--- On Thu, 1/22/09, Philip Pilkington <pilkingtonphil at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> 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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