I’ve been all over the world and have yet to see a culture celibate it. Many foreigners cultures will kill over it and the others just half-ass accept it. I’ve never seen it celebrated by a culture as a whole.. Other queers in a culture might celebrate it. But I’ve yet to see a culture actually celebrate it.

@Esprit_de_Corp The cultures that celebrated it were almost entirely wiped out by the spread of the Christian and Muslim faiths, or the cultures were harassed and attacked to the point where they (almost entirely) changed their views. The best examples would be Native American tribes. As the Christian church tended to burn any records they deemed as "heretic" (I suspect Muslims did the same, but haven't really verified it), remaining records are few and seldom studied.

However, cultural anthropologists estimate from what records there are that historically 95-97% of cultures at least tolerated homosexuals.

Ancient stories seem to show that at least homosexuality was generally accepted. Even in the bible, King David's relationship with Jonathan, son of Saul, is a pretty obvious homosexual love story. Many of the tales from 1,001 Nights, were homosexual love stories, although those tales are seldom published.

In the ancient past people who expressed sexuality or gender differently were not so ostracized as they have been in the recent past.

Granted, in almost every culture where sexual/gender differences were accepted, it was still usually expected that such persons would still, if capable, was expected to produce an heir.

@snytiger6

I’d need proof to believe that, but it makes sense that a bunch of people that celebrated mental illness got over ran. I won’t argue that.

@Esprit_de_Corp It isn't mental illness. It is just a part of natural human diversity.

Ironically most of the surviving records are from Christian explorers who wrote about their "shock" of what was accepted and permissible in the cultures they encountered. So, they actually recorded, and thus preserved a record of, the parts of the culture(s) they most wanted to be eradicated.

@snytiger6
It was listed as a mental illness in the DSM when I was in collage.

@Esprit_de_Corp That changed in 1973, when it was pointed out that there was no actual data that it was a mental illness and not just a part of human diversity.

Sadly, even Freud's theories of what was "normal" was based on cultural mores which had its roots in religious beliefs. In short the churches dictated what was "normal" or "natural" based on scriptural interpretation(s) and it became embedded into the culture. By the time behavioral sciences came along, a hell of a lot of false assumptions had been made and were embedded into the culture(s).

Scientific study has always contradicted those embedded (religious based) cultural mores. Back in the 1920's and 1930's, the Hirschfeld Institute in Germany was the world's leader in gender and sexual studies [en.wikipedia.org] . However, the Nazi's literally burned their libraries and research, which set human sexual research back until Kinsey and Masters and Johnston published their studies in the late 1950's.

It still took until 1973, for scientists to overturn the long held dogma and mores which was not in line with and contradicted actual scientific studies on the subject.

They could just compare it to what the majority of a given gender were wearing in other graves in the area.

Say, 100 years later from now, archeologists found a scotsman in a kilt in a burial. That'll confuse them identifying his gender, then.

Corrected or corrupted?

@racocn8
Lots of both.

Religion changes the way they preach their propaganda in order to stay in control. I don't see that as religion correcting itself.

@noworry28
zoom out

@noworry28

There is no "they".

It's "we".

Better than 80% of our species.