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Ed

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❤️ 💜 ❤️ 💜

a late little piece for valentines day

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"Oh, that's the shape of love."

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Dear Tumblr: I think you should know that David Fane was walking around with a little bag around him and inside that bag was an even smaller bag of mini cadburys chocolate that he went around offering to attendees in the lobby of the con.

Also he sang "how do you solve a problem like maria?" to me.

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Women in Shakespeare

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Yesterday I wrote an AskHistorians answer that I'd like to share with Tumblr. The question:

Is the idea of a “gay Greece” overexaggerated?

Lesbian here, and coming from a stance of curiosity and careful skepticism. Why is it believed that very many, or most, ancient Greek men were same-sex attracted (bisexual/gay)? Isn’t it true that same-sex attraction is a stable minority trait throughout time and culture? If the vast majority of men and women are heterosexual (all with the ability to engage in same-sex sex out of loneliness, etc), why is this idea so prevalent? Were the ancient pederastic poets and writers part of literary minority circles, kind of like a lot of queer people are nowadays? Looking for clarity, thank you!

My response:

This is a really interesting question, and I hope nobody minds if I approach it more from a queer theory perspective, allowing for someone more classically-minded to tackle it as a specific question of ancient Greek sexual norms with primary sources in their own answer.

The idea that "same-sex attraction is a stable minority trait" is not some kind of settled scientific fact. Sexuality is much more loosey-goosey than that! Actual individual preference with all societal baggage removed is simply and literally impossible to find -- we are shaped by the world we live in. A world where being solely attracted to "the opposite sex" is seen as the default, the norm, something that only a small number of people deviate from because they either (depending on your philosophy) were born unable to adhere to that norm or have been seduced into it blah blah. Even the concept of there being an "opposite sex" in the first place is part of a socially-constructed binary rather than something innate and biological, as there are multiple sexes when defined based on chromosomes or physicality, and multiple genders when defined based on how people see themselves. How would we define straightness absent that binary? Moreover, isn't it interesting that even people who are well-versed in the spectrum of sexuality still typically perceive "straightness" as a rigid and defined concept? Isn't it interesting that the modern cultural perception of "straightness" allows for men to have sex with other men as merely "situational homosexuality" in the absence of women, or for men to self-define as "straight" because they always top?

It's very common for people to argue that we shouldn't label historical figures as queer because they would not have understood that self-definition. It's an argument I understand, but it betrays a simplistic understanding of what "queer" means, treating it as something like a political identity today. Which, to be fair, is often how it's used colloquially. However, "queer" is an extremely useful word due to its vagueness, in comparison to pretty much all the other sexuality descriptors: "same-sex attracted" and "opposite-sex attracted" subscribe to that inaccurate binary, and "homosexual" and "heterosexual" do as well, while also being terms culturally grounded in the late nineteenth- and twentieth-century medicalization of sexuality; "gay" and "lesbian" are very specific and also quite politicized labels; "bisexual" and "pansexual" can be useful but not only also come out of a modern context but have a bunch of baggage about What This Specifically Means rooted in interpersonal conflicts within the community (we could make this even more complicated by considering "people who identify as bisexuals who identify as lesbians" but that's not what your question is remotely about); and none of this gets into the difficulties of identifying asexuality even in oneself today, let alone in people we only have records of. "Queer" is a wonderfully vague and all-encompassing term that can be used to mean "anything other than a man who is romantically and sexually attracted to women and only act on those feelings or a woman who is romantically and sexually attracted to men and only acts on those feelings", and there's a reason that it's been embraced in the fields of queer theory and queer history - it's useful specifically as a way to break out of modern paradigms.

So we go back to your original question and the issue of modern paradigms. There are people who will argue that discussing ancient Greek male sexuality in terms of queerness is wrong, because it wasn't about romance and didn't allow for any man to have a true, enduring relationship with another man. This is somewhat understandable but also misguided, and betrays a squeamishness with allowing for queerness in history. "Love between equals" simply cannot be a primary lens of understanding romantic and sexual relationships in any period in which a) people bought and sold other human beings and b) women were either literally or socially forced to marry men. If we cannot identify Greek men having sex with other men as queer because there was a required power differential and/or because it is presumed to be merely a method of sexual release, then we certainly cannot identify them as straight/heterosexual for marrying and procreating with women, a relationship with almost an equivalent power differential and typically done for the sake of making heirs. There is a massive double standard in which historical men can be called straight when they display no interest in women's lives outside of their own needs and the needs of the household, but not queer unless they actively pursue meaningful, permanent relationships with men of their own age and status.

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the purest form of serotonin is when a cat looks at u and u go like “what?” and it meows at u

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Baby and Mama, Yellowstone National Park

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guys you can see the cute little lower back dimples… oh my fucking god……

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ppl in the age of cell phones: fucking up their necks

ppl in the age of books: fucking up their necks

ppl in the age of textile art: fucking up their necks

ppl in the age of picking lice: fucking up their necks

ppl in the age of cooking: fucking up their necks

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'dating rules' are so fucking stupid btw. "don't talk too much about your hyperfixation on a first date, it'll scare them off!!" it'll only scare them off if they're a coward. Someone worthy of my affections will listen to me talk about my goal of visiting every whale exhibit with a life-sized effigy of a whale in it in the world for a solid half-hour and come away from that experience desiring me carnally.