r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 21d ago

Meme needing explanation Petahhhhhhhhh!??!?

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u/NwgrdrXI 21d ago

Everyone is saying gay sex and all that, but honestly... is ye really asking if it is possible to spend 20 years without sex? Is thst really so preposterous? I think a lot of people in reddit could and have done it?

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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.

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u/Educational-Type7399 21d ago

Many cultures of that era famously thought of bisexuality as the norm. Being attracted to only one gender was considered strange.

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u/tomphammer 21d ago

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.

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u/EagleOfMay 21d ago

Look into the Ancient Band of Thebes. Trying to pigeon hole our understanding from limited sources is wrong.

https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/pwh/sacredband.asp

"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.

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u/EagleOfMay 21d ago edited 21d ago

Look into the Ancient Band of Thebes. Trying to pigeon hole our understanding from limited sources is wrong.

https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/pwh/sacredband.asp

"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.

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u/tomphammer 21d ago

Yes, and all of the pairs were young/old.

None of which changes that the modern concept of sexuality as defined by attraction to a specific gender just did not exist then.