eonism en · NOUN
Pronunciation
- /ˈi.əˌnɪzəm/
Etymology
Coined in 1920 by the British physician and sexologist Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) after Chevalier d'Eon (1728–1810), a French diplomat, spy and soldier who presented as male for 49 years, then as a female for 33. Ellis had previously used the term sexo-aesthetic inversion.
Meanings
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(uncountable) The pretence of being the opposite sex, especially that by a man of being a woman; transvestism.
Ellis seems, however, to regard this 'less common but more complete' type as embodying the essence of eonism, and he objected to the term transvestism because it focused attention solely on the element of cross-dressing.
2006, Richard Ekins, Dave King, The Transgender Phenomenon, SAGE Publishing, page 63:2013, C. N. Armstrong, 12: Transvestism, D. Robertson Smith, William M. Davidson (editors), Symposium on Nuclear Sex, Elsevier (Butterworth-Heinemann), page 88, Homosexuals do not as a rule want to change their sex and identity. This is the fundamental anomaly in eonism.
The chief of these intermediate sexual anomalies are: (1) physical hermaphroditism in its various stages; (2) gynandromorphism, or eunuchoidism, in which men possess characters resembling those of males who have been early castrated and women possess similarly masculine characters; (3) sexo-esthetic inversion, or Eonism (Hirschfeld's transvestism or cross-dressing), in which, outside the specifically sexual emotions, men possess the tastes of women and women those of men.
1927, Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6):
Deriveds
Relateds
Translations (4)
fr éonisme (pretence of being the opposite sex — see also transvestism) · de Transgender (pretence of being the opposite sex — see also transvestism) · de Eonismus (pretence of being the opposite sex — see also transvestism) · it eonismo (pretence of being the opposite sex — see also transvestism)