Gay Life and Culture: A World History by Robert Aldrich
This book surveys all the world cultures for homosexuality. For some reason the most fascinating culture for me was that of the ancient Greeks. I guess because the open attitude and acceptance about sexuality seems so different from even our supposedly advanced American culture of today that it is difficult to comprehend. Attraction to the same sex was openly practiced and viewed as a natural part of range of human behavior. Heterosexuals experienced and understood same-sex beauty and attraction and didn’t force themselves to suppress it or deny feeling it; in fact, it seems almost encouraged or special effort was made to develop this ’skill’.
Yet reading on, the idea of dominance did exist. It was acceptable for a person of high position to be the ‘top’, but never the ‘bottom’. This is an attitude which I think still exists in Latin America or the more chauvinistic parts of the world today. Young males would take gifts and even money for the service to older males, and this is not unheard of today as well. So this Greek way perhaps isn’t perhaps as completely revolutionary as it might seem. But I still find it astounding to see pottery with the fairly explicit acts depicted. But never have I seen Greek pottery with explicit heterosexual acts depicted. This is either puzzling or I never noticed this more pedestrian pairing or ancient artists never bothered to paint it. Or perhaps all the ancient artists were gay.
The book does mention that pairings of males of the same age were also known in ancient Greece. So not all the gay activity was between older males and younger males.
