Saturday random

[erastes]

1. I’m back from the library with Oscar Wilde and the dead man's smile By Brandreth, and First man in Rome/Masters of Rome By McCullough. Ordered Dissolution by C J Samson but that wasn’t there.  Also emptied my car of wine bottles. I tell you, if I’d had a crash, the airbag might save my life but I would have been cut to ribbons by the four enormous bags of bottles…

I do wish someone would invent a bottle bank that didn’t smash. It’s rather embarrassing to have the people behind you in the car counting every single smash and then looking knowingly at you as they get their mere three bottles out of their car…

2. Erastes/eromenos: Nearly four years after an academic journal nixed plans to publish a piece about sex between adult and adolescent males of antiquity, the controversy is erupting again. This time, however, it’s not conservative critics yelling the loudest. A group of classicists, now twice thwarted in efforts to publish on the provocative subject, have taken aim at one of the world’s largest publishers, saying Taylor & Francis Group has placed reputational concerns above the legitimate scholarly pursuits it ought to promote. The story dates to 2005, when Haworth Press announced amid heavy criticism that its Journal of Homosexuality wouldn’t publish an article or book chapter about sexual relationships between men and boys in antiquity. READ MORE

3. Apparently, an Argentinean condom company used an upcoming football match between rivals Brazil and Argentina to show Brazil what they were going to do to them whilst cleverly advertising safe sex.

Sadly for Argentina, Brazil won, and then they came up with a rebuttal.

4. And I thought you’d appreciate this – make your own ceiling cat!

Comments

[semioticwarrior.livejournal.com]

Hee! Love the ceiling cat! The ads were hysterical.

[angelabenedetti.livejournal.com]

Comment to that article by Barbara Fister:

Even if one doesn't like those results, burying them won't change them, nor will a congressional condemnation.

That's pretty much the sum of it. :/ I realize that child molestation -- which is a horribly misleading label for what's being discussed here, since "child" makes most people think of a six-year-old -- is a very sensitive topic, but scholarship needs to be done on sensitive topics. If the work itself is flawed, that's one thing, but if the scholarship is solid and some people just don't like the results, oh well.

Angie

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Absolutely - how is it ok for someone to be jailed for denying certain parts of history, but other parts to be swept under the carpet? It's not like that anyone's going to be writing graphic sexual details about boys and men having sex in a professorial work.

I don't actually know what age the sexual practices started, to be honest - I'll have to look it up, I know that in Sparta the boys were taken at seven to live with the other men and he'd be appointed an erastes there - but I really doubt that sexual congress started that young.

[angelabenedetti.livejournal.com]

but I really doubt that sexual congress started that young

Agreed. [nod] I haven't made a major study of it, but from what I've seen around I always got the impression that the young men were post-pubescent when they started having sex. Spartan boys went away to live in age cohorts for military training at seven, but that's not necessarily the same as starting sex at that age. Heck, the vast majority of the men involved wouldn't want to have sex with the boys that young anyway; it'd be at least as much of a hardship for them as for the boys. :P I can't see them forcing themselves just for training or... well, all right, they were Spartans so I guess I can [duck] but I don't see how such a custom would have come about in the first place, against the wishes of most of the participants, including the ones in charge back when they were making all this up.

But yes, it does no one any good to sweep truth under the carpet, no matter how distasteful it might be to the current generation.

Angie

[leebenoit.livejournal.com]

Few holler when scholars or public intellectuals engage in and publish studies of gang rape (Peggy Sanday) or Female Genital Mutilation (Alice Walker) and nor should they. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's a very disturbing double standard at work.

In other news, the two ads had me howling. HOWLING!

[angelabenedetti.livejournal.com]

Humm. Yes, that's an interesting observation, and I agree that there's definitely a double standard going on there. :/ I'll grant that people get outraged about child molestation whether the child is male or female, but personally as a woman I'd rather be raped than have people start hacking pieces off of my private parts, but somehow that doesn't arouse quite the same level of RAWR! in folks. Maybe the fact that the whole purpose of female circumcision is to keep the girls "pure?" [raised eyebrow] Maybe that mitigates it somehow, in some folks' view. o_O

Angie

[leebenoit.livejournal.com]

I guess what I'm trying to suggest is that the moral panic around erastes/eromenos has something to do with the inherent homophobia in the publishers' societies. Then there's the point that rape, in many ways widely acceptable a half-century ago only became...not acceptable after rigorous academic and public examination. It's sort of opposite process here.

As to the FGM question, some social scientists have argued cultural relativism (and indeed colonial governments often outlawed the practice not as a way to liberate women but as a way to hamstring men and undermine resistance), in assessing the practice (and thereby making is ok to study and write about) and yet that's not what's happening in the case of erastes/eromenos. There's no cultural relativity or historical relativity in play, which makes the publishers look, um, stupid.

[kittymay.livejournal.com]

I am quite tired and just read the line 'I'm back from the library with Oscar Wilde'

Just make sure he doesn't bring any renters into your front room. And brush that cat hair off the couch, it'll get on his nice suit, don't you know?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Oscar took one look at the place, threw his hands up in horror and backed out with a muffled squeak. Lucius and Severus followed him out, baffled. I managed to snag the renter he had with him, he's painting the upstairs bedroom.

[kittymay.livejournal.com]

'Painting the upstairs bedroom',eh? That's quite the euphemism! ; )

[sleveen.livejournal.com]

Haworth Press announced amid heavy criticism that its Journal of Homosexuality wouldn’t publish an article or book chapter about sexual relationships between men and boys in antiquity.

Yes, well, history is written by the victors - or, in many cases, the group that can shout the loudest. o_O