ABSTRACT
Nowadays we speak without hesitation about sexuality, homosexuality, heterosexuality, as if the meaning of the word ‘sexuality’ were totally clear. This is certainly not the case. In the nineteenth century, when the concept of sexuality was being introduced, a Dutch dictionary gave ‘sexuality’ quite another definition than the one we are used to: ‘sex system’ (with sex in the meaning of biological gender), according to Linnaeus, and derived from the Latin sexus. It is likely that biology, especially the theory of evolution that attributes an essential role to propagation, led to the entanglement of gender and sexuality which still prevails today.
