Homosexualities is the culmination of a series of books on forms (types) of homosexuality in different times around the world put together by Stephen Murray. Based in part on his observations from four continents, it primarily draws on and synthesizes what has been written by others about male-male and female-female sexual relations.

The materials are organized by type, that is, particular sociocultural organizations of same-sex sexual relations/relationships. The main types are relations in which the younger partner is used to provide pleasure to the older partner (as in ancient Greece or the boy-wives in various African societies), relations in which the more feminine partner submits to the more masculine one (e.g., the maricón in Latin America), and relations not structured by differences in age or gender ("modern gay" homosexuality, but also some relations in premodern societies from around the world). There are subtypes for these, also.

Murray contends, that "there is diversity, but there are only a few recurring patterns. Relatively few of the imaginable structurings of same-sex sex recur in the panorama of known societies, despite the tradition of anthropologists and other travelers ofstressing “exotic” differences and the tendency not to bother mentioning what is familiar There are not hundreds or even dozens of different social organizations of same-sex sexual relations in human societies. As for other cultural domains, only a few categorization systems recur across space and time." He is, nonetheless, careful to stress that the most recognized type is not the only one in a society (at a particular time). Material on Athens, Rome, China, and Japan appears in the sections about each main type, and Murray notes that that even in contemporary American cities, there are homosexual relations structured by differences in age and gender as well as officially egalitarian "gay" and "lesbian" relationships.

The "case studies"  (of which there are many, involving a veritable Babel of languages with specific terms for roles for those who engage in sex with persons of the same biological sex) are of cultures, not of individuals. They vary in length and in the reliability of the available sources. The conclusion contains correlations of types of homosexuality to other sociocultural patterns (in the same societies), such as inheritance, postpartum sexual taboos, urbanization, and the existence of social classes.

The main thesis of the book, implicit in its organization, is that each of the main types occurs in a range of societies differing radically in size and technological development, so that there is not any clear evolution (from age to gender to egalitarian relations) paralleling technological/economic development. Although this negative conclusion is quite clear, some of the positive relations are only statistical and likely to seem equivocal to readers without backgrounds in statistics. However, most of the book is filled with information about homosexuality in many different times and places. Except in the conclusion, Murray discusses literature more than numbers. Although hard to skim, the writing is accessible to college-level readers. It is free of jargon, postmodernist, sociological, or any other kind.


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This is, surely, the magnum opus of the Minnesota-born author who is hosting a writeoff on various products of Minnesota. For other contributions, see http://www.epinions.com/user-stephen_murray. An earlier version and my account were wiped out by epinions.



Recommended: Yes