fuck ass gender and sexuality

Aphrodite of Cnidus

• a statue of a goddess caught in the middle of bathing-shes reaching for a cloth with one hand and covering her genitals with the other

• began the tradition of the female nude in Greek art

Stoicism

• Passionate emotions are bad

• promoted friendship

• advocated pederasty-like sexual mentorships

• advocated for unisex dress, mutual consent in sexual relationships

• valued self-control, reason, and emotional restraint

• Men and women can share rationally

Erinna

• wrote epigrams

• wrote The Distaff, a poem about the death of her friend Baucis and she was not allowed to mourn her

• was obviously in love with Baucis

Hippocratic Corpus

• a collection of around 60 Ancient Greek medical works associated with a physician and his teachings

• mostly from the fifth and fourth century

• Look for natural causes for diseases rather than divine
  origins

• Believed that health was affected by the “humors”:
  blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile

• Being too hot, cold, wet, or dry disturbs the balance
  of the humors, resulting in illness

• The foundations of “western medicine”

• attacks women’s health

The one-$ex model

• Galen’s theory of female anatomy
  was accepted until the 18th century

• There is only one sex: male

• Women are imperfect men

• The female genitalia and reproductive organs correspond exactly to the male, only inside the body instead of outside

Patria Potestas

• the absolute power that a Roman paterfamilias had over the descendants of his male line

• ultimately made all decisions for the family

• owned everything (property)

• central to Roman family structure

Tutor

• a legal guardian, not a teacher

• manages legal and financial affairs of someone who could not act independently under Roman law (women, minors, men deemed incapable)

• shows how roman law limited women’s autonomy

Mos maiorum

• the unwritten code from which the ancient Romans derived their social norms

• was crucial for the Roman’s culture stability

• led politics

• moral tradition

• customs of their ancestors

Verginia

• Decemvir lusted after her and plotted to have her legally declared a slave so he could rape her

• her father kills her so she doesn’t get raped

• this leads to the overthrow of the decemvirs

Roman Marriage

• typical happens at a young age, especially women

• both partners needed citizenship

• primarily the reproduce, transfer wealth and begin family alliances

The Warren Cup

• ancient silver drinking cup decorated with two images of males having sex

• one side had an older man and a younger man engaging in sexual activity, the younger being penetrated

• other side also depicts anal sex but with a younger, small man, age gap was larger

• acceptable because of status roles

Catullus

• poet who wrote about sexual themes

• emotional extremes

• wrote about lesbia, the woman her loves

Sulpicia

• claims sexual agency

• still constrained by male framework

• rare female poetic voice

• only Roman women whose love poetry survives under her own name

• Her poems focus on her love affair with a man she calls Cerinthus

Carmen et error

• “a poem and a mistake”

• shows danger of sexual discourse

Juvenal

• Roman satirist writing in the late 1st–early 2nd century CE, best known for his Satires, which harshly criticize Roman society

• writes about gender, sexuality, and moral decline

• uses sexual slander as a rhetorical weapon

• reveals Roman anxieties about gender and loss of male authority

Pythagoreanism

• Banned all sex outside of marriage, including for men

• believed in cosmic harmony and numerical order

• gender was binary and hierarchical

• masculine = order, rationality

• feminine = chaos

• reinforced male dominance

• social hierarchy

Anyte

• wrote epigrams, lyric and epic poetry

• called “female Homer”

• invented the epigram genre of “pet epitaph”

Nossis

• wrote many dedicated epigrams

• influenced by Sappho and Aphrodite

• writings focus on women

• most likely wrote erotic epigrams

The wandering womb

• can wander around inside the body, causing various health problems

• can be solved by having a baby to hold it down

• used as a method to control women

Etruscan Women

• more publicly visible and having greater freedom and power than Greek women

• were said to exercise nude alongside men, recline at dinner with men who are not their husbands, sexually promiscuous

• depicted a lot in funerary art

Paterfamilias

• the head of the male line of a Roman family

• the familia was said to be under the hand of this

• legal authority over wife, children and slaves

Virtus

• manly virtue

• masculine excellence

• courage, dominance, sexual control

• losing control = moral failure

The Sabine Women

• neighboring cities of rome refused to let their daughters marry the Romans so Romulus came up with this plan to reproduce

• Roman youths seized and carried of all the young women

Laudatio Turiae

• funeral elegy

• praises the loyal and ideal roman wife

• idealized feminine virture

• obedience and devotion

Contubernia

• informal slave marriage

• not legally recognized

• shows class difference in intimacy

The Greek Novel

• prose fiction that developed in the Roman Imperial period and typically centers on a young heterosexual couple who are separated and tested before being reunited

• chastity, desire, adventure, social order

Clodia Metelli

• known from Cicero’s speeches

• elite woman of the late roman republic

• discredited by being portrayed as promiscuous, manipulative, and morally corrupt

• a crucial example of how female sexuality became a political weapon

Ovid

• roman poet

• wrote Metamorphoses

• wrote mainly in elegiac meter on erotic themes

• wrote the Ars Amatoria, 3 books about how men get girlfriends and how women get boyfriends

• punished for carmen et error

Procne and Philomela

• one of ovids writings

• Sister 1 was married to the king of Thrace, but he lusted after Sister 2

• king forced himself onto Sister 2 and locked her away, raped her, and cut out her tongue

• Sister 1 discovers this and took revenge by murdering her only child and served it to the king

• then they all turned into birds

Tribas

• masculine woman, possibly wishes to be a man

• penetrative role with women, thought to have an enlarged penis-like clitoris

• A woman who engages in sexual activity with other women

• vulva-to-vulva rubbing

Epicureanism

• Pleasure is the only good, but excessive pursuit of pleasure causes pain

• pleasure = absecene of pain

• sex is problematic because passion causes emotional distress

• marriage should be avoided because it’s more trouble

• warned agaisnt intense sexual desire

• less political

Etruscan funerary art

• indicate the importance of the mother’s side of the family

• show women participating in banquets alongside men

• emphasized the importance of a husband-wife bond

• often depict graphic sexual scenes

• sex between men and women, between men, sadomasochism

• also show people farting/defecating

Stuprum

• illicit sexual behavior

• unlawful sexual relations outside of marriage, different from adultery

• public disgrace

• used politically

Vir

• an adult male citizen

• legally protected from anal penetration, beating and torture

• an achieved status

• excels in oratory, politics and war

• ideal roman man

Lucretia

• got told she was going to get killed and be put in with the body of a male slave if she didn’t have sex with Sextus Tarquinius

• he was obsessed with her chasity

• she commited suicide

• ideal woman

• sexual violence led to a political revolution

The Julian law

• refers to a series of Roman statutes

• focusing on public morals, family, and legal procedure

• marriage laws, and others on bribery, expenses, and court reform, aiming to restore traditional Roman values

• they established rules for marriage, divorce, adultery penalties (exile, property loss), and regulated public conduct like bribery and extravagance, fundamentally shaping Roman social and legal life. 

Love Elegy

• male poets claim submission to love

• still objectifies women

• performative vulnerability

The Art of Love

• a didatic poem by Ovid that presents itself as a playful instruction manual for seduction and relationships

• how to find lovers and maintain affairs

• challenges traditional ideals of female chastity and male self-control

Daphne and Apollo

• female resistance, male entitlement

• a metamorphosis myth

• man fell in love with a woman after being struck by Cupid’s arrow

• woman was also struck by arrow but was full of repulsion and fled the pursuit of the man

• she transformed into a tree, which became the man’s sacred plant

The Galli

• castrated priests of Cybele

• gender nonconforming

• viewed with suspicion and fear

• apart of a cult

The Satyrica

• sexual chaos

• mocks elite masculinity

• Follows the "road trip" adventures of Encolpius, his lover Giton, and friend Ascyltus as they travel and encounter various characters, from corrupt priests to vulgar millionaire

• rovides valuable insight into the daily life, customs, and social structures of the early Roman Empire, beyond what is found in official monuments

Encolpius

• one of the narrator and main character of Petronius’s Satyrica

• Unlike the ideal Roman vir, he is insecure, sexually frustrated, and repeatedly fails to assert masculine dominance, especially in his relationships with other men such as Giton

• mportant for understanding Roman sexuality because he exposes the fragility of male authority and the absurdity of social expectations around sexual power

Giton

• young, beautiful boy and the lover of Encolpius in the Satyrica

• He is desired by multiple men and frequently shifts his loyalties, which creates rivalry and conflict

• typically occupies the sexually passive role, a position associated with youth and lower status

Elagabalus

• scandalous and eccentric teenage emperor

• challenged norms by identifying as female

• had a lavish lifestyle and partook in controversial sexual practices

• He was assasianated

• used as a moral warning

Iphis and Ianthe

• raised as a boy by her mother to avoid her father’s decree against daughters

• she then falls in love with a woman

• since they were both biologically women it was viewed as unnatural desire

• the mother prays for her daughter, and she turns into a man

• then they could live happily ever after

Cinaedus

• effeminate man

• passive sexual role

• social insult not orientation

• displays feminine traits and demeanor

• lack of self control