Constructing the Heterosexual, Homosexual, Bisexual System, by Jonathan Ned Katz

This feature explores the human production of the terms and concepts "heterosexual," "homosexual," and "bisexual," which are presented here as evidence of the construction of a historically specific social order or regime. This is the social-historical institution or system that divides people, identities, desires, acts, relationships, and groups into heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual with profound subjective, objective, psychological, social consequences. The chronology includes scholarly works dating to the 1980s, when historians began to develop what is now called "critical heterosexual history," analysis that interrogates the historically specific discourses and institutions that comprise the hetero, homo, bi system. First published on OutHistory in 2014. Last edit: April 15, 2021.

1901: William Alexander Dorland: "Heterosexuality"

In 1901, Dorland's Medical Dictionary, published in Philadelphia, defined "Heterosexuality" as:

Abnormal or perverted appetite toward the opposite sex.

Dorland's heterosexuality, a new sort of "appetite," was here clearly identified with an "opposite sex" hunger. But that craving was still aberrant. The heterosexual appetite was not, for the first time in print, spoken of as an entity: "heterosexuality."[1]

Dorland's calling heterosexuality "abnormal or perverted" is, according to the old Oxford English Dictionary's first Supplement (1933), a "misapplied" definition. But that OED, is mistaken. Dorland's is a perfectly legitimate understanding of heterosexuality according to a traditional procreative norm.[2]

====
Notes

1 Adapted from Jonathan Ned Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality (NY: Dutton, March 1995), page 86, notes 11 and 12 on page 223, citing William Alexander Dorland, The American Illustrated Medical Dictionary, second edition, (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1901), page 300.

2 James A. H. Murray, etc., eds. A Supplement to the Oxord English Dictionary (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1933), page 460.