>>186518
Greek Pederasty is complicated and often misunderstood.

While we may hear of pederasty and think of relationships between older men and younger boys, Greek pederasty explicitly refers to the social institution that was practiced in many of the Greek city states. The key word is 'institution'. It was not simply a relationship, but a custom heavily embedded into elite male life.

It consisted of two parties: an erastes, who was the freeborn older male usually around 30 years of age; and an eromenos, who was the freeborn younger male usually in his mid to late teenage years. The purpose of pederasty was in educating the youth on the virtues and conventions of Greek citizens. When the eromenos came of age and thus became a citizen, marked by the growing of his first beard, then the relationship came to an end and the former eromenos was expected to take part in adult male life. This included marrying women and having children, as well as, as was often the case, becoming an erastes and taking an eromenos himself. This was not an inherently sexual relationship. Because the eromenos was expected to become a citizen, it was strictly forbidden to penetrate them, as the Greeks, who saw it as inherently denigrating, had a heavy taboo placed on being the passive partner of sex. In fact, being penetrated could lead to Atimia, or the loss of citizenship, and this would leave the youth vulnerable to slavery. When sex did take place, it was primarily intercrural, rubbing the PENIS between the thighs.

Greek attitudes towards pederasty, like all things, fluctuated over time. During the Archaic period, pederasty was idealized, seen as natural or even divine; but during the Hellenic period, the view seemed to have soured, made clear by several plays, dialogues and speeches written during that time which mocked and critiqued it. The practice gradually declined, with vestiges surviving well into the Roman period, and it was stamped out entirely after Christianization.

It would be amiss to not note that pederasty is not the same as homosexuality. The modern conception of homosexuality, that being an innate identity, did not exist in Ancient Greece. Our conception of homosexuality has its roots in the Victorian Age, when the increasingly secular scientific field sought to move the topic away from religion (a sin which needs punishment and repentance) towards science (a disease which could be cured). Further reformers later took the disease model and adjusted it to be about innate diversity of sexual identity. None of these things applied to Ancient Greece, and as such, it, as well as all things related to it (such as whether Greeks were 'gay' or 'homophobic'), should not be anachronistically pushed back onto Greece.