Rob Liefeld hates it when you gay up his straight characters...

. . . but he doesn't help his cause when he makes arguments like this:

He's a warrior, a Spartan, and not a gay one.

The evidence that the actual Spartans were homosexual [thanks James] is scant and somewhat contradictory.  In the most frequently cited classical source, "The Polity of the Lacedaemons," Xenephon insists that the Spartans were not homosexual in the manner of the Boetians and Eleians:

I ought, as it seems to me, not to omit some remark on the subject of boy attachments, it being a topic in close connection with that of boyhood and the training of boys.

We know that the rest of the Hellenes deal with this relationship in different ways, either after the manner of the Boeotians, where man and boy are intimately united by a bond like that of wedlock, or after the manner of the Eleians, where the fruition of beauty is an act of grace; whilst there are others who would absolutely debar the lover from all conversation and discourse with the beloved.

Lycurgus adopted a system opposed to all of these alike. Given that some one, himself being all that a man ought to be, should in admiration of a boy's soul endeavour to discover in him a true friend without reproach, and to consort with him—this was a relationship which Lycurgus commended, and indeed regarded as the noblest type of bringing up. But if, as was evident, it was not an attachment to the soul, but a yearning merely towards the body, he stamped this thing as foul and horrible; and with this result, to the credit of Lycurgus be it said, that in Lacedaemon the relationship of lover and beloved is like that of parent and child or brother and brother where carnal appetite is in abeyance. (301, emphasis mine)

Note that while there are no carnal relations allowed in Sparta, the male-male couple is still referred to as "lover and beloved," which leads me to believe this could be a rough Spartan equivalent of the Sacred Band of Thebes.  The other most frequently cited ancient source cited on homosexuality in Sparta is Plutarch's "Life of Lycurgus," in which he describes the wedding night and connubial bliss of the married Spartan couple thus:

Then the woman that had the direction of the wedding, cut the bride's hair close to the skin, dressed her in man's clothes, laid her upon a mattress, and left her in the dark. The bridegroom, neither oppressed with wine, nor enervated with luxury, but perfectly sober, as having always supped at the common table, went in privately, untied her girdle, and carried her to another bed.

Having stayed there a short time, he modestly retired to his usual apartment, to sleep with the other young men; and he observed the same conduct afterwards, spending the day with his companions, and reposing himself with them in the night, nor even visiting his bride, but with great caution and apprehensions of being discovered by the rest of the family; the bride, at the same time, exerted all her art to contrive convenient opportunities for their private meetings. (112, emphasis mine)

The Spartans are still not homosexual in the manner of the Boetians, Eleians, or a host of my closest friends; however, on their wedding nights they gave the bride a man's haircut, dressed her up men's clothes, did their thing, then "retired to [the] usual apartment, to sleep with the other young men."  Lycurgus seems to have mandated that all young men need and must be double-super-secret beards, which means that because no one is gay, everyone is; or that because everyone is gay, no one is—or maybe they were Heisenbergian beards, in that no Spartan could be measurably gay while being observed and vice versa because we have inadequate tools. 

So even the most charitably homophobic reading of the classical literature puts to lie the notion that someone can be a Spartan warrior and unquestionably straight at the same time.  From our perspective, being a Spartan warrior entails engaging in behaviors that range from "overtly homosexual" to "extremely homosocial," so Liefeld's claim that his character is "a Spartan, but not a gay one" smooths the wrinkles of historical truth in the name of hospital corners. 

Unfortunately for Liefeld, in the years since history there's been this, which this (inarguably NSFW) image pretty much sums up.

(h/t Bill Reed.)

Comments

[James T]

"While the evidence that the actual Spartans is scant and somewhat contradictory"
Whoops! Evidence of what?

[James T]

...Oh, and at that resolution, the last link is inarguably NSFW.

[SEK]

Thanks for the correction, James, and sorry about the resolution. Firefox downsizes everything unless I click on it, and it's not even remotely NSFW at that unclicked resolution. I'll add a note.

[anthony]

has the focculadian idea of a 19th century creation of the category set homosexual finally died? Because I always feel weird when people use the word before it's time, but that might be my hang up.

[SeanH]

"Focculadian"? Really? I always said "Foucaultian", and just pronounced it like his name with "-ian" awkwardly suffixed.

I have often wondered, going into academia, if my surname will ever be turned into an adjective.

[anthony]

Technically, it's Foucauldian

[tomemos]

Hard consonants are usually added to those whose names end with vowel sounds: Foucauldian, Shavian (for Shaw).

[j.s.nelson]

I've always wanted my name to be turned into an adjective, but I'm hoping "Nelsonian" eventually means something along the lines of "Mathusian" or "Lovecraftian", possibly a combination of the two.

[anthony]

can someone now answer my question

[SEK]

has the focculadian idea of a 19th century creation of the category set homosexual finally died?

Sorry about that Anthony, I meant to answer it before: the Foucauldian notion still holds sway in the humanities, but I can't speak for the social sciences. However, it's not as over-arching as it once was, thanks to the work of a lot of (largely) scholars of Irish Modernist literature (or scholars who happen to be dipping into Irish Modernist literature) like Neil Bartlettt, whose Who Was That Man? (about Oscar Wilde) actually delves into the minutiae of social and legal history in an effort to put some flesh to those Foucauldian bones. That said, in any but the loosest sense I don't buy the Foucault, because while it may be true that they didn't define it like us, that doesn't mean that the category itself is somehow invalid . . . just like, to draw from my own work, just because someone isn't talking about Darwinian evolution doesn't mean that they're not talking about the development of species over time.

[JPool]

Anthony, I'm not sure what Scott was going for, but I'd say that in the years since Foucault was writing History of Sexuality and the like that "homosexual" has fallen far enough out of common usage that it seems less presentist than "gay", but not so far out that it seems like a historically specific formulation, like "invert" or "Urning." Of course, Foucault's point was that everything is epistemeic (I know that's probably not an acceptable adjectival mash-up), so there is no acceptable trans-historical terminology. Even abstracted alienated terms like "same-sex erotic relations" take on a specific historical value the moment they're popularized, even if they might be more useful in the moment for remind us that we shouldn't assume that men having sex with men in earlier and/or non-Western societies are necessarily homosexuals or gay men as we understand them.

At which poin I will presume to spek for what Scott was doing, because it seems to me that what he was trying to do was in fact to point out, ala Foucault vol. II, that Spartan same-sex relations, such as we are able to know them, don't reduce to gay/not gay in the way that Liefeld quote would presume they could. (One presumes that Liefeld would respond "I wasn't talking about Sparta Sparta. I just meant all serious warrior badmotherfucker-like." Or something. I don't really know who these comic book people are.) In doing so, SEK used some of that same vernacular language in a trans-historical way. This may have udercut or made his point more persuasive, depending on the sort of driving that you do, the quality of your tires, and other mileage varying things.

At the same time, this
behaviors that range from "overtly homosexual" to "extremely homosocial,"
I don't like. If "homosocial" means anything useful it has to be seperable -- not opposed, but seperable, and therefor not meaningfully part of a spectrum -- from sexual relations. Otherwise you're essentially saying "Dude, they were so bromantic, they were totally gay for each other." Michel would indeed tsk.

[anthony]

Michel tsked a lot. i have been sort of accepting the idea as doctrinaire for a while, and i am sort of trying to figure out if i can move things about while still maintaining it's authenticity.

[Karl Steel]

You may also want to look into James Schultz, "Heterosexuality as a Threat to Medieval Studies," Journal of the History of Sexuality 15.1 (2006) 14-29. Here's the opening to the essay:

Medievalists know that if they claim to have found "homosexuals" in the Middle Ages they will provoke cries of outrage, and nothing else they say will be heard. So they avoid the term. Thus Allen Frantzen, on the very first page of Before the Closet: Same-Sex Love from "Beowulf" to "Angels in America," declares categorically: "I call this a book about 'same-sex love' because the obvious choice, 'homosexuality,' is, for periods before the modern era, inaccurate. 'Homosexuality' and 'homosexuals' were not recognized concepts in the Middle Ages." Apparently, the same is not true of "heterosexuality" and "heterosexuals." Frantzen does not hesitate, throughout his volume, to oppose "same-sex relations" to "heterosexual relations." 1 The result is a Middle Ages that would make Pat Buchanan jump for joy, one from which all the homosexuals have been banished and only heterosexuals remain.

This should give one pause. If homosexuality was not a "recognized concept" in the Middle Ages, then heterosexuality wasn't either. This in itself is not a reason to argue against its use: much of the best work in medieval studies relies on concepts that were not recognized in the Middle Ages. And, in any case, to insist that medieval scholarship limit itself to medieval concepts in their medieval meanings is to insist on an impossibility. I want to argue against the use of heterosexuality in medieval studies not as a matter of high principle but as a practical matter because of the damage it does.

To be sure, other scholars have questioned the wisdom of imposing the heterosexual norm on the Middle Ages. 2 Karma Lochrie makes the point [End Page 14] with exemplary clarity: "Heterosexuality as a normative principle simply did not exist" in the Middle Ages. 3 But Lochrie, like others, voices her objections as part of a larger argument on a different topic. Perhaps it is for this reason that the case against heterosexuality has not carried the day. In what follows I propose to isolate the issue and illustrate the consequences, both historiographical and political, of reading heterosexuality backward into the Middle Ages.

[Laura]

I'm not crazy, am I? You did make a dick joke in there, didn't you? (Or do I just have a dirty mind?)