Was Zeus Originally Gay?

[Onasander]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derveni_papyrus

 

Zeus, having "heard oracles from his father", goes to the sanctuary of Night, who tells him "all the oracles which afterwards he was to put into effect." Upon hearing them, Zeus "swallowed the phallus [of the king Uranus] who first had ejaculated the brilliance of heaven."[5]

 

_______

 

I know some of the Egyptian Gods had a fondness for gay antics, and that the Greek population itself was pretty outright homosexual.... they even had hermaphrodite gods.... but I never once came across a actual homosexual scene, till now.

 

Yet, in earlier works, I don't recall much evidence of the greek gods being gay... thinking of the Illiad.

 

So, was it the Greek Dark Ages that caused social conditions to morph to the point that everyone switched over from hetero to homo? Even in San Francisco, they only get a single neighborhood (Castro) to dominate. I'm kinda suprised society went so far during the dark age as to wholly embrace it to the point of rewriting theology.

 

Closest similar phenomena I can even point to would be the freefall collapse of The Church of England and the Dutch Old Catholics, and the dead Church of Sweden. They have increasingly embraced every stable measure built into stabilizing the family between Aristotle and Augustus, and the early Christians. Not surprisingly, you undercut the religions social and theological tradition, people flee from it like the plague.... which is happening in those countries.

 

In the Greeks case, they exited the dark ages with this outlook still intact apparently.

 

I don't know how advanced a country's statecraft in a purely agriculture and guild society can get.... if the population favors hedonism and homosexuality. You have to actively farm in family units as much land as possible to get agricultural and manpower yields to achieve the resources necessary to levy work for walks, civic building, navies, standing armies.... just doesn't seem a culture built around male homosexuality and it's associated, sterilizing VDs would do much.

 

But then again, most greek cities started from fortified acropolis, right? Slowly build up from a strongpoint, bring in slaves, or attract populations.... a few will take off long enough for homosexuality to remain a rite of the acropolis, but not seriously accepted by the breeding oriented people below.

 

I dunno.... anyone has a say on this? Were looking at early agricultural bronze age societies, not modern suburban service and computer tech counter cultures or far left countries. Obviously, given the right conditions and geography, a modern state can embrace homosexuality and general abandonment of the family for several generations before ill effects start getting noticed, but I think it wpuld get noticed much faster in Bronze Age Societies, given the agricultural emphasis in structuring society. You can blame Christianity, but it's mores would only be a reflective (and successful) offshoot of a wider social understanding of how the ancient world worked.

 

We now live in a era where homosexual gods (minus hawaii) are largely unknown. The greek gods come off as philadering, but not gay. Why?

[caldrail]

The greeks didn't have the same straight/gay debate we do today. For them relationships between men were perfectly normal, and that sort of attitude has been present in other societies such as medieval japan. Sex is not necessarily involved (we do tend to assume that it was these days), and since the strongly masculine Romans took greek mythology and made it their own, perhaps some adjustments to the image presented to the public were indeed made, although in fairness I don't recall seeing anything that suggersted Zeus was gay.

[Auris Arrectibus]

What about Homer heroes : Achilles and Patroklos are nowadays thought to be in a epic gay relationship?

And the three sexes in Plato's symposion, told by Aristophanes to explain homosexuality and the urge to want to be reunited with your other half.

 

Auris Arrectibus

Edited December 27, 2014 by Auris Arrectibus

[caldrail]

It's very common these days to see history interpreted in modern terms, because it's a more populist and easier method of describing the subject. It does however tend to create anomalous situations that shouldn't exist, such as this recently topical example...

 

Mordern interpretation: Augustus comes to power and rules Rome as their first emperor. He makes a lot of political fudges to avoid public objection

 

My analysis: Augustus avoids becoming a ruler per se because he saw what happened to Julius Caesar after he'd taken full ruling power permanently from the state. Instead, Augustus makes himself the most important Roman (he calls himself princeps, or 'First Citizen'), and thus becomes patron to his client, Rome, a situation the Roman public are perfectly happy with because it's merely an extension of normal social structures. There is no fudge. OF course Augustus was a control freak and thus tends to advise rather more strongly than a typical patron might.

 

You see what I mean? Relationships betwen human beings are often subtle and individualistic. To simply label two guys as gay because they have a close friendship is quite possibly wrong. It is true, for instance, that samurai often developed homosexual relations because women were not supposed to be trusted, and that they considered this normal and acceptable. The ancient greeks however weren't so obvious. Their relationships did not have the masculine boundaries of the Roman (or indeed our modern western world), thus close friendships were developed for different reasons than say the Samurai. That does not necessarily imply sexual behaviour (I'm sure it went on, human beings have always included a proportion among them with a prediliction toward such behaviour), but instead a tactile relationship which has more to do with instinct than sex - note how apes and monkeys groom each other to build relationships - the greeks essentially were doing something similar.

[Onasander]

I've never claimed Augustus sought total power, or tgat Julius Caesar had it either; I'm holding to a ancient school of statecraft and sociology in examining the morphology of a state, the "kyklos cycle". In order for it to be a cycle, it means the morphology has to be interchangeable.... organs of state in a resurgent monarchy over a republic that was once a monarchy isn't going to completely erase it's republican institutions anymore than the republican stage completely erased the monarchical.

 

This being said, they did aim for a absolute monarchy. Monarchies tend to have ministers, and many even some sort of expanded court or parliament. The Romans under Caesar and Augustus were just starting down that road. Augustus' only claim to not being a tyrant was he allowed people to be cheeky and offered retorts back himself about his status as a tyrant.

 

Auris..... you just helped me figure out an aspect of the Satyricon that never occurred to me. Hopefully I'll remember to thank you in a essay on it someday.

 

As for Caldrail.... men come with two probable holes.... I think homosex isn't that hard of a concept to figure out.... it's either handjobs, BJs, or Anal. People tend to figure this sorta thing out on their own, like masturbation. I never needed a instruction manual, as I figured that one out on my own (quite literally alone).

 

I think some guy sucking off another guy, whatever the era or cultural norms or deeper esoteric meanings, can still pass off safely as a rather obvious gay act. Even if that culture otherwise didn't have a awareness such a thing coukd be abstractly (which I severely doubt), it becomes rather obvious within seconds of walking in what's going on.

 

It's sorta like that barn scene in season 2 of Deadwood, where the white guy was pants down behind the horse, as the black stable head walked up silently behind thinking it was a thief.... stopping dumbstuck not immediately interpreting the scenerio. Only took a few seconds to register.... he was all weirded out and dead set on the moral imperative of killing him for it, nit fir being criminal but rather too damn strange to be allowed to live.

 

But in societies where these alternative sex acts occur on a more open and higher frequency, the more acceptable and common place, no doubt. But perverted sex acts involving the penis are never that alien to begin with, and I doubt any society would truly draw a blank or have literally NO OPINION about sexual relation outside of heterosexuality.

 

If I recall, even medieval japan mocked male homosexuals, including women doing the mocking, in the story of Genji. Confucians barely tolerated it in China, and the singke tempke in China allowed for Sidomy was dedicated to King Zhou of Shang after the collapse of the Shang Empire, in a retort similar to Seneca in "The Pumpinfication of the Divine Claudius" in a mocking deification of a emperor to a God.

 

Reason why is.... society is literally built around heterosexuality. In every persons place prior to test tube babies, a man and a woman got it on, and made a baby. Whatever the attractions and paraphilia a indivudual or culture adopts, whatever cunning sex cults they developed in ancient times (and they had quite a few) everyone had a awareness of sex. We're not sexless Pandas, were the species clisely related to sex crazed bonobo chimps. We have a nack for figuring out penis politics.

 

It's why the ambiguous "beyond good and evil" arguments Nietzscheans push don't hold.... the dominate Nietzscheans.... the mist famous from Japan to England, had a assortment of odd sexual fetishes, that leaned Sadistic. When I first explored and listed their biographies, it was pointed out to be they just were not perverts, but gad "penis magic" fixations (to borrow a awkward yet perfect phrase from a Bosnian).

 

Human sexuality, the libido, isn't terra incognito until it passes into a dictionary. Were flexible in terms of mores, but hardly infinitely. Only a couple of responses really possible.

 

I think two gay greek guys doing it 2500 years ago isn't unrecognizable from two guys today. You can safely apply the word, and can predictably detect the range of reactions (acceptance and rejection) then as now, just differing in quantity, with each locale putting emphasis on sliding scales of cultural acceptance.

 

In San Francisco, I saw a guy in leather whip another man in the park infront of the house they filmed the TV Show "Full House" in. Was very strange, but I sorta got used to it. Never completely.... but would be shocked to see it happen here in West Virginia. However, despite the likely much harsher reaction likely to occur in West Virginia to witnessing such a event.... nit to mention a leaner vocabulary to expresses it, people here would instantly grasp what is happening as in San Francisco where that happens way too often.

[Thurinius]

In the past they didn't label people per say as homosexual but more the act. So you could be perfectly hetrosexual but commit a homosexual act.

Bear in mind that Ancient Greek ladies of any reputation were fiercely protected and existed in the domestic sphere almost entirely. For the young single male that surely inhibited their chances to relieve their libido, beAring in mind they might catch something nasty from a prostititute. Course there were always slaves...

 

 

I think due to the sheer amount of vase paintings showing older men fondling the genitals of younger boys shows it was sexual , though entwined with other philosophies.

[Onasander]

Yeah.... I think no. You can't half-half ass Sodomy, you either do it, or you don't, and those who don't do it are of the status of "not gay", while those who indulge even a little are.

 

The Peripatetic and especially Stoic tradition of male oriented pedophilia as a binding principle of love that holds together a civilization is well documented, and also not all that ancient.... it was a philosophical product of the philosophical schools, and I sincerely question, however accepting Aristotle and Theophrastus was to molest the daylights out of each others younger male relatives and disciples, King Phillip of Macedonia brought the duo to Macedonia with the intention of gang raping Alexander next to that waterfall/spring.

 

Clearly the greek brand of homosexual pedophilia had a specific name, who's nomenclature was expressible drawing upon earlier linguistic arrangements already present in the Greek language, yes?

 

Afterall, how else would they of known that they were specifically given the task via a specific nomenclature, by the urging of the philosophers, to molest younger males, if just such concepts, or near equivalents, didn't already exist?

 

Wouldn't people walk out of a lecture by Theophrastus or Zeno, and get confused, and take the moral of the lesson of hierarchical love as men in their thirties and forties needing to go and bang elderly women for the general betterment of society, or goats so that the goats could revolve and attain the merits of Hellenic civilization?

 

There was apparently no confusion on this part. They more or less instantly git the message, and perhaps a few were interested after the discussion to eat the doughnuts on the back table and find out more.

 

Likewise, many guys likely said "F This" and got out fast. Homosexuality could be a very embarrassing act, as I recall Diogenes and the Wrestler. Diogenes became suddenly aroused, and began masturbation, which caused his opponent to flee in shame.

 

Likewise, the greeks were very strict on who could marry who, lineage and civic rights, I don't recall a category for men marrying men.

 

I do however, recall Nero castrating a Slave and marrying him, which if true clearly showed the shock and disapproval of the Romans. The entirity of the traveling duo of Gay Cynics in the Satyricon on their quest for priapus clearly takes the extremes of gay culture in the ancient world as a antithesis of the normal.

 

Only way I can see it being normal and undifferentiated was in the cases of gay phalanx armies, if and when it was practiced, or in my earlier questioning about the practice arising in the dark age when communities were much smaller, fortified on acropolis prior to expansion with a population boom of more hetero-oriented members below.

 

There does seem to be gay friendly early myths out there. Also very unfriendly ones too, like Sardanapullas the ultimate drama queen transvestite lighting himself onfire.

 

Imagine a ancient engadged in gay sex, however acceptable, and imagine there nit being a world for it.... but the guy is also married to a woman. How long do you think it's going to take her and her friends gossiping at the well to come up with a special word that applies to when their husbands have sex with other guys, but not them? I assure you, they will find out a way to bring that word up in conversation when they ask each other how their day went, or if one is stepping out for a bit, or asking why the other just isn't that interested in sex that night.

 

It's not a act of deep philosophising, they will nail that word down fast, and it will have a core component that readily equates to the modern concept of gay. If they had a hard time explaining the new word to a barbarian slave, they would just point at Nick and Phillip oiled down and impactfully wrestlin to the finish, and the slave would very quickly grasp the concept.

 

It's not like trying to explain how a warp drive works to a cavemen. Concepts related to the privates, sex, pooping and farting are low brow because EVERYONE gets them. It's damn near instinctual... our ability to stick our fingers out and requesting them to be pulled, with a resulting fart is what makes us human. Chimps can't do that. So very easy to grasp too.

 

So no more of this "word-concept" conundrum.

[Onasander]

stigmergy...

 

I just learned of this word just now, but have essentially been arguing it for years.

 

What I'm trying to say (and have been for at least five years) is alot of communication is non-verbal, and even when verbalized, is held together as much by mores, conduct, situation, and eponymous forces in the environment effecting the motivation and understanding of language as much as say, syntax and depth of known vocabulary to retrieve and order for expression.

 

In the case of a sex obsessed, very social species like homo sapiens, a kind of Sexual Stigmergy arises among the population, that streamlines the underlining range of complexity inherent in complex communities that would otherwise die off or fall apart if left to mate select and reproduce only via select, announced social rules.

 

We tend to follow such rules only when it suites us, and this suiting isn't always healthy or altogether rational in hindsight. In Stigmergy, mistakes can happen, and subcultures can pop up around these mistakes and precariously maintain themselves even for a time prior to busting via natural introspective rejections insular to the individuals or lifestyle, or by outsiders or reformists who snap out of it and systematically pronounce against it on a logical basis (one can argue this logic isn't always very logical).

 

Sexual Stigmergy bucks and literally fucks over even the cleverest constructed ideologies, in that it's closer to the native root of our communicative approach to sex.... which definitely is not linguistic or large government oriented.... Bonobos lack both, yet we readily figure our what is going on in documentries.... the commentary of primateologists is largely unnecessary as were still very much primates and quickly grasp what is going on. If it was the otherway around, language and text oriented historians would of evolved first, THEN sexual divisions in life, and then multicellularism..... ect.

 

The question that arises, when contronted by the odd sexual myth that stands out, like this one of Zues sucking a guy off, or Egyptians swapping and chucking cum, and wearing it on their heads, is the underlining conditions that allowed such a myth to be accepted in the first place by a larger breeding community. It's nit hard to imagine the attractiveness of such myths to the male dominated male priesthood.... there is bound to be a insular temple out there that will adopt homosexuality, or other form of sexuality.... but getting the larger breeding population to accept it, even take it as natural? It takes massive cohersive force at times, especially if the words identifying the outlook/act are stigmatised and used as profanity.

 

One case I recall is the "Mother Fucker" phenomena arising from Fruedian Psychosexuality. He presumed gay guys secretly desired to have sex with their moms. Perhaps iin a few cases, but today we seriously doubt this. It was still being used back in the 80s in a conference debating the psychology of sex..... verbal rationalized pronouncements on how society is/ought to be, under the guise of science, but really no different from debates by the Stoics or Peripatetic philosophers, other than a historically evolved scope.

 

A big protest of homosexuals broke into the conference, screaming "mither fuckers" hysterically, using strong emotional display to collapse the conference. Ever since, in the west, any meaningful advances in sexology have been extremely stimmied due to a reverse-puritanical taboo placed on any and all investigations of sexual acts, assuming any paraphilia, save rape, pedophilia, and cannibalism is spontaneous and okay and actually the norm, and that everyone else is either wrong or unusual, and that there are no accepted norms for a society to accept.

 

This is a reaction based less on science than fear and desire to avoid confrontation and lose status, and several sexoligists have pointed out the consensus since the "Mother Fucker Riot" wasn't achieved via credible scientific exchange and debate, it was politics.

 

I fully expect this sort of thing to occur. Roman historians know Arius Didymus and Augustus had a very hard time promoting stable family structured households where at least the wife was monogamous (Augustus himself wasn't very good at this).

 

They had alot of success, but it took some time for the whire houses and orgies in Pompeii to close down. VDs like Herpes, Sterility.... it was a big problem, especially for a society transitioning to Monarchy where stable lineage was of vital necessity for advancement of families.

 

But the people of Pompeii didn't immediately listen. It took a long time and Christianity even longer to produce a reliably reproducing population who's needs were directed and answered by a well directed central government. We seemed to of figured thus one out just in time for the dark ages when plagued and invading armies became rampant.

 

Other societies, like China with the Confucian Five Relations, which was codified during a similar age if pipulation increase, more centralised goverment, civil war and social instability achieved much the same thing. In very high population densities, we tend to formalize and structure human sexuality in ways that allow the concept of society as a Duo Entity, family level and city level, the most direct connection and mutual reinforcement. This was even more the case when guilds (composed of self regulating family units in a closed shop enviroment) ruled over individual employees working for modern industry.

 

Yet every system of stigmergy has it's hidden logic, and it tells details of where it's going, not merely by obvious trends that we can pronounce upon and legalize in a rational system, but also hiw it's dialectic is likely to reject a reaction after long digestion.

 

West Africa, for example, was hit hard by AIDS, and became aware of it's poverty at about the same time it started making economic advances and had access to outside information. Christianity pushes monogamy, family values.... and it's american variants put a strong emphasis on education, economic endeavor, democracy. It was very invigorating for west africa, and George Bush in consequence gave mass free AIDS medication on the merger of those principles, believing the culmination of those options (not christianity persay, but the positive effects listed) woukd be achievable and reinforcing if the population had a better sense of it's survival. The irony is, AIDS has recently been traced back to 1920s Kinasha, a boom town (niw capital) of the belgian congo, in a environment of free loving sexual institutions, such as whore houses and open prostitution, and drug access like in several modern cities, SF in particular, where the individual and not the family was the emphasis. AIDS coincidentally broke out there as well.

 

Best indicator for when prescribed sexual mores won't be accepted by society for long is in my opinion, the "stupid teenage girl". It sounds demeaning, but let's be honest.... they are both ignorant and the quickest to get knocked up, and they have the most kids, and seem largely indifferent to the intellectual arguments of the left or right. It's because they don't have to be. They are the root crux of any society, in that they.... and not priests or government officials, have the ultimate last say on the acceptability of sexual relations (though it seems both groups are now saturating their soap operas with their ideology).

 

I hear them running amok in my neighborhoid all the time, gangs of them hang out at fight and talk overly loud to one another.

 

They don't accept either the church or liberal outlooks on sex. They don't appear to be accepting of gay girls, but accept gay guys. I kniw this as it's a consent element of their discussions outside as I try to sleep.

 

They are the ones who reproduce, the primary caregiver in society, and do alit to reorient mens outward opinions.

 

It's why so many liberal government struggle so very hard to present them as pro women, pro feminist. The second wome, these women in particular, realize such policies are bull, it will die. If it doesn't directly interfere with their limited sexual ambitions, they care, but only enough to gossip and socially isolate and stigmatise.

 

I'll give you another example, about as remote as you can get from the "stupid teenage girl" as you can get. The homeless transexual population in San Francisco. When I was a security guard there, my two biggest threats were mass asian rushes into my store to steal everything in under a minute, and sewage smelling transexuals trying to steal (oddly enough by acting inconspicuous, which fails horribly when your 7 feet tall, wearing furs and a skirt, and haven't bathed in a very long time).

 

They achieved a semblance or political power congruent to the gay community in SF, in achieving special protections, to the piint of being specifically listed as a group NOT to be discriminated against in the work place, in a category removed from homosexuals. This backfired horribly.... in hindsight for normal(ish) dressing gay guys trying to get promotions over, or being in charge of and firing a cross dresser, especially in the fashion industry where looks are scrutinized.

 

The end result is, many companies, though accepting of hiring the landed elite gay males, are terrified of hiring transexuals as it's absolutely impossible to get rid of them, or even demote them, or write them up for anything, as they can claim discrimination, with a pretty aggressive legal response.

 

So instead, you have alot of homeless tranies in a city supposedly accepting of sexual diversity. They experience the reality.... as the legal trend points one way, reality and actual acceptance points another, suggesting society won't ling accept thus revision, as it's being associated with the social dregs of society, aspects prone to be made illegal, as there is nothing society hates mire than poverty. Ask any Cynic.

 

Now when you completely rationalize it, like the Church of Sweden (not to be confused with Christianity, they are a failed offshoot) did in dressing up the 12 apostles at the last supper a trannies as a social insight into comparing who are the mdern day martyrs and oppressed, deserving of pity or X emotion.... you realize how far they fail in presentation. Only 2 percent of Swedes even go to that state church, many don't bother with church marriages via it anymore, and non married couples break up prior to children reaching maturity mire and more. The amount of jobs are decreasing in Sweden, and it's facing increased military threats, facism, islamic fundamentalism.... all while the government cleverally restricts kinds of free speech.

 

It's all a perfect recipe for the "teenage stupid girl" aspect in time to dominate. And it will, it always does in the end.

 

Reason why, is the Dumbest Common Denominator in society is the one the breeds the most in times of ease. All humans are prone to interpret their paraphilia via conditioned response, associate special concepts with their innate drive to associate with others. But when push comes to shove, they are essentially the invisible hand of society. Young males listen to them. Their understandings are crude, but they understand their biological needs and rough goals in life..... have kids, live a generically acceptable life, die as painless of a death as late as possible, see kids at least equally successful, if not more.

 

When it comes to Ancient Greece, highly stratified ancient greece, where you could only marry one woman at a time, but could have many sex slaves and prostitues as you care for, where your civic status - your ancestry, could determine life and death, property or poverty.... of course they obviously had a diverse range of linguistic categories for various sexual acts.

 

Imagine being a greek couple trying to marry their daughter off. The number of bachelors are small in the city, yet a few guys always seem perpetually single, always hangung out with one another.... in a very happy way. Do you marry her off to one if them? What's the probability of them accepting her without laughing at the offer in this magical world that lacks a concept for the word gay.

 

Let's say for whatever reason, you convince one of these guys to marry your daughter. She is your only heir, so her husband is your son. They never have a baby, and she admits he never touches her sexually, and if she ever gets pregnant, so be it, but it won't be by him. Pragmatically, the parents and daughter would collectively shrug shoulders and just encourage her to have a one night stand to get the job done.... but the greeks had laws stripping citizen rights to those who knowingly let themselves be cuckolded.

 

The rationalization of the greek city sexually closely followed expected stigmergetic expectations and nailed them as unacceptable in advance.

 

This isn't evidence of a society that lacked a concept of gay or homosexual, but rather one that understood it's nuiances very well, perhaps even better than us, and systematically ordered society in just a way to ensure citizens reproduced and had a means to support themselves while encouraging whatever advantages could be gleamed from homosexuality to the larger needs of the body politick.

 

I honestly can't trace every aspect.... they may of very well of had a more advance conception than we do, as our Sexologists today practice science less and tread non threatening waters, asserting political niceties and farces instead. We had the reactionary movement, but not the Thermiadorian Reaction yet to see where we actually, in total honestly, where we actually stand.

 

The greeks and egyptians did both. The Syrians brought it to a unparalleled level with castrated transexual priests and divine prostitutes.

 

How this happens, not completely certain. That's stigmergy for you. But it does.

 

I can't accept a Modern revision of society, however.... in assuming a seeming lack of evidence from a philological perspective for a word translates as a lack of evidence for such a concept. I'm not Vico, not Cottonwood, not Wittgenstein. I know better, as they clearly had a word for it. Does anything ever complete translate from one language to another? Completely, no.... because additional rationalizations and ideology attach themselves to concepts, as concepts are formulaic, networking with non linguistic aspects of the mind. Only a subset of personality types are built around language, that narrative voice in your head. 40% of the population can't even hear it, it's a secondary function at best.... not the primary for most.

 

It's been recently theorized that our capacity for language grew out of increased time constraints selective grooming of individuals in a group. Humans talk to one another as much as primates groom one another, and it triggers similar neurochemical responses.

 

Anything having to do with sex, especially hooking up and getting it on, comes naturally. Doesn't mean there isn't a learning curve, like clueless middle eastern couples trying to conceive via fellatio,but even the failed attempts show we get it close. It needs to be easy to grasp, or we would quickly die off.

 

Every human society has to grapple with this issue. Sex is never a exclusively private sphere affair, as it effects potentially everyone. Free love is just as much the object of study as strict, rigorous rules for sex and relations.... economics, climate, history, basic concepts of structuralism will dominate for a society choosing which way to go, not early 21st century liberal British propaganda who's root cause isn't nearly as liberal or rational as it suggests, but deeply rooted in controversies and problems that never were effectively solved from the 17th Century on.

 

The overly simplified answer that sex was just carefree sex, and we can just blame christians doesn't cut it. It's a hedonistic impulse that passes the buck, hiding behind Occams Razor. We loose alot of details, and potentially hurt future generations who by default must take a inevitable dialectic, mutational stance against our outlook now in order to continue on and survive. Every extreme strikes a balance, nature abhors a void. Concepts build and bifurcate as much as they merge and reinvent the wheel. Our deepest knowledge isn't sourced for a philologist, but rather predates language. And one thing I know from the animal world, some animals are gay. This is very ancient, but obviously prone to encouraging extinction if all members of a species is gay. Life found ways around this.... just as the human race will survive the sexual laissez-faire sexual conventions of the 21st Century, as it survived the strictness of Victorian times. The very fact this dichotomy and yo-yo effect was even possible niw as then is because we clearly have this capacity to assert sexuality on a community as a species trait. It evolved, it's who we are deep down inside. When we try to strip this ordering from ancient societies, one so obviously central to the reproductive human experience, especially in very complex societies that clearly by default dealt with the word, verbally or non verbally in considerable, elaborate detail, then we know were doing something very wrong.

 

I don't expect you to use a 19th century word like "cutter", a particular kind of fast sail ship, and apply it to a fast class of 7century BC ship purely off the quality of fastness. That makes no sense, except within that categorical space in which a uniniated reader wouldn't grasp. But pay attention to deeply rooted phenomena..... sex, homesexuals, violent attacks, good tasting, bad tasting, danger, rain.... these concepts predated our species. You can't have a thriving human society, especially ones that pass property off in some form to biological heirs.... which we've done for a very long time, much less monarchies, without having words for the society that results. Some of the more extreme compounded forms, yeah.... they may never of experienced, but everyone pretty much instantly figure out gay upon first sight. Sometimes aloof, accepting, indifferent, oftentimes violently. This is the obvious range our species evolved to. Once a liberal outlook is emplaced, like early 21st Century England or Sweden, doesn't mean were going to stick to it.... just look at the Maldives, more urbanized than either, going the exact opposite direction.

 

There will someday be, if humans survive, cultures in both countries that swing in both directions.... to more intense stratified rules that seem mean or unnecessary from our perspective today, as well as more liberal. Occasionally odd mixtures.

 

That's just being human. It's our constant, we adjust to the flux that our shortsightedness gets us into. We shouldn't steamroll history with our own sexual prejudices however. It's better to be aware of them and consider how it's possible neurologically we can even think as such, and if people in the past could do so as well? Are we not a product of that past? Are our brains not made of the same cells and structure as theirs? Who has the claim to being more complex? Did they just let their brains atrophy?