Havelock Ellis: homosexuality through the lens of sexology
homosexuality, sexology, sexual inversion, Havelock Ellis
Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) is a significant figure in the consolidation of sexology as a field of scientific inquiry. Author of the first medical book on homosexuality in English, his proposals were crucial for understanding sexual inversion, as he termed it, as a congenital variation. Through naturalistic logic, Ellis argues that homosexuality should be considered an abnormal condition, rather than a psychopathological manifestation or moral vice. This work revisits the author's productions on the subject and analyzes the assumptions that guided his understandings of sexual inversion through the works "Man and Woman" (1894), "Sexual Inversion" (1897), and "Psychology of Sex" (1933). Guided by investigations of Queer Theory, three themes derived from documentary analysis were produced: the hermaphroditic bases of homosexuality; normal men and women, inverted men and women; degeneration and collapse. The results point to the ambiguities of sexological heritage, which despite reformist contributions towards greater tolerance of homosexuality, keep intact the assumptions of heterossexual supremacy.