Homosexuality in Perspective: A Great Leap From the Past (Essay Sample)

Homosexuality in Perspective: A great leap from the past
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For over a century now, scientific and popular belief has strictly opined that male homosexuality springs from and expresses something ‘feminine’ in men, being addressed as the absence of required levels of masculinity in men . This was a malady that bewildered even the most established liberal society where as matter of fact the concept of gay identity was not in any sense recognized, the homosexuals were deemed to be ailing from ‘deviant’ personalities. Reynaldo Arenas brings out all this pertinent issues in his book christened ‘Before Night falls’, which was also made a film in 2000.
The government of the day subjected homosexuals to persecution, alienation and McCarthyism ideals. When Fidel Castro took power after the revolution most of the gay population were driven off to labor camps for‘re-education’ and were perceived to be counter revolutionary. Reynaldo implores the presence ‘…Of the existing sexual repression’ because ‘the dictatorship was considered evil, anything it proscribed was seen in a positive light by the nonconformist who were the majority at that time’ (Schnabel, 2000, scene 8).
This brings out the issue of power groups imposing on the society of what they deem as the appropriate sexuality. This idea is premised on an erroneous reasoning since ‘sexual types and categories were socially constructed by identifiable power groups and the notion of sexuality as the truth of our identity and being was created by the power relations which simultaneously defined the meaning of sexuality’ (Kinsman,1996, p.34). Institutionalized sexuality thus hindered the recognition of homosexuality as an appropriate form of sexuality.
The social division of labor builds around a social separation between the sexes; by and large establishes a social and economic dependence between men and women, ideally putting a premium on heterosexuality. Heterosexuality itself is a power relationship of men over women what gay men are rejecting is essentially polar experiences (faraday, 1985). That is why if a man reclaims the right to refuse his sexual availability to women or who goes against the fundamental principles of patriarchal society that contain, inhibit, restrain, determine and the definition of the role of a man should not be deemed to have absconded the ‘privilege’ of being a man. This is because ‘sex as gender and sex as sexuality are thus defined in terms of each other, but it is sexuality that determines gender not the other way round’ (Mackinnon, 1979, p.15).
Ironically, the repression and persecution greatly oscillated the desire of gays to unite through a shared repression of experience aiding to spur the modern gay civil rights movement. ‘… Concentration camps for homosexuals and the police officers disguise as willing young men to entrap and arrest homosexuals, actua...