Urningin

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« I want a child, but of course, only if I were the father. »
Unknown (Urningin)[1]

Urningin, or Urninde is a term used during the 19th century (and very sparingly during the early-20th century) to refer to homosexual, assigned female at birth people who identify and express themselves in a generally-masculine way. Urningin derives from the German word Urning, referring to Uranians, suffixed with -in, denoting that the term relates to women. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, who coined Urningin in his 1868 book Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe ("Research into the Riddle of Man-Male Love"), exclusively uses the term "Urningin",[2] while most later German authors choose to use "Urninde" instead.[3]

Much like Uranian, Urningin is divided by Ulrichs into sub-classifications, with Weibling Urningins and Mannlingin Urningins. (Because Weibling is already a grammatically feminine word in German, Ulrichs notes that Weiblingin is not used.)[4] Unlike Uranian however, Ulrichs does not provide specific definitions for each of these sub-classifications, leaving their meanings and relations to the Uranian sub-classifications of Mannling and Weibling unknown.

Urningin was used much less frequently used than Urning (Uranian) in German, and was barely used at all in English. Many authors after Ulrichs use Uranian as an umbrella term, including Urningin within it. Some authors such as Prof. Ludwig Frey take Uranian on its own to refer to all nonbinary people, hence eliminating the need for a specific term for people assigned female at birth.[5]

Although a few instances of individuals who identify as Urningin are noted by Ulrichs in the late-1860s and early-1870s, it is not clear if the term was ever commonly used after that point. Experiencing a significant decline in usage after 1900, Urningin appears to fall out of use in academic works in German during the late-1910s or early-1920s, with it never having been common in English.

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

  1. Original untranslated quote: "Ich möchte ein Kind besitzen, doch natürlich nur, wenn ich der Vater wäre." from Hirschfeld, Magnus (1903). Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen Unter Besonderer Berücksichtigung der Homosexualität (in German). Leipzig: M. Spohr. p. 87. Archived from the original on 17 July 2023.
  2. Ulrichs, Karl Heinrich (1868). [False Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe] Check |archive-url= value (help). Leipzig: C. Hübscher'sche Buchhandlung (Hugo Heyn). p. 7. Archived from the original on 17 July 2023.
  3. Hirschfeld, Magnus (1918). Sexualpathologie: T. Sexuelle Zwischenstufen ; das männliche Weib und der weibliche Mann (in German). A. Marcus & E. Webers. Archived from the original on 17 July 2023.
  4. Ulrichs, Karl Heinrich (1870). Prometheus (in German). 10. Leipzig: Serbe'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. pp. 18–19. Archived from the original on 17 July 2023.
  5. Frey, Ludwig (1898). Die Männer des Rätsels und der Paragraph 175 des Deutschen Reichsstrafgesetzbuches. Leipzig: Verlag von Max Spohr. p. 216. Archived from the original on 17 July 2023.