Women in Antiquity: CLAS 330/HUM 330/WS 330 (3 units)
Presession, Summer 1995: Monday, May 15 - Saturday, June 3
9:00 -11:50 AM MTWTHF ML 312
Instructor: Marilyn B. Skinner (mskinner@ccit.arizona.edu)

Readings:
Pomeroy, chapter 6
Lefkowitz and Fant, 72-74
Dover, "Classical Greek Attitudes"

Ancient Sexual Ideology

By understanding how Greek men saw themselves as sexual beings, we understand why they attempted to control women

1. Women's sexuality
   • women violate social boundaries and so pose a threat
   • "women are wet"
   • women have physiological compulsion to have sex, which must be channeled into productive work of childbearing and rearing
   • ancient wedding ceremony designed to assist groom in "taming" the girl
     • betrothal (witnesses, feast for male kin-group)
     • Ekdosis or "handing over" from one kyrios to another
     • Public procession and unveiling of bride
     • Life passages marked by bleeding
2. Men's sexuality
   1. Moral issue: not object or act but degree of temperance
      • object preference not a component of personal identity
      • did not define morality of act
      • in our society, "homosexuality" puts gender identity at risk; in Greece and Rome, some homoerotic and some heterosexual acts put gender identity at risk, others do not
   2. Dominance vs. submission: aligns sexual and social roles
   3. Penetration and gender
      • adult male must penetrate
      • female is by definition penetrated and passive
      • any sexual act between two partners, at least one of whom is male, must involve a dominance-submission relationship
      • sex-role assignment of boy structured along age lines, assimilated to female
      • adolescent sexuality and citizenship
3. Medical and moral issues
   1. Men are dry by nature; excess moisture discharged as semen
   2. Sexual activity necessary, but too much is debilitating
   3. Excess and passivity as two forms of misconduct:
      • sex reduces rational males to animal level, entails submission to demands of nature
      • tempts one to go beyond need satisfaction (addictive)
      • freedom as absence of physical or emotional compulsion
      • surrender to desire is feminine, because women cannot control appetites
4. Moderation is virile. Every kyrios must exercise proper control over himself in order to control his household.

Philosophic Theories of "Woman" (L&F 72, 73, 74)

1. Debate over women's moral nature: can women be temperate?
   • Platonic view: virtue is the same for men and women
   • Aristotelian view: virtue is radically different for each
2. Women's social role and women's virtue
   • Gorgias the sophist: men and women destined by nature to perform different functions
   • Plato in the Republic:
     1. females are by nature weaker than males, but some women are naturally better than most men in a given area
     2. role differences justified only by difference in ability
     3. except for childbearing, no roles exclusively sex-linked
     4. consequently, some men and women will be alike in virtue
   • Aristotle:
     1. women are less capable of self-control through reasoned deliberation
     2. females must be placed under male supervision, hence destined for a subordinate social role
     3. nature determines moral faculty, which then prescribes role (cf. Gorgias: role determines moral faculty)
3. Relation between the state and the family
   • Plato (Republic): promotion of communal life within the ruling class of the ideal state
     1. education and duties the same for both sexes, according to strength and ability
     2. women must be prepared to undertake military duty
     3. abolition of the family and of private property
     4. state regulation of sexual unions
     5. provision of communal child care
   • Plato (Laws): extends the principle that the state must direct energies of all its citizens to its own advantage
     1. primary goal--increasing state productivity
     2. abolition of privacy and retirement for women
     3. development of their "lesser" potential for virtue
     4. procreation is the sole and natural purpose of sex
   • Aristotle: critique of the Republic
     1. natural hierarchy of the sexes
     2. women's nature not fitted to command
     3. children cannot be held in common

www.stoa.org/diotima