Sexual Fluidity in Ancient Greece

Females in Ancient Greece

Through all this it is obvious that the homosexual acts were a common feature of Ancient Greek society. That is, it is a common feature among men in ancient Greece. So there stands the question of what were the actions of women when their men were away seeking out young men and boys in bath houses or actually committing these homosexual activities? A look into this takes the use of Feminist Anthropology, which strives to understand the female position and power in society, in conjunction with archaeology and the synchronistic approach to truly understand the full dynamic of homosexuality in Greece (Walter, “Feminist Anthropology?”).

In Greek myth and pottery there are plenty of stories of the promiscuous or abducted woman who is pursued by a man such as with the story of Hades and Persephone, but not so often are women shown or talked about as having sexual lives of their own with people of the same-sex. This would lead many to believe that women of this time were solely engaged in sexual activity with men and that men had the advantage of sliding between both worlds. Nevertheless, evidence has been found that moves towards women having sexual encounters with other women. Women formed these type of support network, when their men were off frolicking with each other, to provide each other with comfort and sexual pleasures. In saying that, it is also important to know that the origin of the word lesbian is the Lesbos island of Greece. The stories tell of a lesbian woman who denied Zeus and invoked his wrath, of which he used to put a spell on the island of Lesbos where she was from. After forty years, Zeus lifted the spell and there were no sexually mature men left on Lesbos Island and women were sexually...

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