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Concept
Androphilia and gynephilia
Summary
Androphilia and gynephilia are terms used in behavioral science to describe sexual orientation, as an alternative to a gender binary homosexual and heterosexual conceptualization. Androphilia describes sexual attraction to men or masculinity; gynephilia describes the sexual attraction to women or femininity. Ambiphilia describes the combination of both androphilia and gynephilia in a given individual, or bisexuality.
The terms are used for identifying a person's objects of attraction without attributing a sex assignment or gender identity to the person. It may be used when describing intersex and transgender people, especially those who are nonbinary.
Magnus Hirschfeld, an early-20th century German sexologist and physician, divided homosexual men into four groups: paedophiles, who are most attracted to prepubescent youth, ephebophiles, who are most attracted to youths from puberty up to the early twenties; androphiles, who are most attracted to persons between the early twenties and fifty; and gerontophiles, who are most attracted to older men, up to senile old age. According to Karen Franklin, Hirschfeld considered ephebophilia "common and nonpathological, with ephebophiles and androphiles each making up about 45% of the homosexual population."
The term androsexuality is occasionally used as a synonym for androphilia.
Alternate uses in biology and medicine
In biology, androphilic is sometimes used as a synonym for anthropophilic, describing parasites who have a host preference for humans versus non-human animals.
Androphilic is also sometimes used to describe certain proteins and androgen receptors.
A version of the term appeared in Ancient Greek. In Idyll 8, line 60, Theocritus uses gynaikophilias (γυναικοφίλιας) as a euphemistic adjective to describe Zeus's lust for women.
Sigmund Freud used the term gynecophilic to describe his case study Dora. He also used the term in correspondence.
The variant spelling gynophilia is also sometimes used.
Rarely, the term gynesexuality has also been used as a synonym.
Official source
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