It's always interesting to see how shifts in philosophical thinking occur in waves across interconnected cultural traditions. Europe always had a diverse set of attitudes toward non-normative sexuality. But you can see specific concepts take hold and spread, either integrating with, or replacing, the existing local attitudes. These sorts of shifts are easier to see in more recent centuries. In medieval and early modern sources, the divide between the intellectual tradition of classical philosophy and the everyday experieces and reactions on the streets and in the courts can mask both the diversity of local tradition and the spread of intellectual theories. (A good example is the Zimmern Chronicle, where the author considers a number of potential "causes" for women's same-sex desire, some of them rooted in international philosophical traditions, some expressed in everyday social reactions.) In reviewing this series of articles on the rise of sexology in various countries, we can see in more detail how ideas about sexuality and gender spread and were integrated into existing understandings.
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