Female sexuality in the classic Greece: reproduction and pleasure

Abstract

We will analyze the female sexuality in Greece, starting by the hypothesis that human sexuality is a socio-cultural construction, which shows the power-relationships in a determined society. In this sense, we will try to set an equivalent among social ranks, which gave the roles of domination and superiority to men (owners of the external space: economy, politics and war) and left the roles of subordination to women (relegated to the internal space: mothers and home managers) and the sexual practices, in which the active role was for the first ones, either joined with a young one, with his bed partner (legal or illegal wife) or life partner, but limiting the second ones to the passive role of an erotic object or a keeper of the birth seed. The fundamental opposition was not homosexuality/heterosexuality, but activity/passivity.