I did allude to the Greeks with the "Symposium" reference. You'd think that all the Western culture mavens around here might have heard of that one, or maybe they're all too jaded from reading the Starr report. I guess we've probably moved beyond the Allen Bloom Closing of the American Mind phase of the culture wars. Bloom, being an old Chicago hand, was into the Aristotelian view of the world, I imagine virtuous William Bennett knows how to edit the canon properly.
I wouldn't claim to be right about anything here, I was just quoting a book review I found interesting. What I got out of the review I cited was that the ironclad "homosexual/heterosexual" division was a fairly recent invention, not that homosexual practice was a novelty. The book reviewed was The Other Side of Silence Men's Lives and Gay Identities: A Twentieth-Century History. By John Loughery. A longer excerpt, containing the bit I quoted earlier:
The broad outlines of Loughery's story are becoming familiar to historians, if not to the general public. But Loughery goes farther. In ''The Other Side of Silence'' he combines original archival research, mastery of the secondary historical literature, more than 300 of his own interviews and a broad and deep knowledge of 20th-century American letters, theater and film into a narrative that is completely accessible to nonspecialists.
Despite our tendency to think of Victorian sexuality as repressed, dominated by the rigidly separated ''spheres'' apportioned to men and women, that very segregation encouraged a good bit of same-sex physical intimacy. How much of this activity was what our cruder age regards as the ''real thing'' -- genital stimulation -- remains less clear, though with so much smoke in the sources, the odds favor the existence of a substantial amount of fire.
Neither the terms nor the concepts ''homosexual'' and ''heterosexual'' even existed until the late 19th century, when a newly powerful medical profession began defining homoerotic behavior as ''perversion'' or mental illness. Still, the conceptual distinction between homosexual and heterosexual had considerably more force in the minds of clinicians than in the sexual practices of men, even the men who worked for vice squads.
In his opening chapter, for instance, Loughery recounts the juicy story of the 1919 sex scandal at the naval training station at Newport, R.I., in which the Navy ran a sting operation to entrap sailors and their civilian friends (known among themselves as the ''Ladies of Newport'') in homosexual conduct. The most striking part of the investigation, to modern eyes -- and eventually to an embarrassed Department of the Navy -- was the enthusiasm with which the presumably ''normal'' young detectives threw themselves into their work, enjoying (under often explicit orders) a ''fairly staggering amount of oral sex,'' Loughery writes, and admitting, in at least two cases, to ''having had anal sex to orgasm.'' But as long as they were on the receiving end of oral attentions, and on the giving end of anal intercourse, no one considered them ''fairies.'' What was common knowledge within gay communities -- that otherwise heterosexual men, known as ''trade,'' could and did enjoy sex with other men -- has been more or less suppressed in straight life.
And the conclusion:
By giving voice to those who have been too often silenced in the past, by engaging them in a serious dialogue, by placing their words and their lives in front of modern readers, Loughery has rescued their experience from (in E. P. Thompson's memorable phrase) the enormous condescension of posterity. This extraordinary book will shame anyone who still wishes that gay issues would just go away. Loughery has added a powerful voice to the chorus making sure that speech triumphs over silence.
Personally, I doubt if any book could possibly shame the righteous Christian moralists here, secure in their one particular "inerrant" interpretation of the Bible. I haven't read the book, and probably won't, the topic sure isn't a burning interest of mine. Unfortunately, it seems to be all too literally a burning interest of many others here.
Cheers, Dan. |
