on the novel Mikael by the Dane Herman Bang (but having a Ganymede statue instead of a painting at the center of the plot). In 1919 the first Swedish sexology book devoted entirely to homosexuality was published by Dr. An­ton Nyström, who was a friend of Magnus Hirschfeld.
During the twenties, a vivid dis­cussion about homosexuality took place in the "yellow press" of Stockholm and Göteborg, and letters from homosexuals were published on page after page (with reprimands and corrections from the edi­tors, of course).
Another phase of homosexual emancipation started in the thirties, when lawyers and doctors and radical philan­thropic organizations, such as the National Federation for Sexual Enlightenment, demanded revision of the old paragraph 18:10 "in accordance with new scientific findings." The Swedish iron-mill worker Eric Thorsell at the same time returned from a study period at Hirschfeld's Berlin institute in 1932, and started a one-man movement against paragraph 18:10 with public lectures, newspaper articles, and the like.
The campaigns were successful. From 1944 homosexuality in private was declared legal in Sweden, with some dis­criminating clauses such as a higher age-limit (18 years instead of 15, in the case of prostitution, and 21 for dependent rela­tionships).
Toward Today. In 1950, the first homosexual organization in Sweden was founded by the engineer Allan Hellman. At first it was a Swedish branch of the Danish/Scandinavian Federation of 1948, but soon became an organization in its ownright, acquiring its present name RFSL (National Federation for Sexual Equality) in 1952.
The fifties, however, also meant a new wave of anti-homosexuality. In Swe­den the gay baiters were not right-wing but "radicals" and "anti-fascists." A labor newspaper and the author Vilhelm Moberg played the role of McCarthy, accusing the authorities of being corrupted by "homo­sexual leagues." The campaign was in practice an attack on all homosexuals (and on homosexuality as such). But the RFSL succeeded in strengthening itself in the struggle, and in presenting its goals and aims in the press during a difficult period.
The sixties were politically a si­lent era for the homosexual movement. But they also meant a consolidation of RFSL and the new indoor subculture: the
cafés and small dance halls that had emerged during the fifties.
When gay liberation swept in from the West at the beginning of the seventies, gay life in Sweden was vitalized and radi­calized. At the end of the seventies, the first sizable gay demonstrations in Stock­holm were held, organized by RFSL. They grew from 400 people in 1977 to several thousand in the eighties. The Stockholm Gay Liberation Week held in August every year during the eighties became one of the biggest social and political gay events in Europe.
One of the achievements in the gay struggle during this period was setting the same age of consent, 15 years, as for heterosexual relations (1978). This fol­lowed on a statement from the Swedish Parliament in 1973 that "cohabitation between two parties of the same sex is from the standpoint of society a totally acceptable form of relationship."
In 1987 Parliament passed two historic laws. The first forbids discrimina­tion against homosexuals by authorities and private enterprises. The second grants homosexuals many of the same economic and legal privileges (and obligations) that unmarried heterosexual couples living together have in Sweden. Thus for the first time a positive homosexual status,
homosexuellsambo ("homosexual cohabitant"), has been introduced into the Swedish language and Swedish society, after a struggle of more than a century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Bent Hansen, Noidisk bibliografi: Homoseksualiteit, Copen­hagen: Pan, 1984.
Fredrik Silverstolpe

Symonds, John Addington (1840-1893)
English scholar. John Addington Symonds was born into a prosperous Lon­don family; his father was a renowned physician and the young Symonds was educated at Harrow and at Oxford.
Symonds realized that he was homosexual at a very early age. Even as a child, he had vivid dreams of being in a room surrounded by naked sailors: odd dreams, since he had not seen a nude adult male, much less a nude sailor. According to his
Memoirs, the central theme of Symonds' Ufe was his ongoing attempt to deal with what he felt to be an inborn propensity to love the male sex. His innate timidity and romanticism caused him to be disgusted by the abundant homosexual activity available to students at Harrow. This puzzling rejection (of what he was later to value most highly) culminated in his first adult action on the scene of the wide world: he accused the Harrow head­master, Dr. Vaughan, of loving one of his pupils, and with the cooperation of his father, procured Vaughan's removal from the headmastership and subsequent exile to obscurity. This malicious act caused several of his closest friends to cut him off for the rest of his life, and he was deeply troubled by the remembrance of it. What, after all, was the difference between him and Dr. Vaughan, except for Symonds' vague feeling of spiritual superiority?
He had already, by this time, read Plato and become enthusiastic about the ideals of Greek pederasty; he was, indeed, in love with an English choirboy named Willie Dyer, with whom he twice ex­changed kisses which he would remember to the end of his days. This passionate friendship was terminated on the advice of his father, who pointed out that Symonds might be accused of the same "crime" as his recent victim, Dr. Vaughan.
In his twenties, again at the ad­vice of his father, Symonds married, and eventually fathered four daughters. He never had any passion for his wife. Fortu­nately, she loathed sex and pregnancy, and soon they were living in separate parts of the house, while Symonds continued to pursue young men as soul mates.
Serious illness made Symonds incapable of any real career, so he turned to literature as an avocation. He pursued another schoolboy named Norman Moor in an ardent Platonic fashion, which even­tually culminated in their spending six nights in bed together, nude and kissing, but without doing anything which would offend the laws of the time.
Several things happened in a short space of time, which decisively altered Symonds' life. His father died, he moved to Switzerland for the sake of his health, he had his first "base" homosexual interac­tion with a nineteen-year-old soldier, his literary output increased substantially, and his health improved. This would per­haps indicate that the beloved father was in fact an obstacle to Symonds' self-actu­alization.
In any case, he quickly got the knack of making close and passionate friends among the Swiss peasants and Ital­ian gondoliers, and discovered that it was quite possible for two men to share their sexuality, in moderation, without being immediately damned and thrown into jail.
Symonds became one of the fore­most men of letters of his time, famed for his reviews, essays, books of art history, and expositions of poetry. He became a cultural arbiter for the Victorian era, and also published several volumes of bad poetry.
Unknown to most of his contem­poraries, however, Symonds was pursuing a second career. As he grew more accus­tomed to his own homosexuality and dis­covered Walt Whitman, he produced the pioneering essay
A Problem in Greek Eth­ics (1883), published in an edition of 10 copies. As he grew older and read the works of such pioneers as Krafft-Ebing, he realized that he was not alone and wrote the larger essay A Problem in Modem Ethics (1891), issued in 50 copies. He also began a collaboration with Havelock Ellis, which resulted in the publication of Sex­ual Inversion after Symonds' death. (The family made trouble about the book, and demanded that Symonds' name and life history be removed from the English edi­tion.)
Symonds also committed his memoirs to a distant posterity. The sealed memoirs were handed to his literary ex­ecutor, H. F. Brown, and were willed to the London Library by Brown on his demise in 1926, with instructions to withhold them from publication for fifty years. They fi­nally appeared in 1984.
As Symonds' respectable Victo­rian persona retires into obscurity (he is mostly remembered for his enormous
Renaissance in Italy), his fame as a homo­sexual theorist and apologist takes up the failing torch and secures for him a new and perhaps more lasting reputation. He has certainly been a major influence in the cause of social and legal reform, and, with the sad exception of Dr. Vaughan, a valu­able ally for homosexual men everywhere.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Phyllis Grosskurth, The Woeful Victorian: A Biography of John Addington Symonds, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964.
Geoff Puterbaugh

Symposia
In ancient Greece, symposia were convivial meetings for drinking, con­versation, and intellectual entertain­ment; they were all-male, upper-class drinking parties that beginning ca. 600 b.c. were held following the evening meal.
After pouring libations to the gods, the guests - usually ten or twelve - began to drink wine diluted with various amounts of water. Often garlanded and perfumed, they reclined usually two to­gether - often
erastes (lover)and eromenos (beloved) - on couches propping them­selves up on one arm while servants brought round the calyx, the common drinking cup filled with watered wine. Though some did not drink, others be­came riotous. Besides drinking and con­versing, they told riddles and fables and sang drinking songs (often ribald and pederastic) and recited verses, whether ar­chaic (the most popular being those of Theognis) or of recent composition. Athenaeus preserved a collection of scolia, as the drinking songs were known, from the fifth and sixth centuries b.c. Each sang in turn when he was passed the myrtle branch. Having wrestled nude with his boy in the gymnasium, a gentleman might recline with him in the evening on a couch at a symposium sipping wine together and exchanging glances and singing love songs. Flirtation was the rule, and sometimes kisses and embraces. Going farther in public with one another was considered indecorous, although young girl and boy slaves were often pinched and pummeled, and attending musicians, often slaves themselves, were available and often fondled and groped by intemperate guests, and hetairai (female companions) often attended. But ladies, after 600 b.c., were shut away in the gynaecea (women's quar­ters), and children were formally excluded from these parties. They were held in the men's chamber that each greater house possessed, often furnished with stone couches upon which pads and pillows were placed. One of the more popular games was kottabos (winethrowing) in which, reclining on their left elbows on the couches, the guests threw the last drops of wine from the calyx into a basin set in the middle of the room without spilling any.
In the seventh century, first at Crete, then at Sparta, lawgivers founded men's houses
[andieia], where upper-class males messed together. The institution was imported to Athens and the rest of Greece after 600 b.c., along with gym­nasia, pederasty, and the seclusion of women, but in Athens the eating clubs, often bound together by pederastic rela­tionships, met only occasionally for din­ner parties and symposia, many of which became very intellectual. Some ended in komoi, drinking processions revelling through the streets to serenade an eromenos outside his house. Heroes and others whom the state wished to honor, such as the descendants of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, were dined at public expense in the Prytaneum, but most upper-class men outside of Crete and Sparta, normally dined en famille. The symposia fulfilled the need of educated Greeks for relaxation and stimulation, as restaurants and night clubs did not exist. They could, however, also degenerate into drunken orgies that brought out the mutual hostility of the participants.
Plato, Xenophon, and many oth­ers set dialogues in symposia, which be­came a recognized literary form that al­lowed the author to ramble over his choice of barely related themes. Prominent in this genre is the
Deipnosphistae of Athenaeus, who had a most artificial ar­rangement, with 40 guests and a three-day banquet. Vase paintings preserve a vivid picture of the proceedings at such affairs. Crude Roman imitations of the Greek banquets were satirized, more in literary form, by Petronius in the Cena Trimalchionis, the banquet episode of the Satyricon. Christian hostility to such centers of pederasty and intellectual analysis, as well as the loss of wealth and leisure be­ginning with the third century, led to their decline. In the late fourth century Libanius complained that at Antioch banquets had degenerated, citing an egre­gious case in which a father regularly prostituted his son.
A survival of the symposium is the Jewish Passover meal, where the guests are formally required to recline in the manner of upper-class Greeks, proving that they are no longer slaves after being deliv­ered from bondage in Egypt. Also, a cere­monial part of the meal is the
aphikoman, from Hellenistic Greek epicomon, the final course of the banquet.
English colleges created
their own, more sedate versions of the sympo­sia. The common room and dining hall arrangements with sherry, port, and other wines, where a variety of opinions are expressed, parallel those of antiquity. Tutorials, though one-on-one, tradition­ally end with the quaffing of a glass of sherry.
William A. Percy

SZYMANOWSKI, KAROL
(1882-1937)
Polish composer. The son of Pol­ish landed gentry, Szymanowski was born in Tymoszowka, in eastern Poland (now part of the Soviet Union). He began to play the piano and compose at an early age, and while at the Warsaw Conserva­tory quickly acquired a reputation as a composer of talent, and a follower of modern musical trends.
Szymanowski's wide travels (he visited America in 1921) brought him into contact with many European artistic trends. This is reflected in his evolving and somewhat eclectic style, which moves from a Chopin-Scriabinesque early period, through a more Germanic chro­maticism, to an impressionist period. His final compositions reflect Polish folk tra­ditions and are more Bartokian in style.
Evidence of Szymanowski's sex­ual preference is largely indirect but none­theless telling. He remained unmarried, and once jokingly remarked that the only woman in his life was his mother. Corre­spondence with several close male friends is extant, although not published in its entirety (no similiar correspondence with women exists). Contemporaries of the composer make reference to his fondness for men. B. M. Maciejewski, in
Karol Szy­manowski: His Life and Music (London, 1967), states that it was common knowl­edge throughout European cultural circles that Szymanowski was homosexual. The Polish biographer Stef ania Lobaczewska is more circumspect, stating only that Szy­manowski was regarded in his youth as zepsuty [decadent, immoral) and that his music is marked by a strong erotic drive.
The most direct evidence is the composer's two-volume novel,
Efebos, written in 1917. It is described by the composer as an apologia pro vita sua. The hero of the novel is a divinely beautiful young man in whom are united physical and divine love. Unfortunately, all but the introduction to the novel was destroyed during the bombing of the Polish National Archives at the beginning of World War II. Contemporary accounts describe it as the composer's theory of Greek love.
Szymanowski's musical output spans the gamut from solo piano works (three sonatas, preludes, studies, mazur­kas) to songs for voice, orchestral works, symphonies, concerti, ballets, and opera
[King Roger, premiered in the United States only in 1988). Szymanowski was director of the Warsaw Conservatory from 1927 to 1931, and was a strong advocate for con­temporary music in prewar Poland. At his death, he was widely heralded as Poland's greatest composer since Chopin.
Peter Gach