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Uranian is a nineteenth century term that referred to a person of a Third Sex — originally, someone with "a female psyche in a male body" who is sexually attracted to men, and later extended to cover homosexual Gender Variant females, and a number of other sexual types. It is believed to be an English adaptation of the German word '''Urning''', which was first published by activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1864 and 1865 in a series of five booklets which were collected under the title ''Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe'' ("Research on the Riddle of Male-Male Love"). Ulrich developed his terminology before the first public use of the term "homosexual", which appeared in 1869 in a pamphlet published anomymously by Karl-Maria Kertbeny . The term "uranian" was quickly adopted by English-language advocates of homosexual emancipation in the Victorian Era , such as Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds , who used it to describe a comradely love that would bring about true democracy, uniting the "estranged ranks of society" and breaking down class and gender barriers. The term also gained currency among a group of Oxford and Cambridge graduates who studied Classics and dabbled in Pederastic poetry from the 1870s to the 1930s. The writings of this group are now known by the phrase " Uranian Poetry ". The art of Henry Scott Tuke and Wilhelm Von Gloeden is also sometimes referred to as "Uranian". ETYMOLOGY The word itself alludes to Plato 's '' Symposium '', a discussion on Eros (love) . In this dialog, Pausanias distinguishes between two types of love, symbolised by two different accounts of the birth of Aphrodite , the goddess of love. In one, she was born of Uranus (the heavens), a birth in which "the female has no part". This Uranian Aphrodite is associated with a noble love for male youths, and is the source of Ulrich's term ''urning''. Another account has Aphrodite as the daughter of Zeus and Dione , and this Aphrodite is associated with a common love which "is apt to be of women as well as of youths, and is of the body rather than of the soul". After Dione, Ulrichs gave the name ''dioning'' to men who are normally sexually attracted to women. However, unlike Plato's account of male love, Ulrich understood male urnings to be essentially feminine, and male diongs to be masculine in nature. John Addington Symonds, who was one of the first to take up the term ''Urnanian'' in the English langage, was a student of Benjamin Jowett , the greatest Victorian popularizer of Plato, and was very familiar with the ''Symposium''. DEVELOPMENT OF CLASSIFICATION SCHEME FOR SEXUAL TYPES Ulrichs came to understand that not all male-bodied people with sexual attraction to men were feminine in nature. He developed a more complex threefold axis for understanding sexual and gender variance: Sexual Orientation (male-attracted, Bisexual , or female-attracted), preferred sexual behavior (passive, no preference, or active), and gender characteristics (feminine, intermediate, or masculine). The three axes were usually, but not necessarily, linked — Ulrichs himself, for example, was a Wiebling (feminine) Urning (homosexual) who preferred the active sexual role. The taxonomy of ''Uranismus''
''Urningthum'', "male homosexuality" (or ''urnische Liebe'', homosexual love) was expanded with the following terms:
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