In Han Dynasty China, Bisexuality Was the Norm
The fact that all these stories are about the origin of <i>euphemisms</i> should be a strong clue about how normative homosexuality and bisexuality was in the larger society.<p>There&#x27;s a lot of ground between the extremes of brutal, sadistic repression we&#x27;ve seen in modern times and a culture where everybody is bisexual, which is basically what this article is whispering. There&#x27;s an odd, even dissonant, urge in contemporary liberal Western society to conflate &quot;normal&quot; with &quot;common&quot;, even while supposedly celebrating diversity.[1]<p>As an side, is it just me who doesn&#x27;t think it&#x27;s a coincidence that in both imperial China and classical Greece (Athens in particular) where bisexuality and, <i>specifically</i>, male-male sexual relations were relatively more common you also see a culture of repression of women? In cultures where women are seen as dirty or unequal to men in the public sphere, it&#x27;s entirely unsurprising that homosexuality might become more common. That&#x27;s a testament to the power of culture--that culture <i>can</i> shape sexual preferences to some non-negligible degree.<p>Energy spent on trying to revise history to turn minorities into majorities is energy not spent on teaching people to have open minds and to be more accepting. Because minorities will never go away--some types of identities ebb and flow into and out of minority status, while others, like the color of your skin, never will--we can&#x27;t fix everything by turning everybody into a majority member. Indeed, in attempting to do so we reinforce the notion that legitimacy and majoritarian status are intertwined. Which isn&#x27;t to say we shouldn&#x27;t teach historical facts, like the bisexual practices of imperial Chinese nobility, just that we should abstain from needlessly spinning them.<p>What do these sexual practices in imperial China and elsewhere tell us? That sexuality is more fluid and adaptable than we assume, and that culture can shape it. We just need to be careful how we extrapolate from those facts. Admitting that culture can shape sexuality does <i>not</i> imply that people like Jerry Falwell are correct in their characterization of homosexuality. Ill considered attempts at avoiding situations where a Jerry Falwell can say, &quot;I told you so&quot;, is part of the reason liberals end up with contorted narratives. That&#x27;s why we ended up, during the marriage equality debates, arguing in the Supreme Court and the court of public opinion that being gay was never a choice and always predetermined by biology. Not only did it leave many bisexuals out in the cold, but it reinforced and perpetuated many prejudices about sexuality that we&#x27;ll regret for years to come.[2]<p>Can we just stick to the facts and stop spinning narratives? With enough facts a narrative will emerge on its own. Or it won&#x27;t, because there is none. For example, the persistent practice of same sex relations would be much less interesting absent sexual taboos as most human behaviors exhibit significant diversity (including cultural meta-diversity) relative to other species. But the surest way to end up with a <i>wrong</i> narrative is to force it--it&#x27;ll merely be a reflection of existing prejudices.<p>[1] Conflating &quot;normal&quot; with &quot;common&quot; is a rather conservative mentality. Since most people, even self-identifying liberals, tend to be rather conservative, I guess the attempts aren&#x27;t that surprising. And making the argument that atypical case foo is <i>actually</i> <i>everywhere</i> is a provocative, common rhetorical technique, making its popularity in academia also unsurprising. (Unprovocative arguments don&#x27;t usually achieve high &quot;impact factors&quot;, even if they&#x27;re unintuitive and non-mainstream.) But none of that justifies the dissonance, especially in intellectual debate.<p>[2] Much of the research, and particularly the reporting thereof, showing homosexuality among, e.g., penguins and bonobos always seemed to me dangerous flirtations with the appeal to nature fallacy; the same fallacy at the heart of conservative arguments against same-sex marriage.