Bisexuality in History
Though many of us tend to forget the B in LGBT today, and we have prescribed a certain negative perception to those who are attracted to multiple genders, bisexual people have been living incredible lives for as long as the rest of us have. Their stories are rooted in the same oppression all queer people face, but they’re rooted in a second oppression — the silence they have lived under within our own community.
The book Ancient Greece confirms that the ancient greek religion didn’t dictate sexual behavior, the non-heterosexual relations were common, and that it was acceptable for men to have extra-marital sex. In that detachment of sex from marriage, some Greek men engaged in sex and even meaningful relationships with other men. Ancient Greece confirms that it was normal for an older married man to court a young boy. It wasn’t a “courageous” act for an older man to love — emotionally or physically — a younger man, and it certainly wasn’t rare.
In mythology, Achilles and Patroclus were likely intimate, which wasn’t recorded as being odd. They still had wives. The emperor Hadrian built an entire city for Antinous, his lover who died on the battlefield. He still had a wife. Zeus even had a male lover, Ganymede. Zues also had a wife. History Today even states that Alexander the Great was known to have loved at least two men among the many he potentially had sex with, including his beloved childhood friend, Hephaestion. You guessed it, he had a wife.
Outside of Europe, bisexuality was seen around the world, including in Japan and the Americas, according to the New World Encyclopedia. The LGBT bigotry we now see being played out in countries around the globe wasn’t always there, and bisexuality was a normal part of life in pre-colonization.
In Japan, one example of what we would now call bisexuality was shudo, which was practiced by many samurai. Many young men were trained by older males in the culture and strategy of being a samurai, and the two would generally become lovers. According to Bustle, shudo was supposed to create a bond of friendship, and the sexual relationship generally lasted until the young man was ready for marriage. Across Asia, this also took place in Buddhist monasteries.
In the Americas, many Native American cultures revered “two-spirit” people, whom we now conceptualize as being either androgynous or transgender. In history, though, two-spirit people were sometimes “androgynous males” who were married to masculine men or had sex with men, or “masculine females” who had feminine women as wives, according to The Guardian.
What early history tells us about bisexuality and sexual liberalism in general is that it was a normal part of life throughout much of antiquity. Obviously, moralists and the codifying of evangelical Christianity, imperialism, and industry changed this, but bisexuality continued to exist. I say exist and not thrive because we know bisexual individuals were marginalized in history much like gay and lesbian people were. England passed The Buggery Act in 1553, which eventually grew to lump bestiality with anal penetration and banned them both. Thomas Jefferson proposed a “liberal” law in 1779 threatening castration for any man guilty of sodomy. Homosexuality, and largely bisexuality with it, was considered a disorder until 1973.
There was a tragically strong history of discrimination against conduct that wasn’t strictly heterosexual, but bisexuality continued to gain legitimacy and national understanding from Freud’s discussion of bisexuality as universal and innate, Dr. Kinsey’s scale of sexuality, and the “gender-bending” sexual revolution that came about after the Stonewall riots launched the modern gay rights movement in 1969.
Sadly, we don’t know about bisexuality to its fullest extent due to poor record keeping, but we do know one thing. In the long line of recorded human history, bisexuality has continued to exist, evolve, and resist unrelenting cultural and social pressures, a legacy that many can learn from.
