Published in: Handbook of Gay and lesbian Studies (spring 2000)

HIDDEN FROM HISTORY?

HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES

Introduction: Homosexuality and History

The rise of Gay and Lesbian Studies in the early eighties was preceded and accompanied by a rising interest in what was basically seen as gay and lesbian history, i.e., the way in which people expressed same-sex behaviour and feelings in history, in which homosexuality was seen as a history of changing attitudes to an unchanging type of behaviour. Books such as Homosexuals in History (Rowse 1977) and Homoseksualiteit in middeleeuws Europa (Homosexuality in medieval Western Europe) (Kuster 1977) bear witness to this attitude. Concurrently the idea was developed that - just as in Gay and Lesbian Studies as a whole - there had been a conspiracy to make gays and lesbians in the past invisible only to wait for the kiss of the gay or lesbian historian to bring them back to life. This was true for the first amateur historians of the reform movements of the fifties, who wrote short biographies of 'famous homosexuals in history' to legitimate the reform movement, because people such as Plato and Shakespeare could not have been *that* wrong or morally depraved. This was especially true for early lesbian history, reflecting the long invisibility of lesbians as women and homosexuals (Cook 1979a: The historical denial of lesbianism). In fact this sense of 'reclaiming' history never went out of fashion, as recent (sub)titles such as 'Reclaiming Lesbians in History' (Lesbian History Group, 1989), 'Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past' show. This last was the subtitle of a compilation of articles on lesbian and gay history called Hidden from History (Duberman et al., 1991). But is homosexuality really hidden from history - or rather hidden in history? 'Before it could become classified information, the love that dares not speak its name first of all had to have a name' (Smith, 1991: 12/13).
The emphasis on matters of legitimation is not strange. Ever since E.H.Carr asked the question What is History? (Carr 1961), it has been recognized that history has more to do with our own view of the society in which we live at any particular time than with an exact knowledge of what has happened in the past. So, questions in history are usually questions of legitimation and support, if sometimes hidden under the guise of interest in 'what has happened'.
This idea of contingency, linked to the fact that most historians are averse to 'grand theories', might seem to point in the direction of history as the pre-eminently post-modernist discipline, were it not that at the heart of historical method we find a scientific criticism of the information contained within and around the historical source material (known as 'source criticism'). Therefore at the heart of any historical inquiry there are always specific data about the past which, through the asking of specific questions and careful consideration of sources, become elevated to the special status of 'facts'.
In the case of the history of homosexuality, 1869, i.e., the year in which the term 'homosexuality' was used for the first time, has been regarded by many as such a 'fact' (Lautmann 1993). But what did this 'fact' mean? Was it an accident of history, did it encode something - more or less exclusive same-sex acts - that had been going on for quite a long time (if not, in fact, forever?) or was this the beginning of a totally new phase in the history of sexuality, when sexual preference started being regarded as an inseparable part of personal identity? Underlying these questions there is the basic philosophical/epistemologic problem of the role naming a category plays in the existence of that category.
In this chapter I shall trace the argument about the importance and meaning of the fact 'homosexuality'. I shall follow two lines of inquiry: the first will deal with the importance of the development of discourse about sexuality; and the second will follow recent publications that historicize the body and sexual identity. I shall finish by looking at some recent develop-ments and the relationship (if any) between gay & lesbian and mainstream history. Overall, this article will concentrate on the history of European and North American sexuality. This has to do with the fact that fundamentally, the history of homosexuality today is basically the history of Western homosexuality. A comprehensive overview of other sexualities and other cultures still remains to be done. I shall start out, however, where lesbian and gay history itself started out, by looking at the role of gay and lesbian icons.
I From homosexuals in history to the history of homosexuality
Early gay and lesbian history was built up around the personal and sexual histories of individuals. Although these individuals lived in a past that supposedly had no word for homosexuality, they were deployed as figureheads in the legitimization of present-day homosexuality. Some of these canonic figures were turned into gay and lesbian icons: Through their life-histories they started living in the text, and by doing so created examples of gay and lesbian life-styles (Marks 1979). Sappho is an obvious example, but there are many more: Oscar Wilde, Nathalie Barney, Radclyffe Hall, etc.
In response to these practices, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick asked in her influential book Epistemology of the Closet the question 'Has there ever been a gay Socrates?' (Sedgwick 1990: 52). Of course this is meant as a joke; but it is a very apt joke that points a finger at the crucial issue: although it is recognized that the concept of modern homosexuality has eminently been shaped in and through the lives of these icons, asking who was homosexual in a period that had no word for homosexuality is pointless. Much published historical material on homosexuality is of a biographic nature and in many of these biographies it is suggested that, in contrast to earlier studies, the hitherto 'forgot-ten' homosexual leanings of the protagonist are brought to the fore. This can lead to strange consequences: Thus, there is sometimes wild speculation regarding the supposed homosexual identities of people such as Michelangelo, Schubert and Vol-taire, to name but three examples. According to the authors of these works (Pomeau, 1986; Royer, 1985; Saslow, 1988; Solomon, 1989), the function of this kind of biography has been to fulfill feelings of personal hero worship (as Terry Castle did in The Apparitional Lesbian on Marie Antoinette), or to reclaim personal histories that had been heterosexualized, such as Elaine Miller on the relationship be-tween Ellen Nussey and Charlotte Brontë (Lesbian History Group 1989:29-55). Here, silence turns into speech, but at the same time we can ask if this is not all projection.
Precursors of homosexuality?
In the early years of lesbian and gay historical research the question was often debated whether these 'forgotten' same-sex relationships should be regarded as precursors of 19th century homosexuality or not. This was even more the case in studies inspired by lesbian-feminist or cultural-feminist paradigms. Within these paradigms, an important role was reserved for (asexual) romantic friendships among women. Such friendships were regarded as the idealistic mode of lesbianism-before-the-fall, in which sisterhood was more important than genital sex, which was at that time viewed as a dirty masculine habit (e.g., Faderman, 1981; Jeffreys, 1989; Cook, 1979b). Some important early studies were written under this paradigm, such as Caroll Smith-Rosenberg's inquiry into intense forms of friendship among American women in the early 19th century (Smith-Rosenberg 1975), Adrienne Rich's concept of the lesbian continuum (Rich 1980) and Martha Vicinus's study of boarding school friendships (Vicinus, 1984). The feminist perspective has continued to inspire some historians (Auchmuty, Jeffreys & Miller, 1992; Bonnet, 1981). It has now, however, become evident that the debate about the precursors is in fact a non-discussion, because this debate disguises the fact that there has been a genuine shift in important concepts concerning the organization of social and sexual life. I shall return to this after considering some epistemological problems.

Epistemological problems

Historians have to face the problem that the subject of homo-sexuality as regards content and source analysis does not fit in the basically 19th century academization of their discipline. Traditionally the aim of history was to describe 'how things really were'. There was no explicit 'theory of history', but a rather rigid methodology of source criticism that was developed with an epistemology based along more or less positivistic lines. In the early 20th century this led to a parcelling of the subject in different spheres of interest, although on the whole history was viewed predominantly as political history. The French Annales school of (social) historians changed this practice in the early fifties by focusing on the integration of various styles as well as sub-jects of history (socio-economic, different time trends) with non-traditional subjects of inquiry, such as social groups, that among other things had in common that they either could not be found or could be found only with difficulty in classical source material and required other methods of analy-sis. The Annales concentrated on the study of 'lived experience', the study of daily life. This opened the way to research into various kinds of subject outside the dominant discourse, such as the history of mentalities, family history, and sexuality. Traditional source criticism clearly did not suffice to exami-ne mentali-ties and identities. Other sources and methods of analysis were needed as well. These were partly to be found in sociology, although this in itself created another problem, as historians in general are usually not very interested in 'grand theories', which they fear will contami-nate the views on their sources. By a curious twist of fortune the rise of social con-structivism (not in itself an historical theory), which regarded homosex-uality as the result of a social and historical pro-cess, not only led to extensive new re-search from this new angle but also contributed greatly to theory building on the con-ceptuali-zation of homosex-uality and sexuality in general.

Essentialism and social constructionism

Social constructionism in the study of sexuality arose at the end of the sixties out of two theoretical currents: American symbolic interactionism and French structuralism. Both currents concern themselves with the relation between the individual and society, social forces and 'lived experience'. Within social constructionism two approaches are distinguished, British constructionism, as embodied by McIntosh (1968), Plummer (1981; 1994) and Weeks (1981a,b), and French constructionism, where in the field of sexuality Foucault is the most important writer. Both focus on the late 19th century as the period in which modern homosexuality was first conceptualized. Foucault wrote what he called an 'archaeology of the present'. For Foucault, sexuality is a construct of human imagination, a cultural artefact that changes with time. 'Knowledge' involves talking about sexuality to other people, and the subsequent effects of this talking Foucault designated as 'Power'. By using the method of deconstructing different discourses about sexuality he hoped to uncover the power structures that had served to regulate human behaviour and led at the end of the 19th century to the search for the desire to know the 'truth about sexuality' (Scientia Sexualis). One of the ways individuals could gain this truth was self-examination of what they saw as their personal identity and subsequent confession (Foucault 1976-1984). Weeks uses an historical approach to identity that pays attention to the description of the social conditions under which homo-sexuality as a category came into existence and the construction of homosexuality as the unification of disparate experiences. Important roads of enquiry are the relation of this catego-rization to other socio-sexual categorizations, and the relationship to certain historical circumstances that have been created by this (Weeks 1981a:81). Weeks also sees the late 19th century as the formative period of the 'personal identity' conception of homosexuality.
The introduction of social constructionism led to fierce debates between the social constructionists and those who had maintained that there had 'always' been homosexuals in history (such as Dover, 1985, Bullough, 1979). The latter were suddenly labelled 'essentialists', although several writers remarked on the fact that self-confessed essentialists were hard to find. Part of this fierce debate was of a personal nature and reflected old enmities that had little to do with academic debate. In fact, the discussion about the nature of things and categories is a very old philosophical debate (Boswell 1982-3). Although essentialists were often defamed by constructionists for being uneducated country hicks, within the essentialist grouping there was at least one very respected historian, John Boswell, whose study of sexuality in antiquity led him to believe there was something like a gay consciousness in the Roman period (Boswell 1980). According to Boswell, constructionists disregard the fact that there are some real problems, summarized in the question whether society is itself responding to sexual phenomena that are generic to humans or whether these sexual phenomena are created by social structures. He then discussues four areas in which limitations on the validity of constructionism are most apparent. These areas are of a philosophical (does an abstract ever relate to reality?); semantic (is it legitimate to ask questions of the past using the categories of the present, regardless of whether they would have had meaning for the persons being studied, or should the investigator adopt the categories with which denizens of the past would have described their own lives and culture? In other words, does the fact that the Romans had no word for 'religion' mean that they did not have any?); political (everybody uses generalizations for political reasons); and empirical (the historical record itself suggests that premodern patterns of sexuality were fundamentally different from modern ones only to a certain extent) nature (Boswell 1992).
After well over fifteen years of debate on the essentialist/constructionist divide we can see that the constructionist paradigm has largely carried the day, at least within intellectual circles. It has not, however, become part of 'popular knowledge', that is, of the people at large, and has been taken up only reluctantly by parts of the political gay movement. For both public and movement, it apparently is safer to stress one's status as an essential group to which members have no choice in belonging. If sexual identity is fixed, it also poses no threat to seduction by older people. Vance (1989) comments on what she calls 'the failure to make a distinction between politically expedient ways of framing an argument and more complex descriptions of social relations.'

The evidence of experience

According to Foucault, every culture has its own distinctive ways of putting sexuality into words - in his view sexuality cannot exist apart from being talked about. The trouble with the gay icons was that they were silent. They could not speak about their experiences because they had no words in which to describe them. Once they started to speak, however, they still had to stay within the discourse that was available to them, thereby also creating methodological problems with those who are speaking. An argument that is often used against constructionism is that when they talk about their (sexual) identities, people often are convinced that they were 'born that way'. Such people therefore refute the idea that there could be such a thing as constructionism. Joan Scott calls this 'the evidence of experience'. She questions this evidence of experience, especially when docu-menting life-stories of non-dominant groups. The only way to deal with these stories is by comparing them with other narratives. Scott argues against accepting these stories simply at face value: the evidence of experience is not enough. By staying within the epistemological framework of orthodox history, one leaves aside questions about the con-structed nature of experience and how subjects are constituted as different in the first place. Whereas individuals have experiences, subjects are constructed by their experiences (Scott, 1991).

The question of knowledge

The discussion about the validity of experience can also be regarded as a discussion about 'knowledge'. Whereas English has only the word 'knowledge', French has two - 'connaissance' and 'savoir' (Smith 1991: 13). Whereas 'connaissance' refers to knowledge through direct experience, 'savoir' - the word used by Foucault - refers to learning beyond direct experience, to erudition and ideas. It is in the latter sense that 'knowledge' plays a role in discussions on the nature of the development of the lesbian sexual role in particular. Exactly because lesbianism (and female sexuality in general) has been so much more invisible than male sexuality, the existence of specific literary sources has been used as evidence that women had 'knowledge' of same-sex sexuality. Among these sources we find literature written by men about explicit lesbian activities among distinct groups of women (mostly of a pornographic or adventurous nature, cf. Donoghue, 1993) and coded poems written by women (Van Gemert, 1995). This 'knowledge' has been considered as 'transgressive', as it pictured women in an active role in sexual play, and authors such as Donoghue and Van Gemert stressed this transgressiveness as a sure sign of the existence of other sexual heterodoxies such as lesbianism.
It remains to be seen whether this view is correct. It could be the result of an historical Victorian projection, to wit: Ever since Victorian times women were supposed to 'think about England' rather than about sex; therefore, the simple fact that women could acquire some form of knowledge about sexuality was assumed (e.g., by Donoghue, 1993) to be in itself highly transgressive. This is the critique taken by Andreadis (1996). Yet she suggests a connection between the development of sexual knowledge as a printed verbal construct and the increasing availability of vernacular print cultures that in itself was associated with (upper)class literacy among women.
Class seems to have played an important role in the ideas about sexual practice. Most of the written histories of sex between women are situated within the lower classes. So were (perhaps not incidentally) most of the cases involving females that went to court (Van der Meer 1984). This has less to do with transgressiveness than with the manner in which the lower classes' sexuality was constructed in the 17th and 18th century. So, Kraakman warns against the tendency to regard 18th century erotic fiction as subversive and transgressive by nature. 'Transgression of political, social and discursive norms can go very well together with the reendorsement of existing sex-roles - how else can we explain the sharp odour of misogyny and sodomophobia that rises from this literature?' At the same time, she recognizes female curiosity in the 18th century as the source of sexual curiosity which in itself leads to both learning and knowledge through experience (Kraakman, 1997:140 ff.). This again takes us to definitions of sexuality that are part of a changing discourse in which elements of class and situations of knowledge play important roles.

II The development of sexuality

Homosexuality as we see it today pre-supposes not only the concept of personal sexual identity but also the notion that this sexual identity is based on gender as the most important distinguishing feature. The concepts of gender and sexual identities seem to have developed relatively recently. The implicit consequence of this is that we have to investigate sexual object choice in the past and the ways in which this is structured socio-sexually. At which particu-lar point in time was the concept of sexual identity formed and which elements were involved? How was same-sex behaviour regarded? Can or should people who engaged in same-sex behaviour be seen as precursors of modern homosexuality? When did gender become important and why?
Halperin distinguishes between sex, which is biological, and sexuality, which is cultural. He states, 'Sex has no history...Sex refers to the erogenous capacities and genital functions of the human body. Sex, so defined is a natural fact (...and) lies outside history and culture' (Halperin 1990, intro). Sexuality, on the contrary, is a cultural product: '...it represents the appropriation of the human body and of its physiological capacities by an ideological discourse'. This statement was in fact implicitly made by Padgug in the late seventies: 'In the pre-bourgeois world sexuality was a group of acts and institu-tions not necessarily linked to one another. Each group of sexual acts was connected directly or indi-rectly - that is, formed part of - institu-tions and thought patterns which we tend to view as politi-cal, eco-nomic, or social in nature, and the connections cut across our idea of sexuali-ty as a thing, detachable from other things, and as a separate sphere of existence' (Padgug 1989:62).
Sexuality does have a history, but, according to Halperin, not a very long one (Halperin, 1989). In classical antiquity there was as yet no sense of a) the autonomy of sexua-lity as an autonomous sphere of exis-tence and b) the function of sexuality as a principle of individua-tion in human natures. Foucault had already remarked on the fact that sexuality in antiquity had been largely an ethical concern. Recent studies of sexual behaviour in classical antiquity confirm that although there was same-sex behaviour, the main distinction in sex was between the sexual behaviour of the free adult male versus the rest of the population. Penetration was the main sexual act, but as long as the free male was the perpetrator the passive partner was not really relevant. The sort of partner he had sex with did not constitute part of his identity, and could equally be a woman, a slave or a young boy (Halperin, 1989; Winkler, 1990; Halperin, Winkler & Zeitlin, 1990).
The study of (homo)sexuality in the Middle Ages does not yet incorporate these new perspectives. This is partly because there have been very few recent studies on the subject, partly because the most influential author on the Middle Ages, John Boswell, advocated a more essen-tialist view of homosexuality, supposing a gay subculture as early as the twelfth century (Boswell, 1980). His study addressed the controversial influence of the Catholic church on the persecution of gay people. The source material on the medieval period is of a legal nature, focusing on sodomy and other forms of same-sex behaviour (Pavan, 1980; Trexler, 1981), and it is probably this kind of material that leads some (such as Goodich, 1979) to the conclusion that effeminacy and the exclusive preference of men for other men that was so prevalent in Italian Renais-sance sources were indeed signs of a gay consciousness. On the one hand there is legal prohibition, based on the church's view of homosexuality as a sin against the world order; yet on the other hand there is an apparently rather profuse 'lived experience' coupled to moral panic over the decadence of the higher classes and fear of extinc-tion (Ruggiero 1985, Rousseau & Porter 1987). This fear of extinction was the consequence of deep-felt moral precepts embedded in the late Medieval and early Renaissance worldviews based on the balance of the God-given universe. Within this moral universe, practising homosexual behaviour became another form of heterodoxy, joining sorcery, religious heresy, and treason; a part of the general depravity to which all mankind is subject - dangerous to the continuing existence of the universe as such and therefore to be condemned, but not a distinct social role as such (Bredbeck 1991). This ties in with studies that describe the main social division people recognized in sexual behaviour as that between those who were 'honest' (i.e., modest and chaste) and those who were 'dishonest' (lecherous and lustful in all matters of life) (Van der Pol 1996).

The Renaissance as period of transition

In her groundbreaking article on social constructionism, Mary McIntosh pointed out that the introduction of what she called the homosexual role had taken place around 1700. As a sociologist she had no means to prove this at the time, but her conjecture led to a great number of impressive studies focusing on the transitional period of 1600-1700 in England. Discourse on sexuality and same-sex relationships at the start of this century turned out to be totally dissimilar to discourse at the end of the century. The first of those studies was by Alan Bray, who studied the development of the homosexual role in the context of this period's great social changes (Bray 1982). He started by positioning homosexuality in the mental universe and the structure of society, deciding that at the very least homosexuality was the solution to the frustration of sexual needs caused by the universal practice of late marriage. There was a contradiction in the fact that it existed on a large scale despite widespread social condemnation. Bray was unable to solve this contradiction. So were most of his followers, although the Renaissance continued to receive a lot of attention (Coward, 1980; Gerard & Hekma, 1989). The challenge was taken up by literary historians such as Smith. Smith, following a Foucauldian perspective, set out to investigate not just what was prohibited, but what was actively homo-eroticized - in order to trace 'savoir' in the 17th century - and found 'a startling ambiguity': a disparity between the extreme punishments prescribed by law and the almost positive valuation of homo-erotic desire in the visual arts, literature and political power structure. So, in order to understand Renaissance 'scripts of sexual desire' we must discriminate among various discourses about homosexuality: legal, moral, medical and poetic. Of these the poetic is the most informative, as it tells us about homosexual desire. Smith then describes six (classical) poetic stories (which he calls 'myths') of desire. Each of those represents a different intersection of structures of ideology with power structures, and a different site of socio-sexual experience. This ends with an eroticized form of male bonding specific to the culture of early modern England, as demonstrated in Shakespeare's sonnets (Smith 1991). Little is known about female relationships in this period (Brown 1986).

The development of gendered sexuality

Smith's study has shown a possible way in which specific forms of male desire could turn into a specific preference for same-sex sexualities rather than just a possible form of behaviour. We still need to analyze the historical process by which this specific preference was taken further in the 18th century. This started with an important shift in the organization of sexuality, from hierarchical to gender-based relations.
First of all, an essential difference between men and women was created that had to become inscribed not only in the body, but also in the soul. The result of this process was the recognition that the soul and the emotions were gendered. Men and women were supposed to be and feel differently. The existing division of humanity into those who were 'honest' and those who were 'dishonest' started to be more often explained in terms of gender than in terms of class. 'Honest' people could control themselves and therefore did not care much about sexuality, whereas 'dishonest' people were perceived to be pre-occupied with all sorts of dishonest behaviour, including sexual behaviour. 'Dishonesty' became connected with lasciviousness, which was regarded as a female characteristic. Women were supposed to be unable to control themselves, whereas for men sobriety and moderation were ideal traits. In this way the gendered soul became embodied in a gendered body. The new male and female identities were realized within different kinds of discourse that were often contradictory. Masculinity was moulded within philosophical and religious discourse about identity in which 'the soul', 'the Self' were described as 'human', that is, 'male'; femininity was described in medical, educational and literary discourse that only served to demonstrate derived identities within the private sphere. Finally the development of the theory of the Self at the end of the 18th century liberalized the individuality of emotions. Releasing the reproductive role from the family left room for the introduction of passion and friendship (for a more general background to this see Armstrong, 1987; Nussbaum, 1989).
A pre-requisite for perceiving gender differences is to recognize differences between the sexes in general. This remark might seem facetious, but as Thomas Laqueur (1990) has shown, it was only during the 18th century that the crucial importance of the physical differences between men and women gained recognition. Prior to that period the difference between the sexes was recognized as one of degree rather than of kind: there was only one sex with two genders, the ideal male and the lesser female. Laqueur describes a radical shift in the 18th century from this 'one-sex' system to a 'two-sex' system, in which the anatomical differences between men and women were recognized as significators of important physical and emotional differences as well. Under the 'one-sex' system only one sex and two genders are recognized, whereas under the two-sex system there are two distinct sexes (Trumbach 1994). In the end the body itself becomes the bearer of different messages through which the constructed differences between men and women are understood to be the result of natural differences. For women the formation of the two-sex system had the most consequences, as under the 'one sex system' males formed the universal human standard. Instead of being slightly imperfect versions of universal male perfection, women were suddenly relegated to a distinct category of being with a nature, body and soul that were by definition inferior.
The new ideas about the differences between the sexes led to increasing interest in both academic discourse and life experience of the dynamics of sexual relationships between the sexes, to the detriment of the antique systems of attraction through hierarchical differences. This involved a long period of transition that took place throughout the 18th century and a large part of the 19th. In the sexual vacuum created by this transition, gay and lesbian identities based on inversion were being formed, although there was probably a time gap of close to a century between the formation of gay identities and lesbian identities.
Male homosexual identities were formed first. When there was as yet no fixed homosexual role, men who had sex with other men also had sex with women, albeit often with women years older than themselves. For instance, Van der Meer (1995) found in his Dutch court material of the 18th and 19th centuries evidence of the process by which these sexual acts with other males became tied to gendered emotions. According to him, the rise of modernism and especially of the individual at the end of the 17th century was the main agent through which desires became gender-related. Within the old hierarchical system desires were in the first place of a purely physical nature. There was room for homosexual behaviour that might not have been exclusive, but was regarded as 'habitual'. As homosexual behaviour was equated with excessive sexuality these desires were designated as 'female'. Van der Meer sees discourse and life experience (which he calls social reality) drift further apart after the persecution of sodomites in the Dutch republic in the years after 1730. The persecution forced people to face their own feelings and must have played an important part in crystallizing these feelings. Regarding these feelings as 'feminine' became connected to pre-scientific notions of influences on the unborn child that led them to start seeing their 'female' behaviour as a sign of innateness. According to Van der Meer, these early sodomite subcultures are definite precursors of modern homosexuality. Once these ascribed gender roles became written on the body, the connection between unlicensed sexuality and femininity in playing a crucial role in the development of homosexuality became obvious.
The change in thought that led to homosexual men being regarded as 'effeminate' cannot by definition have been the same for women. Trumbach (1994) had already surmised that there had been a gap of at least 75 years between the formation of male and female homosexual identities, although he placed this gap earlier in the 18th century, instead of (as now seems more likely) in the late 18th century and early 19th century. For most of this period, women appear to stay out of the medical and psychiatrical discourse about sexual identities that dominated most of the 19th century (Mak 1996). Class played an important role in the development of ideas about female sexuality. As we have seen, the old ideas about honesty and dishonesty presented many undertones of classism and sexism. Women in whom both elements were united - working class girls and prostitutes in particular - were among the first to be described (by medical docters commissioned to write reports of social wrongs) as having sexual relations with other women. At the other end of the scale we find the same suppositions about upperclass women, based upon the supposed availability of sexual knowledge as a result of Enlightenment literature and the sort of general 'don't give a damn' attitude that has always been attributed to the nobility (Trumbach, 1989; Donoghue, 1993; Kraakman, 1997). At the same time we witness the rise of the middle-class woman, with her soft female soul and gentle habits, in whom the old notions of honesty developed seamlessly into the bourgeois ideal of sexlessness (with noted unfortunate Victorian consequences). Under the aegis of honest bourgeois enlightenment we can place such former lesbian icons as the Dutch writer-couple Betje Wolff and Aagje Deken, as well as countless other scholarly and literary couples and women who engaged in what later came to be known as 'Boston marriages' (Smith-Rosenberg, 1975; Faderman, 1981; Everard, 1994).
Within bourgeois gentility women who dressed up as men (Dekker & Van de Pol 1989, Vicinus 1989) could only create confusion by undermining limits that were becoming ever more fixed. At first all they were charged with fraud, not homosexuality (Mak 1996). Within a one-sex system this is easily explained: sex is not yet an identity, only a status. According to Mak, this status is proclaimed through actions, not yet through words. But this changed during the 19th century. As the result of the introduction of the two-sex system, doctors were now increasingly of the opinion that everybody should have 'a true sex'. Gender could be explained through embodied sexed characteristics and thus sexual identity was formed. As a result of the intervention of sexologists at the end of the 19th century, all women were now supposed to declare their 'true histories' within the narrow definitions of medical discourse. Masculine behaviour was seen as the result of a lack of femininity rather than as a possible mode of behaviour. In this manner inversion - the reversal of the sex-role - in women was linked to (homo)sexuality. From this time on a lesbian role, linked to masculinity, existed. The process ended with the internalization by some women of this role, as attested by the publication in 1901 in one of the Jahrbücher für sexuelle zwischenstufen of the autobiography of a lesbian, E.Krause, under the title 'Die Wahrheit über Mich' (The Truth about Me). The homosexual and lesbian role had gained a narrative.

III The 20th century

Consolidation

I have given disproportionate attention to the developments in the 17th and 18th centuries compared with the actual number of studies on this subject because it seems to me that at present this period is on the cutting edge of the development of the study of homosexuality in history. This has not always been the case, however. Some historians still maintain that the late 19th century is the period to examine for the conceptualization of homosexuality. These studies emphasize the importance of the sexologists' intervention and the 'medicalisation of homosexuality', following Foucault's observation that modern homo- and heterosexual identities were formed only through the development by the medical profession of a 'scientia sexualis' in which 'the wish to know' led to confessing the 'truth about one's sexuality' (Foucault 1976; Hekma 1987, Weeks 1981a). Weeks, who was interested in the intricacies of late-Victorian society, also concentrated his argument on the close of the 19th century (Weeks 1977). He regards the years around 1890 as 'the moment of the solidification of that binary opposition between "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality"'. Weeks, working 'on historical questions through the reading of literature, reading literary texts with the grain of contemporary historical knowledge', saw a sense of the historicity and power of our sexual definitions. He found no order, but conflict and disorder, at least suggesting that the process did not run along a clearly defined one-way track. One example to illustrate this is the lawsuit against Oscar Wilde, which probably did more to educate people about the interconnections between dandies, inverts and homosexuals in turn-of-the-century England than the whole abstract discussion on the introduction of the Labouchère Act in 1885, which put male homosexuality back in the statute book (Bristow 1995). After all, Queensberry accused Wilde of posing as a sodomite rather than being one!
The process of medicalization has been documented closely (see, among others, Chauncey, 1982, 1983; Hacker, 1987; Kennedy, 1990; Lautmann, 1993; Steakley, 1975). The process of legal punishment and liberation that went hand in hand with this has also been described (e.g., Lautmann, 1977;Hütter, 1992). Not yet fully documented are the interrelationships between the development of homosexuality and nationalism, imperialism and the concomitant attempts at purity. Nationalistic and imperialistic nations such as Germany and Britain attached great value to maintening what they defined as 'healthy (hetero)sexuality' as a moral precept that would validate their claims to dominate countries in Africa and Asia. The 'othering' that was the result of this led to equating being non-white with being non-heterosexual and therefore perverse (e.g., Lautmann, 1984; Mosse, 1985; see also Gert Hekma's contribution to this book). Some of this history is rather con-fusing, as it demonstrates that there were uneasy alliances both between feminism and right-wing anti-sexual move-ments (using their particular versions of 'femininity' to try to curb a more free expression of sexuality by statutory prohibition) and between early male bonding societies and early fascism (in celebrating masculine values).
The final phase of conceptualizing the modern homosexual was completed between 1890-1914. Foucault pointed to the vicious circle that was the consequence of this process of conceptualization: as even more people started to recognize themselves under the label of homosexuality, more people became aware of the existence of homosexuality. This in itself provoked a repressive reaction from the authorities. The emancipation movement that started up thereafter made homosexuality more visible and public and attracted more and more people. It is from this point of view of oppression and liberation that the remarkable history of the start of the emancipation movement in the 20th century has been described.

The company of others like oneself

To the notion that there now was an 'official' homosexual identity some dissident voices have to be noted. One is that of Lillian Faderman, who claims that the potentially sexual and therefore dangerously transgressive nature of female relationships was recognized only in the wake of what she found to be the stigmatizing writings of sexologists. In the United States the shift towards more pathologizing discourse happened only after 1928 (Faderman 1986). Attention has been paid to the conceptualization of other forms of relationships that were not sexual (among women: Rupp, 1989) or not overtly homosexual (among men: Chauncey, 1994). In his study of New York, Chauncey found at the beginning of the century differences between the gay person and his partner based on the perceived female behaviour of the gay person and the masculine image and behaviour of the partner, who did not lose his heterosexual status. According to Chauncey, adaptation was the important ability to move between different personas and different lives. It was not so much 'coming out' as such, as coming out into the gay world. In this world men were not divided into 'homosexuals' and 'heterosexuals'. This is a recent distinction that was not made in the working-class culture. Men were labelled 'queer' if they took over the gender role of women; the man who responded to this was not considered abnormal so long he adhered to masculine gender conventions. This sort of behaviour reminds us of the well-documented behaviour of upper-middle class British writers such as Isherwood, Auden, Forster and Ackerley, who felt sexually attracted only to young working-class boys. Their attraction was based on availa-bility, erotized class and therefore power. The difference between the 'invert' or core-homosexual and the masculine (rent) boy was maintained by the existing social relationships as well as by psychological discourse on inverted behaviour. This changed between the thirties and the fifties, marked by class and ethnic differences (Chauncey 1994), and only fully disappeared under the influence of the sexual liberation in the '60s and '70s, which led people to regard (sexual) relationships first of all based on equality.
As many early scholars of lesbian and gay history had backgrounds in the emancipation movement, it comes as no surprise that the history of the movement and gay and lesbian subcultures itself became a subject for investigation (Tielman, 1982; Girard, 1981; d'Emilio, 1983; Altman 1983). Most of this research was carried out in the eighties and can be regarded as quite straightforward attempts at descriptive history, although they drew heavily on alternative sources, such as oral history. At the end of the 19th century homosexual men and women developed their own forms of organization. This process was helped along by increasing urbanization in Western Europe and the United States, which created both the space and the people for this. City air again meant freedom. From Berlin in the 1880s to New York, Paris and, to a lesser extent, London men and women met under various disguises and formed subcultures (e.g., Katz, 1983; Chauncey, 1994; Berlin-Museum, 1984). There have been numerous studies on the development of and habits within subcultures, in particular in relation to the development of subcultural identities. These subcultures are characterized by specific locales, norms and values, and are usually but not always sex-segregated (Benstock, 1987; Casselaer, 1986; Faderman, 1991; Hacker & Vogel, 1984; Hamer, 1996; Kennedy & Davis, 1993; Newton, 1994; and Schuyf, 1994; to name but a few). Local knowledge was needed to be able to make same-sexual contacts. This was true in particular for smaller towns in Europe, where we do not find extensive subcultures until the late 1970s. In many towns the local sexual infrastructure was limited to cruising areas available to men only (see Koenders, 1996, for provincial towns in the Netherlands and Nielssen, 1995, for the town of Götenburg in Sweden).
The history of persecution of homosexuality during the Second World War can in part be seen as a disruption of the development of lesbian and gay subcul-tures in the western world. Part of this history was mapped out through oral history and eye-witness accounts, which were inspired by the total lack of information about the persecution of homosexuality during this period that was maintained by the authorities (Heger, 1972; Plant, 1986). Eventually original source material that had been 'lost' in a number of German archives was located and published (Jellonek, 1990; Grau, 1993). These studies led to the conclusion that mainly male homosexuality within the original German Reich was persecuted, especially in the years between the Nazi power take-over and the beginning of the war. According to Nazi ideology, gay men could be re-educated through hard labour, so they were put in labour camps. Although the many thousands that were arrested were not put in proper extermination camps, a disproportionately large number of them died as they were at the bottom of the camp's pecking order and had no protectors (see Martin Sherman's play Bent for a moving literary representation of this). Schoppmann (1991) wrote about the 'invisible' history of lesbians under Nazism. Lesbians were persecuted as 'asocial' because they did not conform to Nazi population policy and work ethics. Careful consideration of the sources also led Koenders (1996) to the conclusion that there was no extensive persecution of homosexuals outside Germany proper unless German soldiers were actively involved. A number of Dutch homosexuals were active in the Resistance, which may even have led to the kernels of a post-war political movement. Interestingly enough, in the United States the experiences of many young men and women in sex-segregated army units away from the constricting influences of their small home towns led to a heightened gay and lesbian self-consciousness (Berubé 1990) that, despite a fierce backlash in the fifties, eventually led to the formation of the modern lesbian and gay movement after the war (Altman 1983, d'Emilio 1983).

Countering the taboo: Political and Emancipation History in the 20th century

The early emancipation movements made use of a particular kind of legitimizing discourse that was based on a mixture of arguments taken from the natural sciences, law and (literary) history. This can be seen almost from the beginning of the movements at the end of the 19th century. In reaction to legal pressures on the emerging homosexual identities emancipation movements were founded in Germany as early as 1897 (Wis-senschaftlich Humanitares Komitee in Germany). Its Dutch counterpart, NWHK, was founded in 1911 (Tielman 1982). There is a remarkable unity in goals and organizational forms among these early movements. Hirschfeld's adagium per scientia at justitia seems to have been adopted as their motto: By producing 'scientific evidence' on the nature and manifestations of homosexuality they hoped to change public opinion and contravene the increasingly hostile measures of the authorities. This is also true for the reform movements that were founded after World War II (Adam 1987; Adam, Duyvendak and Krouwel 1999). These movements had to strike a delicate balance between the internal mobilization of the - mainly male - members and keeping up serious appearances externally in order to be accepted by the heterosexual majority. With this, we have strayed into the realm of political history. (See for further discussion of this subject the article by Duyvendak and Krouwel in this volume).

Coda

Undoubtedly the development and ideas of lesbian and gay history have made great contributions to thinking about sexuality in the past as well as in the present (e.g., in gay and lesbian studies). Yet at the same time it is striking that it took a long time before the influence of these ideas was felt within mainstream history, let alone by the general public. One does not have to look far to find a reason for this, for gay and lesbian studies are methodologically and ideologically suspect in many academic circles (see the introduction to this volume) and the message they carry can be threatening to the male heterosexual world order, which is based on the tenet that heterosexuality is 'natural'. Also, many Foucauldian and post-modern studies are written in the kind of dense argot that those who are not experts in the field find hard to follow. The personal, and especially the sexual, is still not regarded as a subject fit for research, well, perhaps fit for women's history - something that has no status.
But things are slowly changing. Some efforts have been made by gay and lesbian historians - such as Weeks (1981b) and d'Emilio & Freedman (1988) - to write more general overviews of sexual history. Furthermore, Foucault, well over fifteen years after his death, is finally making some imprint on mainstream history, although this is mostly on studies that deal with the history of culture of literary history. The Dutch cultural historian Frijhoff recently summed up the change in perspective initiated in the study of 'love' (as this was called) as a language of culture and forms rather than something fit for anecdotes. Sex has now become a full-fledged object of cultural history. The historization of gender and the body and the introduction in history of concepts such as honour and friendship can fully be put down to new studies spawned by gay and lesbian studies, although Frijhoff forgot to mention this last attribution (Frijhoff 1998). We can add to this new methodological inroads, such as the introduction of the historization of mentalities - in particular the historicity of the psyche - and the creative use of new types of sources in history, such as oral history, which although in itself not a lesbian and gay studies 'invention' has been widely used (Vacha, 1985; Marcus, 1995; Cant & Hemmings, 1988; Kokula, 1986; Newton, 1994; Porter & Weeks, 1991). No longer are these regarded as simple statements of facts, but rather as narratives that can help deconstruct becoming (homo)sexual and other aspects of gay and lesbian lives. 'Telling sexual stories' (Plummer 1994) is a sign of modernity, of gaining sexual citizenship. New narrative interpretations help to solve the contradictions among theory, discourse and life experience. It shows the space people created for themselves in countering dominant discourse and helps to break out of the dichotomy between dominance and submission (Marcus 1995).
So, are there new directions to be found? This outline of the development of the homosexual role has to be fleshed out - in particular for the early 19th century and in conjunction with the development of concepts such as 'passion', 'friendship', 'soul' and 'self'. This in itself could lead to new investigations into the Middle Ages. This may appear to take us away from homosexuality per se, but will lead us into new and exciting worlds.

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank my co-editors (Jan-Willem Duyvendak, Theo Sandfort and Jeffrey Weeks) and Geertje Mak for their careful comments on this article.

LITERATURE

Adam, B.D. (1987) The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement. Boston: Twayne Publishers.
Adam, B., Duyvendak, J.W. & Krouwel, A.P.M. (eds) (1998) The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics. National Imprints of a Worldwide Movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Adelman, Marcia (1987) Long Time Passing: Lives of Older lesbians. Boston: Alyson.
Altman, D. (1983) The Homosexualization of America. Boston: Beacon Press.
Andreadis, Harriet (1996) 'Tribades, Tommies, Lollepots and.... Romantic Friends? Theorizing Early Modern Lesbianisms', Thamyris 3 (1): 125-137.
Armstrong, Nancy, Desire and Domestic Fiction. A Political History of the Novel, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Auchmuty, R., Jeffreys, S. and E. Miller (1992) 'Lesbian History and Gay Studies: keeping a feminist perspective', Women's History Review 1 (1): 89-108.
Benstock, Shari (1987) Women of the Left Bank. Paris 1900-1940 Lon-don: Virago.
Berlin-Museum (1984) ELDORADO. Homosexuelle Frauen und Männer in Berlin 1850-1950. Geschichte, Alltag und Kultur Berlin: Frölich & Kauf-mann.
Bérubé, Alan (1990) Coming out under Fire. The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two. New York: Plume Penguin.
Bonnet, Marie-Jo (1981) Un Choix sans Equivoque : Recherches Historiques sur les relations Amoureuses entre les Femmes, XVIie-XXe Siècle. Paris: Denoêl.
Boswell, John (1980) Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homo-sexuality: Gay People in western Europe from the beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Boswell, John (1982-3) 'Revolutions, Universals, and Sexual categories', Salma-gundi, 58-59: 89-113.
Boswell, John (1992) 'Categories, Experience and Sexuality' in Stein, E.(ed) Forms of Desire. Sexual Orientation and the Social Constructionist Controversy. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 133-173.
Boswell, John (1994) Same-sex unions in premodern Europe. New York: Villard Books.
Bravmann, Scott (1994) 'The Lesbian and Gay Past: It's Greek to whom?', Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 1 (2):149-167.
Bray, Alan (1982) Homosexuality in Renaissance England, London: Gay Men's Press.
Bredbeck, G. W. (1991) Sodomy and interpretation. Marlowe to Milton. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Bristow, Joseph (1995) Effeminate England. Homoerotic Writing after 1885. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Brown, J. (1986) Immodest Acts: TheLlife of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bullough, V. (1979) Homosexuality: A History. New York: New American Library.
Cant, B.and Hemmings,S. (1988) Radical Records: 30 Years of Lesbian and Gay History. London: Routledge.
Carr, E.H. (1961) What is History? London: Macmillan.
Casselaer, C. van (1986) Lot's Wife. Lesbian Paris, 1890-1914. Liverpool: Janus Press.
Castle, Terry (1993) The Apparitional Lesbian.. Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture. New York: Colombia University Press.
Chauncey, George (1982/3) 'From Sexual Inversion to homosexuality: Medicine and the Changing Conceptualization of female deviance' Salmagundi 58-59: 114-146.
Chauncey, George (1994) Gay New York. Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books.
Cook, Blanche Wiesen (1979a) 'The historical denial of lesbianism', Radical History Review 5 (20):55-60.
Cook, Blanche Wiesen (1979b) '"Women alone stir my imagination": Les-bianism and the cultural tradition', Signs 4:719-720.
Coward, D.A. (1980) 'Attitudes to Homosexuality in Eighteenth Century France' Journal of European Studies 10/4:231-255.
Dekker, Rudolf and Van de Pol, Lotte (1989) The Tradition of Female Trans-vestism in Early Modern Europe London: Macmillan.
Donoghue, Emma (1993) Passions Between Women. British Llesbian Culture 1668-1801. London: Scarlett Press.
Dover, K.J. (1985) Greek Homosexuality. New York: Duckworth.
Duberman, Martin Bauml, Vicinus, Martha and Chauncey jr., George (eds) (1989) Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. New York: New American Library.
Emilio, J.d' (1983) Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Emilio, J. d' and Freedman, E.B. (1988) Intimate Matters. A History of Sexuality in America. New York: Harper & Row.
Everard, M. (1994) Ziel en Zinnen. Over liefde en lust tussen vrou-wen in de tweede helft van de achttiende eeuw. Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij.
Faderman, L. (1981) Surpassing the love of men. Romantic Friendship & Love between women from the Renaissance to the Present. New York: Morrow.
Faderman, L. (1986) 'Love between women in 1928: why progressi-vism is not always progress', Journal of Homosexuality 12 (1): 23-42.
Faderman, L. (1991) Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers. A Histo-ry of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-century America. New York: Colombia University Press.
Foucault, M. (1976-1984) The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 An Introduction; vol. 2 The Use of Pleasure, Vol.3 The Care of the Body. Harmonthsworth: Penguin.
Frijhoff, Willem (1998) 'Liefde in Holland: inleiding', Historisch Tijdschrift Holland 30 (4/5):191-195.
Gemert, L. van (1995) 'Hiding behind Words? Lesbianism in 17th-Century Dutch Poetry', Thamyris 2 (1): 11-44.
Gerard, Kent and Hekma, Gert (eds) (1989) The Pursuit of Sodomy: Male homo-sexuality in renaissance and Enlightenment Euro-pe. New York: Har-rington Park Press.
Girard, Jacques (1981) Le mouvement homosexuel en France 1945-1980. Paris: Syros.
Goodich, M. (1979) The Unmentionable Vice: Homosexuality in the Later Medieval period. Dorset Press s.l.
Grau, G. (1993) Homosexualität in der NS-Zeit. Dokumente einer Diskriminier-ung und verfol-gung. Frankfurt a.M: Fischer Verlag.
Hacker, H. and K. Vogel (1984) 'Ist das violette Fieber Trivi-al?', Unsere Kleine Zeitung (UKZ) 10.
Hacker, H.(1984-5) 'Eigensinn und Doppelsinn in frauenbezogenen und lesbischen literarischen Texten Österreichischer Auto-rin-nen 1900-1938', Lesbenstich 1984(3):25-30; 1984(4):29-31, 1985(1):31-34.
Hacker, Hanna (1987) Frauen und Freundinnen. Studien zur 'weibli-chen Homo-sexualität' am Beispiel Österreich 1870-1938. Bernheim und Basel: Beltz.
Halperin, David M. (1989) 'Sex before sexuality: Pederasty, Politics and Power in Classical Athens' in M. Duberman et al. (eds) Hidden from History. New York: New American Library, pp 37-53.
Halperin, D. (1990) One Hundred Years of Homosexuality; and Other Essays on Greek Love. London/New York: Routledge.
Halperin, D., Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F.I. (1990) Before sexuality: the construc-tion of erotic experien-ce in the ancient greek World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Heger, Heinz (1972) Die Männer mit dem rosa Winkel, Hamburg: Merlin.
Hekma, Gert (1987) Homoseksualiteit, een medische reputatie. Amsterdam: SUA.
Hutter, Jörg (1992) Die gesellschaftliche Kontrolle des homosexuellen Begehrens. Medizinische Definitionen und juristische Sanktionen im 19. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt a.M/New York: ???.
Jeffreys, Sheila (1989) 'Does It Matter If They Did It?', in Lesbian History Group Not a Passing Phase. Reclaiming Lesbians in History 1840-1985. London: The Women's Press, pp. 19-28.
Katz, Jonathan Ned (1983) Gay/Lesbian Almanac. A New Documentary. New York: Harper & Row.
Jellonek, Burghart (1990) Homosexuelle unter dem Hakenkreuz. Pader-born: Schoeningh.
Kennedy, E.L. en M.D. Davis (1993) Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold. The history of a lesbian community. New York and London: Routledge.
Kennedy, Hubert (1990) Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Sein Leben und sein Werk. Stuttgart: Enke.
Koenders, Pieter (1996) Een verloren strijd. Zedelijkheidslobby, over-heid en zedeloos-heidsbestrijding, met nadruk op de repres-sie van homosek-sua-liteit. 1845-1900-1958. Amsterdam: IISG.
Kokula, Ilse (1986) Jahre des Glücks, Jahre des Leids. Gespräche mit älteren lesbischen Frauen. Kiel: Frühlingserwachen.
Kraakman, Th.D. (1997) Kermis in de Hel. Vrouwen en het pornografisch universum van de 'enfer' 1750-1850. Dissertation Amsterdam.
Kuster, H.J. (1977) Over homoseksualiteit in middeleeuws West-Europa. Utrecht.
Laqueur, Thomas (1990) Making Sex. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lauritsen, J./D.Thorstad (1974) The Early Homosexual Rights Move-ment (1864-1935) Times Change Press, New York.
Lautmann, Rüdiger (1977) Seminar: Gesellschaft und Homosexualität. Frankfurt a/M.: Suhrkamp.
Lautmann, Rüdiger (1984) Der Zwang zur Tugend. Die gesellschaftliche Kontrolle der Sexualitäten. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.
Lautmann, Rüdiger (ed) (1993) Homosexualität. Handbuch der Theorie- und Forschungsgeschichte. Frankfurt/New York: Campus.
Lesbian History Group (1989) Not a Passing Phase: reclai-ming lesbians in History, 1840-1985. London: The Women's Press.
Mak, Geertje (1997) Mannelijke vrouwen. Over de grenzen van sekse in de negentiende eeuw. Amsterdam, Meppel: Boom.
Marcus, Eric. Making History. The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights 1945-1990. An Oral History. New York: Harper Collins.
Marks, Elaine (1979) 'Lesbian intertextuality', in G. Stambo-li-an and E. Marks (eds.) Homosexualities and French Litera-tu-re: Cul-tural Contexts/Criti-cal Texts. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 353-377.
McIntosh, Mary (1968) 'The homosexual role', Social problems 16 (2).
Meer, T. van der (1984) De wesentlijke sonde van sodomie en andere vuyligheeden. Sodomieten vervolgingen in Amsterdam 1730-1811. Amsterdam: Tabula.
Meer, T. van der (1995) Sodoms zaad in Nederland. Het ontstaan van homoseksualiteit in de vroegmoderne tijd. Nijmegen: SUN.
Mosse, George L. (1985) Nationalism and Sexuality. Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe. New York: Howard Fertig.
Newton, Esther (1984) 'The Mythic Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman' Signs 9:557-575.
Newton, Esther (1994) Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town. Boston MA: Beacon Press.
Nielssen, Arne (1995) Att vara men inte synas. Om mäns homosexuella livsrum i Göteborg decennierna kring andra världskriget. Göteborg: Sociolo-giska Institutionen.
Nussbaum, Felicity (1989) The Autobiographical subject. Gender and Ideology in 18th Century England, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Padgug, R. (1989) 'Sexual Matters: Rethinking Sexuality in History' Hidden from History: 54-66.
Pavan, E. (1980) 'Police des Moeurs, Societé et politique a Venise a la fin du Moyen Age', Revue Historique 264/2:241-288.
Plant, R. (1986) The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals, New York: Henry Holt.
Plummer, Kenneth (1981) (ed) The Making of the Modern Homosexual. London: Hutchinson.
Plummer, Kenneth (1994) Telling Sexual Stories. Power, Change and Social Worlds. London: Routledge.
Pol, Lotte van der (1996) Het Amsterdams hoerdom. Prostitutie in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw. Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek.
Pomeau, René (1986) 'Voltaire, du cote de Sodome?' Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France 86(2): 235-247.
Porter, K./J. Weeks eds (1991) Between the acts. Lives of homosexu-al men 1885-1967. London: Routledge.
Rich, Adrienne (1980) 'Compulsory heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence', Signs 5: 631-660.
Ross, E. & Rapp, R. (1983) 'Sex and Society: a research note from social history and anthropo-logy', in A. Snitow e.a. (ed) Desi-re, the politics of sexuality London: Virago, pp. 105-126.
Rousseau, G. & Porter, R. (eds) (1987) Sexual Underworlds of the En-lighten-ment. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Rowse, A.L. (1977) Homosexuals in History. A Study of Ambivalence in Society, Literature and the Arts. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
Royer, Jean-Michel (1985) 'Voltaire, le gay Candide' Historama (22):72-78.
Ruggiero, G. (1985) The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rupp, Leila (1989) '"Imagine my surprise": women's relationships in mid-twen-tieth century America', in M. Duberman, e.a.(ed) Hidden from history: Reclaiming the Gay & Lesbian past. New York New American Library, pp. 395-410.
Saslow, James M. (1988) 'A veil of ice between my heart and the fire':
Michelangelo's sexual identity and early modern constructs of homosexuality,
Genders (2):77-90.
Schoppmann, Claudia (1991) Nationalsozialistische Sexualpolitik und weibliche Homosexualität Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus.
Schuyf, Judith (1994) Een stilzwijgende samenzwering. Lesbi-sche Vrou-wen in Nederland 1920-1970. Amsterdam: IISG.
Scott, Joan (1991) 'The evidence of experience' in Critical Inquiry vol 17:773-797.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1990) Epistomology of the Closet. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Smith, B.R. (1991) Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England. A Cultural Poetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Smith-Rosenberg, C. (1975) 'The female world of love and ritu-al: Relations between women in nineteenth-century America', Signs 1: 1-29.
Solomon, Maynard (1989) Franz Schubert and the peacocks of Benve-nuto Cellini', 19th Century Music 12(3): 193-206.
Steakley, J.D. (1975) The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany. New York: Arnold Press.
Tielman, Rob (1982) Homoseksualiteit in Nederland. Studie van een eman-cipatiebeweging. Meppel: Boom.
Trexler, R.C. (1981) 'La Prostitution Florentine au XVe Siècle : Patronages et Clienteles', Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 36/6:983-1015.
Trumbach, R. (1989) 'Gender and the homo-sexual role in modern western culture: the 18th and 19th centuries com-pared', Homosexuality which Homosexuality. Amsterdam: Dekker/Schorer, pp. 149-169.
Trumbach, R. (1991) 'London's Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making of Modern Culture', in J. Epstein and K. Straub (eds) Body Guards: the Cultural Politics of gender Ambiguity, Routled-ge London: 112-141.
Vacha, K. (1985) Quiet Fire. Memoirs of Older Gay Men. New York.
Vance, Carole S. (1989) 'Social construction theory: problems in the history of sexuality' in D. Altman e.a. (eds) Homosexuality, Which Homosexuality? Amsterdam: An Dekker/Schorer; London: GMP Publishers, pp. 13-34.
Vicinus, M. (1984) 'Distance and desire: English Boarding School Friendships 1870-1920', Signs, vol. 9 nr. 4.
Vicinus, M. (1989) '"They wonder to which sex I belong" : the historical roots of the modern lesbian identity', Homo-sexuality which Homosexuality, Amsterdam: Schorer, pp. 171-198.
Weeks, J. (1977) Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the 19th Century to the Present London, Quartet.
Weeks, J. (1981) 'Discourse, desire and sexual deviance: Some problems in the History of Homosexuality' in Plummer, K. (ed.), The Making of the Modern Homosexual. London: Longman, pp. 76-111.
Weeks, Jeffrey (1981) Sex, Politics and Society. The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800. Harlow.
Winkler, J.J. (1990) The Constraints of Desire; the Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece. New York: Routledge.