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The Imperialism of Historical Arrogance: Where Is the Past in the DSM’s Idea of Sexuality?

  • Special Section: DSM-5: Classifying Sex
  • Published:
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Abstract

This article questions the historical awareness of the DSM-5 by investigating first the treatment of prostitution from the Victorian period to today as a means of medicalizing desire; and second, by looking at the category of hebephilia, where modern medicalizing classifications are criticized for ignoring ancient evidence. By this comparative method, the article shows how ignoring historical evidence allows the social and ideological elements in the work of defining psychological sexual diseases to remain concealed.

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Notes

  1. There are particularly strong, local histories for prostitution in the nineteenth century, which are central to the debate: see most recently Harris (2010) building on Corbin (1990), Finnegan (1979), Gibson (1986), Harsin (1985), Luddy (2008), and Walkowitz (1980). In general, see the fine studies of Levine (2003) and most recently Laite (2012), which go beyond Hyam (1990) and Bristow (1977, 1982). There are many broad histories of varying usefulness (see, e.g., Roberts, 1993; Simons, 1975).

  2. The stress on abuse is the argument, of course, of much important feminist thinking of the 1980s and 1990s in particular: see, for example, Barry (1979); Dworkin (1979); Bristow (1982); Kappeler (1986); MacKinnon (1987); Pateman (1988). For “sex work,” see, e.g., Weitzer (2000).

  3. On ancient Greek sexuality and prostitution, see Davidson (1998); Kurke (1999); McClure (2003); Glazebrook and Henry (2011); Faraone and McClure (2006); McGinn (1998); Budin (2008); Ogden (1999)—all with further bibliography. On Foucault’s classicism, see Goldhill (1995).

  4. The identification was first made by Gershon Legman in the introduction to the 1962 Grove Press edition of My Secret Life, and, although doubted by Marcus (1966) has been defended at length by Gibson (2001).

  5. This “literally” is a repeated rhetorical strategy of the treatise: e.g., “literally every woman who yields to her passions and loses her virtue is a prostitute” (p. 215); “A woman when she introduces a man to a woman is literally pimping for him” (p. 251).

  6. A general bibliography on hebephilia is maintained by Dr. James Cantor at http://www.individual.utoronto.ca/james_cantor/page19.html (Accessed September 25, 2013).

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  1. Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT, England, UK

    Simon Goldhill

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Goldhill, S. The Imperialism of Historical Arrogance: Where Is the Past in the DSM’s Idea of Sexuality?. Arch Sex Behav 44, 1099–1108 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-015-0556-7

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