History of bisexuality

The history of bisexuality concerns the history of the bisexual sexual orientation.

Although the term "bisexuality" was coined in the 20th century, there are recorded examples throughout history of people having both opposite-sex and same-sex relationships.

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 was redefined later in the 20th century as a person who is sexually and/or romantically attracted to both males and females, or as a person who is sexually and/or romantically attracted to people regardless of sex or gender identity, which is sometimes termed pansexuality. Some distinguish between bisexuality and pansexuality.

In English, the word "bisexual" was first used in 1892 by American neurologist Charles Gilbert Chaddock when he kept the term from the source material in his translation of 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. 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. 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. 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.

Ancient cultures and societies have conceptualised sexual desire and behaviour in a variety of ways throughout history, which are subject to debates. Many historians have pointed out the difficulty in identifying historical examples of queerness that have not been filtered through the lens of modern Western paradigms. Manuela L. Picq and Josi Tikuna wrote that "sexual diversity has historically been the norm, not the exception, among Indigenous peoples," pointing to the diversity of indigenous terms to refer to both sexual and gender identity, many of which do not translate well into contermporary English. Generally, homosexual relationships between men are more visible and recorded than those between women in literature and historical texts.

The ancient Greeks did not conceive of sexual orientation as a social identity as modern Western societies have done, or distinguish sexual desire or behavior by the gender of the participants. The main distinction was in the role that each participant played in the sex act, that of active penetrator (typically associated with masculinity) or passive penetrated (typically associated with femininity). When intercourse occurred between two people of the same sex, it still was not entirely regarded as a homosexual union, given that one partner would have to take on a passive role, and would therefore no longer be considered a 'man' in terms of the sexual union. The active penetrator was typically associated with masculinity, while the passive penetrated was typically associated with femininity. However, for Plato, both men and women could be subjects or objects. For both philosophers, however, the male hierarchy is unquestioned.