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[edit] Attempt to delete Pederasty category
Editors here may be interested in the following: * Category:Pederasty LGBT Category on one of the three main forms of homosexuality, with close to one hundred and fifty articles, is seen as "serving no educational purpose" and having "no meaning." Second time this deletion is attempted. CfD log 2006 February 5
[edit] Homosexuality as beyond normal?
In several of the Dialogues of Plato, all the various philosophers, even those who are only recent aquaintances, seem to talk about the qualities of young men/boys with the assumption that all involved in the conversation are at least a little gay. Now, I understand that modern notions of sexual identity were not a part of the ancient Greek understanding of things, which brings me to my question: Was there an ancient Greek way for a man of learning to say "Sorry, don't swing that way" rather than take on an apprentice? Or did they all "not ask, not tell" concerning the absence of attraction for boys, much as closeted gays might when speak with fraternity members about the attractiveness of local women? Or, I suppose you make argue that homosexual conversion really is possible, and hence it was self-perpetuating... but I doubt this. What are the current scholary theories on this? --Lenoxus 02:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
- Generally men would not have had to refuse the attentions of boys, boys usually waited to be courted. The love of a boy was also seen as something of great value, which men fought over. But would a man refuse such a gift? Why not? The Greeks did whatever they wanted, that is the freedom they defended. Still, he would have been seen as stingy - taking on a boy was considered an act of generosity. Would it have been possible to covert the Greeks to heterosexuality? It has been accomplished. It was done through force and fear. Haiduc 03:19, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
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- Thanks for your response. I guess my question entails my assumption that a certain percentage of any population is always gay and a certain percentage is always straight, with plenty of variations of the two. Most modern progressive analysis of ancient Greece gets all excited that homosexuality was so very tolerated (unlike the bigotry of the Christian West) that they stop there; they don't then look into the mystery of why it was so widespread, seeing as our modern understanding of orientation holds that homosexuals still tend to be a minority. In other words, I'm asking the opposite question of whether it would have been "possible to convert the Greeks to heterosexuality", because I agree, this was done through force and fear. I'm asking if there was any degree of prejudice against the (apparent) minority of pure-hetero Greek intellectuals. Still, your answer helped untangle many of the complexities, so thanks again. --Lenoxus 16:24, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
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- What is in the minority today is a man's capacity to desire, and enjoy intimate relations with another adult male. That, however, was not a majoritarian practice in ancient Greece either. The question you are posing could be stated as asking whether the Greeks' appreciation of boys was an acquired taste, or whether our present abhorrence of pederastic relations is an acquired distaste, and if so, could it be inculcated into a pederastic population. Certain groups' distaste for pork comes to mind, as another fair example of how a cultural preference can acquire the force of an absolute, visceral disgust. Presumably those populations at some point in their history or prehistory did not discriminate, and were you to take such a child at a young age and raise it in a pork eating culture you would be hard pressed to find a genetic predisposition for avoiding pork, I suspect. The Japanese macaque presents an interesting example of the influence of culture on the integration of homosexual relations into society: different bands exhibit widely divergent rates of homosexual interaction. Haiduc 16:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
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- Eneter the animals! They're always really cool. I thank you again and would like to note that if we disagree at all, it is on the subtlest of points. I suppose pederasty of any kind is in a sense "natural" to the extent that the young are more generally fit, and our modern complicated conceptions perhaps fail to take this into account — but of course, the prevention of exploitation is the highest priority I see here. I'm thinking about your "aquired taste" idea and starting to see how it applies to my own preferences and ideals as a straight American male — for example, physically speaking, deep-down, I probably appreciate more zaftig women than the sort of models my culture has conditioned me to like. Yet the conditioning is there nonetheless, causing me to first think "ick" and then "wait, hmm..." So yeah, this helps me think about why all those smart dudes kept agreeing about guys like Alcibiades...— Lenoxus 05:59, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] "unpublished doctoral dissertation"
"David Allan Gilbert, "Plato's Ideal Art of Rhetoric, an Interpretation of Phaedrus 270B-272B"; Unpublished doctoral dissertation, 2002"
So, if it hasn't been published, how can we check the factual accuracies of the quoted information? MikaelRo 19:13, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
- One can search for it on the web. Link and quotation have been provided now. Haiduc 22:53, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
