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Our contemporary understanding of sexuality, which has been informed by the discoveries
made in psychology and sociology in the early 20th century, differs dramatically from
sexologists understanding of sexuality in the 19th century. Urbanization, industrialization and a
scientific thought characterized the beginning of the 19th century. This is a transition period in
time, where people shift from living with extended family in the country to living in the city with
a smaller family unit, and even to alternative living arrangements, like Boston marriages. With
more people in big cities, sexual differences among people became more apparent and the field
of sexology emerges to study these differences.
In the early 19th century, a German doctor said that people who were attracted to members
of the same sex had a "contrary sexual feeling" mental disorder. He believed that men who
exhibited this disorder tended to exhibit feminine characteristics, and vice versa for women.
Sexologists started to call these people "inverts" before the term homosexuality came into use.
The term invert clouded sexologists view on homosexuality, because it implies that sexual desire
for the same sex is linked with non-confirmative gender presentation. For many years,
sexologists such as Richard Von Krafft-Ebing categorized homosexuality as a perversion, along
with fetishism. He advocated for homosexuality to be treated like a disorders, instead of a sin. He
also believed that people were born attracted to the other sex, so his views advanced our
understanding of homosexuality in some positive ways, but also his stance that homosexuality is
a disorder carried in the 20th century, and has created misinformation that is still present in some
people's minds today.
Karl Heinrich Ulrich was a sexologist who disagreed with Krafft-Ebbing and stated that
homosexuality is not a mental disorder or a sexual perversion. He believed that there was not
only men and women, but that a third category called Urnings existed, and the Urnings are
people with a same sex sexual preference. This classification of homosexuality was different
from other sexologists categorization, and lead to the start of people viewing homosexuality as a
sexual identity, instead an unnatural sickness. It united a community in a positive way, instead of
acting as a label that signaled that there was something wrong with a person.
Havelock Ellis was a sexologist who changed our understanding of homosexuality for the
better. He called heterosexual sex natural, since it is for procreation, but argued that homosexual
sex for pleasure is also normal, and should just be treated as a variation of normal human
sexuality. Ellis' studies focus more on gays than on lesbians, but he does fight against the notion
that lesbians are man like, and myths surrounding penetrative and nonpenetrative lesbian sex.
Ellis was ahead of his time in some ways but he did however hold some odd beliefs about
gay people, like that gay men preferred the color green. He thought that a person could be born
gay, but also believed that a person could become gay in the absence o