Uranian is a term for homosexual men. It is an English translation of the German word Urning and its derivatives.
The term originated from the name of Aphrodite Urania, who in Plato's "Feast" was called the patroness of inter-male love.
History
The term was first published by activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–95) in a series of five booklets (1864–65) collected under the title Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe (Research into the Riddle of Man–Male Love). Ulrichs derived Uranian (Urning in German) from the Greek goddess Aphrodite Urania, who was created out of the god Uranus' testicles. Therefore, it represents the love between men, while Dionian (Dioning), derived from Aphrodite Dionea, represents the love for women. Ulrichs developed his terminology before the first public use of the term homosexual, which appeared in 1869 in a pamphlet published anonymously by Karl-Maria Kertbeny (1824–82).
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. Oscar Wilde wrote to Robert Ross in an undated letter (?18 February 1898): "To have altered my life would have been to have admitted that Uranian love is ignoble. I hold it to be noble—more noble than other forms."
The term also gained currency among a group that 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 Ulrichs'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 sexually attracted to women. However, unlike Plato's account of male love, Ulrichs understood male Urnings to be essentially feminine, and male Dionings to be masculine in nature.
John Addington Symonds, who was one of the first to take up the term Uranian in the English language, was a student of Benjamin Jowett and was very familiar with the Symposium.