Gender Roles In Ancient Greek And Roman Culture

In the Ancient Greek and Roman worlds, there was a strong emphasis on ‘natural’ roles during sex wherein men would take on an active role whereas women would take on a passive role. With this, any actions that deviated from these natural roles were perceived as being against nature and were considered to be wrong, including male-male sexual intercourse as a man would be engaging in a passive role. Despite this, pederasty, in which an older man would engage in sexual intercourse with a younger man, was common during the time. These relations were not seen in the same way as sexual intimacy and would not have brought the same shame onto the men engaged in pederastic relationships as the shame brought on to men engaged in male-male sexual relationships.

254). Along with the acceptance of pederasy as a sign of cultural status, the older men who would engage in pederastic relationships would not face shame as males engaged in male-male intercourse as they would retain the active role during intercourse, and would therefore continue to hold dominance and control in the relationship. Through this, the men in these relationships were not shamed as they were still abiding by the naturally active role that they were believed to have. The younger boys in pederastic relationships, despite engaging in a passive role, seemed to have not faced the shame that they would have if they were to be men engaged in the same passive role during intercourse with another man. Instead, pederasty was often perceived to be a form of social education for these younger boys. Despite the acceptance and normalization of pederasty in the Greco-Roman world, male-male sexual intercourse and relationships were not seen with the same acceptance as men in these relationships would be perceived as taking on a feminine, passive role rather than retaining their naturally active role and

Culture” and were not “grounded in the desire for physical gratification” unlike male-male relationships (Hubbard 2009, p. 255, 254). The acceptance of pederastic relationships contrasted with the homophobia towards male-male relations can be quite confusing when 20th and 21st-century terms for sexual identity are applied, as it would seem that many men would be bisexual at least yet still homophobic. However, it is important to consider that these modern-day categories are the result of cultural constructions, as are categorical constructions in the Ancient world. Based on the way the Ancient Greek and Roman cultures were constructed, categorizations such as lesbian and bisexual were not recognized, thus these categorizations did not exist. With this lack of cultural construction for bisexuality, men who desired or engaged in both pederastic relationships and male-female relationships would not be considered to be bisexual. They would not be bisexual and homophobic as we would categorize them