Ethos Of Sex

463 Words2 Pages
The information concerning the ancient ethos about sex can shed light onto the language and implications of Romans 1:24-27. Today, we base our “sexual categories on the axis of same versus other,” but the ancient world divided theirs on active versus passive (Parker, 47), based on their “ethos of penetration and domination” (Halperin, 35). The active were the men doing the penetrating, receiving the pleasure, and were a group exclusively consisting of the elite male citizens in the society (Halperin, 31); the receivers could be any of his statutory minors, including women, boys, foreigners, and slaves (Halperin, 30). Therefore, since their sexual categorization was based on status as a male citizen or not, they had no concept of homosexuality or heterosexuality, and even using these words to understand the historical context is “anachronistic and can lead to serious misunderstanding” (Parker, 47). So, what was natural in their culture was for the male to be the active agent and for the woman, or the social inferior, to be passive and the receptor of the action done unto them (Parker, 48). With the above interaction as normal, then what was deemed abnormal and “virtually inconceivable” to this culture was “sex between members of the superordinate group” (Halperin, 31). This situation would mean that an elite male was passive…show more content…
Since the active agent in the act must penetrate the receiver with their penis,

More about Ethos Of Sex

Open Document