RE: Forget Old Guard .. More Like Stone Age

Join Our Community

Collarchat.com

Home Login Search

RE: Forget Old Guard .. More Like Stone Age

View related threads: (in this forum | in all forums)

Logged in as: Guest

All Forums >> [Community Discussions] >> Ask a Master >> RE: Forget Old Guard .. More Like Stone Age

Page: << < prev 1 2 [3]

Message

<< Older Topic Newer Topic >>

RE: Forget Old Guard .. More Like Stone Age - 9/23/2004 3:05:15 PM

WayHome

Posts: 237
Joined: 8/4/2004
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Leonidas
There were "reports" of it throughout greek history, and roman history too, for that matter. What have you read that lead you to believe that homosexuality was rampant in Sparta?

Because they had sex with men far more often than with women. Because they tended to treat men as worthy company while treating women as means to an end. Because sexual relationships between men were acceptable and common even after the time when they were forced to live in barracks and had no access to women.

quote:

Well, again, looks that way to whom? There is absolutely no doubt that it occured. A certain percentage of any group of men is going to be homosexual.

True, but I do not belive that percentage is fixed biologically. I believe it has a lot to do with modelling behavior, Skinnerian and Pavlovian conditionning, cognitive factors such as expectation and sexual imagery, formative fantasies, etc. I believe that a culture can overcome what little "instinct" we might possess towards heterosexuality or homosexuality even though there do CLEARLY seem to be some people who are just wirded that way from birth (such as the example of my lesbian cousin).

quote:

quote:

I espouse the idea that if all the boys masturbate around and with other males and go through puberty with all physical experiences being with males, most will grow up being aroused by males--so much for biological determinism)

Again, I'd love to know why you think so. Have you read anything that leads you to believe, for example, that boys who are in single sex educational settings in middle and highschool (like military academies, parochial schools, or yeshivas) are more predisposed to homosexuality and bisexuality than boys in general?

Good question. They are certainly more likely to have homosexual experiences, which is not the same thing as being homosexual. I remember being bunked above another guy who jerked off all night and my bunk was constantly rocking and squeeking and it made me nuts. I yelled at him to stop, I got out of bed and tried to leave until he was done (getting in trouble for that since they don't make those sort of allowances at boot camp) and finally jumping out of bed and threatenning to kick his ass. The only reason I didn't hit him was because I really didn't want to touch another man while he had his erect dick in his hand. Was that experience "gay"? A little, even though neither of us was gay (ok, I'm not sure about him). Did it make me gay? No.

But there is a big difference between modern kids at bording school and what went on in Sparta. First off, those kids still model heterosexual behavior. The boys still jerk off to images of women and that leads to the sorts of fantasies that will later influence their patterns of arousal. They are not completely cut off from the opposite sex and most are just as likely to have sexual encounters with members of the opposite sex at as early an age as those not in gender-specific programs. Some studies have even said they tend to have such experiences earlier than average. Bording school and boot camp are still entrenched in our heterosexual culture. Sexual preferences cannot be sepparated from cultural context. I'm not gay or even the slightest bit bi, but I suspect I might have been if I grew up in Sparta. I generally don't find obese women sexier than thin women but I suspect that I might if I grew up in pre-colonial Samoa. I don't prefer my fish served with the heads still on, but I probably would if I grew up in China. We have a slight biological tendancy toward male dominance, but as humans we are succeptable to alternatives. We have a predisposition toward heterosexuality also, but it too can be shaped by culture and individual nature AND nurture. We probably have a biological tendancy to favor physical traits in sexual partners that imply good health, but it's just a tendancy and alternatives abound.

quote:

Part of my curiosity has to do with the fact that both of my boys are being educated in a single-sex environment.

Uh oh, you're turning them queer

quote:

My experience around their classmates wouldn't lead me to believe that they are more curious about each other, and less so about girls, than other boys their age. In fact, my experience has been the opposite.

Exactly right. Humans are very intellectual creatures and what goes on between their ears is at least as important as who they are in proximity to. These children are just as likely to think of the opposite sex in their fantasies as any other. That is the culture we live in. That doesn't mean it can't be any other way and many in the past have dismissed the possibility that a whole culture could express homosexuality as the norm simply because they felt that God or mother nature made us this way. We in the "scene" should be particulalry aware of how mutable human sexuality is and should not be so quick to dissmiss (sigh "should")

quote:

These military science professors need to get out of their classroom and go have a stab (no pun intended) at phalanx warfare sometime.

They are expressing the principles that the US military has been applying for decades. The more bonds you can create between a warrior and his unit (not that unit), the more likely he will be to fight instead of give in under pressure. If those bonds extend even to the romantic and sexual, all the better. Not so strange when you think about it.

quote:

The strongest men with the best discipline and most endurance win. The spartans were successful at it because they practiced selective breeding (and infanticide of weak or deformed young) and drilled their men for physical strength, endurance, and perfect disciplne from a very young age.

Partly right. Strength, endurance, and discipline are all very nice, but skill and fortitude rule. They had incredible amounts of training with the weapons and tactics of their day. They also trained for pain tollerance and coping with injury. By the time a typical Spartan saw his very first battle, he had far more experience than most seasoned soldiers from any time or place in history. The closest modern analog I can see is things like Shaolin monks and the Beijing Opera House. They undergo training of similar intensity and duration but without an eye on the ultimate goal of being the most powerful and deadly soldiers on the planet. They do it for fame or for spiritual reasons, but imagine that effort and intensity applied to all out war using the most up-to-date weapons and tactics in a world where weapons and tactics aren't obsolete by the time someone could even finish such training. Size and strength are nice, but training is everything.

quote:

That their success stemmed from fucking each other is pretty far fetched.

I never said that. I said part of their success came from the intense bonds they shared, which in this case included sex.

quote:

I thought that I was fairly explicit about what I think constitutes homosexuality. Let me be even more explicit, just for you. If a man prefers men even when women are as accessible and available, he's a homosexual. If he will as readily fuck a man as a woman, all things being equal, he's bisexual. If he will fuck a man if no women are available (such as in a prison or single-sex only environment such as an extended military deployment) he may be neither. It depends on whether he loses interest in men when women are again available to him. We (in the US) don't see that kind of behavior much outside of prison. It's more common in some of the traditional cultures that I mentioned. It's reasonable to think that it was more common in Sparta than it is in our experience (again, in the US) too, given the structure of their society. I don't think I have much "difficulty" with Spartan sexuality unless your definition of difficulty is not agreeing with you.

Actually, I find that definition perfectly reasonable, though probably not common. It's also completely different from the kind of mounting to express dominance that you mentioned much earlier in the thread. If the motivation for a behavior is sexual gratification from a member of the same sex, then that is homosexual behavior, though the behavior might be situationally dependant and thus the "person" might not be gay even is the behavior clearly is. If the motivation is not sexual gratification from the same sex, but rather a display of dominance or a tool of humiliation, that is not necessarily homosexual behavior (though it could be) and it's not really "sex" in the same way of speaking as when people say "rape isn't sex". Either can happen in prison, but they are not the same thing at all.

quote:

PranksterBitch, please don't provide any more support for Leonidas's worldview with your behavior. It really undermines my arguments.

Friend, if women behaving that way undermines your argument, you are on very thin ice. It's becoming an increasingly popular attitude.

Heh.

I mostly just see it in places like this online. It's not that such behavior actually disproves the argument, but that it just makes the argument harder to accept.

As for the "When you carry around a hammer..." argument for me seeing homosexuality in classical cultures, that's not a particular hammer I carry around, nor one I even own. Which is kinda sad considering I'm married to one of the rare women in the world who is as fascinated and turned on by two men having sex together as the typical male in our society is by two women together. My response has always been, "I'm happy to help fulfill your fantasy of two men as long as neither of the men is me and I don't actually have to be in the room". I espouse open-mindedness but admit when my own has limits....

Leto

< Message edited by WayHome -- 9/23/2004 3:22:44 PM >

(in reply to Leonidas)

Profile

Post #: 41

RE: Forget Old Guard .. More Like Stone Age - 9/23/2004 5:21:59 PM

Leonidas

Posts: 2078
Joined: 2/16/2004
Status: offline

quote:

Because they had sex with men far more often than with women. Because they tended to treat men as worthy company while treating women as means to an end. Because sexual relationships between men were acceptable and common even after the time when they were forced to live in barracks and had no access to women.

OK, I'll ask again. Where are you getting this? Xenophon, by far the best source we have about Sparta, expressly says that homosexuality was not prominant in Spartan society, no doubt in response to rumors to that effect that were already circulating in his time. You could say that he was misinformed, except that he lived among the Spartans for years, and even fought with them against his native Athens. You could say that he was a homophobe, and that he lied, but if he were a homophobe, why would he send his own sons through the Spartan educational system where they would be likely to be butt-fucked into oblivion by the time they were 15 when he had other options?

Ok, Ok, you're going to say that Plutarch tells a different tale. He did. 450 years later . You can chose to favor Plutarch for accuracy in his account, but then I'm going to start checking your hands for a hammer again.

Aristotle wrote that the power of women in Sparta was typical of militaristic societies which did not emphasize homosexuality. What he was saying was that because they were not homosexual enough like the other greek city states, their women had them by the balls.

quote:

I believe it has a lot to do with modelling behavior, Skinnerian and Pavlovian conditionning, cognitive factors such as expectation and sexual imagery...

Funny you should mention sexual imagery. Homosexuality is notably absent from the motifs of Spartan/Laconian potery, unlike that of Athens, Corinth, and other city-states.

In addition, Spartan men were expected to marry in their 20s, far younger than was typical in other city-states, and they married women much closer to their own age than was typical for their neighbors. These women, by their laws, had to be old enough to enjoy sex when they married (a fairly radical notion at the time). Men had less status in society if they were not the fathers of children. The Agamoi (men who had not produced sons) couldn't even participate in some of the main Spartan festivals, and when they did, they were openly shown disrespect by their peers. They were also made to dance naked in the winter and sing that the punishment for their failure to father sons was just.

I don't think that you can credibly argue that these young men were growing up in an ancient verion of the Castro or West Hollywood with a MANBLA on steroids front and center in society. The documented cultural pressure to marry and produce offspring (as opposed to the conjecture far later about what might have been going on in the barracks or between mentor and pupil) was just too great to have any reason to believe that this was a society that considered homosexuality acceptable. So, there goes your nurture theory. The only leg you might have to stand on you've already thrown away, which is the unlikely notion that these men were far more biologically predisposed to fuck each other than their contemporaries.

That isn't to say that some of the principals that you are describing weren't tried, they just weren't tried in Sparta. The Thebians had an elite unit of 150 pairs of homosexual lovers that they called the "Sacred Band", but elite Spartan units were "all sires" (they had all fathered sons).

quote:

But there is a big difference between modern kids at bording school and what went on in Sparta.

Once again, what is it that you think was going on in Sparta, and where did you read it? Again, Spartan men were encouraged to marry at a much younger age than their contemporaries, and to women for whom there was a much higher liklihood of mutual sexual attraction. Granted they had to jump through some hoops to have sex with their young brides, but remember too that, among other things, they were purposely under fed as boys to encourage them to steal, for which they would be beaten if they were caught. Resourcefulness in the face of adversity was highly prized.

quote:

They are expressing the principles that the US military has been applying for decades. The more bonds you can create between a warrior and his unit (not that unit), the more likely he will be to fight instead of give in under pressure. If those bonds extend even to the romantic and sexual, all the better. Not so strange when you think about it.

Um.... maybe not so strange when you think about it. We have no counterpart of the Thebian sacred band, though I'm sure we could could easily assemble one if we wanted to. You could propose your theory at one of our war colleges. I think it would be recieved less cordially than you'd like. I know that you have been in boot camp. I don't know if you have ever seen combat. Nobody that I know who has confuses the brotherhood of men who have been under fire together with romantic love. Not even gay men who have experienced both.

quote:

Strength, endurance, and discipline are all very nice, but skill and fortitude rule.

That is true when men are shooting at each other. It's not true when you will be slaughtered if your shield wall breaks before that of your enemy because they are just plain stronger than you are and push you back. Strength, endurance, and honor (instilled by discipline over a long period of time) rule. At the time, the better men, not the better techology and skill with it is what really mattered. You are trying to relate their world to what you know. It doesn't correlate exactly.

quote:

As for the "When you carry around a hammer..." argument for me seeing homosexuality in classical cultures, that's not a particular hammer I carry around, nor one I even own.

I didn't say it was your hammer. I said it might be what the authors that you happen to be reading are carrying around, but I don't know that for sure until you tell me what you've read that makes you think as you do.

While I'm unimpressed so far with your arguments about Sparta, I'm curious whether your Pavlov/Skinner notions that sexuality is mutable and based on modeling behavior would lead you to oppose gay men or women adopting children becuase of the risk that they would "turn" them by their example even if the children weren't, as you say "wired" to be gay?

< Message edited by Leonidas -- 9/23/2004 6:18:37 PM >

_____________________________

Take care of yourself

Leonidas

(in reply to WayHome)

Profile

Post #: 42

RE: Forget Old Guard .. More Like Stone Age - 9/23/2004 8:54:05 PM

WayHome

Posts: 237
Joined: 8/4/2004
Status: offline

quote:

OK, I'll ask again. Where are you getting this?

To be honest, it's been about 12 years and I'm not sure where to begin or if it's worth the attempt. You've presented some good info so lets work with that for now. Let's assume for a second that Sparta wasn't gay enough. Doesn't that just as readily suppport the original argument against biological determinism? If the rest of Greece has more homosexuality?

quote:

Xenophon, by far the best source we have about Sparta, expressly says that homosexuality was not prominant in Spartan society, no doubt in response to rumors to that effect that were already circulating in his time.

Glad I didn't try to ascribe contemporaries since I would have had Xenophon and Plutarch backwards on this issue. I guess I need to keep up better with ancient history just in case I get into an online debate [8)]

quote:

You could say that he was misinformed, except that he lived among the Spartans for years, and even fought with them against his native Athens.

Not sure.

quote:

You could say that he was a homophobe...

But I didn't, so let's not go there.

quote:

Aristotle wrote that the power of women in Sparta was typical of militaristic societies which did not emphasize homosexuality. What he was saying was that because they were not homosexual enough like the other greek city states, their women had them by the balls.

Or perhaps the women had them by the balls because women held the most important key to improvements in status, namely as you said, fathering children. There was strong pressure to reproduce for the good of the state (the anti-China?) and that gave the childbearers perhaps a bit more cout than the city elders were comfortable with. Also, as I've argued before power tends to be compartmentalized. The women were likely of necessity in charge of the home front and (like Rosy the Riveter) might have leveraged that quite a bit. Purely speculation of course.

quote:

quote:

I believe it has a lot to do with modelling behavior, Skinnerian and Pavlovian conditionning, cognitive factors such as expectation and sexual imagery...

Funny you should mention sexual imagery. Homosexuality is notably absent from the motifs of Spartan/Laconian potery, unlike that of Athens, Corinth, and other city-states.

Hmm, so if I picked on of those cities, you would have been convinced by my argument?

quote:

In addition, Spartan men were expected to marry in their 20s, far younger than was typical in other city-states, and they married women much closer to their own age than was typical for their neighbors.

Which makes perfect sense. Pressure to procreate combined with requiring a lot from their wives in terms of the household.

quote:

These women, by their laws, had to be old enough to enjoy sex when they married (a fairly radical notion at the time). Men had less status in society if they were not the fathers of children. The Agamoi (men who had not produced sons) couldn't even participate in some of the main Spartan festivals, and when they did, they were openly shown disrespect by their peers. They were also made to dance naked in the winter and sing that the punishment for their failure to father sons was just.

Likewise, only those who had born sons went to Thermopoli, because their seed would not be lost forever when they did not return. If you did have a society where homosexuality was the norm, might you take measures to encourage procreative sex?

quote:

I don't think that you can credibly argue that these young men were growing up in an ancient verion of the Castro or West Hollywood with a MANBLA on steroids front and center in society.

That's quite an image, but not quite what I envisioned.

quote:

The documented cultural pressure to marry and produce offspring (as opposed to the conjecture far later about what might have been going on in the barracks or between mentor and pupil) was just too great to have any reason to believe that this was a society that considered homosexuality acceptable.

That would seem to support their prediliction for sex which didn't produce offspring, wouldn't it? Did the state go to all that effort to pressure men into becoming fathers because they were already so anxious to do it on their own?

quote:

So, there goes your nurture theory. The only leg you might have to stand on you've already thrown away, which is the unlikely notion that these men were far more biologically predisposed to fuck each other than their contemporaries.

Once again, you seem to want to ascribe absurd arguments to me which I would never make. Why would they be biologically predisposed? And if they were then that would support your argument for biological determinism rather than mine against it. The population wasn't isolated enough or under evolutionary pressure to become homosexual. I suppose they might have had some factory nearby (aliens?) that poluted the area with estrogen leading to feminization (and of course frogs with many limbs). Now that I think of it, we have estrogen polution right now. Maybe that's why you seem to see fewer and fewer men all around you not living up to your ideals. Or maybe you're just seeing nails (couldn't resist)

quote:

That isn't to say that some of the principals that you are describing weren't tried, they just weren't tried in Sparta. The Thebians had an elite unit of 150 pairs of homosexual lovers that they called the "Sacred Band", but elite Spartan units were "all sires" (they had all fathered sons).

I hadn't heard of the Sacred Band. Interesting. How about an elite unit of gay fathers? They might really kick ass.

quote:

Once again, what is it that you think was going on in Sparta, and where did you read it? Again, Spartan men were encouraged to marry at a much younger age than their contemporaries, and to women for whom there was a much higher liklihood of mutual sexual attraction. Granted they had to jump through some hoops to have sex with their young brides, but remember too that, among other things, they were purposely under fed as boys to encourage them to steal, for which they would be beaten if they were caught. Resourcefulness in the face of adversity was highly prized.

Already answered.

quote:

Um.... maybe not so strange when you think about it. We have no counterpart of the Thebian sacred band, though I'm sure we could could easily assemble one if we wanted to. You could propose your theory at one of our war colleges. I think it would be recieved less cordially than you'd like. I know that you have been in boot camp. I don't know if you have ever seen combat. Nobody that I know who has confuses the brotherhood of men who have been under fire together with romantic love. Not even gay men who have experienced both.

First, not my ideas. The same US Military Acedemy professor who's lecture I mention also mentioned Isreal and Russia where men and women have fought side by side and where this principle has both been supported and unsupported.

quote:

quote:

Strength, endurance, and discipline are all very nice, but skill and fortitude rule.

That is true when men are shooting at each other.

No, it's true when people are hacking each other to bits up close and personal. When your shooting each other most soldiers in most armies don't actually sight and shoot so the psychology that gets them to do so is often the key. True, skilled snipers and pilots make a world of difference but marksmanship is largely irrelevant to the average soldier today.

quote:

It's not true when you will be slaughtered if your shield wall breaks before that of your enemy because they are just plain stronger than you are and push you back.

I haven't been in combat, but I have been in a few shield walls (am I giving too much away?). Trust me, size doesn't matter as much as you think. Size matters in hand to hand when all else is equal (like in boxing) but on the battlefield things are rarely equal. It's not football or a rugby scrum and the best way to keep your shield wall from being overrun is to kill enough bad guys to make instant terrain. The "300 Spartans" didn't hold back many times their numbers by being strong enough to push them back, they did it by killing them quickly and efficiently so the bodies formaed a wall and the advancing troops were cut to bits while sliding and wallowing in the gore.

quote:

Strength, endurance, and honor (instilled by discipline over a long period of time) rule. At the time, the better men, not the better techology and skill with it is what really mattered. You are trying to relate their world to what you know. It doesn't correlate exactly.

Heh, this is really off topic! I'd love to debate that point with you but this isn't really the place. I agree with you about the "better man" but the better man is the one with the best skills and determination, not the one who is biggest. that might have been true before the days of rocks and clubs, but even before swords it's been about skill and experience.

quote:

While I'm unimpressed so far with your arguments about Sparta, I'm curious whether your Pavlov/Skinner notions that sexuality is mutable and based on modeling behavior would lead you to oppose gay men or women adopting children becuase of the risk that they would "turn" them by their example even if the children weren't, as you say "wired" to be gay?

That's an unfortunate side-effect of a behavioral model. It is possible for those with an agenda to make that argument. I would support gay adoption even if I believed that were true, but I do not. The dynamics involved are a lot more subtle than that and the variables are not easily manipulated, which is a good thing. If humans were that easily shaped, it would be a Brave New World indeed. Learning theory is a powerful technology and not necesarily one we are ready for. There were once those that claimed a "blank slate" which is clearly not true and biology is a factor. It's just not the end-all answer. That has been my point from the beginning.

Leto

(in reply to Leonidas)

Profile

Post #: 43

RE: Forget Old Guard .. More Like Stone Age - 9/23/2004 11:15:00 PM

Leonidas

Posts: 2078
Joined: 2/16/2004
Status: offline

quote:

That would seem to support their prediliction for sex which didn't produce offspring, wouldn't it? Did the state go to all that effort to pressure men into becoming fathers because they were already so anxious to do it on their own?

Sure, it might seem to, but that is only one of several possible interpretations of their traditions, laws, and customs, and obviously the one that seems most attractive and plausible to you. It's not surprising that you and I might have different intepretations thousands of years later. People have made careers intepreting these ancient customs and laws this way and that to prove or disprove some hypothesis they have. At the end of the day, the best contemporary account that we have says no, homosexuality wasn't prominent. I don't know what more to tell you about that.

quote:

Hmm, so if I picked on of those cities, you would have been convinced by my argument?

I think that you have forgotten what your original argument was. You jumped into the middle of what NoCal and I were discussing and weighed in with this:

quote:

however it seems clear that homosexuality was prominent in Sparta.

What we have arrived at is that it's clear to you that was the case, and that's about all.

Biological determinism versus social conditioning is a completely different argument. It's one that I enjoy, but I'm not sure what if anything there is to be learned about the topic by examining how widespread homosexuality was in ancient greece (as opposed to Sparta specifically) since we have much better data about homosexuality in our own time, but that's not the argument that you made anyway. We were talking about Sparta specifically.

quote:

That's an unfortunate side-effect of a behavioral model. It is possible for those with an agenda to make that argument. I would support gay adoption even if I believed that were true, but I do not.

That's probably the most fascinating part of your post. A child growing up gay, or at the very least sexually confused, who otherwise might not have been, would be an acceptable ethical trade-off to you when weighed against the right of a gay couple to adopt. That is an ethical position that both mystifies and intrigues me, but maybe only because it's late and it's been a long day.

The problem with a behavioral model is that it's ready made for anybody's agenda, including yours. Mostly, a behavioral model goes hand in hand with a Hobbsian ethical view that our "sinful" inate nature is base, disgusting, evil, and unworthy of us, and so, must be "overcome". Whether your social agenda is fundamentalist christianity or something else, a behavioral model is ready made to caste detractors as people who are have failed to "overcome" their less worthy, animal selves. It's a powerful and seductive set of tools, and it's lead humanity down all kinds of blind alleys following some notion of "right" that turned out to be a dead end.

You won't get any argument from me about whether human beings can be talked into just about anyting, or socially engineered into behaving in any given way. It's obviously so. I saw a chimp one time in a zoo in Costa Rica. He was bumming cigarettes off of the tourists that passed by. When he saw one with a cigarette, he'd touch his fingers to his mouth as if he were smoking, and then hold out his hand. To argue that a chimp wouldn't smoke because it's not in his nature would be pretty foolish. Whether he should have ever learned to smoke is a different question.

I'm looking at these things from the point of view of a value system that is radically different from yours. I'm a Gorean. I know that you think that just means "male supremicist ideologue", and that's fine, but there's a bit more to it than that.

< Message edited by Leonidas -- 9/24/2004 7:08:59 AM >

_____________________________

Take care of yourself

Leonidas

(in reply to WayHome)

Profile

Post #: 44

RE: Forget Old Guard .. More Like Stone Age - 9/24/2004 7:29:25 AM

Leonidas

Posts: 2078
Joined: 2/16/2004
Status: offline

quote:

I haven't been in combat, but I have been in a few shield walls (am I giving too much away?). Trust me, size doesn't matter as much as you think.

If you are in the SCA, you may have been in some shield walls, but more in the sense that Saxons used shield walls (like at the Battle of Hastings). A phalanx is very different from a shield-wall defense. It's basically, for lack of a better analogy, turning a set of men into a tank. Yes, you still needed to be good with a spear (mostly) and a sword (to a lesser degree), but it really was all about power, endurance, and discipline.

_____________________________

Take care of yourself

Leonidas

(in reply to WayHome)

Profile

Post #: 45

RE: Forget Old Guard .. More Like Stone Age - 9/24/2004 11:16:47 PM

WayHome

Posts: 237
Joined: 8/4/2004
Status: offline

quote:

...You jumped into the middle of what NoCal and I were discussing and weighed in with...

Sorry to jump in on your private conversation in a public forum. I guees pranksterBitch wasn't so far of after all. I was relating to the original topic "Stone Aged: the belief that FemDommes and male submissives are abhorrant, freaks or do not exist." to which list homosexuality had been added by the conversation.

So I won't inflict any more words on your private rant, except to say you have a rather odd picture of behaviorism.

Leto

(in reply to Leonidas)

Profile

Post #: 46

RE: Forget Old Guard .. More Like Stone Age - 9/25/2004 8:12:14 AM

Leonidas

Posts: 2078
Joined: 2/16/2004
Status: offline

If you took that to mean that your jumping into the middle of it was unwelcome, that isn't the case, and wasn't what I intended to convey to you. If I hadn't thought that what you posted was worth commenting on, I would have just ignored it, as I did with Prankster's attempt at starting a flame-war with me. I was just reminding you where you came in. We weren't talking about how accepted homosexuality was in Greece as a whole though I would have some things to say about that too. We were talking specifically about Sparta.

On this side of the screen my sense is that you would have liked to bait me into some kind of homophobic diatribe. That's probably a completely unaccurate assessment on my part, but sometimes impressions go awry in a text only medium. I hope that we are at the point now where you see that my arguments about Sparta are a straight up difference in intepretation of the historical record, not ideological.

You find my picture of a lot of things to be odd, and that's cool. It's what makes for a good conversation. If we were all looking at life from exactly the same perspective, we wouldn't have a whole lot to say to each other.

_____________________________

Take care of yourself

Leonidas

(in reply to Leonidas)

Profile

Post #: 47

RE: Forget Old Guard .. More Like Stone Age - 9/25/2004 3:08:47 PM

LordODiscipline

Posts: 995
Joined: 6/28/2004
Status: offline

Leonidas and No Cal -

It appears you are ascribing our cultural idioms on the Spartans.

The fact is, what some people would consider "homosexuality" (men loving men - or, perhaps - men having sex with men) would not necessarily be true for the PSartans.

Like British 'school boys' of the Victorian era, it might simply be that they enjoyed having a few go-arounds with the "men" when women were not available, forgoing it for the "fairer sex" when they were available.

I realize that is a point being made - I just hate to see Xenophon's writings used to compare apples and oranges.

~J

(in reply to Leonidas)

Profile

Post #: 48

RE: Forget Old Guard .. More Like Stone Age - 9/25/2004 3:21:30 PM

Leonidas

Posts: 2078
Joined: 2/16/2004
Status: offline

Hi LordOfDiscipline,

I made, or at least attempted to make that distinction earlier in the thread. I agree with you, it's difficult to project our cultural understanding of what constitutes a homosexual onto another culture. As I pointed out earlier there are contemporary cultures (like in Afganistan) where what you are describing goes on as well. It's not homosexual in the way that we understand it in the modern west.

_____________________________

Take care of yourself

Leonidas

(in reply to LordODiscipline)

Profile

Post #: 49