An Examen of “The Invention of ‘Heterosexuality’” Part Five.

{... cont’d from before}.

• [Mr. Ambrosino]: There’s been a lot of good work, both scholarly and popular, on the social construction of homosexual desire and identity{13}.

• [example only]: “The Social Construction of the Hetero-Sexualised Identity”. [end example].

• [Mr. Ambrosino]: As a result, few would bat an eye when there’s talk of “the rise of the homosexual”—indeed, most of us have learned that homosexual identity did come into existence at a specific point in human history{14}.

• “Philosophically, then, the homosexual passion of female for female, and of male for male, was upon exactly the same footing as the heterosexual passion of each sex for its opposite. Greek logic admitted the homosexual female to equal rights with the homosexual male, and both to the same natural freedom as heterosexual individuals of either species. Although this was the position assumed by philosophers; Lesbian passion, as the Greeks called it, never obtained the same social sanction as boy love. It is significant that Greek mythology offers no legends of the goddesses parallel to those which consecrated paiderastia {= ‘paederasty’; homosexual interrelations between men and boys} among the male deities. (...elided...). Consequently, while the Greeks utilised and ennobled boy-love, they left Lesbian love to follow the same course of degeneracy as it pursues in modern times. (...elided...). There is an important passage in the Amores of Lucien which proves that the Greeks felt an abhorrence of sexual inversion among women similar to that which moderns feel for its manifestation among men. Charicles, who supports the cause of normal heterosexual passion, argues this wise:

▪ ‘If you concede homosexual love to males, you must in justice grant the same to females; you will have to sanction intercourse between them; monstrous instruments of lust {e.g., ‘dildos’} will have to be permitted, in order that their sexual congress may be carried out; that obscene vocable, tribad {= ‘sapphist’, ‘lesbian’}, which so rarely offends our ears—I blush to utter it—will become rampant, and Philaenis will spread androgynous orgies throughout our harems’.

What these monstrous instruments of lust were may be gathered from the sixth mime of Herodas, where one of them is described in detail...”. [curly-bracketed insert added]~ (pp. 70-72, “A Problem in Greek Ethics: Being An Enquiry into the Phenomenon of Sexual Inversion, Addressed Especially to Medical Psychologists and Jurists” by John Addington Symonds, written: 1875; printed privately: 1883; first published by The Areopagitiga Society, London, 1908).

An enterprising author of literary and cultural history, Dr. Rictor Norton, ʙᴀ, ᴘʜᴅ, whose 1972 doctoral dissertation was on same-sex sexual themes in English Renaissance literature, has assembled a representative collection of Mr. Symonds writings.

To continue: the noun ‘catamite’, a 16th century English name for a sodomitical youth, stems from the Latin Catamītus, from the Etruscan Catmite, from the Greek Ganumēdēs who, in Greek Mythology, was the Trojan youth ‘Ganymede’, a boy of great beauty whom the Greek god Zeus carried away to sodomise—to be his catamite—and to be cupbearer to the Immortals.

Therefore to say that “homosexual identity” came into existence at a specific point in human history is akin to saying “sodomitical identity” and “catamitical identity” came into existence at a specific point in human prehistory (i.e., in the timeless realm of the Ancient Greek Immortals).

Thus, regardless of what the author of this ʙʙᴄ-hosted essay claims “most of us have learned” vis-à-vis whatever their “specific point in human history” might be, the roots of the infecundous same-sex sexual identity, by whatever name, abide beyond even legendary prehistory.

(End Editorial Note).

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{... cont’d from before}.

• [Mr. Ambrosino]: What we’re not taught, though, is that a similar phenomenon brought heterosexuality into its existence {15}.

• [Mr. Ambrosino]: “There’s been a lot of good work, both scholarly and popular, on the social construction of homosexual desire and identity. As a result, few would bat an eye when there’s talk of “the rise of the homosexual”—indeed, most of us have learned that homosexual identity did come into existence at a specific point in human history. What we’re not taught, though, is that *a similar phenomenon* brought heterosexuality into its existence”. [emphasis added].

Therefore, it is vital for comprehension to be aware of what the words “a similar phenomenon brought heterosexuality into its existence” are really conveying ... to wit: that a similar phenomenon brought “the concept of heterosexuality as an identity” into its existence (and not fecund other-sex sexuality in and of itself). Viz.:

• [Mr. Ambrosino]: There are many reasons for this educational omission, including religious bias and other types of homophobia{16}.

It is somewhat akin to opining that religious bias and other types of ...err... of dread or hatred of women (for instance) is among many reasons for some-such educational omission regarding humans as the central element of the universe. For example:

• [example only]: “What we’re not taught, though, is that a similar phenomenon brought anthropocentrism into its existence. There are many reasons for this educational omission, including religious bias and other types of gynophobia”.[end example].

Thus the manner in which the line “religious bias and other types of gynophobia” is phrased in the above illustrative example conveys the impression, demonstrably, that “gynophobia” is what constitutes “religious bias” in and of itself, period (which is intentionally such a stretch as to be highly instructive).

Second, and to again clarify the terms, the aspirant arguer is opining that among those many as-yet unspecified reasons why the comparable social construction of “the concept of heterosexuality as an identity” is not taught, in the worldwide education systems, include various types of “unreasoning fear of or antipathy toward” persons of an infecundous same-sex sexual persuasion and infecund same-sex sexuality itself—or any dictionary definition of the ilk—on the part of the many and various curricular bureaucrats and pedagogues responsible for curriculum governance in each and every one of the 193+ nations on the planet.

And in this regard it is pertinent to note how the earlier-quoted “Online Etymology Dictionary” reports noun-usage of the adjective “heterosexual” as being “recorded from 1920, but not in common use until 1960s” (i.e., self-identifying and/or identifying others of that ilk as “heterosexual” is relatively recent) whereas noun-usage of the adjective “homosexual” was already common “by 1895” (i.e., three years after its 1892 English debut). Viz.:

• heterosexual (adj.): 1892, in C. G. Craddock’s translation of Krafft-Ebbing’s “Psychopathia Sexualis”, a hybrid; from hetero-, ‘other’, ‘different’ + sexual. *The noun is recorded from 1920, but not in common use until 1960s*. Colloquial shortening hetero is attested from 1933. [emphasis added]. ~ (Online Etymology Dictionary).

• homosexual (n.): “homosexual person”, *by 1895, from homosexual (adj.), 1892*. In technical use, either male or female; but in non-technical use almost always male. Slang shortened form homo attested by 1929. [emphasis added]. ~ (Online Etymology Dictionary).

Therefore, the reason why the social construction of “the concept of heterosexuality as an identity” is not taught in the mandatory education systems worldwide is—apart from the sociological theory-of-knowledge called social constructionism being of no substantive utility (hence having no efficacious function in everyday reality)—because the vast majority of the population are indifferent to any such identity.

• [Mr. Ambrosino]: But heterosexuality has not always “just been there”{18}.

As the author of this ʙʙᴄ-hosted essay is convinced that an estimated 2.1 billion ‘abnormal perverts’[†]—(the twentieth-century descendents of those 1.19 billion “heterosexuals” springing feyly into existence[‡] ex nihilo on May 6, 1868, who had morphed into ‘pathological passionates’[§] in 1923, remember, instead of being transformed into ‘loving desirers’ back in 1915)—did not become ‘passional manifesters’ of normal sexuality[⁑] until 1934 it remains to be seen just how the aspirant arguer weaves that rainbow-hued factoid into the increasingly arbitrary timeline of their ‘queer-centric’ narrative as this second section unfolds.

[†][Mr. Ambrosino]: The 1901 Dorland’s Medical Dictionary defined heterosexuality as an “*abnormal or perverted* appetite toward the opposite sex”. [emphasis added].

[‡][Mr. Ambrosino]: “Prior to 1868, *there were no heterosexuals*”, writes Hanne Blank. Neither were there homosexuals. [emphasis added].

[§][Mr. Ambrosino]: More than two decades later, in 1923, Merriam Webster’s dictionary similarly defined heterosexuality as “*morbid sexual passion* for one of the opposite sex”. [emphasis added].

[⁑][Mr. Ambrosino]: It wasn’t until 1934 that heterosexuality was graced with the meaning we’re familiar with today: “*manifestation of sexual passion* for one of the opposite sex; normal sexuality”. [emphasis added].

(There is, of course, always the possibility that the author of this ʙʙᴄ-hosted essay is barking mad).

(End Editorial Note).

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{... cont’d from before}.

• [Mr. Ambrosino]: The first rebuttal to the claim that heterosexuality was invented usually involves an appeal to reproduction: it seems obvious that different-genital intercourse has existed for as long as humans have been around—indeed, we wouldn’t have survived this long without it. But this rebuttal assumes that heterosexuality is the same thing as reproductive intercourse{21}. It isn’t.

{21}Editorial Note: First, a minor point of order, as the aspirant arguer has evidentially become entangled in their own discombobulatory declamations insofar as a first rebuttal to the claim that “heterosexuality” as an identity[*] was invented would not “usually” involve an appeal to reproduction because—as sexualised socio-cultural identities are “usually” those of peoples with an infecundous same-sex sexual orientation—it is those phantasm’s non-reproductive nature which “usually” defines them.

[*][Mr. Ambrosino]: While heterosexual sex is clearly as old as humanity, the concept of *heterosexuality as an identity* is a very recent invention. (Credit: Getty Images). [emphasis added].

Second, a major point of order, because when spelled-out as per the above image-caption (as an illustrative example only) the first-rebuttal paragraph carries the implication it is sexualised socio-cultural identities—psychosexual presentations to the mind (as in mental representations in the form of ideas or images)—who are engaging in the “reproductive intercourse” specifically mentioned. Viz.:

• [example only]: “The first rebuttal to the claim that heterosexuality *as an identity* was invented usually involves an appeal to reproduction (...). But this rebuttal assumes that heterosexuality as an identity *is the same thing* as reproductive intercourse. It isn’t”. [end example].

Upon this closer inspection it can be seen that it matters not one jot whether the aspirant arguer agreed or disagreed with what “seems obvious” anyway—or with why it “seems obvious” even—as all the author of this ʙʙᴄ-hosted essay is focussed on here is making an assertion about what this thus-far undefined “heterosexuality” is not (vide: “It isn’t” above).

In fact, it would have been far simpler (and demonstrative of authorial integrity) to write that opening paragraph for this second section of the narrative thisaway (for example):

• [example only]: “The first rebuttal to the claim that heterosexuality was invented usually involves the assumption that heterosexuality is the same thing as reproductive intercourse. It isn’t”. [end example].

As the aspirant arguer’s “first rebuttal” does not make that assumption—they represented it simply as being “an appeal to reproduction” per se—and as the fecundous other-sex sexual predisposition of the vast majority of the men and women on the planet is undeniably the sine qua non of the perpetuation of the species (as it is self-evident that were it not for fecund other-sex sexuality humankind would be neither present nor having futurition), just what is it, then, the aspirant arguer is in denial of?

By hijacking the well-known and oft-used term “sexual intercourse” (i.e., coition, coitus, copulation) with that ‘queer-centric’ pedanticism “reproductive intercourse” the author of this ʙʙᴄ-hosted essay is specifically denying that fecund other-sex sexuality is “the same thing” as an intromissive penile-vaginal act of spermatozoic fertilisation of the ovum (to meet pedanticism with didacticism so as to expose the word-gamesmanship).

To explain: as coitus incurring impregnation (i.e., “reproductive intercourse” in ‘queer-centric’ propaganda) occurs in affluent industrialised societies on average only about twice per lifetime or less, and, even then, artificial insemination or in vitro fertilisation is sometimes resorted to (albeit “the slim minority”[‡] though)—and as contraception implies coition sans impregnation (a.k.a. “non-procreative” copulation, in ‘queer-centric’ “binary” jargon, as employed much further below[§] by the aspirant arguer)—it is obvious the author of this ʙʙᴄ-hosted essay is resorting to ‘queer-centric’ word-games in order to avoid actually addressing the appeal-to-reproduction rebuttal of the vacuous claim that fecund other-sex sexuality was invented.

[‡][Mr. Ambrosino]: “In 2013, more than 63,000 babies were conceived via IVF. In fact, more than five million children have been born through assisted reproductive technologies. Granted, this number still keeps such reproduction in *the slim minority*, but all technological advances start out with the numbers against them. Socially, too, heterosexuality is losing its ”high ground“, as it were...”. [emphasis added]. ~ (from “The Future of Heterosexuality”; the fourth section of this ʙʙᴄ-hosted essay).

[§][Mr. Ambrosino]: “In the Western world, long before sex acts were separated into the categories hetero/homo, there was a different ruling *binary*: procreative or *non-procreative*. The Bible, for instance, condemns homosexual intercourse for the same reason it condemns masturbation: because life-bearing seed is spilled in the act...”. [emphases added].~ (from “When Heterosexuality was Abnormal”; the second section of this ʙʙᴄ-hosted essay).

A possible clue lies much further below (already-quoted above). Viz.:

• [Mr. Ambrosino]: The Bible, for instance, condemns *homosexual intercourse* for the same reason...” [emphasis added].

As the term “sexual intercourse” specifically refers to the copulatory act whereby “the man’s penis is inserted into the woman’s vagina and excited until orgasm and ejaculation occur” then this presumptuous affixation of the infecundous same-sex sexual prefix “homo-” to the fecundous other-sex sexual term “sexual intercourse” (as in their ‘homo-misappropriation’ of a traditional penile-vaginal term) is a classic example of the shabby appeal word-gamesmanship has to whomsoever it entices into its snares.

Put explicitly: it is a classic example of ‘queer-centric’ misappropriation of fecundous other-sex sexual terminology because, no matter how many times a female of an infecundous same-sex sexual persuasion becomes “excited until orgasm” she never can have “ejaculation occur” in her penile substitute (e.g. dildo or a surgically-confected inflatable penial facsimile)—nor any gametic deposition inside her cohort’s vagina (let alone have any haploidic fusion potentiality) of course—and no matter how many times any male of an infecundous same-sex sexual persuasion becomes “excited until orgasm and ejaculation occurs”, complete with its gametic deposition inside his cohort’s vaginal substitute (e.g. rectum or rima oris), that surrogate depository cannot ever be a vulvouterine matrix (let alone have any haploidic fusion potentiality).

To spell it out in no uncertain terms, those who are enticed into a word-games appropriation of fecundous other-sex sexual terminology (as per the ‘homo-sexual intercourse’ arrogation of a traditional penile-vaginal term) can befool themselves that their impersonation of complemental male-female sexual union is indeed “sexual intercourse” (a.k.a. intromissive penile-vaginal coition)—unto the moon turning blue even—yet any such imposturage is not and never was nor ever will be “sexual intercourse” (a.k.a. complemental male-female sexual union) because the non-complemental and, hence, forever-barren male-male and female-female imitative sex acts are *caricatural* by their very nature as the perpetuation of the species is exclusively the province of fecund other-sex sexuality—its raison d’être (i.e., sole or ultimate purpose; lit. ‘reason to be’) is purely of the procreative, propagative, generative kind—and in which respect infecund same-sex sexuality is an evolutionary dead-end.

It is the same word-games appropriation of fecundous other-sex sexual terminology as is being played-out of late over the time-honoured and august institution of nuptials (a.k.a. connubiality or conjugality) whereby the ages-old “in wedlock” signifier by any name—designating the complemental male-female marital state (a pre-historical matrimonial institution predating even the most primeval society[*] as the regularisation and normalisation of cohabitation is the genesis of any such primitive societal ordering)—is in the process of having the antipodean prefix ‘same-sex’ appended to the word ‘marriage’ as normative usage such as to have the otherwise unnecessary ‘other-sex’ qualifier likewise prefixed, eventually, for differentiation purposes (just as the aspirant arguer’s “different-genital” and “different-sex”[†] displacements of the long-established qualifier “sexual” intrinsic to the traditional penile-vaginal term “sexual intercourse” presages an otherwise unnecessary prefixal appendance of the ‘different-genital’ and ‘different-sex’ qualifiers to the word ‘marriage’ in the not-too-distant future were their shabby ‘queer-centric’ misappropriation ever to gain some wheels).

[*]The complemental male-female nuptial union—a pre-historical institution predating even the most primeval society as the regularisation and normalisation of cohabitation is the genesis of any such primitive societal ordering—was addressed at length in 1877 by the pioneering anthropologist and social theorist Mr. Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) in his voluminous five-hundred-and-seventy-page “Ancient Society” study. He was acutely aware of how the earliest interactions between the eighteenth-century “civilised” British and the stone-aged “savages” living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle on the land-mass then-latterly known as ‘Terra Australis Incognita’ afforded a rare glimpse into the eolithic forebears everybody currently alive has as their remotest ancestors.

In similar vein the clarifier and critic currently typing-out these words has long been acutely aware of civilisation’s primal genesis and has oft-times stressed how man-woman sexuality and intimacy is the genesis of family and thus *the very core of civilisation itself*. (e.g., 28 February, 2016; 15 July, 2015; 23 June, 2013; 28 February, 2012; 05 January 2010; 11 December, 2009; 13 November 2009).

[†][Mr. Ambrosino]: “Debates about sexual orientation have tended to focus on a badly defined concept of “nature”. Because *different sex intercourse* generally results in the propagation of the species, we award it a special moral status. (...elided...). Until this point in our Earth’s history, the human species has been furthered by *different-sex reproductive intercourse*. About a century ago, we attached specific meanings to this kind of intercourse, partly because we wanted to encourage it. But our world is very different now than what it was...”. [emphases added]. ~ (from “The Future of Heterosexuality”; the fourth section of this ʙʙᴄ-hosted essay).

To proceed: conveniently overlooked, however, is how “heterosexuality” itself (publicly categorised as “the hetero-sexual instinct” in that specialist volume, “Psychopathia Sexualis”, of November 1892)—the very experiencing of the fecundous other-sex sexual predisposition as a consistent state or condition—is the instinctive attraction to, and of, the complementary other sex in all matters pertaining to connubiality or conjugality, and not just coition (which may or may not be fructuous for whatever reason), as is exemplified by each and every aspect relating to the conjugal or connubial ménage which, by virtue of the instinctive bonding-&-nesting nature of the aforesaid “hetero-sexual instinct”, includes the immanency and intimacy of complemental togetherness and closeness, and, thusly, the complementary companionship and conviviality which ensues upon sharing adulthood comprehensively with the complemental other sex, through all the vicissitudes of life, and thereby conjointly establishing the stable and secure complementarity—complete with the dependable presence of instinctively nurturing-&-nourishing and protecting-&-providing role-models of both sexes—so essential for wholesomely raising a family.

By framing their ‘queer-centric’ narrative so narrowly (not to forget first basing it, and erroneously at that, upon anomalous and/or aberrant dictionary definitions) as to selectively have their “first rebuttal” equate fecund other-sex sexuality solely with the act of “reproductive” copulation the aspirant arguer is evidentially in utter denial of the instinctive nature of fecund other-sex sexuality (in total denial of the very raison d’être of fecund other-sex sexuality).

• [Mr. Ambrosino]: “Sex has no history”, writes queer theorist David Halperin at the University of Michigan, because it’s “grounded in the functioning of the body”. Sexuality, on the other hand, precisely because it’s a “cultural production”{22}, does have a history. In other words, while sex is something that appears hardwired into most species, the naming and categorising of those acts, and those who practise those acts, is a historical phenomenon, and can and should be studied as such.

• “Sex has no history. It is a natural fact, grounded in the functioning of the body, and, as such, it lies outside of history and culture. Sexuality, by contrast, does not properly refer to some aspect or attribute of bodies. Unlike sex, sexuality is a cultural production: it represents the appropriation of the human body and of its physiological capacities by an ideological discourse. Sexuality is not a somatic fact; it is a cultural effect. Sexuality, then, does have a history—though (as I shall argue) not a very long one.

To say that, of course, is *not* to state the obvious—despite *the tone of assurance* with which I just said it—but to advance a controversial, suspiciously fashionable, and, perhaps, a strongly counter-intuitive *claim*. The plausibility of such a claim might seem to rest on nothing more substantial than *the prestige of the brilliant, pioneering, but largely theoretical work of the late French philosopher Michel Foucault*. According to Foucault, sexuality is not a thing, a natural fact, a fixed and immovable element in the eternal grammar of human subjectivity, but that “set of effects produced in bodies, behaviours, and social relations by a certain deployment” of “a complex political technology...”. [emphases added]. ~ (pp. 257-258, “Is There a History of Sexuality?” by David M. Halperin; “History and Theory”, Vol. 28, No. 3; Oct. 1989, pp. 257-274).

And the reason why it is bull is because, quite simply, as sexuality does indeed “properly refer to some aspect or attribute of bodies” just like sex does (i.e., just like being male or female does)—inasmuch sexuality refers, as a matter-of-course, to the sexual aspect of bodies—then it, too, “has no history” by virtue of being a natural fact, grounded in the sexual functioning of the body and, as such, lying “outside of history and culture” (to couch such a foregone conclusion in accordance with the above rather eccentric phraseology).

Therefore—and because the aspirant arguer, drawn into legerdemain like a moth to the flame by witlessly absorbing the bull a 37-year-old ‘queer-centric’ theorist declaimed nearly thirty years ago, conjures up an historical-unhistorical distinction betwixt “sexuality” and “sex” out of thin air, baldly declaring the former to have a history despite the latter having none, on an ipse dixit premise that the former is “precisely” a societal product (“cultural production” = ‘social construction’)—this is obviously the apposite moment to point out that sexuality (i.e., sexual + -ity) is the state or condition of being sexual and that to be sexual (i.e., sexu[s] + -al) is to be having the form or character of sex. Viz.:

• sexual (adj.): 1. of or pertaining to sex; 2. occurring between or involving the sexes; [e.g.]: “sexual relations”; 3. having sexual organs, or reproducing by processes involving both sexes; (adv.): sexually. [1645-55; from Late Latin sexuālis = Latin sexu[s], ‘sex’ + -ālis, from Latin -āle (sing.), nominalised neuter of -ālis, ‘-al’, a suffix with the general sense “of the kind of”, pertaining to, *having the form or character of that named by the stem*, occurring in loanwords from Latin; [e.g.]: “autumnal”; “natural”; “pastoral”, and productive in English on the Latin model, usu. with bases of Latin origin; [e.g.]: “accidental”; “seasonal”; “tribal”]. [emphasis added]. ~ (Webster’s College Dictionary).

Put succinctly: sexuality is a state or condition having the form or character of sex.

What is mind-bogglingly implicit in this “social constructionist” psychosexuality, then, is that “sexuality” itself—a state or condition having the form or character of unhistorical “sex” mind you—is (thaumaturgically) a historical state or condition “precisely” because that state or condition having the form or character of unhistorical “sex” is (phantasmagorically) “a cultural production” wrought by the (incantatory) “naming and categorising those acts and those who practise those acts” which are grounded in the functioning of the body.

Bedazzled by the abracadabra power of word-magic to increate and proliferate and present to the mind an alluring array of wraithlike identities and/or sexualities, of every alphabetical dial-a-definition description imaginable, more than a few entrepreneurial social constructionists are, perforce, driven to similarly razzle-dazzle their listeners and readers.

And the underlying motive fuelling this phantasmagorical fad—this latest psychosexual craze of affecting a presentation to the mind, in the form of an idea or image, of a state or condition actually having the character or form of unhistorical sex (i.e., grammatically correct sexuality), yet all the while thaumaturgically imprinting itself as an historical sexuality (i.e., politically correct sexuality), regardless—is unintentionally revealed in the next paragraph.

(End Editorial Note).

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{... cont’d from before}.

• [Mr. Ambrosino]: Or put another way: there have always been sexual instincts throughout the animal world (sex). But at a specific point in time, humans attached meaning to these instincts (sexuality). When humans talk about heterosexuality, we’re talking about the second thing{23}.

To proceed: so as to keep track of the sequence leading up to the aspirant arguer’s absurd definition, of what “heterosexuality” is, as they laid-out so helpfully above—(to wit: some unstipulated meaning attached to sexual instincts, by the entire human race (as in “humans” plural as above), on a specific but unnamed and undated day)—the following edited text is a reminder of the aspirant arguer’s flat denial, of what it is not, which resulted in their laying-out what it is to them (i.e., to their imaginative faculty). Viz.:

• [Mr. Ambrosino]: “The first rebuttal to the claim that heterosexuality was invented usually involves an appeal to reproduction: (...elided...). But this rebuttal assumes that heterosexuality is the same thing as reproductive intercourse. *It isn’t*”. [emphasis added].

As almost anything can be posited as ‘true’—bearing in mind how ‘truthiness’ abounds in the mentalistically-based phantasmagorical world of ‘queer-centric’ social constructionists (a creative mind-space where ‘truths’ not only trump facts but where facts are ‘truths’ to be dissed at will, or even whim, at times)—those sentences so helpfully defining what “heterosexuality” is, to the author of this ʙʙᴄ-hosted essay, do require considerable parsing (a.k.a. unpacking), in order to adequately ascertain just what they are “talking about” above, insofar as what is really being conveyed is as follows:

When “homosexual” humans (as per the switchover to “we’re” above) talk about “heterosexuality” what they’re talking about is the meaning “homosexuals” attach to the sexual instincts throughout the animal world (sex) because at a specific point in time “homosexuals” attached ‘queer-centric’ meaning to these instincts (‘queer-centric’ sexuality) so when “homosexuals” talk about “heterosexuality” what they’re talking about is “the second thing” (i.e., a ‘queer-centric’ view of “heterosexuality”).

And it is this “second thing” thusly referred to—an automorphic version of “heterosexuality” which is, in effect, an internalised end-product of an atavistically defensive ‘queer-centric’ Weltanschauung (a.k.a. their ancestrally beleaguered same-sex oriented worldview)—which is problematic to more than just a few clamorous vocalists and vociferous activists, from that tiny minority of the population, and not fecund other-sex sexuality per se (i.e., as it actually is, in and of itself, in everyday reality) without which humankind would be neither present nor having futurity.

It is for self-centric reasons, then, that the author of this ʙʙᴄ-hosted essay, quite understandably yet inexcusably, has their agenda whereby fecund other-sex sexuality “as a way of life” [*] may well die out through public re-educational tracts such as this unscholarly travesty—this “BBC Best of 2017” pick—which is presently in the process of being relentlessly critiqued in these editorial notes by a septuagenarian widower of ‘Fair Albion’ parentage (both matrilineal and patrilineal), nowadays retired and living on a veteran’s pension in a self-built houseboat on a large river-system meandering through the rain-forested countryside, on the eastern seaboard of an affluent industrialised and technologised nation, in a paradisaical sub-tropical wonderland and—due to blessedly being of the fecundous other-sex sexual predisposition—procreant by sequential generational descent (via hereditably passing-on, intact, those fecund other-sex sexual instincts) of four offspring and nigh-on a score of grandchildren, plus, by the latest count, upwards of a dozen great-grandchildren.

[*]The following dénouement is copied & pasted, directly from the concluding paragraph of this ʙʙᴄ-hosted essay, for contemporaneous comprehension. Viz.:

• [Mr. Ambrosino]: “Men and women will continue to have different-genital sex {i.e., coitus, coition, copulation} with each other until the human species is no more. But heterosexuality—as a social marker, *as a way of life*, as an identity—may well die out long before then”. [emphasis added].

The dearth of appreciation for the very fecundity which is the raison d’être of other-sex sexuality—noticeably lacking all throughout this self-centred and other-blaming queer-centric’ essay—provides a sobering insight into what impelled peoples of the fecundous other-sex sexual predisposition down through ages (the more-intolerant eras) to deal with persons of an infecundous same-sex sexual persuasion so severely.

(End Editorial Note).

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{... cont’d from before}.

• [Mr. Ambrosino]: Hanne Blank offers a helpful way into this discussion in her book “Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality” with an analogy from natural history. In 2007, the International Institute for Species Exploration listed the fish Electrolux addisoni as one of the year’s “top 10 new species”. But of course, the species didn’t suddenly spring into existence 10 years ago—that’s just when it was discovered and scientifically named. As Blank concludes: “Written documentation of a particular kind, by an authority figure of a particular kind, was what turned Electrolux from a thing that just was ... into a thing that was known”{24}.

But, then again, what can be expected from someone who does not even comprehend that “sex and gender really were exactly the same”[*] for more than half a millennia (although such usage had essentially remained the preserve of grammarians). In 1955, however, the word ‘gender’ was press-ganged by the monstrous Dr. John William Money (1921-2006) for an entirely different rôle (which gender feminists, as distinct from equity feminists, seized upon in the 1970s when ‘feminist theory’ took up his concept of a distinction between biological sex and the social construct of gender)

[*][Ms. Hanne Blank]: “The world we live in desperately wants there to be only two sexes and only two genders that go along with in the strictest lockstep. In fact, sex and gender should, in their scheme of things, be virtually identical, so much so that they can print the word ”gender“ on a form when what they really mean is ”sex“ and expect everyone to blithely mark “F” or “M” in the box *as if sex and gender really were exactly the same*...”. [emphasis added]. ~ (from “Tits of Clay: Genderphilia and Changing the World, One Lipstick at a Time” by Hanne Blank; August 11, 2006; Keynote Speech, Femme 2006 Conference San Francisco, California).

Some fourteen years ago Ms. Hanne Blank was upfront about her doctoral dissertation proposals being twice rejected, and about her career trajectory thereafter, in an extensive review article promoting her then-latest book Unruly Appetites in the 2003 “Baltimore City Paper Online”. Viz.:

The Naughty Professor.

Writer of Smut and Champion of Porn, Hanne Blank is Baltimore’s Grande Dame of Erotica.

By Lizzie Skurnick; February 18, 2003.

Pornography has historically been the stuff of plain brown wrappers and back-alley bookstores—books thumbed through and passed around as furtively as a joint. But since “erotica” has entered the storied realms of Barnes & Noble and the Book-of-the-Month Club, pornographers have gotten something of a makeover, too. Hanne Blank, Baltimore transplant, self-described publisher of “veritable bushels of smut”, and author of the recently published “Unruly Appetites” from Seal Press, is also a classically trained singer and university instructor who bears the imprimatur of the New England Conservatory, Tanglewood, and Brandeis University, Massachusetts, where she sang Schubert Lieder {=‘Songs for voice & piano’} while leading seminars on sex in Boston.

“People are always trying to figure out how I got into sex work from being an opera singer”, she explains. “And really, they’re not all that different”.

Blank has been something of a freelance sexologist since grade school. Raised by a middle-school teacher and an anthropologist with a subscription to Playboy, she was paging through Hugh Hefner’s rag by the age of 5. (...elided...). Out as bisexual at 15 and writing her first erotic stories at 17, Blank refused to hide any of her more controversial pursuits, publishing Zaftig!, a zine {=short for ‘magazine’; an inexpensively produced, self-published, underground publication} about sex and people of size, at the same time that her doctoral committee at Brandeis was busily rejecting her two dissertation proposals—one, a study of women with low voices, the other, a biography of Sophie Tucker. (“Musicology only discovered feminism in, like, 1986”, Blank comments wryly). “I got really tired really early on trying to make nice with people who were never going to approve of me”, Blank explains. “And when you grow up fat, smart, Jewish, and female, everything else is kind of gravy”.

The same maverick streak that led her to announce herself as a “fat, kinky, trannie-chasing Jew” at a fuddy-duddy academic conference garnered her a first book deal—but not from her horrified colleagues. Greenery Press, attracted by Zaftig! and Blank’s popular seminars in Boston, brought out “Big Big Love: A Sourcebook for People of Size and Those Who Love Them” when Blank was turning 30. She has since edited/ authored five other works, including “Shameless: Women’s Intimate Erotica” (Seal Press) and “Best Transgender Erotica” (Circlet Press, with Raven Kaldera). (...elided...). In the is-porn-good-for-us-or-bad-for-us debates, Blank coolly abstains, refusing to put her work either under the “porn” or “erotica” moniker: “I like to use the word smut because it doesn’t let people hide. As far as I can tell, erotica is smut you like, and porn is smut you don’t like”. She also dismisses those that would link her work to the Paris Review over Penthouse.

“A lot of people like to say, ‘Oh, but it’s literary erotica!’ I don’t give a fuck if it’s floor wax. What do you use it for? What does it do for you?” (...elided...). Literary erotica is a veritable drop in the vast ocean of mass-market pornography, and whether the porn is “erotica” or merely formulaic—a dead body and a smoking gun replaced by a hot body and a smoke—there’s no guarantee that it can change people’s lives.

But Blank is hopeful. “Part of the game in writing erotica is to produce something that people will find sexy, just like part of writing horror stories is to produce something that will scare people—it is genre fiction, let’s face facts”, she says. “But there’s no reason genre fiction can’t be insightful and useful at the same time”.

(End Editorial Note).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

{... cont’d from before}.

(NB.: The reader has to also pretend, of course, that the fecundous other-sex sexual predisposition of those 1.5 billion humans was not already known as normal sexual instinct or natural sexual instinct, or various other terms of that ilk, and that an infecundous same-sex sexual persuasion of those 15 million humans was not already known as abnormal sexual instinct or unnatural sexual instinct, or various other terms of that ilk, because the latter terms, although biologically correct, are not politically correct).

(End Editorial Note).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

{... cont’d from before}.

• [Mr. Ambrosino]: “Prior to 1868, there were no heterosexuals”, writes Hanne Blank. Neither were there homosexuals{26}.

{26}Editorial Note: The pivotal event for ‘queer-centric’ vocalists and activists nigh-on 150 years ago, in “1868” in Berlin, was Herr Károly Mária Kertbeny writing a private letter, dated May 6, 1868, to Herr Karl Heinrich Ulrichs containing the hybrid word “Homosexuale” as a replacement for the then-prevalent words sodomy, sodomite and/or sodomist (plus sodomitical)—which he coined via the affixation of the prefix homo- (Greek ὁμός, ‘same’, ‘identical’) to the adjective sexual (Late Latin sexuālis from Latin sexus, ‘sex’ + -ālis, ‘-al’)—and the similarly hybrid word “Heterosexuale” which he had derived via the affixation of the prefix hetero- (Greek ἕτερος, ‘other’, ‘different’) to the same Late-Latin adjective.

To declare, ex cathedra (as befits “Baltimore’s Grande Dame of Erotica” as it were), that “there were no heterosexuals” and that “neither were there homosexuals” prior to 1868—that is, prior to the sixth day of the month of May in that year, of course, at some indeterminate hour and minute—is to endow the written word with miraculous creative and destructive powers insofar as the very moment Herr Kertbeny put his ink-dipped pen to paper (and in a private letter at that) an estimated 1.19 billion “heterosexuals” and approximately 12 million “homosexuals” sprang ex nihilo into existence, all around the globe, thereby requiring the 1.2 billion humans who were already alive, all over the planet, to simultaneously plunge ad nihil out of existence (despite 1.19 billion of them being of the fecundous other-sex sexual predisposition and the other 15 million being of an infecundous same-sex sexual persuasion).

{29}Editorial Note: It would appear, then, that those miraculous creative and destructive powers Herr Kertbeny was endowed with, when putting his ink-dipped pen to paper on that fateful day, did not extend to autoeroticists and bestialists else the aspirant arguer would surely have written something like the following lines (for example). Viz.:

• [example only]: ‘Prior to 1815-25, there were no bisexuals. Neither were there transsexuals prior to 1955-60’. [end example].

heterosexualem Fühlen (heterosexual feeling)
heterosexualer (heterosexual)
heterosexuale Empfindung (heterosexual feeling)
heterosexualen Gefühle (heterosexual feelings)
heterosexual empfindet (feels heterosexual)
heterosexualen Sinne (heterosexual sense)
heterosexuale Empfindung (heterosexual feeling)
heterosexualem Verkehr (heterosexual intercourse)
heterosexuale Empfindung (heterosexual feeling)
heterosexuale Empfindung (heterosexual feeling)
heterosexuale Empfindung (heterosexual feeling)
heterosexuale Empfindung (heterosexual feeling)
heterosexualen Liebe (heterosexual love)
heterosexualer Gefühlsweise (heterosexual feeling)
heterosexualen Liebe (heterosexual love)