TO EACH HIS OWN –

July 27, 2024 – When the Journal was founded in 1812, there was no such thing as an LGBTQ+ community, and the medical terms “homosexual” and “transsexual” had yet to be coined. Between 1812 and 1890, the Journal made only fleeting references to same-sex sexual activity. An 1853 article entitled “Case of Venereal Chancre Produced by Sodomy” described an episode … “Case of Venereal Chancre Produced by Sodomy” described an episode in a prison in which one man committed “an outrage upon” the author’s male patient, who contracted syphilis as a result. An 1869 article mentioned the murder trial of someone who had killed a friend after repeated attempts “to commit sodomy.”4 In both accounts, sex between men was violent, nonconsensual, and destructive, fueling a notion that same-sex desire was fundamentally predatorial.

Sex between women was barely acknowledged, beyond passing references to Sappho — one describing her as “the only celebrated poetess of Greece” and another noting “the preternatural size” of her clitoris, which “assumed the appearance of the male organ.”5,6 Some doctors of this period believed there must be a biologic explanation for same-sex desire between women — usually that one of the women in question was at least partly biologically male.

CONTINUE@NEJM