Full citation:Blondell, Ruby & Kirk Ormand (eds). 2015. Ancient Sex: New Essays. The Ohio State University Press, Columbus. ISBN 978-0-8142-1283-7
A collection of essays on sex and gender in classical Greece and Rome that looks through a post-Foucaultian lens. The introduction focuses almost exclusively on the subject of men, though the editors justifiably argue that the collection is “remarkable for the attention it pays to female sexuality” in that three of the seven papers concern women. (I’ll be covering only two of those three papers, as the third makes up a chapter of Boehringer 2021 and has been covered previously.)
This paper looks at the evolution of how the word “lesbian”, originally simply a geographic/ethnic identifier meaning “person from the island of Lesbos” came to pick up a separate meaning of “female homosexual.”
Gilhuly begins with a (very brief) discussion of the abstract uses of locational and geographic language, how geographic signifiers very often acquire secondary meanings rooted in some association with the place (e.g., “Spartan accommodations”), and how classical Greek writers were highly prone to developing these sorts of metonymic geographic shorthands.
The common modern assumption is that the geographic and sexual semantics of “lesbian” are linked via Lesbos’s most famous resident, the poet Sappho, whose poetry expressing eros between women was well-known in antiquity. A close look at the chronology of the sexual sense begins to cast doubt on this as the primary causal link. Evidence for the depiction of Sappho as “a specific kind of woman who loved women” does not appear until centuries after her lifetime. And in the earliest known reference to an association of Lesbos with women who love women, in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans, there is no reference to Sappho as an example. But if not through Sappho, how did this association arise?
Gilhuly maps out a long, gradual development of sexual associations for people from Lesbos that eventually gave rise to “the lesbian” in the modern sense of the word, but passed through a number of rather different associations before that point. I’ll hit the highlights of this tour. Gilhuly particularly notes that influence of Athenian depictions of “New Music” and how it was personified in comic drama, as well as the general use of sexual language to represent and manipulate social power dynamics, rather than referring to actual sexual practices. It was this, in combination with the evolving pop culture image of Sappho that gave rise to the association of Lesbos with a specific sexual orientation. Within this, the image of the courtesan, though not directly linked to Sappho or to female homosexuality, becomes a locus for exploring and articulating “non-wifely” activities.
Greek sources, beginning as early as Homer, frame Lesbos as being represented by its female resources and by the beauty of its women. [Note: I’d want to dig deeper into the Homer example, because the context is offering a gift of women enslaved during war. What other geographic-associated gifts are being given? Is Lesbos unique in providing women as opposed to something else? How are other gifts of enslaved women presented and described?]
It was common in Athenian comic theater to identify character types by their geographic origin, including particular sexual specialties. It was in this context that the “erotic reputation” of Lesbos in Greek literature was created. Turning a geographic name into a verb indicating some activity relating to sex was common and must be understood as the context for Lesbos to be treated in this way. Thus “to Corinthize” meant to traffic in prostitutes, “to Phoenicize” means to perform cunnilingus, to “Sybarize” is to be a volupturary. Not all such verbs were sexual. “To act like an Egyptian” is to do criminal acts, “to act like a Cretan” is to lie. [Note: Thus the logical paradox attributed to the Cretan philosopher Epimenides, when he proclaimed “All Cretans are liars,” but being one himself, must therefore be lying.]
Such “ethnic verbs” would have multiple meanings all associated with the culture in question. For example, “to Spartanize” could mean to be a pederast, to break promises, or to love money. The verb “to Lesbianize” is defined by one author as meaning “to do shameful things” while other sources are interpreted as identifying those things specifically as performing fellatio. (This interpretation becomes explicit in post-classical times.)
There is a detailed discussion of the various texts that are interpreted in this fashion. They involve innuendo and word-play, especially alliteration with other words beginning in “L” including various those relating to lapping and licking. [Note: This sort of sound-symbolism can be cross-linguistic. The association of the mouth-part used to form an L (the tongue) with other things done with that part occurs in multiple unrelated languages, similarly the sound N and concepts related to the nose or to smelling.] But the classical sources don’t clearly support a conclusion that “to Lesbianize” only meant fellatio. Other contexts suggest a sense of sexual initiative, behavior that was considered shameless, and an association with the mouth. Many of the examples have a heterosexual context.
But there is also a non-sexual use of “to Lesbianize” in classical Greek, which means “to make music according to the style of Lesbos” suggesting the Aeolic style associated with poets such as Alcaeus and Sappho. In 5th century Athenian drama, this musical style was adapted into an innovative “New Music” which provoked politicized reactions, as when Plato critized it as frenzied, chaotic, and lawless intended to provoke pleasure in the listener, and prone to inspiring the average person to think he could judge good versus bad performance. [Note: I’m definitely getting a “Kids these days! Their music is just noise!” sort of vibe.] Greek musical theory classified certain modes as “masculine” or “feminine”, and criticism of the New Music included accusations that it was effeminate and self-indulgent. Thus the association of New Music, and the musical sense of “to Lesbianize”, with the criticism of New Music as feminine and lacking control all contributed to the pop culture stereotype of “the Lesbian”.
This group of associations appears in the plays of Aristophanes, where the musical styles are associated with luring a man into a sybaritic life that includes hanging out at symposia, composing drinking songs in the style of Alcaeus and Sappho, among other things. When the man takes off from the symposium with a female flute player (auletris), he tells her he has rescued her from having to “lesbianize the symposiasts”. This is the sort of ambiguous, multi-layered wordplay that both suggests a sexual meaning and indicates that it is not the only meaning: “lesbianize” could mean either to play music in the (disapproved) Lesbian mode for the drinkers, or to provide them with (oral?) sexual services.
Other similar examples of “lesbianize” in more specifically musical contexts are discussed. But this is only one of the multiple strands that construct a sexual “identity” for Lesbians (geographic) in antiquity.
Both in Aristophanes The Frogs and in a more obscure work, Cherion by Pherecrates, “Music” is personified as a sexualized and abused woman, in order to critique what the author depicts as the degradation and decline of musical and poetic standards. The personified Mousike complains of an array of geographically personified abusers who “stuffed me full of wiggles…and undresses me and loosens me up with his eleven notes.” These abusers of music are all identified as belonging to the Athenian and East Greek (explicitly including Lesbos) musical innovators. The character of Mousike, in addition to her status as an allegorical figure, is framed as a courtesan-like woman, thus again bringing together the motifs of courtesans, music, and geography and the idea of the debasement of musical traditions—the same motifs expressed in the musical sense of the verb “lesbianize.” This intersection was created and developed on the Athenian (comic) stage and merged with the sexual sense of “lesbianize” but in a heterosexual context. Although the musical meaning of “lesbianize” does connect, in part, to the poet Sappho, the sexual sense—at this point in the development of the meaning-cluster—does not. Yet we now have a loosely heterogeneous cluster of concepts focused around the geographic idea of Lesbos and embodied in the idea of the courtesan that includes innovative (and allegedly debased) musical styles, and assertive/transgressive female sexuality (that may also be associated with debased acts such as performing oral sex). Within this context an association is created that links Sappho as muse and Sappho as courtesan.
In the early sources that mention Sappho, Gilhuly argues that she is not linked personally with homoeroticism, despite the homerotic themes in her poetry. (In a footnote, Gilhuly notes that her analysis is concerned only with literary representations, and that there are Sappho-related images on ceramics in a similar era that suggest an association with a female pederastic image and a tradition of women-only symposia among courtesans (heteirai) which may reflect a part of the tradition that was not included in literature.) She is also set up in contrast and opposition to the image of the heteira, as in a passage by Herodotus concerning Sappho’s brother and his relationship with a famous hetaira Rhodopis, where Sappho mocks her brother in verse for his devotion. It is in contexts such as this that “Sappho as lyric poet in a community of women” becomes “Sappho as adjunct to heterosexual relations of men with courtesans” with a resulting “contamination” of her reputation. This context then drives the development of “Sappho as fetishized object of male desire, depicted as promiscuous and courtesan-adjacent.” This version was so in conflict with Sappho-the-poet that some traditions felt the need to spit the historic Sappho into two different people in order to accommodate it.
Gihuly introduces the self-mocking poem by Anacreon, introduced in the text as sometimes being thought to have Sappho as its subject, in which the poet-persona is struck by Eros to love a girl “from well-built Lesbos” who scorns him because his hair is white and “gapes after another” instead, where “another is grammatically feminine and ambiguous between “another [head of hair]” or “another [person who is female].” Gilhuly downplays the homoerotic reading, feeling that it requires a conceptual leap to attributing a homoerotic reputation to all residents of Lesbos at an era when this is not otherwise in evidence. [Note: But if the commentary by Athenaeus is correct that Anacreon was visualizing Sappho as the girl in his poem, then there is no need for this leap, only an acceptance that Sappho herself was understood as having homoerotic potential.] The style of the poem clearly evokes Sappho’s style and imagery. But if Sappho is indeed the girl in the poem, then the text and the commentary surrounding it that comments on other poets who “loved Sappho” frames her as the object of male erotic desire, regardless of her own feelings. This, in turn, contributed to the motif of Sappho as icon of insatiable (heterosexual) desire with multiple (male) partners, culminating in the legend of Phaon and the leap off the Leucadian rock. (Though some version of this story attribute it to the “other” Sappho, the courtesan.) Gilhuly sees this as an understandable resolution of the difficulty ancient male scholars had in envisioning a female poet, associated with erotic discourse, as being an active subject unless she could be assimilated to heteronormativity by making her a courtesan.
Roman literature carried over some of these images of Sappho and Lesbos while introducing new ones. Gilhuly catalogs them without introducing an overall framework.
Catullus and other poets such as Horace acknowledged Sappho as a poetic predecessor but seem to have difficulty with her femaleness, either assimilating her to their poetic love object (as with Catullus’s Lesbia) or framing her as necessarily masculine (because only men can be great poets) as in Horace’s “mascula Sappho.” Gilhuly connects Horace’s epithet with a Roman image of female homosexuals as “masculine women linked to a Greek past” (as per Hallett 1989). [Note: But see Boehringer 2021 who argues against this supposed “masculine tribade” concept in Roman texts.]
On the sexual side, as in Ovid’s Heroides, the homoerotic content of Sappho’s poetry is acknowledged but over-written by a heterosexual conversion (Phaon). Ovid’s transformation of Sappho’s image was derived from themes in Greek comedy, but integrated the various motifs into a rejection of same-sex love between women.
Overall these Roman interpretations are not coherent with each other, but treat Sappho (her identity, not her work) as source material that can be reinterpreted imaginatively. [Note: Ovid, in particular, had a massive effect on how Sappho’s personal life was envisioned in later centuries.]
As a summary, Gilhuly posits that the image of the courtesan provides the bridge between the evolving representations of Sappho and the evolving image of “lesbian” as a sexual category. Although, in the context of the courtesan, that “lesbian” category is homosexual.
Both as a real social category and as a literary character, the courtesan could do and say things that a “respectable” woman could not. In particular, it was socially acceptable to depict her both as the object and subject of erotic desire, as well as depicting her as given to excess both in behavior and dress. (Within a cultural context where virtue was equated with moderation and self-control.) Gilhuly hypothesizes that this behavioral freedom was an essential context for the “invention” of female homosexuality, particularly her freedom to be a sexual initiator. But this invention/association did not occur within the cultural context when the courtesan/hetaira was a living tradition, but only later when she had become a symbolic subject.
As a fixture of the symposium, the courtesan was solidly associated with the world of poetry and philosophy. She could participate in male-coded activities within the symposium and was associated with erotic discussions. These associations are seen in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans (although these are rhetorical exercises, not an attempt to represent the actual lives and concerns of courtesans). Dialogue 5 (the one concerning Megilla/Megillus) is, of course, the focus of this part of the article. In this dialogue, the courtesan and the woman from Lesbos are distinct characters. The courtesan Leaina relates her experiences with a rich woman from Lesbos who is “terribly manly,” who has a female partner she calls her wife, and who initiates an erotic encounter with Leaina. Leaina’s conversation partner, another courtesan, suggests that Megilla might be a hetairistria (see Plato’s Symposium). The dialogue is littered with philosophical allusions, evoking the overlapping worlds of the courtesan and philosopher, even when the overt topic is a sexual encounter. One particular sexual reputation of Lesbos is directly commented on: that there are “man-faced” women there who avoid sex with men and prefer women.
Although Sappho is not an overt topic of the dialogue, Gilhuly sees her reflected presence in the work, not only in the geographic origin of Megilla/Megillus, but in traditions linking Sappho to courtesans. [Note: I find this particular point a bit weak. As evidence regarding part of the sexual reputation of Lesbos, yes, but whether it connects directly to Sappho within this specific context? Less clear.]
Gilhuly’s final point is that she believes we’re asking the wrong question in seeking what the literary evidence can tell us about the historic Sappho and about erotic practices on the island of Lesbos. And that we should instead be asking how that literary evidence created the popular image of Sappho as homosexual, and the idea of “lesbian” as a sexual category.
[Note: I think there’s a significant point made here. The historic label/category of “lesbian” as referring to erotic relations between women is a clear and solid reality, regardless of what women may or may not have been doing on Lesbos in the 5th century BCE. And the association of Sappho with female homosexuality is also a clear historic fact. Neither of those facts is undermined or erased by picking apart the exact historic path by which those meanings evolved.]
This article looks generally at the topic of women with “active” sexuality in a classical Roman context, as understood in the context of three grammatically-feminine nouns derived from verbs of sexual action: fellatrix, tribade, and fututrix. (Crudely translated, fellator, rubber, and fucker, but where the grammatical form of the word unambiguously indicates a female actor.) An example is given of an inscription identifying a woman as Mola foutoutris “Mola, fucker” using an agentive noun that implies the possession and use of a phallus. The thesis is that these terms have in common that the women were conceptualized as “sexual agents”, separate from the question of penetration, as two of the words (fellatrix and fututrix) were used for women who were penetrated (according to Roman understandings) and one (tribade) for women who penetrated. [Note: I’ll be interesting to see how these conclusions are reached, as I’ve previously seen multiple analyses that interpret fututrix as indicating a woman who performs penetration, and context doesn’t necessarily indicate that a tribade engages in penetrative sex, especially given the literal meaning of the word root.]
The article begins with a discussion of how the terms “active” and “passive” have generally been used in academic discussions of classical homoeroticisim, and especially Greek pederasty. In this context, social norms assumed/required an alignment of social hierarchy (older, higher-status) with both erotic attitude and activity (desiring erotic interaction, gaining sexual satisfaction) and with the grammar of the language used (the grammatically active erastes “lover”). The norm for the grammatically passive eromenes (beloved) was to be younger, lower-status, accepting/allowing erotic interaction, and not experiencing sexual satisfaction from the encounter.
Foucault used active/passive in a second way (in addition to the insertive/receptive duality), following his focus on Greek philosophical principles of self-control of desires of all types, where someone “active” sexually was one who exercised control over his (gendered pronoun used deliberately) sexual appetites, while someone who was sexually “passive” was driven by their appetites, with this category expected to include women, children, and slaves, not because of the nature of their physical participation in sexual acts, but because “by nature” they did not have the virtue of self-control. In combination with a number of other dual contrasts, Foucault creates a “polarity” model with one pole being masculine/dominant/active/superior/sexual-subject and the other pole being feminine (or feminized)/dominated/passive/subordinate/sexual-object. This multivalent polarity model is generally used by those studying classical sexuality.
Thus the prevailing model as used by Halperin, et al. is one defined by “the penetration of the body of one person by the body—and specifically, by the phallus—of another.” In this context “active” and “passive” assume the meanings “penetrator” and “penetrated”. Having been developed in the context of Greek sexuality, this model was also taken up by those studying Roman sexuality. But the association of “penetrated” with “passive” becomes less coherent in the context of a named category of men who actively seek and enjoy penetration by other men. Such men might be disparaged as “effeminate” (aligning with another part of the polarity) but they disrupt the idea that being penetrated was, by definition, something that was endured rather than sought.
The standard vocabulary of sex in Latin aligns with two roles (active/passive), two genders (male/female), and three orifices (vagina, anus, mouth), with the assumption that the inserted item is a phallus, and with gaps in the vocabulary for impossible combinations (e.g., men’s lack of a vagina, women’s lack of a phallus). In the following table, note that only masculine agentive nouns occur for the “active” (insertive) role.
(To deal with potential formatting issues, I’ve reorganized this from a table to a bulleted list. Vocabulary is identified as “v” for verb and “n” for agentive noun.)
ACTIVE
PASSIVE
[**A digression for context: As one might guess from the similarity of words, this is the masculine agentive form for “one who performs cunnilingus, oral sex on the vagina.” And its inclusion in this place in the table is a bit confusing and incoherent. The table is taken from Parker in Hallett and Skinner 1997 which has a bit more discussion of this topic. Why this is viewed as a “passive” act has to do with viewing phallic penetrative sex, and sex with at least one man present, as the reference point. One would expect cunnilinctor to be grouped in the “mouth as orifice” group, with a distinction between whether it is a phallus or a vagina “penetrating” the mouth. But since the grid here assumes the presence of at least one man, then the location of cunnilinctor in this space is treating the (passive) man as having a mouth-as-vagina, since that’s the only available role for a man in this scenario. Thus the mouth is viewed as a “receptive orifice” and the person whose mouth is involved is seen as the passive/receptive partner. How do we assign active/passive roles when two “receptive orifices” are brought together? Mouth + vagina? In this case, it is the social acceptability of the organ that guides interpretation. Romans considered oral sex to degrade and pollute the mouth performing it. Therefore, in order to align status and sexual roles, the person whose mouth performs oral sex is defined as having the lower status (passive) role, even when that contradicts the gender of the people involved. Note that this table doesn’t include language for the hypothetical cases of the “active” vagina that is “penetrating” a mouth, or for the “passive” woman who is performing oral sex on a woman. The feminine agentive form cunnilinctrix doesn’t seem to appear in the Roman corpus, but the act is clearly implied in Martial’s epigram on Philaenis.]
In discussing Parker’s “grid of sexual roles”, the authors note that Parker, in addition to using active/passive as synonyms for insertive/receptive, also uses “active” in the sense of “desiring sexual activity regardless of role.” Thus a sex worker or a woman who has sex outside of marriage is “active” in the sense of pursuing sex in contexts that are not licensed by normative roles for women. Within this sense of “active” a woman could hypothetically be “sexually active” within her role as a married woman, although this would still be considered non-normative.
Having reviewed the various ways in which the concepts of active and passive were used, both by the Greeks and Romans themselves, and by scholars discussing classical sexuality, Kamen & Levin-Richardson move on to considering what Roman writers meant when they used “active” feminine agentive terms for women engaged in sex, such as fututrix. Using both grammatical and social contexts for the language discussing men in “passive” sexual roles, the authors identify a distinction between words that indicate an “accepting/enduring” role, such as pedicatus or irrumatus and words that indicate a “desiring/pursuing” role, such as cinaedus or fellator.
This finally brings us to the heart of the present article: is there language in classical Latin that marks a “passive but sexually desiring/pursuing woman”? because one of the basic tenets of the Roman sexual system is that all normative women (of whatever social status) are, by definition, sexually “passive.” Roman sexual literature is fully of descriptions of women who enthusiastically pursue sexual experiences, but this article focuses somewhat narrowly on women described as fellatrix (a woman who performs oral sex), fututrix (a woman who fucks, linguistically identifying her as an active participant), and tribade (which gets defined in a variety of ways, so I’ll wait to see how these authors interpret it). Although these are agentive nouns, they do not define sexual “identities” but simply sexual activities that are framed in a certain way within the context of Roman sexuality.
“Fellatrix” is the feminine form of the agentive noun derived from the verb “fello” (to suck) which, when used in a sexual context, indicates oral sex (by default, performed on a phallus). The masculine form is more common, appearing in both literature and graffiti, while the feminine form has only been found in graffiti. Descriptions of women performing fellatio do appear in literature, used as mockery or invective, but without using the agentive noun. Oral sex was considered to be degrading and polluting for the person performing it, and description or accusations of the act were often combined with other undesirable characteristics. “Fello” is a grammatically active verb, and therefore implies an active (and perhaps willing) participant in the act. Beside the literary descriptions and innuendos, there are multiple examples of graffiti along the lines of “Rufilla felat” (Rufilla sucks) which, when appearing in a brothel may be more of an advertisement than an insult. But not all such examples appear in buildings identified as brothels, and several of the examples of the form “Secundilla felatrix” (Secundilla the cock-sucker) appear on the walls of private homes.
These uses of derivatives of the verb “fello” can be contrasted with vocabulary derived from “irrumo”, where the agent of this verb is the man (always a man) on whom oral sex is being performed. Thus it might best be colloquially translated as “to mouth-fuck”. The use of this vocabulary set highlights the “receptive” partner in oral sex as both grammatically and behaviorally passive, and contexts in which it is used often focus on the act as aggressive or hostile.
Kamen & Levin-Richardson interpret “tribade,” although literally deriving from a verb meaning “to rub,” as indicating a women who performs penetrative sex. Part of their rationale is the fable by Phaedrus regarding a drunken Prometheus putting male and female genitals on the wrong bodies, thus creating both molles (men classified as effeminate due to preferring a passive role in sex) and tribades. They elaborate their interpretation of this myth as indicating that molles are male beings who have been given female genitals, and tribades are female beings who have been given male genitals, therefore tribades must have been understood as performing penetrative sex.
(Note: Boehringer points out the logical inconsistency of this take, as “molles” was used for people who had male physiology but were considered to have effeminate desires. Thus the basis for interpreting this fable as characterizing tribades as having a penis-equivalent is weak, and the logical chain “tribades are women with a penis, therefore tribades are defined by performing penetrative acts” requires independent evidence.)
The authors note the legal argument quoted by Seneca the Elder about two women caught in a sex act, both of whom are identified as “tribades” but only one of whom is initially believed to be a man. Martial has several epigrams that identify the subject as a tribade who engage in a variety of sexual acts. One sodomizes (pedicat) boys, does an unspecified act to girls (dolat), and also performs oral sex on girls (vorat). Another fucks (futui) her girlfriend. A third “joins twin cunts”. All of these are presented linguistically and situationally as “active” and the authors assert this agency “generally takes the form of penetration”. [Note: although the evidence they present does not at all clearly indicate this.] The tribade’s sexual agency typically involves acts that would be considered normative for a (dominant) man, but are inappropriate for a woman.
The third “sexual agent” word found for women is fututrix “(female) fucker”. The default meaning of the verb “futuo” involves a sexual agent with a phallus who penetrates a vagina. So how do we interpret examples in which the agent is female? There are two examples in graffiti of a person with a feminine name identified as a fututrix. There’s a possible example on a curse tablet. And there are two examples in Martial’s epigrams of a grammatically-feminine body part (a hand, a tongue) that is being used sexually being called “fututrix”.
Reference works of Latin have interpreted this word in opposite ways, depending on whether they relied on grammatical or social context. Grammatically, fututrix indicates an active agent and is directly parallel to masculine fututor, and by this reasoning should be interpreted as indicating a woman who performs penetration. Thus, if one follows the interpretation of tribade as implying penetration, tribade and fututrix should be parallel in meaning. But the authors dismiss this, arguing that there are no examples of a woman described both as a tribade and as a fututrix. [Note: the authors either overlook or avoid discussing Martial’s epigram that describes a woman as a tribade and states that she fucks (futuo) her female partner.]
Interpreting the word fututrix based on social context, one starts with the presumption that, because a woman cannot be an active penetrator (not having a phallus), one can only interpret the word as indicating “the normative female role within a ‘futuo’ scenario,” i.e., a woman being penetrated. However if one wanted to describe a woman as “one-who-is-fucked,” there are other grammatical constructions available, such as the passive participle, which does appear in other graffiti.
The other two instances of the word that are brought to bear involve sexual scenarios in which a man’s body part is being used sexually, and where that body part is grammatically feminine. In the first, the hand is being used to stimulate a boy’s genitals, and in the second, an act of cunnilingus is being described and the man’s tongue is described as a fututrix. Neither of these is a normative example of “futuo”. The hand is not penetrating, and cunnilingus is normally framed as involving being “penetrated.” But they have in common that the male participant is taking deliberate, intentional action. (And possibly that he is the socially dominant partner.) From this, the authors conclude that the “active” grammatical meaning of fututrix comes from agency and desire, not from the “penetrative” role in the sex act. [Note: Since the emphasis in the cunnilingus example is specifically described as penetrating the vagina, this might be an alternate basis for the “override,” but the authors don’t suggest this as a contribution.]
Additional examples are given of descriptions of lascivious women whose participation in sex is given in grammatically and performatively active terms (shake/wiggle, move, thrust).
Thus, the authors conclude, women can be “active” in sex (and have this reflected in active agentive nouns) by expressing desire for the act and engaging in actions/movements during sex. In the context of a m/f sex act (fellatrix, fututrix) this is both non-normative and desired by men. (At least, desired in a non-marital partner.) This same desiring/acting implication for a tribade is both non-normative and disparaged. (Though the authors attribute the negative aspect to them being “penetrating pseudo-men,” as opposed simply falling outside the normative sexual system.) They propose revising the table of sexual vocabulary and roles to reflect this expanded polarity, differentiating between traditionally “passive” roles based on whether active sexual desire and participation is involved.
[Note: I’m not convinced by the argumentation in this article, particularly in light of the more in-depth analysis of some of the examples by Boehringer. There’s a bit too much assuming of conclusions (e.g., “tribade = masculine-style penetrator”) and glossing over of contradictory evidence (e.g., the wide variety of sexual activities by Martial’s tribades). But there’s definitely a contradictory puzzle to be sorted out in the existence of the term fututrix, particularly when appearing in the context of sex work.]
This article covers the same material and topics as Chapter 4 in the 2021 edition of Sandra Boehringer’s Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. See my write-up of that version at the link. Although the structure of the two discussions is different, and the present article is worth reading on its own, it didn't seem profitable to write it up as a separate LHMP entry.