Fourth lecture

I will keep it short. My expectations (or fears) expressed here are to some extent met, though an outright defense of the current "only two genders" mania does not, thankfully, emerge. Malcolm pulls together his claims effectively. To the extent we need to explain different patterns of male-male sexual behavior between north and south Europe -- and clearly there was regional difference -- Malcolm suggests plausible explanations, in particular the marriage pattern distinction first noted by John Hajnal in 1965 (though my understanding was that this doesn't quite match geographically, and as Malcolm concedes, is less an explanation than just another thing that needs explaining). His conception of European pederasty remains, to me, reductive: "[T]here’s no sense that there would be an intrinsic pleasure, a sexual pleasure, in, so to speak, mutually rejoicing in the maleness of the two people.” (31:45, picking up his remark in the first lecture: "This is not a desire of the male for a masculine object of desire" -- nothing gay here. And later: “[Boys] were, to put it crudely, substitute or honorary girls or women in the way that they were thought of.” (32:50) He blames Foucault, who he says “set historians out on a wild goose chase” for the emergence of gay identity. (42:10) He does, at the last moment, mention the Greeks, but praises Davidson (The Greeks and Greek Love, 2007) as the new authority on the topic. I thought Davidson's attempt to assimilate Greek love to modern adult homosexuality had been demolished by Hubbard and others (a review of the book by Beert Verstraete is linked below). I remain anxious to read Malcolm's book, however, and hope to have a copy available by week's end. hugzu ;-p (https site) Beert Verstraete, The Greeks and Greek Love: A Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece (Bryn Mawr Classical Review) [@nonymouse] [Guardster] [Proxify] [Anonymisierungsdienst]