Bradley Menchl CLCIV 342 002 3/19/10 Love between the legs: the transformation of sexual structures Although

the terms gender and sex are used interchangeably in common writing, they do not refer to the exact same concept. Sex, the anatomical characteristic, can be completely different from gender, which is based on ones selfperception. In short, sex is between the legs, while gender is between the ears. This difference is crucial to note when studying ancient Greek and Roman life. It may be easy to brand the Greeks as unorthodox, but this label cannot be given until their behaviors and beliefs are examined along with an understanding of the distinction between our modern day conceptions of sexuality and how the Greek people saw them. The difference centers on the importance of gender and sex, or more specifically, the precedence one concept has over the other in each culture. The Greeks and Romans had a gender-based sex structure, focusing on the passive and dominant roles in a relationship. These roles would translate respectively as feminine and masculine social characteristics. Modern sexuality, in contrast, is thoroughly sex-based. Different categories of sexual interaction, heterosexual and homosexual, refer to the sex of the partners involved in the act. By examining different degrees of normalcy regarding sexual relations in Greece and Rome, it is apparent that sexuality has come to mean something completely different than what it once meant in ancient civilizations. Perhaps the best example of gender-based sexuality in ancient civilizations is the practice of pederasty in ancient Greece and Rome. In Athenaeus account of famous boy-lovers, he mentions that many men, overall, prefer love with boys to

Bradley Menchl CLCIV 342 002 3/19/10 love with females and that love affairs were an open and everyday matter (Hubbard 76). These pederastic relationships were based on the roles of the two participants. The boy, assuming a passive role, was the feminine partner, while the man took on the dominant, masculine role. Young boys, lacking key masculine characteristics, were considered like women as feminine characters and were expected to take on feminine, passive roles in any sexual act. Such a structure was required for a relationship to be considered normal for ancient Greeks. It was indeed a very normal thing for Greeks and Romans to have boy lovers. Athenaeus mentions many notable pederasts including King Alexander who under the eyes of the whole theater bent over to give him [the Eunuch Bagoas] a kiss, and when the audience shouted and applauded, he very willingly bent over and kissed him again (Hubbard 79). This display of affection may be mistaken for modern day homosexuality, but the two cannot be compared, due to the gender roles of Alexander and Bagoas. Although the eunuch is of the male sex, his age and lower status in relation to the king denote him as feminine. Greeks would have seen very little difference if Alexander had instead kissed a woman, not a young boy. Once a boy came of age and began to show characteristics of a man, however, it was no longer generally acceptable to have him as a lover. Athenaeus refers to a saying by the courtesan Glycera, Boys are beautiful only during the period when they resemble a woman (Hubbard 82). Boys therefore were no longer pursued when they lost their feminine, boyish features. These boys were also expected take on the dominant sexual role once they made the switch from boy to man. The gender-

Bradley Menchl CLCIV 342 002 3/19/10 based sexuality of Ancient Greece and Rome was based on the idea of dominance and passivity, which allowed for both male-female sex and pederasty as examples of normal sexual behaviors. Halperin supports this argument of dominance and passivity in his article How to Do the History of Male Homosexuality. He describes sex between men and boys, referring to a similar example in Florence as hierarchy, not mutuality, sex as something done to someone by someone else, not a common search for shared pleasure Here sex implies difference, not identity (Halperin 115). He describes male sexual relationships in the past as sex between a superordinate and subordinate partner. This hierarchy symbolizes their difference in social status, age, and gender role. The act of sex itself is a symbolic exercise of hierarchical power. This is exactly the case in the situations of the boy-lovers described by Athenaeus. Alexander is older and more powerful than his eunuch lover, so in showing public affection and ultimately having sex with him, he is taking on a masculine role, while Bagoas, accepting the love that Alexander showers on him, takes on the feminine role. Following the same gender rules, sex between men and women would have taken place in this fashion. In a modern world of sought after sexual equality, the thought of males dominating females during sex to display their power seems chauvinistic to say the least, but the symbolic social meaning of sex favored men as the dominant partner over women and boys equally. The situation of Bagoas must also be considered in the ancient Greek sexual context. In general, as Halperin explains, a younger partner who figures as a sexual

Bradley Menchl CLCIV 342 002 3/19/10 object feels no comparable desire, and derives no comparable pleasure from the contactAs an erotic experience, an experience of passion or desire, paederasty or sodomy refers to the active partner only. If this statement given is true, then it should be inferred that Bagoas felt no comparable desire toward Alexander. His love could better be described then as more of an appreciation for the gifts given to him by his older lover. The passive lover would be rewarded with praise, assistance, gifts, or money and would in turn give himself physically, offering his beauty as compensation. In most normal situations of pederasty, the boys had no erotic pleasure. It was only the active participant who really got anything out of the act itself. For this reason, only the active partner was considered the pederast. Even in cases of deviant sexual behavior, the dominant participant was the one reprimanded; the passive member was not held as responsible. Although the passive participant was a required part of ancient Greek sex, they were not expected to experience the sexual pleasure that their active partner did, and thus held a role that we dont commonly associate with today. The social norms of sex were not always followed in ancient Greece and Rome. There were plenty of cases of perverted people who went against the grain sexually, their behaviors opposing those that were socially accepted. In Senecas Natural Questions, he reveals the behaviors of a veritable poster child of a perverted Greek. This man, Hostius Quadra scorns no instrument for rousing passion and Seneca immediately goes on to describing his perverted ways. What is apparently even more shocking, however, was the fact that Hostius is committing

Bradley Menchl CLCIV 342 002 3/19/10 these acts not to one sex alone(Seneca 85). At the same time, he said, I submit to both a man and a woman(Seneca 87). Already Hostius is defying the gender rules surrounding Greek sexuality. Hostius, a man, admits to taking a passive role during sex with both men and women. Not only does he willingly submit to another man, but he also allows a woman to take a dominant role during sex, which is a highly unnatural reversal of the sexual structure at that time. The disgust Seneca has for him is apparent in his description, Sometimes shared between a man and a woman, and with his whole body spread in position for submitting to them, he used to watch the unspeakable acts (87). With Hostius as an example of the unnatural in Greek sexual practices, we can see the response to men who submitted themselves to others. He is categorized as unnatural because he outwardly opposes the symbolic meaning of sex as described by Halperin. As a male he is of either equal or higher sex class than his partners and as Seneca explains, he is quite wealthy, thus not of lower social class either. Hostius helps to clarify the sexual boundaries encircling normalcy. With his example of what is unnatural, we are able to further understand the importance of gender roles in ancient Greece and what they considered to be normal. The same gender roles that held men as the dominating role held women permanently as the passive role. However, in this case, there was no other potential sexual partner below women on the social spectrum, no female brand of pederasty; their only normal sexual option would be to submit to a man. Thus, situations of female-female sex were strongly opposed. In Dovers article, Two Women of

Bradley Menchl CLCIV 342 002 3/19/10 Samos, he describes the general opinion regarding lesbianism. Greeks believed that mens desire for a male is sharper than for a female by as much as a male is stronger than a female and because of this claim, male-male love was thought to be on the same or higher level than that between the sexes. In the pseudo-Lucian work, Forms of Love, for example, Callicraditus, in a debate about whether the love of boys or women was preferable, says the love of boys was a noble form of love. However, the love between females as opposed to love between males was seen as a devaluation of the penis (Dover 226). Sex between females would mean by Halperins social model that one or both of participants would be taking on the dominant role, which would go against the generally held fact that as a woman, one is by nature passive. While male homosexuals had no label in ancient Greece, Female homosexuals did, the word roughly translating to tribades. These women were stereotyped, as is shown in Lucians Dialogues of the Courtesans. The woman of question, Megilla, rips of her wig while courting another woman to reveal her shaven head and claims that her name is actually Megillus, a masculine adaptation of her original name. She says to another woman, I was born a woman like the rest of you, but I have the mind and the desires and everything else of a man (Hubbard 469). The dominating role of homosexual women was so off-putting to Greek writers such as Lucian, that they created almost comically masculine women, trying to find an explanation for a woman who is only attracted to other women and takes a masculine role in sex.

Bradley Menchl CLCIV 342 002 3/19/10 This stereotyping of those who defied sexual norms was not unique to the ancient Greeks and Romans. In recent history, those who defied sexual norms, notably homosexuals, were stereotyped and classified with their orientation every characteristic in their life. Homosexual men were all depicted as having feminine traits so apparently one could be spotted from a distance based on their mannerisms. These attacks and classifications were mainstream sexual cultures attempt to protect itself from the threat of those who by action opposed their rules. Since generally held principles and norms only stay in power through conformity, any threat to uniform sexual values in a culture is a danger. The negative response of a culture to opposing sexual behaviors and beliefs is an attempt to keep the status quo and preserve the current state of principles. In previous examples, we have seen sexual beliefs and customs much different from our own. How did we get from the gender-based sexuality of the past to the sex-based sexuality of the present? In Foucaults book, The History of Sexuality Volume 1, he explains the transformation and development of what we now call sexuality. Foucault describes sexuality as a social device that can be used to create new forms of power. Old Juridical power, harsh and public, gave way to Disciplinary power, silent, causing individuals to conform. This came at the end of the Feudal System, when people no longer were perceived as subjects based on rank, but of individuals that were all part of a whole. Sex stopped being the symbolic act of hierarchy and began to be a symbolic act of the individual involved. At the same time, the acts that fell under the category of normal began to shrink

Bradley Menchl CLCIV 342 002 3/19/10 until it encompassed solely heterosexual sex between spouses. The pervert was now assigned the name of homosexual, while those who practiced sexual norms were heterosexuals. Modern sexuality was born, based on an individuals orientation and not the gender role that they played. Homosexual relations, once based on ones social status and which roles one could play in a relationship, now include relationships with equal partners together for each others equal pleasure. From a modern point of view, the ancient Greeks and Romans participated in sexual acts that most would frown against, such as pederasty. From their point of view however, modern sexual relationships would seem just as unnatural. The prospect of men and women assuming equal roles in sex with no clear dominant participant would seem emasculating for the male and women would seen as deviant, denying a constant passive role. Also, modern homosexual relationships would have been seen as perverted, with males submitting to each other. The idea itself of a homosexual choosing to love and marry males rather than females would have been baffling to the Greeks. Male love was normally only considered to be temporary, ending when the object of love, the boy, reached maturity. To have a long-term mutual relationship between men would not be seen as normal in ancient Greece. The transformation of sexual norms from gender to sex-based sexuality created two separate cultures that are almost impossible to compare, and from the point of view of each, the set of normal behaviors in the other seems entirely unnatural.

Bradley Menchl CLCIV 342 002 3/19/10 By examining ancient Greek and Roman texts, and reading modern theories on the topic, it is apparent that the most prominent difference in sexuality since Ancient Greek society is the change from gender-based to sex-based sexuality. Originally, the part one played in the bedroom represented the person they were. Pederasty and sex between the sexes were both fully accepted, with ancient scholars debating which was a preferable form of love. In this society, a young boy, devoid of most masculine traits was seen as a potential feminine sexual partner just as a woman was. After its transformation as described by Foucault, sexuality became more geared to the individual, allowing them to choose their orientation and identity. Also, relationships between partners were equalized, with little importance placed on hierarchy and power. The shift of sexual focus from between the ears to between the legs accounts for the drastic distinction between Greek and Roman sexual practices and modern-day sexuality.