[lbo-talk] Sex before Modernity (was Incommensurability, phooey)

[John Thornton]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> On 8/28/07, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>   
>> But if Miles thinks it's some sort of profound error
>> to raise the question of whether Michelangelo was
>> homosexual, or predominantly so, he's wrong. Sodomy
>> was a category well known and well understood in his
>> time and not that differently understood from the way
>> "we" understand homosexuality -- maybe not in Tribeca
>> but in Bensonhurst or Merrillville -- it was thought
>> of as unmanly, sinful, perverted, and criminal, and
>> associated with child molesting.
>>     
>
> That is a very parochial understanding of history, which ignores women
> as well as other cultures than those of the region that have become
> "the West."  Before modernity, a majority of societies had no concept
> of sodomy, and acts that would have fallen into the category of sodomy
> in the predominantly Christian nations included ones that were not
> only permitted but also in some cases exalted (as in ancient Greece
> and pre-modern Japan) or mandated in the rest of the world.*

In a discussion of whether Michaelangelo wanted to suck dick the 
non-Christian, non-western understandings of sexuality are irrelevant.
That doesn't make such a discussion a parochial understanding of history.

John Thornton