The appearance of the two books under the editorialship of Alfred Kinsey on sexual behaviour of human male (1948) and human female (1953) could be taken as a dividing line in American and Western understanding of sexuality. Thanks to mass media the two books brought the issues of sexuality “from the bedroom to the living room and beyond” once and for good. Although some controversy appeared about their motives, Kinsey and his associates presented same-sex attraction among humans, but also among animals, as so widespread and usual that one could hardly reject it anymore as “unnatural” or “anti-social”. The second line of understanding and acceptance of the same-sex human sexual relations came through the anthropological school known as “Culture and Personality”. This school insisted on cultural relativism. Cultures were so different in terms of their patterns that even the idea of “human nature” was debased. The icon of cultural relativism Margaret Mead never publicly revealed her bisexuality, yet she contributed with her theories to both the emancipation of women and to relativisation of Victorian heteronormativity and hegemonic masculinity. Both disciplines contributed largely to the sexual revolution. Among its outcomes the sexual revolution led to demedicalization of homosexuality and to its decriminalisation in many societies that still treated same-sex relations as criminal acts.

Slobodan G. Markovich, Full Professor at the School of Political Science of the University of Belgrade where he lectures Political Anthropology, Political History of South- East Europe and Image of European Other. He has been Research Associate at LSEE/LSE since 2012, and at LSE IDEAS since 2018. He has been the coordinator of annual meetings “Psychoanalysis and Culture” since 2016. His research interests include: Construction of Ethnic/National and Religious Identities in the Balkans, British-Balkan Relations, psychoanalytic anthropology, and History of European Pessimism.