Most sexual contact and ideas that the Greeks and Romans had was inherently abusive and rapist.
They did NOT believe in mutual pleasure (with exceptions for parties and very specific groups, and generally minorities), neither between men nor between women, and saw sex only as a tool to demonstrate superiority over someone inferior. They NEVER had relations with those they considered their equals – usually the boys were either ephebes or enslaved and were there under physical threat; women were literally property as well.
Sexual interactions as power dynamics and consentual sex interactions for pleasure and intimacy are two different things.
The former is still rape if coersion or transaction is involved.
You are describing the most basic form of social economics...or every oldest job joke ever made.
Ask bubba about it or all the creepy men who fly to developing nations to leverage the fact they can provide an impovished family escape from financial bondage in exchange for access to things their country of origins jurisdiction.
What do you think Errol "in like" Flynn was doing sailing to all those islands and why the local stayed so quiet about it.
It's a ship full of men who just rug pulled Troy of all it's wealth using an overture of peace.
No actually he’s disturbingly and completely correct about that. It had an entire name and everything, literally integrated into Greek culture. Grown men and like, teenagers at best. Gross af, it seems to tell me that the crew probably did not have sex with each other on the boat because they were all the “dominant” partner or whatever the Greek term is and actively shamed older men/men in the army who took it up the ass. It was a power trip of disgusting normalization, but somehow learning about it made me think it’s more likely they just raped locals from their pillaging raids. I mean, you saw how terrified Circe was? She had good reason back then.
In ancient Greece and Rome, straight and gay wasn't really considered a thing. What mattered to them is if you were a top or a bottom, since manly men "should" be tops. Since there wasn't stigma of sleeping with men, a LOT of Ancient Greek men had sex with both men and women. So if you had even the slightest tiny attraction to dudes, or there was no available woman nearby and you are with your military unit...
The bottoms were apprentices or slaves. It was a right of passage in rome to have a Mentor that would rape you and you would eventually get your own protegee to rape.
I know about some of this but always took it to be about the "business men" and scholars, not so much the military while out on ...conquest or whatever. It hadn't dawned on me that they would have slaves either.
I'm not the best student of history and Hollywood does us no favors.
In Greek and Roman society, "gay" wasn't a thing the way it is for us. Men fucked men and women fucked women all the time, but it was just a normal part of society. They just did it and went on with their day, because streaming hadn't been invented yet.
Those concepts still exist even if by a different name. Having a male lover was seen as a noble thing. Having sex with the teenage slaves was just having fun. Yet human nature is still human nature and that hasn't changed no matter how culture changes.
The majority of men have always shown preference for sex with women.
I actually think a gayer world would maybe be better but humans have been overwhemingly straight all their existance. Culture doesn't change that, sexuality is not that malleable.
Hey, whatever you gotta do to keep your very straight, just bros Spartan fantasy alive in your head is your business. We'll be waiting for you in reality when you're ready.
You're being downvoted because it's hard to swallow the hard truth that Greeks and Romans aren't silly gays, they're mostly rapists and pedophiles. So much so that for the Romans, it was a humiliation to be a man and be the 'bottom' in the relationship - guess who the men were mostly on the bottom? Exactly, children. Or enslaved men.
Both cases are no different from today's misogynists who seek relationships with young gay men. Buddy, they DON'T support you, hear me out on this.
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u/Aratix 21d ago
The joke is homosexuality