Wednesday, 10 April 2024
The Roman Sexual Code - Muliebris Patientia (woman-like passivity)
Male anxieties about effeminacy have been in Western culture since the Greeks a perennial source of misogyny and bigotry. In so patriarchal a society as Rome, any comparison of a man to a woman was thought to humiliate the man.
For a male to be penetrated by another male was to consent to let himself be used as a woman and a wife.
Romans relied on stereotypical tokens of effeminacy to identify men willing to be receptive partners in same-sex acts. Such men were known as cinaedi or molles. The cinaedus signals he is ready to be used sexually as a woman by letting his hair grow long, wearing see-through silk togas of green or saffron, perfuming himself with balsam, plucking his eyebrows and painting his eyes, mincing when he walks, and shaving his legs and buttocks. Men, said the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who shave their body hair or pluck it out mean they want to be women.
The deep-seated prejudice against adult male passives distilled in formulas like servilis patientia (slave-like submission) and muliebris patientia (woman-like passivity).
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