Halwani1998. Essentialism, Social Constructionism and The History of Homosexuality.

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Essentialism, Social
Constructionism, and the
History of Homosexuality
a
Raja Halwani PhD
a
School of the Art Institute of Chicago , USA
Published online: 12 Oct 2008.
To cite this article: Raja Halwani PhD (1998) Essentialism, Social Constructionism,
and the History of Homosexuality, Journal of Homosexuality, 35:1, 25-51
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Essentialism, Social Constructionism,

and the History of Homosexuality
Raja Halwani, PhD
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
ABSTRACT. Social constructionism is the view that homosexuality

is not an atemporal and acultural phenomenon. Rather, homosexual-
ity exists only within certain cultures and within certain time peri-
ods, most obviously Europe and North America after the nineteenth
century. Essentialism is the view that homosexuality is an essential
feature of human beings and that it could be found, in principle at
least, in any culture and in any time. In this paper, I argue that the
historical evidence available to us does not show that social
constructionism is the correct view, and that essentialism is fully
compatible with such evidence. Furthermore, I argue that the histori-
cal evidence does not even render social constructionism more prob-
able than essentialism, i.e., both views are equally probable in the face
of this evidence. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Docu-
ment Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: getinfo@haworth.com]
With the notable exception of John Boswell, most historians of sexual-

ity have assumed, in one form or another, the social constructionist model
in their work. That is, most of them have conducted their work on the basis
that social constructionism is true, or they have attempted to show that it is
true. Some historians, however, decided to suspend judgment. Very few
outrightly accepted essentialism in their work. Social constructionism can
be construed as a thesis about language , or about epistemology, or about
ontology. As a thesis about language, it roughly claims that prior to a
certain time era (usually the nineteenth century), the words ‘‘homosexual’’
Raja Halwani is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The School of the Art

Institute of Chicago. Correspondence may be addressed: The School of the Art
Institute of Chicago, 37 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago, IL 60603.
Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 35(1) 1998
E 1998 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 25
26 JOURNAL OF HOMOSEXUALITY
and ‘‘homosexuality’’ did not exist. As a thesis about epistemology, social

constructionism claims that prior to a certain time people had no knowl-
edge of the phenomenon of homosexual people and/or of the concept of
homosexuality. As a thesis about ontology, it claims that prior to a certain
time homosexuality simply did not exist; there were no homosexuals. That
is, homosexuality is a property which is both culture-bound and time-
bound. Essentialism, on the other hand, claims that homosexuality is a
property which is ahistorical and acultural. (I will elaborate on these three
levels in section I.) My concern in this paper is with social constructionism
as an ontological thesis.
The primary claim of this paper is that essentialism is fully compatible
with the historical (and also contemporary anthropological) evidence that
has so far been adduced. Indeed, I will even argue for a much stronger
claim, namely, that no historical evidence, given our actual world, can ever
show conclusively that essentialism is false. Moreover, lest I am accused
of triviality, I will further argue that historical evidence does not even
render social constructionism more probable than essentialism. That is,
both essentialism and social constructionism are equally probable in the
face of historical evidence.
In a sense then, my project in this paper is quite humble. I am not
arguing for anything positive; I am not arguing that essentialism is true,
although I do think it is true. All that I am arguing for is that social
constructionism is not shown to be true given the historical evidence.
Also, and although I will be giving some general remarks about social
constructionism and essentialism, my focus will be on the relationship
between these two views and historical evidence.
In the first section, I distinguish between three different ways of
construing social constructionism. In the second section I present the
historical evidence cited by some historians to support social construction-
ism, and I present their arguments through which that support is suppos-
edly established. I consider the views of George Chauncey, Neil Miller,
and Alan Bray, and I claim that their arguments do not go through. In the
third section, I consider the views of David Halperin and discuss his
arguments. I also argue that the historical evidence is fully compatible
with essentialism. In the fourth section, I argue that both essentialism and
social constructionism, understood in the ontological sense, are equally
probable, given such evidence. I also present some reasons to support the
thesis that no historical evidence, given our actual history, can show the
truth of social constructionism or essentialism. In the fifth, and final,
section I argue that, given the paralysis of such evidence, there are good
reasons to follow in the footsteps of essentialism.
Raja Halwani 27
I. THREE FORMULATIONS OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM

(AND ESSENTIALISM)
Social constructionism (and equally, but oppositely, essentialism) can
be construed at three different levels: the terminological, the epistemolog-
ical, and the ontological. On the first level the claim is that the term
‘‘homosexual’’ did not exist prior to a certain time and outside certain
cultures. The idea is that ‘‘homosexual,’’ as a term, was the invention of
science in the Western world in the nineteenth century. Prior to the nine-
teenth century, there was no such thing as ‘‘homosexual.’’1 Although this
claim is true, it is not of much importance. Words, terms, and expressions
are coined all the time, without the necessity of any corresponding onto-
logical entities coming into being. This is not to say, of course, that words
do not often help us see reality in different ways. For example, when Toni
Morrison uses the term ‘‘whitewoman,’’ she forces us to see the world in a
new way: we now begin to understand that a certain kind of person,
whitewoman, exists. However, what is crucial is that Toni Morrison does
not bring into existence such a kind, but that her expression helps us
classify the world differently, and whether such a classification is ulti-
mately correct or not remains to be seen. I will not be concerned with the
terminological level in this paper.
At the epistemological level, the claim is that prior to certain times,
people did not have the awareness, or idea, or even concept,2 of the
homosexual, of someone whose erotic and sexual fantasies are directed
solely, or primarily, at the members of his or her same sex.3 The claim here
is that if we were to approach someone, say an ancient Greek man, and
describe to him what a homosexual is, the man would find our description
at best very bizarre, and, at worst, unintelligible. The discussion of Aristo-
phanes’ myth in the Symposium by David Halperin is aimed precisely to
show us that, contrary to appearances, Aristophanes had no clear distinc-
tion in mind between homosexuals and heterosexuals (Halperin, 1990,
pp. 18-24). An essentialist claim at this epistemological level would argue
that such an awareness of homosexuality was present (not necessarily
widespread). It becomes crucial at this juncture to be specific about the
time period and geographical region about which the argument is centered.
Finding evidence that homosexuality was not an alien concept to Renais-
sance Florentines does not show that it was not an alien concept in all
other time periods. However, in so far as the social constructionist claim is
that prior to a certain time there was no such awareness, then one single
piece of evidence would be sufficient to refute it.
I would like to make a few remarks about the epistemological issue
before setting it aside. To begin with, there does seem to be evidence, prior
to the nineteenth century, that people were aware of homosexuality.4 The

most controversial piece of evidence is that given by Aristophanes in the
Symposium, when he advances his own account of love by explaining its
origin. I will not repeat the ‘myth,’ but I will repeat the important phrase
that made many scholars, among them Boswell, believe that Aristophanes
was aware of homosexuality: at 192b, Aristophanes says, ‘‘They have no
natural inclination to marry and beget children. Indeed, they only do so in
deference to the usage of society, for they would just as soon renounce
marriage altogether and spend their lives with one another.’’5 Halperin is
not convinced that Aristophanes was speaking of homosexuals in this
passage. According to Halperin, we have no reason to think that females
who desire females and males who desire males are to be put under the
same category according to Aristophanes. Given that we do so with
respect to homosexuals, it follows that Aristophanes did not necessarily
have homosexuality in mind. Moreover, within the category of males there
is a crucial point that we should keep in mind: Aristophanes spoke of men
loving boys and of boys loving men. Those men that we think Aristo-
phanes is speaking about are not homosexuals in our understanding of the
term, for when they are men they desired boys, and when they are boys
they desired (nonsexually, perhaps) men. In short, Aristophanes does not
have the same thing in mind as we do when we speak of homosexuality.
Two points are in order. The first is that Aristophanes was simply silent
about whether females and males desiring members of the same sex are to
be put together under one category. In this, Halperin is correct. However--
and this is crucial--it is not an essential tenet of essentialism that female
homosexuals and male homosexuals have the same kind of desires in
virtue of being homosexuals. What is essential to essentialism is (a) that
they sexually and erotically desire members of the same sex, and (b) that
the desires are intrinsic, objective, and not dependent on a particular cul-
ture. Halperin here is simply attacking an irrelevant feature of essential-
ism.
The second point is that Aristophanes seems to be undecided about how
to characterize the connection between the age of the men and their love
for one another. It is true that he speaks of men desiring boys and vice
versa, but he also speaks of men wanting to ‘‘spend their lives with one
another’’ (the above quotation). Moreover, he also tells us that if one is
lucky enough to find his other half, he would be unwilling to part company
with him. But, given that the two halves are of equal ages, this implies that
they want to spend their lives together. If so, we would have on our hands
two males of equal age desiring to be together for a lifetime: ‘‘It is such
reunions as these that impel men to spend their lives together . . . ’’ (192c).
Raja Halwani 29
Aristophanes seems to be pulled in two directions here: the logical

implication of his own myth on the one hand, and the man/boy practice of
Athenian males. The bottom line, however, is that the possibility of two
men, of equal or similar ages, desiring each other sexually was not alien to
Aristophanes.
Despite the above, it is difficult to see what an awareness of homosexu-
ality would establish. It certainly would not show that homosexuality did
exist. At best, it would show that it was perhaps conceived of. But just as
we conceive of possibilities without the existence of actualities, a similar
point can be made here: the fact, if it is a fact, that people in the remote
past have conceived of homosexuality does not show that there were
homosexuals back then. It is this ontological claim that needs to be dealt
with head on. Alternatively, even a lack of awareness of homosexuality
would not establish much, either. The fact that in the past people had no
awareness of the fact that light is photons does not show that back then
light was not photons. Similarly with respect to homosexuality.
At the ontological level, the social constructionist claim is that prior to a
certain time there were no homosexuals. In the words of Edward Stein, ‘‘it
[sexual orientation] is culture-dependent, relational and, perhaps, not
objective’’ (Stein, 1992, p. 325). Homosexuals came on the scene given a
certain culture, and it is precisely in relation to that culture that homosexu-
ality is a relational property. Essentialists, on the other hand, claim that
homosexuality is objective, intrinsic, and culture-independent. If homo-
sexuality exists, it does so regardless of societal and cultural factors. It
does so because its origins, or its causes, are not culture-dependent. They
are either genetic, or hormonal, or Oedipal, or some combination of
these.6,7
I have mentioned in the above paragraph the notion of ‘causes,’ and it is
important to keep in mind that social constructionism, according to Rich-
ard Mohr, can be construed as being either an antirealist thesis, or as an
antiessentialist thesis (Mohr, 1992, pp. 222-223). In the former way, social
constructionism would be the view that there are no sufficient causes from
nature to explain homosexuality (and, presumably, heterosexuality). In
other words, social and cultural causes need to be resorted to in order to
give a sufficient explanation for homosexuality, or the lack of it.
Construed as an antiessentialist thesis, social constructionism would be a
view about the definition of ‘‘homosexuality’’: that there is no objective
definition which can be applied cross-culturally and/or cross-temporally to
homosexuality, and ‘‘if the term ‘homosexuality’ is used across cultures, it
must be used equivocally’’ (Mohr, 1992, p. 223).
Mohr is correct in making this distinction, for the issue of causes and
the issue of definitions are logically distinct. It is possible, for example,

that we come to discover that there are no sufficient natural causes for
homosexuality, and yet still define ‘‘homosexuality,’’ say by basing the
definition purely on sexual behavior among members of the same sex, in
such a way that it applies cross-culturally. However, the two issues are
linked: discovering a genetic explanation for homosexuality would give us
an excellent reason for defining ‘‘homosexuality’’ in genetic terms, and
this would automatically give us a definition which is not socially and
culturally dependent.
Before moving to the second section of this paper, I wish to be under-
stood that I am focusing on (a) essentialism and social constructionism at
the ontological level, (b) the realist/antirealist aspect of the debate, and
(c) that aspect of social constructionism which we may call the ‘‘nonempty
category,’’ to borrow some terminology from Ed Stein, i.e., that aspect
which claims that ‘‘homosexual’’ does denote a certain type of person, but
that such a type exists only within certain cultural and temporal bound-
aries.8
II. SOME HISTORIANS’ VIEWS ON THE ‘CONSTRUCTION’

OF HOMOSEXUALITY
Some historians of sexuality do not even need to delve into the deep
past to claim that homosexuality did not exist back then. Indeed, George
Chauncey in Gay New York wants to claim, or so it seems, that there were
no homosexuals, given the way we understand ‘‘homosexual’’ today, in
New York City in the early years of the twentieth century: ‘‘Above all, it
was not a world in which men were divided into ‘homosexuals’ and ‘hetero-
sexuals’’’ (Chauncey, 1994, p. 12). Chauncey wants to argue that ‘‘in
important respects the hetero-homosexual binarism, the sexual regime now
hegemonic in American culture, is a stunningly recent creation’’ (p. 13).
Chauncey’s argument is the following: in the early years of the twentieth
century, especially in the prewar era, the division was primarily between
‘‘fairies’’ or ‘‘pansies,’’ and ‘‘trade’’ or ‘‘real men.’’ The factor that played
an essential role in this division was not the sexual object choice, but the
gender role that the person fit. Hence, a man who desired sex with other
men, and who was effeminate, was a fairy, a pansy. A sailor, however,
whose gender role was that of a ‘normal’ man, was labeled as ‘‘trade’’:
‘‘The abnormality (or ‘queerness’) of the ‘fairy,’ that is, was defined as
much by his ‘woman-like’ character or ‘effeminacy’ as his solicitation of
male sexual partners; the ‘man’ who responded to his solicitations--no
matter how often--was not considered abnormal, a ‘homosexual,’ so long
Raja Halwani 31
as he abided by masculine gender conventions’’ (p. 13). Moreover, by the

1910s and 1920s, men who were not effeminate (who even disliked effem-
inate males) but who sexually desired other men began to call themselves
‘‘queer.’’ To understand the application of these labels, we have to under-
stand how gender roles played a role. For if we were to attempt to apply
the labels based solely on sexual object choice, we would be at a loss as to
how to do so. Fairies, trade, and queers desired to have sex with a male.
But what differentiated these was the issue of gender roles. Fairies were
effeminate, trade-men were masculine, but they had no problems with the
idea of having sex with a male, especially if effeminate (indeed, many of
the trade would claim that they were ‘heterosexually’ inclined), while
queers were masculine men who desired other masculine men.
There is no denying that Chauncey’s analysis is very interesting, but it
certainly is not tantamount to a vindication of social constructionism. To
begin with, Chauncey himself often writes as if the issue was that of
taxonomy, or classification: ‘‘Only in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s did the
now-conventional division of men into ‘homosexuals’ and ‘heterosexuals’
. . . replace the division of men into ‘fairies’ and ‘normal men’ on the basis
of their imaginary gender stats . . .’’ (p. 13; my emphases). And, ‘‘One way
to introduce the differences between the conceptual schemas by which
male sexual relations and identities were organized in the first and second
halves of the twentieth century is to review the changes in the vernacular
terms used for homosexually active men . . .’’ (p. 14; my emphases). The
terms ‘‘divisions,’’ ‘‘organized,’’ ‘‘conceptual schemas’’ suggest that the
classification of homosexually active men into fairies, trade, and queers
was a societal practice. But this would not show that there were no homo-
sexuals. All that it would show is that the terminology of ‘‘homosexual’’
and ‘‘heterosexual’’ was not in use, or was not in wide currency. More-
over, Chauncey’s claims would not even show that people, homosexual
and heterosexual, in the early years of this century had no awareness of the
concept of homosexuality. A fairy or a sailor would understand very well
that there are men who only sexually desired other men: the fairy would
give himself as an example of one, and the sailor would give the same
fairy as an example of one.
Chauncey’s line of argument is similar to that of other historians of
sexuality: find a feature, or features (in Chauncey’s case it is effeminacy
and masculinity), that was paramount in, or even defining of, the sexual
norms of a certain society, claim that that feature is not present in, or that it
is not essential to, our sexual norms, and then conclude that what exists
today as homosexuality and heterosexuality did not exist in the society
under consideration. This line of reasoning is mistaken. After considering
briefly the views of Neil Miller and Alan Bray, I will turn to David
Halperin’s. Hopefully, where the mistake lies will become clear by then.
In the introduction to Out of the Past, Neil Miller informs us that his
book ‘‘takes as its assumption that in the West toward the end of the
nineteenth century a modern sense of homosexual identity began to take
shape. At that historical moment, it became possible to conceive of oneself
as defined by an attraction to people of the same sex--apart from any
inversion of gender roles--and, later, to construct a community on that
basis’’ (Miller, 1995, p. xxi). Miller goes on to tell us that there is a
division among historians between essentialists and social ‘‘constructiv-
ists.’’ The former believe that a gay identity and subculture persisted
throughout the past. The latter group, however, believe that only certain
societies had fertile enough conditions for gay identity and subculture to
emerge (p. xxi). Miller sides with the social constructionists because
‘‘these [non-European, pre-nineteenth century] identities were quite dif-
ferent from our own. . . . Above all, they [gay prototypes] were not defined
by their sexual orientation or attractions: The homosexual of the ancient
world was Everyman, not a specific ‘type’’’ (p. xxii).
Miller’s remarks illustrate wonderfully the confusion that has set in
regarding the debate between essentialists and social constructionists. One
term that is often misleading is ‘‘homosexual identity.’’ On one reasonable
understanding of this term, what it means is a person whose sexuality goes
a long way to shape the kind of person he or she is. Hence, to claim that I
have a homosexual identity is to claim, roughly, that my homosexuality
plays a very important role in determining the kind of person I am: how it
enters into my social, political, moral, emotional, and intellectual life. But
it is entirely conceivable to have a person who is a homosexual yet who
has no homosexual identity. Consider a priest who has all the right sexual
dispositions, but who takes his chastity vows very seriously, and who
considers his sexual life to be of no importance to him. This person, I
would argue, has no sexual identity.9 Now it is crucial to distinguish in
questions about identity between the words ‘‘homosexual’’ and ‘‘gay.’’
The latter carries with it tremendous social, political, and cultural connota-
tions that are peculiar to this century and to certain geographical regions.
Indeed, ‘‘gay’’ is often used in such a way that to be gay is to lead a certain
way of life. On such an understanding, the expression ‘‘gay identity’’ is
redundant, for if part of what ‘‘gay’’ means is to be someone who marches
in parades, who does community work, who goes to gay and lesbian bars,
who is conscious of homophobia, etc., then that person’s homosexuality
forms a large part of who he or she is. Of course, given this understanding
of ‘‘gay’’ and ‘‘homosexual,’’ it makes sense to point to someone and say,
Raja Halwani 33
‘‘He is a homosexual, but he is not gay’’ (whether the opposite is true is

debatable). Moreover, it becomes trivially true that there were no people
with gay identities prior to the nineteenth century.
But it is not obviously true that there were no people prior to the
nineteenth century who had homosexual identities. Maybe there were. But
even if there weren’t, this would not show that there were no homosexuals.
All that it would show is that those homosexuals, and their society, did not
consider their sexuality to be part of who they were, in a robust sense. If
there is (or was) a society which did not fuss about sex as such, and if it did
not make heterosexual sex the norm, then indeed, there would probably be
no obvious reason for either homosexuality or heterosexuality to become
constitutive parts of people’s characters.
The having of a homosexual identity is not an essential feature of
essentialism, as we have seen. But neither is the existence of a homosexual
or gay ‘‘subculture.’’ Although ancient Athens is often portrayed as if it
were the Greenwich Village of the Ancient World,10 the formation of a
homosexual subculture is not part of the essentialist claim. The minimal,
and central, claim made by the essentialist is that homosexuals have
existed in the past, and this claim follows from the claim that homosexual-
ity is an intrinsic, culture-independent, and objective property of some
human beings. Unfortunately for Miller, he has fastened upon two noncen-
tral features of essentialism.
Alan Bray’s wonderful book Homosexuality in Renaissance England is
intended by its author to fall under the social constructionist camp. ‘‘It is
broadly in this tradition [the tradition of Michel Foucault and Jeffrey
Weeks] that the present book is written,’’ Bray tells us in the introduction
(Bray, 1995, p. 9). But what are his reasons? The most important one is
that it would be very difficult to approach history from an essentialist
standpoint: The sources, although they do mention homosexuality, employ
terms that also have other meanings (p. 8). Moreover, if the historian were
to turn to the views of the philosophers and the theologians, she would be
disappointed: ‘‘the researcher will soon begin to notice behavior which we
today would certainly recognize as homosexual but which contemporaries
appear to be seeing in altogether other terms’’ (p. 9). Let us see how this
general line of reasoning applies to the work undertaken by Bray.
By the first quarter of the eighteenth century in London, the phenome-
non of the Molly houses appeared. These were public or private places
where homosexuals could meet. Moreover, ‘‘The Molly houses and the
casual meeting-places such as St James’s Park were not separate entities
but were part of a specifically homosexual world, a society within a
society’’ (p. 85). It is this social and cultural dimension that separates the
homosexuality of the eighteenth century from the homosexuality that pre-

ceded it. The difference is not so much in the existence of such houses, for
similar ones existed prior to the eighteenth century. Rather, the difference
lies in the fact that the Molly houses played a very significant part of
society: ‘‘its [the society of the Molly houses] elaboration of its own
distinctive conventions: ways of dressing, of talking, distinctive gestures
and distinctive acts with an understood meaning, its own jargon’’ (p. 86).
What was most prominent about the society of the Molly houses was the
high degree of effeminacy and transvestism involved (p. 86). Moreover,
such a transvestism was intentional; it was not intended to deceive, it was
confined to the private domain of the Molly houses, and it was ‘‘about
homosexuality’’ (p. 88). Most importantly, with the emergence of the
culture of the Molly houses, there emerged a new perception of homo-
sexuality: the focus was no longer on the act, but on the person; the focus
was now on homosexuality as a characteristic that certain people have,
rather than as a sin, or a vice, that anyone can potentially fall prey to
(p. 104). The question that Bray poses is now the following: Given that
this shift in focus is revolutionary rather than evolutionary (which might
be a mistaken claim, by the way, but we will assume that it is correct), why
did it happen?
Bray’s answer is astounding: ‘‘in terms of the history of homosexuality,
there is no answer. The reason is . . . that there is no linear history of
homosexuality to be written at all, any more than there is of ‘the family’ or
indeed of sexuality itself. These things take their meaning from the vary-
ing societies which give them form; if they change it is because these
societies have changed’’ (p. 104). Indeed, Bray continues to give us an
answer to the question in terms of the changes in society. The shift in focus
in regard to homosexuality is part of a larger shift in outlook towards
things in general; it is part of the views of empiricism, of individualism,
and of the scientific spirit that began to take hold of the English frame of
mind in the eighteenth century.
It seems to me that there is a tremendous error in this reasoning. If by
‘‘the family’’ we mean a particular form of familial arrangement that exists
in such-and-such a time and place, then it is true that it has no history, but
that is because we have ruled out such a history by the very way we
defined ‘‘the family.’’ If, however, we define ‘‘the family’’ in less specific
terms, such as ‘‘a cohabitating group of individuals consisting, minimally,
of a parent and a child,’’ then surely there is good history to be done.
Similarly for ‘‘sexuality,’’ although I will have more to say on this in the
discussion of Halperin’s views. Similarly for homosexuality. Why cannot
Alan Bray think of the frequenters of the Molly houses as homosexuals
Raja Halwani 35
who, given the kind of society they lived in, were effeminate and transves-
tites? Why cannot the history of homosexuality consist in, or part of it,
anyway, uncovering the causes of why homosexuality took on different
garbs in different historical periods? Why cannot we ask, ‘‘Why were the
homosexuals of the Molly houses transvestites?’’ instead of stating that
those frequenters of the Molly houses were not homosexuals? Bray wants
to claim that the Mollies shared with their predecessors the homosexual
sexual act, but that they differed from them in the feature that the Mollies
were also people with certain sexual identities, a feature that they share
with the modern homosexual (they differ from the modern homosexual
with respect to the issue of effeminacy). And so we have sodomites,
mollies, and homosexuals. But why should this classification push us to
claim that there is no linear homosexuality? Why not claim that all (or
some; not all sodomites were homosexuals) of these people were homo-
sexuals, but that they differed in important respects? And why can’t the
history of homosexuality be, at least partially, a history of the factors,
social or otherwise, that gave rise to those important differences? I can
find no compelling reason for Bray’s drastic conclusion.
III. DAVID HALPERIN ON SEXUALITY
I now turn to the views of David Halperin, especially those found in the
first two chapters of One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (Halperin,
1990). Halperin often writes as if the issue between social constructionists
and essentialists were terminological. He speaks of the introduction of the
term ‘‘homosexuality’’ into the English language (p. 15), and in one amaz-
ing passage he says, ‘‘The real issue confronting any cultural historian of
antiquity, and any critic of contemporary culture, is, first of all, how to
recover the terms in which the experiences of individuals belonging to past
societies were actually constituted and, second, how to measure and assess
the differences between those terms and the ones we currently employ’’
(pp. 28-29). However, and no matter how tempting it is to consider Hal-
perin’s views as being about language, they are not just about language.
They are about ontology: ‘‘although there have been . . . persons who
sought sexual contact with other persons of the same sex as themselves, it
is only within the last hundred years or so that such persons . . . have been
homosexuals’’ (p. 29). In the very first page of his essay ‘‘One Hundred
Years of Homosexuality,’’ Halperin tells us that ‘‘Before 1892 there was
no homosexuality, only sexual inversion’’ (p. 15). In his interview with
Richard Schneider, he says, ‘‘Homosexuality and heterosexuality are not
the atomic constituents of erotic desire, the basic building-blocks out of
which every person’s sexual nature is constructed. They just represent one
of the many patterns according to which human living-groups . . . have
drawn the boundaries that define the scope of what can qualify--and to
whom--as sexually attractive’’ (p. 45). This is not an issue of terminology,
but ontology.
Let us first of all come to grips with Halperin’s views on sexuality, of
which homosexuality is only a modern species, and then carefully attend
to his arguments. To Halperin, sexuality itself is a modern invention. Since
homosexuality presupposes sexuality, homosexuality is also a modern
notion (p. 24). Sexuality is a cultural production: ‘‘it represents the
appropriation of the human body and of its erogenous zones by an ideo-
logical discourse’’ (p. 25). Halperin is careful to distinguish between sexu-
ality and sex, and he considers the latter to be a ‘‘natural fact’’ (p. 25). He
explicitly identifies himself as a social constructionist, a position which he
characterizes as one that assumes that ‘‘sexual desires are learned and that
sexual identities come to be fashioned through an individual’s interaction
with others’’ (p. 42). One important piece of evidence for the construction-
ist position is that ‘‘Anthropological and historical studies have shown to
my satisfaction that patterns of sexual preference and configurations of
desire vary enormously from one culture to the next’’ (p. 42). Hence, to
Halperin, the terms ‘‘homosexual’’ and ‘‘heterosexual’’ are not mere clas-
sificatory devices; they refer to ‘‘new types of desire, new kinds of desir-
ing human beings’’ (p. 43). That is why on Halperin’s view, (a) homosexu-
ality and heterosexuality are not the building blocks of sexual desire, and
(b) they are not unreal: to say that they are new is not to say that they are
imaginary; it is a fact that there are homosexuals and heterosexuals (p. 43).
Let us now attend to the arguments. Halperin considers, as we have
seen, sexuality to be a modern invention. Homosexuality presupposes
sexuality. But ‘‘sexuality’’ is not a descriptive term; sexuality ‘‘serves to
interpret and to organize human experience, and it performs quite a lot of
conceptual work’’ (p. 25). It does so in three ways: (a) it is understood as a
separate domain within a person’s ‘‘psychophysical nature’’; (b) sexuality,
in its separateness as an ‘entity,’ embodies within it aspects that have in the
past cut across domains of personal and social life (aspects such as pas-
sion, eroticism, love, intimacy, affection, appetite, and desire); and
(c) sexuality gives rise to the notion of sexual identity; it gives rise to the
idea that each person has an essence understood in sexual terms. ‘‘Sexual-
ity, then, is not . . . a universal feature of human life in every society. For as
the word is used today (outside the life sciences at least) sexuality does not
refer to some positive physical property . . . that exists independently of
culture; it does not rightly denote some common aspect or attribute of
Raja Halwani 37
bodies’’ (p. 25). This argument is suspect. Halperin claims that ‘‘sexual-
ity’’ is not a descriptive term. Supposedly, then, it is an interpretive one,
not purely descriptive. But where is the interpretation? To say that it
denotes a separate psychophysical entity within a person is not to say that
it is interpretive, or, if it is interpretive, it might be so in a scientific way,
similar to positing certain theoretical subparticles in the field of physics.
Moreover, assuming that it is true to say that each person has a sexual
essence, it does not follow that in claiming this one is making an interpre-
tive claim. If I say, ‘‘X is a homosexual,’’ I am not necessarily making an
interpretive judgment. Moreover, it seems that Halperin considers only
hard-core physical properties to be universal features of the world. But this
is at best debatable. Emotions, in so far as they are mental states, might
very well be nonphysical, and some of them, such as anger and pleasure,
are universal in nature. Also, ethical properties are nonphysical. But
whether this renders them nonuniversal is a matter of debate. This argu-
ment by Halperin certainly does not go through. Perhaps the notion of
sexuality has been abused by scientists, but it does not follow that the
notion is inherently interpretive or even evaluative.
But why invented? Why is sexuality a matter of invention? Prior to the
‘invention’ of sexuality, according to Halperin, sexual evaluation was
done with respect to sexual acts. It is only with the coming of sexuality
that the focus shifted to the notion of sexual orientation, and society
started identifying people in terms of their sexual orientations. It is true
that human beings differ in terms of their sexual preferences, and even
ancient societies recognized this. But what Halperin finds bewildering is
the modern view that sexual preferences are determinants of personal
identity (p. 26). Why should sexual preferences rather than, say, dietary
preferences, be such determinants? Halperin’s argument can be stated as
follows: (a) if we have no reason to think that dietary preference is a
constitutive feature of personal identity, then it is not so obvious that
sexual preference is such a feature; (b) we have no reason to think that
dietary preference is such a feature; (c) therefore, it is not so obvious that
sexual preference is such a feature. What supports this conclusion is the
historical fact that premodern societies did not think of sexual preference
as being a determinant feature of a person’s identity. Why should we? The
fact that we do indicates that sexual preference is a cultural construct.
There are a number of points to be said about this argument and the
assumptions underlying it. To begin with, the analogy between food and
sex is not good. There are features about sexual activity that are universal,
and that set such an activity apart from dietary activities. Sexual activity is
typically private, and it is universally so. Moreover, sexual activity typi-
cally accompanies certain emotions, such as those of love, domination,

possession, and affection, and this is a universal feature of sexual activity.
I am not equating sexual activity with sexuality or sexual preference, but I
am claiming that there are important features that attach themselves to
sexual activity, features which make for good reasons to treat sexuality to
be important to us in ways that dietary habits are not. It is because of these
features that the analogy with dietary habits is at best tenuous.
Moreover, we have seen that essentialism need not make any strong
connections between sexual preference and issues of identity. It is not an
essential aspect of essentialism that homosexuality or heterosexuality be
viewed as determinants of personal identity. If psychologists, scientists,
society at large, and even gays and lesbians, wish to claim that sexual
preference is constitutive of identity, their claim is not an intrinsic part of
essentialism. Put bluntly, whether sexual preference is a determinant of a
person’s identity is a matter of the extent and the role that the person’s
sexual preference plays in his or her life (which is not to say that it is up to
the person to decide if sexual preference is determinant of his or her
identity). However, when Halperin speaks of homosexuality and hetero-
sexuality, he speaks of them as being determinant features of identity. In
other words, Halperin has in mind an understanding of sexuality which has
issues of identity built into it.
But let us delve a bit deeper and consider what would motivate a view
such as Halperin’s. The obvious candidate is historical and cultural evi-
dence. It is the diversity of the data regarding different cultures’ sexual
norms that tend to make us stop and think twice before we project our
sexual categorization to these cultures. Consider ancient Athens. Accord-
ing to Halperin, sexual behavior in ancient Athens ‘‘did not so much
express inward dispositions or inclinations (although, of course, it did also
do that) as it served to position social actors in the places assigned to them,
by virtue of their political standing, in the hierarchical structure of the
Athenian polity’’ (p. 32). Although each sex was an expression of desire,
the desire itself ‘‘had already been shaped by the shared definition of sex
as an activity that generally occurred only between a citizen and a non-citi-
zen, between a person invested with full civil status and a statutory minor’’
(p. 32). To a male Athenian, sex was not something that one did with
someone else; it was an act that one performed on someone else. Who is
the active party and who is the passive one is a crucial feature of the sex
act. Moreover, the age of the partners is important: two citizen men of
relatively the same age having sex would make the sex act at best awk-
ward, for the question as to who will be the active party will not have an
easy answer, if it has one at all.
Raja Halwani 39
But although puzzling questions arise in regard to ancient Athens, they

do not stop there:
Does the ‘paederast’, the classical Greek adult, married male who
periodically enjoys sexually penetrating a male adolescent share the
same sexuality with the ‘berdache’, the Native American (Indian)
adult male who from childhood has taken on many aspects of a
woman and is regularly penetrated by the adult male to whom he has
been married in a public and socially sanctioned ceremony? Does the
latter share the same sexuality with the New Guinea tribesman and
warrior who from the ages of eight to fifteen has been orally insemi-
nated on a daily basis by older youths and who, after years of orally
inseminating his juniors, will be married to an adult woman and have
children of his own? Does any one of these three persons share the
same sexuality with the modem homosexual? (p. 46)
Now suppose that we claim that the tribesman from New Guinea, to take
him as our example, is really a homosexual. How are we to explain his
lack of erotic interest in males after his marriage? Suppose we claim that
he is not a homosexual. How are we to explain the fact that he spent half
his life engaging in oral sex with other males? Halperin, I believe, has a
fair demand: it is incumbent on the essentialist to explain how it is possible
to have homosexuals in New Guinea if we are to consider essentialism to
be true. The essentialist is not committed to the claim that every New
Guinean warrior is a homosexual. Indeed, the essentialist is not even
committed to the claim that there is at least one homosexual in New
Guinea. But the essentialist still owes us an explanation of how, given the
different sexual ‘economy’ of New Guinean men, it is possible for some
New Guinean men to be homosexuals. I will consider the situation of
homosexuality in Lebanon, for it gives us an interesting illustration of how
homosexuality and heterosexuality can exist in a society whose sexual
divisions are much more similar to New Guinea and ancient Athens than
to the contemporary Western world, and so helps us find an essentialist
answer to Halperin’s questioning.
In Beirut, Lebanon, the social and political atmosphere is extremely
homophobic.11 Although there are many males who are homosexuals, and
who identify themselves as such, they are mostly closeted and under-
ground. The situation regarding lesbians is even worse, despite the fact
that there are now a few women who identify themselves as lesbian. Most
of the males who are homosexuals are extremely effeminate, except for
those who happen to have been ‘Westernized,’ either through living out-
side the country, or through receiving their education in a Western-ori-
ented institution, such as the American University of Beirut. The homo-

sexual males who are effeminate tend to come from traditional, poor
classes, and tend not to have completed their higher education. The first
point I wish to make is that they are homosexuals. They desire other men,
they drool over certain men, they exercise tastes in specific kinds of men,
and they fantasize about men. Most importantly, they have sex with men.
The second point that I wish to make is that the men they have sex with are
mostly, if not all, heterosexuals. Many of them are even married. More-
over, these men rarely, even never, perform fellatio on the homosexual
males, and they rarely get anally penetrated. If they do, which is certainly
possible, they are highly ashamed of and secretive about it. Typically, they
penetrate and get fellated. Moreover, they have no problem in boasting
about these sexual activities to their friends, relatives, and co-workers. The
reason is that such sexual activities do not threaten their, and others’,
perception of their manhood. The issue is not so much having sex with
another male. It is, rather, the kind of sex to be had. This picture is not
confined to Lebanon. Indeed, it is a feature that is found in many other
cultures, for example Mexico and Latin America, and it is very close to the
picture we find dominant in ancient Greece. Yet there is no problem in
claiming that these macho men are heterosexuals. They do not have sex
with another male because he is a male. They have sex because of the
sheer sexual pleasure they derive from it, i.e., what turns them on is the
idea of deriving pleasure from such sexual activity. Indeed, when they can,
they have sex with women, although this is not easily available to them
given the ultra social ‘protection’ of women prior to their marriage (and
when they are married, they are ‘protected’ by their husbands). To begin
with, they enjoy having fellatio performed on them. However, the most
common way of obtaining such a sexual activity is by having recourse to a
homosexual male, because given the sexual norms, women typically
refuse to do it, and a husband often will refuse to allow his wife to perform
it on him (because he will then perceive her as a ‘slut’). Moreover, they
enjoy having anal intercourse, and given that it is not allowed to be per-
formed on women, they have recourse to willing men. Why anal inter-
course? The reason often given is--and excuse the vulgarity--the snugness
of the anus.12 While these macho men are congratulated by their peers on
their virility, the homosexual men, who tend to be effeminate, are often
ridiculed and made fun of because of their mannerisms, their behavior, and
who they are.13
The upshot of the above is that there is room for homosexuality and
heterosexuality in a society such as that of Lebanon. But such a society is
Raja Halwani 41
of the kind that motivates Halperin-like views. Before I move on to some

generalizations, let me give one more example.
In Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, Judith
Brown relates the story of Benedetta Carlini, a woman from a modest
family from Vellano, Italy (sixteenth century), who was placed by her
parents, as parents were prone to do in those times with their daughters, in
a convent. Benedetta soon rose to become the abbess of the convent. More
significantly, she claimed more than once to have received visions and to
have received the stigmata of Christ. The Church did not take these mat-
ters lightly, and soon an in-depth investigation took place which revealed,
among other things, that Benedetta had faked the signs of the stigmata, and
that she had been having sex with another nun in the convent, Sister
Bartolomea Crivelli. Here is an account from the investigation:
This sister Benedetta, then, for two continuous years, at least three
times a week, in the evening after disrobing and going to bed would
wait for her companion to disrobe, and pretending to need her, would
call. When Bartolomea would come over, Benedetta would grab her
by the arm and throw her by force on the bed. Embracing her, she
would put her under herself and kissing her as if she were a man, she
would speak words of love to her. And she would stir on top of her
so much that both of them corrupted themselves. And thus by force
she held her sometimes one, sometimes two, and sometimes three
hours. (Brown, 1986, p. 118)
This testimony by Bartolomea was so shocking that the scribe’s handwrit-

ing became barely legible. What was shocking was not so much that a nun
was having sex--this was a common enough phenomenon. Even homo-
sexual male sex was familiar to the investigators. What was shocking was
that the sex was between two women (p. 118). The question in the minds
of the investigators, however, was why Bartolomea would allow herself,
as a nun and the bride of Jesus, to be ‘corrupted’ in such a way. Bartolo-
mea’s answer was extremely interesting: Benedetta assured her that the
two of them were not sinning because it was the angel Splenditello who
was having sex with Bartolomea through Benedetta. Splenditello was the
angel assigned to Benedetta by Jesus (when he appeared to her in a vision)
as her guardian. Benedetta described him as ‘‘a beautiful boy. He was
dressed in a white robe with gold embroidered sleeves and wore a gold
chain around his neck. His handsome face was framed by long, curly hair
crowned by a wreath of flowers’’ (p. 64). Moreover, when Benedetta
spoke to Bartolomea during these sexual encounters she used the voice of
the angel (she changed her voice and spoke as if she were in a vision). The
angel would reassure Bartolomea that the two of them were not sinning,
and that she should not tell anyone about what they were doing (p. 119).
Even Jesus would speak through Benedetta to Bartolomea, especially
during the times when the latter appeared to be doubtful about what was
going on.
Judith Brown characterizes the relationship between the two nuns as
having been more than sexual. Through the voice of the angel, Benedetta
declared her love for Bartolomea, and begged the latter to declare her love
also. Benedetta did not just want sexual gratification: ‘‘She wanted love in
every sense, so that her words of love are as revealing of her desires as was
her sexual passion’’ (p. 125). But why an angel? According to Brown, the
angel allowed (not in a conscious and deceptive sense) Benedetta to
breach her chastity, and her gender and sexual roles: ‘‘Like the ecclesiasti-
cal authorities who heard the case, Benedetta lacked a cultural and intel-
lectual framework to incorporate her behavior into her view of reality. . . .
The only sexual relations she seemed to recognize were those between
men and women. Her male identity consequently allowed her to have
sexual and emotional relations that she could not conceive between
women’’ (p. 127). But we should keep in mind that Benedetta was a nun,
and what was needed was not just any male identity, but a supernatural
one. Hence the angel. Benedetta was herself the victim of her own decep-
tion. She herself was part of the ‘‘intended audience.’’
The point of this example is simple in essence: Assuming that Bene-
detta was a lesbian (which is a plausible assumption), she did not have the
conceptual apparatus to think of herself as a woman who sexually, eroti-
cally, and emotionally desired other women. The reason for this was the
society she lived in, a society which placed extreme restrictions on its
conception of sexual activity and desire. The only way that Benedetta
could even make sense of her desires and acts was through superimposing
on her own identity that of a male one. The only way Benedetta could have
sex with a woman was if she were to be male, because that was how sex
was thought of. The claim is not that every lesbian had to have some kind
of a split personality in order for her to make sense of her acts and
thoughts, but that this is certainly a possibility, and, if Brown is correct in
her interpretation, a historical actuality. In a nutshell, homosexuality could
exist amidst layers of acts and behaviors whose agents, and the people
surrounding the agents, cannot even conceive of as stemming from a
homosexual.14
Essentialism does not claim that any person who engages in sex with
members of his or her own sex is a homosexual: that person need not have
the desires and dispositions to sleep with members of the same sex, to
Raja Halwani 43
sleep with men, or with women. It is possible to have a person who

consistently engages in homosexual sex yet who is not a homosexual.
Why engage in it? One reason is the sheer pleasure of it (the Lebanese
married man). Another is societal expectations (the ancient Athenian adult
male). It is also possible to have someone who is homosexual yet who
does not even engage in a single sex act throughout his life (a priest).15
Hence, we should reject the dilemma that Halperin challenges us with:
Either the Athenian adult male is a homosexual or not, and that on either
count, we lose. If we say that he is a homosexual, how do we explain the
fad that he is married? If he is not, how do we explain the fact that he
engages in homosexual sex throughout most of his life? The dilemma
seems to be about a specific individual, but it is not. The Athenian adult
male is a representative of his class, and as soon as we see this, our answer
to Halperin is, ‘‘Neither. We have to go case by case.’’ An Athenian adult
male could be a homosexual, a heterosexual, or a bisexual. Consider the
males of New Guinea. Suppose one was a homosexual. Why does he get
orally inseminated by other males? Well, it is a societal custom; he has to do
it, and in this case, he perhaps sexually desires it (at least with some men).
But doesn’t he get married? Maybe. Surely, there are some males who do
not get married. And even if a homosexual New Guinean does get married,
what is so bewildering about that? It is a social custom, and society has the
amazing ability of making us internalize its norms to the point that we do
not realize who we are until a very late age, if ever. There are North
Americans and Europeans who get married and only much later realize that
they are homosexuals. Think of the number of women who realize after
years of marriage and of rearing children that they are lesbians. Think of the
number of men in similar situations. If this happens in what social construc-
tionists consider to be the cradle, the very land, of homosexuality, why
should we be surprised if it happens in societies and cultures that have
drastically different sexual taxonomies? Now suppose that the New Guin-
ean man is a heterosexual. This would explain the fact that he got married
(in addition to the explanation of societal pressure). How does he get orally
inseminated by males, and how does he orally inseminate others? The latter
part is easy to explain: in addition to being a societal norm, it could be
pleasurable. In a society such as that of the United States, in which the
distinction between homosexuals and heterosexuals is hard and fast, and in
which such a distinction is imbibed by the society, it is easy to imagine how
a straight man would find the idea of being fellated by another man disgust-
ing. But we should not transport this image to a society in which it is part of
their customs that oral insemination be performed. A heterosexual man in
such a society would not, and does not, find it disgusting. The same reason-
ing applies to the case of a heterosexual New Guinean being orally insemi-
nated by another man: it is a rite, a ritual, a custom that has to be gone
through and maintained. To sum up the reasoning so far, the norms of a
society ‘‘will tend to determine whether, for instance, the desire is actual-
ized in an active or a passive sexual role or is realized with someone of one
age but not another. The norms may well even require, as they did in Greek
citizen culture and as they do in contemporary hustler culture, that the boy
deny that he finds the pleasurable contacts pleasurable (Mohr, 1992, p. 235).
The norms may even require of a person to perform an act that he or she
does not find pleasurable.
IV. THE PLAUSIBILITY OF ESSENTIALISM
Given the historical evidence, and given the arguments, essentialism

stands strong. Not only have I claimed that social constructionist argu-
ments do not go through, i.e., that essentialism is a possibility still, but I
have also claimed that essentialism is perfectly compatible with the histor-
ical evidence so far adduced.
However, someone might argue that given the evidence, social
constructionism is a more probable thesis, i.e., that the evidence favors
social constructionism over essentialism, even though the latter is compat-
ible with it.
It is tempting to respond to this objection by emphasizing that essential-
ism is a theory about the causes of homosexuality, causes which might be
construed as a cluster found across cultures. That is, whether a person is a
homosexual or not is determined by the person’s genes, or hormones, or
certain universal psychological traits, or a combination of a number of
these factors. And so, the kind of evidence, historical, sociological, and
anthropological, that social constructionists summon is simply irrelevant.
What is relevant is whether certain genetic, hormonal, and psychological
properties obtain within an individual.
Hence, and focusing on genetic theory (since it is often considered to be
the essentialist’s main weapon and research tool), it is important to realize
that genes do not on their own determine what the ‘finished’ organism is.
The model of genetic theory is an interactive one. Scientists distinguish
between the genotype of an organism and its phenotype. The phenotype of
an organism is the total set of its physiological, morphological, and behav-
ioral properties. The genotype is the state of the genes of the organism.
Moreover, it is the latter that is inherited from the parents, and not the
former. In short, the genotype does not on its own determine the pheno-
type: ‘‘There is no one-to-one correspondence between the genes inherited
Raja Halwani 45
from one’s parents and one’s height, weight, metabolic rate, sickness,
health, or any other non-trivial organic characteristic’’ (Lewontin et al.,
1984, p. 95). The genes interact with the environment to produce the
phenotype, and this is a process that continues up to the point of the death
of the organism. Given the plausible assumption that homosexuality is not
a trivial characteristic such as eye color, it would be a mistake to think that
a set of genes (or one gene) determines on its own whether one is a
homosexual or not.
But now the following possibility emerges: if one’s homosexuality is a
matter of genetic and environmental interaction, then it is possible that in
certain environments, and despite the genetic disposition, a person does
not become a homosexual, i.e., a person does not develop sexual desires
towards members of his or her own sex. It is possible, then, that there were
no homosexuals (or heterosexuals) in ancient Athens precisely because the
environment was simply not conducive, so to speak, to trigger the homo-
sexual or heterosexual genes. But then once we see it this way, historical
and anthropological evidence becomes paramount, because it is precisely
this evidence that will tell us whether there are certain environments that
will prohibit or allow the genetic development of homosexuality.16
But it still does not follow that historical and anthropological evidence
favor social constructionism over essentialism, and the reason is that such
evidence is also irrelevant for the genetic/environmental model at hand.
Consider classical Athens once again. We have seen (in section III) how
essentialism can accommodate the sexual norms and divisions in the Athe-
nian society, and the general point is that under essentialism it is possible
for homosexuality (and heterosexuality) to coexist with diverse and vari-
ant societal sexual norms and categorizations. But now there is a rival
possibility, namely, that the environment of classical Athens was of the
kind that does not allow the genes for homosexuality to develop. But if so,
then it is true to say that there were no homosexuals or heterosexuals in
classical Athens. If this reasoning is correct, then it would seem that social
constructionism is the more plausible theory.
But this need not be so. The rival possibility in effect conceded that there
is a genetic basis or foundation for homosexuality (and, if we were to take
psychology into account, that there is a psychological basis for homosexual-
ity), and so it is false that sexuality is entirely a product of social causes.
But, and more to the point, the evidence that is relevant in such a case is not
the social configuration of the classical Athenian society. Such a configura-
tion is evidence that we might have an environment of the kind that does not
trigger homosexual genes. Whether such a configuration is of this kind will
require a different type of evidence altogether. The proposition ‘‘Society x
has such-and-such a social configuration’’ is not evidence for the proposi-

tion ‘‘Such-and-such a social configuration does not trigger homosexual
genes,’’ for homosexuality is perfectly compatible with that configuration.
The evidence for the latter proposition would have to come from a com-
bination of genetic and social research and experimentation, in order to
explain the triggering or the nontriggering of homosexual genes with the
environment at hand. To state the point differently, the existence of homo-
sexuality in a culture requires a certain type of genetic, hormonal, and/or
psychological factors, and it requires an appropriate social configuration.
From the fact that homosexuality is absent from a certain culture, we do not
know offhand whether the genetic, hormonal, and/or psychological factors
are lacking, or whether the social configuration was simply inappropriate.
Despite appearances, the kind of historical and anthropological data
that social constructionists adduce do not favor their theory over that of
essentialism. Indeed, the kind of evidence will have to come from the
biological and the social sciences, and no evidence coming from one
branch of science is going to be sufficient on its own to settle the issue.
Historical evidence on its own will not, and cannot, do it. At best, histori-
cal evidence can point to the area where research needs to be done. The
same for anthropological evidence. Even determining the seemingly sim-
ple thesis that homosexuality has a genetic basis will require data from the
social sciences in order to correlate the behavior of certain genes with that
of the organism which contains these genes. And it is debatable whether
even such evidence could be obtained at all.
V. THREE QUESTIONS FOR SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM
I believe, however, that we have good reasons to follow in the footsteps

of essentialism. One such reason is the conclusions of this paper: social
constructionism is not able to rule out essentialism as a viable possibility,
and essentialism can easily accommodate the evidence that social construc-
tionists claim to refute essentialism and to bolster their own position.17
Another reason has to do with the fact that social constructionism
leaves some questions unanswered, and these are three in number: the
connection between socially constructed entities and ‘natural’ entities; the
nature of the ontological status of socially constructed entities; and an
explanation of the generation of socially constructed entities.
1. Social constructionism does not deny the claim that physiological
and biological phenomena are real. Halperin, as we have seen, distin-
guishes between sexuality and sex. To Foucault, sex is also a social
construct, but he does seem to allow for the objectivity of physiology and
Raja Halwani 47
biology (Foucault, 1978, pp. 47-48, 151-154). However, the two are
obviously connected, and social constructionists do owe us an explanation
of this connection. Now if one were to claim that even entities such as
genes, hormones, etc., are socially constructed, then we have an entirely
new issue on our hands. It is no longer a claim about homosexuality and
heterosexuality as such, but about the reality of scientific entities. In any
case, it seems fairly obvious that such a drastic claim is false, at least in the
sense that genes and hormones did not exist prior to their discovery and
labeling by scientists.
2. Connected with the above is the issue of the ontological status of
socially constructed entities. Homosexuality is fictitious in the sense that it
is not real in the same way that cells, microbes, and atoms are real. But
then again, it is not fictitious in the same way as unicorns and Mr. Pick-
wick are; homosexuality exists, at least in certain temporal and geographi-
cal locations. Are socially constructed entities supervenient entities? What
are they, exactly? Again, the social constructionist owes us an explanation.
3. Connected also to the first point above, we still need an adequate
explanation of how it is that a person comes to be a homosexual, an
explanation which is a bit more detailed than the claim that a person
becomes a homosexual because of a certain societal configuration, or
because the society he was living in had different sexual concepts from the
ones our current society has. It is not enough to claim that different cul-
tures give rise to different sexualities, because an essentialist need not
disagree with this. What we need is a causal account of how this works.
Labeling theory--the theory that a person comes to be what the label
assigned to him or her says he or she is--seems to be simplistic and open to
a large number of counterexamples (Mohr, 1992, pp. 223-228). It still
needs a lot of work in order to be boosted into a convincing view.18
Given that essentialism is compatible with the evidence advanced by
social constructionists to support their view, given that the arguments for
social constructionism do not go through, and given the number of issues
that face social constructionism still, it is safe to follow in the footsteps of
essentialism because of truth-related reasons, if not for pragmatic ones,
such as maintaining a political unity and coherence with sexual minorities
across the globe.19
NOTES
1. In 1892 in the English language and 1869 in the German language (1872 in
the German language according to David Halperin. See Halperin, 1990, p. 15).
2. I take it that one could have the concept of something without having the
term that came to label that concept. For example, certain societies certainly had
the concept of what it is to be exploited and conquered by Europeans, although

they did not have the term ‘‘colonialism’’ at their disposal.
3. This definition was given by Michael Ruse, 1988, p. 1. Such a definition
should be acceptable to both social constructionists and essentialists. The former
do not deny that a homosexual is one who has such desires and fantasies. The def-
inition, then, does not prematurely tip the scale in the favor of either camp.
4. One such piece of evidence comes from Boccaccio. Giovanni Boccaccio,
in the Decameron, tells the story of a rich man living in Perugia who married a
woman without any real wish to marry. Unfortunately for Pietro di Vinciolo, the
woman he married turned out to be a ‘‘buxom young woman with red hair and a
passionate nature, who would cheerfully have taken on a pair of husbands, let
alone one, and now found herself wedded to a man whose heart was anywhere but
in the right place’’ (Mitchell, 1995, p. 10). Pietro had no desire to have sex with
his wife, and indeed, he did not. His wife decides to cheat on him, and Pietro
catches her in the act. He resolves the problem by making sure that the young man
his wife was intending to sleep with ended up in his (Pietro’s) own bed. Whether
the story is entirely fictitious, or whether it was based on a tale that Boccaccio had
heard, the point remains the same: the possibility that homosexuals existed was
not so alien to, at least, some Italians in the fourteenth century.
5. Translated by Michael Joyce, in Hamilton and Cairns, 1982.
6. We have to be careful here. It would be surprising, for example, if psycho-
analytic theory can sustain itself as being independent of any environmental influ-
ence. The important role that the father plays in the family is certainly linked to a
patriarchical society, a societal configuration which is (hopefully) contingent.
Moreover, the genes do not determine the phenotype of an organism entirely on
their own. Rather, they do so in collaboration with the environment. I discuss this
in the fourth section of the paper.
7. Ian Hacking (1992) argues that although social causes are not sufficient to
explain homosexuality, they are nevertheless necessary. His argument is that since
homosexual acts are intentional acts, and since intentional acts require a certain
description for the agent to act on his intentions, then given that the description of
the homosexual is a social construction, then the homosexual is a social construc-
tion also. Richard Mohr (1992, pp. 228-235) offers some excellent criticisms of
Hacking’s view.
8. This version of social constructionism is opposed to the ‘‘empty category’’
one which states that there are no people who are homosexual or heterosexual,
even though there are the terms ‘‘homosexual’’ and ‘‘heterosexual.’’ I focus on the
nonempty category version because it is more interesting than its rival, and
because it is not so flagrantly false.
9. In the robust sense. Of course, we can always identify him as a homo-
sexual, and in a minimal sense, such a person has a homosexual identity. But it
seems that if it is this minimal sense that we have in mind when we talk of ‘‘iden-
tity,’’ then it is better not to use the expression ‘‘homosexual identity’’ for in such
a case it would be misleading.
Raja Halwani 49
10. Or that it was a homosexual haven. Maybe it was for the homosexuals back
then. But it is hard for us to imagine ourselves living there. I think that we would
not be able to survive for a minute, even if we spoke the language frequently--and
with the appropriate accent.
11. Due to homophobia and other causes, there are no sources, as far as I know,
on homosexuals in Lebanon. What I say here is from personal experience and
observation.
12. A reviewer of the paper--from this journal-wondered why I claim that these
men are straight and not bisexual. While I believe that some of them might very
well be bisexual, I am inclined to argue that the majority of them are straight. The
reason I claim this is because their object of arousal in the case of homosexual sex
is not their sexual partner--not the man, or the way the man looks, etc.--but the idea
or prospect of getting fellated, of penetrating the man’s anus. In the case of their
heterosexual sexual activity, they seem to be turned on also by the fact that their
sexual partner is a woman, and that she is pretty, or sexy, etc. However, I certainly
do not wish to deny the existence of bisexuals in any society.
13. I once asked a homosexual friend of mine why he puts up with all the abuse
from his ‘boyfriend’--a married, straight, construction worker--and he replied,
‘‘He’s cute, it’s sex, and it’s free.’’ Obviously, it was not entirely free.
14. In Benedetta’s case, the nuns of the convent and the investigators did not
think of her as a lesbian, but as a woman who is possessed.
15. But surely, an objection might go, a man who habitually anally penetrates
another invites us to describe him as a homosexual. Yes, but we must not forget that
an invitation is an invitation, and we do not need to take it up. The force of such an
objection is an epistemological one: given that we do not typically have epistemic
access to a person’s desires and fantasies, we go by behavior. If we have such
desires and fantasies laid out before us, we might very well change our minds.
16. There are a number of questions to be asked at this point, and here are two of
them: (a) How are we to understand the term ‘‘environment’’? Does it include only
the natural environment, or also the social? And how widely or narrowly are we to
understand the term? (b) Are we to believe that there are environments that would
not make room for the homosexual genes to be triggered for any individual what-
soever in that environment, and precisely because they are those kinds of environ-
ments? If one does not grow to a certain height, for example, despite the fact that he
has the genetic potential to do so, it is going to be a matter of nutrition why he did
not grow to that height. But although the quality of nutrition is sometimes the result
of a certain social structure, it need not be. The point is simply that environmental
factors could be construed in a very narrow way, but if so, then it is not always cor-
rect to speak of a whole environment interacting with the genes of an individual.
17. I should emphasize that there are certain reasons which have been thought
to support essentialism over social constructionism, but which, philosophically,
do not. I will give two examples. Contrary to certain beliefs, social construction-
ism need not entail that there are no homosexuals at all; that, although some
people are called ‘‘homosexuals,’’ the word has no referent. This is the empty-
category version of social constructionism, and it is by no means adopted by all
constructionists. Halperin, for example, does not adopt such a version. Therefore,
to think that one reason for essentialism and against social constructionism is that
this theory does not deny the existence of homosexuals is a mistake. Also, some
think that social constructionism entails the claim that homosexuality is a matter
of choice. It need not do so. Again, Halperin does not believe that homosexuality
is a matter of choice. Now given that in most cases homosexuality does not seem
to be voluntary, some have thought that essentialism wins over social construc-
tionism because the latter does not accommodate such data, while the former
does. This is a mistake, because social constructionism, or at least one version of
it, does. More importantly, however, those who desire a theory that entails the
nonvoluntariness of homosexuality do so from motivations that are highly sus-
pect, motivations that have to do with absolving homosexuals from their condi-
tion and behavior because their orientation was ‘imposed’ on them. This is mis-
guided because there is nothing intrinsically and morally wrong with homosexual
behavior or with being a homosexual. Hence, there is no need for excuses.
Whether I choose my homosexuality or I don’t should not be the issue.
18. Another reviewer wondered why the same questions cannot be raised with
respect to essentialism: Doesn’t an essentialist need to tell us how biology and
culture are connected? Isn’t the ontological status of cultural traits which are gen-
erated by biological processes puzzling, too? And doesn’t the essentialist need to
explain how a person becomes a homosexual? I agree that the essentialist must at
some point attempt to answer these questions. However, I do not think that these
questions have equal force to both essentialists and social constructionists. Con-
sider the second question. The social constructionist seems to be positing a third
ontological category, one that is between what is ultrareal (the world of physics)
and what is purely fictitious (literary characters). The essentialist need not have
such a third category: the existence of homosexuality is as real as the existence of
atoms, although these two phenomena have drastically different properties. Con-
sider the first and third questions. To the essentialist, the difficulty in meeting
these questions seems to be of a practical, scientific nature: it is a matter of figur-
ing out, through research, how biological, psychological, and social properties
interact to produce a homosexual. With social constructionism, there are meta-
physical issues involved: how do real, physical properties cause certain properties
that are neither real nor entirely fictitious?
19. Special thanks to Linda Alcoff and Richard Mohr for comments on an ear-
lier draft of this paper. My thanks also go to the two referees from the Journal of
Homosexuality who have supplied me with excellent comments on an earlier draft
of this paper.
REFERENCES
Boswell, John. 1981. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. Chi-
cago: The University of Chicago Press.
Bray, Alan. 1995 (second edition). Homosexuality in Renaissance England. New
York: Columbia University Press.
Raja Halwani 51
Brown, Judith. 1986. Immodest Acts: The life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance
Italy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chauncey, George. 1994. Gay New York. New York: Basic Books.
Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality, volume 1. New York: Vintage
Books.
Hacking, Ian. 1992. Making Up People. In Ed Stein (Ed.), Forms of Desire:
Sexual Orientation and the Social Constructionist Controversy. New York:
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Halperin, David. 1990. One Hundred Years of Homosexuality. New York: Rout-
ledge.
Hamilton, Edith, and Huntington Cairns, editors. 1982. Plato: The Collected
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Lewontin, R. C., Leon Kamin, and Steven Rose. 1984. Not in Our Genes. New
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Miller, Neil. 1995. Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the
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Mitchell, Mark, editor. 1995. The Penguin Book of International Gay Writing.
New York: Viking Penguin.
Mohr, Richard. 1992. Gay Ideas: Outing and Other Controversies. Boston: The
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Morrison, Toni. 1988. Beloved. New York: Plume Penguin.
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Essentialism, Social Constructionism,

ABSTRACT. Social constructionism is the view that homosexuality

With the notable exception of John Boswell, most historians of sexual-

Raja Halwani is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The School of the Art

and ‘‘homosexuality’’ did not exist. As a thesis about epistemology, social

I. THREE FORMULATIONS OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM

to the nineteenth century, that people were aware of homosexuality.4 The

Aristophanes seems to be pulled in two directions here: the logical

the issue of definitions are logically distinct. It is possible, for example,

II. SOME HISTORIANS’ VIEWS ON THE ‘CONSTRUCTION’

as he abided by masculine gender conventions’’ (p. 13). Moreover, by the

‘‘He is a homosexual, but he is not gay’’ (whether the opposite is true is

homosexuality of the eighteenth century from the homosexuality that pre-

III. DAVID HALPERIN ON SEXUALITY

cally accompanies certain emotions, such as those of love, domination,

But although puzzling questions arise in regard to ancient Athens, they

ented institution, such as the American University of Beirut. The homo-

of the kind that motivates Halperin-like views. Before I move on to some

This testimony by Bartolomea was so shocking that the scribe’s handwrit-

sleep with men, or with women. It is possible to have a person who

IV. THE PLAUSIBILITY OF ESSENTIALISM

Given the historical evidence, and given the arguments, essentialism

has such-and-such a social configuration’’ is not evidence for the proposi-

V. THREE QUESTIONS FOR SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM

I believe, however, that we have good reasons to follow in the footsteps

the concept of what it is to be exploited and conquered by Europeans, although

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