The Cambridge History of Gay and Lbian Lerature - November 2014
Contents:
WAS ANCIENT GREEK POET SAPPHO GAY ?
The last is a particularly load issue, given that, for many rears and scholars, Sappho has been a femist heroe or a gay role mol, or both. There were no words Ancient Greek Sappho’s time that meant “gay, ” “bi, ” or “straight. In other words, each person is herently “straight, ” “gay, ” “bisexual, ” or somethg else.
In fact, there are no words Ancient Greek that are equivalent to the English words “straight, ” “gay, ” or “bi. As a rult, outsi the poems of Sappho, there are extremely few survivg sourc that discs homoerotic love and attractn between women at all. Female homoeroticism was also apparently an acceptable subject to be celebrated artistic pictns durg this perd.
620 BCE pictg a homoerotic scene of two women, wh one woman touchg the ch of the other a gture of urtship. A morn person might read this passage and thk that the woman is not terted him bee he’s a man and she’s gay, but the speaker claims that she’s not terted him bee she’s young, he’s old, and she’d rather be wh a woman who’s prumably closer to her own age.