Talk:History of homosexuality

Jesus Christ, DRP and PC are both working on this? It's the perfect storm. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 13:23, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Jesus Christ, TOP is whining about non-native speakers working their asses off to type a coherent sentence? Nothing new in the Saint Floriant's Dale. -- DasRationalpersone Socks cat 1.JPG (Annoy me!) 13:27, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * PC is a native speaker. You create a ton of work for other editors and never fucking show any gratitude for people fixing up your mistakes. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 13:34, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * If I am such a braker for the community, go ahead and block me. If not - no one is showing me any gratitude for taking time out of my day to write sth on this wiki. If you edit a wiki in search of gratitude, you need to realize what a fucking wiki is. -- DasRationalpersone Socks cat 1.JPG (Annoy me!) 13:40, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to block you. But if I habitually made messes for a couple of years, I would feel remiss if I didn't thank the folks who tidied up after me. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 13:42, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * "no one is showing me any gratitude for taking time out of my day to write sth on this wiki." Maybe that's because most of your stuff isn't very good. Look at how many edits have been made to Slovenia, for example, to fix up your prose. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 13:43, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * ... Nope. Still not banned. -- DasRationalpersone Socks cat 1.JPG (Annoy me!) 14:43, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

You haven't done anything worth banning for. That doesn't make your contributions any more productive, or your writing any better. nor does it improve your shitty attitude. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 14:56, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Wow, I'm being schooled about attitude by you. As for me only doing harm to this wiki, ban me, if not, you are still free not to edit my contributions. -- DasRationalpersone Socks cat 1.JPG (Annoy me!) 15:41, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

A problem with the way this article is framed.
"Homosexuality" is a term with a history. Check out the intro to George Packer's Gay New York for a great discussion, if you're interested. To put it briefly the idea that being a "homosexual" was a type of identity is a fairly recent development in Western history. Sexuality was often seen as more of a behavior than an identity or a subject position; moreover, certain kinds of acts were often deemed as a type of sexual behavior that didn't jeopardize making somebody into what might have, in some historical contexts, been called a "fairy" or a "queer" or what have you. Sexuality is a human construction, taking shape within specific cultural contexts. To make the argument that "homosexuality has been accepted throughout human history" begs the question that "homosexuality" has always meant the same thing across times and across cultures. It has not. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 13:54, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * So what if it was called differently. It was still same-sex partnerships and that we call homosexuality. You don't need to get all philosophy over this. Until Wikipedia doesn't change article "History of homosexuality" into "History of same-sex sexual behavior" it's staying as it is. -- DasRationalpersone Socks cat 1.JPG (Annoy me!) 14:43, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I do need to get "all philospohy over this," because it's an important topic that scholars are doing exciting and interesting work on, and part of our mission is to debunk commonly-held assumptions. One commonly-held assumption that could use debunking is the idea that sexual identities are somehow fixed, when in fact they are historically and culturally contingent. and i don't really care what WP says, because we are not WP. We are different, and in some ways better. who decided that WP should be the gold standard of intellectual production, anyways? Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 15:00, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think we should lave it up to scholars. -- DasRationalpersone Socks cat 1.JPG (Annoy me!) 15:41, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * If you're interested in the topic, and want to write a mission-worthy article that engages with the big ideas that debunk the conventional wisdom about sexuality, you need to do better than reading Wikipedia and doing Google searches. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 16:14, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Oxford Dictionary: homosexual noun a person who is sexually attracted to people of their own sex. That's all there is to it. It may be called motsoalle in Africa or shudo in Japan, but it's called homosexuality in English and all of those mean the same thing - sexual attraction to same gender. I still don't quite get what's the problem. -- DasRationalpersone Socks cat 1.JPG (Annoy me!) 16:29, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * This isn't about the dictionary definition of a word. it's about how that definition came to exist. It's about the way in which the idea that homosexuality developed as an identity and a subject position; how it moved from being understood as something that one did to being understood as something that one was. The idea of homosexuality, like the idea of race, like the idea of gender, like a lot of the categories in which we put people, isn't static or constant--it changes depending on where and when you look. These are important ideas because thy say a lot about the relationship between knowledge and power, and the ability of people to contest power, or make claims against that power. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 17:08, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, that really depends on how you understand the word "homosexuality". I'd stick with the dictionary. I don't carefully examine the etymological history of all the words I'm using. I let the language flow. -- DasRationalpersone Socks cat 1.JPG (Annoy me!) 17:19, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * It DOES depend on how you understand the word, but that's not just an etymological question. Those "flows" don't just happen. They are historical phenomena with close ties to how power is constructed, exercised and contested. If you want to write an article about the history of homosexuality, I would hope that you would be the least bit intellectually curious about how that history came to be, about how the concepts that you're trying to write about have specific and complex histories. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 17:31, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Errr... Throughout the history, people were sexually attracted to other people who were the same gender and I'm writing about them and how societies throughout the history perceived them. You're seriously overcomplicating this. So what would you suggest? Something with a title that would have same fucking meaning, just that it would satisfy your philosophical frustrations? "History of people who were sexually attracted to other people of the same gender, their role in different historical societies and societies' perception of them" instead of "History of homosexuality" perhaps? -- DasRationalpersone Socks cat 1.JPG (Annoy me!) 19:00, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, you haven't shown that you understand the difference between understanding homosexuality as a behavior and understanding it as an identity or a subject position, which is kind of key not only to the history of homosexuality, but to the history of whether or not such a thing was deemed acceptable. Your flippant comment about people attracted to people of the same gender could be complicated in much the same way--gender is a historically/culturally contingent social construct, as much as sexual orientation is, and any attempt to write a history of sexual categories needs to engage with that. I mean, these are first-year gender studies/queer studies/women's studies concepts here. When we write science articles, we expect people to have a grasp of basic physics, etc. I don't think it's too much to expect the same level of engagement with fundamental concepts in an article of this nature. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 19:07, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * You just robbed me of my last shred of will that I had to write this article. Congratulations. You must be happy, since everything that comes from under my keyboard is shit from your pow. Enjoy in creating your Nietzsche-esque pamphlet. -- DasRationalpersone Socks cat 1.JPG (Annoy me!) 16:48, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * This page is entirely too angry. I don't think anyone wants to oppress or be nasty to anyone here. It's just that people who disagree with us will inevitably mine pages for possible flaws, especially pages like this with fuzzy historical contexts that might not entirely match up to a modern perspective. I am fairly sure we'd rather not say anything at all than say things that can be interpreted as unsubstantiated, especially things that aren't interpretation but should draw strongly from cited historical discovery. ±[[File:knightoftldrsig.png]]KnightOfTL;DR walls of text while-u-wait 16:58, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * DRP, I'm sorry that you lack the curiosity to engage with the basics of a subject that you wish to write about; I'm sorry that you think you can just read a couple of things on Wikipedia, Google a couple of terms, peek at a dictionary and then pull something out of your ass and call it an article when there is already a vast amount of informed and accessible scholarship on the questions that you're trying to write about. I'm sorry that you have dug your heels in so deeply that you can't be bothered to engage with criticisms of your approach to putting this article together. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 17:37, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

on TOP's comment about Sexual orientation being a new thing
One thing that should be remembered when looking at any relationship in so-called "ancient times" depends exactly on what TOP has said. People "did" things, not "were" things. You were expected to marry and have children in most all societies. That relationship was very often not one of a romantic nature, for a host of reasons including arranged marriages, limited partner choices, and views of romantic love in general. As long as you fulfilled your duty to the society, by making babies, how you spent your time was by and large, unimportant. So if you had sex with men and women, to fill that duty, were you bi? were you gay? did it matter? and if you spent all your time with one best same-sex friend, going hunting, holding each other in friendship (or love, name it what you will) but did not think to actually have sex, were you straight? It's a tricky topic to talk about, but we shouldn't be scared to jump in, cause it's right at the core of what will be an important argument in front of the USSC this year. IS THE PROHIBITION OF GAY UNIONS, "TRADITIONAL". AND DOES/SHOULD THAT MATTER?Godot  18:55, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Delete, retry, fail?
So is anyone going to write this now that DRP scarpered off? Or should we just delete? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 18:02, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * In the style of University Challenge: "Nominate, Foster!" Scarlet A.pngtheist 15:34, 8 May 2012 (UTC)