Bruce Thornton's Greek Ways, Chapter 1, "Eros the Killer"
From the start I have to say that I find Thornton's treatment of sexuality in ancient Greece problematic. And yet, he supports his points with extensive references to ancient primary sources. What is more, I think he is largely right in his picture of the Greeks, although his treatment is limited in scope and depth. He paints in broad strokes, however, that willfully avoid much nuance. In a nutshell, he seems to be saying that Greeks thought of sexual desire as a primary force of nature which must be controlled in certain ways and in certain of its manifestations. He seems also to be suggesting sotto voce that the Greeks were right (the tone of the book is a vindication, defense, and praise of things Greek, he never explicitly condemns any aspect of their treatment of sexuality, and he starts out with Bill Clinton [whom he obviously despises]: he agrees with the views he finds in the "Greeks"). That last bit is where I have to say that Thornton is offensive to me: the Greeks were, I hope, wrong about sexuality in many ways.
I will start with some basic logical problems I have, then go on to talk about "constructedness" or sexuality. Following that, I will talk about the problem of speaking of the Greeks as though they had one unified view of what sexuality is. Finally, I will try to summarize what Thornton has to say.
The manifestations of eros that the Greeks thought must be controlled include any and all desires to be penetrated, whether the penetrated is a woman, boy, man, or anything else, but especially if you are a male. Males are, apparently, penetrators by nature. Since it is contrary to a man's nature to be penetrated, that makes it bad to be penetrated, for nature is good (supposedly: more on that in a minute). More specifically, being penetrated makes you or shows that you are womanish. Also, once you do one thing contrary to nature, you will inevitably do other things contrary to nature. In other words, you will be womanish in all other things: you will be a coward. This appeal to nature as a normative thing that is good is problematic on the bare face of it, for it is precisely the nature of sexual desire to be destructive, and Greeks thought that nature of sexual desire must be controlled. If sexual desire is naturally destructive, then it seems that 1. all sexual desire should be controlled, not just the desire to be penetrated; and 2. at least one thing that is natural is bad, namely sexual desire per se, and so even if it is a man's nature to penetrate, that fact (that it is his nature) does not make it good. For not all natural things are good. The Greeks were, in fact, aware of the problems of appeals to nature, at least those who followed certain sophists like Protagoras were.
As to 1, consider that in Greece the sexual desires of women are far more controlled than those of men: men who want to penetrate are encouraged to pursue their desires in many ways. They are discouraged from only a few avenues, such as adultery. They have prostitutes readily available and apparently acceptable. They also have their wife and young men as acceptable objects of penetration. Now if the argument were that sexual desire in and of itself is destructive and so must be controlled, it is clear that those penetrating desires would be as much or more in need of control than the penetrated's desires. Perhaps Thornton is right in that the idea that sexuality must be controlled might be acceptable if it the way that view were cashed out in a society was consistently applied to all, not just the privileged males.
Is it a man's nature to penetrate, i.e. be that "active" partner? Think about the penetrator versus penetrated (active versus passive) distinction. Is that how you think of sexuality? I do not have carefully formulated views about it really, but my views do not include seeing it primarily as active versus passive. I suppose it's more of a partnership. Is it all about who is passive and who is active, and can you simply take the set of those actions and people who are active and call them "good" and the set of those actions and people who are passive and call them "bad." I am sure that you cannot. What if we turn the tables and think of it as "engulfing" and "being engulfed"? If you did that, then what the Greeks think of as the penetrator would be the passive partner: the penetrator would BE engulfed. That is passive. And the penetrated would engulf. That is active. So it's all in how you think about it and what importance you attach to the concepts you create. There is nothing that is IN REALITY active about penetration, nor anything IN REALITY passive about being penetrated. Nor is there anything "good" about the active and "bad" about the passive. In that sense, sexuality and the morality that attaches to it is a constructed thing.
Sure, the basic acts and permutations of putting parts with parts are fixed in some way. You can't penetrate someone's foot with your elbow. It's just unlikely that rubbing the backs of your heads together will ever be seen as a clearly erotic act. I.e. you cannot "construct" sexuality willy-nilly as you please. BUT within certain vague parameters, how we view the acts we engage in IS what they are, and how we view them is culturally specific and "constructed." A mistake that is frequently made when talking about "constructedness" is thinking that because something is "constructed," it can be changed any which way by anyone. But it cannot. Of course, you may decide on your own to change your sexuality any which way you want and try to stick with that, but I would argue that 1) you won't "succeed" in still having something that is a sexuality if you change it beyond certain limits (I think Plato changed it beyond those limits: I don't see how knowing the forms is erotic, although I suppose it could be a passion-arousing experience), and 2) it usually takes two (or more) to tango. Onanism is of course an option, but it is nothing new. In the end I suppose I have to admit that you could have your own solipsistic sexuality. But nonetheless sexualities that have anything like longevity to them must belong in communities.
What is more about Thornton, if he is right that the Greeks all saw things in terms of penetrator-penetrated, then their view of sexuality is quite different from ours and does not split along lines of homosexuality/heterosexuality, but rather along the lines of something like bottoms and tops. What sense can it make then to speak of homosexuality when the Greeks did not see it that way? What can that have to say to us? I am not sure, but I do know that I don't accept what Thornton apparently thinks it says. What we mean by "homosexuality" is foreign to the Greek view.
Another problem with Thornton (and with "constructionists") is that he does not sufficiently allow sexuality to be a matter of individual taste. He speaks as though all Greeks had one sexuality, there was a single norm, and that is the whole picture. It's all you really need to know, he seems to say.
But it is not. Clearly Sappho thought lesbianism was just fine. Aristophanes' picture of us as split units likewise seems to posit homesexuality and heterosexuality as matters of one's nature that are neither good nor bad. In fact, it seems to be a good thing when a male half finds the one other male half that it was split from. A large part of the Symposium is, in a sense, a glorification of same-sex attraction. Hence his verdict that Greeks though homosexuality was wrong is just wrong itself. He frequently quotes or cites Plato as though Plato's views are simply "the Greek view," but Plato's dialogues are aimed at a rarefied intellectual coterie. In all, we might speak of "sexualities" in the Greek and the modern world.
Summary of Thornton Chapter 1
Greeks thought of Eros as "a turbulent and potentially pernicious force that overthrows the mind and judgement and threatens the social and political orders that make human life possible." (15)
Greeks were not sexual libertines: they kept sexuality under controls.
Recent interpretations of sexuality see it and human identity itself as "mere epiphenomena of totalizing power networks ... the Greek 'conceptual blueprint of sexual relations ... corresponded to social patterns of dominance and submission, reproducing power differentials between partners in configuring gender roles.'" (16: quote from Skinner's intro to Roman Sexualities)
Greeks thought sex was a primary natural force that had to be controlled by the mind and culture. E.g. Plato thought that the passions had to be controlled by the rational part of the soul.
Greek poetic imagery speak of eros as an arrow, a bodily pain, fire, limb-loosening (like death), disease, and insanity. Excessive sexual desire was considered a disease.
Some Greeks saw homosexuality as deviant, but a phenomenon of nature. Mainly they condemned the passive homosexual (21). The catamite was the worst of all for the Greeks. Humanity was defined as the rational control of the appetites, and so anyone who willingly gave in to sexual urges was less than human. The passive homosexual and the adulterer were creatures of appetites that drove them to excess. (22)
Aristophanes' point in making fun of males who have been penetrated is that the political problems of the day resulted from "unrestrained greed for power, wealthy, and self-gratification." (IF THAT IS true, then in fact those who connect sexuality to political constructs are right: Aristophanes confirms that politics and sexuality are all of a piece and belong to a "totalizing power network" !!).
Aristophanes condemns passive homosexuality as the explanation of Athenian decline. (24)
Plato and Xenophon both portray physical sex between males as degrading to the passive partner. (25). Shame was the control on this: one would not give in because of the shame involved.
Plato describes adultery and catamitism as contrary to nature (but in the Republic, wives are to be held in common!), and so the obvious implication, Thornton thinks, is that "at least Plato and Aeschines viewed sex as having a natural function, procreation, which by its absence rendered homosexuality 'unnatural.'" (26).
Greeks nonetheless recognized the beauty of sexuality. They simply thought it needed to be controlled to be beautiful. Socrates thought knowledge was the key to virtue, but Euripides denied that (27). Reason is supposed to conquer the desires. "The ability to control one's sexual appetite is the touchstone of the truly self-controlled, virtuous man." (29).
THe main societal control of sexuality is marriage.The household is the basic societal unit. The idea is to exploit sexuality to further society, the state, and property. (29)
Women's sexuality was connected with nature and fertility rather than culture and rationality. (31-32)
The young man-older man relation was an effort to exploit homosexual desire for societal ends, and included a sanction on the younger man for giving in. It was a delicate balancing act (rather like the whole "be a virgin til you marry thing": sex as bait for marriage).
"To them, sex could never be a "private" affair, of no concern to the larger political community; nor was it a mere "Social construct" reflecting the structures of power and privilege, a contingent phenomenon to be restructured at will by social engineers. Rather, it was one of those absolute limits on human idenity and aspiration, a powerful force of nature." (36).