Hubbard and the Extermination Collusion

Thanks, Eric, for reviving this 2018 thread, which I do not recall reading at the time. I see I did not respond to it. It's possible, however, that this post led me to read Hubbard's important article, "Popular Perceptions of Elite Homosexuality in Classical Athens," Arion ser. 3, 6.1 (1998) 48-78, which has very much influenced my understanding of Athenian pederasty. If so, I failed to return to Sam's post to address his critique of Hubbard's thesis. I should re-read the Hubbard article in light of this critique. But I would be surprised if Hubbard, in saying pederasty was practiced by only a "minority" of "[e]ven... the upper class," was invoking our contemporary notion of stable and distinct heterosexual and homosexual orientations. These are anachronisms if applied transhistorically, and are of questionable validity even in our own period -- have we discarded the Kinsey scale? Sam elsewhere (see link below) speaks approvingly of Paglia's notion of "bisexual responsiveness." In performing math using what he calls the "overinflated 10% bandied around today" to estimate a prevalence of homosexuality among Athenians of different social classes, I suspect Sam was engaging in a bit of sarcasm. The gay movement promoted a "born this way" view of sexual orientation because it was an effective tactic against moral condemnation of sexual difference. In the form of "born in the wrong body" it did the same kind of work for the trans movement. But human sexuality and gender are more mutable and diverse than those binary slogans would suggest. hugzu ;-p (Boychat.org link) Oh stop it! (Sam Hall post)