Uranian
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Featured:  Illustration: Portrait fantaisiste du marquis de Sade (1866) by H. Biberstein |
Uranian is a nineteenth century term that referred to a person of a third sex — originally, someone with "a female psyche in a male body" who is sexually attracted to men, and later extended to cover homosexual gender variant females, and a number of other sexual types. It is believed to be an English adaptation of the German word Urning, which was first published by activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1864 and 1865 in a series of five booklets which were collected under the title Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe ("The Riddle of Man-Manly Love"). Ulrich developed his terminology before the first public use of the term "homosexual", which appeared in 1869 in a pamphlet published anomymously by Karl-Maria Kertbeny.
The term "uranian" was quickly adopted by English-language advocates of homosexual emancipation in the Victorian era, such as Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, who used it to describe a comradely love that would bring about true democracy, uniting the "estranged ranks of society" and breaking down class and gender barriers.
The term also gained currency among a group of Oxford and Cambridge graduates who studied Classics and dabbled in pederastic poetry from the 1870s to the 1930s. The writings of this group are now known by the phrase "Uranian poetry". The art of Henry Scott Tuke and Wilhelm von Gloeden is also sometimes referred to as "Uranian".
