Marc-Andre Raffolovich's
Uranism and Unisexuality: A Study of Different Manifestations of the Sexual Instinct.
He advocated the freedom of sexual choice and modelled a cult of
Uranism on Pausanias' praise of the Eros of Celestial Aphrodite, a love that is goverened by strict conventions that 'impels a lover to pay a great deal of serious attention to the question of virtue' as well as for the boy who is the object of the lovers affection (Plato 1994:19).
He starts with the father of what became the modern gay rights movement, Magnus Hirschfeld, a late 19th- and early 20th-century German physician and sexologist who situated male homosexuality or "
uranism" within a medical model, explaining the male homosexual as a female psyche inhabiting a male body (a theory dating back to the 1850's).
Indeed, it was not until 1932, ten years after Proust's death, that Andre Gide--who differed from Proust on the literary treatment of "
uranism" and who had notoriously rejected Un Amour de Swann when it was submitted for publication--recognized the important place of Les Plaisirs et les jours in Proust's oeuvre.
Created in anticipation of the 175th anniversary next year of Ulrich's birth, this page gives details about the man said to be the first out-and-proud gay activist, including his writings, his passions, and his coining the word
uranism to describe homosexuality.
"The masculine soul, heaving in the female bosom," he remarks, "finds pleasure in the pursuit of manly sports and in manifestations of courage and bravado." He adds: "
Uranism may nearly always be suspected in females wearing their hair short or who dress in the fashion of men, or pursue the sports and pasttimes of their male acquaintances."(39)
The Raffalovich entry directed me to the industrious Cevasco's entry on John Gray, but it had also mentioned homosexuality and "
uranism," so I let my fingers do the walking and I found helpful articles under both words.)
Ruling uses both the term "homosexuality," which was coined by Karoly Maria Kertbeny in 1868, and the term "
Uranism," which was coined by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1862.
Equally important to Ulrichs was the fact that this feminine temperament was evident from early childhood and therefore indicated that "
uranism" was congenital (in Inclusa):