ONABASULU MALE HOMOSEXUALITY: Cosmology, Affect and Prescribed Male Homosexual Activity among the Onabasulu of the Great Papuan Plateau

Oceania ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Ernst
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-130
Author(s):  
Ya Lan Chang

Should Singapore’s conservative, communitarian society continue to criminalise male homosexuality in the name of its common good? This is the fundamental question raised by Singapore’s continued retention of Section 377A of the Penal Code, a colonial-era law that criminalises only male homosexual conduct. With reference to Parliament’s reasons for retaining 377A and scholarly arguments against homosexuality, this article reconstructs, and debunks, the best philosophical case in favour of 377A; namely, that it should be conserved to sustain communitarian Singapore’s common good. Instead, the article argues that, because homosexuality is morally permissible, 377A does not satisfy the ‘goodness’ component of the common good and hence does not, and cannot, sustain communitarian Singapore’s common good. Rather, a communitarian approach to 377A, one based on an inclusive conception of communitarianism and an aggregative conception of the common good, would lead to its repeal and vindicate gay men’s right to equality.


2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-113
Author(s):  
Benedikt Wolf

Starting from existing scholarship on the relationship among masculinity, sexuality, and Jewishness in the German-language cultural sphere, this article analyzes the connection between antisemitism and homophobia in Otto Julius Bierbaum’s fin-de-siècle novel Prinz Kuckuck. By tracing the respective paths of the Jewish protagonist and his male homosexual counterpart, the article elaborates on the specific versions of Jewishness and male homosexuality that Bierbaum’s novel creates. It can be shown that the novel exposes both the Jewish and the homosexual character as deficient and harmful. The novel, however, does not restrict itself to mere parallelization but establishes an intrinsic connection between the Jewish and the male homosexual character by integrating homosexual codes into the Jew’s “parasitic” repertoire. The article concludes by offering an explanation of this connection that draws on Moishe Postone’s critique of modern antisemitism. Antisemitism and homophobia are shown as two complementary and intrinsically connected ways of dealing with two dimensions of the experience of modernity: capitalism and social contingency.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maarten van Ginkel

Male homosexual preference (MHP) is present in many human societies, making up a small but significant cohort. Because homosexual mate preferences are associated with lower fecundity, many evolutionary explanations have been advanced to account for the persistence of this trait. After reviewing a number of these hypotheses and finding room for additional explanations, we propose a new hypothesis that depends on the observed greater empathy and reduced hostility of men who express MHP. This gives them a central role in the performance of groups or teams (all male and mixed) where cooperation and intra-team coherence are at a premium. In this view, teams that contain men with MHP will outcompete teams without such men, other variables being similar. The links between personality traits and team performance do not require homosexual activity within the group. The hypothesis is supported by observations of the personality traits associated with MHP, such as increased agreeableness, which is linked to the literature on team cohesion and performance in sports and other kinds of teams and groups. This novel hypothesis could be examined through direct study of team performance. The proposed hypothesis may also have relevance to better performance among the diverse teams whose efficient performance is so important in modern society.


1969 ◽  
Vol 115 (529) ◽  
pp. 1433-1436 ◽  
Author(s):  
June H. Hopkins

This paper is an attempt to fill the void in objective investigation into the personality factors of lesbians. Although the subject of male homosexuality has been investigated exhaustively, it was not until relatively recently that studies concerned with lesbianism have been published, beginning with Armon (1960), then Bene (1965), Kaye et al. (1967) and Kenyon's series of articles in 1968. These papers have all attempted to take the subject out of the myth and psychoanalytic theory stages and bring it into the light, to determine whether the many theories, which at times have been based upon knowledge gleaned from male homosexual studies, have any objective, quantifiable basis. For example, one view stated by Caprio (1957) ‘that the vast majority of lesbians are emotionally unstable and neurotic …’ is a view commonly held as true almost by definition in psychiatric circles. It might be that this type of observation has been too subjectively made, on the basis of psychiatric interviews of otherwise neurotic women, who also may have been homosexually inclined.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maarten van Ginkel

Male homosexual preference (MHP) is present in many human societies. Because homosexual mate preferences are associated with lower fecundity, many evolutionary explanations have been advanced to account for the persistence of this trait, with varying degrees of success. After reviewing a number of these hypotheses and finding them lacking, we propose a new hypothesis that depends on the observed greater empathy and reduced hostility of men who express MHP. This gives them a central role in the performance of groups or teams of males and/or females where cooperation and intra-team coherence are at a premium. Teams that contain men with MHP will, we propose, outcompete teams without such men. The links we propose between personality traits and team performance do not require homosexual activity within the group. Our hypothesis is supported by observations of the personality traits associated with MHP, such as agreeableness, which we link to the literature on sports and other kinds of teams and groups. Our hypothesis could be examined through direct study of team performance, enabling the topic to move beyond evolutionary theorizing. We note too that although we set out to develop an additional account for the evolutionary maintenance of MHP, our hypothesis may also have relevance to better performance among the diverse teams whose efficient performance is so important in modern society.


2000 ◽  
Vol 11 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 431-432

There is no pressing social need for the criminalisation of and prosecution for truly private and consensual group male homosexual activity.


PMLA ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 122 (1) ◽  
pp. 344-347
Author(s):  
Garry Wotherspoon

Sydney is probably best known nowadays for its annual gay and lesbian mardi gras parade, beamed worldwide to millions of TV and Internet viewers, marking it as one of the iconic gay cities of the contemporary world. And while Sydney also had a reputation from its earliest convict-colony days as a city with high levels of homosexual activity—one early chief justice damned it as a “Sodom” in the South Pacific (UK, Parliament, 18 Apr. 1837, 518; question 505)—only in the last two or three decades have Sydney's homosexual or gay subcultures openly flourished and, perhaps grudgingly, been accepted. Indeed, from its earliest days until some years after World War II, Australia was in the grip of Victorian moralistic attitudes, only finally broken by the countercultural revolution of the 1960s and the social movements from the 1970s.


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