History of lesbianism
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[edit] Early Greece (776-480 BCE)
It is speculated that many men in ancient Greece sought homosexual relationships because of the low intellectual status of women, as in classical Athens. However, this was not always so: in Homeric times, women appear to have been less constrained. The freedom that women shared with men seems to have especially lingered on the Isle of Lesbos, the home of Sappho (b. circa 610 BCE.)
[edit] Sappho
Although Sappho has become a symbol of lesbianism in modern times and in fact the very word lesbian derives from her home on the Isle of Lesbos, historians have pointed out that Sappho's poems do not likely refer to lesbian feelings, as she was commissioned to train girls of noble families in dance and song for weddings and religious festivals. Her poems reflect a literary form of that era.
Sappho was married off and eventually gave birth to a daughter. A revolution temporarily forced her into exile in Sicily; when she returned, she served as a teacher of aristocratic girls.
Plato dubbed Sappho the "tenth muse." The metrical form she developed came to be known as the Sapphic meter.
Many of her poems deal with Aphrodite, a common theme in Greek poetry in general. Modern literary critics have praised the intense imagery in Sappho's work: "You came and I was longing for you; you cooled my heart which was burning with desire," "Love shook my heart like a wind falling on the oaks on a mountain," "Once again limb-loosening Love made me tremble, the bitter-sweet irresistible creature." Most historians doubt that these would reflect Sappho's own feelings.
[edit] Judea
Although Hebrew scriptures outright condemn male homosexuality, particularly in the book of Leviticus, there is little to no mention of lesbianism. The Talmud records that Rabbi Huna (d. 296 CE) decided that "women who practice lewdness with one another are disqualified from marrying a priest." (A priest's wife must be a virgin.) However, this mild sanction was rejected by the Talmud, which accepts the opinion of Rabbi Eleazar (c. 150 CE) who felt that lesbianism should not bar a women from marrying a priest, since "the action is...mere obscenity."[1]
Lesbianism in the Torah may also be sparse due to the fact that sexual relations between women do not waste fluids, such as semen in a man. Women need not even experience an orgasm to conceive a child. Procreation, as in many cultures, was held to be highly important, especially because of the higher death-rates of earlier centuries. Since sexual intercourse between men, in the eyes of the writers of Hebrew scriptures, wastes semen, then there is more reason to outright condemn the act.
[edit] Rome and Greece (323 BCE-138 CE)
The lesbian love story between Iphis and Ianthe, in Book IX of Ovid's the Metamorphoses, is most vivid. When Iphis' mother becomes pregnant, her husband declares that he will kill the child if it is a girl. She bears a girl and attempts to conceal her gender by giving her a name that is of ambiguous sex: Iphis. When the "son" is thirteen, the father chooses a golden-haired maiden named Ianthe as the "boy's" bride. The love of the two girls is written sympathetically:
They were of equal age, they both were lovely,
Had learned their ABC's from the same teachers,
And so love came to both of them together
In simple innocence, and filled their hearts
With equal longing.
However, as the marriage draws ever closer, Iphis recoils, calling her love "monstrous and unheard of." The goddess Isis hears the girl's bemoans and turns her into a boy. This self-loathing homophobia still embodies the conflicting emotions of many gay people today. It is most likely that Ovid attempted to reflect the prejudice of the classical world, a place in which lesbianism, also known as tribadism, was not tolerated as much as paiderastia.
References to love between women is sparse. An epigram from the Greek Anthology by a third-century poet named Asclepiades blames two women for taking the "wrong path" to love, and he asks Aphrodite to hate them. Phaedrus attempted to explain lesbianism through a myth of his own making: Prometheus, coming home drunk from a party, had mistakenly exchanged the genitals of some women and some men - "Lust now enjoys perverted pleasure."
It is quite clear that paiderastia and lesbianism were not held in equally good light, possibly because of the violation of strict gender roles. Seneca the Elder mentions a husband who killed his wife and her female lover and implies that their crime was worse than that of adultery between a male and female. The Babyloniaca of Iamblichus describes an Egyptian princess named Berenice who loves and marries another woman. This novelist also states that such love is "wild and lawless". Martial satirized a woman named Philaenis as an athlete who plays ball in a bikini, wrestles in the mud, vomits wine before dinner, gorges on food, and drinks once more. Philaenis also sodomizes boys to prove her masculinity. Even worse, Martial theorized that lesbians have long clitorises that allow them to sexually penetrate other women.
Another hypermasculine stereotype of the times was documented in Lucian's Dialogue of the Courtesans, in which Megilla renames herself Megillus and wears a wig to cover her shaved head. She marries Demonassa of Corinth, although Megillus is from Lesbos. Her friend Leaena comments that "They say there are women like that in Lesbos, with faces like men, and unwilling to consort with men, but only with women, as though they themselves were men". Megillus seduces Leaena, who feels that the experience is too disgusting to describe in detail. This is far from the sophisticated aestheticism of Sappho's group.
In another dialogue ascribed to Lucian, two men debate over which is better, male love or heterosexuality. One man protested that if male affairs were legitimized, then lesbianism would soon be condoned as well, an unthinkable notion.
[edit] Dark Ages (476-1049 AD)
Greece was the most accepting of homosexual relationships. When Rome came to power, it began to frown on such relations: however it was all but stamped out-- the emperor Hadrian and his beloved Antinous come to mind. When Rome fell in 476 CE, Christianity attempted to forcefully eradicate any remaining evidence of homosexuality. Penitentials, unofficial guidebooks, became popular, especially in the British Isles. These books listed crimes and the penances that must be done for them. For example, "...he who commits the male crime of the Sodomites shall do penance for four years." The penitentials of Theodore of Tarsus, who became archbishop of Canterbury in the 7th century, made special references to lesbianism. He states, "If a woman practices vice with a woman she shall do penance for three years." Penitentials soon spread from the isles to mainland Europe. From the 6th to the 11th centuries, there are thirty-one penitentials that punish male homosexuality and fourteen that punish lesbianism. This allows one to assume that homosexuality was quite regularly confessed.
[edit] References
- ^ Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Yevamot 76a; http://www.orthodykes.org/faq.html
[edit] See also
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