[lbo-talk] Greece, was Bar-bar-bar Barian

Philip Pilkington pilkingtonphil at gmail.com
Thu Jan 22 18:41:24 PST 2009


On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 11:39 PM, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>wrote:


> Doesn't Juvenal in the Satires denounce the Greeks for homosexuality? Come
> to think of it, I can't think offhand of any positive depictions of
> homosexuality in Roman literature -- not that I am terribly conversant with
> it. It doesn't make any appearance in the Art of Love (or so I recollect),
> which you expect it would if it were a common, socially acceptable practice.
>
>
According to Foucault - if I remember correctly - the distinctions here aren't really clear-cut. He reckons that even in Greece homosexuality wasn't fully embraced; it was widely practiced, of course, but there were only certain forms of it which were tolerated. The whole thing spun on an active-passive axis. If you were considered a free man you were expected not to... well... take it. It was sort of a "prison rules" system, with certain sections of the population classified as "fair game" (boys and slaves and the like).

Foucault reckons that in Rome the legal-administrative systems began to tighten up. The result on the family was that fathers were more concerned as to how their son's activities might affect their future position and so, since the notion that passivity in a male was shameful, engaging in homosexual activity was if not denounced, at least driven out of sight. He claims that this led to slaves taking up more of a role. I think he was saying that it was pretty much socially acceptable, but people didn't go around shouting about it.



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