Homosexuality before Religion

by ElPresidente96

Can someone give me a brief idea of how homosexuality was perceived in civilisations that existed before the western religions developed such as Christianity and Islam etc... Some examples would be Ancient Egypt; Ancient Greece, Asia etc...

leyebrow

Firstly, little deceptive question, all of the examples you gave had religions...

Regardless, I can speak on the subjects of Ancient Greece and Rome, but mostly about man on man homosexuality - women were much less recorded. Firstly, in both cases, they did not perceive an interest in homosexual behaviour to be a disorder or a problem at all- just an aspect of an individual's sexuality. Would have been seen the same as someone who enjoys role play or bondage in today's age. Maybe not 100% standard, but not a HUGE deal.

Greece: In Greece, homosexuality was largely a specific relationship called pederasty. This was a relationship between an adult male and and an adolescent male (until you could grow a beard). As an important note, being the receiver of homosexual intercourse was only ok as the adolescent, not the man because it was seen as subservient. It's origins were in pre-historic Greece where a rite of passage would be for a teen to leave the tribe with an older man and the older man would teach the younger man about life and how to become a man, which apparently also included some sexual activity between the two. In Ancient Greece, pederasty was a form of mentorship. The man would choose a boy who showed promise - both attractiveness and potential - and would "court" him. They would form a bond and would have a sexual relationship, but the older man would also provide education, introductions, guidance and such to the teen. This relationship would last usually from the age of 12 to 17. Outside of pederasty, there were homosexual relationships between two adult males, usually between a citizen and a non-citizen or a citizen and a slave (again, being the receiver makes you lower, so if you're already a slave, who cares). Being the "giver" was never an issue, just as long as you weren't the "receiver". There are also a few super close highly suspect relationships that have been suggested to have been homosexual in nature such as Achilles and Patroclus and Alexander the Great and Haphaestion (later). Neither conclusive, but very very close relationships beyond most friendships, but both included men in high command leadership roles so the fact that they were suspect of being homosexual while still being highly respected is pretty indicative of the feelings of the day compared to today. In terms of women, early in Greek history women could be sent to be taught at a school called a thiasos where they regularly engaged in similar mentor/mentee sexual relationship - Sappho from the island of Lesbos was a teacher there and the word sapphic and Lesbos (lesbian) have derived from her poetry about her romantic and sexual relationships with women and become common words to describe homosexual women.

Rome: There was no word for homo vs. heterosexual, rather words meaning feminine and masculine in terms of sexuality. It was entirely acceptable for a man, married, single, whatever to engage in homosexual acts, as long as he held the dominant position (similarities between Greece and Rome are apparent here). If you were the penetrative partner, you maintained your "male" title (whether with a male or female partner), but if you were receiving, you'd receive the female title (which for women was fine, but for men was debasing). Because of this, most relationships occured between a citizen and a slave/prostitute/entertainer who were already seen as debased in society (again, similar to the Greeks). IN certain time periods (the early imperial period for one), a marriage between to men was legal. Not seen as entirely legitimate because the point of marriage was having children and no chance of that obviously). One famous example of this was Emperor Nero who married a man, but his public musical performances were seen as much more scandalous than his homosexual relationships - he married a slave and therefore assumed to be the "male" in the relationship. They were so casual about it it was kind of amazing. One crazy example was a graffiti saying "Secundus is a fellator of rare ability" - aka Secundus gives good blowjobs - found in Pompeii. Basically the bathroom stall writing of the age. Because of the whole male and female roles in sexual relationships, they didn't really get female homosexuality. They believed that there had to be some sort of penetration (still an issue today) so they depicted lesbians to use dildos or giant clitorises that could somehow penetrate. They also associated lesbians with the "male" in the relationship, giving them male stereotypes, but also hyper-sexuality.