#queer greek history

[kaliarda]

“Take the first step today and become the homosexual you want to be!”.

Thessaloniki, Greece, 1994.

[forgetmenauts]

A little acoustic demo release for you! Both a new song and also arguably the oldest Forgetmenauts song, written by Walker in the early 2010s & first released under their moniker Mountain Gnomes. A full band version will be on our upcoming album, likely to be released in 2025. Happy Bandcamp Friday! Download it today if you want us to get a full cut of the proceeds <33

[alatismeni-theitsa]

This! The tweet references this tweet where foreigners proceeded to rejoice about their vacation in Greece as a first reaction after hearing about how the brutal reality of queer Greeks has been alleviated. Are you for FUCKING REAL people?? You make me wanna puke! Were we ever people to you? Or just a fancy destination and some vague ancient texts of a "dead" language, that you never cared to associate with the actual Greek culture and people??

I saw the majority of these comments came from USians and I implore you specifically to shut your fucking face. This shouldn't be your reaction to a foreign marginalized group (that is still in danger) gaining rights. The privilege of living in the country that controls Greece has gotten to your head, and unfortunately, I see this attitude from all US marginalised groups also.

You are clearly NOT ready to discuss how your country has been profiting from exploiting our culture, and that the way you see us for centuries now reeks of the neocolonialist attitudes.

Even when we are happy when for the first time in our history our existence is legal MUST WE cater to your voyeurism and "ancient Greek" fantasies? Not to mention the continuous eyerolls I had seeing people expressing they thought Greece is a gay paradise since antiquity... B R U H .... It was never legal or non-shameful for us to be gay! N E V E R . Check ancient texts and laws. It was never legal or pleasant for us here!

More from the tweet here:

[tragediambulante]

Sleeping Hermaphroditus, II century D.C

[thetelesterion]

Dionysos, also called Zagreus, is the god of rebirth, renewal, and wine. Additionally, he is the god of liberation and freedom. To me, he represents freedom for all people, especially the oppressed and the minorities. Dionysos is also heavily intertwined with queer history, and his own mythological stories reflect his gender non-conformity and androgynous nature. One of his epithets is literally "Ανδρογυνος." In the Roman period, the Emperor Hadrian ordered the deification of his lover Antinous, who tragically drowned in the Nile River. Even after his death, the cult that had formed around Antinous continued to thrive, creating statues which bore Antinous's youthly face. These statues also blended imagery of Osiris and Dionysos. Thus, even after death, this man wore the guise of a god, and lived on in a sense. Another fun fact I wanted to add, while reading up on a specific statue of Antinous/Dionysos, this one, I came across the little tidbit at the bottom which suggests that during the criminalization of homosexuality in the USSR, underground gay communities would perform wedding ceremonies and rites in front of the statue.

[doves-of-aphrodite]

Sappho - Queer History and what Lady Aphrodite had to do with it

As it’s currently pride month, I couldn’t think of anything better suited to talk about this month than Lady Aphrodite’s role as the Patron of Lesbians.

Sappho’s poetry was mostly lost, and only fragments remain, with the first of these fragments and the one which is considered to be the only completed one (as there are only two parts where it’s hard to understand it) is her Ode to Aphrodite, through which Aphrodite gets labelled the patron of lesbians.

This poem is written in Aeolic Greek and Sapphic stanzas, a meter where three long lines of the same length were followed by a fourth shorter line. It was written in first person and was one of the most important things which proved that Sappho was in fact queer, as the person mentioned to be the object of her desires was female . The poem was written in form of prayer to Lady Aphrodite, and was written how most Ancient Greek hymns are, in three parts.

The contents of the poem were the speaker asking for Lady Aphrodite’s help in her longing for an unnamed female who’s caught the speaker’s eye. The speaker (who it’s believed to simply be Sappho) asks for Aphrodite’s help in easing her pain from the unrequited love she’s experiencing. After being invoked, Aphrodite appears to Sappho and comforts her by saying that the woman who rejected her will someday pursue Sappho herself. The poem ends with the speaker asking the goddess to help her in all her future romantic struggles.

Overall, this poem showed Aphrodite as a kind and caring goddess and helped cement the idea that she is happy to help wherever she can, no matter if it’s homosexual relationships or heterosexual relationships you find yourself in, which would help a lot of people come to terms with their sexuality, and would help a lot of her queer worshippers nowadays.

[chengchengj]

Alexandre: Hephaestion completes me.

Roxana: Um…hello?

Alexandre: You’re nice too, Rox.

Roxana: I’m your wife.

Alexandre: Ah, but Hephaestion is my soulmate. Huge difference.

[queeratlast]

IYKYK 👀👀👀

[kaliarda]

Κοντροσόλ Στο Χάος (1986 - 1992)

[revwack]

stop erasing intersex people and our bodies

[photoshopped by me]

[whereserpentswalk]

There's no actual proof there was hetrosexuality in ancient Greece, as much a lot of cishet teens online like to say there was. Yes they had a strange ritual known as marriage where older men would sexually exploit young girls, but that doesn't mean they had modern views about hetrosexual love being accepted.

Yes, I know a lot of people ship Orpheus and Eurydice nowadays, but that doesn't mean the ancient Greeks saw them that way. They were very close, and we know he cared about her enough to venture into the underworld. But we don't have any explict sex scenes between them in any source, so it could have been a friendship.

Stop trying to impose your modern values onto the ancients.

This isn't my actual opinion I'm making fun of how people talk about queer history.

[leonardoeatscarrots]

Transgenders your Dionysus

[tragediambulante]

Apollo and the Shepherd Daphnis, Pietro Perugino, 1475-1500

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 37: Ancient History XVII and Earlier

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct earlier time grouping. Basically, I'd already moved on to human history, but I'd periodically get a pre-homin suggestion, hence the occasional random item waaay out of it's time period, rather than reopen the category.

In some cases a culture lasted a really long time and I grouped them by whether it was likely the later or earlier grouping made the most sense with the information I had. (Invention ofs tend to fall in an earlier grouping if it's still open. Ones that imply height of or just before something tend to get grouped later, but not always. Sometimes I'll split two different things from the same culture into different polls because they involve separate research goals or the like).

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration. All cultures and time periods welcome.

[itsybitsybatsyspider]

i would say one of the most neurodivergent moments in my life was in 7th grade history when we were taking a little quiz on Ancient Greece and an extra credit question our teacher gave us was 'Name 3 Greek gods'

and boi let me tell you

I took that instruction and ran with it and kept listing Greek gods until i had filled up the whole back space and we ran out of time in class. There was honestly like 30 names or something that i had listed. I was so excited for that test and that segment in our curriculum because i could finally talk about my hyperfixation and use it to get a good grade, like it was easy as fuck.

and then later i had found out that my teacher had came up to my mom one day and told her that i had listed some gods that even he didn't know about.

obviously i got the extra credit and the vindication was worth it

[chengchengj]

Ptolemy: Alexander, you need to- Alexander, tearing up: Hephaestion always used to call me Alexander. Ptolemy: Because it's your goddamn name.