I think the concept of a stable gender-based sexual preference that’s part of your personal identity is relatively recent. Of course people were aware that there were men who liked having sex with other men, but that’s not really the same thing.

And yeah I mean people obviously use labels as part of homophobic abuse, but that’s not going to be helpful as part of an argument that such labels are useful or valuable. I don’t really see why it’s necessary to decide whether Henry James is straight bi or gay just because those are the major classifications in our present social context.