hey everyone,

Lisa posted some thoughtful comments under Part 3, my response to which was way too big for the comments section, so I’m posting her comments and my response here.

Lisa:

“well i have two thoughts so far…
all in all i’ve thought for a while now that our society is really turning back to the way the greeks viewed things. it is true that gay vs. straight is generally seen as dichotomous…. but bisexuality is also seen as a legit category and the idea that we are all a little bisexual is pretty popular. the top theories in psychology for sure right now are based on a continuum approach meaning that everyone has attractions to both genders (so you’d be somewhere a scale from 1 – i am only attracted to women, to 7 – i am only attracted to men). of course it takes a while before theories trickle down and become general societal attitudes but i think it’s on its way. men in general are pretty resistant to the idea – straight guys want everyone to know they’re straight but this doesn’t seem to be as true of women. i think a lot of women embrace the idea though especially if they have feminist tendencies. it seems like a big fad now for heterosexual girls to post photos of themselves and their girlfriends smooching on facebook…

secondly, how do greek women shed light on this matter? While the men were free to do whatever they wanted sexually, the same wasn’t true of women (well, there’s Sappho… but generally speaking lesbian acts were viewed negatively and satirized, i think). so for women, would a heterosexual orientation actually have been more a part of existential identity? or perhaps sexuality simply not a part of their identity at all, since women’s self-worth was tied up with other aspects of life?

sorry for being so long. i’m very interested in this topic and looking forward to seeing what you come up with in future posts :)”

My Response:

I’m sure you won’t take it ill of me if I restate that I am not an expert in any of this. With that said, here are my thoughts:

1. Yes, society is slowly turning toward the Greek conception. Nevertheless, while continuum theories come close to the Greek conception, they are very different from adding the category of bisexuality. This category that exists in our language/thought is very different from the Greeks’ absence of these types of categories. The continuum stuff has in large part broken free from these categories, but as you say, those ideas have not filtered down into society at large; certainly not conservative Christian society, but not even ‘homosexual’ society either. For instance, groups advocating the rights of ‘homosexuals’ often have GLBT somewhere in their names, which evidences that their self-identity is very categorized (although this line of argument could be pushed too far—they have to distinguish themselves somehow!)

2. I think the continuum theory in its most basic form is essentially right. Everybody is attracted to both sexes sexually, but to varying degrees. Many Christians of the past (and present) would probably deny this, categorizing homosexuality as a deviance that only the horribly degenerate suffer from. Of course, I am not seeking to minimize what I think is the horrible degeneracy of homosexual behaviour, but I do think that homosexuality should be dealt with honestly. Here’s an example to illustrate. I remember Al Mohler mentioning a story from his youth: As a young boy he came across the word ‘homosexual’, the meaning of which he did not know. He asked his grandfather (I think this was probably in the 1950s) what a homosexual was. The reply? “Boy! If I ever hear you say that word again, you won’t be able to sit down for month!” Not exactly the best response. In Mohler’s words, “I knew I was on to something!” Far more Christian men and women experience homoerotic desires than are willing to admit it. They probably feel that such an admission would place them in a whole different category from those who only suffer from ‘normal’ sexual desires. Of course the distinction between heterosexual desires (which have a legitimate outlet in marriage, and therefore, are not necessarily sinful) and homosexual desires (which have no legitimate outlet, and are by definition sinful) must be maintained. Our society is desperate to erase that distinction, and Christians are (hopefully) desperate to maintain it. Nevertheless, the way to combat homosexual sin in the lives of Christians is not to pretend that it doesn’t exist.

3. Social and mental environments either cultivate or dampen sexual desires of all kinds. While I am arguing that the continuum theory has a lot of truth in it, I am not arguing that we are all what would be traditionally called ‘bisexual’. The ‘gay’ population that we see around us wasn’t always there. Sure, there were always ‘homosexuals’ but they weren’t as visible, not only because the subject was taboo and their activities were abhorred, but because the environment was not conducive to cultivating homoerotic desires. These desires, if they were consciously felt, were repressed by most men and women. Today, repression of any desire, no matter how perverse, is seen as a terrible strangulation of self-expression and identity. Anyone who believes in the pervasive reality of sin obviously cannot hold to this view. Repression of sinful desires is a good thing (leaving aside the fact that there can be unhelpful and unhealthy types of repression). Nowadays, the legion of books, magazines, movies, etc. which gives expression to homosexual struggles and desires is not only ‘helping’ homosexuals deal with themselves, but is awakening homosexual desires in people at the heterosexual end of the spectrum. Potential homoerotic energy lives in us all. Whether or not that energy is realized in mental or physical sin largely depends on our environment. In that sense, the derision in which homosexual behaviour was held in the past centuries was very effective in creating an environment not conducive to cultivating those desires. On the other hand, the approach, insofar as it denied the desires rather than dealt with them, was a failure. Thus those individuals who had more intense struggles with homosexual sin were left totally alone and had to find a way to deal with or express those desires without any guidance from people of God who were busy pretending that none of them had similar desires (regardless of how intense or not they were). While this was wrong, our society’s celebration of those same desires is probably far worse.

4. Now onto the Greek women. First of all, I should clarify that Greek men weren’t allowed to do whatever they wanted sexually. The Greeks still had a concept of sexual misconduct, it just wasn’t defined in terms of gender. Greeks saw sex as something one did to another (as opposed to some thing one does with another, which I believe is the biblical conception). Therefore, sex and sexual misconduct was seen in terms of the active and passive sexual roles and there were all sorts of ways in which males could behave inappropriately in terms of active/passive behaviour.

5. Ancient Greek female sexuality is not well attested in our surviving sources, so it’s a lot harder to come up with general principles. In general, female sexuality was not nearly as complicated as male sexuality. Females were basically always the passive partners in sexual relationships (although some artwork does depict them in active roles (I won’t explain how)), and this fits well into the entire Greek concept of females and their role in society (which I don’t really want to get into now – its a huge topic). With regard to Sappho, it is interesting to note that while she was from the 6th? century BC, she was not seen as a symbol of homoeroticism until around the 1st century AD, either because here poetry was not seen as homoerotic until then, or because her homoeroticism was not worthy of note. It was not until the 19th century that the term ‘lesbian’ was used to denote female homosexual relationships (previous to that, it merely referred to somebody from Lesbos, the island on which Sappho lived).