These days, for many people who identify themselves being gay, “gayness” is as much a political and lifestyle statement, as it is a description of their sexual preference.
In days gone by, other than notions about “the love that dare not speak it’s name” how was the idea of gay identify manifested? Was it always in a hidden context or pejorative terms, or were there cultures where being gay was not something to hide or be ashamed of?
It seems most of what we know involves some degree of transgenderedness (is that a word?). A child decides it wants to live as the opposite sex or fulfill the gender role of the opposite sex. The surrounding culture accommodates that to varying degrees.
Otherwise, we know a little about pederasty. We’ve all heard about the Greeks, but it seems to have been quite common world-wide, in many cultures.
What I’d be interested in knowing more about is how “regular” gays got along. That is, an otherwise normal, adult male or female without gender role/identification issues who was simply homosexual and preferred a same-sex mate, of approximately the same age.
Is that what you’re wondering about too?
I would phrase it “some degree of transgender.”
But trans and gay are apples and oranges, not the same thing at all. Years ago, sexologists in Germany got the two things all confused together and it’s taken until recently to get them sorted out.
There are gender-conforming prissy femme lesbians. There are gender-variant tough, masculine hetero women.
There are gender-conforming macho bruiser gay guys. There are gender-variant sensitive, feminine hetero guys.*
And then there are trans people, who can have any sexual orientation or variant thereof under the sun, or maybe no sexual orientation at all.
Gender identity is about you–who you are in yourself, without reference to others.
Sexual orientation is about how you relate to others–which people you want to date.
*I just met a hetero ballet dancer who told a hilarious story about his showdown with football players in college who harrassed him for being insufficiently macho. He joined the football team for a day of training and made it through OK. The deal was that one of the football players would reciprocally do a ballet class. But the jock couldn’t hold up, ballet class was too strenuous for him. After that, the football players respected the ballet guy.
I’m glad you popped in. You’re always a good source of information.
Yes, that’s the point I was trying to make. Generally when people ask about gays in pre-modern times people will trot out stories along the lines of, “well, in some Native American tribes men were allowed to act as women.” Or something like that. But that’s a transgender issue more than a gay issue.
There doesn’t seem to be much information about what it was like to simply be gay.
Note that the definition of “gay” (or the equivalent – the terms are very slippery and change over time*) was different at different times. In 1920s New York, for instance, you weren’t gay if you had sex with men as long as you were the top. That was considered perfectly heterosexual (and much less perverted than masturbation).
Gays at the time were thought of as men with female personalities – pretty much the current definition of transsexual.
There’s also the issue of gender identity and sexual orientation, but these were not clearcut either. If there was a society that allowed men wearing dresses to have sex with each other, are the men wearing dresses because they like to wear dresses, or because they want to have sex with other men, and this will allow them to do so?
*“Heterosexual,” for instance, originally meant the same as the current word “oversexed.”
In American Indian tribes, two-spirits lived in the social roles of women, and as such they got married to men. When men don’t marry men, women don’t marry women, and two-spirits don’t marry other two spirits–but men marry two-spirits who function as women–that is not gay. It’s transgender.
The distinction is “not clearcut” as long as the distinction between trans and gay isn’t understood.
To understand queer identities in other cultures, there are two things to look at: One is a set of behaviors that can be described objectively, the other is the interpretations of what those behaviors mean. In the case of the Indian tribes, reading two-spirit marriage as “gay” would be an imposition of early 20th-century white interpretations, while from my early 21st-century perspective, I don’t see the gay there. I think the best question to ask it: How did the people themselves who did these practices see them?
If you didn’t “act Gay”, it was usually accepted in many societies.
Even today, it is considered a rite of passage for young males supposedly saving themselves for a woman until you are officially married. In a recent MSNBC story, an American soldier briefly mentioned he was hit on quite a bit by Iraqi men who told him it is “ok”, as long as you are not yet married.
I met an older man from Germany years ago, and he told me when he was a kid (pre-WWII), his father told him, “if you ever have a quick desire, simply walk through that park over there at night and find a pervert to take care of you.” In other words, as long as you were the top and just getting serviced, you weren’t a pervert.
There was also a report I read in college about Pegboys - basically young boys brought onto ships for the sole purpose of providing sexual pleasures for the men during those long times at sea without women nearby.
So essentially, it seems this has gone on, and still does, in many cultures…who knows how many men actually preferred this acceptable sexual encounter more than heterosexual relations?
With no stigma attached, it seems that having a sexual encounter with another man is/was not perceived as anything out of the ordinary in certain situations, depending of course on your role in the act itself.
Chuck, I hate to challenge your ordinarily leet history sk1llz, but…cite? Were parents, clergy, doctors, etc., seriously counseling homosexuality over self-play?
And was this specific to New York culture in some way?
It’s interesting that you brought this up – I knew a Native American lesbian woman who told her friends about the Native American concept that this was a special gift – and then I read about it in the NY Times last week –Two-Spirit Gathering
Cite? The root “hetero” means “different”-why would it then be used to mean “oversexed?”
:dubious:
Jane Auel, in her Clan Of the Cave Bear series, made the “nurses” of the tribe gay men. :rolleyes:
I didn’t read the whole series; in the later installments was there ever a public canoe service across the Danube with gay men serving refreshments to the passengers?
NYT is asking me to pay for that article.
I imagine in a good number of cultures, it didn’t matter what your orientation was - social pressure to marry and reproduce was almost overwhelming.
Regards,
Shodan
Yeah, Chuck definitely seemed to be pushing some agenda there…
This is by no means a situation that only existed 80 to 90 years ago.
Cartooniverse
Nah, probably just confused his prefixes – hetero-sexual with hyper-sexual.
The latest public health term I’ve seen is “MSM.” No, not methylsulfonylmethane. It stands for “men having sex with men.” It seems to go along with more public awareness of the “down low” thing. If they just put out public health information for “gay” men, I guess the thinking is the down low guys would ignore it. So the term “MSM” avoids slippery semantics by just giving a phenomenological name without any interpretation of identities attached.
You’re right about that. I read a moving essay on that subject, “Remembering Saadia” by an American FTM guy I know, Ty Jalal. In the Arab world (when he was still presenting female) he had known someone who seemed naturally either butch lesbian or FTM trans… but had no choice but to accept a conventional female role and get married off… It’s sad reading, but I recommend it.
http://huriyahmag.com/member-only/summer/column.ty.htm
(Sorry, that site has started requiring registration to read the articles, but it’s free.)
Here’s an excerpt.
Yeah. Read Transgender Warriors by Leslie Feinberg. In many other cultures, in various times and places, we were respected and even highly valued. In this culture we get shit on.
Um, no she didn’t. 
Shamud was not a nurse, but a shaman who also knew healing. While Shamud’s people knew the gender, Shamud presented very androgynously, and never took a lover that we are aware of. Shamud is variously described as “other”, and it’s speculated that Shamud possesses both the spirits and inclinations of both genders, or neither. Shamud is an enigma, but most decidly not “gay” in the modern sense of the word.
There is one other shaman talked about who is gay, and is mated with another man and they are raising a child together, but we never even meet them.
In two cultures (the Mamutoi and the Sharamudoi), we’re told that gay and transgendered people are often called to serve as holy people and are very powerful people because they contain and control the powers of both genders, but all the other examples of Those Who Serve the Mother are straight, some of them with mates and children (although it’s also emphasized that being Trained to Serve takes a lot of work and time, and having a family is difficult if you are Chosen.) In one culture, it’s thought that you catch Teh Gay by being around young women who’ve gotten their period but not yet had their first ritual sex.
It’s obvious to me that Auel was inspiried by stories of two-spirits, but let’s face it, her stories are fiction. They’re not history, even though they’re based on archeological evidence and theory. I could go to the garbage dump and make up a story about the worship of infants based on disposable diapers, but that doesn’t mean it’s the way it is.