Espaço Queer

Two penguins native to Antarctica met one spring day in 1998 in a tank at the Central Park Zoo in midtown Manhattan. They perched atop stones and took turns diving in and out of the clear water below. They entwined necks, called to each other and mated. They then built a nest together to prepare for an egg. But no egg was forthcoming: Roy and Silo were both male.

Robert Gramzay, a keeper at the zoo, watched the chinstrap penguin pair roll a rock into their nest and sit on it, according to newspaper reports. Gramzay found an egg from another pair of penguins that was having difficulty hatching it and slipped it into Roy and Silo’s nest. Roy and Silo took turns warming the egg with their blubbery underbellies until, after 34 days, a female chick pecked her way into the world. Roy and Silo kept the gray, fuzzy chick warm and regurgitated food into her tiny black beak.

Like most animal species, penguins tend to pair with the opposite sex, for the obvious reason. But researchers are finding that same-sex couplings are surprisingly widespread in the animal kingdom. Roy and Silo belong to one of as many as 1,500 species of wild and captive animals that have been observed engaging in homosexual activity. Researchers have seen such same-sex goings-on in both male and female, old and young, and social and solitary creatures and on branches of the evolutionary tree ranging from insects to mammals.

Unlike most humans, however, individual animals generally cannot be classified as gay or straight: an animal that engages in a same-sex flirtation or partnership does not necessarily shun heterosexual encounters. Rather many species seem to have ingrained homosexual tendencies that are a regular part of their society. That is, there are probably no strictly gay critters, just bisexual ones. “Animals don’t do sexual identity. They just do sex,” says sociologist Eric Anderson of the University of Bath in England.

Nevertheless, the study of homosexual activity in diverse species may elucidate the evolutionary origins of such behavior. Researchers are now revealing, for example, that animals may engage in same-sex couplings to diffuse social tensions, to better protect their young or to maintain fecundity when opposite-sex partners are unavailable—or simply because it is fun. These observations suggest to some that bisexuality is a natural state among animals, perhaps Homo sapiens included, despite the sexual-orientation boundaries most people take for granted. “[In humans] the categories of gay and straight are socially constructed,” Anderson says.

What is more, homosexuality among some species, including penguins, appears to be far more common in captivity than in the wild. Captivity, scientists say, may bring out gay behaviors in part because of a scarcity of opposite-sex mates. In addition, an enclosed environment boosts an animal’s stress levels, leading to a greater urge to relieve the stress. Some of the same influences may encourage what some researchers call “situational homosexuality” in humans in same-sex settings such as prisons or sports teams.

Making Peace
Modern studies of animal homosexuality date to the late 19th century with observations on insects and small animals. In 1896, for example, French entomologist Henri Gadeau de Kerville of the Society of Friends of Natural Sciences and the Museum of Rouen published a drawing of two male scarab beetles copulating. Then, during the first half of the 1900s, various investigators described homosexual behavior in baboons, garter snakes and gentoo penguins, among other species. Back then, scientists generally considered homosexual acts among animals to be abnormal. In some cases, they “treated” the animals by, say, castrating them or giving them lobotomies.

At least one early report, however, was more than descriptive, yielding insight into the possible origins of the behavior. In a 1914 lab experiment Gilbert Van Tassel Hamilton, a psychopathologist practicing in Montecito, Calif., reported that same-sex behavior in 20 Japanese macaques and two baboons occurred largely as a way of making peace with would-be foes. In the Journal of Animal Behavior Hamilton observed that females offered sex to the more dominant macaques of the same sex: “homosexual behavior is of relatively frequent occurrence in the female when she is threatened by another female, but it is rarely manifested in response to sexual hunger.” And in males, he penned, “homosexual alliances between mature and immature males may possess a defensive value for immature males, since they insure the assistance of an adult defender in the event of an attack.”

More recently, some researchers studying bonobos (close relatives of the chimpanzee) have come to similar conclusions. Bonobos are highly promiscuous, and about half their sexual activity involves same-sex partners. Female bonobos rub one another’s genitals so often that some scientists have suggested that their genitalia evolved to facilitate this activity. The female bonobo’s clitoris is “frontally placed, perhaps because selection favored a position maximizing stimulation during the genital-genital rubbing common among females,” wrote behavioral ecologist Marlene Zuk of the University of California, Riverside, in her 2002 book Sexual Selections: What We Can and Can’t Learn about Sex from Animals. Male bonobos have been observed to mount, fondle and even perform oral sex on one another.

Such behavior seems to ease social tensions. In Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape (University of California Press, 1997), Emory University primatologist Frans B. M. de Waal and his co-author photographer Frans Lanting wrote that “when one female has hit a juvenile and the juvenile’s mother has come to its defense, the problem may be resolved by intense GG-rubbing between the two adults.” De Waal has observed hundreds of such incidents, suggesting that these homosexual acts may be a general peacekeeping strategy. “The more homosexuality, the more peaceful the species,” asserts Petter Böckman, an academic adviser at the University of Oslo’s Museum of Natural History in Norway. “Bonobos are peaceful.”

In fact, such acts are so essential to bonobo socialization that they constitute a rite of passage for young females into adulthood. Bonobos live together in groups of about 60 in a matriarchal system. Females leave the group during adolescence and gain admission to another bonobo clan through grooming and sexual encounters with other females. These behaviors promote bonding and give the new recruits benefits such as protection and access to food.

Defended Nest
In some birds, same-sex unions, particularly between males, might have evolved as a parenting strategy to increase the survival of their young. “In black swans, if two males find each other and make a nest, they’ll be very successful at nest making because they are bigger and stronger than a male and female,” Böckman says. In such cases, he says, “having a same-sex partner will actually pay off as a sensible life strategy.”

In other instances, homosexual bonding between female parents can boost the survival of offspring when male-female pairings are not possible. In birds called oystercatchers, intense competition for male mates would leave some females single were it not for polygamous trios. In a study published in 1998 in Nature, zoologist Dik Heg and geneticist Rob van Treuren, both then at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, observed that roughly 2 percent of oystercatcher breeding groups consist of two females and a male. In some of these families, Heg and van Treuren found, the females tend separate nests and fight over the male, but in others, all three birds watch over a single nest. In the latter case, the females bond by mounting each other as well as the male. The cooperative triangles produce more offspring than the competitive ones, because such nests are better tended and protected from predators.

Such arrangements point to the evolutionary fitness of stable social relationships, whatever their type. Biologist Joan E. Roughgarden of Stanford University believes that evolutionary biologists tend to adhere too strongly to Darwin’s theory of sexual selection and have thus largely overlooked the importance of bonding and friendship to animal societies and the survival of their young.“ [Darwin] equated reproduction with finding a mate rather than paying attention to how the offspring are naturally reared,” Roughgarden says.

Protection of progeny, social bonding and conflict avoidance may not be the only reasons animals naturally come to same-sex relationships. Many animals do it simply “because they want to,” Böckman says. “People view animals as robots who behave as their genes say, but animals have feelings, and they react to those feelings.” He adds that “as long as they feel the urge [for sex], they’ll go for it.”

A recent finding indicates that homosexual behavior may be so common because it is rooted in an animal’s brain wiring—at least in the case of fruit flies. In a study appearing earlier this year in Nature Neuroscience, neuroscientist David E. Featherstone of the University of Illinois at Chicago and his colleagues found that they could switch on homosexual leanings in fruit flies by manipulating a gene for a protein they call “genderblind,” which regulates communication between neurons that secrete and respond to the neurotransmitter glutamate.

Males that carried the mutant genderblind gene—which depressed levels of the protein by about two thirds—were uncharacteristically attracted to the chemical cues exuded by other males. As a result, these mutant males courted and attempted to copulate with other males. The finding suggests that wild fruit flies may be prewired for both heterosexual and homosexual behavior, the authors write, but that the genderblind protein suppresses the glutamate-based circuits that promote homosexual behavior. Such brain architecture may enable same-sex behavior to surface easily, supporting the notion that it might confer an evolutionary advantage in some circumstances.

The Captivity Effect
In some less social species, homosexual behavior is almost unheard of in wild animals but may surface in captivity. Wild koalas, which are mostly solitary, seem to be strictly heterosexual. But in a 2007 study veterinary scientist Clive J. C. Phillips of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and his colleagues observed 43 instances of homosexual activity among female koalas living in a same-sex enclosure at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. The captive females shrieked male mating calls and mated with one another, sometimes participating in multiple encounters of up to five koalas. “The behavior in captivity was certainly enhanced in terms of homosexual activity,” Phillips says.

He believes that the females acted this way in part because of stress. Animals often experience stress in enclosed habitats and may engage in homosexual behavior to relieve that tension. A lack of male partners probably also played a role, Phillips suggests. When female koalas are in heat, their ovaries release the sex hormone estrogen, which triggers mating behavior—whether or not males are present. This hardwired urge to copulate, even if expressed with a female partner, might be adaptive. “The homosexual behavior preserves sexual function,” Phillips says, enabling an animal to maintain its reproductive fitness and interest in sexual activity. In males, this benefit is even more obvious: homosexual behavior stimulates the continued production of seminal fluid.

A lack of opposite-sex partners is also thought to help explain the prevalence of homosexuality among penguins in zoos. In addition to several gay penguin couplings in the U.S., 20 same-sex penguin partnerships were formed in 2004 in zoos in Japan. Such behavior “is very rare in penguins’ natural habitats,” says animal ecologist Keisuke Ueda of Rikkyo University in Tokyo. Thus, Ueda speculates that the behavior—which included both male pairings and female couplings—arose as a result of the skewed sex ratios at zoos.

Researchers have found still other reasons for homosexual behavior in domesticated cattle—which is such a common occurrence that farmers and animal breeders have developed terms for it. “Bulling” refers to male pairs mounting, and “going boaring” is its female counterpart. For cows, the behavior is not just a stress reliever. It is a way to signal sexual receptivity. The females mount one another to signal their readiness to mate to the bulls—which, in captivity, may cause a breeder to know when to bring in a suitable opposite-sex partner.

Homosexual mounting is much rarer among cattle in the wild, Phillips asserts, based on his research on gaurs in Malaysia, a wild counterpart to domesticated cattle. “Cattle evolved in the forest, so a visual signal was not going to be useful for them,” he says.

Stress and the greater availability of same-sex partners may similarly contribute to the practice of homosexual acts among self-described heterosexual humans in environments such as the military, jails and sports teams. In a study published this year in the journal Sex Roles, Anderson found that 40 percent of 49 heterosexual former high school football players attending various U.S. universities had had at least one homosexual encounter. These ranged from kissing to oral sex to threesomes that included a woman. In team sports, homosexuality is “no big deal and it increases cohesion among members of that team,” Anderson claims. “It feels good, and [the athletes] bond.”

In stressful same-sex environments such as prisons or a war zone, heterosexuals may engage in homosexual behavior in part to relieve tension. “Homosexuality appears mostly in social species,” Böckman says. “It makes flock life easier, and jail flock life is very difficult.”

Altered Spaces
In recent decades zoo officials have tried to minimize the stresses of captivity by making their enclosures more like animals’ natural habitats. In the 1950s zoo animals lived behind bars in barren enclosures. But since the late 1970s zoo homes have become more hospitable, including more open space, along with plants and murals representative of an animal’s natural habitat. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) regulates everything from cage dimensions to animal bedding. The AZA also outlines enrichment activities for captive creatures: for instance, two golden brown Amur leopards at the Staten Island Zoo regularly play with a papier-mâché zebra, an animal they have never seen in the flesh.

Researchers hope such improvements might affect animal behavior, making it more like what occurs in the wild. One possible sign of more hospitable conditions might be a rate of homosexuality more in line with that of wild members of the same species. Some people, however, contest the notion that zookeepers should prevent or discourage homosexual behavior among the animals they care for.

And whereas captivity may engender what appears to be an unnaturally high level of homosexual activity in some animal species, human same-sex environments might bring out normal tendencies that other settings tend to suppress. That is, some experts argue that humans, like some other animals, are naturally bisexual. “We should be calling humans bisexual because this idea of exclusive homosexuality is not accurate of people,” Roughgarden says. “Homosexuality is mixed in with heterosexuality across cultures and history.”

Even Silo the penguin, who had been coupled with Roy for six years, displayed this malleability of sexual orientation. One spring day in 2004 a female chinstrap penguin named Scrappy—a transplant from SeaWorld in San Diego—caught his eye, and he abruptly left Roy for her. Meanwhile Roy and Silo’s “daughter,” Tango, carried on in the tradition of her fathers. Her chosen mate: a female named Tazuni.

This story was originally printed with the title, "Bisexual Species".

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
EMILY V. DRISCOLL is a freelance science writer living in New York City.

Bisexual Species: Unorthodox Sex in the Animal Kingdom

James Owen in London
for National Geographic News

July 23, 2004
Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. So go the lyrics penned by U.S. songwriter Cole Porter.

Porter, who first hit it big in the 1920s, wouldn't risk parading his homosexuality in public. In his day "the birds and the bees" generally meant only one thing—sex between a male and female.

But, actually, some same-sex birds do do it. So do beetles, sheep, fruit bats, dolphins, and orangutans. Zoologists are discovering that homosexual and bisexual activity is not unknown within the animal kingdom.

Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins at New York's Central Park Zoo have been inseparable for six years now. They display classic pair-bonding behavior—entwining of necks, mutual preening, flipper flapping, and the rest. They also have sex, while ignoring potential female mates.

Wild birds exhibit similar behavior. There are male ostriches that only court their own gender, and pairs of male flamingos that mate, build nests, and even raise foster chicks.

Filmmakers recently went in search of homosexual wild animals as part of a National Geographic Ultimate Explorer documentary about the female's role in the mating game. (The film, Girl Power, will be screened in the U.S this Saturday at 8 p.m. ET, 5 p.m PT on MSNBC TV.)

The team caught female Japanese macaques engaged in intimate acts which, if observed in humans, would be in the X-rated category.

"The homosexual behavior that goes on is completely baffling and intriguing," says National Geographic Ultimate Explorer correspondent, Mireya Mayor. "You would have thought females that want to be mated, especially over their fertile period, would be seeking out males."

Well, perhaps, in a roundabout way, they are seeking males, suggests primatologist Amy Parish.

She argues that female macaques may enhance their social position through homosexual intimacy which in turn influences breeding success. Parish says, "Taking something that's nonreproductive, like mounting another female—if it leads to control of a resource or acquisition of a resource or a good alliance partner, that could directly impact your reproductive success."

Sexual Gratification

On the other hand, they could just be enjoying themselves, suggests Paul Vasey, animal behavior professor at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. "They're engaging in the behavior because it's gratifying sexually or it's sexually pleasurable," he says. "They just like it. It doesn't have any sort of adaptive payoff."

Matthew Grober, biology professor at Georgia State University, agrees, saying, "If [sex] wasn't fun, we wouldn't have any kids around. So I think that maybe Japanese macaques have taken the fun aspect of sex and really run with it."

The bonobo, an African ape closely related to humans, has an even bigger sexual appetite. Studies suggest 75 percent of bonobo sex is nonreproductive and that nearly all bonobos are bisexual. Frans de Waal, author of Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape, calls the species a "make love, not war" primate. He believes bonobos use sex to resolve conflicts between individuals.

Other animals appear to go through a homosexual phase before they become fully mature. For instance, male dolphin calves often form temporary sexual partnerships, which scientists believe help to establish lifelong bonds. Such sexual behavior has been documented only relatively recently. Zoologists have been accused of skirting round the subject for fear of stepping into a political minefield.

"There was a lot of hiding of what was going on, I think, because people were maybe afraid that they would get into trouble by talking about it," notes de Waal. Whether it's a good idea or not, it's hard not make comparisons between humans and other animals, especially primates. The fact that homosexuality does, after all, exist in the natural world is bound to be used against people who insist such behavior is unnatural.

In the U.S., in particular, the moral debate over this issue rages on. Many on the religious right regard homosexuality as a sin. And only this month, President Bush vowed to continue his bid to ban gay marriages after the Senate blocked the proposal.

Already, cases of animal homosexuality have been cited in successful court cases brought against states like Texas, where gay sex was, until recently, illegal.

Yet scientists say we should be wary of referring to animals when considering what's acceptable in human society. For instance, infanticide, as practiced by lions and many other animals, isn't something people, gay or straight, generally approve of in humans.

Human Homosexuality

So how far can we go in using animals to help us understand human homosexuality? Robin Dunbar is a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Liverpool, England. "The bottom line is that anything that happens in other primates, and particularly other apes, is likely to have strong evolutionary continuity with what happens in humans," he said.

Dunbar says the bonobo's use of homosexual activity for social bonding is a possible example, adding, "One of the main arguments for human homosexual behavior is that it helps bond male groups together, particularly where a group of individuals are dependent on each other, as they might be in hunting or warfare."

For instance, the Spartans, in ancient Greece, encouraged homosexuality among their elite troops. "They had the not unreasonable belief that individuals would stick by and make all efforts to rescue other individuals if they had a lover relationship," Dunbar added.

Another suggestion is that homosexuality is a developmental phase people go through. He said, "This is similar to the argument of play in young animals to get their brain and muscles to work effectively and together. Off the back of this, there's the possibility you can get individuals locked into this phase for the rest of their lives as a result of the social environment they grow up in."

But he adds that homosexuality doesn't necessarily have to have a function. It could be a spin-off or by-product of something else and in itself carries no evolutionary weight."

He cites sexual gratification, which encourages procreation, as an example. "An organism is designed to maximize its motivational systems," he adds.

In other words, if the urge to have sex is strong enough it may spill over into nonreproductive sex, as suggested by the actions of the bonobos and macaques. However, as Dunbar admits, there's a long way to go before the causes of homosexuality in humans are fully understood.

He said, "Nobody's really investigated this issue thoroughly, because it's so politically sensitive. It's fair to say all possibilities are still open."

Homosexual Activity Among Animals Stirs Debate

Homosexuality is quite common in the animal kingdom, especially among herding animals. Many animals solve conflicts by practicing same gender sex.
From the middle of October until next summer the Norwegian Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo will host the first exhibition that focuses on homosexuality in the animal kingdom.

"One fundamental premise in social debates has been that homosexuality is unnatural. This premise is wrong. Homosexuality is both common and highly essential in the lives of a number of species," explains Petter Boeckman, who is the academic advisor for the "Against Nature's Order?" exhibition.

The most well-known homosexual animal is the dwarf chimpanzee, one of humanity's closes relatives. The entire species is bisexual. Sex plays an conspicuous roll in all their activities and takes the focus away from violence, which is the most typical method of solving conflicts among primates and many other animals.

"Sex among dwarf chimpanzees is in fact the business of the whole family, and the cute little ones often lend a helping hand when they engage in oral sex with each other."

Lions are also homosexual. Male lions often band together with their brothers to lead the pride. To ensure loyalty, they strengthen the bonds by often having sex with each other.

Homosexuality is also quite common among dolphins and killer whales. The pairing of males and females is fleeting, while between males, a pair can stay together for years. Homosexual sex between different species is not unusual either. Meetings between different dolphin species can be quite violent, but the tension is often broken by a "sex orgy".

Homosexuality is a social phenomenon and is most widespread among animals with a complex herd life.

Among the apes it is the females that create the continuity within the group. The social network is maintained not only by sharing food and the child rearing, but also by having sex. Among many of the female apes the sex organs swell up. So they rub their abdomens against each other," explains Petter Bockman and points out that animals have sex because they have the desire to, just like we humans.

Homosexual behaviour has been observed in 1,500 animal species.

"We're talking about everything from mammals to crabs and worms. The actual number is of course much higher. Among some animals homosexual behaviour is rare, some having sex with the same gender only a part of their life, while other animals, such as the dwarf chimpanzee, homosexuality is practiced throughout their lives."

Animals that live a completely homosexual life can also be found. This occurs especially among birds that will pair with one partner for life, which is the case with geese and ducks. Four to five percent of the couples are homosexual. Single females will lay eggs in a homosexual pair's nest. It has been observced that the homosexual couple are often better at raising the young than heterosexual couples.

When you see a colony of black-headed gulls, you can be sure that almost every tenth pair is lesbian. The females have no problems with being impregnated, although, according to Petter Boeckman they cannot be defined as bisexual.

"If a female has sex with a male one time, but thousands of times with another female, is she bisexual or homosexual? This is the same way to have children is not unknown among homosexual people."

Indeed, there is a number of animals in which homosexual behaviour has never been observed, such as many insects, passerine birds and small mammals.

"To turn the approach on its head: No species has been found in which homosexual behaviour has not been shown to exist, with the exception of species that never have sex at all, such as sea urchins and aphis. Moreover, a part of the animal kingdom is hermaphroditic, truly bisexual. For them, homosexuality is not an issue."

Petter Bockman regrets that there is too little research about homosexuality among animals.

"The theme has long been taboo. The problem is that researchers have not seen for themselves that the phenomenon exists or they have been confused when observing homosexual behaviour or that they are fearful of being ridiculed by their colleagues. Many therefore overlook the abundance of material that is found. Many researchers have described homosexuality as something altogether different from sex. They must realise that animals can have sex with who they will, when they will and without consideration to a researcher's ethical principles."

One example of overlooking behaviour noted by Petter Bockman is a description of mating among giraffes, when nine out of ten pairings occur between males.

"Every male that sniffed a female was reported as sex, while anal intercourse with orgasm between males was only "revolving around" dominance, competition or greetings.

Masturbation is common in the animal kingdom.

"Masturbation is the simplest method of self pleasure. We have a Darwinist mentality that all animals only have sex to procreate. But there are plenty of animals who will masturbate when they have nothing better to do. Masturbation has been observed among primates, deer, killer whales and penguins, and we're talking about both males and females. They rub themselves against stones and roots. Orangutans are especially inventive. They make dildos of wood and bark," says Petter Boeckman of the Norwegian Natural History Museum.

http://www.uio.no

1,500 animal species practice homosexuality

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Sergio Gomes

ENSAIOS HOMOERÓTICOS I

O Homoerotismo na antigüidade clássica


(...) “Sejamos mais precisos: melhor que de homossexualidade, deveríamos falar de relações entre pessoas do mesmo sexo. Deveríamos, então, empregar o termo homofilia. De fato, sem exacerbar o sentido do paradoxo, poderíamos até mesmo afirmar que a homossexualidade não existe na Grécia”.
Jean-Philippe Catonné

A sexualidade, ontem e hoje

No conjunto de ensaios que se seguirão a este, pretendo analisar historicamente com vocês como as várias (homo) sexualidades se configuraram ao longo do tempo através do uso da linguagem. Nesta jornada, iremos verificar como nossas crenças acerca das múltiplas sexualidades participaram na construção de um ideário lingüístico com força performativa, para falar da verdade do sujeito homoerótico contemporâneo.

Partindo desta concepção, penso que de todos os seres vivos, o ser humano é o único que possui, entre tantas, duas características básicas que o distingue dos outros seres: a capacidade de raciocínio e a habilidade da fala, através da linguagem.

A linguagem nos propicia a comunicação seja através da palavra escrita, falada ou através de códigos, gestos ou sinais. Somos capazes, então, de nomear o que ainda não tem nome, de modificar e redescrever o que já foi nomeado, ou de dizer aquilo que não queremos dizer, já que “não somos senhores nem mesmo na nossa própria casa”.

Para aquilo que ainda não possui nome, logo, logo, conseguimos inventar palavras novas para determinados objetos, atos ou situações do cotidiano, de acordo com a nossa crença e moral vigentes, e compreendê-los a partir de então como uma verdade única e universal. E quando não temos a compreensão científica de determinado fenômeno, nossa tendência é procurar de imediato uma explicação lógica e daí, ou o aceitamos ou o reprimimos, afastando-nos o mais que possível, senão, exterminando-o.

Na época da inquisição, que se estendeu do século XIV até o século XVII, para aquilo que cientificamente ainda não se tinha compreensão causal do fato de algumas mulheres apresentarem comportamentos estranhos à maioria da população, a acusação era de bruxaria ou possessão diabólica contra essas mulheres, condenando-as a morrerem queimadas na fogueira.

No início do século XX, os mesmos fenômenos antes concebidos como bruxaria ou manifestações do diabo, poderiam ser explicados, por exemplo, como “ataques histéricos”, após o advento da psicanálise. O mesmo fato e duas explicações.

De acordo com o psicanalista Jurandir Freire Costa, em seu artigo “Homoerotismo: a palavra e a coisa”, “toda época produz crenças sobre a “natureza” do bem e do mal, do sujeito e do mundo, que aos olhos dos contemporâneos, sempre aparecem como óbvias e indubitáveis. Os séculos XIV, XV, XVI e XVII criaram as feiticeiras. E, porque a crença na bruxaria existia, existiam bruxas. As bruxas eram um efeito da crença na bruxaria. Sem a crença em bruxas, não haveriam mulheres que sentissem, agissem, se reconhecessem e fossem reconhecidas como bruxas”. Para compreender o que o autor fala, vejam o filme As Bruxas de Salém.

No que compete à sexualidade, a compreensão do fato se dá de modo semelhante.

Desde o século XIX acreditamos na divisão dos sujeitos em “homossexuais, bissexuais e heterossexuais”. Passamos a acreditar que há algo de universal em pessoas com determinadas características desejantes, e passamos a reclassificar a antigüidade a partir da compreensão do vocabulário sexual criado no século XIX.

Ora, na antigüidade greco-romana não havia a compreensão do sexo a partir do que aprendemos nos últimos 200 anos. Portanto, enganamo-nos ao projetar hábitos mentais do presente na relação pederástica que havia na Grécia, semelhante à moderna relação homossexual dos nossos dias.

“Na Grécia antiga não existiam palavras para designar o que chamamos de “homossexualidade” e “heterossexualidade” porque simplesmente não existia a idéia de “sexualidade”. A sexualidade é uma construção cultural recente (...). No mundo helênico havia um eros múltiplo e heterogêneo, sem contrapartida no imaginário de hoje. Assim, o eros da “pederastia” era, em sua “natureza”, diverso do eros presente entre homens e mulheres ou mulheres e mulheres (e eu acrescentaria entre homens e homens). Por princípio era virtuoso, ao contrário da “homossexualidade” contemporânea, tida como vício, doença, “degeneração” ou perversão, desde que foi inventada pelas ideologias jurídico-médico-psiquiátricas do seculo XIX”, conforme nos informa Jurandir Freire em seu artigo “Os gregos antigos e o prazer homoerótico”.

O que estava em jogo era a educação do cidadão e toda conduta que evocasse excesso ou passividade entre o erastes e o erômeno, era considerada indigna, sem valor, podendo inclusive, no caso deste último, perder o “status” social que possuía.

O eraste, “pedagogo”, “amante” ou “homem adulto”, como queiram, jamais poderia ser “passivo” na relação amorosa, e isso significava não poder ser penetrado, pressionado física ou moralmente a ceder os avanços sexuais do erômeno ou erômenes, ou de nenhum outro cidadão, nem muito menos de um escravo, ou ser subordinado com presentes, promessas ou com dinheiro. A virilidade era reforçada, os atos dos amantes deviam ser comedidos, evitando exageros apaixonados. O prazer devia estar a serviço do cidadão da polis grega, já que a vida pública era destinada à política, ou seja, entre dois homens adultos, era impensável que se mantivesse contatos físicos, coito anal e manifestações apaixonadas, pois a pederastia era a forma mais nobre de amor entre os gregos.

Jean-Philippe Catonné, em seu livro “Sexualidade: ontem e hoje”, ainda complementaria nosso pensamento, ao afirmar que “para um cidadão, a passividade sexual é que representa problema. Desde então, o amor entre rapazes confronta-se a uma situação contraditória, que Foucault qualificou de “antinomia do rapaz”. O amado, o eromenes, o rapaz, ocupa uma posição passiva, e o homem adulto, o amante, o erastes, uma posição ativa. Ora, a função social da pederastia é a de ensinar ao rapaz a tornar-se um cidadão, consequentemente, um homem sexualmente ativo, por meio de uma situação paradoxal de passividade na relação amorosa. A contradição se resolve na distribuição dos prazeres. O rapaz é levado a dar e a não obter, ou, ao menos, não muito ostensivamente. Além disso, ela se desfaz num processo de passagem determinando a idade. A relação cessa quando o jovem rapaz deixa de sê-lo: o sinal da metamorfose é indicado pelo surgimento de pêlos, no queixo e nas pernas. Via de regra, se é rapaz entre os doze anos, a idade da flor, e os dezessete, a idade dos pêlos”.
A pederastia, era então, um rito de iniciação daquela sociedade, que demarcava a passagem da infância para adolescência, e desta, para o mundo adulto.

Veja-se, por exemplo, a produção artística grega, através dos achados antropológicos, e notem que toda forma de contato entre dois homens dava-se entre um mais velho e outro mais jovem, antes mesmo que os pêlos do rosto ou do corpo pudessem ser notados, e isto não fazia do erastes ou do erômeno mais ou menos homem ou cidadão, conforme a ideologia machista que predomina em nossa cultura, em nossa época.

O que grande parte da literatura nos mostra é que o amor na forma de eros era buscado da forma mais sublime, na virilização dos corpos, na contemplação do belo, nas múltiplas formas de se alcançar eros, e esta busca estava dedicada diretamente à população masculina, já que a mulher, assim como os escravos, crianças ou serviçais, gozavam de menos prestígio e estava a serviço da reprodução da casta grega. No que compete à civilização romana, poucas mudanças poderíamos notar na dinâmica dos papeis masculinos e femininos.

Deste modo, assim como não existia uma homossexualidade inerente aos gregos, da forma como a compreendemos hoje, bem entendido, onde há definições e escolhas dos papéis dicotômicos ativo/passivo, desejo sexual, amor e respeito mútuo entre os(as) parceiros(as), valorização dos atos e jogos afetivos, fantasias ou qualquer outra manifestação amorosa que também sirva para descrever a pluralidade da vida afetiva e sexual entre um homem e uma mulher, a sociedade greco-romana era uma sociedade predominantemente “masculinista”, ou seja, onde só os homens gozavam dos direitos enquanto cidadão (apesar de haver relatos acerca da comunidade formada por mulheres na ilha de Lesbos – no qual resultou a derivação do termo lesbianismo/lésbica, para referir-se à homossexualidade feminina – e que tinha na poetisa Safo sua principal representante).

Vimos, assim, que o uso dos prazeres na antigüidade devia estar a serviço da honra do cidadão, pois era impensável na Grécia antiga uma liberdade sexual privada na forma como as múltiplas homossexualidades são vividas na contemporaneidade.

A “homossexualidade” grega, retomando as palavras de Jurandir Freire, era uma sociedade onde “a pederastia era não só recomendada como louvável e praticada por toda a elite moral, intelectual, política, artística, guerreira e religiosa de uma sociedade culturalmente sofisticada como a grega”.

Portanto, cair no erro crasso de nomear a pederastia grega do que hoje compreendemos como sendo a mesma homossexualidade vista por juristas, médicos, psiquiatras e higienistas do século XIX, é cair no mesmo erro crasso de se pensar que na antigüidade existia uma patologia ou um distúrbio sexual inerente dos desejos afetivos e sexuais do erastes e do erômeno, concebendo-os como seres desviantes, doentes, “perversos”, “degenerados”, de personalidade “anormal” e passíveis de cura.

Precisamos ter cuidado com as armadilhas que a cultura do sexo rei nos preparou e possibilitar ver o mais longe quanto possível as armadilhas “lingüísticas” que “a vontade do saber” nos deu como legado.

Mas isso é uma história para o nosso próximo ensaio.

ENSAIOS HOMOERÓTICOS I

The mission of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) is to secure the full enjoyment of the human rights of all people and communities subject to discrimination or abuse on the basis of sexual orientation or expression, gender identity or expression, and/or HIV status. A US-based non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO), IGLHRC effects this mission through advocacy, documentation, coalition building, public education, and technical assistance.

International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC)

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Somos um grupo de estudantes lésbicas, gays, bissexuais, trans, queer e simpatizantes da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa conscientes que existe discriminação no espaço escolar e que a queremos combater tal como queremos combater a homofobia, bifobia e transfobia que se sente lá fora.

Para nós a Faculdade, além de um local onde adquirimos o conhecimento que vem nos livros que nos pedem para ler, deve ser também um espaço onde questionamos o que está à nossa volta e tentamos fazer algo para o mudar. Podemos e devemos questionar o que acontece dentro da Faculdade de Letras mas não só, devemos também ter liberdade de falar, questionar e agir sobre assuntos que apesar de não estarem directamente ligados à Faculdade dizem respeito a todos aqueles que frequentam esse espaço público.

Com este grupo queremos criar visibilidade e discussão. Queremos uma escola e uma sociedade livre de preconceitos não só em relação à orientação sexual e identidade de género mas também livre de sexismo, racismo e xenofobia! Somos um grupo LGBTQ mas não é só isso que nos move. Porque a população LGBTQ é vítima de outras opressões estamos dispostos a trabalhar noutras áreas com quem estiver disposto a juntar-se a nós!

Porque uma faculdade em que os alunos LGBTQ vivem calados na esperança que outros não descubram o seu "segredo" e onde todos fingem que eles não existem não é uma faculdade livre. Também não o é quando em todo o lado se ouvem comentários ofensivos, quando “fufa” ou “paneleiro” são consideradas as piores coisas que se podem chamar a alguém, quando um aluno não está à vontade para ter uma demonstração pública de afecto e quando há quem tenha de esconder a sua identidade como se isso fosse um motivo de vergonha.

Queremos que a FLUL volte a ser um espaço aberto à diversidade, onde há debate, onde há agitação fora das salas de aula e os alunos sentem que fazer parte da FLUL é muito mais que ir às aulas e ir a festas! Queremos que a FLUL volte a ganhar vida!

Queremos barulho, debate, cinema, encontros e mais coisas que quem se juntar a nós for propondo!

Letras fora do armário!