SEXUAL DISORDERS AND THEIR TREATMENT: HOMOSEXUALISM. DEFINITION AND DESCRIPTION

Apr
07
2009

Posted by: admin in Categories: Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction.
Using Tags: Men’s Health

Homosexualism is the same as homosexuality. Professional opinion is currently divided as to whether homosexuality should be considered a syndrome or simply a socially sanctioned erotic alternative analogous to left-handedness. In the American Psychiatric Association the majority opinion, as expressed in the referendum of early 1974, supported a change in official nomenclature, so that homosexuality per se is no longer classified as a mental disease or illness. In the religious law of former times, homosexuality was a crime synonymous with treason and heresy. In the civil law today, in many states, homosexuality is classified as a crime against nature, with penalties that are brutally severe. In other states, homosexuality is considered a matter of private morality, provided it takes place between consenting adults.

In current usage, there are those who define homosexuality mentalistically as a trait, state, or disposition emanating from the personality, and those who define it behaviorally as something that happens between two people with similar sex organs. The mentalist says that a person can be homosexual, even though his or her only sexual practices have been heterosexual, provided the erotic imagery is consistently homosexual. To the mentalist, a single homosexual act by itself does not make the person homosexual, because homosexuality is defined as a continuing state of mind or personality. The behaviorist says that a single homosexual act makes a person homosexual for the duration of that act, but from that one act alone it will not be possible to predict more of the same in the future, nor what the person will say or do to indicate a trait, status, or disposition toward homosexuality.

The only evidence that both a behaviorist and a mentalist have about homosexuality is behavioral, that is, what the ostensible homosexual says or does. Thus, it makes sense to define homosexuality in terms of two people each with a penis or two each with a vagina in an erotic partnership. Anything further about the fortuitousness of the event versus its replication, and anything about the imagery and thoughts of the partners, will need extra information. Only then can an inference be made about whether either partner is an obligative versus a facultative (situational) homosexual, the latter being in fact a bisexual. Homosexuality is extensively, though quite wrongly, used as a synonym for bisexuality in today’s literature.

Extra information, over and beyond that of erotic performance, also is needed before an inference can be made regarding the extent or pervasiveness of the gender transposition in homosexuality. There are some male homosexuals who manifest negligible femininity vocationally and recreationally. Even in erotic performance, they may be more masculine than feminine in what they do, except that it is usually considered a feminine trait to have a male copulatory partner. The same applies, vice versa, in the case of the female homosexual.

A male homosexual who manifests little gender transposition, except for entering into an erotic activity or partnership with a male, is often said to have a male gender identity, but to prefer a male partner. For the sake of precision, one should say more restrictively that his gender identity/role is predominantly male, though not completely so. Sexual practice and partnership are components of gender identity/role and must be included in its definition as masculine or feminine in any given case.