This would have arguably been the case had he been sufficiently “Europeanized” in the

sexological sense—which is to say, had Rizal been sufficiently raised and trained in the newly

inducted homophobic regime (an accepted way or a system) that had begun to take hold of the

European imagination in the latter part of the nineteenth century. As the constructionist

historian Arnold Davidson (He is a professor in various departments like the Department

of Philosophy, the Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of Romance

Languages and Literatures, the Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of

Science. He is a European Editor of Critical Inquiry, also a director of the France-

Chicago Center. His major fields of research and teaching are the history of

contemporary European philosophy, the history of moral and political philosophy, the

history of the human sciences, the history and philosophy of religion.) puts it, this regime

of “sexuality” was made possible by the emergence, in Europe, of a new, psychiatric style of

reasoning, a manner of arguing about sexual personalities, orientations, “paraphilias” ( or the

condition in which a person's sexual arousal and gratification depend on fantasizing

about and engaging in sexual behavior that is atypical and extreme. A paraphilia is

considered a disorder when it causes distress or threatens to harm someone else) and

other such “categories of being,” which arose alongside the various disorders—neuroses,

(Mild functional, neuro-psychical disorders that confirm themselves in specific clinical

phenomena in the absence of psychical phenomena.) psychoses, (A severe mental

illness characterised by loss of contact with reality and relationship with other people

causing social maladaptation.) hysterias, (a psychological whose symptoms include

conversion of psychological stress into physical symptoms (somatization), selective

amnesia, shallow volatile emotions, and overdramatic or attention-seeking behavior.

The term has a controversial history as it was formerly regarded as a disease specific to

women.) and the like—that were being discursively produced by the different “biomedical”

dispensations of the time (Garcia, 2008). In fact, Arnold “Davidson’s work is one of the

most significant applications of Foucault’s (and in part Georges Canguilhem’s) ‘historical

epistemology’ (the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge ) to

the development of psychiatric thinking about sexuality.

JOSE RIZAL WAS FULLY AWARE OF THE EMERGENCE OF THE SAME-SEX

RELATIONSHIP. IN LIGHT OF HIS MEDICAL TRAINING AND THE ABUNDANCE OF

POPULAR LITERATURE ON SEX, RIZAL’S CALLS FOR SEXUAL RESTRAINT,

MODERATION, AND SELF-DISCIPLINE WERE MORE THAN JUST MERE

RHETORIC. For Rizal, sexual self-discipline also signified self-mastery. Male hygiene,

virile health, and sexual self-regulation were not just ideal dispositions, but were the

hallmarks of a respectable and civilized citizenry.