sex, history, and fanfic
A few days ago I was looking for discussions of recent Rome episodes, and I stumbled upon this post by vaznetti. In the course of a general discussion about Roman culture's attitudes towards male/male sex, vaznetti mentions that the Pullo/Vorenus pairing doesn't work for her because she sees it as contradicting Roman ideas about appropriate masculinity. In the comments, she observes that "if Vorenus made a sexual advance on Pullo, Pullo would have to kill him, and vice versa."

Before I begin, I'd better say that the purpose of my post isn't to diss vaznetti, okay? Nor is it to question what she says about Roman sexual attitudes generally (though I do think it's noteworthy that, while both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony were widely known to have allowed men to fuck them, neither's social status or political power apparently suffered much).

What I do want to question is a chain of ideas that I've seen in a number of posts (not just vaznetti's) about boyslash in a historical context. The logic goes like this: we know that culture A thought male/male sex (or certain kinds of it) was bad. Therefore, nobody in culture A ever indulged in these frowned-upon behaviors. And therefore, these characters could not possibly be doing it.

Now, I'm a firm believer in taking history in account, and not giving characters in a historical setting inappropriately modern ideas. When we write, it's important to know that Greek man/boy relationships were typically expected to end when the boy reached adulthood, and that the Romans considered being penetrated to be unmanly and degrading, and that a man in 1950s Britain could be sentenced to chemical castration for having consensual, private sex with another man. (*weeps for Alan Turing*)

But it's also important to remember that people defy their societies' sexual ideologies all the time. Just because a particular kind of sex is considered degrading/laughable/disgusting/sinful doesn't mean people don't do it anyway.

In my other life as an academic, I specialize in Renaissance England. Male/male sex was a hell of a lot more taboo there than in ancient Rome. Religion (both Catholic and Protestant) taught that sodomy was a terrible sin; legal discourse called it "a crime not to be named among Christians"; men convicted of sodomy were sentenced to death. And yet, men continued to have sex with other men.¹ People also masturbated, had premarital and extramarital sex, had heterosexual sex of taboo types (e.g., oral sex) and in taboo positions (e.g., woman on top), used sex toys (there's a sixteenth-century English poem about dildos) and generally behaved like the randy creatures that human beings typically are. These behaviors weren't necessarily as common or as guilt-free as they often are for twenty-first century Westerners, nor did people think about sex and its meanings in the same ways we do now, but there's every evidence that a damn wide range of sexual practices existed. (Another bit of trivia--there are fourteenth-century London court records indicating the existence of crossdressed male prostitutes. There's very little new under the sun.)

For that matter, think of the ideas our own culture² promulgates about sex. Romantic relationships should be monogamous.³ Kink is something only creepy, emotionally-disturbed people find appealing. Women are more interested in cuddling than in sex, and they never, ever enjoy porn.

(Have you stopped laughing yet at that last one?)

So I think it's ridiculous to say "these characters would never do that, because it was terribly, terribly forbidden." Why should we assume that our characters would follow every social dictate? Some characters probably would--Vorenus may be among them, although Pullo has quite a history of being able to convince him to forget about what respectable Roman men are supposed to do. Other characters might need convincing or have to take a long time thinking things through. Some might do taboo things and then feel wretchedly ashamed afterwards. Some might blithely do whatever the hell they feel like. The thing is, it all depends on the character.

When we're writing fic set in another time, or another culture, we should certainly think about differences of all kinds, and be aware of how our characters' attitudes and desires are shaped by their society. But we should also beware of a false universalizing tendency that turns cultural norms into straitjackets binding our characters. That's not history, that's stereotyping.

***

¹Women undoubtedly had sex with other women, too. But for various reasons, it's less well documented.

²By which I mean contemporary America--I can't speak for the rest of the world, though I don't imagine things are that different in western Europe.

³Probably one of the most universally agreed-on sexual norms of our culture is that cheating (in a relationship that's officially monogamous) is wrong, is a truly reprehensible thing to do. And yet, many people--possibly most--cheat on a partner at some point.