Re: Homosexuality and What's in a Name

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> wwchi@xxxxxxxxxxxx 12/05/00 04:07AM >>>



>It is a bit unbelievable that
>there were no words for a section of society (such as 'homosexuals) if such
>a section of society (homosexuals) actually existed throughout all that
>time.


It depends on what you mean by 'section'.  I don't know what you think
people have to have to be a 'section' .. a secret handshake? bars? a
newsletter? :-)   In order to think of lesbians, gay men, and other sexual
resisters as 'oppressed groups', I really don't demand much more than that
they actually are oppressed in the same way.  Surely (well, it seems sure to
me) such people were actually, materially oppressed in pre-capitalist
European society, in common, whether or not there was a word for them.  In
fact, the 'words' for them may have been things like 'depraved',
'licentious,' 'given to the sin of ONAN', 'they that commit the abominable
crime against nature' and so on.

(((((((((((((

CB: There seems to be a lot of evidence that same sex among males was not 
materially
oppressed in a number of periods of pre-capitalist European society, but was 
rather
practiced by sections of various ruling classes, such as Greek philosophers and 
other
ruling class individuals, feudal priests, and French aristocrats.

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