argumate:

plum-soup:

It’s interesting how gay relationships in Edo-period Japan are always described as “age-structured” which is like, KINDA a euphemism for pederasty but it’s also complicated. It was kinda similar to Sparta in that it was considered very “acceptable” for a young trainee samurai to bottom for his master. But that was just the conventional version of the relationships, like from what I’ve read there was a fair deal of switching (vers samurai rights!) and also often there would be kinda the outer image of age-structuring but “young boy” was essentially just a role you’d inhabit in the relationship so you could have a guy that is 35 bottoming and inhabiting the “boy” role indefinitely despite aging out of being a boy. Or the “young boy” role could even be inhabited by a man that is actually older than the top. It was basically more the idea that tops are supposed to be fatherly and dominant and bottoms are supposed to be vaguely feminine, submissive, and boyish. Like it’s just an interesting history because they kinda perfectly mapped out their sexuality onto the warped-ass class system of the feudal state they lived in… I mean relationships between men and women had stuff that was even more fucked up id imagine tbh. And I’m sure normal gays existed but tbh it’s interesting how they’re never remembered, it’s the age structuring that ppl focus the most on which betrays a bit of homophobia I think. But whatever, I know it WAS pretty damn common esp with lords and higher ranking samurai so yeah

isn’t that similar to the other common way of interpreting homosexual relationships, so common that it’s a trite cliche: so which one of you is the man and which is the woman? (because everything in the universe can be divided into one of two binary categories that are isomorphic to gender, obviously).