Sex And Charicles Forms Of Love

Pseudo Lucian’s dialogue “Forms of Love” centers on a debate the narrator, Lycinus, was privy to. The purpose of this debate was to determine whether a love for boys or a love for women was the superior form of sexual love; Callicratidas, an Athenian, argued on behalf of love for boys and Charicles, a Corinthian, argued on behalf of love for women. Through analyzing the arguments presented by Charicles, one can draw conclusions about the various effects gender and gender roles had on social hierarchy in Greece and gain an understanding of the social norms and cultural beliefs relating to gender and sexuality that these opinions are based in.
To explore societal sources of these beliefs, we must first establish how these beliefs were defined
…let them have intercourse with each other just as men do. Let them strap to themselves cunningly contrived instruments of lechery, those mysterious monstrosities….Let wanton [Lesbianism]….freely parade itself, and let our women’s chambers emulate Philaenis, disgracing themselves with Sapphic amours. And how much better that a woman should invade the provinces of male wantonness than that the nobility of the male sex should become effeminate and play the part of a woman!” (518). The first sentence of this text frames female and male homoeroticism as strikingly different in terms of how they are viewed by society. Charicles’ statement that, if male homoeroticism is accepted, female homoeroticism should also be accepted is comparable to claims by modern conservatives that if homosexual marriage is legal, America should also make it legal to marry one’s pet. Proof that this comparison was purposefully presented as a sarcastic, false equivalence is seen in phrases and descriptive terms found in the following sentences; when discussing the female sex and its members’ sexuality, the words “monstrosities,” “disgracing,” and “lechery” are used to bring forth negative associations with female homoerotic acts. However, the source of this negativity is not the act of homoeroticism itself, but rather the social implications of the act: a woman acting out the role of a man. The bolded text demonstrates a societal hierarchy through the phrase, “how much better.” We previously determined that masculine men were considered superior to feminine women, and we now learn that a masculine woman was more socially acceptable than a feminine man through the implicit ranking. A likely reason for these differing levels of acceptance arises from the idea that, though a woman wanting