Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 October 2019
“Sexuality” refers to “a person’s sexual identity in relation to the gender to which he or she is typically attracted” (OED def. 3). When considering Byron’s sexual identity, several interpretative problems arise. Although sexuality is now seen as a container for identity, it did not always have such powers. Philosopher Michel Foucault alleged a turn from sex to sexuality, which he suggests does not happen until the term “homosexuality” was coined in 1869, when as he put it, “the homosexual became a personage.” Before the homosexual, there was the sodomite, whose identity consolidated around the performance of nonnormative sex acts (acts outside of reproductive intercourse). In this view, these acts were not yet part of identity because the discipline of psychology had not yet provided concepts like dispositions and preferences to stitch acts to identity.
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