This article tackles an interesting contradiction in Roman sexual discourse--or perhaps in scholarly discourse around Roman sexuality: how do you integrate the theoretical concepts of "active" and "passive" within sexual activity with the language used to talk about those acts and the people who engage in them? I tend to think that apparent contradictions--rather than needing to be resolved via an additional layer of theory--sometimes simply illustrate the contradictory nature of life and society. "Women are supposed to behave this way, men are supposed to behave that way, but what if they don't?" You can view it as the exception that tests the rule, or as an unavoidable messiness around the edges of normativituy, or as a deeper structural coherence that would make sense if only you could decipher it. Or you could simply accept that people behave in individual ways that don't always follow social rules, and that other people will talk about those diversions from the norm in descriptive ways rather than necessarily tryin to shoehorn them into the standard language. Kamen and Levin-Richardson tackle the question: Given that women are presumed to be sexually "passive" according to the Roman sexual hierarchy, and given that the verb futo/future inherently presumes that the agent of the verb is the "active" partner in m/f penetrative sex, how is it that the agentive feminine noun "fututrix" exists, and what does it mean when it is applied to specific women?
The article become relevant to the LHMP because that question is addressed within the context of sexually "active" women in general, to which category the tribade belongs. But I take issue with the shallowness of the analysis of "tribade" in this article. And, in general, the article gives the feeling of having presupposed a conclusion and then carefully selecting and omitting the evidence in order to come to that conclusion. The question itself is fascinating, but the answers here are somewhat unsatisfactory from a methodological basis.
Comments