A website supporting my switchingview YouTube Channel

This webpage explains the various ideas I have used in the project in much more detail than I can give in the videos.

I also list the definitions I have used. Some of these will be standard definitions already in widespread use. Others will be my own newly invented words (neologisms) created to describe new ideas that I have developed.

In my experience it is vitally important to pay close attention to definitions. It is very easy to create confusion when different people mean very different things despite using the same words.

For example, some people define 'homosexual' as a person who has sex with somebody of the same sex. For others homosexuality is congenital. It's an intrinsic disposition you are born with. I have a friend who knew he had an innate homosexual disposition but he married a woman and had children due to social and religious pressures. Is that person homosexual or heterosexual? You get different answers depending on which definition you use.

Similarly, people often use the words 'sex' or 'gender' interchangeably to describe if somebody is male or female. Yet as we shall see, the two words mean very different things.

In the Discussion Definitions and Laws pages I will explore many issues like this in much more detail than I can in the videos, to try and make sense of these sometimes confusing issues.

Intermediate Types

Intermediate Types, Queer Minstry and Warrior Love

How do you tell the History of Homosexual People?

Homosexual Identity and Orientation

The Essentialist / Social Construct Debate

Intermediate Types, Queer Minstry and Warrior Love

Intermediate Types is a term first used by Edward Carpenter in the early days of LGBTQIA+ research. He used it to describe people whose identities or ways of being didn't fit neatly into the traditional categories of female or male.[Footnote 1.1]

Today, many of these individuals might be described with LGBTQIA+ labels. But people in different cultures and historical periods often understood themselves in very different ways, using their own language and concepts. Because of that, I like using the term Intermediate Types - it avoids projecting modern Western labels like gay or transgender onto people who may not have seen themselves that way, and it leaves space to explore who they were on their own terms.

Queer Ministry is a phrase I created to describe a fascinating pattern found across many cultures and time periods: Intermediate Type people being welcomed into spiritual or religious roles. These individuals appear as priests, shamans, teachers, counsellors, and in many other forms of sacred service.

Warrior Love is a term borrowed from bible scholar Theodore Jennings. He describes historical contexts in which:

"warriors are often accompanied in their exploits by younger male companions who share in the adventures and the dangers of their 'lovers'". [Footnote 1.2]

In many societies, this took the form of Age Structured same-sex relationships. A young man (from puberty to around age 20) might be the junior partner or 'beloved', and later (from about 20 to 30) he would become the senior partner or lover'. After this stage, he would often be expected to move into heterosexual married life (although some did not!). These relationships were often woven into military culture and valued for two main reasons:

• Emotional and moral support: The bond between partners was believed to inspire courage, loyalty, and virtue in battle.
• Teaching and mentorship: The older partner passed on skills, values, and practical training in warfare, while the younger partner offered companionship, service, and support.

How these age structured relationships relate to the modern Western idea of a lifelong homosexual orientation is still debated among scholars. I'll explore this further in the Talking about Homosexuality theme.

If you'd like to see real historical examples, I've put together Eight Case Studies of Queer Ministry and Warrior Love in the YouTubevideo Stories of Queer People in History. Intermediate Types - The Evidence.

How do you tell the History of Homosexual People?

The history of same-sex love is a fascinating but often complicated field. One of the biggest questions scholars ask is this: when we look back at people in history who experienced same sex-attraction, or had same sex relationships, are we seeing the same thing we call "homosexuality" today? Sometimes the similarities are striking; other times the differences are just as important. So how do we make sense of it?

Some people argue that homosexuality has an Essential, inborn nature. According to this view, people throughout history who loved or desired the same sex shared the same underlying disposition as homosexual people today, even if they understood or expressed it differently.

Others take the opposite approach. They see homosexuality as a Social Construct - a set of ideas, behaviours, and identities shaped by culture. From this perspective, we shouldn't assume that people in the past experienced or understood same sex attraction the way we do now. In fact, some scholars argue we shouldn't even use the word 'homosexual' for periods before the late 19th century, when the term itself was invented.

My own approach blends aspects of both ideas. After explaining my own view, I'll explore this essentialist/constructivist debate and suggest a more balanced way forward.

Homosexual Identity and Orientation - My Own Approach

In simple terms:

1. Orientation is about who you're drawn to emotionally and romantically.
2. Identity is how you understand and describe yourself.

A homosexual person has both an identity and an orientation as two separate aspects of their being. Confusing these two ideas has caused a lot of misunderstanding in sexuality studies.

Sex or Love?

Some scholars define homosexual orientation only by sexual behaviour - who someone has sex with. For example, Kenneth Dover once described homosexuality as:

the disposition to seek sensory pleasure through bodily contact with person's of one's own sex in preference to contact with the other sex" [Footnote 1.3]

But this definition is far too narrow. Human sexuality is flexible. Many people with a homosexual disposition have married and had children, while many heterosexual men have had same-sex experiences, especially when young or in environments where women weren't available. Reducing homosexuality to sexual acts alone misses the bigger picture.

A homosexual orientation includes emotional attraction, romantic love, and sometimes broader patterns of relating to others and to society. We need definitions that reflect this complexity. [Footnote 1.4]. I will explore this in the Talking about Homosexuality Theme in due course.

Is Homosexual Orientation Intrinsic?

I believe there is strong evidence that homosexual orientation is an intrinsic, inborn disposition - something stable across a person's life. Many early scholars in the late 19th century, especially those who were themselves homosexual, argued the same. (see my YouTube video The Gay men who "Invented Homosexuality")

Edward Carpenter, for example, saw homosexuality as a natural and valuable variation in humanity. He described it as:

a phenomenon widespread through the human race and enduring in history

and

in a vast number of cases quite instinctive and congenital, mentally and physically, and therefore twined in the very roots of individual life and practically ineradicable.[Footnote 1.5]

Although some early writers viewed homosexuality as a pathology, modern scientific research increasingly supports Carpenter's view. Studies suggest that homosexuality is strongly linked to genetic and prenatal hormonal factors. People come out of the womb "programmed" to be gay. [Footnote 1.6]

A Developing Identity

This intrinsic orientation often becomes clear around puberty. People begin to notice that their feelings differ from those of many peers. They look for explanations, find others like themselves, and gradually develop a sense of identity - a social construct - around their orientation.[Footnote 1.7]

So a person ends up with:

1. an intrinsic, inborn orientation, acquired before birth - and
2. a cultural identity shaped by their culture, time and place.

Both aspects matter. Homosexual scholarship should study both aspects in balance.

Orientation Across History, Identity Across Cultures

While homosexual orientation appears stable across history, the identities people use vary widely.

In 21st century England, I describe myself as homosexual by inborn disposition, but I could choose to use the labels Gay or Queer to describe my identity.

Some conservative Christian homosexuals avoid those labels because they associate them with lifestyles they reject. Instead, they use same-sex-attracted to describe their homosexual but celibate lifestyle choice.

If I had lived in another era, I might have called myself a 'Molly' in 18th century England or a 'Kinaidos' in ancient Greece or Egypt.

It's worth exploring these identities and asking how different - or similar - they really were to modern ones.

Some scholars insist that "homosexual" should only apply after 1870, when the word was coined. I disagree. People with homosexual orientations clearly existed long before then. It's appropriate to use "homosexual" when discussing their orientation, but when discussing identity we should use the appropraite terms from that culture.

In my own work, I try to use "homosexual" only for the intrinsic orientation, and other appropriate labels for cultural identities.

The Essentialist / Social Construct Debate

It has to be said that my approach, outlined above, is very much a minority view within current gender and sexuality related scholarship. There is a strong movement within such circles that rejects ideas around essential or innate homosexual characteristics, and says that only social contruct arguments should be used. My argument for including both aspects is as follows:

Essentialism is the idea that people and things have 'natural' characteristics that are inherent and unchanging. Essentialist ideas about the inborn nature of homosexuality were widely discussed within the early academic debate starting in the late 19th Century. The main question at that time was whether homosexuality was a pathology in need of treatment, or instead (as Edward Carpenter argued) an entirely natural and healthy variation in the normal human condition.

Today some people reject the use of the word homosexual because for them it is still linked to this question of pathology and medicalisation. For others the word is a neutral descriptor in medical terms, but with political overtones, like having black skin.

Social Construct theories began to challenge these esentialist ideas in the late 20th century, mainly in the context of gender and race rather than homosexuality. Feminist scholars such as Judith Butler drew out the distiction between a woman's sex (defined by the shape of their body) and their gender (the role they choose to perform, or are forced to perform by the surrounding culture)

Butler and others criticised beliefs that traditional women's roles roles were "a natural fact or a sociological reality": beliefs that it was the 'essential' nature of women to be defined by their sex as passive nurturing child bearers in the service of dominant men.

"All I was saying is that the sex you're assigned at birth and the gender you are taught to be should not determine how you live your life . . . . one is not born a woman, but rather becomes one - the body is not a fact" [Footnote 1.8]

Gender should instead be seen as a social construct:

an idea, concept, or category that is created and maintained by society rather than existing naturally or objectively, its meaning is determined by collective agreement and cultural context.

Butler herself said that

"Gender is a mix of cultural norms, historical formations, family influence, psychic realities, desires and wishes".

Women had been forced to conform to these passive, nurturing, child-bearing gender constructs by a patriarchal society. But women should have the choice and freedom to adopt and perform different gender roles and constructs instead. One could even choose to perform certain roles as a form of social action.

Similarly, there was a pushback against eugenic arguments that it was the 'essential' nature of black African people to be less evolved, or to have a lower IQ than white people.

These arguments about social constructs were taken up into the study of sexuality and queer theory. Much queer theory explores these ideas around performativity and construct as a form of protest. It was said by many that sexuality and sexual orientation was entirely a construct, a personal choice, a performance, a behaviour learned from the surrounding culture, and with no biological or congenital cause.

These social construct ideas are incredibly important, a major addition to academic theory. I have incorporated them into my own ideas (see the discussion around identity above). But there have been two problems.

1. Firstly, and very understandably when you look at the original debate, proponents of essentialist ideas became regarded with great suspicion as people who wanted to push women back into the old patriarchal ideas. Sadly this suspicion has continued. It is almost impossible to present essentialist ideas within academic debate today, 50 years later. It is not that your ideas will be criticised if they are found to be at fault. It is simply considered wrong to present essentialist ideas in the first place, almost as an act of faith.
2. Secondly, it seems to me that anti-essentialist arguments are applied across the board, whereas I would argue that race, gender, and sexuality are different contexts. It is entirely possible that strong anti-essentialist arguments may still be appropriate in the context of race and gender, but are no longer sustainable in the separate context of homosexuality.

I think we now need to move beyond this situation, and move to a healthier academic debate which includes both essentialist and social construct arguments in a balanced way. Even Judith Butler herself said

"We have a whole lot of differences, biological in nature, so I don't deny them, (my emphasis) but I don't think they determine who we are in some sort of final way.

We need to move to a position where, for homosexuality, biological differences are not denied, but considered alongside constructs and identities as parts of the complete picture.

In the past two decades new evidence has emerged which supports the idea of homosexuality having an innate cause. We should be prepared to analyse this newly emerging evidence with an open mind.

1. Research in humans suggests that homosexuality is strongly related to biological causes, such as genetic and intra-uterine (hormone flow in the womb) factors. The social environment (a person's upbringing and culture post-birth) has been shown to be much less important. [Footnote 1.5]
   
   
2. Much research and experience suggests that a homosexual orientation is intractable and cannot be changed by, for example, conversion therapy, even with the full desire and cooperation of the 'patient'.
   
   
3. There is extensive research into widespread expressions of homosexuality within the animal kingdom. Over 1500 separate species exhibit some form of homosexual behaviour, some of which (in monkey species) appears similar to expressions of human homosexual behaviour. This raises questions about the evolutionary causes and benefits of homosexuality (and whether monkeys can be said to respond to social constructs). I will explore this in the 'Talking about Homosexuality' theme in due course. [Footnote 1.9]
   
   
4. Much research into sexuality looks only within a Eurocentric bubble with unconsciously embedded patriarchal assumptions. Too often the only historical cultures studied are limited to Europe and within the Roman/Greek empires. But if one opens out one's field of view one can see expressions of same-sex erotic and loving behaviour, often linked to spirituality, which are similar right across the continents and right across thousands of years of history. This massively extensive similarity of behaviour and understanding must raise profound questions as to what is "natural".

It seems to me that arguments which reject any idea of homosexuality as a biologicaly caused, historically stable human condition can no longer be sustained in light of this new data.

One constructive way of moving forward with this debate may be to apply the dialectical process of thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

The original late 19th century thesis of homosexuality as an innate disposition was correct, and valid for it's time.

The late 20th-century antithesis developed incredibly valuable ideas of social constructs and identities. For entirely understandable reasons there was a strong rejection of essentialist ideas. But now, 50 years later, new research calls for a reappraisal.

We can now develop a synthesis which accepts a complex balance of both both essentialist and social construct arguments as the best way of describing the complete situation. One's total being is a nuanced combination of both intrinsic drive and culturally dependant performance. Both aspects of a person's life need to be included to get the complete story