Premodern origins of modern homophobia and masculinity

Premodern and early modern perceptions of same-sex desires and behaviors, in particular in Protestant seventeenth and eighteenth century Holland, show similarities with modern discourse on homophobia, especially vis-à-vis the suggested mutability of homosexuality. Early European perceptions of homosexuality represented universalizing discourses according to which everybody could become a sodomite. Like modern discourses on homophobia, they originated from a comprehensive sexual ontology—one that expressed an apparent unity of notions concerning eroticism, gender, mind/body distinctions, the polity, and cosmology—attributed little or no agency to the mind, and could only perceive of same-sex behavior as the result of a body spun completely out of control. Examination of the case of the Netherlands in the eighteenth century shows the anxieties such ideas can provoke and helps to shed light on tensions underlying modern discourses on homophobia.