Gays are 3rd Gender, and Western straights were bisexuals before the concept of sexual orientation

Sex and the Gender Revolution. Volume 1: Heterosexuality and the 'Third Gender' in Enlightenment London, By Randolph Trumbach. Chicago Series on Sexuality, History and Society. Edited by John C. Fout.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 998. Pp. xiv+509. $35.00


Excerpts from the JSTOR Book Review:

"Trumbach's argument, reiterated throughout the volume, is this: by the very early eighteenth century in London, a "third sex" of effeminate sodomites emerged as a specific and unique sexual identity. Before this period, Trumbach argues, most men had sexual relations with both women and boys, the latter relations occurring before marriage or occasionally on the side. By 1700, however, a man's having sex with another male was seen as aberrant and incorrigible, in fundamental contrast to the sexual behaviour and identity of other men who were now "brought... into more intimate relations with women" (p. 9)

This thesis is not new -- Trumbach has made these points in earlier articles, plus other scholars of sexuality, namely, Michel Foucault, have also claimed that (homo)sexual identity was constructed at a particular moment."