Forms of Classical Athenian Homosexuality in Transhistorical, Cross-cultural, Biosocial, and Demographic Perspective: A Response to Dover, Foucault, and Halperin

In this work major issues, debates and controversies surrounding the subject of Greek homosexuality are examined. Suggesting that the so-called orthodox model of Greek homosexuality is seriously flawed, the author examines and critiques the views of Sir Kenneth James Dover (and to a lesser extent, those of Michel Foucault and David Halperin) and finds that social constructionist misuse/misinterpretation of the Greek literary and iconographic evidence, stemming from an inattention to crucial details and cross-cultural research, as well as an over-adherence to a historical particularist theoretical framework, prevent these researchers from recognizing the existence of more than one form/pattern of homosexuality in the ancient Greek world, leading to either a mislabeling/misidentification of particular expressions of Greek homosexuality and/or the conflation of two distinctly different types of Greek homosexuality into one lump category. To substantiate this assertion the author re-examines the interpretation of "Greek homosexuality" as put forth in Greek Homosexuality (Dover 1978) by utilizing a transhistorical, cross-cultural and multidisciplinary approach. Finding that all the major forms of homosexuality that we know of were present in classical Athenian society (including pederasty, preadolescent experimentation, gender-differentiated homosexuality, ephebophilia and mutual androphilia), the author concludes that not only is the use of the term "Greek homosexuality" a misnomer, it does not, in fact, describe the existence and reality of non-pederastic same-sex relationships known from Athenian literature or iconography. In light of this evidence Foucault's notion of the 19th century development of the "species" homosexual is rejected. Also rejected is the currently fashionable proposition that Greek pederasty, the most predominant form of Greek homosexuality, was primarily the product of a set of "self-fashioning" ethic…