Submitted by angelojann t3_10nigaq in books
***19th century
I've noticed that male characters are more touchy and give more compliments with each other. For example:
Steerforth calls David Copperfield "My Daisy"
David and Mr. Peggoty are very physically affectionate
And most of the time male characters are not intimidated by complimenting each other.
I'm sure you will rarely see this kind of behavior among modern men.
Was the culture different back in the day?
You're correct, but missing an important factor: there was no need to be "obsessed with not being perceived as gay" in Dickens' time, because homosexuality was closeted and considered unacceptable. Affection between men wasn't sexualized.
Fear of being perceived as gay only became an issue with the increasing visibility of homosexuality & its gradual social acceptance. Normal affection between boys was sexualized. The visibility of homosexuality had a direct negative effect on the expression of intimacy & affection between heterosexual men, just as it also put a damper on things like girlfriends holding hands while they walk (something I remember being normal & common when I was a kid but which gradually ceased when girls started getting called lesbians for doing so).
The sexualization of same-sex affection is what killed it.
It wasn't just affection between men or people of the same sex that wasn't sexualized. Affection in general is much more sexualized today. People showed a lot more affection towards children, for instance, without being viewed as pedophiles.
Yes, very true.
This is a very good comment, and it is spot on in why it seems men of that time were more affectionate towards each other. We do have old photographs from the infancy of photography in which men are holding hands. Co-workers or friends. Just this simple gesture of holding hands means something different to us, but at that time it was merely a gesture of friendship. There was no question at the time, obviously they merely friends.
In my country around that time the practice of, when meeting people, kissing them once on each cheek regardless of gender was still well alive. There was nothing about it that was considered sexual, society just regarded it as the way people greeted each other.
I went backpacking in Europe in the mid nineties, and I remember seeing lots of Italian men walking along holding hands, with their arms over shoulders and around waists. You don’t see that there as much now. So, I think it’s cultural: times change, people’s attitudes change, acceptable public behaviour changes. Even as recently as 1995 it was acceptable for grown male friends and family to hold hands and embrace in public in some places. I think I’d agree that it’s possibly fear of being labeled “gay” that has caused this to fall away. Kind of unfortunate. Even women aren’t demonstrative in public much in North America. Well, def more public affection in Mexico.
Yes, I miss the way it used to be. People need (non-sexual) affection & touch, it's so important. Everyone is worse off without it. I personally think the lack of it has a lot to do with the increasing incidence of mental health problems.
This is how men are in India today. Though I guess it will begin to change soon as we ‘westernize.’
I don’t like seeing us drift apart, physically or otherwise, whether because of shame or peer pressure or whatever. People need physical contact. We shouldn’t feel bad about it. We shouldn’t be made to feel bad about it.
If you really get down to it, there was not concept of being gay. It was recognized that people did have sex with other people of the same gender, but there was no concept of a gay or straight sexual orientation.
In Dickens' time? Yes, there absolutely was.
You may want to look at some books on the history of sexuality. The words homosexual and heterosexual did not even exist when David Copperfield was written. They came two decades later and even then were not understood the way we do today.
Attraction and sexual acts existed, but in general they were not seen as markers of an identity or orientation.
This article gives a simple background of the general understanding of the history of our understanding of sexual orientation.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170315-the-invention-of-heterosexuality
Yes, I understand all that. My point wasn't that the words existed, or that it was considered an identity, because obviously it was not. But it was well understood that certain men and women were "queer" and preferred sexual intimacy with their own sex. It was considered a perversion.
But it wasn’t understood as an orientation. It is like today we might describe someone as a thief or an teacher. We do that as a description of behavior. And we might find that behavior abhorrent or admirable.
But we don’t consider it as someone’s orientation. Or even part of their Personality. We are just describing behavior that any human being is capable of.
So just like today you can look at something in someone’s house and say I’d love to swipe that, without being considered part of the thief orientation, one could Be more sensual in one’s appreciation of another person of the same gender, without being considered part of a homosexual class.
You mention the word "queer" but the first recorded use to describe sexuality was not until 1894--and even there is it not clear that sexuality was was being referenced or if we are reading a later use of the word into an earlier reference.
Even "heterosexuality" was defined as an abnormal attraction to people of the opposite sex up until the 1920s. So what we think we are reading is not always what we are actually reading.
It gets more confusing in a Homosocial world, Where the majority of one’s emotional attachments are to people of the same gender.
>Even "heterosexuality" was defined as an abnormal attraction to people of the opposite sex up until the 1920s
That's very interesting. Would you have any reccos for books on the history of terminology relating to sexuality, orientation, etc.?
It has been awhile since I did research on this so it is a bit of a blur, but in the 90s and 00s a lot of books came out on gay history and gay people in the 19th century. They all will discuss this.
Please, I am begging homophobes to READ BOOKS.
What killed it was the demonization of same-sex affection, not same-sex affection being made more visible. If two men being attracted to each other wasn't demonized then there wouldn't be any reason to be bothered if someone called you gay and you weren't.
It truly baffles me as to how this is even remotely controversial while the homophobe trying to justify homophobia based on how things were centuries ago is treated as rational.
It was already "demonized" in Dickens' time, so your argument holds no water.
In that they were murdered the second they peeked out in the open? Sure, how does that change anything? Are you suggesting that gay people should go back in the closet and disappear so that men can hold each others hands without being accused of being gay, because that's ridiculous.
Your entire argument hinges upon the need to force same-sex attracted people back into the closet, that's insane and you're insane for arguing that we should do that. It's truly troubling that we're still dealing with people obsessed with not being called gay, and that people like you are the main perpetrators for it by implying its a bad thing to be gay.
>Your entire argument hinges upon the need to force same-sex attracted people back into the closet, that's insane and you're insane for arguing that we should do that
They're not arguing that. They're saying that the increasing visibility of and conceptualization of homosexuality meant that men felt the need to signal that they were not homosexual. That isn't saying that we should go back, it's just saying what likely happened. Even today you can see greater male physical affection in places where homosexuality is extremely taboo like in Saudi Arabia, where it's not rare for male friends to hold hands.
The solution to this is not that gay people should go back in the closet, it's that there should be a reduction in the stigma associated with being gay (though even without a stigma, most people don't want to be perceived as a sexuality they're not, so this might not work). Identifying why things likely shook out in a certain way is not an attack on the gay community.
> The solution to this is not that gay people should go back in the closet, it's that there should be a reduction in the stigma associated with being gay (though even without a stigma, most people don't want to be perceived as a sexuality they're not, so this might not work).
This is what all of my posts have been arguing, yes. That the taboo is what causes it. They were putting the blame on homosexuals, rather than putting the blame where it belongs on the people who still despise them. You wouldn't, or shouldn't, blame women in Saudi Arabia for getting beaten to death because they aren't wearing a burka so why should you blame gay people for why straight men can't hug each other?
>so why should you blame gay people for why straight men can't hug each other?
It's literally not blaming gay people.
Jailed, usually, rather than murdered. Murder was illegal.
And you're attributing an argument to me that I haven't made, then arguing against it. At no point did I advocate any particular course of action. I simply presented a sociological reason for the decline of non-sexual same-sex physical affection that was omitted from the comment to which I was responding.
> It was already "demonized" in Dickens' time, so your argument holds no water.
What does this mean if not that they need to be demonized again? I know they were demonized back then, that much is obvious to everyone. You're victim blaming, plain and simple.
No, you're putting thoughts & opinions in my head/mouth.
This is the “is/ought” fallacy. Someone describing a situation does not mean that they think the situation is good. To be specific it is quite possible to think that the decline of non-sexual same-sex public intimacy was an unfortunate side effect of the otherwise beneficial rise of homosexual relationship acceptance.
Hopefully, if homosexual relationships are completely destigmatized this process will slowly reverse as people will not care if they are classified as being “gay“.
> the visibility of homosexuality had a direct negative effect on same-sex affection
No, the negativity came from the fear of being stigmatized. Maybe you didn’t mean to but I don’t like your placing blame on gay people for being themselves.
That's a very homophobic way of saying that heterosexual people feared being perceived in any way as gay and have spent decades sexualizing same-sex affection as a way to further stigmatize gay people.
It's not homophobic, it's presenting a reasonable theory of why things shook out the way that they did. It's not saying "and that's why gay people should go back in the closet." It's just saying that as the concept of homosexuality developed in public consciousness as possible thing that a person might be, that men made a point of signalling that they're not part of that group. There's no value judgment there.
>Fear of being perceived as gay only became an issue with the increasing visibility of homosexuality & its gradual social acceptance. Normal affection between boys was sexualized. The visibility of homosexuality had a direct negative effect on the expression of intimacy & affection between heterosexual men, just as it also put a damper on things like girlfriends holding hands while they walk (something I remember being normal & common when I was a kid but which gradually ceased when girls started getting called lesbians for doing so).
>The sexualization of same-sex affection is what killed it.
This is literally a value judgement and saying that it's gay people's fault. That's homophobic, and if you look at their post history you'll see tons of bullshit "heteronormativity" being supported.
No. They're blaming the "sexualization". That is an action by the person doing the sexualizing.
Read: If you sexualize teen girls for dressing in a certain way, we should not blame the girl; however, we should blame the person who sexualizes the child.
Also, this person is stating facts. History is what it is. The person stating the facts is not a homophobe for speaking the truth.
Seriously, people? Taking an excellent topic to spur intelligent intellectual conversation and using it as a chance to go all "social justice warrior"? What a drag.
This is r/books, so I'm begging you to READ A BOOK.
Just because you're comfortable being homophobic doesn't make it correct.
Yes, but they didn't want to be seen as being part of that group, because it was culturally unacceptable. It was perceived as perverse. Which resulted in death, or jail, or being ostracized. If being gay was always accepted, and demonized, or treated as a perversion. Then men wouldn't have an issue with same-sex affection. Because being seen as gay wouldn't be a bad behaviour in society.
Yes, it is homophobic.
The girl flat is blaming gay people for "sexualizing" girls holding hands. Did you even read it?
No.
I'm shocked that a girl saying lesbophobic and homophobic things denies being homophobic.
Please cite the statements that are lesbophobic & homophobic.
Try commas
It's absolute insanity how that take is being accepted just because it was written in a lot of words, isn't it? It shows that society still has a long way to go for even gay people to be fully accepted, rather than their current state of only being vaguely tolerated.
Ohh so it was also socially accurate. I thought the characters were meant to be that way and not because it's the reflection of society. But It turns out men were really more open back in the day.
Pretty much.
Even the ancient Greeks practiced same sex relationship
Everyone had same sex relationships. There is no human culture that has ever existed where they aren't present.
However men being affectionate for each other and complimenting each is other is not the same thing
that's also truee
It's important to remember that these relationships were different to what we perceive same sex relationships today. To call ancient Greeks gay or homosexuals would be an anachronistic fallacy.
Yes, but greek wasn't the only ancient civilization, there were others, and there same sex relationships were a lot more equal, then power based. You also ignore the men and women that hid their same sex relationships.
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It also depended strongly on class. All classes had less 'no homo' kind of bullshit, but upper classes in particular did not need to pose as manly in order to be powerful and respected. Working class folks still needed to prove dominance over each other and had less tolerance for genteel behavior.
Yeah but then you have people who take every intimate thing between men as they were gay etc. Just look at the sapphoandherfriend sub....
Excellent post
I’m not sure how apocryphal this is but apparently, soldiers would often walk arm in arm, or hand in hand.
It wasn’t till the trial of Oscar Wilde for homosexuality and the corresponding media coverage that these things were then viewed in a homosexual context and stamped out.
when did people start condemning homosexuality? was it because of religion?
There isn't really a singular "point" in which it became unacceptable. You can trace it back to, as someone else said, Paul's time, but cultures have varied on tolerance. What's probably more important is that homosexuality as we understand it is very recent, sure the Greeks are known for their relationships but they won't understand it as being homsexual or same sex. Relationships in their times were based on power, it was based on who was giving and who was receiving, there was a very strict hierarchy of power in those acts.
So with that understanding male platonic relationships were never viewed in a sexual way because relationships were not based around being attracted to the same gender but to the power being used in that relationship
I think the take that their relationships were vastly different due to power structures is a bit lacking in nuance. I don’t mean to come off as a jerk with what I’m about to say, but this is important to me so please give what I’m saying a fair shake.
If we live in a post scarcity world a thousand years from now, the people of the future could just as easily say “they lived in a society of unequal access, love as we know it wasn’t possible for them.” I also think the idea that homosexual activity always took place within a power structure is, for one inaccurate, but is also a concession that keeps men from having to look too closely at their own sexuality. It keeps sex in a viewpoint of the receptive partner being somehow lower than the penetrating partner. It’s hard for modern men to reconcile how much homosexual activity there was compared to our modern world, it’s easier if we think it was mainly the context of it being forced on someone of a socially lower position. In modern American society there still seem to be a lot of people who believe you aren’t “really gay” unless you are the receptive partner, and I think this view of Greek/ Roman same sex relationships is easier for people to come around to.
We also have a ton of examples of men of the same social station having sex with each other, the Spartans would be fucking their bunk mates for years before they were married. I think the interpretation is backwards, it’s more that marriage wasn’t an institution of love. It could be seen as dismissing same sex relationships because there was no equivalent institution for same sex couples. But, it also wasn’t considered adultery to have sex with another man of your station or lower, or to have sex with a prostitute. Because the marriage wasn’t necessarily for that, it was to build connections and influence while continuing your family line. You weren’t seen as threatening that institution (as a man) as long as the people you were banging couldn’t legally be your wife anyway. There were certainly marriages where the participants started in love, or fell into love, just as in the case with arranged marriages today. But love can blossom in many different types of relationships. Take modern day relationships between men in the military. People might get in to them for simple release of tension, for companionship and safety, for camaraderie, or for love. But that’s also true of who ever you might meet at the bar, or even who you might marry. So I do imagine there were relationships between men that looked pretty recognizable to modern homosexual relationships. The past is a foreign country, but people are the same all over.
Beyond that, Greece was an extremely small part of the ancient world. Many cultures accepted homosexuality, and it’s created this strange incongruence in there modern culture and their mythology. Cultures started to really fall in lock step about it a thousand years ago, but pretty much everywhere it’s fluctuated between “put them to death!” And “uncle Steve and Kevin are just roommates.” Several times since that point, and we are only starting to see real acceptance again in the last forty or so. I think industrialization really solidified homophobic attitudes and laws, and the women’s liberation movement have room for people to pushback, but that’s a whole other comment.
While you paint a somewhat convincing narrative I’m not sure it holds up. For one thing it wasn’t just Ancient Greece that had this different view on sexuality, it was present throughout Rome as well and seems to have been the dominant perspective for hundreds of years (until after the spread of Christianity).
The idea really seems to have been rooted in concepts of masculinity. We see in Roman culture that a free man is expected to dominate his wife and his slaves (and that would involve sex) and not to be dominated himself. No one in Roman society seems to have considered it odd for a man to have sex with his male slaves, and we even see cases where Roman emperors are notably distraught when a favoured male slave dies and build memorials for them. We would certainly understand these relationships as being in love, and the Romans don’t seem to have considered them odd.
What we do see constantly though is Roman men being shamed for being the “bottom” in a relationship. Julius Caesar for example was rumoured to have had such a relationship with Nicomedes of Bithynia, and though he denied it, the rumours dogged him all his life, with his political enemies calling him “Queen of Bithynia”.
I think the real takeaway from the Roman situation is that human sexuality is very complex, and while defining people by the gender they prefer is one way to define sexuality, it is not the only way. While there were undoubtedly plenty of people in the Roman world who we would identify as straight or gay, equally there were many people who wouldn’t fit neatly into our modern categories for sexuality, and who instead adhered to the ideas of dominance/passivity that were prevalent in their own culture. If you took a Roman from the Imperial period forward to the modern world, they would probably understand a lot of the questions we are dealing with around immigration and economic inequality. However they would probably find our modern ideas of sexual identity quite puzzling.
I don’t really see a contradiction with what I said and what you’ve laid out here. What I’m trying to get at is that there is always an incongruence between societally accepted and recognized relationships, so we should take interpretations that rely on law or philosophy from the time with a grain of salt, especially when they seem to contradict primary sources from day to day life.
I’m aware of the Roman’s high levels of bottom shame, and, as I said above, it persist in modern culture. As you said, it would be a source of shame to be the bottom, and I will admit to a bit of purposeful omission regarding sex between soldiers. Most of the depictions we have of that are soldiers engaged in frottage, no one is “playing Juliet”, so to speak. But that’s the official party line, if we went off official attitudes in the military from the 70s in the same way we would have to say there were no gay military relationships at the time, and we know that’s just not true.
But to expand out on what you are saying, yeah it does seem to be a common theme in other cultures too, with variations, many of which also persist today. Some cultures it was seen as childish for a man to enjoy receptive sex, some controls conflated it with transsexuality and would only accept gay men who presented as women (usually in areas where the population has less sexual dimorphism). One of the big problems in my opinion is that we see just in recent times how quickly attitudes can change and fluctuate, and we know that cultures that rely heavily on persecution of out groups are more likely to destroy media and historical records, and given that homosexuality is a persistent out group, there is probably a lot of queer history that’s been destroyed. Like the works of sapho have been lost and found 3 times, and I think it’s telling that her work deals with love and lust outside of social institutions.
Just by the by, this is also why I think that the women’s liberation movement really kicked off the gay rights movement. The last 100 years have seen tons of pushback from subalterns of one sort or another, and I see that as being the “moral arc of history” and all that Jazz. But we see pockets of it throughout history. Like I had a professor get mad at me once for writing an essay arguing that Diogenes was the “ earliest recorded punk rocker” lol, but I really do think it has some merit. And there is a weird connection between being the receptive partner and rebelliousness, the term punk originally had an association with being a male receptive partner.
I think the point I'm most trying to argue against is casting these relationships using our modern conceptions of sexuality. I don't think it's right to talk about gay or straight people, or to cast their relationships in these terms, in a society that did not think about sexuality in these terms
Which is why I didn’t use the term straight or gay in either of my comments. The reason I responded to the initial comment was because I think that people often say this because it deletes male/male compassion from the equation, which I think straight American men are really more uncomfortable with than the sexual aspect. I’m not saying that two Spartans bustin’ a nut together makes them gay, like you said the term doesn’t apply to those people. But it does paint a different picture of how homosexual activity fit into there life and culture. The main thing I’m trying to get at is there consistent and significant incongruities in every cultures values around sex and how people actually behave, and a general impulse to “prudify” the past. I’m not saying this applies to you, you clearly know your history, but I feel the need to correct the record when people imply that Greek and Roman homosexual activities were compassion-less expressions of power. It’s not accurate, and people sometimes use it to claim that modern homosexual activity is somehow new.
I apologise, I mistook the meaning of your original comment
I found your point interesting.
Achilles is still gay then? Or no? Like canonically I guess what would be your guess?
thank you for sharing your thoughts!
This was fascinating to read. Would be interested to hear how industrialisation solidified homophobic laws, if that’s something you’d be able/happy to share. (But no worries if not!)
So the origins are a little more loosely Goosey, but I’ll spell out how I see it. So around a thousand years ago chattel slavery really started its decline, it took a long time though. We see the start of it’s decline with the moral philosophers of the dark ages, and really even earlier than that, the late Roman Empire did not see slavery as moral, it was just a fact of life. It would be like asking if war is moral. As less and less of the labor force was legally compelled yo work, either by being owned directly or being serfs that came packaged with the land they were on. If people aren’t legally obligated to work for you, how do you keep them working? One effective way is to control access to sex. It wasn’t just homosexuality that was less repressed, like I was saying in the other comment Roman’s did not consider having sex with a prostitute to be adultery. By disenfranchising women and making it illegal for them to own property, you put women in a situation where they have to marry. By making fornication and same sex encounters illegal, you force men to have to enter into a marriage contract to (legally) get access to sex. Burdened with dependents, you limit a man’s economic freedom of movement and his freedom in general. A man with mouths to feed is less likely to stand up for himself due to poor treatment. It’s even pretty explicit that this was the goal at points in history, there is a lot of talk about marriage being an institution meant to civilize men. Which is another way of saying “this system helps preserve the status quo.” It also keeps the population growing, which was seen as more and more imperative as industrialization ramped up and the labor potential of any able bodied man skyrocketed. We of course also see that in laws being passed against sodomy, those laws weren’t just for gay folks, it was the states way of saying “fucking is only for making babies and nothing else. You don’t get to have sex unless there is a chance of it producing offspring in a stable family environment.” It seems from a modern perspective that the repression around sex really peaked in Europe during the Victorian era, but it’s hard to tell as historical resources about gay life are often destroyed. For instance, at the same time that homosexuality was punishable by imprisonment in Europe, we have records of various “Molly houses”, which were quite a bit like modern gay bars or burlesque houses. We also have some old words that imply a more complicated situation, for instance the historical meaning of the word “Minion” is the lover of a powerful man. Powerful men were allowed things like that, so long as they fulfilled their martial duties as well. Even here in the US I’ve seen the rhetoric shift just in my life time, when I was younger you would hear a lot of talk from the political right about “family values” and “ensuring a stable society”, these days, now that gay marriage has been around for awhile and society didn’t spontaneously collapse, they seem to have switched to calling trans people pedophiles.
But the reason I think this moment is different and not just part of the cycle is the legalization of gay marriage. That’s an endorsement that these relationships are allowed in our societal setup. And I think things have been moving that direction since the sixties. Ironically, the birth control pill might have paved the way for gay acceptance. The advent of the pill meant women could have careers, and could also plan out when they were going to get pregnant. The women’s rights movement sprung out of that, and that disruption of the “men provide for women” setup created room for gay relationships to fit in.
This is really interesting and makes a lot of sense, thank you!
So, if the Greeks didn't understand it as being homosexual why would Paul who lived in that culture?
Because the Greek culture I was referring to is Classical Greece. Paul would've come about 500 years after that, who while born in the Mediterranean area, would've lived with Roman culture. Already within the Roman Empire there is subtle changes to same sex relationships, the Roman Empire is heavily steeped in tradition, much of what dictated what was socially acceptable was based on perceived honor, virtue, liberty, and family. As such male-on-male sexual relationships were fine within certain stipulations. A Freeborn man could have sex with another man if 1) The free-born man was penetrating and 2) the other man was of a "lower class", i.e a slave, a prostitute, etc. Any one else and it would be constitute a loss of status for the one taking, and in Roman society it can't be overstated how important status was. Of course this isn't to say all homosexual relations were purely based on power or that there couldn't be a romantic/sexual relationship between men of equal class, but most as perceived within the society followed traditional views.
With Paul again he's already several hundred years past the point I was intially talking about, and of course just because someone lives in a specific area/culture doesn't mean that they can't hold ideas of their own differing from said culture. However the empires stance on same sex relationships would of course change as it gradually became more Christian before being a Christian empire, with male prostitution being outlawed not long after Paul died, anal penetrating would result at being burned, etc but this is rambling from the point. The earliest times we see this change on same sex relationships is with the first Christian polemics (such as Paul) who preached on the vices of Rome decadence with a core critique being same sex relationships as a "sin". Christianity as a whole was considered radical for the time given the Roman culture so it's not really a surprise that Paul would similarly hold a different view of same sex relationships then what was then accepted.
Thanks.
>The earliest times we see this change on same sex relationships is with the first Christian polemics (such as Paul) who preached on the vices of Rome decadence with a core critique being same sex relationships as a "sin".
I know that the original codex that we have of the Greek and the Latin Vulgate of the New Testament are on average hundreds of years later than Paul. And yet they can be interpreted more in line as to what you described here in the same sex interactions in Roman civilization. The real detachment seems to be in the translation of the Greek codex which would indicate a loss of culture knowledge.
There was a push in the 1800s due to a conservative POS in parliament who got too much power and got out of control. Suddenly it was being harshly criminalized, and Oscar Wilde was one of the most prominent victims of this moral panic.
And yes religion as usual was a major factor.
Also, it wasn't condemned at all in a lot of cultures prior to Christianity. For example the ancient Celts were so pansexual (and polyamourous) that even the Greeks and Romans were like "woah dial it back a notch."
Most of the negative attitudes towards it around the world can be traced back to Christian colonization.
I wonder how would our society work if the didn't happen. what if Christianity didn't demonize same sex love..
Christianity straight up demonizes sex period. same, different, whatever. Paul was repressed, and took it out on everybody else.
Oh my god please recommend further reading on this topic
I thought it was at least looked down upon in (edit- pre-Christian) Roman society depending on your role in the relationship. In as much as being seen acting as a woman or subservient was a bad thing , being seen as the ‘dominant’ participant not so much!
Edit: I wonder why the downvote for what as far as I know is entirely factual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Rome
Also I think one has to be careful about perhaps using modern concepts of pansexuality/polyamory on ancient cultures especially when it’s based on another culture’s views ( propaganda?) about them and the Romans weren’t exactly unbiased or always worried about being too accurate when writing about other groups. From what I can see ( being no expert) Roman writers seem to have described Celtic women being shared by lots of men , being able to choose their men , and yet also the Celtic men preferring other me? But how reliable those comments are and whether it corresponds precisely to our idea of ‘pansexuality’ etc can we really say?
It was at least as early as biblical Paul, but it wasn't standardized across cultures and religions. Some cultures were more tolerant.
> I’m not sure how apocryphal this is but apparently, soldiers would often walk arm in arm, or hand in hand.
Men still do in many cultures - I remember being surprised by it the first time I went to Turkey but it rapidly becomes no big deal. If you tried that amongst the general public here (UK) you'd definitely get funny looks and could be in danger of getting beaten up.
Aparrently still very much common in China also.
I understand this makes me a pedant but it would be the 19th century.
I was just going to say that, and no, it’s not pedantic. I think it helps to get the centuries straight when reading.
oh sorry, thanks for correcting the timeframe
100 years is not pedantry, I think you get a pass.
I remember this strongly from War and Peace as well. They didn't have the same stigmas as are popular these days.
it's kind of fascinating how culture and society can change. Luckily classic books can give us a glimpse of how people lived in the past.
It's one thing that I often think about when people go off saying, "All men/women like (thing) because that's just how they have always been wired."
Okay, that would only be true if it was true across all cultures, for all of history. Typically it's something only present in a small number of cultures that has been true for less than a century, therefore there's no way it's just part of human nature.
I agree with this. I also don't 100% believe that "Men/women are wired to act the way they do because of (biological) reason"
What people fail to realize is that cultural norms have greatly shaped the way we think too.
Yes, humans are extremely easy to manipulate, and brainwash.
Indeed. Gender is a societal construct but it is often difficult to perceive when you are embedded in that society.
Well said
That's what immediately came to mind for me as well; I'm currently watching the 2016 miniseries after reading the book last year.
where did you watch the 2016 miniseries??
Right now it's on Prime, "free with ads on Freevee." The ads are more frequent and longer than I'd like but oh well.
thank you!!
I think I missed homosexuality in War and Peace... where was it? Unless we are talking about Nicolai's 'love' for the emperor, which I thought was of platonic nature..
I wasn't talking about homosexuality. That wasn't the topic of this post. It was about men being able to hug or show affection towards one another, which has absolutely nothing at all to do about homosexuality.
That's the problem. If you have two male friends, they talk about it being a "bromance". As if "romance" is a factor. Bloody hell, how stupid is that. There's no wonder to many are so toxic.
It's not about sex. It's about affection and emotion. Not homosexuality.
Yeah I agree, I think our problem is that in our culture (by which I mean modern American) we read all physical affection as sexual, therefore people tend to avoid physical affection in relationships that aren’t sexual. That’s actually not great for psychological health though, and not the norm globally/historically.
Although, I’ve always understood “bromance” as platonic, just a shorthand for “male friendship story,” and so to me the coinage is a positive thing because it recognizes that these relationships have value and are worth depicting in media. (I wish we had a similar word for women.) If it was actually meant as gay I think it would just be called a “gay romance” rather than suggesting that they are each other’s bro.
The problem is that it hints at romance, which colours everything, especially when there is so much toxicity. It makes many men self conscious about it rather than just be natural.
It technically, officially is supposed to mean platonic, probably. The problem is the undertones. Many men avoid a "bromance" because of the label. It makes them uncomfortable because there are certain groups that obsess about homosexuality or anything vaguely resembling it.
For example, in Britain having actors in casual drag (eg Monty Python) is completely no big deal, while in America you'll get lynched in some places.
The whole panic about drag is seriously new in America too, like within the last 10-20 years. Used to be way more common. I mean people still love the movie Mrs. Doubtfire. There was an entire sitcom starring Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari called Bosom Buddies about two dudes who dressed in drag so they could live in an apartment building that was for women only (which is an interesting artifact itself.) Can’t say it tanked their careers; on the contrary it was extremely popular.
In my lifetime I’ve watched certain groups of people get WAAYY more skittish about drag, as if there MUST be a sexual connotation to it, and it’s not a good thing.
Reminds me of Some like it Hot!
It’s also interesting to consider the very mainstream annual pantomimes which are generally shows for children (and a regular Christmas school trip) in the U.K. in which the ‘dame’ is always a man in drag and the principle boy a girl. Of course it’s well known that in Shakespeare’s day women weren’t even allowed on the stage ( so plays that had men pretending to be women who in the play are pretending to be men and so on?) so I’m guessing plenty of actors that specialised in dressing up as women.
Ok
There are still many cultures in the world where non-sexual/non-romantic physical affection between men is commonplace. Some Western cultures have just lost that aspect of platonic male relationships.
I spent some time in Saudi Arabia. It was quite usual to find two men walking around holding hands. Homosexually is a crime there and this didn't raise any eyebrows. A man and a woman on the other hand...
Ya its the same in China, they also walk holding hands. I asked my chinese friend if there were a lot of gay dudes there. He said no one is gay in China haha
Well that's just a fact, everyone knows that
Yeah that's because in those types of places, gay people hide their identities so no one thinks anything of two dudes holding hands or hugging. But as gay people get slightly more accepted and open with things people don't want to be labeled as gay.
I think it’s not only not wanting to be labeled, but recategorizing the meaning of the behavior in general. Even if you live in a liberal area and nobody would think less of you for it, you maybe don’t want to give a false impression about yourself/your friendships—least of all to your friends who now might worry you’re coming on to them or crossing boundaries if you try to hold hands or something!
Yeah they kind of go hand in hand together (lol).
Which cultures are still open with physical affection between men? I guess in some European countries?
More like countries where close relationships between unmarried men and women are socially unacceptable. Middle east, india etx
In Pakistan young men can often be seen holding hands while walking together.
India. Men wear pink too! It’s awesome.
It's not because they're not afraid of being seen as gay though, it's because being gay is so taboo there that most people wouldn't assume that a guy is openly expressing being gay.
Nah more like Asia, China for shizzle
It was during the Oscar Wilde trail.
The general understanding as I learned getting my masters was that the friendship between two men was, historically, seen as a more noble and valuable kind of love or affection because you didn't "get" anything out of it but the friendship. No, titles, no heir, no political alliances. The value was placed only in the friendship itself since all you got was the other's company
Such isn't to say that some of that love might have gone a bit further than that would have let on back then, but you've got to remember how drastically gender norms have changed, even within the last few decades. As other's have mentioned, some cultures today show male friendship by holding hands or even kissing, it isn't necessarily UNUSUAL unless society seems it so. With literature over 150 years old, some things are obviously going to change
Men used to share a bed unflinchingly. Travelers would end up in a bed in an inn with a random other person if they were not wealthy, or share it with a friend if they were well off (the writer Goethe frequently mentions doing this on his travels).
Of course, Moby Dick begins with Ishmael sharing a bed with Queequeg.
Wasnt that still in 70s (?) comedy something like Morecambe and Wise or The Goodies - or am I misremembering.
Men were more affectionate in a platonic way because there was pretty much no risk of somebody calling them gay. The idea that hugging, kissing, complimenting your friend "makes you gay" is a pretty new thing, and both sides of the spectrum do it. And so it's just a bad cycle that drives a wedge between male relationships. Blame television executives and their constant stream of gay jokes going back 50 years. Even in literature, people will read an old book about a strong male bond such as Achilles/Patroclus or Gilgamesh/Enkidu and start labelling them gay. BOTH sides do this. Homophobes and pro-LGBT people both love to project homosexuality on any male relationship that goes further than a handshake. And so, modern men stay isolated and keep a cold distance between each other.
I feel like you’re mislabeling the culprit a bit: homophobia is why a lot of men don’t do affectionate bonds with each other. Whether or not someone reads a friendship with intimacy as gay is only problematic if you give in to internalized homophobia. Reading the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus as gay isn’t the source of that.
I completely agree with this. I don’t think that the term homophobic really fits because there are plenty of people who don’t fear or hate gay people but are part of a religion where it’s viewed as sinful, therefore they don’t want to be associated as gay. Both straight and gay people do this where any form of affection beyond what is considered “standard” in today’s western modern world can be looked at or perceived as gay or someone being in the closet and too afraid to say anything. I’ve definitely heard this sentiment from people across the sexuality spectrum and it’s sad. If people just minded their business and weren’t so quick to judge simple affection, I don’t think it would be as stigmatized
Is it ironic that you say Achilles and Patroclus were affectionate in a platonic way and that it's a modern projection to view their relationship as gay when Plato argued that they were lovers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symposium_(Plato)
I have read previously that the obscenity trial of Oscar Wilde was a massive turning point in British culture.
The way he has demonised made men more wary of showing public affection, and more suspicious of those men who did.
This specific moment is often pointed to as a reason why continental men are often more physical with each other and the British are much less so.
You don't have to go that far.
I've seen people arguing that the relationship between Frodo and Sam was of two gay me. And not of two friends.
They were just mentioning that on a Tolkien podcast a few days ago and I wanted someone to call in and tell them it was nonsense. Yes Sam and Frodo loved each other deeply, no they were not gay. It’s frustrating.
There was no sexual angle whatsoever between Sam and Frodo... it's so painful how people label literary characters in retrospect. It's become a fashion now...
To understand a bit more about the US obsession with men needing to be manly, you might want to read Jesus and John Wayne.
From what I know of the Victorian era, men were much more free to express themselves. The emphasis wasn't on being macho, it was on being cultured.
On top of this, I've noticed that men were not obsessed with sports during that time but more in arts, literature, and culture.
Heavy involvement in sports was very much a thing in the Victorian era, it was viewed as healthy and good for the mind (which, surprisingly compared with many Victorian beliefs on other medical issues, is actually correct.)
The thing is that in that era it was a much more local, amateur scene - professional sports weren't really a thing yet.
Another point I should make though is that Victorian society was heavily stratified. Do not assume that what is normal for the upper classes translates to the behaviour of the lower classes. Not everyone saw an education as being worthwhile, many thought their children should focus on practical matters of making enough to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.
thank you for the explanation!!
While I recognize the sports industry does create some jobs, I think the modern obsession with sports is really over-the-top. Colleges focus on it because they make a ton of money from it. The professional players get paid unreasonably huge amounts of money to play a game, and then the fans are obsessed with it like it's a religion.
I agree with this too.. However in our country, if you don't play basketball,.people will think you're gay.
You should ask this in r/AskHistorians and I believe you'd get a very in depth response!
thank you for the suggestion!
Yes, they were. It was common for male friends to kiss upon meeting and parting, and to walk around holding hands or with arms around each others waists. It was considered perfectly normal and acceptable in society, even after homosexuality had been made illegal. It was only after Oscar Wildes trial and imprisonment that men began to fear this kind of behaviour would be viewed as homosexual, and it very rapidly fell out of favour.
It wasn’t the tv, as some commenters seem to believe. It was the trial of Oscar Wilde. Before that men used to have affectionate gestures with their male peers, they could be walking arm in arm in Hyde park and express their friendship verbally with phrases we would find unusual. The Wilde trial was a very public scandal and it marked the public’s perception of potentially punishable behavior between men, AND instilled the fear of being perceived as homosexual and socially shunned for otherwise common gestures. As an aside, the judge in the case said something to the tune of Wilde’s being the most horrible and disgusting trial he had sat on - that after judging on a child murder a couple of weeks before.
That being said, in the particular examples you are giving: Steerforth has a very relaxed approach to social norms in general and a very nonchalant way of addressing most people in his life. And Mr. Peggoty in my opinion has a fatherly feelings towards David, so that would explain why he would have an affectionate demeanor. Plus he is usually a non-emotional man, but is overcome with emotion he can’t control in his quest for Emily.
Short answer is 'yes'. If you look at the private correspondence of the times that have been published, there is a great deal of overt affection and endearments between men.
It's like modern western society sexualize everything and need to put a name/tag on every bond, relationship etc...
Yes, it was very different.
A lot of male behavior became codified around not being gay at some point after this. I would pick the 1940s, but some people would pick an earlier point.
Before that, there was even the concept of a "romantic friendship" in which men would write each other love notes and sometimes kiss that was not considered to be the same as a romance with a woman. The categories and boundaries have shifted wildly.
this is interesting. I do realize that masculinity is defined by social norms not by "Biological" urges.
Damn, this post got homophobic FAST.
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We live in a post-love world
Yes, they were. Some historians believe it was the trial of Oscar Wilde, and the subsequent Victorian pearl-clutching, that caused this change.
Also, it was part of the philosophy espoused by Dickens that permeates his work, that if people would just be kind to each other, treat each other with affection and justice, society would function decently. He never worked/advocated for structural reform despite his clear campaigning against the horrors of the age. He wanted social reformation by individual reform. See -A Christmas Carol.
One of the more famous examples of an intimate male friendship in the 19th century:
thanks for sharing!
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Not for nothing, but Oliver Twist features a character named Charley Bates who is usually referred to as Master Bates. No wait, that is nothing.
If it had been Shakespeare would definitely be deliberate.
Well, in europe and many asians , south america or africans countries, men are still affectionate with eo. It's only in USA ...
men are also not affectionate here in our country
Which country ?
In Philippines
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I always took this as differing meanings to the language. I think by interpreting these as more affectionate we could be imposing more modern understandings of language on to what would be 19th century meanings of words.
The first thing you’ll probably want to know is all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it.
Surviving back then was much, much more difficult. The strength of the bonds you made with your fellow man were quite literally a matter of life or death. This was especially true in the American frontier.
Now, you can be a complete and total shut-in with no meaningful connections and still live into old age. Things are getting interesting (see: Japan).
Not 18th century but Holmes referred to Watson as his “intimate friend” so persistently that I started shipping them (but I’m not the first).
DeusExLibrus t1_j68w8m9 wrote
Simply put, yes. This obsession with not being perceived as gay is incredibly historically recent. You can find old black and white photos of male friends embracing and letters between men that’d come off as love letters to most men today. And that’s just in western culture. The samurai, arguably one of if not the greatest warriors in history, were not just warriors, but avid poets, artists, practitioners of ikebana (flower arrangement) and had surprisingly intimate relationships with other men.