>>
> Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>> ...same-sex sexual relations occur in most societies, but the linkage
>> of that behavior to a stable, exclusive sexual identity is not a
>> human universal. Good example: ancient Greece. The men who engaged
>> in same sex sexual relations were typically older, married men and
>> young men who would later marry and have a family. There were not
>> "gay" men in ancient Greece...
>
>
> The ignorance expressed in these lines would be astounding were it
> not so commonplace. How can anyone have the chutzpa to write
> about Greek homosexuality without ever having read the *Symposium*?
>
Well, wo, wait. Aristophanes' bit in the Symposium is one of my all time
faves, but it does not contradict what Miles wrote. For the Greeks, it
may have mostly been what is the case in some parts of the world today:
women for babies; men for pleasure. And then, remember, he quotes
Aristophanes in order to prefigure the "spiritual" mating he celebrates
at the end, not really because he agrees with Aristophanes. We may think
that Aristophanes was right; but Plato didn't. He just found that bit
dramatically and poetically useful.
Homosexuality was so common and so accepted in Greece, that Alcibiades' final story in the Symposium, about how Socrates refused to have sex with him, is meant to shock. But this is not the same as saying that Greeks identified themselves exclusively as homosexuals in the way that some men do today. That's all that Miles was arguing. I think.
BTW. The Symposium is really a great (poetic) work.
Joanna