Posted on 03/17/2008 8:50:15 PM PDT by Marc Tumin
It was late on a rainy fall day, and a college freshman named Rey was showing me the new tattoo on his arm. It commemorated his 500-mile hike through Europe the previous summer, which happened also to be, he said, the last time he was happy. We sat together for a while in his room talking, his tattoo of a piece with his spiky brown hair, oversize tribal earrings and very baggy jeans. He showed me a photo of himself and his girlfriend kissing, pointed out his small drum kit, a bass guitar that lay next to his rumpled clothes and towels and empty bottles of green tea, one full of dried flowers, and the ink self-portraits and drawings of nudes that he had tacked to the walls. Thick jasmine incense competed with his cigarette smoke. He changed the music on his laptop with the melancholy, slightly startled air of a college boy on his own for the first time.
Rey’s story, though, had some unusual dimensions. The elite college he began attending last year in New York City, with its academically competitive, fresh-faced students, happened to be a women’s school, Barnard. That’s because when Rey first entered the freshman class, he was a woman.
Rey, who asked that neither his last name nor his given name be used to protect his and his family’s privacy, grew up in Chappaqua, the affluent Westchester suburb that is home to the Clintons, and had a relatively ordinary, middle-class Jewish childhood....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“I knew someone once at work who’d gone through this. I can’t begin to imagine the stress on them wrestling with these decisions. It was a very sad story that finally turned out for the best.”
________________________________________________________________________________-
I dunno, I’ve heard rumblings that a substantial proportion of transsexuals end up regretting their choice but that, like abortion and breast cancer, those figures are suppressed by the usual suspects. I’m willing to bet, that the cause of gender dysmorphic disorder is not so mysterious after all, that most of it’s victims, like nearly all gays, were in fact molested as very young children.
> “Mayhap if boys were raised by men and girls raised by women, this wouldn’t be a problem.?” <
That’s the way they did it in ancient Greece. The result was rampant homosexuality.
But the sons haven't a clue as to where to pit it anyway.
There’s a good reason he was in the abnormal psych class.
Sick.
You are not allowed to make such radical suggestions until you check in with:
ping
That is myth. There was no “rampant” homosexuality in either ancient or Hellenistic Greece.
Sorry, Nucsubs, but as a highly trained professional Art Historian, I beg to differ.
The Greeks idealized the man-boy love relationship to such an extent that they painted the pornographic subject on pottery. Lots of pottery. There are people who collect it (no doubt for the salaciousness of the subject), and in museums it is usually kept in the storage areas accessible only to staff. We unlucky few are, ahem, exposed to it. (Sorry for the pun.)
I take it from your handle that you were in the Nuclear Sub Fleet. I was, for six years, a Navy linguist (CTI).
Among particular social and economic cadres of the ancient world, there was certainly nothing deemed wrong with homosexual liaisons under accepted protocols. On the other hand, for the vast majority of rural folk in the Mediterranean world, heterosexuality and marriage were, of course, the norms. The pre-Christian poor and agrarian classes considered homosexual acts deviant, not on religious grounds of sinfulness, but rather as proof of corruption and decadence that were the wages of too much money and too much time in town.
This is merely the one quote I could find quickly online. I have read several books by him and he makes it quite clear that homosexuality was neither "rampant" nor celebrated. It was accepted in very narrow terms and considered a pathology of the very wealthy (hence the surviving art evidence you point to and the persistence of the myth). Your argument comes from the likes of Cahill who is a liberal hack next to Hanson.
I was in from 85-92, See my profile.
> “...It was accepted in very narrow terms and considered a pathology of the very wealthy...” <
Good catch. That statement sounds like it would be closer to the “norm” for the majority who are usually voiceless. Why? Unfortunately rural folk in the ancient world didn’t write the histories - they couldn’t write much less read. To receive an education one had to have wealth - so guess who wrote the histories?
Interest in how ancient peoples lived, other than the very wealthy, has been of increasing interest during the last half of the 20th century, something I believe we Americans fostered. Personally I’m glad to see it.
Western Civilization’s classical perception of the ancient world has tended to be fixed by the interests of 18th-19th century Europeans, a group whose backgrounds were anything but middleclass. The homosexual agenda goes way back.
Thank you for the civil conversation on this subject.
The issue was not about the presence of homosexuality in Greece, it was the use of use of "rampant". It made it sound like the Greeks were all rump rangers.
They were not and most of the ones who did participate in this repulsive behavior practiced more of a pedastry with feminine looking adolescent boys, never grown men.
“Sorry Rey, but you are not a man” - The Men
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.