Homosexual
Having sexual desire for the same sex.
Absolute inversionAn exclusive homosexual orientation in which the person shows no erotosexual interest in persons of the other sex, and even have ana version for them.
Adolescent homosexuality: Homosexual contacts, usually involving orgasm, during adolescence. Surveys by Kinsey and others have indicated that about 17% of homosexual women and about 18% of homosexual men experienced their first coitus before the age of 15. In most cases, however, homosexual contacts during adolescence are occasional and experimental, and may not lead to a pattern of homosexuality in adult life.
Boston marriage: A colloquial term for a middle-class Victorian American lesbian relationship. Unlike the hidden world of Victorian working-class female couples in which one member passed as a man, Boston marriages were commonly visible and accepted.
Effeminate homosexuality: A male homosexuality characterized by adoption of the gestures, voice infections, and mannerisms often associated with femininity. Effeminate homosexuals may also engage in cross-dressing, and assume the passive role in intercourse.
Ego-syntonic homosexuality: Active homosexual behavior that the indivudual, male or female, considers acceptable and in keeping with his or her personality and emotional needs.
Gay community: A subculture composed of male or female homosexuals who share the same social and political organizations, meeting places, activities on behalf of gay rights, customs, special vocabulary, and in some areas, pubs, beaches, park areas, and shops. Also known as: homosexual community.
Homoerotism: A pattern of erotic, or or sexual interest in members of the same sex. Also known as: homoeroticism
Homophilia: The condition or orientation in which love, lust, limerence, and sexua bonding are directed to persons of the same sex.
Homophobia: An intense fear of homosexuals and homosexual behavior, also a fear of being homosexual. Also known as: homoerotophobia
Homosexual panic: An acute, sudden anxiety reaction precipitated by fear of being attacked by a person of the same sex; fear of being considered homosexual by associates, fear of inadequacy or impotence in a homosexual relationship or of engaging in homosexual behavior, or loss of a long-term homosexual partner.
Homosexual patterns: Three phases of homosexuality that include, according to some authorities. First is the active role, in which the individual functions sexually as a male. The second is the passive role, in which the individual functions as a female. Third is the mixed role, in which the individual plays both roles occasionally. The third role is considered the most common role.
Homosexual rape: Sexual assault or sexual activity forced on a person of the same sex as the perpetrator.
Iatrogenic homosexuality: Doctor-induced homosexuality. Homosexual desires resulting from doctor-patient relationships, usually during psychotherapy or psychoanalysis.
Latent homosexuality: Partially or completely repressed homosexual tendencies that may occasionally express themselves in fantasies, extreme criticism of homosexuality, or homosexual impulses.
Lesbianism: Female homosexuality. The term comes from the Greek island Lesbos, where a homosexual lifestyle was very common among the female inhabitants.
Masked homosexuality: Unconscious homosexuality, which may take many forms: exclusive preference for sexual acts usually engaged in by homosexuals, such as anal intercourse with members of the opposite sex; also, according to the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel, sexual relations with old women (gerontophilia) or sexual desire directed to children.
Situational homosexuality: Male or female homosexuality undertaken in an environment in which the opposite sex is inaccessible for a more or less extended period, such as in a boarding school, in a prison, aboard ship, or at a military outpost. Homosexuality of this kind may be only temporary, and heterosexual contacts may be resumed soon after release from the situation. Also known as: accidental homosexuality, deprivational homosexuality, faute de mieux or occasional inversion.
Also see: bisexual, heterosexual
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