# Gay indentity in pre-modern cultures.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [October 15, 2006, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546 "2006-10-15T18:04:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2006, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/1 "2006-10-15T18:04:00Z")
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?
---
### Author:  [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2006, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/2 "2006-10-15T18:36:13Z")
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?
---
### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2006, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/3 "2006-10-15T20:20:49Z")
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
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.
[/QUOTE]
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.
---
### Author:  [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2006, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/4 "2006-10-15T20:42:42Z")
[QUOTE=Johanna]
I would phrase it “some degree of transgender.”
[/quote]
I’m glad you popped in. You’re always a good source of information.
> [@](#):
>
> But trans and gay are apples and oranges, not the same thing at all.
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.
---
### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2006, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/5 "2006-10-15T23:20:35Z")
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.”
---
### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2006, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/6 "2006-10-16T05:43:17Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
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?
[/QUOTE]
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?
---
### Author:  [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2006, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/7 "2006-10-16T18:49:56Z")
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.
---
### Author:  [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2006, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/8 "2006-10-16T19:28:28Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
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).
[/QUOTE]
**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?
---
### Author:  [@ratatoskK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ratatoskK)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2006, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/9 "2006-10-16T23:22:28Z")
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](http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F4071FFC39540C7B8CDDA90994DE404482)
---
### Author:  [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2006, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/10 "2006-10-16T23:27:39Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
\*“Heterosexual,” for instance, originally meant the same as the current word “oversexed.”
[/QUOTE]
Cite? The root “hetero” means “different”-why would it then be used to mean “oversexed?”
:dubious:
---
### Author:  [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2006, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/11 "2006-10-16T23:42:06Z")
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?
---
### Author:  [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2006, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/12 "2006-10-17T00:32:15Z")
[QUOTE=ratatoskK]
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](http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F4071FFC39540C7B8CDDA90994DE404482)
[/QUOTE]
NYT is asking me to pay for that article.
---
### Author:  [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2006, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/13 "2006-10-17T01:02:10Z")
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
---
### Author:  [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2006, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/14 "2006-10-17T01:14:55Z")
[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> \*“Heterosexual,” for instance, originally meant the same as the current word “oversexed.”
Cite? The root “hetero” means “different”-why would it then be used to mean “oversexed?”
:dubious:
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, **Chuck** definitely seemed to be pushing some agenda there…
---
### Author:  [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2006, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/15 "2006-10-17T01:48:02Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
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).
[/QUOTE]
[Try 2006 as well.](http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2465177&page=1).
> [@](#):
>
> Recent reports, including a segment on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” have publicized the practice known among African American men as “the down low,” in which men “love their wives but have sex with men” — and don’t identify themselves as homosexual.
> The new study, based on a 2003 phone survey of 10,000 residents by New York’s public health department, found that 38 percent of the men (who said they were straight but had had sex with a man in the previous year) were white, 29 percent were Hispanic, 23 percent black and 10 percent Asian, multiple race or other.
This is by no means a situation that only existed 80 to 90 years ago.
Cartooniverse
---
### Author:  [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2006, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/16 "2006-10-17T04:29:08Z")
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
Yeah, **Chuck** definitely seemed to be pushing some agenda there…
[/QUOTE]
Nah, probably just confused his prefixes – hetero-sexual with hyper-sexual.
---
### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2006, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/17 "2006-10-17T05:51:06Z")
> [@Cartooniverse](#):
>
> men (who said they were straight but had had sex with a man in the previous year)
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.
> [@Shodan](#):
>
> 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.
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](http://huriyahmag.com/member-only/summer/column.ty.htm)
(Sorry, that site has started requiring [registration](http://huriyahmag.com/pm3/register.html) to read the articles, but it’s free.)
> [@Ty Jalal](#):
>
> When she was leaving, I hugged her and said, “I hope I see you again. But without all this makeup and feminine stuff.”
>
> “What? Do you want me to have no life?”
>
> I just hugged her again.
>
> Years later, when I began transitioning, I thought of her constantly. In this country, in this culture, she would have been considered some kind of transgendered person. Maybe she’d use the word “genderqueer.” Maybe “trans butch.” Or maybe “FTM.” It’s impossible to say because this wasn’t her country or her culture. In her culture, she was simply a woman, held to the same expectations as every woman. Here, even if her family saw things so simply, eventually she’d realize she had choices.
>
> For her, the choice was very simple. To have a life, or not.
---
### Author:  [@ratatoskK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ratatoskK)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2006, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/18 "2006-10-17T12:07:29Z")
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
NYT is asking me to pay for that article.
[/QUOTE]
Here’s an excerpt.
> [@](#):
>
> The term for Two-Spirit people is different in each tribal language, but the practices and traditional social position of Two-Spirits is fairly consistent, said Brian Joseph Gilley, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Vermont and author of ‘‘Becoming Two-Spirit: Gay Identity and Social Acceptance in Indian Country.’’ In tribal tradition, when children exhibited interest in activities not associated with their gender – for boys, typically cooking or sewing; for girls, hunting or combat – they were singled out as inhabited by dual spirits, Mr. Gilley said.
>
> In some tribes they were considered spiritually gifted, and might have been sought sexually for their powers. Often Two-Spirit people helped raise children or accompanied war parties as surrogate wives, Mr. Gilley said. At the Montana gathering, one man brought his two grandchildren, whom he was raising. ‘‘It was never about sexuality,’’ Mr. Gilley added. ‘‘It was about your role in the community.’’
---
### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2006, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/19 "2006-10-17T15:22:46Z")
> [@](#):
>
> In some tribes they were considered spiritually gifted
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.
---
### Author:  [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2006, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546/20 "2006-10-17T16:18:19Z")
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
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?
[/QUOTE]
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.
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-indentity-in-pre-modern-cultures/376546.md?page=2)