This takes me back ... something like six years. That is, the first thing I thought of when I read through the historical review was an
article I quoted way back when:
Numerous deities and spirits of other traditions express similar connections between liminality and gendered or erotic diversity. Associated with amazonian behavior and with intimacy between women, the Mediterranean Artemis/Diana is frequently linked to moments of transition. She is the "one who looses" or sets free and is the "goddess of the 'out there'" ....
.... The plump, elephant-headed Hindu deity Ganesha is likewise associated with the threshold and with the blurring of gender distinctions. As the loyal son of the goddess Parvati, Ganesha guards her bedchamber. In this capacity, he is described as a "protean, liminal character" who "stand on the threshold between the profane world ... and the sacred territory," who "protect the purity of the inner shrine," and who "provides access to the other gods and goddesses." Ganesha's head is that of a female elephant, while his torso is that of a human male. Even Ganesha's male torso is, however, perceived as androgynous; his softness, plumpness, and breasts are viewed as feminine. Moreover, both his "perpetually flaccid trunk" and his role as bringer of rain indicate an association with eunuchs, considered liminal figures in the Hindu cosmos. Ganesha is also associated with homoeroticism, by way of both the upanayana ritual, which may include intimate relations between master and disciple, and his patronage of the muladhara chakra. This chakra signifies not only the threshold leading to the awakening of the kundalini, but also the practice of cultic homoeroticism.
(Conner)
Homosexuality and homoeroticism have long been a part of the human experience, both culturally and personally. And people have struggled, the entire time, to understand how this component of our species' socialization fits into the larger scheme of the human endeavor.
Sometimes, in other sociopolitical debates, we hear much about the nature of historical narratives. Sometimes it is the complaint that "winners write history"; in the U.S., we still hear of struggles to define the genuine historical record in classrooms against myths like Empty Continent (white people found the Americas virtually empty), or Southern Reconstruction (blacks could not take care of themselves, thus Jim Crow laws were necessary and for the benefit of the unfortunate former slaves and their descendants).
Here again we find a question of the historical narrative. To the one, homosexuality is allegedly "unnatural", despite habitual homoerotic behavior occurring in various animal species, and had it not been prevalent in human practice, why would God have mentioned it at all when handing down the Law to Moses?
To the other, we often encounter the assertion that religion is a means of exercising authority over other people; while this is undoubtedly an effect that can, over time, become calculated and thus exploited, this is not the natural state of mystical inquiry. We see in diverse mystical expressions a recognition of homosexuality or the homoerotic. And while we might assert that some individual shaman or high priest might have cleverly sublimated his "forbidden love" as some mystical aspect of life, what of the everyday adherents and members of society who accepted such claims, and reproduced them in later generations?
Even in Christian societies, there have been attempts to recognize the value of the homoerotic. "Female hysteria" was long a diagnosis attributed to various ridiculous causes until Freud identified it as part of a broader class of neurotic disorders. But over the centuries, there have been various attempted cures, including rape; for our purposes, though, it is enough to note that somewhere along the line arose the idea of genitally masturbating a woman, often with the aid of a midwife. That's right, a woman getting off another woman was, under certain superstitious circumstances, considered healthy in Western, Christian cultures. (Still, though, the "water massages"—see the Wikipedia article for an hilarious illustration thereof—seem somewhat ridiculous; not so much with the modern shower head, but ....)
One thing we must understand is that the intersection of sexuality and politics is found what might reasonably described as a Gordian knot of human psychological dysfunction. Sexual expression pertains to both our deepest evolutionary programming and most superficial self-recognition.
Looking at the myth of female hysteria, one might suggest that the diagnosis—at least since the time of Galen (second century CE)—it has been used as a device to help men get laid. And, in the end, that might be the driving force behind homophobia: it is perceived by men as a threat to their purported inherent right to fuck women.
Norman O. Brown explained of Freud, "The doctrine of the universal neurosis of mankind, if we take it seriously, therefore compels us to entertain the hypothesis that the pattern of history exhibits a dialectic not hitherto recognized by historians, the dialectic of neurosis." Practical application of the proposition is a complicated and oft-uncertain business, but also a rewarding one.
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Notes:
Conner, Randy P. L. "Men-Women, Gatekeepers, and Fairy Mounds." Parabola. Spring 2000.
Brown, Norman O. Life Against Death. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1959.
See Also:
Wikipedia. "Female Hysteria". August 6, 2010. Wikipedia.org. August 29, 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_hysteria
