#ancient gender and sexuality should include nuance as well

So I was listening to a podcast on ancient history that focused on queer women in Greece and Rome and I wanted to get a sense for how widespread are some of the assumptions we make about ancient sexuality.

Those who have studied gender and sexuality in Greece and Rome have surely come across the most popular theory addressing the definitions of ancient sexuality, that modern conceptions of sexuality (hetero- and homosexuality) were nonexistent and instead ones sexuality was defined by specific sex acts. Normative sexuality involved a binary between the one penetrating and the one being penetrated. Thus, for a man, penetrating a woman or another man was within the bounds of normative sexual behavior, as was a woman being penetrated. This is obviously penis-centered in nature and thus anything not involving a penis falls outside the bounds of normative sexuality, or at least that is what we assume. We do not have enough historical evidence to make claims about how sexual acts between women were viewed by society in Greece and Rome (as the podcast did) because our understanding of ancient sexuality is focused on this binary penetrator and penetrated.

For all we know, women could engage in sexually pleasurable relationships with other women and no one batted an eye (I am not saying they did, just that it could have been the case). What I am saying is that based on our source material it is equally possible that pleasure between women was not talked about because it was not seen as anything unordinary.

Martial has two epigrams about a “monstrous” woman (Bassus) who has sex with other women, but his gripe is that she tries too much to be “like a man” not specifically that she has sex with women.

One of the other things that really bothered me about the podcast was the assumption that to be a penetrator meant to absolutely dominant, and thus that being penetrated automatically must mean being on the receiving end of something hostile and violent. This might be the end result of using terminology like dominant and submissive for ancient sexual roles which have taken on specifically modern connotations. Nevertheless, it is an absurd assumption to make and leads to some equating the majority of ancient sex with rape.

Lastly, to characterize ancient pederasty as “heteronormative” is just a bad take.