Re: Were there lesbians or gay men in feudal Europe?

[Juan Fajardo <fajardos@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Carrol Cox wrote:

>
> Prior to the *invention* of homosexuality there were (as now) various
> combinations for sexual acts. Those *acts* were classified, but the
> people who performed then were (characteristically) *not* classified.
> It would be safe here to use ther Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, which
> often leads to nonsense but not always. How could people think
> about homosexuals if the *word* homosexual did not exist? Further,
> *why*, at a given historical moment, did the *word* "homosexual"
> come into existence.

That leads to a question that has been brewing in my mind as I read
these posts.

Several members have posited that "homosexuality" arose as a result of
the triumph of the bougeoisie, of capitalism.
But, as I read the posts I am led to wonder whether it might not be in
fact that "homosexuality" could be defined because there was created a
category, "homosexuals", not as the result of the triumph of capitalism,
but as a result of the triumph of science.

Granted, it can be argued that the XIX C. scientists, roaming the world
collecting, analyzing, and above all, categorizing everything they came
in contact with were made possible by the rise and triumph of British,
French, German, capital.   But it can also be noted that the revolution
in knowledge and, more importantly, in world-view that was brought about
by the rise of science over craft, magic, and religion, made possible
the investigations and advances which spurred the late industrial
revolution onward, and infused all areas of society and study, such that
we came to think and act in terms of "scientific management,"
"scientific farming," even "scientific socialism."

What I am suggesting is that the scientific worldview lead to the
categorization of certain behaviors and the people who exhibited them as
"homosexual, which allowed the move from prohibiting specific acts to
prohibiting *categories* of acts, and thence to proscribing *categories
of people," and that this was possibly a result not of a capitalist
world-view but of the rise of a "scientific" worldview, and that it is
maintained not because it necessarily helps capitalism, but because it
so far hasn't hurt it.

- Juan