Tabooing many aspects of human sexuality is a great way to build a hateful society, used both in Russia and by Islamic extremists.
Homer’s «Iliad» begins with the scene of Achilles’ anger: Achilles was angry with Agamemnon because he took away the captive Briseis due to the great warrior. This is a completely natural reaction of an angry male. The only thing that is incomprehensible from a modern point of view: why does Achilles need Briseis if he already has Patroclus?
You tell me — this is literature. Well, then here’s a story for you: the Spartan king Cleomenes, having fled to Egypt, tried to arrange a coup there and seize power. The attempt failed, the Spartans were surrounded, Cleomenes ordered everyone to commit suicide. The last survivor was Pantheus, who, according to Plutarch, “was once the beloved of the king and now received orders from him to die last when he was convinced that all the others were dead … Cleomenes pricked his ankle and noticed that his face was distorted, he kissed the king and sat down beside him. When Cleomenes expired, Pantheus embraced the corpse and, without opening his arms, stabbed himself to death.
After that, as Plutarch mentions, the young wife of Panthea also stabbed herself: «A bitter fate befell them both in the midst of their love.»
Again: so Cleomenes or the young wife?
Alcibiades was Socrates’ lover, which did not prevent him from later throwing heterosexual orgies all over Athens. The womanizer Caesar in his youth was «the bedding of King Nicomedes.» Pelopidas, beloved of Epaminondas, commanded the Theban sacred detachment, which consisted of lovers and lovers, which did not prevent his wife from «seeing him off with tears from the house.» Zeus took the boy Ganymede to Olympus in the claws, which did not prevent Zeus from seducing Demeter, Persephone, Europe, Danae and the list goes on, and in ancient Greece, husbands in love swore an oath of allegiance to each other on the grave of Iolaus, beloved Hercules, to whom Hercules gave his wife wife Megara. The greatest conqueror of antiquity, Alexander the Great, loved his beloved Hephaestion so much that they simultaneously married two daughters of Darius. These are not love triangles for you, these are some, straight, love tetrahedra!
As someone who had been taught ancient history by his father since the age of six, two obvious questions have bothered me for quite some time.
— Why is the modern gay perceived by society and behaves like a feminine being, while in antiquity gays were the most ferocious warriors?
— And why is homosexuality now considered a type of minority sexual orientation, while in antiquity it was rather described as a period in the life of a significant number of men?
The discussion that unfolded on the occasion of the medieval homophobic laws adopted by the State Duma gives me the opportunity to speak on this issue. Moreover, both sides of the dispute demonstrate, in my opinion, amazing ignorance: both those who stigmatize «unnatural sin» and those who say: «We are gay, and we are genetically born that way.»
Homosexuals don’t exist? Just like heterosexuals.
“The belief that man is, or should be, a heterosexual being is, quite simply, a myth,” writes James Neill in his The origins and role of same-sex relations in human societies, a book radical rethinking of the very foundations of human behavior, I can only compare with Sigmund Freud.
This is where we start: from the point of view of modern biology, the assertion that homosexuality does not exist in nature and that sex is needed for reproduction is simply wrong. It is as obvious and as false as the statement «The sun revolves around the Earth.»
I will give a simple example. Our closest relative, along with the chimpanzee, is the bonobo, the pygmy chimpanzee. The common ancestor of chimpanzees and bonobos lived 2,5 million years ago, and the common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees and bonobos lived about 6-7 million years ago. Some biologists believe that bonobos are somewhat closer to humans than chimpanzees, because they have a number of features that make them related to humans. For example, female bonobos are almost always ready to mate. This is a unique trait that distinguishes bonobos and humans from all other primates.
Bonobo society is distinguished by two striking features among primates. First, it is matriarchal. It is not led by an alpha male, as in other primates, but by a group of old females. This is all the more surprising because bonobos, like their closest relatives homo and chimpanzees, have pronounced sexual dimorphism, and the female has an average body weight of 80% of the male. Apparently, this matriarchy is associated precisely with the aforementioned ability of female bonobos to constantly mate.
But the most important thing is different. Bonobo is a monkey that regulates almost all conflicts within the team through sex. This is a monkey who, in the wonderful expression of Franz de Waal, vividly embodies the hippie slogan: «Make love, not war»2.
If chimpanzees solve conflicts with violence, then bonobos solve them with sex. Or even easier. If a monkey wants to take a banana from another monkey, then if it is a chimpanzee, then he will come up, give a horn and take the banana. And if it’s a bonobo, he’ll come up and make love, and then get a banana in gratitude. The sex of both monkeys does not matter. Bonobos are bisexual in the full sense of the word.
You will tell me that bonobos are unique. Yes, in the sense that they have sex as an expression of equality.
The problem is that all other primates also engage in homosexual sex, only it usually takes a slightly different form.
For example, gorillas are also our close relatives, our evolutionary lines diverged 10-11 million years ago. Gorillas live in a small pack of 8-15 individuals, in which there is a pronounced alpha male, 3-6 females and adolescents. Question: what about young males who were kicked out of the pack, but there are no females for them? Young males often form their own pack, as young human males often form an army, and relationships within a pack of young males are maintained through sex.
Baboons live in large flocks, up to 100 individuals, and since a group of alpha males is at the head of the flock, the question naturally arises: how can an alpha male prove his superiority over young males without killing them to death, and young males, again, how to prove your obedience? The answer is obvious: the alpha male proves his advantage by climbing on a subordinate, usually a younger male. As a rule, this is a mutually beneficial relationship. If such an eromenos (the ancient Greeks called this term the one who occupied the position of Alcibiades in relation to Socrates) is offended by other monkeys, he will squeal, and an adult male will immediately come to the rescue.
In general, same-sex sex with young males is so common among monkeys that some researchers believe that monkeys go through a homosexual phase in their development3.
Homosexual relationships in nature are an area in which the Copernican revolution is taking place before our eyes. As early as 1977, George Hunt’s pioneering work on lesbian couples among black-headed gulls in California was rejected several times for being inconsistent with biblical concepts of biology.
Then, when it became impossible to deny the embarrassment, the stage of Freudian explanations came: “This is a game”, “Yes, this baboon climbed on another baboon, but this is not sex, but domination.” The stump is clear that dominance: but why in this way?
In 1999, the breakthrough work of Bruce Bagemill4 counted 450 species that have homosexual relationships. Since then, one or another type of homosexual relationship has been recorded in 1,5 thousand species of animals, and now the problem is exactly the opposite: biologists cannot prove that there are species that do not have them.
At the same time, the nature and frequency of these connections unusually differ from each other. In a lion, the king of beasts, in a pride, up to 8% of sexual contacts occur between individuals of the same sex. The reason is exactly the same as that of baboons. The head of the pride is the alpha male (rarely two, then they are brothers), and the alpha male needs to build relationships with the younger generation and with the co-ruler so as not to devour each other.
In herds of mountain sheep, up to 67% of contacts are homosexual, and a domestic sheep is a unique animal, in which 10% of individuals will still climb on another sheep, even if there is a female nearby. However, this feature can be attributed to unnatural conditions in which behavior generally changes: let’s compare, for example, with the sexual behavior of men in Russian prisons.
Another unique animal is the giraffe. He has up to 96% of his contacts are homosexual.
All of the above are examples of herd animals that, through sex within the same sex, reduce friction in the team, demonstrate dominance, or, conversely, maintain equality. However, there are examples of homosexual couples in animals living in pairs.
For example, 25% of black swans are gay. Males form an inseparable pair, build a nest together and, by the way, incubate strong offspring, because a female who has noticed such a pair usually sneaks up and rolls an egg into the nest. Since both males are strong birds, they have a large territory, a lot of food, and the offspring (not theirs, but relatives) are excellent.
In conclusion, I will tell you one more story, which is also quite unique, but very important.
The researchers noticed that the number of lesbian pairs among black-headed gulls in Patagonia depends on El Niño, in other words, on the weather and the amount of food. If there is less food, then the number of lesbian couples grows, while one gull cares for an already fertilized partner, and they raise chicks together. That is, a reduced amount of food leads to a decrease in the number of chicks while improving the quality of life of the remaining ones.
Actually, this story perfectly demonstrates the mechanism of the emergence of homosexuality.
To think that the DNA replicating machine — and we are the DNA replicating machines — needs to make as many copies as possible is a very primitive understanding of Darwin. As the leading modern neo-Darwinist Richard Dawkins has so beautifully shown, the DNA replicating machine needs something else—that as many copies as possible survive to reproduce.
Simply stupid reproduction of this can not be achieved. If a bird lays 6 eggs in the nest, and she has only 3 resources to feed, then all the chicks will die, and this is a bad strategy.
Therefore, there are many behavioral strategies aimed at maximizing survival. One such strategy is, for example, territorial.
The females of many birds simply will not marry a male if he does not have a nest — read: the territory from which he will feed the chicks. If another male survives from the nest, then the female will remain at the nest. She’s married, gu.e. speaking, not for the male, but for the nest. For food resources.
Another survival strategy is to build a hierarchy and pack. The right to reproduce gets the best, alpha male. A strategy that is complementary to hierarchy is homosexual sex. In a pack, there are usually three questions to solve: how can the alpha male prove his superiority over the young males without crippling them (which will reduce the chances of the gene machine for survival), how can the young males build relationships among themselves, again without hacking each other to death, And how to make sure that females do not fight among themselves?
ចម្លើយគឺជាក់ស្តែង។
And if you think a person is above that, I have a simple question. Tell me, please, when a person kneels in front of a ruler, that is, in front of an alpha male, or, moreover, prostrates himself, what does he actually mean and what biological habits of distant ancestors does this gesture go back to?
Sex is too powerful a tool to be used in one single way. Sex is not only a mechanism for reproduction, but also a mechanism for creating bonds within the group that contribute to the survival of the group. The very incredible variety of types of behavior based on homosexual sex indicates that this strategy arose independently in the history of evolution more than once, as, for example, the eye arose several times.
Among the lower animals, there are also quite a lot of gays, and finally — this is a question of diversity — I can’t help but please you with the story of an ordinary bed bug. This bastard copulates with another bug for a very simple reason: she copulates with someone who just sucked blood.
As you can easily see above, in the animal kingdom, homosexual relationships are characterized by a huge variety. They express a very large number of relationships in very different ways.
A person who does not have innate behavioral responses, but has an unusual number of customs, laws and rituals, and these customs not only rest on physiology, but also enter into a stable feedback with it and influence it — the dispersion of behavior patterns regarding homosexuality colossal. One can construct a long classification scale of societies according to their attitude towards homosexuality.
At one end of this scale will be, for example, the Judeo-Christian civilization with its categorical prohibition of the sin of Sodom.
At the other end of the scale would be, for example, the Etoro community. This is a small tribe in New Guinea, in which, like many New Guinean tribes in general, such a substance as a male seed occupies a central role in the universe.
From the point of view of the Etoro, the boy cannot grow up unless he receives the male seed. Therefore, at the age of ten, all boys are taken away from women (they generally treat women badly, consider them witches, etc.) and take them to a men’s house, where a boy from 10 to 20 years old regularly receives his portion of a growth-promoting agent, anally and orally. Without this, «the boy will not grow up.» To the questions of the researchers: “How, and you too?” — the natives answered: «Well, you see: I grew up.» The brother of his future wife usually takes advantage of the boy, but on solemn occasions a lot of other assistants participate in the ritual. After the age of 20, the boy grows up, the roles change, and he already acts as a donor of the means of growth.
Usually at this moment he marries, and since he usually marries a girl who is still underage, at this moment he has two partners, with both of whom he communicates, as a Protestant pastor would say, «in an unnatural way.» Then the girl grows up, he has children, and by the age of 40 begins to lead a completely heterosexual life, not counting the social duty on solemn dates to help the future generation grow up.
Following the model of thisoro, the pioneers and the Komsomol were organized in our USSR, with the only difference being that they fucked the brain, and not other parts of the body.
I’m not a big fan of political correctness, which claims that every human culture is unique and wonderful. Some cultures do not deserve the right to exist. It is hardly possible to find anything more disgusting in the list of human cultures than etoro, except, of course, for the sweet habit of the priests of some extinct American civilizations to copulate with future victims before the sacrifice.
The difference between Christian culture and etoro is noticeable to the naked eye. And it lies in the fact that Christian culture has spread throughout the world and has given rise to a great civilization, and the Etoros have been sitting in their jungles and are sitting. By the way, this circumstance is directly related to the views on sex, because Christians forbade homosexual relationships and were fruitful and multiplied in such numbers that they had to settle, and thanks to their marriage habits, thisoros are in balance with nature.
This is especially for lovers of balance with nature: please do not forget that some of the tribes that were in this very balance achieved this homeostasis that thrilled the souls of the «green» with the help of pedophilia and cannibalism.
However, there were a huge number of cultures in the world that were no less successful than ours, sometimes were its direct predecessors and were quite tolerant of homosexuality.
First of all, this is the ancient culture I have already mentioned, but also the culture of the ancient Germans and samurai Japan. Often, just as between young gorillas, sex happened between young warriors, and mutual affection made such an army completely invincible.
The Theban sacred company was all composed of young men, bound in this way, beginning with their leaders, the famous statesmen Pelopidas and Epaminondas. Plutarch, who is generally very ambivalent about sex between men, told us a story about how King Philip, having defeated the Thebans at Chaeronea and seeing the corpses of lovers and lovers who died side by side without taking a single step back, dropped: “Let him perish one who believes that they have done something shameful.»
Detachments of young lovers were characteristic of the ferocious Germans. According to the story of Procopius of Caesarea6, Alaric, who sacked Rome in 410, achieved this by cunning: namely, having selected 300 beardless youths from his army, he presented them to patricians greedy for this business, and he himself pretended to remove the camp: on the appointed day, the youths, who were among the most courageous warriors, killed the city guards and let the Goths in. Thus, if Troy was taken with the help of a horse, then Rome — with the help of pi … races.
Samurai treated homosexuality in exactly the same way as the Spartans, that is, gu.e. speaking, he was allowed, like football or fishing. If fishing is allowed in a society, this does not mean that everyone will do it. This means that nothing strange will be found in it, unless, of course, a person falls into madness for the sake of fishing.
In conclusion, I will mention a social institution, which, perhaps, not everyone knows about. This is the Korean social institution «hwarang» of the Silla Dynasty: an army of elite aristocratic boys, famous for their courage, as well as their habit of painting their faces and dressing like women. The head of the Hwarang Kim Yushin (595-673) played a leading role in the unification of Korea under the rule of Silla. After the fall of the dynasty, the word «hwarang» came to mean «male prostitute».
And if you find the habits of the Hwarang strange, then a dumb question: please tell me why so many warriors in various societies went into battle in multi-colored plumes and feathers, like prostitutes on the panel?
Actually, now it will be easy for us to answer the question posed at the beginning of this article: why did Achilles have Briseis if he already had Patroclus?
In human society, behavior is not determined by biology. It is culturally conditioned. Even primates do not have innate patterns of behavior: groups of chimpanzees can differ in habits no less than human nations. In humans, however, behavior is not determined at all by biology, but by culture, or rather, by the unpredictable transformation of biology by culture.
A typical example of this, by the way, is homophobia. Scientific studies show that usually homophobes are closeted homosexuals. The standard homophobe is the frustrated homosexual who has repressed his drives and replaced them with hatred for those who didn’t.
And here is an opposite example: in modern society, it is women (that is, those who obviously cannot be suspected of being gay) who are more sympathetic towards male homosexuality. Mary Renault wrote a novel about Alexander the Great on behalf of his Persian lover Bagoas; my beloved Lois McMaster Bujold wrote the novel «Ethan from the planet Eytos», in which a young man from the planet of homosexuals (by this time the problem of reproduction without the participation of the woman herself, of course, had long been solved) enters the big world and meets — oh, horror! — this terrible creature — a woman. And JK Rowling admitted that Dumbledore is gay. Apparently, the author of these lines is also in this good company.
The gay community has recently been very fond of research on the biochemical triggers of homosexuality (usually we are talking about certain hormones that begin to be produced even in the womb during stress). But these biochemical triggers exist precisely because they trigger a behavioral response that increases the chances of a species surviving under given conditions. This is not a glitch in the program, this is a subprogram that reduces the population, but increases the amount of food for the rest and improves their mutual assistance.
Human behavior is infinitely plastic. Human cultures exhibit all types of primate behavior. A person can obviously live in monogamous families and obviously (especially under conditions of stress or despotism) is able to gather in huge flocks with a hierarchy, an alpha male, a harem, and the reverse side of the hierarchy — homosexuality, both physiological and symbolic.
On top of this whole pie, the economy is also superimposed, and in a rapidly changing world, with a condom, etc., all these ancient behavioral mechanisms finally failed.
How quickly these mechanisms change, and what very non-biological things they depend on, can be seen in Edward Evans-Pritchard’s classic work on the Zande ‘boy-wife’ institution. Back in the 8s, the Azande had kings with huge harems; there was a shortage of women in society, extramarital sex was punishable by death, a bride price was very expensive, and young warriors at the palace could not afford it. Accordingly, among the advanced Azande, as in modern France, same-sex marriage was allowed, with respondents making it clear to Evans-Pritchard that the institution of «boy-wives» was caused by the scarcity and high cost of women. As soon as the institution of unmarried warriors at the palace disappeared (cf. with young gorillas or the ancient Germans), bride price and death for extramarital sex, “boy-wives” also ended.
In a sense, homosexuals do not exist at all. As well as heterosexuals. There is a human sexuality that is in complex feedback with societal norms.
LGBT propaganda often repeats the phrase about “10% of congenital gays in any population”9. Everything we know about human culture shows that this is complete nonsense. Even among gorillas, the number of gays does not depend on genetics, but on the environment: have females become free? Not? Can a young male survive alone? Or is it better to form an «army»? All we can say is that the number of gays is clearly non-zero even where there are a lot of heads for it; that it is 100% in those cultures where it is obligatory (for example, in a number of tribes of New Guinea) and that among Spartan kings, Roman emperors and pupils of Japanese goji this figure clearly exceeded 10%, and Patroclus did not interfere with Briseis in any way.
Total. To claim in the XNUMXst century that homosexual intercourse is peccarum contra naturam (sin against nature) is like claiming that the sun revolves around the earth. Now biologists have a completely different problem: they cannot reliably find bisexual animals that do not have it, at least in a symbolic form.
One of the most dangerous features of both homophobia and LGBT propaganda, in my opinion, is that both of them impose on a young man who has felt an interest in his own sex, an idea of himself as a “person with deviations” and a “minority” . A samurai or a Spartan in this situation would go fishing and would not rack his brains: whether the majority are those who go fishing or not, and whether going fishing does not contradict marriage with a woman. As a result, a person who in another culture, like Alcibiades or Caesar, would consider his behavior just an aspect of his sexuality or a phase of his development, turns into either a frustrated homophobe who accepts medieval laws, or a frustrated gay who goes to gay parades. , proving, «Yes, I am.»
Also important to me is this.
Even George Orwell in «1984» noted the most important role that sexual prohibitions play in building a totalitarian society. Of course, Putin cannot, like the Christian church, forbid any joys of life, except for heterosexual contact in a missionary position for the purpose of procreation. It would be too much. However, tabooing many aspects of human sexuality is a great way to build a dysfunctional, hate-filled society, used by both Putin and Islamic extremists.
The position of the editors of Psychologos: “Bestiality, pedophilia or homosexuality — from the point of view of the social development of society, and from the point of view of individual development — is about the same controversial activity as playing slot machines. As a rule, in modern realities, this is a stupid and harmful occupation. At the same time, if bestiality and pedophilia today has practically no justification (we do not live in the ancient world) and can confidently be condemned, then it is more difficult with homosexuality. This is a very undesirable deviation for society, but not always a free choice for a person — some people are born with such deviations. And in this case, modern society tends to cultivate a certain tolerance.