Sexual Orientation

There are other factors to be considered, particularly the relation between actual practice, fantasy, and feelings. Anna Freud, for example, maintained that the crucial determination of homosexuality or heterosexuality was one's thoughts and images when masturbating or becoming sexually aroused. A woman who becomes sexually aroused by same-sex fantasies while having sex with her husband would be classed as homosexual even though she never engaged in homosexual behavior. The opposite case with males would be equally true. The question of whether erotic attraction or sexual practice is the defining characteristic of sexual orientation continues to be debated by researchers.

Another approach taken by scholars attempting to discover the true "nature" of sexual orientation has been to look at nonhuman species. Frank Beach, for example, held that homosexual activity among animals was usually an expression of the dominant or submissive role of that particular individual animal vis-à-vis another. He cautioned, however, that the existence of homosexual behavior in some animals says little about homosexual relations in humans, that is, it could not prove that homosexuality is "biologically normal." The empirical evidence from animals, he felt, was irrelevant.

Another knotty question has to do with the relationship between sexual orientation and gender. Whereas stereotypical images of the homosexual associate same-sex desire with male effeminacy and masculine-appearing women, in actuality the relationship between gender and sex is far less predicable.

Cross-cultural data further complicate the picture. Clellan Sterns Ford and Frank A. Beach (1951) examined 190 cultures for information about sexuality using what was then called the Human Relations Area Files, a collection of reports of a variety of cultures. The information was extracted from reports of observers in earlier periods, many of them missionaries or explorers, while later reports were more often made by trained anthropologists. They found that homosexual behavior was not a predominant sexual activity among adults in any of the societies but that in the majority of the seventy-six groups for which information on homosexuality was available, same-sex relations were considered to be normal and socially acceptable, at least for certain members of the society. In about one-third of these societies where homosexuality was reported, it was said to be rare, absent, or carried on only in secrecy. The fact that it was not mentioned in the reports of the majority of societies, however, should not be taken to say it was nonexistent since the observers might well not have been looking for it.

For example, Balinese society was classified by Ford and Beach among the 36 percent minority where homosexual activity was rare, absent, or carried on only in secret. Yet the crossing of sex roles is common among the Balinese, and their religious beliefs place a high valuation on the hermaphroditic figure of Syng Hyan Toengaal, also known as the Solitary or Tjinitja. Tjinitja existed before the division of the sexes and is regarded as both husband and wife. Are the transvestic ceremonies connected with god homosexuality? Other examples of gender and sexual variation in non-Western and tribal societies, such as the Native American berdache or "two-spirit person" or Polynesian mahu, have all been objects of fascination to European and U.S. homosexuals looking for evidence of sexual freedom, but in reality, it is very difficult to map Western notions about sexual orientation onto non-Western contexts. Even in closely related societies, such as those of Latin America, the United States, and Canada, ideas about male homosexuality have been shown to vary considerably, so that, for example, the nature of the sexual activity (active versus passive) may be more important than the sex of the partner in determining sexual identity. Furthermore, within complex societies, distinct sexual subcultures with their own notions about sexual orientation flourish within different racial, class, ethnic, and regional groups. For instance, while upper-middle-class lesbians in the United States embraced a model of androgyny and equality between partners in the latter half of the twentieth century, working-class lesbians chose to be either "butch" or "femme," a pattern that later came to influence their wealthier and better-educated sisters as well.

In the early twenty-first century, although some social and biological scientists continue to pursue other methods of identifying sexual orientation, most observers simply ask the person in question, leaving sexual orientation as a question of self-identity. Such an approach assumes a more tolerant attitude toward homosexuals and bisexuals than in the past, when such an identity was widely regarded as "sick" and their "illness" as illegal. It was not until 1974 that members of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) adopted a resolution that being "homosexual did not imply any impairment in judgment, stability, reliability or general social or vocational capabilities" (Bullough, 1994). Such a conclusion was based on research dating from at least the beginning of the twentieth century, but change in psychiatric opinion was slow and occurred only in response to activists in the gay and lesbian community, who confronted both the American Psychiatric Association and the legal system. Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the American Law Institute began agitating for change in the 1950s and the early 1960s, as did a growing number of people in the gay community, an agitation culminating in the 2003 decision of the U.S.. Supreme Court declaring sodomy laws unconstitutional.