[lbo-talk] Nepal gays and Maoists/Marxist Approach

Shane Mage shmage at pipeline.com
Sun Jan 21 15:50:10 PST 2007


Charles Brown wrote:
>
>^^^^^^
>CB: Was this an ideology of all classes of the time and place, or only the
>ruling class elite ?

I'm not sure that the words of [the dramatic character] Aristophanes should be regarded as expressing an "ideology." As I pointed out, the treatment of sexual orientation as determined by "nature" goes along with [the historical] Aristophanes ridiculing Cleon's effeminacy--and that neither the speech in the Symposium nor the jokes in his own plays should be taken as proof of his opinions, ideological or not. The whole point was that *the existence of the stable sexual orientations we today call "straight," "lesbian," and "gay"* was familiar, even commonplace, to the amcient Greeks.

Shane Mage

"Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not consent to be called Zeus."

Herakleitos of Ephesos



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