>
>^^^^^^
>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 M
^^^^^ CB: How about "custom" ? Is that an apt word. I'm assuming that Greek customs regarding sexual practices is somehow reflected in the passage. Are the customs described confined to the ruling class elite or did the working classes have the same customs ?
Also, it seems that not only were there stable sexual orientations, but that the man-boy sexual relations were considered of superior virtue in the "mainstream", and among the ruling class.
The below addresses the question of whether the practices were in all classes.
Charles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greece
Scholarship and controversy After a long hiatus marked by censorship of homosexual themes,[15] modern historians picked up the thread, starting with Erich Bethe in 1907 and continuing with K. J. Dover and many others. These scholars have shown that same-sex relations were openly practiced, largely with official sanction, in many areas of life from the 7th century BC until the Roman era. Although this perspective is the scholarly consensus in North America and Northern Europe, some scholars believe that homosexual relationships, especially pederasty, were common only among the aristocracy, and that such relationships were not widely practiced by the common people (demos). One such scholar is Bruce Thornton, who argues that insults directed at passive homosexuals in the comedies of Aristophanes show the common people's dislike for male homosexuality.[16] Other scholars, such as Victoria Wohl, emphasize that in Athens, same-sex desire was part of the "sexual ideology of the democracy," shared by the elite and the demos, as exemplified by the tyrant-slayers, Harmodius and Aristogeiton.[17] Even those who argue that pederasty was limited to the upper classes generally concede that it was "part of the social structure of the polis."[18] Outside academia, both opponents of LGBT rights and Greek nationalists have latched on to the argument that homosexuality was limited to the elite for political purposes. The subject has caused controversy in modern Greece. In 2002, a conference on Alexander the Great was stormed as a paper about his homosexuality was about to be presented. When the film Alexander, which depicted Alexander as romantically involved with both men and women, was released in 2004, 25 Greek lawyers threatened to sue the film's makers,[19] but relented after attending an advanced screening of the film.[20] The movie was a financial disaster in Greece, where it played for only four days
Context The ancient Greeks did not conceive of sexual orientation as a social identifier, as Western societies have done for the past century. In the ancient Greek context, the terms "homosexual" and "heterosexual" are properly used only to describe activities, not identities. Greek society did not distinguish sexual desire or behavior by the gender of the participants, but by the extent to which such desire or behavior conformed to social norms. These norms were based on gender, age and social status.[5] There is little extant source material on how females viewed sexual activity.
There are two main views of male sexual activity in ancient Greek society. Some scholars, such as Kenneth Dover and David Halperin, claim that it was highly polarized into "active" and "passive" partners, penetrator and penetrated, an active/passive polarization held to be associated with dominant and submissive social roles: the active role was associated with masculinity, higher social status and adulthood, while the passive role was associated with femininity, lower social status and youth.[5] In this view, any sexual activities in which a male penetrated a social inferior was regarded as normal; "social inferiors" could include women, male youths, foreigners, prostitutes and/or slaves; and being penetrated, especially by a social inferior, was considered potentially shameful.[5]
Other scholars, however, argue that the relations, while usually age-structured, were mutual and democratizing.[6][7] They also describe them as "warm," "loving," and "affectionate," [8] and argue that the Greek tradition of same-sex relations was central to "Greek history and warfare, politics, art, literature and learning, in short to the Greek miracle."[9]