Highly recommended reading (link below): Richard Carrier’s fascinating talk “Sex &a
Highly recommended reading (link below): Richard Carrier’s fascinating talk “Sex & Sexism in Ancient Rome.” Carrier, a scholar of the ancient world, tells you everything you didn’t know about sex in the Roman Empire. He’s a great speaker, very specific, funny, clear, and informative in how he describes the Romans being at the same time very controlling, sexist, and punitive about sex and also very open in portraying sex in public art. Read an excerpt below and the whole essay at http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/8938[P]aintings of sex in public were not a crime. In fact, they were everywhere. In fact, no sex act was forbidden to be publicly displayed in art. And that includes, that means that, gay and straight sex, almost in equal proportions, were on tableware; you went to a party, they would just be on your cup, your plate, whatever. It’d be on a home’s walls, when you go visit somebody, and it would be right there in the living room. There’d be this sex scene, right on the wall. “Uh, okay.” Right on the wall of the home. Street signs, statues. There is an example from Pompeii, we found a stone, a really realistic stone statue of Pan fucking a goat. Really hyper-realistic and accurate depiction of the god Pan having sex with a goat. And it’s clear that this was actually in a garden. Someone just had this, they were proud of it, they displayed it publicly when people showed up at their house. “Look at this, isn’t this great?” The Roman Baths in Pompeii … were frequented by both men and women, possibly at different times of the day, but they would be frequenting the same rooms, and therefore seeing the same scenes of sex depicted. So they weren’t shy about letting women see sex. Now, these scenes were of basically every conceivable—basically every porn scene you’ve ever seen in life is depicted in some form. Including bisexual MMF threeways—a guy is fucking a guy while he is fucking a girl while she is in a prone position, for example. We have an example of a picture of a fully bisexual four-way, where there is a guy fucking a guy, being blown by a girl who is being eaten out by another girl.[C]unnilingus was depicted in the baths, too, as well. A woman fucking another woman with a strap on is depicted. There are all of these things. The use and display of dildos and strap-ons in fact was an open industry. They were usually made of red leather, we know. It was a booming industry; women could go to market and procure them. There is so much evidence, in fact, of women pegging men—and each other—but of women pegging men as well, and it was clearly popular. This was a thing that Romans were doing a lot. And it is kind of interesting to note as to whether anyone was prosecuted for a sex crime for receiving that. Technically you should have been. But we don’t have any cases on record. That’s an evidence issue. But people would do it in private, I guess.(Post #700 at straight-male-anal-erotic.tumblr.com) -- source link
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#sex history#sexology#roman sex#pompeii#roman baths