In fairness, for much of history it was perfectly normal for two people of the same gender to live together and eat together and sleep in the same bed and write affectionate letters to each other without that necessarily implying that they were lovers.
That, and the whole ritual pederasty. And that homosexuality was viewed really from a standpoint of power dynamics rather than uwu yaoi twinks.
The greeks had several more nuanced words that would all be translated to English as just "love," and if Eros were used I don't think this would be a debate, yes? The question is whether their relationship lines up with philia or whether that word was said with a deliberate wink, and that would be Homer's own fault.
It's always ~~aggravating~~ interesting to see this kind of contradictory interplay from the same people who are always talking about understanding other cultures properly instead of appropriating, and the need for absolutely any depiction of men behaving in a way that is consistent with normal human emotions like "being sad your friend died". No. Unquestionably gay behavior.
You guys are really gonna tell me to my face that you could lose your childhood companion in battle and you just...wouldn't do anything about it because it's not like y'all were banging.
I mean, there is an ocean between doing nothing that your childhood friend died, and asking to be cremated in the same urn as the person you shared your bed with.
I grant that you're right in that we shouldn't project modern western ideas of sexual identity onto other cultures, but typically I see this conversation come up as a reaction or rebuttal to the assertion that this kind of behavior has no historical precedent.
Isnt it because they can never really be 100% sure about the feelings people who have been dead for centuries?
Solid meme; but the better part of that post is the headline.
I’ll beach-off you and your friend.
It was such a fun little film!
Certain strawman historians...
Grace Ledbetter in the Journal of Philology (1993) stated Patroclus could simply be Achilles' softer side. So at least one peer reviewed journal felt maybe they werent, ya know, lovers. I think thats hogwash, but hey
Fair enough. I know Achilles' and Patroclus' affair has been discussed for more than a century.
I subbed to Reddit's community on this topic (SapphoAndHerRoommate?) out of curiosity, and it struck me at some point that none of the examples posted were historians denying the possibility of historical figures being gay. So at some point I actually went through like 3 pages of the top stories...like 50+% were tweets saying basically "Boy, those historians sure do like to pretend gay people don't exist! Imagine them pretending Achilles and Patroclus were just buds lol!" Seriously most of them were specifically about A&P.
Then another 30% or so were religious fundamentalists posting complaints about how people were trying to queer up history.
There were a handful of historians saying "hey guys, gender roles were different back then, it may not be accurate to label a history figure 'gay' even if they did have male lovers"
Then there were like 3-4 quotes from popular biographies from the 1800s that used funny language about "never married" and "lifelong friends".
And finally there was one article from the BBC about two dudes from the Roman period in Britain who were buried in an embrace, and it was like "What could their relationship have been? We can only speculate...maybe they were both apprentices?" or something. It was pretty egregious. Maybe a historian was involved in that.
Anyway, that was one example in the 60 or so top stories. It seems like a meme that just keeps on going even though it's been obsolete for a century.
Their logo looks like an anus
This reminds me of how unaware I was as well in general. And then I was like ohhhhhhh .