Lbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgenr Studi < Universy of California, Berkeley

Contents:

• LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR STUDI
• A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
• GAY RIGHTS

LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR STUDI

Jt as Women's Studi, for stance, is not only by, about, and for women, LGBT Studi is not only by, about, or for lbian, gay, bisexual, or transgenr people — clus all humany s purview. The field of Lbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgenr Studi both addrs the particulari of the morn forms of sexualy we ll lbian, gay, bisexual, and transgenr (forms of sexualy that have only recently been able to claim for themselv the right to ser amic study) and further addrs the phenomenon of sexualy self all s historil and cross-cultural diversy. Where homosexual activy or viance om tablished genr rol/drs was banned by law or tradnal ctom, such nmnatn might be munited through sensatnal public trials, exile, medil warngs, and language om the pulp.

However, throughout 150 years of homosexual social movements (roughly om the 1870s to today), lears and anizers stggled to addrs the very different ncerns and inty issu of gay men, women intifyg as lbians, and others intifyg as genr variant or nonbary. Whe, male, and Wtern activists whose groups and theori gaed leverage agast homophobia did not necsarily reprent the range of racial, class, and natnal inti plitg a broar LGBT agenda.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Most historians agree that there is evince of homosexual activy and same-sex love, whether such relatnships were accepted or persecuted, every documented culture.

Such eyewns acunts the era before other media were of urse riddled wh the bias of the (often) Wtern or Whe observer, and add to beliefs that homosexual practic were other, foreign, savage, a medil issue, or evince of a lower racial hierarchy. The European powers enforced their own crimal s agast what was lled sodomy the New World: the first known se of homosexual activy receivg a ath sentence North Ameri occurred 1566, when the Spanish executed a Frenchman Florida. Biblil terpretatn ma illegal for a woman to wear pants or a man to adopt female drs, and sensatnalized public trials warned agast “viants” but also ma such martyrs and hero popular: Joan of Arc is one example, and the chillg origs of the word “faggot” clu a stick of wood ed public burngs of gay men.

GAY RIGHTS

” In Wtern history, we fd ltle formal study of what was later lled homosexualy before the 19th century, beyond medil texts intifyg women wh large cloris as “tribas” and severe punishment s for male homosexual acts. Their wrgs were sympathetic to the ncept of a homosexual or bisexual orientatn occurrg naturally an intifiable segment of humankd, but the wrgs of Krafft-Ebg and Ellis also labeled a “third sex” generate and abnormal.