Dylan's Take: Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World Readings

Daily responses to the readings for Classics 240, Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World.  

[dylansclassics240blog]

Wow, hi.  I didn’t actually check the activity on this blog so I didn’t realize people were actually reading what I had to say over here.

The semester/this class is almost over, and I didn’t actually post most of the diary entries I wrote for this class -- so shoot me a message if you’re actually interested in my thoughts on these class readings and I can keep writing for you!

However, if you’re thinking “thank goodness I don’t have to hear Dylan talk anymore -- his thoughts are so ridiculous!” that’s also valid.  But if you’re still interested in classical content, I can give you my personal Tumblr where some of that stuff pops up.

Thanks for reading!

[dylansclassics240blog]

Christianity and Sex from Plato to Paul

Readings:  L&F #555-557 (pp. 391-94), Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 3.4-10, Gaca, Kathy.  2003.  The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity Chapter 10, “The fornicating justice of Epiphanes,.”

What struck me most about today’s reading was its relevance to life today, particularly in this political climate.  All right, so maybe communal sexual ethics are not exactly widely-advocated.  But Clement of Alexandria sounds like he is the mouthpiece of Focus on the Family, an unsettling similarity.  Gaca points out that the root of Christian social conservatism is found in Clement’s argument that procreationist monogamy is the only way to go.  Even his argument style sounds familiar -- he calls Epiphanes a “lewd outcast” and villifies his principles.  Somewhere Jerry Falwell is cackling with glee.  Maybe nobody today is pushing Platonic/Stoic sexual communalism.  But Epiphanes’ argument resonated with me in other ways, particularly his statement that God’s righteousness is social equity with no distinction between anybody (at least in the eyes of God, if not in the eyes of humanity).  I feel as though I’ve encountered variations of his argument from the kinds of Christians who attend Cornerstone Festival before.  It’s striking to me to see the dialogue I’ve heard so often between various groups of Christians reflected here, even if the historical context is completely different.

I was also intrigued by how much property is tied into sexuality, for both Clement and Epiphanes.  Epiphanes advocates for communalism not just sexually, but also in terms of property.  I guess this shouldn’t be surprising.  After all, I remember earlier in the semester when we talked about how property was easily the most important thing to the ancients, but I tend to think of ancient Christians as being somehow “different” than their counterparts.  That’s not true, though -- they would still have been influenced by their culture as much as anybody else.  I am also surprised to encounter such a strong bedrock of philosophy that endorsed the liberation of the burden of private ownership, to paraphrase Gaca.  I feel like I tend to associate Christianity with being obsessed with the ownership of private property (or at least a ringing endorsement of free-market capitalism), but that’s just my own cultural lens talking.

I’d also like to comment on how valuable I found Gaca’s chapter on Clement and Epiphanes in setting up historical context.  The context she provides near the beginning of the chapter really makes clear the importance of the dispute about sexual principles, and also helps Epiphanes’ arguments for sexual communalism make sense.  Gaca writes that Christianity at the time was countercultural* and shaped by communal social ideals.  This sentence made everything so much clearer for me.  Sexual communalism is a natural extension of the communal social ideals Christianity was shaped by at the time.  It wouldn’t have been a weird and foreign concept to them as it may be to us, especially since there was already a precedent of support for communalism established by Plato and early Stoics.

Lastly, I suppose I should comment on Paul.  I believe I’m the one person I know who actually likes Paul.** I’m not really a fan of predestination, but I think Paul captures the essence of the Christian message very well.  When I argue with friends about Paul, however, they’ll usually throw today’s readings at me and appeal to my feminism to ask how I can support him.  But does Paul not display an inclusive view of women by saying there is no difference between women and men in the eyes of God (at least in Galatians)?  I don’t know, I haven’t had time to do as much research into Paul’s writings on women as I would like but I feel like there has to be more to this story than the way so many people have interpreted it since (as an excuse to oppress women).  After all, he actively worked with women in the church (see Priscilla, off the top of my head) so I feel like we can’t take his (or pseudo-Paul’s?) comments that women must stay silent at face value.  But I don’t know much about this, so perhaps don’t put too much faith into this last paragraph.

*As it’s supposed to be, as some might say. **I lied, Professor Whitlatch likes Paul too.

[dylansclassics240blog]

Sparta

Readings:  Pomeroy p. 35-39, LF #112-117, “Sayings of Spartan Women” by Plutarch, “Spartan Wives:  Liberation or Licence?” by Paul Cartledge

I wrote in my entry about Athens that American classical democracy was based on Athens, and I came to the conclusion that Athens was actually much different than I had imagined -- and by different I mean regressive and terrible-sounding.  This week, I had a revelation about ancient Sparta.  Rather than the barbarian and hellish experience I had imagined growing up in Sparta to be, Sparta seems to be more nuanced than I could have imagined.  I also am now more aware of how much Athenian influences have affected how I view Sparta -- I’m surprised at just how little of what we know about Sparta comes from Sparta.  As a Classics major, this hurts me.  It’s also surprising to me that we have built up such a mythos around this polis when we really have such little factual information about it.  I’m also surprised that in my studies of Classics this information hasn’t come up before.

Also, I really enjoyed the Cartledge article (even though the fact that it directly contradicts the Pomeroy readings in many places makes me question the truth of everything a little bit).  I especially enjoyed the bit at the very end where Cartledge quotes Simone de Beauvoir.  Can a woman truly be free if she is expected to unquestioningly serve the state?  I would say no, and that is very much what women of Sparta were expected to do (produce more soldiers for Sparta, take care of the future soldiers, et cetera).  He also highlights how, for all of the ways Sparta might look like a feminist utopia (property rights!  education!  short skirts!), growing up in Sparta would have actually been quite difficult for women (especially in their marriage practices, which would certainly be a shock to say the least).  The one thing I didn’t quite understand from the reading was Aristotle’s objections to Sparta, and I’m hoping we go over them in class.  (I admittedly tend to space out when legal matters are being discussed.)

Then there’s Plutarch’s “Sayings of Spartan Women.”  Knowing Plutarch, this makes me suspicious.  How did this Athenian rando get all these quotes, especially the quotes of “common women?”  Did he go to Sparta himself?  Did the women come to him?  This reeks of urban legend to me.  (”Hey, look how ridiculous those Spartans are!”  And so on.)  Regardless of where they come from, the “Sayings” definitely show what those outside of Sparta thought of Sparta.  It’s almost like the mythos that exists today existed back then, as well (to circle back to my first paragraph).  These women are completely focused on being strong for their state, which is exactly how they were supposed to be.  Even if the “Sayings” aren’t real, they exemplify many Athenian attitudes toward Sparta -- and modern day ones, as well.

[dylansclassics240blog]

Classical Athens

Readings:  Pomeroy 4-5, LF #92-106, 355

I feel like I’ve often assumed the notion that because Athens is the founder of democracy and so much of our nation’s government and culture is based on Athenian culture, women were treated better in Athens.  Alas, this is obviously not the case.  It surprised me to see just how regulated women’s life in Athens was, and how secluded they were required to be.  One particular aspect that struck me was the condescension of husbands to wives:  a husband was more educated than his wife, and also often at least ten years older.  I never considered just how difficult that would be for a man’s wife, but it’s a good point, especially since we just read Medea’s monologue in Greek Drama where she discusses this in detail.*  I was also stunned to read that wives and women in general had the legal status of a literal child, and that females never came of age.  Contrary to this, I couldn’t believe how easy it was to attain a divorce in Athens.  I would have thought it would be extremely difficult for either or both parties, or at least have quite a bit of stigma attached, but Pomeroy writes that this is not true.**  I suppose when property and money are the driving factors in a marriage, it doesn’t matter so much whether or not a couple stays together, but considering the culture’s emphasis on a woman’s virginity I would think a divorced woman would have a difficult time finding another husband or living in the society.  Would she be considered “used” or would it truly not be that difficult for her?

*Although, now that I think about it, that didn’t take place in Athens -- but the play was written for an Athenian audience, so I presume Euripides is mostly writing about Athenian culture here. **But Medea explicitly writes that divorce brings stigma for women.  How much of her speech is rhetoric to get the Corinthian women on her side, and how much truth is there to what she says?

[terpsikeraunos]

These four women all appear in the Greek Anthology and reflect the widening of the Greek world in their geographical distribution. Moero was an epic poet, whose son was also a poet. The son went to Alexandria and became part of a quasi-canonical grouping of third century poets too modern to have been included in the proper canons drawn up by their scholarly contemporaries. However, Moero herself spent all her life and wrote all her poetry in Byzantium, so far as we know. Anyte wrote several types of poetry and carried on from Telesilla and Praxilla the tradition of women poets in the Peleponnese. She was a native of Tegea in Arcadia, one of the most rural and conservative areas in Greece, but, because some of her poems refer to the sea, people assume that she travelled out of Arcadia at least as far as the Peloponnesian coast. Nossis was a poet from Locri in southern Italy and represents the importance of the western Greeks in the period just before Rome and Carthage fought over their countryside. Erinna, the most fascinating but in many ways the most mysterious of these poets, seems to have come from the island of Telos near Rhodes, since that is the one of her several traditional birthplaces of which the local dialect best fits the language of her poetry.

Sylvia Barnard, Hellenistic Women Poets (via terpsikeraunos)

[dylansclassics240blog]

The Myth of the Heterosexual

Readings:  “The Myth of the Heterosexual: Anthropology and Sexuality for Classicists” by Holt N. Parker, “Making a Monster” by Sarah Scullin

Once, my sophomore year, the other officers of the LGBTQ+ campus alliance I help coordinate indulged my love of studying ancient queer sexuality and let me present on the topic at a meeting.  While I was admittedly a novice to presentation and research, which resulted in a talk that was mostly gushing about my historical OTPs (Hadrian and Antinous for life), I tried to ensure one point came across:  ancient queer folks did not call themselves “heterosexual” or “homosexual” the way we do.  Identity politics based on sexual orientation would not have existed, because sexual orientation did not exist.  Instead, the categories were based on power and who did what in sexual interactions.  This seemed like a given to me -- I had heard it from professors and older friends in the classics department and took it as a given.  Therefore, it is cool to visit the original research that brought us to this point.  I can only imagine what those reading such a fresh take in 2001 would have thought.  

I loved how comprehensive this piece was, and how Parker does not shy away from language that may seem crude in an academic setting but that conveys what he wants to say succinctly and well.  In addition, Parker is even more inclusive of nonbinary and intersex folks than Scott, which shows how well-thought out the research is.  Parker really makes a point of showing that sex is socially constructed, a point I think most of us forget since most of us are not intersex, do not know any openly intersex people, and therefore don’t have to think about it.  Like the Scott article, the Parker paper forces me to review my ideas of the relationship between sex and gender.  Before, I would have said that sex constructs gender.  However, Parker writes that sex depends on gender and our categories of male, female, and intersex.  Which one constructs the other?  I don’t know, but it’s an exciting question.  The paper did, however, prove to contain some confusing elements.  For example, I lost Parker when he begins talking about the idea of “emic” versus “etic.”  I understand the basic idea, that one references to people within a group and one to people outside the group, but I was confused as to why he spent so many pages talking about it and feel I might have missed something.  He also includes a graph of sex and gender relations on page 341 that may be helpful to some but that I can make neither head nor tail of.  Overall, the reading was very useful and I understand its influence, but as a classicist its sociology/anthropology take was something I wasn’t exactly used to and it therefore didn’t come as naturally to me.

And then there’s the article "Making a Monster.”  My heart sank when I learned Holt Parker was in prison, and what exactly he was in prison for.  It was similar to the way I felt when I read Gayle Rubin’s essay “Thinking Sex” and her apparent defense of pedophilia, only ten thousand times worse because Parker has actually committed a crime.  I understand the impulse to ban his work or to stop citing this article that is, again, so influential.  But I don’t agree with it.  I think it’s important to continue to read this research, as long as we constantly evaluate it with this news in mind.  Another point of view I disagree with is the idea that his crime is worse because of his scholarship.  Who cares whether or not his day job was in Homer’s use of the metaphor?  Child pornography is child pornography, and studying ancient sexual relationships does not worsen or better it.  The study of sexuality as a field is reputable and important on its own, and to suggest that someone having child pornography is somehow worse because they study is inaccurate.

[dylansclassics240blog]

Gender as a Historical Category

Readings:  “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis“ by Joan W. Scott, “Gender:  Still a Useful Category of Analysis?” by Joan W. Scott, “The Public Voice of Women” by Mary Beard

Before approaching the articles assigned for today, my initial reaction to their premises was quite simplistic.  “Yes.  Probably.  They have one, at least in 2017 United States of America, but are often told to shut up and are the subject of misogynistic tirades when they do speak up.  (See press treatment of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.)”  But this classic article by Joan Scott, her follow-up, and a wonderful lecture by my favorite classicist, Mary Beard, proved more rewarding than I could have possibly imagined before I read them.  

I will start with the Beard reading, which might have been the least surprising to me in terms of content but was nonetheless enlightening.  I have encountered the phenomenon Beard details of women being told to shut up, or being interrupted or talked over, numerous times -- both in the ancient world, as such things do come up in readings for my Classics courses, and in the modern world, as an AFAB* trans guy who was socialized female and whose friends are mostly women.  In other words, I have not only read about such instances but I have experienced them personally.  What I had not considered until completing this reading was the point Beard raises that even today, the most accepted examples of female oratory are about being a woman.  Beard also mentions that her own topic is “the public voice of women” rather than “migration or the war in Syria.”  Upon reaching this point in the reading I had to stop and consider my own fields of interest.  When writing Classics papers, I often gravitate toward topics that touch on gender.  My film papers usually include feminist or queer reads.  Don’t get me started on my interest in women’s and gender studies.  I am forced to ask myself, then, if this fixation on gender in my work is a reaction to feeling boxed in by society’s views of my perceived gender and an attempt to buck the system, or if my fascination with gender and sexuality simply shows I’m more comfortable filling the niche prescribed for people like me.  (And is one a worse thing than the other?)  I have yet to come to a conclusion on this point, but I don’t plan to stop writing about gender or sexuality so I think it’s pretty clear where I stand.  Another point Beard brought up that I had not considered was that women are not the only ones who feel voiceless.  She suggests that some abuse women face today is a result of men feeling powerless.  Instead of confronting this powerlessness, they take aim at history’s conventional targets, women.  This doesn’t necessarily make me feel positively about those who hurl insults at women and tell them to shut up, but it does make me feel a little more sad for them.  (This is similar to how I feel about those so desperate for change and economic prosperity that they chose to vote for Donald Trump in the last election.)

As for the Scott readings, I was surprised that I had not encountered these before in Women’s and Gender Studies courses.  She is able to so concisely present a definition of gender that seems to encompass all the ways I have been taught to view it.  (I suppose this summation isn’t that surprising since the original article is considered a classic, but I still can’t believe I’ve never read it before.)  I was particularly struck by the end of her original article about how views of the state can change views of gender relationships and the ways power and gender construct each other.  However, I also found this last part and the questions Scott raises about how to change the subordination of women depressing, as it seems to imply that every upheaval that could possibly affect the status of gender relationships has mixed effects at best.  We know this from history, and the fact that changes like demographic crises and new cultural symbols often do not result in the end of the subordination of women.  Meanwhile, I didn’t like Scott’s 2010 response as much -- perhaps because I felt it covered the same ground as her original paper, at least regarding the points that gender as an analytical category is only useful when it is questioned, and that we must think critically about the meanings of sexual bodies.  I do wonder, though, what a response in 2017 would look like, considering a very different conversation about gender and increasing presence in dialogue of transgender individuals since 1986 and 2010.**  Is what we are doing now what Scott means when she says we must critically analyze gender?  What does this increase say about our state, or what does our state say about our new views of gender if the two construct each other?  These questions are all very fascinating, and I hope we get to talk about them in class.

*Assigned Female At Birth **I do not use the word “acceptance” because I believe that bathroom bills and the continuing increase of murder rates in transgender people (especially women of color) indicates that we have a long way to go before we can claim we accept transgender people as a society.