Talk:Gynephilia and androphilia

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'...with the aim of therapy usually being to substitute gynophilic desires for pedophilic ones.' I guess the therapy aims to make females undergoing the treatment into lesbians, then.

[edit] Hirschfeld and androphilia?

DanB DanD rightly asked for a source for Hirschfeld's "threefold classification system" (ephebophilia, androphilia and gerontophilia), allegedly from the early 20th century. The ephebophilia article makes the following claim: "[Ephebophilia] is a term of recent coinage, created by psychologist John Money in the late twentieth century." The following reference is given: Rahman, Tariq (1988). Ephebophilia: the case for the use of a new word, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 24(2), 126-141.

Oddly, the Rahman article doesn't seem to support the claim, as least as I could see from a quick read. The author actually calls for the adoption of a "new word", ephebophilia, which would be defined as "male sexual interest in boys and youths as if the latter were surrogates of women". He writes: "This word has not been used in English, although it has been used [in a 1980 article by Felix Buffiere]" in French.

I also found a 2002 letter to the editor from The Advocate magazine. The author, Thomas Kraemer, writes: "The word ephebophilia is not "newly invented," as Richard Goldstein claims ["The Double Standard," August 20], because nearly a century ago Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld defined it as homosexuals "who are attracted to youths from puberty to the early 20s." Goldstein is right that it is a double standard to diagnose gay ephebophilia, because the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual names only pedophilia as a mental disorder, which is carefully restricted to being a "focus on prepubescent children.""

However, there are no references. Curioser and curioser! ntennis 03:22, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh crap, that's my fault! I think that reference to Rahman is supposed to go with the etymology. It was me who inserted the attribution to John Money (who definitely did use the term), but it looks like I put the {{fact}} tag in the wrong place. I apologize for sucking.

DanB†DanD 03:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I googled up a source that says Money coined "ephebophilia," and that source sources the claim to this:

John Money, Lovemaps: Clinical Concepts of Sexual-Erotic Health & Pathology, Paraphilia & Gender Transposition in Childhood, Adolescence & Maturity, Irvington Publishers: New York, 1993 (Reprint: original edition published in 1988)

Anybody have a copy? It's entirely possible that Money picked up term from Hirschfeld and popularized in the context of his own ideas.

DanB†DanD 03:47, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Relevant part of this source [1]:

This term – ephebophilia - is not yet widely recognised or used, and many professionals still use the traditional term paedophilia to describe the sexual abuse of pre- and post-pubescent children.

Ephebophilia as a term or as a qualification of paedophilia does not appear in DSM-IV. According to the A.P.A. the significance of a term not appearing in DSM-IV means that, as of 1994, there was not sufficient data to justify inclusion at that time. Being a qualification of the term paedophilia, ephebophilia belongs to the category of paraphilias. The term ephebophilia was coined by Dr. John Money, a sexologist at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. It is defined by him as a sexual attraction for adolescents, applying in the same way to male-female and male-male encounters. (and the ref. is to the above)

That source is from this Catholic journal, not really an academic publication

DanB†DanD 04:13, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for following this up. Obviously Money couldn't have coined the term in Lovemaps (1988) — although he may have coined it earlier. I did find an article from 1974 that uses both 'ephebophilia' and 'androphilia' (and doesn't feel the need to define them, either): Kurt Freund, Ernest Nagler, Ronald Langevin, Andrew Zajac and Betty Steiner, Measuring feminine gender identity in homosexual males, Archives of Sexual Behavior, Volume 3, Number 3 / May, 1974. Springer, Netherlands. ISSN 0004-0002.

So I guess Rahman hasn't done his research. I wouldn't be surprised if the term does in fact go back to Hirschfeld; I believe that the term 'transsexual' has been widely credited to Harry Benjamin but was in fact a Hirschfeldism. Look forward to more sleuthing — AKA original research. :P ntennis 08:07, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Here's another (unhelpful) reference, from the Newsletter of the Connecticut Psychological Association (Summer 2002). The article, titled Treating Clergy Who Sexually Abuse Minors, By L.M. Lothstein, claims that "John Money coined the term "ephebophilia" to apply to an individual's targeting of teenagers for their sexual desires". ntennis 08:21, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Yet another candidate for coining ephebophilia (given here in the synonymous form "hebephilia"): Bernard Glueck, Jr., in 1955.

Thus, the relatively rare erotic preference for prepubescent children has long been denoted as pedophilia (von Krafft-Ebing, 1886/1965), and the — perhaps even rarer — preference for the elderly is conventionally known as gerontophilia (Hirschfeld, 1920). Glueck (1955) contributed the word hebephilia to denote the erotic preference for pubescent children. Except for the occasional, semihumorous use of the term “adultophilia” (e.g., Gebhard, Gagnon, Pomeroy, & Christenson, 1965), there was no sustained effort to label the population majority’s erotic preference for adults until we introduced the term teleiophilia (Blanchard et al., 2000).

—(Ray Blanchard and Howard E. Barbaree, (2005). The Strength of Sexual Arousal as a Function of the Age of the Sex Offender: Comparisons Among Pedophiles, Hebephiles, and Teleiophiles, Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, Vol. 17, No. 4, October 2005.

It seems odd that Blanchard and Barbaree would credit "gerontophilia" to Hirschfeld but not ephebophilia/hebephilia, if Hirschfeld had indeed mentioned it. Here are the references:

• Glueck, B. C. Jr. (1955). Final report: Research project for the study and treatment of persons convicted of crimes involving sexual aberrations, June 1952 to June 1955. New York: New York State Department of Mental Hygiene.

• Hirschfeld, M. (1920). Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes [Homosexuality in males and females]. Berlin: Louis Marcus.

The editor who contributed the information about Hirschfeld's "threefold classification system" is User:William percy (see this diff). I've left a note on his talk page asking for a citation. ntennis 01:14, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

You are doing awesome research, thanks.

I'm pretty sure that, similar as their meaning is, "hebephilia" and "ephebophilia" have different histories as words. For one thing, "hebephilia" is from the female personification of youth, Hebe, while "ephebophilia" is from "ephebos," a generic word for male youths, and has historically been used in a gay context.

OH!

Is it possible that Hirschfeld did indeed coin "ephebophilia" as the male homosexual desire for adolescents, but that it was Money who first began to use the term to mean desire for adolescents in general? Could this be why both have been reported as the inventor of the term?

Also, who is the "we" in "we introduced the term teleiophilia"? Because that's a term Money uses too.

DanB†DanD 01:50, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer about Hebe (mythology), I didn't know the origin of this word. You may be right about Money, but where did he publish this revised definition?

The "we" in the above quote is Blanchard et al, and they give this reference: Blanchard, R., Barbaree, H. E., Bogaert, A. F., Dickey, R., Klassen, P., Kuban, M. E., et al (2000). Fraternal birth order and sexual orientation in pedophiles. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 29, 463–478.

It may be yet another case of misattribution, as the chronophilia article suggests that "teleiophilia" was coined by Kurt Freund, who died in 1996. Now if Ray Blanchard was trying to take credit for a term he didn't actually coin, it would be consistent with Lynn Conway's characterisation of him as dishonestly and aggressively trying to make a place for himself in the history of science (see also Andrea James' Blanchard page.) ntennis 02:57, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Little update: After some sniffing around for uses of the term teleiophilia, all references I found attributed it to Blanchard. I found that in Freund's articles, he uses the terms gynephilia and androphilia to indicate an erotic preference for adults, not teleiophilia. I also put a note on the chronophilia article asking for a citation. When did Money use the term? ntennis 08:14, 22 August 2006 (UTC)