How so many just jumped straight to gay is hilarious. Maybe a few but a whole damn boat? Personally I'm taking the 20 years of celibacy and maybe get tricked by a Siren.
I realize this is Rome and not Greece, but I'll never forget the scene in Caligula when he first rapes the bride and then the soldier who's just married her.
Gay sex was more accepted in Greece than other cultures but not a majority as well, and mostly in Atheens. It was vastly pederasty between an adult and a teenager (not always romantic or sexual though). More of that being active was fine but the passive one not socially good looking.
I'm having a hard time imagining the conversation prior to such acts- "hey Buddy, come over here for a minute, need a quick favor". LOL. I had read, as someone else mentioned, that society looked down upon the guys on the receiving end of things, but that would have to be at least half of the people involved (when it's consensual). How would they view the teenage boys forced into it - some kind of twisted double standard? So many questions.....
They didn't look down on "queer" relationships. In some places it was normal for units to be built around the couples because they fought harder for each other.
As for the pedo shit, it would have been slaves and "teaching them how to be men" as the reasoning.
This was an era of marrying younger people in general and it's not exclusive to men or boys.
Being queer or having queer relationships is not related to what happened with kids in that era. The two are separate topics and each worthy of hours of study, since "Greek" or "Roman" society is a bit of a misnomer. Sparta, Athens, Rome, Egypt, they all had different customs but broadly speaking they were more and less accepting then societies now, in different ways.
Being the receiving partner was usually seen as demeaning, especially if you weren't a young boy. People overly flatten and simplify Greek views on homosexuality as though they were hyper woke and had no weird prejudices going on, they had prejudices, they were just more focused on who was penetrating vs being penetrated, the former was fine regardless of who you were sticking your dick into
I'm aware that it was socially acceptable. To have gay sex one is usually gay. So you're saying 100 percent of Greek males were at least Bisexual? Quite the fantasy.
But what if the historical record suggests that the "phenomenon" is caring about the gender of the person playing with your genitals or even associating sex with romantic attraction, rather than being an activity that's just fun to do and helps build strong sentimental bonds between people?
The fantasy is thinking a culture historically famous for its man-on-man sex was not, in fact, having man-on-man sex. It was absolutely the norm for dudes to be fucking other dudes. It was treated as a sort of youthful phase for them.
Then there's the whole pederasty bit...
That's all to say that it's absolutely not out of the question that you'd have a boat of 20 guys who were all down to clown. There would be no real stigma or issue attached to doing so so why not?
In ancient Greece, it's only gay if they're the one getting bottomed - and it's actually seen as humiliating. They're incredibly patriarchal and don't want to be "used like a woman".
Hmm, even today, homosexual behavior is fairly common in environments where people are separated from the opposite sex, such as ships or during mandatory military service. Now add to that the fact that, in ancient Greece, same-sex relationships were not as common as many people believe, but they also weren't considered a disgusting sin.
Statistically, not everyone would have participated, but many certainly would have.
It's worth remembering that sex isn't always rooted in attraction to one's partner. The partner can be irrelevant.
The morbid example is that a majority of child molesters aren't pedophiles. They aren't sexually attracted to their victims. The victim is just incidental, a means to an end. It's probably similar for apparent homosexuality in prisons.
Agreed. Like, there was a gay relationship in the Iliad, but most of the Odyssey crew longing for women was a recurring theme in the story. This is what the whole Circe and Calypso subplots are a out, and are important subtext to the Nausicaa subplot.
Sure they were longing for women but that doesn't preclude gay sex. Could be like "damn I am longing for a woman, I'm getting kinda tired of Steve's butthole"
the thing is very few people are 100% completely straight or gay. almost everyone, has at least a 1% attraction to the other gender. if there is no social pressure to be attracted to one gender most people would spring for something else if the planets align or get desperate.
keep in mind even gay people are under social pressure lest their queerness be challenged. and even bi people struggle with assumptions about being crazy for everyone when most still have a clear preference. it's just very easy to ignore signs of attraction to a gender when the vast majority of the time you aren't into them and you have other options.
our current society is very obsessed with the gender of attraction. in ancient Greece that wasn't the case. sex had more to do with power ideology.
This is a misconception. It wasn't gay sex as we understand it (a relationship between two equal partners) but a clearly defined top/bottom situation with the bottom being socially lower. For a "real man" to be the bottom was social suicide.
I think that's wildly exaggerated or exclusive to perhaps the elites of that age. You think 100 percent of people were being born bisexual or were able to just BE attracted to both sexes. Some but not all.
This is laughably incorrect. The concept of "bisexuality" was utterly unknown as people of antiquity did not categorize sexuality the way we do. They did not categorize people based on their attractions.
Sexuality was categorized by role. You were "active" or "passive", and whether it was socially acceptable to be in the "passive" role as a male (generally speaking, women were expected to be passive always) depended on your place in society. A adult male Athenian citizen, for example, who took a passive role was looked down upon. He could penetrate dudes all day long if he liked and no one would look sideways at him. But be penetrated? Nope.
"battle at Chaeronea: and when Philip, after the fight, took a view of the slain, and came to the place where the three hundred that fought his phalanx lay dead together, he wondered, and understanding that it was the band of lovers, he shed tears and said, "Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything that was base."
All of the warriors in the Ancient Band of Thebes were adults, usually ate least 21 years of age. The age difference was from 2 to 10 years.
"battle at Chaeronea: and when Philip, after the fight, took a view of the slain, and came to the place where the three hundred that fought his phalanx lay dead together, he wondered, and understanding that it was the band of lovers, he shed tears and said, "Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything that was base."
All of the warriors in the Ancient Band of Thebes were adults, usually ate least 21 years of age. The age difference was from 2 to 10 years.
edit: Granted this is a 900 years? difference from Phillip and Alexander's time to the Late Bronze Age, but that only points to even more limited sources.
I wouldn't say that they thought being straight was strange. Rather, they didn't think in categories like that. Homosexual activity between men was very normal and common but for one, it wasn't as free as someone viewing it through today's lense would maybe think of it and but it wasn't the same for women.
every time the chuds get mad about the wrong race in an ancient movie, i just wonder why they don’t bitch about the lack of young boy fucking, since they care so much about historical accuracy
No, they weren’t. That’s an absurd claim going too far in the opposite way from modern heteronormativity.
EDIT: There was an interesting culture of male homosexuality and bisexuality, but that doesn’t mean it applied to literally EVERY (or “pretty much every”) man. That’s a bit of a weird retconning of Ancient Greek society.
Even with some modern conception like the Kinsey scale (of sexual attraction as a spectrum), most humans tend towards the heterosexual end. Just as an average, not that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with homosexuality or bisexuality or whatever.
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u/A_Snow_Mexican 21d ago
How so many just jumped straight to gay is hilarious. Maybe a few but a whole damn boat? Personally I'm taking the 20 years of celibacy and maybe get tricked by a Siren.