Sailors and Cones, Albert Hampsen, 1937.
“The general secretary of the city’s major anti-prostitution society warned in 1918 that opponents of his anti-prostitution campaign might use the ‘apparent increase of male perversion’ during World War I as ‘evidence to sustain their argument that vice driven out of one form will appear in another.’ […] His fear that such reasoning would seem plausibe was well founded. One of his own investigators had used it to explain the homosexual liaisons he had observed on the streets surrounding the Brooklyn Navy Yard late one summer in 1917, when no women were to be found:
‘The streets and corners were crowded with the sailors all of whom were on a sharp lookout for girls… It seemed to me that the sailors were sex mad. A number of these sailors were with other men walking arm in arm and on one dark street I saw a sailor and a man kissing each other. It looked like an exhibition of mail [sic] perversion showing itself in the absence of girls or the difficulty of finding them. Some of the sailors told me that they might be able to get a girl if they went ‘up-town’ but it was far too far up and they were too drunk to go way up there.’
The belief that fairies could be substituted for female prostitutes - and were virtually interchangeable with them - was particularly prevalent among men in the bachelor subculture whose opportunities for meeting ‘respectable’ women were limited by the moral codes, gender segregation, or unbalanced sex ratios of their ethnic cultures. Indeed, many of these men found the sexual services of fairies to be both easier and cheaper to secure than those of women. They could be found around the Navy Yard and along the waterfront, on well-known streets and in many subway washrooms, where a man could find quick release on the way home from work by merely presenting himself. A finely calibrated map of the sexual geography of the neighborhood was usually part of men’s gender-specific ‘local knowledge.’ Many workingmen knew precisely where to go to find fairies with whom, if they chose, they need not exchange a word to make their wishes clear.”
-George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940.
When I was in college and working as a page in the manuscripts and archives division of a major library, I got to photocopy a bunch of original vice-squad reports from the 1920s and 1930s, wherein investigators like the one quoted above had to go undercover into fairy-bars and prostitute haunts. Needless to say, I spent more time reading than copying. Hot stuff.
![cicerothewriter:
cuddlywares:
apiphile:
cuddlywares:
apiphile:
cuddlywares:
apiphile:
cuddlywares:
cerberusia:
cuddlywares:
apiphile:
I’M DRUNK IT IS TIME FOR HEPHAESTION FEELS
^ ohoho look a post about why I don’t drink
HEPHAESTIONNNNNNNN. Can never work out what kind of guy he was IRL - teacher speculates that he was difficult to get along with (albeit utterly loyal to Alexander) and completely willing to get his hands dirty, and more of a infrastructure guy that military leader.
ye ye ye I SUSPECT severe power struggles with the other generals! And also iirc Alexander once demoted him for not being that good a battlin’ general but in the texts he is very often in charge of logistical things
(particularly fond of how the texts sometimes specify ‘tall and good looking’)
completely willing to get his hands dirty
Oh good more reasons to be flailingly fucking obsessed
asdfg I love when tumblr becomes dirty flaily Hephaestion parties
he is just ALWAYS INJURED AND TRYING TO FUCK UP RIVALS
tbqh i am sure some of my feels come from alexander’s dementedly ott mourning and that “one soul in two bodies” and “he, too, is alexander” shit and it’s like OH BOYS WE GET IT YOU ARE TOTALLY FUCKING SILLY FOR EACH OTHER and then BADASSES AS WELL and then i died a lot.
[/not a classicist]
YOU DON’T NEED TO BE A CLASSICIST TO KNOW ‘BOUT THE BEING SILLY FOR EACH OTHER aaaaaaaa
Being a classicist just teaches you about the naked love ceremonies
And now you HAVE to teach me aaaaaall about those. >:)
All the historians say Alexander went to Troy when he first came to Asia on account of being a massive Iliad fanboy, and Arrian and Aelian say he and Hephaestion both put wreaths on the tombs of Achilles and Patroclus to represent their own devotion.
And then Plutarch says they and the other companions got naked and oiled up and ran a footrace around Achilles’ tomb. OH PLUTARCH.
Plutarch was always making crazy shit up. Entertaining shit (usually), but still.
This whole post is made of win! :D](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4ap0vxBsU1qb93qso1_1280.jpg)
![the-seed-of-europe:
Sailors and Cones, Albert Hampsen, 1937.
“The general secretary of the city’s major anti-prostitution society warned in 1918 that opponents of his anti-prostitution campaign might use the ‘apparent increase of male perversion’ during World War I as ‘evidence to sustain their argument that vice driven out of one form will appear in another.’ […] His fear that such reasoning would seem plausibe was well founded. One of his own investigators had used it to explain the homosexual liaisons he had observed on the streets surrounding the Brooklyn Navy Yard late one summer in 1917, when no women were to be found:
‘The streets and corners were crowded with the sailors all of whom were on a sharp lookout for girls… It seemed to me that the sailors were sex mad. A number of these sailors were with other men walking arm in arm and on one dark street I saw a sailor and a man kissing each other. It looked like an exhibition of mail [sic] perversion showing itself in the absence of girls or the difficulty of finding them. Some of the sailors told me that they might be able to get a girl if they went ‘up-town’ but it was far too far up and they were too drunk to go way up there.’
The belief that fairies could be substituted for female prostitutes - and were virtually interchangeable with them - was particularly prevalent among men in the bachelor subculture whose opportunities for meeting ‘respectable’ women were limited by the moral codes, gender segregation, or unbalanced sex ratios of their ethnic cultures. Indeed, many of these men found the sexual services of fairies to be both easier and cheaper to secure than those of women. They could be found around the Navy Yard and along the waterfront, on well-known streets and in many subway washrooms, where a man could find quick release on the way home from work by merely presenting himself. A finely calibrated map of the sexual geography of the neighborhood was usually part of men’s gender-specific ‘local knowledge.’ Many workingmen knew precisely where to go to find fairies with whom, if they chose, they need not exchange a word to make their wishes clear.”
-George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940.
When I was in college and working as a page in the manuscripts and archives division of a major library, I got to photocopy a bunch of original vice-squad reports from the 1920s and 1930s, wherein investigators like the one quoted above had to go undercover into fairy-bars and prostitute haunts. Needless to say, I spent more time reading than copying. Hot stuff.
Queenie97:
Wow how interesting!](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx53l3nIev1r6y3vao1_400.jpg)
