Talk:Homoerotic themes in Greek and Roman mythology

Greek mythologia

In "Greece" , I think that "Orpheus and Calais (one of Boreads)" is better than "Orpheus and the Thracians". At least in Japan, Calais is famous as a beloved-boy of Orpheus. Hadrianvs et antinovs (talk) 02:05, 10 February 2008 (UTC)hadrianvs et antinovs

One is good, two are better. Haiduc (talk) 13:13, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Amazons

How does this myth relate to GLBT issues? The Amazons rejected typical (or at least Greek) gender roles for women, but I don't think that's the same as being homosexual, transgender, or bisexual. Unless this article is intended to include transvestite stories as well? 97.116.17.199 (talk) 21:49, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

The Amazons were clearly transgender in every way short of gender reassignment surgery. They lived, fought, and often dressed and loved as what ancient Greeks would consider men, full time. A transvestite is someone who cross-dresses, usually on an occasional basis, but does not live full time in the entire social role of a different gender.Markwiki (talk) 04:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Plato

Plato's Dialogues includes a description of the origin of human beings, love, and sex in which there was a third gender, androgyns, and all three human genders reproduced asexually. But after the gods split every human being into two halves, the males and females became pairs of homosexual soul-mates, and the androgyns became pairs of heterosexual soul-mates. This is philosophy, not necessarily "mythology" as such, so should it be mentioned in this page or not? 97.116.17.199 (talk) 22:15, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I would save Plato's Dialogues for a philosophy page since it covers humanity as a whole. Most of these entries seem directed at specific characters more so than the state of being of the entire human race.Markwiki (talk) 04:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Spoken-word versions - audio files

• Achilles and Patroclus
• Apollo and Hyacinth
• Chrysippus and Laius
• Ganymede and Zeus
• Heracles and Hylas
• Narcissus
• Orpheus
• Pelops and Poseidon

• Bernard Sergent, Homosexuality in Greek Myth
• Bernard Sergent, L'homosexualité initiatique dans l'Europe ancienne
• Andrew Calimach, Lovers' Legends: The Gay Greek Myths
• Andrew Calimach, Lovers' Legends Unbound
• Homosexuality and the Ancient Greeks
• Greek Mythology The secret Greek myths of male love, ancient coming-of-age rituals, uncensored and developed.

needs citing & incorporating

A number of deities and semi-divine heroes with changing or ambiguous genders are present in Greek and Roman myths. Hermaphroditos, the son of Aphrodite and Hermes is a hermaphrodite, a term derived from his name. Phanes, is the primordial, androgynous deity of love and procreation who hatched from the World Egg during the creation of the world. Tiresias was a male prophet who was turned into a woman for 7 years. Agdistis, a Phrygian deity born with both male and female genitalia, but later castrated so that she became female. Amazons, a nation of warrior women

• Acantha - Greek myth (bisexual)
• Adonis - Greek myth (bisexual)
• Attis - Greek myth (transgender)
• Caeneus/Caenis - Greek/Roman myth (transgender)
• Hermes/Mercury - Roman/Greek god (bisexual)
• Leukippos/Leukippe - Greek girl, raised as a boy to hide her gender from her father, and later transformed by a goddess into a boy.
• Pales - Roman myth (transgender- sometimes embodying male and sometimes female)
• Virtus - Roman deity (transgender- sometimes embodying male and sometimes female)
• Zephyrus - Greek god (bisexual)

I have objections to several points above:

• Attis is not transgender. Him castrating himself didn't make him change gender. In fact, he died shortly afterwards.
• In which myth is Acantha shown to be bisexual?
• What do the Amazons have to do with the topic?
• Regarding Virtus, I didn't see any mention on his page about him changing gender
• I also didn't see it about Pales, as his page just says that different sources mention him as either male or female (not that he undergoes a gender change). --168.228.86.39 (talk) 22:32, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: History of Sexuality

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 September 2023 and 22 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Beetleinabox (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Robynbest (talk) 01:47, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 23 December 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Rough consensus to move to "Homoerotic themes in Greek and Roman mythology" (closed by non-admin page mover) BilledMammal (talk) 06:23, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

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LGBT themes in Greek and Roman mythology → ? – Following recent discussion at what at the previously-titled LGBT in the Ottoman Empire, the term "LGBT" may be anachronistic to use when talking about ancient Greek and Roman mythology. Not sure what the best title would be. (Apologies if this or a similar discussion has already been posted before) GnocchiFan (talk) 17:09, 23 December 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. – robertsky (talk) 17:31, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

• I agree with a move. "LGBT" is not common in scholarship on classical mythology compared to, say, "homosexual", "homoerotic" or "queer". Possibly the page should be split so as not to lump together LGB and T, but this is not my area and I cannot propose a better title. The page originally said "classical mythology", which I slightly prefer—and the WP:CONSUB guideline also. Srnec (talk) 04:40, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

• You make a good point, but "homoerotic" is probably the best alternative, and while that would certainly be a valid topic in itself, it doesn't necessarily address all of the subjects of modern scholarship, which probably would include discussions of beings of indeterminate or variable gender (e.g. Tiresias), who might not fit under the heading of homoeroticism. Since this is a modern field of study, perhaps the existing title isn't that bad. The Greeks and Romans may not have known what "LGBT" is, but modern scholars do, and that's the lens through which classical mythology is being studied in this instance. P Aculeius (talk) 14:42, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

• I prefer 'Gender and sexual diversity in...'—blindlynx 02:28, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
• Support Homoerotic themes in Greek and Roman mythology. I agree with Srnec except for the classical mythology part. Killuminator (talk) 15:24, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
• Two important points I agree with that have been made:

1. "Anachronism" is not really at issue here, because the article is using "LGBT" to describe modern analysis / study of the material rather than attributing the LGBT construct to Antiquity.
2. Modern scholarship seems more likely to use a term like "Queer" over "LGBT" (though I'm not sure where Wikipedia style and conventions fall on that point).

A more crucial issue with the title seems to be that it's not very reflective of the article's content, which in turn seems to lack focus and consistency.

The "Sexuality" section of this article seems to just be a list of myths that feature homosexual relationships. The "Sex and gender" section, on the other hand, more genuinely discusses "themes" as promised, except a large portion of it is opinions of philosophers or traits of gods rather than mythological topics.

Perhaps splitting this off into different articles like, "Homosexuality in Greek and Roman Mythology" and "Trans and Intersexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome" would provide a better path forward? — Uiscefada (talk) 21:53, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

yeah the 'anachronism' argument is at odds with WP:MODERNLANG—blindlynx 23:12, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

I can't find where that appears in that essay (not a policy, BTW), but Uiscefada's first point seems to cover the anachronism claim. The topic is about modern scholarship, not whether the Greeks and Romans would have had any idea what "LGBT" means. P Aculeius (talk) 14:50, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

The title of the article refers to "LGBT themes in Greek and Roman mythology", so it is certainly not using LGBT to describe modern analysis but to describe the mythology itself. That still might be fine, but there is some ambiguity—when describing a "theme" as "in" some mythology—between emic and etic descriptions. Srnec (talk) 20:54, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: on further reflection, I can see where "LGBT" might not be ideal, because in many contexts it's been superseded by increasingly complex initialisms—"LGBTQ", "LGBTQ+", "LGBTQIA+", and I'm probably missing some that include a "P" or other symbol variations—but I'm also not convinced that "Queer themes" is predominant in scholarship, or that it covers as broad a scope. Isn't it still widely understood to refer specifically to homosexuality? That would of course cover the better-known mythological examples, such as Patroclus, Ganymede, etc., but not Tiresias, who was literally a man, then a woman, then a man again due to divine intervention, but evidently not gay, lesbian, or bisexual. So I'm still thinking that "LGBT" may be the most recognizable way of defining the scope of the topic. P Aculeius (talk) 14:50, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Homoeroticism x Sex and gender

I just saw that the title of the article was changed to "Homoerotic themes in Greek and Roman mythology", but still kept the section "Sex and gender" (Transgender, Androgynes and Intersex). Since homoeroticism is about same-sex attraction and not about gender variance issues, I don't understand why the "Sex and gender" section remains here. One suggestion would be to create a new article titled, I don't know, "Sex and gender in Greek and Roman mythology" or "Gender variance in Greek and Roman mythology", or something like that (and, of course, include it in the categories "Classical mythology", "LGBT themes in Greek mythology" and "LGBT themes in mythology". --168.228.86.39 (talk) 22:16, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: F24 Introduction to Mythology

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 August 2024 and 14 December 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Bbodnicki (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Bbodnicki (talk) 01:32, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 1 June 2026

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jeffrey34555 (talk) 23:05, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

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Homoerotic themes in Greek and Roman mythology → Sexual and gender minorities in Greek and Roman mythologySexual and gender minorities in Greek and Roman mythology – This article contains too much related topics, it requires a title that reflects its subtopics rather than picking only one. Compare with Sexual and gender minorities in the Ottoman Empire and Sexuality in ancient Rome (I'm not opposed to moving it to Sexuality in Greek and Roman mythology). Dudzcar (talk) 23:02, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

• "Themes" strike me as more appropriate to the topic of mythology than "minorities". Your alternative is better, but much broader. Srnec (talk) 01:29, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

  @Srnec Sexual diversity akin to Sexual diversity in the Huancavilca culture is another way, since minorities typically refers to beings and diversity is about the concept or things. Dudzcar (talk) 01:42, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

  Oppose a move, for now. I don't think "minority" and "diversity" are well-defined in the context of mythology. Srnec (talk) 00:21, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose the move; the current title uses scholarly terminology and is fairly neutral; nobody will be confused about what it means. I have no idea what a sexual or gender minority is. Is it anyone who doesn't identify as either male or female? Or anyone who isn't strictly heterosexual? Sex and sexuality are two different topics. How do you define a "minority" without also defining a "majority"? This seems like a hazy concept for something that society has yet to reach any kind of consensus on, if consensus is even possible. I don't see any advantage in using ambiguous terms to describe an unambiguous topic. The terminology is also anachronistic; not just because the Greeks and Romans didn't use this kind of wording to describe particular segments of society, but because the very idea of dividing society into majorities and minorities according to their sexual identities or preferences would have been completely baffling to them. This proposal potentially imposes our own concepts of different groups onto a society that would not have recognized them, which I think is a step beyond simply recognizing themes in a body of mythology. P Aculeius (talk) 07:34, 2 June 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose, too vague and not what is used in academic fields per P Aculeius's comment. Felinaex ^{(purr / pawprints)} 22:45, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Is the title "queer themes in greco-roman mythology" or "lgbtq+ themes in greco-roman mythology" not an option? those seems all-encompassing to me Bob the pig314159 (talk) 20:54, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

Those suggestions might be considered somewhat slangy or jargony, in the sense that they reflect usage particular to a very recent dialect of English, and don't reflect usage in scholarship over a considerable period of time; materials even twenty years old discussing the same topic will use completely different language, because the preferred terminology is highly subject to change. Even ten years ago, people might have said "gay and lesbian" rather than "LGBT"; "LGBT" was just becoming common when it started to be replaced by other variations such as "LGBTQ", "LGBTQIA", "LGBTQ+" and other alphabet soups that still have vague and uncertain meanings to a large portion of the English-speaking population (I doubt, for instance, that most people could tell you what the 'A' means or have a clear understanding of 'I'). And that's intentional, since "queer" is meant to be broadly inclusive, and tacking on "+" is meant as a catch-all for "whatever else might happen to belong to the same category". The use of terminology that is vague, potentially clunky, and likely to change further within a short span of time will affect the searchability and accessibility of the article. And that's aside from the fact that most of the mythological topics being discussed are limited to a period and context in which the concept of "LGBTQIA+" did not exist. Sticking with fairly neutral terminology actually used in scholarly sources on this topic seems preferable. P Aculeius (talk) 13:42, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.