But of course! It helps to have a portmanteau language when you’re coming up with these concepts:
Indeed, German speakers – both self-identified same-sex loving men and medical doctors – invented a new language of sexual orientation and identity that displaced the older understanding of perversion and moral failure. Invented terms such as Urning (Ulrichs’ own coinage) or “homosexual” first entered the German lexicon and later other European languages as well. Ulrichs’ pamphlet propaganda played a critical role in this development: his theories of an inborn Urning sexuality and character coupled with his outspoken activism helped not only to influence the incipient sciences of sexuality but also to mobilize an imagined community of homosexuals. Concretely Ulrichs spearheaded a conceptual revolution that transformed erotic, same-sex love from one of deviant acts into a full-blown sexual orientation with its own distinct quality and character.
