[lbo-talk] Michelangelo , was Re: The sources of suffering (Grow up!) ( Was Re: Harry Potter, Metritocracy, and Reward)

John Thornton jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net
Mon Aug 27 15:38:00 PDT 2007



>> Miles if you're savvy enough to realize that the historic differences in
>> understanding sexual orientation are non-trivial one would think you
>> would also realize that Chris' question was far from meaningless.
>> The analogy you draw however is deeply flawed so as to be meaningless.
>> I would suggest reading the collection of works that comprise "Queering
>> the Renaissance".
>> It would seem that we actually can come to a decent understanding of the
>> sexual orientation of others during Michaelangelo's time.
>>
>> John Thornton
>> ___________________________________
>>
>>
> Only if we are willing to falsely impose our own sexual categories on
> societies in the past. (The notion that people have stable sexual
> identities based on the gender of their partners is not a human universal.)
>
> Miles

A great many of us are able to discuss the sexuality of people non-contemporaneous to ourselves without imposing our own sexual categories on them. I'm am saddened to hear that you are not able to do this. This limitation must also prevent you from understanding Greek tragedies or even the works of Shakespeare since doing so would apparently force you to falsely impose sexual, political, and social categories on the authors and their characters.

The answer to the question that Chris asked "how do we know what Michelangelo's sexual orientation was?" is that his sexual orientation may not exactly correspond to sexual orientations in todays society however we can certainly add that if the man had a strong but sublimated desire to fuck boys then labeling him queer does no harm to either our understanding of the term nor does it distort his real desires to such a degree that they lose any meaning. This is an example of overly complicating a rather simple question. Did Michaelangelo want to fuck boys, girls, both, or neither?

John Thornton



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