Van der Meer, Theo. "Sodomy and the Pursuit of a Third Sex in the Early Modern Period." In Third Sex/Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, edited by Gilbert Herdt, pp. 137–212. New York, 1994.

History 1450-1789: Homosexuality

From: History 1450-1789

Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World, by the Gale Group, Inc.

Self-Perceptions

By the late eighteenth century, sodomites in northwestern Europe had not only developed a distinctive societal role, but also perceived themselves as a separate category from men and women. They also talked about these issues among one another. Early in the eighteenth century they would refer to other sodomites as men who liked to do this kind of thing as well. Some seventy years later sodomites talked about "being a member of the family," "people like us," and "you and me and thousands like us." It especially allowed devout men to look upon themselves as morally responsible human beings. From the 1750s onward sodomites arrested in the Dutch Republic would refer to the biblical story of David and Jonathan, and increasingly they would claim to have been born with their inclinations intact. More than half a century before Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in Germany in the 1860s formulated the theory of the existence of a third sex—men born with a female soul—sodomites in the Netherlands spoke among one another of their "condition" or "way of being" as an inborn weakness. There is no documentation about women who clearly spoke in such a way of themselves. For men, one might say this newfound homosexual identity culminated in the contents of a love letter from one Dutch male servant to his male lover early in the nineteenth century. He used still-current terms for boyfriend, talked about "being of the family," and he called upon innate weaknesses to explain their desires, while also legitimizing those desires by telling his lover that God had not created any human being for its own damnation.

how man 2 man desires were stigmatized by associating them artificially with a queer like Oscar Wilde

Excerpt from: Queer Masculinity: The Representation of John Paul Pitoc’s Body in Trick

Sexual passivity, therefore, was conflated with the idea of femininity which signified lower social status.
However, as Sinfield argues, it was not until the Oscar Wilde trial that the modern day conflation of effeminacy with same sex passion solidified. (5 Alan Sinfield, The Wilde Century (London, Cassell, 1994).

Homophobia = effeminophobia

Excerpt from: Queer Masculinity: The Representation of John Paul Pitoc’s Body in Trick

One of the most troublesome aspects of homophobic discourse is the desire to read sexuality and gender as collapsible categories. I still shudder to hear the question ‘Which one is the girl?’ directed at a gay male couple. This should, of course, more correctly be termed ‘effeminophobia’

Effeminacy and Passive sex define the modern homosexual identity as well

Excerpts from the book: Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig

By Judith Ann Peraino, Published by University of California Press, 2006

page 187

"It is the passive partner and his effeminacy that defines--from the perspective of the heterosxual status quo--the identity of the homosexual community as a whole. It can be argued, then, that the core of the male homosexual identity is inextricable from "femaleness" due to the gendering of sex roles."

Passive roles

Excerpts from the book, "A critique of social constructionism and Post modern Queer thoery by Rictor Norton":

But the fact of the matter is that a great many indigenous societies didhave words for ‘the homosexual’. By this I mean that they had words which identified a homosexual personality type, not matching the sexological psychopathological personality disorder (which, baldly stated thus, undoubtedly is a modern social construct), but words roughly equivalent to modern queers – words which demonstrate a consciousness (albeit often contemptuous) of a queer stereotype or gay identity. Here are just a few words for queers from many hundreds: in the Middle East the xanitha plays the receptive role with older or richer men; in Nicaragua el cochon; in Italy the arruso and ricchione, andfemmenella, little female, for the transvestite; Loca and maricón in Latin America; the teresita in Argentina; bicha and veado in Brazil; masisi in Haiti; zamel in North Africa. In many languages the generic term for a male homosexual is derived from a female name: Spanish maricón andmariquita derive from María; Italian checca derives from Francesca; Flemish janet derives from French Jeannette; a Portuguese queer is anAdelaida; in England queer men have called themselves Marys, Mary-Annes, mollies, nancy boys, nellies.

Most – but not all – of these labels are derogatory stigma applied to the fucked rather than the fucker. This is also true of most modern non-scientific words for homosexuals. 

PASSIVE ROLES

Excerpts from the book, "A critique of social constructionism and Post modern Queer thoery by Rictor Norton":

Terms of contempt for homosexuals are common throughout history and across cultures. In Old Norse and Icelandic sagas, and in Finnish and Estonian languages, the most powerful terms of abuse are the words argr, ragr, and ergi, which all connote cowardice, effeminacy, sorcery and (receptive) male homosexuality. The terms probably derive from the archetype of the queer sorcerer (often a religious functionary acting as a scapegoat) found in many ancient societies and indigenous cultures. In modern Germanic languages arg just means ‘bad’. Similarly, the modern English word felon, criminal, comes from Medieval Latin felo/fello meaning ‘evildoer’, but this is derived from fellare, to fellate. In other words, the primal felon was a cocksucker. In fact the modern English word ‘bad’ derives from the Anglo-Saxon term baedling, meaning effeminate/receptive male. In countless languages the basic pattern for the most contemptuous terms of abuse is practically the same: the archetypal bad man is one who performs a shameful receptive/feminine role in sex, i.e. a queer, cocksucker, or cunt. They are all reducible to the single paradigm of the man who takes ‘the woman’s role’ in sex, hence the affinity of homophobia and sexism.