Sex between Men and Boys in Classical Greece: Was It Education for Citizenship or Child Abuse?
Through most of the past two thousand years, Greek pederasty The criminal offense of unnatural copulation between men.
The term pederasty is usually defined as anal intercourse of a man with a boy. Pederasty is a form of Sodomy. was a subject no one would discuss directly. Greek philosophy on modern philosophy, as well as modern science. Clear unbroken lines of influence lead from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers, to medieval Muslim philosophers and scientists, to the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, to the secular sciences of the modern day. , for example, was read and analyzed by scholars as if it never had contained its innumerable references to erotic relationships between men and boys. In recent years this situation has changed drastically with the publication of important books about sexuality in the ancient world. Indeed, open discussion has reached the point, as one modern scholar has put it, that "the love that once (in Alfred Douglas's words) dared not speak its name ... now cannot shut up."(1)
And yet in all this comment, no one has raised the question of whether Greek pederasty was good for the young boys who were the object of adult male sexual attention. Modern scholars have tended to accept without question or doubt the assertions of ancient pederasts that their activities were beneficial to boys, that they were educating boys in the habits and ways of manhood and of citizenship. This ready acceptance of the rationale of the Greeks is surprising, given the increasing sensitivity in our own culture to issues of child abuse.
Let us explore Greek pederasty from the point of view of the child rather than the adult. Greek boys could not speak for themselves, and all we have in the historical record is the viewpoint of the adults who wrote the accounts we read. However, there are many signs in Greek literature that pederasty posed a serious problem for boys, that it did not simply involve pleasant physical and emotional contact with men, but also deeply traumatic experiences. Both Greek mythology The Greek myths and legends are known today primarily from Greek literature, including such classic works as Homer's Iliad and and Greek philosophy give us a way to understand some of the difficulties with which boys were confronted.
Greek pederasty, we shall see, was not as fully accepted in Greek society as modern commentators have supposed, but in many cases brought risks for the boys of intense shame as well as physical damage. Let us compare the ancient material with modern information on the psychological and physical consequences of sexual abuse for boys in our own society, asking whether contemporary experience can shed light on the difficulties of boys in the ancient world.
SEXUALITY IN ATHENS
K. J. Dover first effectively elucidated the basic outline of Greek male sexual relationships in 1978, in his groundbreaking and authoritative work, Greek Homosexuality.(2) As a highly respected classicist and also unquestionably a heterosexual, Dover gave to the study of Greek sexuality both respectability and a thoroughly scholarly approach. His work spurred intense interest among classicists, and a number of other important books followed. Among these were three volumes published in 1990, John Winkler's The Constraints of Desire,(3) David Halperin's One Hundred Years of Homosexuality,(4) and a collection of essays, Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek
As these scholars make clear, Greek sexuality was based upon a fundamental distinction between an "active" dominant partner and a "passive" submissive one. The Greeks never conceived of sex as a mutually satisfying experience shared by equal partners, for sex by definition had to involve a superior and an inferior. In Athens a man would have been regarded as perverted if he sought a relationship with another person equal to him in age and status. For his sexual needs he could use women, slaves, prostitutes, and boys, in any combination, but not another adult male citizen.
The Greek language indicates how definitively the Greeks distinguished between the active and the passive partner. The one who did the desiring was the erastes, or "lover," whereas the one whom he desired was his eromenos, or "beloved." It was not possible for each of the partners to be called an erastes, for there was no way they could both be "lovers," with the implications in the English language of mutual desire, shared affection, and equal satisfaction. Even "lover" and "beloved" are not accurate translations, for the very notion of "love," with the multiple meanings we assign to that term in English, could not be expressed in classical Greek. The Greeks differentiated sharply between eros as erotic desire and the non-sexual affection family members or friends might feel for one another, called philia. No word or concept could evoke both eros and philia together.
A man could follow his eros wherever it led him. Sex was not as "gendered" as it is in our society, and a man could easily switch back and forth between females and males, as long as his partners were inferiors. The married man was not expected to confine himself to his wife, but could continue the full range of his sexual activities just as he had done before marriage. His wife was ignorant and inexperienced and far younger than he, for in Athens a man of about 35 would marry a girl of 14 or so who had never been outside her parents' home. Her purpose was to provide her husband with citizen children, not to serve as his companion or intellectual partner. She lived most of her life in the dark recesses of the house and did not attend her husband's dinner parties or social gatherings. She could not leave the house without a male accompanying her.
The Greeks seem to have regarded sex as an activity one does by oneself, even though the other person is there to be acted upon. This self-centered notion of male sexuality was especially evident in pederastic relationships. The man fulfilled his desire while the boy was presumed to be feeling nothing at all, certainly not erotic arousal. Indeed, a boy who too obviously enjoyed such passive sex would have seemed perverted.(6)
PEDERASTY AND SHAME
It is impossible to know how widespread was the practice of pederasty in Greek society as a whole or Athenian society in particular. Those from whom we learn about it, the creators of Greek literature and philosophy, were for the most part a special group of influential men who had the leisure and money with which to pursue boys. Aristophanes, whose plays were meant to appeal to a general audience, tends to portray heterosexual relationships as the norm and to ridicule pederasty, though Plato in the Symposium has him speak in justification of same-sex relationships.(7) It is apparent that not everyone in Athens approved of pederasty and that attitudes differed in various parts of Greece. According to
3. Pausanias' speech in the Symposium, in Ellis and Boeotia "the universal sentiment is simply in favor of these connections, and no one, whether young or old, has anything to say to their discredit."(8) "But in Ionia and other places, and generally in countries that are subject to the barbarians," pederasty is held in "evil repute."(9) Pausanias refers to Athenian attitudes as " perplexing ,"(10) for on the one hand, pederasty is regarded as honorable, but on the other, as disgraceful.
Pederasty in Athens is most respected, Plato tells us, when it is open rather than secret and when the man is seeking "love of the noblest and highest."(11) And yet Athenian parents "forbid their sons to talk with their lovers, and place them under a tutor's care, and their companions and equals are personal in their remarks when they see anything of this sort going on, and their elders refuse to silence them and do not reprove their words; anyone who reflects on this will ... think that we hold these practices to be disgraceful."(12) The truth is that pederasty is honorable for those who follow it honorably and dishonorable for those who do not, Plato writes.
Boys in Athens seem to have been quite vulnerable to sexual attack. Laws were passed to try to protect them from random attacks on the streets or in the gymnasia or schools. Slave boys, of course, enjoyed no protection at all from their masters, who could use them or female slaves at will. Yet pederasty in its respectable form involved neither violent rape nor the use of a submissive slave, but the ardent courting of a free boy. The man flattered the boy and plied him with gifts. He himself was all but carried away by the intense desire to gaze upon and touch his beautiful "beloved," and any sort of ridiculous behavior would be forgiven him in his pursuit of the boy. "He may pray, and entreat, and supplicate sup·pli·cate and lie on a mat at the door."(13) He might write poems and sing songs and follow his desired one about.(14) The boy was not supposed to give in to these approaches too readily, but to consider his options and accept for himself a good "lover," not out of reciprocal desire, but for the benefits the man could bestow on him. Many a boy may have been given by his father to whatever man could benefit the father as well as the boy.(15)
The "active" partner in the pederastic relationship most likely would have been a man in his twenties or thirties. He probably had started to use boys for sex when he himself was an older adolescent. Though the infatuations of pederasty began to look silly as the man advanced in age, some men must have continued to use boys well into their mature and later years. The boy himself was thought to be at the peak of his attractiveness between the ages of 12 and 16, though he might have been used by the man when he was even younger. The boy remained beautiful so long as his body seemed sexually immature. Once he passed through puberty and began to grow bodily hair, the man usually would replace him with a younger child.(16)
Though pederasty was openly practiced in Athens, at least in the circles of the intellectual class whose works we read, there was always an inner conflict about it, for in many ways the experience was deeply shameful for the boy. According to Athenian custom, Plato tells us, there can be no " dishonor " to "one who does service to another under the idea that he will be improved by him either in wisdom, or in some other particular of virtue,"(17) yet the very need to make that statement reveals the disgrace customarily associated with the boy's position.
As the "passive" partner the boy was being used "like a woman," a humiliating experience in itself, and one that could have lifelong consequences. The most shameful thing that could happen to any Greek male was penetration by another male. It was up to the boy to try to prevent this from occurring, to keep his lover within certain limits. Intercourse was acceptable if it took place intracrurally, that is, between the thighs, or in other ways that did not involve actual penetration. It is unlikely, however, that a young boy could control an adult male, and many must have had to submit to whatever the man desired.
Anal intercourse not only shamed the boy but risked his entire future as a member of the citizen class. In Athens a male who had been penetrated by another, no matter at how young an age, and had taken money in exchange, even if forced to do so by his father, was no longer entitled to participate in the political institutions of Athens. He was unworthy, because he had in effect become both a woman and a prostitute. If as an adult he nevertheless went ahead and exercised his citizenship by casting his vote or speaking in the assembly, he could be put on trial and lose not only his citizenship but also his life. Such charges may not have been brought very often, but it did sometimes happen,(18) and the very possibility must have preyed on the minds of boys who knew they could later be accused.
There were other psychological dangers as well. Not only was the pederastic experience destined to end in abandonment, with the man rejecting the maturing boy in favor of a younger one, but the boy himself at some point had to shift his sexual posture from that of a passive recipient to an active pursuer. As he grew toward adulthood he was expected to flip to an active role, first with younger boys and eventually with women. Some males had difficulty making such a change, and if they persisted in sexually passive ways they were once again subject to deep humiliation and shame.(19)
NONJUDGMENTAL SCHOLARSHIP
One might expect that modern scholars encountering this ancient situation would lament its implications for the boys caught up in it. But classicists have prided themselves on withholding judgment. Thus Dover writes, "I am fortunate in not experiencing moral shock or disgust at any genital act whatsoever, provided that it is welcome and agreeable to all the participants."(20) Yet how could such activity be either "welcome" or "agreeable" to young boys, when they could not possibly anticipate its effects--indeed, when they were not even supposed to be feeling any pleasure?
Dover's nonjudgmental approach did represent a major scholarly advance, for he had had to contend with the attitude that homosexuality is "unnatural" or contrary to "God's will," a widely held conviction not just as he was writing but still today, some two decades later. However, it left him unable or unwilling to consider whether this particular form of homosexual activity, with the use of children for the sexual gratification of adults, was a healthy expression of sexuality.
In recent years, one scholar after another has looked upon the sexual habits of the Greeks as simply the way Greek sexuality was "constructed." There is nothing in any particular sexual practice or idea that is intrinsically healthy or unhealthy, good or bad, classicists like Winkler, Halperin, and Zeitlin all claim, only "socially constructed meanings," which vary from society to society and from age to age.(21) The very concept of "sexuality" is itself a modern construct, they say, for in the ancient world the sexual dimension could not be separated from everything else that made up the social meanings of the society. We cannot judge the sexual activity of the Greeks but only try to recover the meanings they themselves assigned it.
However intellectually challenging these views may be, such ideas only make sense from the viewpoint of the adult, not that of the child. Few classical scholars have been interested in the experiences of children, perhaps because the Greeks themselves rarely talked about childhood. Even a scholar such as Mark Golden, whose Children and Childhood in Classical Athens(22) appeared in 1990, describes the exploitation of children in the same nonjudgmental way as do his colleagues. Mistreatment that he most likely would condemn within our own society he blandly accepts among the Greeks, seeing it as the Greek way of acculturating boys to their future citizenship roles.
Golden is not troubled even by physical brutality toward children, and the justifications he offers are revealing. Athenian children were regularly beaten by their parents, especially their fathers, he reports, for "respect and obedience were enforced by physical punishment."(23) The same process went on in Athenian schools. "Teachers deserved respect," but it "was not always forthcoming ... so teachers imposed their authority through beatings."(24) Boys probably helped the teacher beat up their fellow students, or more likely, it was the paidagogoi, the slaves who accompanied the boys to and from school, who "assisted" the outnumbered teachers. Such experiences helped boys gain group solidarity, Golden explains. "Relatively cohesive to begin with, students might be made more so by the harsh discipline of the classroom."(25) This "stress on discipline and punishment reflects the goal of Athenian schooling, to produce citizens with the hoplite hoplite (hop`lit), heavy infantry soldier in the armies of classical Greece. Hoplites were usually protected by helmets, cuirasses, and leg armor. virtues of courage and self-control rather than to teach skills."(26) Golden never explains how beating a child, whether in ancient Greece The term ancient Greece refers to the periods of Greek history in Classical Antiquity, lasting ca. 750 BC[1] (the archaic period) to 146 BC (the Roman conquest). It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of Western Civilization. or in our own society, teaches either self-control or courage or promotes respect.
Golden describes sex between men and boys in similarly positive terms. "There is little disagreement" among scholars, he tells us, "on the benefits that were said to accrue to the boys themselves or on the role of male homosexuality as an institution of transition between boyhood and maturity. Broadly speaking regular intimacy with an older member of the citizen elite provides a boy with a model of appropriate attitudes and behaviors, a source of wisdom."(27) For individual boys, "involvement with a particularly well-connected or gifted partner may prove socially and politically valuable, not just for the boy but for his whole family."(28)
Golden is correct that a youth could acquire valuable knowledge and experience by associating with influential men, and in the absence of institutionalized higher education in Greece The Greek educational system has undergone significant changes and modernisations during the 1990's. Primary Education , that may in fact have been the most effective means of preparing for a future career, especially in politics. But at how heavy a price? It is astonishing how completely Golden and his colleagues deny the suffering of children in ancient Greece. Ignoring huge amounts of evidence right before their eyes, they miss the very questions their own material suggests.
Some scholars go so far as to deny it actually was children who were being used for sex. Thus Martha Nussbaum ,(29) following the lead of Anthony Price . ,(30) contends it was not boys but older youths of about the same age as our own college students who typically were involved in pederasty. But her argument does not make much sense. Though some relationships may have involved older boys, when we look at such works as Plato's Lysis it is obvious that quite young children are being described. Lysis, who is the object of the young man Hippothales desires, is still playing children's games in a gymnasium for boys when Socrates engages him in conversation. Everything Lysis says, down to the fact that his mother would beat him if he touched her loom, indicates that he is very young.(31) The same is true of Autolycus, who in Xenophon's Symposium sits next to his father, leaning against him in the manner of a young child, as wealthy Callias seeks the father's approval for a pederastic relationship.(32) Both boys sound as if they are about 11 or 12 years old. There are also many vase paintings depicting adult men or older adolescents pursing young boys.(33) Painful questions can be avoided only by closing our eyes to these realities.
Plato does seem to be advocating, through the speech of Pausanias in the Symposium, that men choose older boys, though more for the welfare of the man than that of the boy. "The love of young boys should be forbidden by law, for their future is uncertain; they may turn out good or bad, either in body or soul, and the affection which is devoted to them may be thrown away."(34) Rather than "take them in their inexperience, and deceive them, and play the fool with them, or run away from one to another of them," Pausanias advises, a man would do better to select "an intelligent being whose reason is beginning to be developed, much about the time at which their beards begin to grow,"(35) for then he can gain a companion for life. Though some relationships of this type may well have existed, such as Pausanias' own partnership with Agathon,(36) his very speech indicates that younger boys were the norm in Athenian pederasty As an erotic and educational custom it was initially employed by the upper class as a means of teaching the young and .
TRAUMATIZED BOYS
If these were indeed children, a number of questions arise. What, for example, did it do to a boy to be genitally stimulated at a time he was not yet ready for it? The very fact that Greek men thought the boy did not feel anything erotic is an indication of how traumatized these young boys actually must have been. Greek vase paintings often show a boy standing perfectly still as a man reaches out for his genitals. Were such boys psychologically immobilized, unable to move or run away?(37) Was the Greek boy who seemed to feel nothing when the man touched his genitals suffering a kind of sexual anesthesia sex Would it result in later sexual dysfunction sexual dysfunction
Inability to experience arousal or achieve sexual satisfaction under ordinary circumstances, as a result of psychological or physiological problems. ? Aristotle observed that men during their lives naturally experienced periods of impotence.(38) But was impotence really all that natural, or was it a consequence of early sexual abuse?
Did the Greeks express sexual trauma in other symbolic ways? Consider, for example, the herms of Athens. These were peculiar statues adorning the doorways and public places of the city. Each had a head of the god Hermes set on top of a rectangular four-sided block of wood. Significantly, a herm had no arms or legs yet sported an erect penis. No classical scholar seems ever to have asked why it is that the herms lacked limbs,(39) yet any modern neurologist or psychologist would worry if a child today were to draw a picture of that sort, interpreting it as the child's feeling of immobility, helplessness, or entrapment (e.g. . Were the herms an expression of helplessness in the face of overwhelming genital stimulation? Were they on another level an attempt to compensate for the fear of impotence or of domination by others?(40)
We also must wonder what it does to a child's understanding of sex if he passively looks on while the adult satisfies himself. "What pleasure or consolation can the beloved be receiving all this time?"(41) Socrates asks in Plato's Phaedrus. "Must he not feel the extremity of disgust"(42) when he gazes upon an old face and body? Xenophon is even more explicit. "A boy does not even share the man's enjoyment of sexual intercourse as a woman does: he is a sober person watching one drunk with sexual excitement. In view of all this, it is no wonder if he even develops contempt for his lover."(43) If Plato and Xenophon could recognize a problem, should not we?
And what is the effect on the boy if the man is in fact his own father? Classicists seem not to have taken seriously the possibility that Greek fathers might have been sleeping with their own sons, nor do the Greeks themselves talk openly about it. Yet what was there to prevent it? Fathers were accustomed to using boys sexually who were the same age as their sons, often engaging in such activity within their own households.(44) Why should we assume they would not also be attracted to their own sons? Fathers frequently came home drunk after participating in dinner parties. What could protect a boy from the erotic advances of an intoxicated father?(45)
A societal injunction against incest is not likely to have been any more effective than it is in our own day,(46) and it would have led to just as much shame and secrecy. If a Greek father had been using his son sexually, the boy could not have revealed it to others, for the father, as the dominant male in the household, held the entire well-being and continued existence of the family in his hands. His reputation in the community was all-important. The oikos, or household, had a religious as well as social meaning within the Athenian polis. If a boy exposed or attacked his father, he destroyed his household, its place in the polis, and his own future as well.(47) Even if the father did not go so far as to have sex with the son, his erotic interest may have been evident.
Sexual aggressiveness of father toward son certainly found expression in Greek mythology, if in somewhat disguised form. Hesiod's Theogony When Kronos cuts off the genitals of his father Ouranos, can we fail to imagine that the father had been using his genitals to attack the son? Ouranos is heaven, and he has mated with Gaia, the earth. Each time she gives birth, he stuffs the child back inside her. The groaning mother encourages her sons to save her and her children, and she devises a "mighty sickle" with which the deed can be done. It is Kronos who agrees to the task. "I do not care for my unspeakable father," he declares, "for he first thought of shameful acts."(48) Though it is the mother's idea to castrate the father, all this may be a screen for the son's need to protect himself from the father's aggressive genitalia Significantly, Kronos himself later becomes an abuser, swallowing his own children as each issues from the womb. His son Zeus fends off such an attack by substituting a stone, which Kronos vomits up together with Zeus's siblings. Connotations of childhood sexual abuse seem inescapable.
The Greek myth of Oedipus is especially evocative. Freud interpreted the myth primarily in terms of the desire of the son for the mother, but in so doing he ignored what may be the most significant parts of the story. The father of Oedipus was King Laius, the very man to whom the Greeks attributed the invention of pederasty. Laius had taken the son of another man to use for sex, and because of it the boy's father cursed the king, declaring he would someday die at the hands of his own son. In order to prevent the curse from coming true, Laius pierced the feet of his newborn son with a penetrating instrument, pinning his feet together, and had the child thrown into the mountains, presumably to his death. The name "Oedipus" means "swollen foot," and it refers to the wounds of the child. Oedipus survived, meeting his father again years later when they happened to cross paths on a crowded road. Neither recognized the other, but Laius jabbed at Oedipus with a goad, again a penetrating instrument, and it is in direct response to that attack that Oedipus killed his father.(49)
Failure to appreciate this aspect of the Oedipus myth has made it easier for modern commentators to excuse the behavior of ancient males. Many have regarded Greek pederasty simply as a way of providing a boy with the attention he lacked from his own father. Rather than criticizing the absent father and his emotional distancing from his son, they have looked upon pederasty as a creative solution to the problem. Thus the psychoanalyst Philip Slater, in his 1968 volume, The Glory of Hera,(50) saw in Greek pederasty a way the boy could get away from the excessive attentions of his mother, totally missing the possibility that the son may have needed to escape from the sexual attacks of his father.
Slater was aware of antagonism between father and sons, but not of the sexual desire of father for son, for as a Freudian he could conceive only of erotic interest in the mother by both father and son. "Pederasty was far from being a trivial by-product of Greek society," Slater claimed. "It became an almost vital institution, diluting the mother-son pathology, counteracting rivalry between father and son, and providing a substitute father-son bond."(51) Pederasty also helped prepare the boy for citizenship, for it "universalized and defamilialized the socialization process, rescuing the male child from a disorganizing family situation and training him for the peculiarly diffuse and erratic life of Athenian democracy developed in the Greek city-state of Athens. ."(52)
PLATO'S STRUGGLE
And yet, for a thinker like Plato, pederasty was hardly without problems of its own. Classicists who study Greek sexuality may have overlooked some of the most suggestive material in Plato's dialogues, for they have tended to dismiss Greek philosophy as unrepresentative of the profession" of the common habits of the population.(53) But when we peer behind the words of Plato, we find the distressing sexual experience of many an Athenian boy, possibly including one little boy who grew up to tell us about it, Plato himself.
In Plato's early dialogues, Socrates engages in almost light-hearted banter around the subject of pederasty. He is ready to advise young men on the way to win a beloved, and he speaks openly of his own erotic arousal. But by the time Plato wrote the Phaedrus he seems to have been more troubled by the consequences of pederasty for the boy. Much of the dialogue focuses on the question whether the boy is better off accepting as his lover a man who is passionately aroused, a true erastes, or a "non-lover," a more sober sort who is not carried away by passion. Phaedrus and Socrates present various arguments on the benefits to the boy one way or the other.
Their conversation reveals a great deal about the emotional abuse of boys. An aroused lover is "extremely unpleasant to live with."(54) Such a man makes promises he does not keep, he is jealous of the boy's relationships with family and friends, he tries to keep him in a position of inferiority, and when the " bloom of youth is over,"(55) he no longer cares about the boy. "Consider this, fair youth," Socrates advises, "and know that in the friendship of the lover there is no real kindness; he has an appetite and wants to feed upon you."(56)
Through much of the dialogue, Socrates seems to favor the "non-lover," but the climax is reached when Socrates, in altogether driven language, suddenly pours forth in glorious depiction of erotic erousal. Eros is "inspired madness," it is "the greatest of heaven's blessings,"(57) and the soul possessed of it flies heavenward like a wing of feathers. Most significant, not just the man, but also the boy has erotic feelings. "His desire is as the desire of the other, but weaker,"(58) Socrates claims. The boy wants to see and touch and kiss his lover and go to bed with him. He is "bursting with passion which he understands not,"(59) and in that state he can refuse his lover nothing. If the lover is a virtuous man, and self-control and philosophy prevail, together the souls of man and boy can reach Olympian heights. What Plato seems in the Phaedrus to be struggling to say is that it is all right for the boy to be aroused, that he does not have to remain altogether passive and lacking in erotic feeling.(60)
Plato also struggled with the distinction between eros and philia, as he tried to find a way the boy and man could continue as friends after the boy was no longer erotically desirable. Were the erastes truly interested in the boy's soul, he would want him around even when the youth had reached maturity, and they could continue enjoying each other's company.
It seems to have taken Plato until the end of his life to decide that men and boys simply should not engage in sex. In the Laws, Plato's final work, he declares pederasty unnatural and seeks for it to be prohibited in the same way as incest. "The law must go ahead and insist that our citizens' standards should not be lower than those of birds and many other wild animals which are born into large communities and live chaste and unmarried, without intercourse, until the time comes for them to breed."(61)
MODERN BOYS
Perhaps we should not be surprised that so many modern scholars have ignored the consequences of ancient pederasty, for even our own society is rife with denial when it comes to the sexual abuse of boys. Most Americans, including physicians, remain largely unaware of the vast numbers of boys who are violated. It is only in very recent years that some effort has been made to gauge the extent of the problem and find ways to help male victims deal with what has happened to them.
Such study is only in its beginnings, but the results so far show a problem of enormous proportions. Though boys are not abused as frequently as girls, the numbers are not as different as most people might suppose. A 1990 survey found that 27 percent of women and 16 percent of men admitted to having been sexually abused before reaching the age of 18.(62) Other surveys conducted over the last 20 years in various parts of the country have ranged from 2.5 percent to 26 percent of males reporting childhood sexual abuse.(63) It is difficult to correlate the varying results, for different definitions of sexual abuse were used and different populations consulted in each of the studies. The most recent estimates range from 1 in 5 to 1 in 11 males who have been sexually abused as children.(64) The numbers in reality may be even higher, for many males are unwilling to disclose sexual abuse.
As three recent books, Frank Bolton's Males at Risk,(65) Mic Hunter's Abused Boys,(66) and Matthew Mendel's The Male Survivor,(67) all point out, basic attitudes in American culture make it difficult for male victims to be identified or helped. Such attitudes range from a general belief that sexual abuse does not happen to boys to the notion that a boy should be able to handle whatever does happen without complaining. Even in the context of psychotherapy, male victims often are not able to talk about sexual abuse, for many therapists are themselves uncomfortable with the subject and tend to avoid asking about it. While girls receive sympathy and offers of help, boys for the most part are left to handle sexual abuse and its effects on their own.(68)
Yet the effects are just as significant for boys as for girls, and sometimes even worse. As researchers and clinicians have discovered, guilt, depression, low self-esteem, and behavioral problems may affect not only the boy's developmental years but also possibly his entire life.(69) The adult may be plagued by sexual dysfunction, including impotence,(70) along with emotional withdrawal, resentment, and aggression. There may be deep confusion about sexual identity, with the boy or man not knowing whether he is homosexual or heterosexual.(71) As the abused boy grows toward adulthood, he may become an abuser himself, using children for sexual gratification as he himself had been used.
Despite these findings there are writers, especially in Europe, who continue to deny the harmful effects of pederasty. Much like the ancient Greeks, they claim that sex between men and boys benefits the boys in various ways. If the adult has used neither force nor violence, they argue, there can be no harm, for the children themselves desire such contact. These writers do not recognize the manipulation of children by adults, nor do they find anything objectionable in the imbalance of power and experience between men and boys.
The Dutch author Theo Sandfort, for example, challenges the "assertion which American commentators are fond of making," that "no boy can really give consent to having sex with an adult because of the inherent asymmetry of power."(72) Pedophilia is not a matter of "child abuse," he writes, but of "friendship within which sexual contacts occur."(73) Some American writers also defend pederasty, objecting to "the new victimology-based literature."(74) In one author's words, "cultural feminists and victimologists are able to advance with impunity, `under the cover' of consideration of child sexual abuse , fundamentally reactionary and sex-negative propositions."(75) In other words
put differently , to think of the child as a "victim" is to attack both the child's and the adult's freedom of sexual expression.
The conviction of these writers that sex with men helps children fulfill themselves is instructive. Despite cultural differences, common dynamics do seem to be involved in both ancient and modern pederasty. Men who use children for sex, or who advocate such use, need to explain it to themselves in ways they themselves can accept. What better explanation can there be than that they are in fact helping the children?
The fact that modern proponents of pederasty justify their views in ways that sound like the ancient Greeks throws light on ancient experience. Rather than accepting the reasons Greek men offered, especially their claim that they were benefiting the boys and preparing them for citizenship, modern scholars ought to recognize such arguments for the rationalizations they were. Even if Greek boys did in fact benefit in some ways, why did that benefit have to be joined to sexual exploitation? Could not Greek men simply have taken boys under their wing, or have established high schools and colleges for them, without the expectation of sexual favors? Plato seems slowly to have been moving toward such a position.
One of the most difficult things to understand is the flattery a Greek man lavished on his young "beloved." Why, when these men thought of themselves as superior and dominant, did they temporarily put the child on such a pedestal, prostrating themselves before him? The answer may lie in a peculiar idealization of childhood that seems characteristic of pedophiles everywhere. Some psychoanalytic writings have explored the deep ways in which the modern abuser seems to be identifying with the experience of the child he is using.(76) The ancient man, who in his own childhood may have been desperately unhappy, perhaps needed to see reflected in his eromenos what he had not found in himself.
Interestingly, modern pederasts, despite the democratic ethos of modern culture, seem to be preoccupied with dominance and submission,(77) much like the ancient Greeks. They find the child erotic in his powerlessness and lack of dominance. It is significant that that should be the case, because it means that the sexual desires of the Greek pederast ped·er·ast
n.
A man who has sexual relations, especially anal intercourse, with a boy.
ped er·as were not necessarily a "construction" of his culture, but may well have answered much deeper needs within his own personality. If cultures foster such needs, it is surely in much more complicated ways than mere "constructed meanings."
The boys in such relationships also resemble each other. Ancient or modern, boys who accede to sex with men seem to have lacked the attentions of an effective father. Seeking to fulfill through another adult male the affection that has been missing at home, they allow the man to use them as he wishes. There may also be similarities in the way incest occurs. Both in the ancient Greek and the modern American culture, incest has been strongly prohibited. The interesting question therefore is how the man overcomes his own inhibitions. According to modern researchers, the single most important factor in "disinhibiting" the modern father or step-father is the use of alcohol.(78) Plato observed that when the Greek man returned home drunk he was capable of any outrage, not excluding incest.(79)
The idea that fathers might have an erotic interest in their sons has only recently begun to be taken seriously in modern psychiatry. The Oedipus Papers,(80) a collection of psychiatric essays brought together in 1988, finally recognizes the significance of those parts of the Oedipus myth that Freud had chosen to ignore. One of the most interesting of these papers is John Munder Ross's "The Darker Side of Fatherhood: Clinical and Developmental Ramifications of the `Laius Motif.'"(81) Somewhat painfully, Ross concludes from his own clinical experience that male children in our society do indeed have to contend with the sexual aggressiveness of their fathers, even with the desire of their fathers to murder them. "I am compelled to advance a most stark and terrible thesis. Loving them, fathers also want to rape, abuse, and kill their sons. It is an ugly, repulsive, hateful notion, but I now know that it is a truth of the human heart and, as a psychoanalytic thinker, I am compelled to give it credence and utterance. The statistics, certainly, even in this age of enlightened attention to childhood, attest to its crude, real-life manifestations."(82)
PHYSICAL DAMAGE
In addition to emotional harm, there are physical consequences of sexual abuse that few people in our society have wanted to recognize. Indeed, even physicians seem to know little about such injuries, especially in boys. To address this problem much valuable medical information has been brought together by Angelo Giardino and others in A Practical Guide to the Evaluation of Sexual Abuse in the Prepubertal prepubertal /pre·pu·ber·tal/ (-pu´ber-tal) before puberty; pertaining to the period of accelerated growth preceding gonadal maturity. Child, published in 1992. The signs of sexual abuse are often subtle, they write, for pedophiles who seek a continuing relationship with a child will try to avoid physical harm. But damage nevertheless often occurs, especially when the abuser is an older adolescent rather than a more experienced and manipulative adult.
For our purposes, the most interesting information in this volume has to do with damage to the anal area. A child penetrated anally by an older adolescent or an adult may suffer tearing or fissuring of the anus. There may also be bruising, swelling, and " posttraumatic With repeated abuse, the child is likely to lose tone in his anal sphincter muscle, and the anus may remain dilated. "The most serious acute injuries include complete transection of the external anal sphincter, laceration .
2. , and perforation that is, of the rectum together with the sigmoid colon This medical information can help us make sense of Greek experience, for the human body has remained the same through time, and the injuries suffered by modern boys must also have occurred in the past. Indeed, the evidence is there in the ancient material, if we but open our eyes. For example, readers over the centuries have enjoyed Aristophanes' plays without understanding that many of his jokes must be referring to just such anal damage. In the Clouds, Aristophanes points to members of the audience and reviles them for their "sprung buns." "Whence are tragic poets fetched? From a bottom that's been stretched. And politicians old or young? All from bums that have been sprung."(84)
Aristophanes also ridicules male characters in his plays for the way they soil their clothing. Modern readers tend to assume the Greeks simply had a scatalogical sense of humor But Aristophanes' audience had to have been familiar with the dilemma of men who could not control defecation for a torn sphincter muscle one of the contractile organs of the body or one that has lost its tone results in the leakage of feces. Even today it often is impossible for a damaged sphincter to be effectively repaired through surgery. In ancient Greece there would have been little hope of recovery from such an injury, and a number of males must have faced a lifetime of urgency and embarrassment.
We must wonder to what extent Plato himself may have worried about such things. His image of hell in the Phaedo is of brown rivers of mud, of splurgings and surgings of water and wind, and of children stuck in the muck, crying to their parents to let them out. The heavenly world, on the other hand, is one of pure spirits, who are not weighed down by the dirt and pollution of their bodies. Can we sense behind this scene a desire to rise above the self-disgust of anal incontinence or abuse?(85) Aristophanes, in Frogs, had offered a similar vision of the underworld: "Then mud,/Masses of mud, and streams of muck, in which/Is every man who ever wronged a guest,/ Or beat his ma, or slapped his father's face."(86) Such an image may well have had a long cultural history,(86) but that does not diminish its emotional meaning for either Aristophanes or Plato. Both men seem to have been preoccupied with anal problems.
CONCLUSION
We should not be afraid to call Greek pederasty a form of child abuse. This was not sex between consenting adults or even between two children discovering their sexuality in their own way and at their own pace, but the deliberate use of a child by an adult for the sexual gratification of the adult. Many scholars seem hesitant to attack pederasty for fear of seeming homophobic, but to criticize sex between men and boys is in no way to cast aspersions on homosexuality itself, or on bisexuality. Would we sanction the use of young girls by adult men or adult women? If we call it rape or child abuse when the victim is a girl, we must do likewise when the victim is a boy.
The argument could be made that it was acceptable in Greek society not only for men to use boys, but also for them to use young girls. A man married his wife, after all, when she was still a girl. Yet we do not have to look far to see all the harm that was done to girls by this arrangement. Greek literature is full of the Greek male's disdain for females and the suffering of Greek gifts and women.(88) The fact that such behavior was acceptable to Greeks, or at least to Greek men, does not mean we have to conclude that it was good or healthy.
There is a vast difference between sex as the mutually shared experience of equal and consenting partners, whether males or females, and sex between an "active" dominant partner and a "passive" submissive one. The world has long suffered from the dominant-submissive way of conceiving of sexuality and of human relationships. The Greeks may have "constructed" their world that way, but it was not one that recognized human dignity We fool ourselves if we think that by withholding judgment about such things we are not arriving at judgments. For when we ignore the damage, whether to boys or girls, when we pretend that all sexual behavior is only a "construction," we are in fact deciding that the suffering of children simply does not matter.
It surely does matter, not only for the sake of the children themselves, but for the continuing effect it has had upon all of us. Greek boys, after all, grew up to become the very men who shaped the western intellectual heritage. If the leading lights of classical civilization in fact had been sexually abused as children, and then perhaps in adulthood had gone on to become abusers of children themselves, how might that be reflected in the political and social ideas they have passed on to us? We need to know.
The time has come when we no longer can assume that anything the Greeks did or thought had to be good and noble. They surely did not treat their children well. As the psychohistorian Lloyd DeMause has written, "the history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken."(89) Yet we cannot wake up until we are willing to open our eyes, allowing ourselves to see the many problems and the dreadful reality of childhood sexual abuse, whether in our own society, or in that of the ancient Greeks.
NOTES
(1.) David M. Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, and Other Essays on Greek Love, Routledge, ( New York New York, state, United States
New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , 1990), p. 2. As Halperin points out, homosexuality for many centuries was regarded as an "unspeakable vice," with no word to describe it, and only in the past hundred years has the very term "homosexuality" been in use. Halperin is not particularly happy with the word, for it defines people through a fixed concept of sexual orientation sexual orientation
n.
The direction of one's sexual interest toward members of the same, opposite, or both sexes, especially a direction seen to be dictated by physiologic rather than sociologic forces. that in his view is neither fixed nor can it be separated from its ideological or cultural baggage.
(2.) K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality, Harvard University Press The Harvard University Press is a publishing house, a division of Harvard University, that is highly respected in academic publishing. It was established on January 13, 1913. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. , (Cambridge, 1978). Halperin refers to Dover's book as "the first modern scholarly study of the subject and a triumph of empirical research."
(3.) John J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece, Routledge (New York, 1990).
(4.) Halperin, op. cit.
(5.) David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, Froma I. Zeitlin, editors, Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, Princeton University Press (Princeton, 1990).
(6.) "In crude terms, what does the eromenos get out of submission to his erastes? The conventional Greek answer is, no bodily pleasure; should he do so, he incurs disapproval as a pornos and as perverted." Dover, op. cit., p. 52.
(7.) It is Aristophanes who relates the famous myth of bodies originally joined together in three versions: male-female, female-female, and male-male. They are then split apart and yearn for their missing halves. Plato, Symposium, 189c-193e.
(8.) Plato, Symposium, 182b; p. 114 of the Prometheus Books edition of Plato, On Homosexuality: Lysis, Phaedrus, and Symposium (Buffalo, 1991).
(9.) Ibid., 182b.
(10.) Ibid., 182d; p. 115.
(11.) Ibid.
(12.) Ibid., 183c-d; pp. 115-6.
(13.) Ibid., 183a.
(14.) A good example is the behavior of Hippothales in Plato's Lysis.
(15.) The setting of Xenophon's Symposium is a dinner party given by an erastes, the rich Callias, to which he has invited his desired eromenos, the young boy Autolycus, and the boy's father, Lycon. Such an occasion, with a man giving a boy's father the opportunity to approve a lover for his son, would have been regarded as the height of propriety.
(16.) The idea that bodily hair makes a boy unattractive persisted over time, as Greek epigrams written in later centuries clearly reveal. Thus in Strato's Musa Puerlis, an anthology of poems dating probably from the time of Hadrian, we find: "Your leg, Nicander, is getting hairy, but take care lest your back-side also gets the same unnoticed. Then shall you know how rare lovers are." Also, "Ye young men, let not your thoughts mount higher than beseems a mortal; there are such things as hairs." "Wast thou yesterday a boy," asks another, "and we had never even dreamt of this beard coming? How did this accursed thing spring up, covering with hair all that was so pretty before?" And, "Why are you draped down to your ankles in that melancholy fashion, Menippus, you who used to tuck up your dress to your thighs? I know what you are hiding from me. They have come, those things I told you would come." We can only imagine the anxiety some boys must have felt, as puberty transformed their bodies and foretold fore·told
v.
Past tense and past participle of foretell. their coming abandonment. The quotations are from Epigrams 30, 39, 191, and 176, respectively, on pp. 295, 299, 379, and 373 of the Loeb Library edition, The Greek Anthology IV, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, 1979).
(17.) Plato, Symposium, 184c; p. 116.
(18.) The most famous case is that of Timarchus, who was accused by Aeschines. When Aeschines won the case, Timarchus lost the right to participate in all public and religious functions. See "Against Timarchus," The Speeches of Aeschines, Loeb Library edition, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, 1988).
(19.) Aristotle (or pseudo-Aristotle) worries that those who have become used to the passive sexual role will want to remain in it. "Those who have been accustomed to submit to sexual intercourse about the age of puberty ... desire to take a passive part owing to habit, as though it were natural to them to do so; frequent repetition, however, and habit become a second nature. All this is more likely to occur in the case of one who is both lustful lust·ful
adj.
Excited or driven by lust.
lustful·ly adv.
lust and effeminate ef·fem·i·nate
adj.
1. Having qualities or characteristics more often associated with women than men. See Synonyms at female.
2. Characterized by weakness and excessive refinement. ." Problems, Book IV, 879b35-880a5; p. 1357, Complete Works of Aristotle, Vol. II. In the Nichomachean Ethics, VII 1148b, Aristotle comments that sexual perversion, by which he means the enjoyment of passive sex, may "result in some cases from natural disposition, and in others from habit, as with those who have been abused from childhood," p. 403 of the Loeb Library edition.
(20.) Dover, op. cit., preface, p.viii.
(21.) For theoretical discussion of "constructed" sexuality, see especially the introductory chapters of Halperin's One Hundred Years, Winkler's Constraints of Desire, and Halperin et al., Before Sexuality.
(22.) Mark Golden, Children and Childhood in Classical Athens, Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University, mainly at Baltimore, Md. Johns Hopkins in 1867 had a group of his associates incorporated as the trustees of a university and a hospital, endowing each with $3.5 million. Daniel C. Press (Baltimore, 1990).
(23.) Ibid., p. 103.
(24.) Ibid., p. 64.
(25.) Ibid.
(26.) Ibid.
(27.) Ibid., p. 59.
(28.) Ibid.
(29.) Martha Nussbaum, "Platonic Love and Colorado Love: The Relevance of Ancient Greek Norms to Modern Sexual Controversies," pp. 168-223, in The Greeks Among Us: Essays in Honor of Arthur W.H. Adkins, edited by Robert Louden and Paul Schollmeier, University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including (Chicago, 1996). "To modern American ears the word `boy' suggests someone between the ages of, say, four and twelve. But the eromenos of Greek custom was typically, and ideally, a young man between the time of full attainment of adult height and the full growth of the beard: so, if we go by modern growth patterns, perhaps sixteen to nineteen; but more likely, since the ancient Greek age of puberty seems to have been slightly later than ours, the age of a modern college undergraduate," p. 178.
(30.) Nussbaum cites Anthony Price's Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle, Clarendon Press (Oxford, 1989). "By `pederasty' Price means something quite different from pedophilia, sex with young children; he means sex with adolescents of roughly college age," Nussbaum, op. cit., p. 218, n. 84.
(31.) For the reference to the mother's weaving, see Plato, Lysis, 208d-e. Lysis is still taken to school by his paidagogos, which means he cannot be older than 11 or 12 at the most, for boys did not go to school much beyond that age. The conversation with Socrates concludes when the paidagogos arrives to take Lysis home. See Plato, Lysis, 208d and 223a-b.
(32.) Autolycus sits while the adults recline re·cline
v. re·clined, re·clin·ing, re·clines
v.tr.
To cause to assume a leaning or prone position.
v.intr.
To lie back or down. , another sign that he is still a young boy. For Autolycus' demeanor see Xenophon, Symposium, especially I.8-10 and III.15-6; pp. 228, 238 of the "Dinner Party" in the Penguin Books edition, Conversations of Socrates (London, 1990).
(33.) See, for example, plates B598, R530, and R791, in Dover, op. cit.
(34.) Plato, Symposium, 181d-e; p. 114 in Prometheus Press edition.
(35.) Ibid., p. 113-4.
(36.) According to Dover, Pausanias "has a strong personal reason" for regarding a long-lasting relationship as superior, for he himself is "represented by Plato as erastes of Agathon when the latter was about eighteen, and as remaining so more than a dozen years later," p. 84, op. cit.
(37.) Socrates as an adult had bouts of immobility, when he might stand in one place for hours on end. Its symbolic meaning is considered in my paper, "The Psychodynamics psychodynamics /psy·cho·dy·nam·ics/ (-di-nam´iks) the interplay of motivational forces that gives rise to the expression of mental processes, as in attitudes, behavior, or symptoms. of Socrates' Death," presented to the New York State Political Science Association in March, 1996.
(38.) "It is a common thing with men to be at first sexually competent and afterwards impotent, and then again to revert to their former powers." Aristotle, History of Animals History of Animals (or "Historia Animalium", or "On the History of Animals") is a zoological natural history text by Aristotle.
The work consists of lenghthy descriptions (Greek: historiai , 585b 29-30; p.918 in The Complete Works of Aristotle, Vol. I, edited by Jonathan Barnes, Princeton University Press (Princeton, 1985). There is also repeated reference to impotence in Strato's Musa Puerilis. That this was a psychological and not a physiological problem is evident from the fact that the men described in Strato's poems were able to achieve erection when alone. Thus Epigram epigram, a short, polished, pithy saying, usually in verse, often with a satiric or paradoxical twist at the end. The term was originally applied by the Greeks to the inscriptions on stones. 232, by Scythinus: "You unnamed thing, now you stand erect and do not wilt in the least, but are on the stretch like one that will never stop. But when Nemesenus curved his whole self to me, granting all I want, you hung as a dead thing," pp. 399-401, op. cit. By Strato himself, in Epigram 216, we find: "Now you're upright, damn you, and stiff, when nothing is there. But when there was something yesterday, you heaved no breath at all," p. 393.
(39.) The classic monogram monogram [Gr.,=single letter], symbol of a name or names, consisting typically of a letter or several letters worked together. A famous monogram is that of Christ, consisting of X (chi) and P (rho), the first two letters of Christ in Greek. on the subject of the herms is Robin Osborne, "The Erection and Mutilation Mutilation
See also Brutality, Cruelty.
Mutiny (See REBELLION.)
Absyrtus
hacked to death; body pieces strewn about. [Gk. Myth.: Walsh Classical, 3]
Agatha, St.
had breasts cut off. [Christian Hagiog. of the Hermai," Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society The Cambridge Philosophical Society (CPS) is a scientific society at University of Cambridge. It was founded in 1819. The name derives from the medieval use of the word philosophy to denote any research undertaken outside the fields of theology and medicine. 211 (1985): pp. 48-73.
(40.) The herms seem to have served an aggressive purpose as boundary markers, warning passers-by of the potency of Athenian men. Why would a phallus be used in this threatening way, unless men were worried about their abilities? Dover has some interesting comments on the phallus as a warning device in animal as well as human societies. See especially p. 105, op. cit.
(41.) Plato, Phaedrus, 240d; p. 57 in Prometheus Press edition.
(42.) Ibid.
(43.) Xenophon, Symposium, VIII. 21-22, quoted from p. 261 of "The Dinner Party," Conversations of Socrates. A similar concern is expressed in Aristotle's Problems, Book IV 10: "Why is it that the young, when they first begin to have sexual intercourse, feel loathing after the act for those with whom they have had intercourse?" Interestingly, the pain or injury caused by intercourse is suggested as the reason. "Is it due to the fact that the change caused in them is great? For they are only conscious of the ensuing feeling of discomfort, and so avoid those with whom they have had intercourse as being the cause of this feeling," p. 1353 in Complete Works of Aristotle, Vol. II.
(44.) In Xenophon's Symposium, a Syracusan man is asked whether he sleeps with a boy he has brought to the party to dance for the guests. "Most certainly," he answers. "All night and every night." IV.52, p. 591, Loeb Library edition. We can assume their shared bed is located in the Syracusan's home.
(45.) The dominant male in the Greek household, the kyrios, enjoyed almost total authority. He could not kill his son, but he could do almost anything else, and the boy could not retaliate. Throughout Plato we find many injunctions against a boy raising his hand to his father, no matter what the father might be doing to him.
(46.) There is an interesting exchange in Xenophon's Memorabilia, IV. iv. 20. Socrates asks the sophist soph·ist
n.
1.
a. One skilled in elaborate and devious argumentation.
b. A scholar or thinker.
2. Sophist Any of a group of professional fifth-century b.c. , Hippias of Ellis, "Is not the duty of honoring parents another universal law?" "Yes, that is another," Hippias agrees. "And that parents shall not have sexual intercourse with their children nor children with their parents?" "No, I don't think that is a law of God," Hippias objects. "Why so?" "Because," Hippias responds, "I notice that some transgress it." (p. 321 of Loeb Library edition.)
(47.) In my paper, "The Psychodynamics of Socrates' Death," I interpret Socrates' irritating questioning of the men of Athens as his method of attacking fathers without lifting a hand to them.
(48.) The episode appears in Hesiod, Theogony, lines 116 through 206. The quote is from p. 28 of the Penguin Books edition, Hesiod and Theognis (London, 1973).
(49.) See Sophocles' Oedipus Rex for the best-known version of the myth. Other ancient sources give slightly different accounts.
(50.) Philip E. Slater, The Glory of Hera: Greek Mythology and the Greek Family, Princeton University Press (Princeton, 1968).
(51.) Ibid., p. 59.
(52.) Ibid., p. 74.
(53.) "Philosophers and moralists offer primary material for the history of ideas The history of ideas is a field of research in history that deals with the expression, preservation, and change of human ideas over time. The history of ideas is a sister-discipline to, or a particular approach within, intellectual history. , only inadvertently for the history of practices. This is particularly true in the case of classical Greece ... Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the like count for nothing--in this context. Athens was a society in which philosophers were often ignored and when noticed were easily represented not as authority figures but as cranks and buffoons. If we focus our attention not on that eccentric coterie but on the citizen body (in its own way an elite in the population of Athens), we get quite a different picture, one in which the debates of philosophers have no discernible impact." Winkler, Constraints of Desire, p. 19.
(54.) Plato, Phaedrus, 240b; p. 57 in Prometheus Press edition.
(55.) Ibid., 243b; p. 50.
(56.) Ibid., 241c; p. 58.
(57.) Ibid., 245b; p. 63.
(58.) Ibid., 255c; p. 74.
(59.) Ibid., 256a; p. 74.
(60.) That it is difficult for Socrates (i.e., Plato) to come out with such a statement is dramatically revealed in the Phaedrus in the way in which Socrates tries to walk away after praising the non-lover, but is prevented by his daimonion from doing so until he ultimately provides a tumultuous description of eros.
(61.) Plato, Laws, Book VIII 840; p. 339 in Penguin Books edition of Plato, The Laws (London, 1975).
(62.) Cited in Angelo P. Giardino et al., A Practical Guide to the Evaluation of Sexual Abuse in the Prepubertal Child, Sage Publications, ( Newbury Park, California The community of Newbury Park, California is located in the western portion of the City of Thousand Oaks and Casa Conejo, an unincorporated area of southern Ventura County. , 1992), p. 4.
(63.) Mic Hunter, Abused Boys: The Neglected Victims of Sexual Abuse, Fawcett Columbine columbine, in botany
columbine (kol`?mbin), any plant of the genus Aquilegia, temperate-zone perennials of the family Ranunculaceae (buttercup family), popular both as wildflowers and as garden flowers. (New York, 1990), p. 26.
(64.) The number of surveys and their differing results have been increasing steadily. The leading researcher in the field is David Finkelhor. His 1979 survey initiated the study of prevalence rates for childhood sexual abuse. In their 1990 survey, Finkelhor et al. estimate that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 11 men, or 20% of women and 9% of men, have experienced sexual abuse before age 18. Cited in Giardino, op. cit., p. 12. "The reality," writes Finkelhor in his 1986 A Sourcebook on Child Sexual Abuse, Sage Publications, (Beverly Hills), "is that there is not yet any consensus among social scientists about the national scope of sexual abuse," p. 16.
(65.) Frank Bolton, Jr., Larry A. Morris, and Ann E. MacEachron, Males at Risk: The Other Side of Child Sexual Abuse, Sage Publications (Newbury Park, CA, 1989).
(66.) Hunter, op. cit.
(67.) Matthew Parynik Mendel, The Male Survivor: The Impact of Sexual Abuse, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, 1995). Another valuable book, by an author who had to "come to grips" with his own "devastating boyhood experiences and the subsequent years of pain and anger, sadness and fear," is Broken Boys/Mending Men: Recovery from Childhood Sexual Abuse, by Stephen D. Grubman-Black, Ivy Books (New York, 1990). Grubman-Black presents the stories of a number of men who "met and found a deep sense of brotherhood" by discovering they were not alone.
(68.) "[T]here is little recognition of the impact upon the male victim, and few services attempt to identify and aid him in coping with and resolving the feelings of anger, powerlessness, and lack of control that victimization victimization Social medicine The abuse of the disenfranchised–eg, those underage, elderly, ?, mentally retarded, illegal aliens, or other, by coercing them into illegal activities–eg, drug trade, pornography, prostitution. may produce. In the United States, society expects that males will protect and defend themselves." G. Ryan, et al., "Juvenile Sexual Offenders: Development and Correction," Child Abuse and Neglect, 11, 1985, p. 386, quoted in Bolton, op. cit., p. 94. The boy faces an especially difficult problem when his abuser has been a woman, for in American culture the boy is likely to be regarded as lucky if he has been initiated into sex by an attractive baby-sitter or other adult female. Many popular movies snicker about such events, yet for the boy it can be just as devastating as the seduction of a little girl by an adult male. For information about female offenders, see Hunter, op. cit., pp. 34-43, and Bolton, op. cit., pp. 52-56.
(69.) Excellent overviews of the consequences can be found in Mendel, Chapters 4 and 5, op. cit., pp. 73-129; Bolton, Chapter 3, op. cit., pp. 68-93; and Hunter, Chapters 3 and 4, op. cit., pp. 45-91. A very interesting theoretical consideration of the "trauma-causing factors" in childhood sexual abuse, including "traumatic sexualization
(70.) The sexually abused boy may as an adult associate the early abuse with sexual excitement, and so shut down his own erotic responses as soon as he begins to feel them, thereby rendering himself impotent. Many physicians who treat impotence seem to be unaware of this mechanism. I asked a leading urologist Urologist
A physician who deals with the study and treatment of disorders of the urinary tract in women and the urogenital system in men.
Mentioned in: Congenital Bladder Anomalies, Lithotripsy, Men's Health, Overactive Bladder
urologist if he inquires, when a man has come to him complaining of impotence, whether there had been a history of childhood abuse. The urologist became quite discomfited, declaring that members of his profession receive no training in posing such questions, and that at all the urology urology
Medical specialty dealing with the urinary system and male reproductive organs. It traces its origin to medieval lithologists, itinerant healers who specialized in surgical removal of bladder stones. conventions he has attended he has never seen a paper or poster session on the subject. I received a similar response when I asked a leading professor of dentistry whether he inquires, when an otherwise intelligent and responsible patient obviously has avoided dental care for years, losing teeth as a result, whether the mouth had been a site of childhood abuse from oral sex. Such patients are terrified
(71.) For example, Jim Bakker, the TV evangelist, who was sent to prison for several years. Shortly after his release Bakker disclosed on a television talk program that despite a life lived as a married heterosexual he had been plagued all through his adulthood by the thought that perhaps he really was homosexual, for he had been sexually abused by a man when he was a child. Only in prison did he gain relief, for a prison counselor assured him he was indeed heterosexual.
(72.) Theo Sandfort, Boys on their Contacts with Men: A Study of Sexually Expressed Friendships, Global Academic Publishers ( Elmhurst, New York Elmhurst is the name of two places in New York State: - Elmhurst, Chautauqua County, New York
- Elmhurst, Queens, New York
, 1987), publisher's introduction, pp. 9-10.
(73.) Ibid., p. 18. Sandfort reproduces interviews with boys who claim they enjoy sex with men and that they feel free to say no if they are not in the mood. Yet this seeming "control" on the part of the child is not very convincing, nor is it really the issue, for the same interviews, if read carefully, reveal not only that it was the men who first initiated the sexual contact, but that the boys became so preoccupied they lost interest in school or in friends their own age. Sandfort wishes to change Dutch law to make pederasty legal, for "children who engage in such activities out of their own free choice deserve to be protected rather than threatened," p. 133.
(74.) Paul Okami, " Sociopolitical so·ci·o·po·li·ti·cal
adj.
Involving both social and political factors.
sociopolitical
Adjective
of or involving political and social factors Biases in the Contemporary Scientific Literature on Adult Human Sexual Behavior This article is about sexual practices (i.e., physical sex). Broader aspects of sexual behaviour such as social and psychological sexual issues are covered in related articles such as human sexuality, heterosexuality, and homosexuality.with Children and Adolescents," in Pedophilia: Biosocial bi·o·so·cial
adj.
Of or having to do with the interaction of biological and social forces: the biosocial aspects of disease.
bi Dimensions, edited by Jay R. Feierman, Springer-Verlag (New York, 1990), p. 91. Okami identifies himself as an "independent researcher" based in New York.
(75.) Ibid., p. 113. Okami and Sandfort do make some good points. When such words as "victims," "perpetrators," "survivors," etc., are used in research, the harmfulness of sexual contact between adults and children has been predetermined, yet they themselves are entirely sure there is no harm in most cases. It is interesting how angry both men are at the women's movement. Again, they offer some interesting arguments, for male sexuality has indeed been demeaned by some feminist writing, but they confuse the issues, for they do not want to recognize the sexuality of the child as different from that of the adult or in need of protection from violation by adults. Another recent book that questions the harmfulness of such contacts is Children's Sexual Encounters with Adults: A Scientific Study, by C. K. Li et al., Prometheus Books (Buffalo, 1993).
(76.) An excellent summary of psychoanalytic theories seeking to explain the "emotional congruence con·gru·ence
n.
1.
a. Agreement, harmony, conformity, or correspondence.
b. An instance of this: "What an extraordinary congruence of genius and era" " between abuser and child is given in Sharon Araju and David Finkelhor, "Abusers: A Review of the Research," Chapter 3 of Finkelhor's Sourcebook, especially pp. 80-97.
(77.) Araju and Finkelhor, p. 96, cite K. Howells, "Some Meanings of Children for Pedophiles," Love and Attraction, edited by M. Cook and F. Wilson, Pergamon Press (London, 1979). "Howells ... found some support for two propositions: (1) that issues of dominance and hierarchy were more important in the social relationships of molesters than in those of non-sex offenders and (2) that one of the salient characteristics that molesters point to in their victims is lack of dominance."
(78.) "Incest offenders appear to be the most alcohol involved of all abusers." "Of all disinhibition dis·in·hi·bi·tion
n.
1. A loss of inhibition, as through the influence of drugs or alcohol.
2. A temporary loss of an inhibition caused by an unrelated stimulus, such as a loud noise. theories [for incest], it is clear that the one with the most empirical support is that of alcohol involvement." Araju and Finkelhor, op. cit., pp. 166-167.
(79.) See Plato's Republic, Book IX, 571C.
(80.) The Oedipus Papers, edited by George H. Pollock and John Munder Ross, Monograph 6 of the Classics in Psychoanalysis series of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, International Universities Press (Madison, Connecticut, 1988). I am grateful to my colleague, Professor Ronald Zirin, for bringing this work to my attention.
(81.) John Munder Ross, "The Darker Side of Fatherhood: Clinical and Developmental Ramifications of the `Laius Motif,'" p. 389-417, in The Oedipus Papers. See also Ross, "Oedipus Revisited: Laius and the `Laius Complex,'" pp. 285-316, also in The Oedipus Papers.
(82.) Ross, "Darker Side," p. 390.
(83.) Giardino, op. cit., p. 55. In an interview (January 13, 1994), Jen Henry, director of the Children's Sexual Abuse Clinic at the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinic, Buffalo, New York, informed me that experienced pedophiles learn how to introduce larger and larger objects into a child's anus, so that through gradually increasing dilation dilation /di·la·tion/ (di-la´shun)
1. the act of dilating or stretching.
2. dilatation.
di·la·tion
n.
1. the child's anal muscles will stretch without tearing. Unfortunately, many such offenders are then released by the courts because there is no sign of tearing, scarring, or rupturing. When obvious damage is not present, the courts have ruled that children are lying about anal penetration.
(84.) Aristophanes, Clouds, p. 131, in The Complete Plays of Aristophanes, edited by Moses Hadas, Bantam Books (New York, 1988).
(85.) Plato, Phaedo. See 109-114, pp. 375-391 in the Loeb Library edition. Possibly Plato was reacting not just to sexual abuse but to the pain and terror of beatings. The way in which Plato in the Phaedo describes the separation of the soul from the body is highly suggestive of suggestive of Decision making adjective Referring to a pattern by LM or imaging, that the interpreter associates with a particular–usually malignant lesion. See Aunt Millie approach, Defensive medicine. the dissociative dissociative /dis·so·ci·a·tive/ (-so´se-a´tiv) pertaining to or tending to produce dissociation. experiences of severely abused children in our own society. We know that such children, at times of great fear and danger, seem to themselves to be floating above their own bodies, pure and untouchable untouchable
Former classification of various low-status persons and those outside the Hindu caste system in Indian society. The term Dalit is now used for such people (in preference to Mohandas K. , separated from whatever is happening to them physically. Through such a mechanism children can preserve not only a semblance of sanity, but their very lives. Could Plato as a young child, and other Greek children, have endured such traumatic experiences and found for themselves a similar way out?
(86.) Aristophanes, Frogs, p. 373 in Complete Plays.
(87.) Plato was aware of a tradition. "I fancy that those men who established the mysteries were not unenlightened, but in reality had a hidden meaning when they said long ago that whoever goes uninitiated and unsanctified to the other world will lie in the mire mire (mer) [Fr.] one of the figures on the arm of an ophthalmometer whose images are reflected on the cornea; measurement of their variations determines the amount of corneal astigmatism.
mire
n. , but he who arrives there initiated and purified will dwell with the gods." Phaedo, 69c; p. 231 Loeb Library edition.
(88.) Euripides offers the best exploration of the damage done to females, for example in The Trojan Women and Medea, in which female characters speak of the inequality and injustice of their situation and their exploitation by men. For scholarship on women's lives in ancient Athens, see Mary Lefkowitz and Maureen Fant, Women's Life in Greece and Rome, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, 1992); Roger Just, Women in Athenian Law and Life, Routledge (New York, 1989); or Sarah Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity, Schocken Press (New York, 1975).
(89.) Lloyd DeMause, "The Evolution of Childhood," in Varieties of Psychohistory psy·cho·his·to·ry
n. pl. psy·cho·his·to·ries
A psychological or psychoanalytic interpretation or study of historical events or persons: the psychohistory of the Nazi era. , edited by George Kren and Leon Rappoport, Springer Publishing (New York, 1976), p. 123. The article also appears as Chapter 1 of DeMause's Foundations of Psychohistory, Creative Roots, Inc. (New York, 1982).
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Fifth Annual Conference of the American Men's Studies Association at Vanderbilt University, School of Divinity, Nashville, Tennessee, March 1997.
Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to ENID BLOCH, 43 Gina Meadows, East Amherst, NY 14051 or enidbloch@yahoo.com.
ENID BLOCH, Ph.D., has interests that span both ancient and modern life and thought. She has taught world civilization and Greek philosophy in the classics department of the State University of New York (body) State University of New York - (SUNY) The public university system of New York State, USA, with campuses throughout the state. at Buffalo and political theory in the political science department of the Johns Hopkins University. Currently she is writing a book about the emotional life of Socrates. (enidbloch@yahoo.com) |
