Bittersweet
March 9, 2015 10:18 AM   Subscribe

Since the late 19th century, the amount of her writing we have access to has more than doubled and our views of sexuality have changed, leading to constant modern reexamination of one of the greatest poets the world has ever seen: Who was Sappho? And just how much does her sexuality and her personal life matter to a discussion of her work?
Some ancient writers assumed that there had to have been two Sapphos: one the great poet, the other the notorious slut. There is an entry for each in the Suda. The uncertainties plaguing the biography of literature’s most famous Lesbian explain why classicists who study Sappho like to cite the entry for her in Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig’s “Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary” (1979). To honor Sappho’s central position in the history of female homosexuality, the two editors devoted an entire page to her. The page is blank. . . . Even as we strain to hear this remarkable woman’s sweet speech, the thrumming in our ears grows louder.
Previously: Metafilter (awesomely) tackles the newly discovered "Brothers Poem" in real time.
posted by sallybrown (41 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
I really liked this (and am already saving up to get the Royer translations which sound delightful).

The article is a nice look into how modern perspectives (of whatever era) are imposed upon readings of the past and upon ancient translations, much less fragments. The blurriness between what we know, what we think we know, what we suspect, and what could be are obvious in Sappho's case, where the excellence of her work seems to make it imperative for historians and poetry-lovers to fill in the gaps around her life with something that makes sense to them. It was nice to see that unpacked here: misunderstood jokes, poetic inferences, remnants of gossip, and all.
posted by julen at 10:52 AM on March 9, 2015


It really can't be seriously argued on one hand that her poems were intended to be expressions of cultural desire rather than personal desire, and on the other mine them for biographical tidbits. I'm getting kind of sick of pieces like this one, which on the aggregate tend to read at worse like apologia for LGBT cultural erasure, or at best like people arguing that we can't really know that William Shakespeare wrote all those plays.
posted by muddgirl at 11:16 AM on March 9, 2015


However exalted her reputation among the ancient literati, in Greek popular culture of the Classical period and afterward Sappho was known primarily as an oversexed predator—of men. This, in fact, was the ancient cliché about “Lesbians”: when we hear the word today we think of love between women, but when the ancient Greeks heard the word they thought of blow jobs. In classical Greek, the verb lesbiazein—“to act like someone from Lesbos”—meant performing fellatio, an activity for which inhabitants of the island were thought to have a particular penchant.

I thought the above new information alone was worth the price of admission, for me...
posted by saulgoodman at 11:27 AM on March 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


anyone interested in the full panoply of sexual relations in the classical world should read a modern translation of Herodotus. he gives a mini ethnography of each ethnic group including how they fuck... homosexuality is really the least outre of the sex going on in the classical world.

and then there are the Spartans. unconquerable warriors who, according to the laws, were prohibited from learning any skill other than war. so, when they returned to Sparta from the battlefield there was nothing to do but sing and dance in chorus lines and chase young men. the great Spartan king Agesilaus, who as a youth "bottomed" for Lysander (the general who defeated Athens) is described as perpetually falling in love with young men and spends a lot of time in his tent after battle weeping over some man. everyone lived in same sex dorms and it was widely acknowledged that Spartan women would habitually fuck each other too... I think this is in either Plutarch or Xenophon.

but the thing is, this is all not just socially acceptable but *expected* behavior. the modern notion of homosexuality really doesn't apply.
posted by ennui.bz at 11:28 AM on March 9, 2015 [7 favorites]


It really can't be seriously argued on one hand that her poems were intended to be expressions of cultural desire rather than personal desire, and on the other mine them for biographical tidbits

Er...that isn't what the piece does. It isn't, in fact, arguing for any particular position in relationship to Sappho's poetry or biography (other than "it's really good poetry"), just pointing out the inherent complexity of the incredibly spotty historical record and how little we know about the cultural context in which the work was written and received.

The point about the "brother" mention in the recently discovered poem is not "and so this tells us that Sappho had a brother" it is that it explains a separate, ancient biographical claim that she did. That that claim (Herodotus's) may simply stem from an over-literal reading of the newly discovered poem is implicitly obvious in Mendelsohn's piece.

We just do not know if Sappho had sex with women, sex with men, was asexual, bisexual or omnisexual. We just do not know if the poems are fictional scenarios, personal 'confessions' or recognizable versions of other people's lives and romantic entanglements. Imagining a version of Sappho and insisting it must be the "true" one because that's how you'd like history to be is as indefensible if you're a 21st Century person insisting that she was obviously a lower-case-l "lesbian" as it is if you're a 19th century classicist insisting that such a thought would obviously never cross her mind.
posted by yoink at 11:28 AM on March 9, 2015 [5 favorites]


Sappho invented the guitar pick?!!
posted by latkes at 11:47 AM on March 9, 2015


Er...that isn't what the piece does.

I know the author himself isn't arguing for any particular viewpoint, but he does juxtaposes two different academic perspectives in a way I found both amusing and annoying.

That that claim (Herodotus's) may simply stem from an over-literal reading of the newly discovered poem is implicitly obvious in Mendelsohn's piece.

I re-read those two paragraphs and I still disagree. Perhaps the author intended to correlate this recent discovery with his earlier discussion of how tricky it is to nail down fact vs. layers of interpretation, but then it's written ineptly.
For specialists, the most exciting feature of the “Brothers Poem” is that it seems to corroborate the closest thing we have to a contemporary reference to Sappho’s personal life
"Corroborate" does not mean "explain".

Imagining a version of Sappho and insisting it must be the "true" one because that's how you'd like history to be

Who's doing this? Again, this starts to seem like a strawman attempting to erase the natural desire of people to find their own thoughts, feelings, and desires represented in the art of others.
posted by muddgirl at 11:50 AM on March 9, 2015


Who's doing this?

You, when you complain about "LGBT cultural erasure." That's putting a thumb on the scale and saying 'you're allowed to speculate/investigate/examine Sappho's life and times all you want, so long as you never reach any other conclusion than that she is an LGBT icon.'

"Corroborate" does not mean "explain".


No, but the "seems to corroborate" makes it pretty explicit that Mendelssohn is advancing no opinion as to what we conclusion we should draw, no? And "corroborate" does not mean "prove," it means, essentially, "tells the same story as." That the two stories "corroborate" each other does not mean that they prove something about Sappho's biography.
posted by yoink at 12:07 PM on March 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


This was really interesting stuff. My one beef was this line: Classicists today have no problem with the idea of a gay Sappho.

How can you assume that modern scholars are neutral toward Sappho's sexuality? We all have our unconscious biases and wishful thinking. It’s not like contemporary classists are immune from modern cultural homophobia. Likewise, many Sappho enthusiasts are probably pretty invested in her having some sort of queer sexuality (as defined by our modern concepts). No one is neutral.
posted by latkes at 12:08 PM on March 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


How can you assume that modern scholars are neutral toward Sappho's sexuality?

I don't think his point is "there is no living Classicist who is in any way homophobic." I think his point is that "taken as a whole, there is no systemic pressure in contemporary classical studies that would deprecate findings to the effect that Sappho preferred sex with women." Which is, I think, clearly true. In fact, I would expect the opposite to be somewhat the case; I think on the whole in contemporary academia literary scholars have a systemic preference for findings that the authors we admire and study have non-vanilla sexual/political/cultural preferences/orientations. It puts your object of study into more critical conversations and generally makes them "cooler" (or "hotter" if you prefer) than they would otherwise be.

If we were to suddenly dig up an "Autobiography of Sappho," say, I think there would be much more disappointment than otherwise in Classics departments around the world if it were to make it quite clear that the woman-woman love she writes about had nothing to do with her personal life.
posted by yoink at 12:19 PM on March 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


> This was really interesting stuff. My one beef was this line: Classicists today have no problem with the idea of a gay Sappho.

How can you assume that modern scholars are neutral toward Sappho's sexuality? We all have our unconscious biases and wishful thinking.


Good lord, I get tired of the MetaFilter tendency to treat every sentence in every linked piece as an ironclad statement of scientific fact, to be mocked if it shows hyperbole or generalization or in any way departs from the standard of discourse to be found in a physics dissertation. It is blindingly obvious that what is meant by "Classicists today have no problem with the idea of a gay Sappho" is not "There does not exist a single classicist today who does not enthusiastically embrace LGBT rights" or "contemporary classicists are immune from modern cultural homophobia" but "Compared to the rampant and unexamined homophobia of earlier generations, today's classicists are pretty accepting of homosexuality," which I think it would be hard to dispute.

I look forward to reading the essay when my physical copy of the New Yorker arrives (I know, I'm a Luddite); Mendelsohn (who should be name-checked in the post, he murmured wearily) is an excellent writer and Sappho is one of my all-time favorite poets, whatever her personal life may have involved.
posted by languagehat at 12:19 PM on March 9, 2015 [10 favorites]


It really can't be seriously argued on one hand that her poems were intended to be expressions of cultural desire rather than personal desire

it's silly to argue that Sappho isn't writing about sexual desire. the problem is that Sappho the "lesbian" is a product of Victorian and post Victorian prudery. but the real problem is the author is trying not to offend. IMHO LGBT simply doesn't make sense in the classical world but if you are a classicist stuck between neoconservatives and queer theory you have to step very lightly...
posted by ennui.bz at 12:21 PM on March 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


We just do not know if Sappho had sex with women, sex with men, was asexual, bisexual or omnisexual.

Ahh yes, still concern trolling using ideas liberally ripped off from queer history.

Imagine, for one moment, that historians looking at sexuality are fully aware of the theoretical and methodological ambiguities surrounding that subject, past and present. Furthermore, imagine that in the course of doing their jobs, those historians openly acknowledge those theoretical and methodological issues in discussing how the evidence is interpreted.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:24 PM on March 9, 2015


IMHO LGBT simply doesn't make sense in the classical world but if you are a classicist stuck between neoconservatives and queer theory you have to step very lightly...

Yes, because a body of theory that critically examines the ways in which sexuality is a social and political construct around various forms of power in a culture is going to naively treat the classical world as equivalent to our own. In other news, evolutionary biologists are totally about validating Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:27 PM on March 9, 2015


Imagine, for one moment, that historians looking at sexuality are fully aware of the theoretical and methodological ambiguities surrounding that subject, past and present.

My problem isn't with historians of sexuality. They are perfectly well aware of the dangers of anachronistically projecting our contemporary categories and attitudes onto the past.

Not, by the way, that it is a crucially important fact, but it would be worth mentioning in this thread that Daniel Mendelsohn--who is himself a classical scholar and a (superb) translator of classical texts--is also gay and the author of a memoir about growing up gay/orthodox Jewish which delves into the complexities of sexual identities in Classical Greece (The Elusive Embrace). In other words, he's not someone to lightly brush aside "LGBT cultural history."
posted by yoink at 12:31 PM on March 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


Good lord, I get tired of the MetaFilter tendency to treat every sentence in every linked piece as an ironclad statement of scientific fact, to be mocked if it shows hyperbole or generalization

Geeze! I certainly didn't intend to mock. I liked the article (as I stated!) and that line genuinely jumped out as making a weird, hard-to-support blanket statement, unlike the rest of the article.

; I think on the whole in contemporary academia literary scholars have a systemic preference for findings that the authors we admire and study have non-vanilla sexual/political/cultural preferences/orientations

I actually included that possibility in my comment too! There is probably a bias toward reading her as lesbian in modern terms. One point of the whole article is to say, “hey, we are making assumptions but we don’t really know…”

We are all influenced by unconscious preferences and biases. I would think in any discussion of a dead/historic person’s sexuality, those biases are particularly at play. I was surprised by a sentence unequivocally saying, “Classists have no resistance to calling her gay” when of course we all have our agendas – conscious and un.

Sorry if I came off as nit-picky. I just found that a problematic assumption. And I guess as a gay person, I do bristle at any handwaving dismissal of potential unexamined homophobia (just as I scoff at any automatic assumption of homophobia where it probably does not exist).
posted by latkes at 12:35 PM on March 9, 2015


a body of theory that critically examines the ways in which sexuality is a social and political construct around various forms of power in a culture

would that were so... also a gay man talking about "lesbians" has to tread very lightly indeed.
posted by ennui.bz at 12:37 PM on March 9, 2015


By the way CBrachyrhynchos, I would love to know what, specifically, you consider to be incorrect in the statement of mine that apparently caused you so much ire:
We just do not know if Sappho had sex with women, sex with men, was asexual, bisexual or omnisexual.
If you disagree with that statement it implies that you think we do know--for a fact--something about Sappho's sexual life. I would be interested to know what it is that you think we can prove--beyond doubt--about that, and what evidence you base it on.
posted by yoink at 12:56 PM on March 9, 2015


I think it is very difficult to look at Sappho's individual poems and try to determine anything of a composite nature. Her poems have survived to us through more diverse avenues than is true of pretty much any other ancient author, and all of the evidence suggests that even the Alexandrian collections of her poems (organized by meter rather than in any composer-intended fashion) was rather haphazard in nature. It may even be the case that poems involving female concerns get put under "Sappho" while male concerns go more into the "Alcaeus" collection unless they happen to be in the Sapphic meter. So I personally believe it is impossible even to look at one fragment and then read that fragment onto another fragment. And one certainly has major problems to go so far as to investigate the poetry for Sapphic identity markers.

It is even possible to make the case (though I've not yet done so in any written publication) that "Sappho the poet" is purely a poetic persona created as a character-type on Lesbos. (I therefore go a bit beyond even the article's stated positions of Lardinois and the earlier Segal.) Our earliest testimonia about Sappho's biography are (as usual) much later (and obviously much fabricated). In this case, it is evidence from vase painting plus early mentions of her name (which is variously spelled and may even be in the end related to the word for one of the instruments she supposedly played) that lead the way. I am not saying that Sappho MUST have been totally fictional, but there is at least the distinct possibility that she was simply the collective persona under which this type of poetry was presented. (Similar personas exist at least for Greek epic [Homer], South Slavic poetry (Cor Huso [sorry about the missing diacritic there]), and various Southeast Asian and Central African poetic traditions.

In the end, though, the figure of Sappho is always going to evolve into what each age wants her to be. Even with new poems emerging, the connection to any possible biography or even cultural context is going to be difficult. So people will fill in the gaps accordingly. I personally am much more interested in the tradition that gave rise to this poetry in the first place. To me, it's that overarching performance context that allowed these poems to be meaningful in the first place, and if we hope to interpret these poems as their original audiences did, that context is always going to be a bit easier to reconstruct than is Sappho herself.
posted by zeugitai_guy at 1:09 PM on March 9, 2015 [7 favorites]


> It is even possible to make the case (though I've not yet done so in any written publication) that "Sappho the poet" is purely a poetic persona created as a character-type on Lesbos.

Very interesting! What's your take on Archilochus (around the same time, with a similarly dubious biography)?

> (Cor Huso [sorry about the missing diacritic there])

Here you go: Ćor Huso (Husović, to give "him" his alleged surname).
posted by languagehat at 1:17 PM on March 9, 2015


yoink: My problem isn't with historians of sexuality.

Could have fooled me. Thus far, you've expressed hostility toward any attempt to understand sexuality across time periods, even if the ideas you've been hammering people with originated with queer history.

ennui.bz: would that were so...

Of course it's so. Who do you think has been putting the work into all those ideas about the sociopolitical construction of sexuality across history that you and yoink have been throwing around?

You're going to run into problems of interpretation no matter what dimension you try to understand a classical figure. Take for example, that Sappho was a "great poet." How someone claim that without wrestling with the modern connotations of poetic professionalism and poetry-as-art that come to us from the English Romantics? Or even, how can one say that Sappho was a woman without dealing with the cultural construction of womanhood?

yoink: If you disagree with that statement it implies that you think we do know--for a fact--something about Sappho's sexual life.

Well, on one level, it's stating the obvious as if it's an insightful criticism. So my suggestion is that if you take for granted that these ambiguities are foundational to queer history and Sappho scholarship, that discussion can move forward.

The second point of disagreement is that it assumes that queer history is about knowing exactly who had what kinds of sex with whom. That's not necessarily the case. I'm fairly confidant in saying that Sappho was not bisexual in the same way that I'm bisexual because my bisexuality is informed by a historical century of anti-bisexual prejudice and violence, but I'm a filthy radical queer social constructivist in these matters.

But I think it's reasonable to interpret her poetry using a lesbian or bisexual framework because literary interpretation isn't biography and doesn't necessarily depend on biography. After all, I just can't believe that Tolkien married an Elf, or that Mick Jagger just can't get no satisfaction either.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:32 PM on March 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


What's your take on Archilochus (around the same time, with a similarly dubious biography)?

For me, Archilochus is an even tougher nut to crack. Many of the biographical details are undoubtedly fiction (though the Neobule story is so great that it almost seems like it would be impossible to make up!), but I find some of them to be just specific enough in the right ways to make me think there's at least a kernel of historical truth there. And iambic poetry would seem by its directed praise/blame nature to be even more connected with reality and historical circumstances. Even there, however, I'm leery of gleaning much info from the poems themselves, and I would say the possibilities range from a totally fictionalized Archilochus to one that has to be re-created almost as if we were taking an Aristophanic comedy and trying to reconstruct one of the characters/historical individuals there.

But as a follow-up on both Archilochus and Sappho, even though I don't like assigning all of the poetry to particular authors, I DO think the reason that these poems are still meaningful today is that someone (or multiple someones) composed them in such an individually powerful way that they could resonate through many generations. All great poetry can only become so if there is a gifted artist interacting with an audience by means of a traditional medium (or in some cases in the subversion of such a medium). And parts of that medium are going to become more or less relevant as the poems move beyond their originally intended audiences. But the fact that we still appreciate Archilochus and Sappho always reminds me of just how much we must still have in common with those Archaic Greek audiences--even if we sometimes forget them in favor of remembering the composers instead.

(Sorry for the length of these responses. This is one subject where it's easy for me to get carried away.)
posted by zeugitai_guy at 1:37 PM on March 9, 2015 [6 favorites]


In fact, Sappho's importance in queer history doesn't depend on there actually having been a person named Sappho, which is true of many ancient texts where authorship is minimally documented or even apocryphal.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:33 PM on March 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


> Sorry for the length of these responses. This is one subject where it's easy for me to get carried away.

You should get carried away more often! I find your comments incredibly enlightening and thought-provoking.
posted by languagehat at 2:52 PM on March 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


Metafilter:
On his farmland Eudemos built this sanctuary to the Zephyr,
kind breeze among the harsh gales,
for when the farmer prayed,
the wind awoke briskly
helping him winnow good wheat from the chaff.


"The West Wind" by Bakchylides, quoted from my copy of Sappho and the Greek Lyric Poets; Willis Barnstone, trans; Schoken Books: New York, 1988.
posted by CincyBlues at 2:58 PM on March 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


I look forward to reading the essay when my physical copy of the New Yorker arrives (I know, I'm a Luddite); Mendelsohn (who should be name-checked in the post, he murmured wearily) is an excellent writer and Sappho is one of my all-time favorite poets, whatever her personal life may have involved.

Wow, my brain was just channeled on every point, from reading it in print, to wishing that writers were always credited in FPPs, to loving Sappho's poetry. (The not crediting writers increasingly bothers me, though I am sure I have neglected it many times; it seems disrespectful given how simple it is to provide the credit.)

But as a follow-up on both Archilochus and Sappho, even though I don't like assigning all of the poetry to particular authors, I DO think the reason that these poems are still meaningful today is that someone (or multiple someones) composed them in such an individually powerful way that they could resonate through many generations.

I have not read Archilochus but I can't imagine Sappho's poetry carrying such power if it wasn't the work of either one person or a set of people working on one voice.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:08 PM on March 9, 2015


The poet Sappho was well known in ancient times. Plato called her the "tenth muse." Her head appeared on at least one coin. Her lyrics were not written by committee, though the many modern translations may make it seem that way.
posted by Carol Anne at 6:41 AM on March 10, 2015


Thus far, you've expressed hostility toward any attempt to understand sexuality across time periods

That's simply a lie. Or, to be more charitable, I assume you must have confused me with someone else. I think understanding sexuality across time periods is vitally important. What I have "expressed hostility" towards is lazily assuming that people in the past expressed their sexuality in precisely the same ways that we do today.

Well, on one level, it's stating the obvious


So my statement was OUTRAGEOUS because it was self-evidently true? That seems, um, odd.

The second point of disagreement is that it assumes that queer history is about knowing exactly who had what kinds of sex with whom.


No. You've assumed a vast subtext of implications in my statements which have absolutely nothing to do with what I'm saying. That the cultural construction of the figure of Sappho is vitally important to queer theory and to the history of Western ideas of sexuality is obviously and self-evidently true. But it is just as self-evidently true that the cultural deployment of the figure or idea of Sappho need tell us nothing at all about the historical "Sappho."

My argument was simply that for an historian of the actual historical context out of which Sappho's poetry emerged to argue that the work was not necessarily autobiographical and that it does not necessarily stand as testimony to prove that there was some actual "lesbian" poet back on Lesbos in the C7th BCE should not be scolded as "LGBT cultural erasure."

You, personally, seem to be happy with the idea that there may have been no historical Sappho or that, if there was, she may not have had sex with women. The person I was disagreeing with, however, was suggesting that to even entertain such hypotheses was a kind of anti-LGBT hate-crime.
posted by yoink at 10:02 AM on March 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


Well, thus far you've accused everyone and their uncle as engaged in those "lazy assumptions." But as far as I can tell, almost everyone is approaching this subject with a fair degree of justifiable consideration of the problems of historical interpretation.

The problem here is one of ethics. You're combining a shallow plagiarism of queer history with a cranky criticism of the same. The laziest assumption in this discussion is between your ears, and the refusal to engage in fellow advocates of sociopolitical views of human sexuality in good faith.

No, I'm not responding to subtextual criticism, I'm responding to your explicit texts. You're the one who's accused everyone else of lazy assumptions, even going so far as to equate queer theory to Republican revisionism. You've explicitly declared a reductionist frame for looking at Sappho as a bisexual or lesbian figure, defended it twice, before finally disowning it. If that's not what you're really saying, perhaps you shouldn't have actually said it.

And speaking of lazy assumptions, no that's not what muddgirl was suggesting. That's about as tone-deaf and cranky a misinterpretation as, oh, the suggestion that queer theory is the same as Republican revisionism.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:28 AM on March 10, 2015


You're combining a shallow plagiarism of queer history with a cranky criticism of the same.

You seem to be confusing me with someone else, still. I've offered no criticism of "queer theory" at all. I have offered a criticism of people making lazy assumptions about the past with insufficient information to support those assumptions.

I'm responding to your explicit texts.


Try finding an "explicit text" of mine where I've said anything impugning "queer theory."

You've explicitly declared a reductionist frame for looking at Sappho as a bisexual or lesbian figure, defended it twice, before finally disowning it.


You seem to have some extraordinary difficulties with basic reading comprehension. Here is what I wrote:
We just do not know if Sappho had sex with women, sex with men, was asexual, bisexual or omnisexual. We just do not know if the poems are fictional scenarios, personal 'confessions' or recognizable versions of other people's lives and romantic entanglements.
That is in no way presenting a "reductionist frame for looking at Sappho as a bisexual or lesbian figure"--it is a claim about the limits of our knowledge about the historical "Sappho."

even going so far as to equate queer theory to Republican revisionism


Again, quote me some "explicit text" where I equated "queer theory" to "Republican revisionism." You're referring to another thread where I equated people who think they can look at scattered facts about past lives (such as two women cohabiting, or a Founding Father talking about the "Supreme Being") in a context-free way and arrive at determinations about those lives based on what those facts would represent if performed by somebody in the present. That has absolutely nothing to do with "queer theory" (and if you are suggesting it is a hallmark of queer theory then you are the one insulting queer theory, not me).

You've simply dreamed up an imaginary interlocutor who is making these entirely commonsense points about the limits of our historical knowledge and the changing historical context in which human sexual desires and practices get expressed for dark, nefarious reasons having to do with some deep hatred of "queer theory." All of that is, however, entirely a figment of your imagination.
posted by yoink at 12:15 PM on March 10, 2015


One thing I forgot to add: the real object of my irritation in both this thread and the other one you allude to is the all-too-familiar substitution of bullying for argument that seems to happen whenever we start to debate ideologically sensitive material. Someone raises a question about the historical evidence that should be brought to bear in order to "read" the significance of same-sex cohabitation in C19th America? Can't win the argument by bringing counter evidence or calling into question the evidence offered? Why then, just accuse them of being homophobic, that will get the job done! Someone mentions scholarly work calling into question the image of the historical Sappho as "lesbian"? Can't muster a critique of that work or demonstrate any flaws in it? Oh well, no worries: just accuse them of "LGBT cultural erasure." End of discussion.

That was the comparison I was drawing what you see when people misread the Founding Fathers as religious zealots because of their (by modern standards) frequent references to the deity. When Bill O'Reilly invites some pointy-headed-intellectual onto the program as sacrificial lamb to say "you know, if you actually look at the context of those statements..." his response is not, of course, to say "well, no, actually you've failed to consider this piece of the evidence." It's to say "why do you hate America? And why do you hate Christians?" It's the same move.

Your attack on me, CBrachyrhynchos, is exactly of the same ilk: you can't actually criticize my arguments (heck, you concede that they're "obvious"), but you think it's impolitic of me to bring it up, so you accuse me of having some eeeeevil agenda. It's childish and depressing.
posted by yoink at 12:33 PM on March 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


One thing I forgot to add: the real object of my irritation in both this thread and the other one you allude to is the all-too-familiar substitution of bullying for argument....

Well sure, if you're going to start blowing that dogwhistle, (along with repeated accusations of engaging in revisionism), you shouldn't be surprised when you're accused of having a primarily ideological agenda.

Now you you actually have anything to say about the sociocultural construction of human sexuality?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 3:06 PM on March 10, 2015


And again, my primary arguments are:

1. Your objections have been fundamental to queer history since the 1980s.

2. We use modern theories about capital, religion, technology, social networks, and language to talk about historical periods, so why not sexuality?

3. We can speculate plausibly about Sappho and Addams because we've done a ton of research regarding sexuality in those historical periods.

4. When we say, "she might have been a lesbian" we do not mean "just like Ellen Degeneres."
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 3:20 PM on March 10, 2015


> We can speculate plausibly about Sappho and Addams because we've done a ton of research regarding sexuality in those historical periods.

In the first place, how exactly have "we" done "a ton of research" regarding sexuality in Lesbos, or even the North Aegean, in the seventh century BC when that's one of the most obscure periods of Greek history? In the second place, even if "we" knew all sorts of stuff about sexuality in that place and time, how would we apply it to someone whose biography is known to us only via much later legends and is clearly largely invented based on the poems?
posted by languagehat at 10:05 AM on March 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


In the first place, how exactly have "we" done "a ton of research" regarding sexuality in Lesbos, or even the North Aegean, in the seventh century BC when that's one of the most obscure periods of Greek history? In the second place, even if "we" knew all sorts of stuff about sexuality in that place and time, how would we apply it to someone whose biography is known to us only via much later legends and is clearly largely invented based on the poems?

Just about any work of Sappho scholarship attempting biography is going to wrestle with these problems, gaps, and ambiguity. My suggestion is that we should proceed with this discussion with the assumption that historians are actually doing history and not writing fanfic.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:06 PM on March 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Sorry, I have no idea what you mean. Basically, any assertion about Sappho's love life is fanfic. Any historian of the period will tell you we know essentially no more about Sappho than we do about Homer.
posted by languagehat at 1:29 PM on March 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Sorry, I have no idea what you mean. Basically, any assertion about Sappho's love life is fanfic. Any historian of the period will tell you we know essentially no more about Sappho than we do about Homer.

From my perspective, you're demanding the wrong answers to the wrong questions. And I'm wondering if you're confusing sexuality for the contemporary concept of sexual orientation.

Sexuality isn't just about fucking, and queer history isn't about peeking around curtains to determine who was fucking whom.

It's also about the changing cultural expressions of relationships. Which is what we're saying when we talk about Sappho as a bisexual or lesbian poet, or Gilgamesh as a gay text.

It's also about the distribution of political and economic power. Which is what we're saying when we talk about Boston Marriage as a relationship between two women.

We can't say much about the "love life" of 21st century people without running into a host of methodological and definitional issues, much less peek behind the curtains of the past.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:18 PM on March 11, 2015


All of that has been said before multiple times. So if you want to argue against the fannish position that Sappho must have been lesbian because they ship it so hard, tumblr is just around the corner.

As I've explicitly said, my political wonkery runs on the radical queer side of the street. So I'm not inclined to provide nonexistent evidence for answering the wrong questions about putting historical persons into bullshit categories.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:54 PM on March 11, 2015


> From my perspective, you're demanding the wrong answers to the wrong questions. And I'm wondering if you're confusing sexuality for the contemporary concept of sexual orientation.

Sexuality isn't just about fucking, and queer history isn't about peeking around curtains to determine who was fucking whom.


Yes, I know all that. From my perspective, you're evading providing any answers at all to the essential questions. I think queer history is great, but it's got to start from actual history. There is no actual history about Sappho, so you may as well be talking about the sexuality of Xena the Warrior Princess. Which is fun, but it ain't history.

You are of course welcome to interact as you see fit, but I for one would be grateful if you'd spare me the lectures on Sexuality 101 (is it really too much of a stretch to assume that someone who's been an active MetaFilter member since 2002 probably has had the course?) and address the actual question at hand.
posted by languagehat at 10:59 AM on March 12, 2015


You are of course welcome to interact as you see fit, but I for one would be grateful if you'd spare me the lectures on Sexuality 101 (is it really too much of a stretch to assume that someone who's been an active MetaFilter member since 2002 probably has had the course?) and address the actual question at hand.

I'm giving you the lectures on Sexuality 101 because you're demanding answers to questions I think are fundamentally misguided. What was Sappho's "love life?" Even for people in the 21st century, that's a big can of worms when it comes to issues of evidence, definition, and interpretation.

I'll admit that I'm not a Classics scholar. But it seems to me that if the evidence is so deeply lacking, we shouldn't speculate on her gender and profession either. I don't think discussion of Sappho as a lesbian or bisexual poet requires that Sappho be lesbian or bisexual. I don't think it requires that there even was a Sappho.

My pragmatic interest is in the construction of sexuality from the Krafft-Ebing to the present. So sure, let's talk about the sexuality of Xena as a TV series from the 1990s. While we're at it, how about Mae West's The Drag, and the sexuality of psychotherapy?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:20 PM on March 12, 2015


> But it seems to me that if the evidence is so deeply lacking, we shouldn't speculate on her gender and profession either.

Well, it's pretty clear she was female, since she uses female forms of speech and the entire Greek tradition treats her as female, but that's about it. (Assuming she existed, of course.) No way of knowing what her profession was, assuming she had one.

> I don't think discussion of Sappho as a lesbian or bisexual poet requires that Sappho be lesbian or bisexual. I don't think it requires that there even was a Sappho. My pragmatic interest is in the construction of sexuality from the Krafft-Ebing to the present.

OK, so if I'm understanding you correctly, you're interested in Sappho, or "Sappho," as a historically constructed figure rather than an actual historical person, in which case we've been talking past each other and I withdraw my insistent questions, which don't apply to what you're interested in. Pax!
posted by languagehat at 3:32 PM on March 12, 2015


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