Urgency and Strategy - Bert Boelaars

Homosexual Men and Women in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

A hundred years ago, openness about sexuality was unthinkable anywhere in the world, especially
when it came to homosexuality. This word has been in use since 1869. The Austrian/
Hungarian writer Károly Mária Benkert (1824-1882), who wrote under the pseudonym, K.M.
Kertbeny, deserves, as far as is known, credit for being the first person to use the psychiatric
term homosexual.