History of bisexuality

The history of bisexuality concerns the history of the bisexual sexual orientation. Ancient and medieval history of bisexuality, when the term did not exist as such, consists of anecdotes of sexual behaviour and relationships between people of the same and different sexes. A modern definition of bisexuality began to take shape in the mid-19th century within three interconnected domains of knowledge: biology, psychology and sexuality. In modern Western culture, the term bisexual was first defined in a binary approach as a person with romantic or sexual attraction to both men and women. The term bisexual is defined later in the 20th century (for example by Robyn Ochs) as a person who is sexually and/or romantically attracted to both males and females,^[1][2][3] or as a person who is sexually and/or romantically attracted to people regardless of sex or gender identity, which is sometimes termed pansexuality.^[4][5][6]

In English the word was first used in 1892 by American neurologist Charles Gilbert Chaddock when he kept the term from the source material in his translation the seventh edition of German psychologist Krafft-Ebing's book Psychopathia Sexualis. Richard von Krafft-Ebing was the first to use the word bisexual with the meaning of having both heterosexual and homosexual attractions or, in lay terms, attraction to both men and women. Prior to Krafft-Ebing, bisexual usually meant having both female and male parts as in hermaphroditic or monoicous plants, or in the sense of mixed-sex education, meaning inclusive of both males and females.

From the 1970s onwards, bisexuality as a distinct sexual orientation gained visibility in Western literature, academia and activism.^[7] Despite a wave of research and activism around bisexuality, bisexual people have often been marginalised in literature, film and research.

Societal attitudes towards bisexuality vary by culture and history; however, there is no substantial evidence that the rate of same-sex attraction has varied across time.^[8] Prior to the contemporary discussion of sexuality as a phenomenon associated with personal identity, ancient and medieval culture viewed bisexuality as the experience of homosexual and heterosexual relationships.^[9][10] The cultures of ancient Greece and Rome accepted that adult men were involved in homosexual relationships, as long as they took the active role of penetration.