femmenietzsche:

Greek vase painting is a major source for scholars seeking to understand attitudes and practices associated with paiderastia.^[62] Hundreds of pederastic scenes are depicted on Attic black-figure vases.^[63] In the early 20th century, John Beazley classified pederastic vases into three types:

- The erastês and erômenos stand facing each other; the erastês, knees bent, reaches with one hand for the beloved’s chin and with the other for his genitals.
- The erastês presents the erômenos with a small gift, sometimes an animal.
- The standing lovers engage in intercrural sex.^[64]

Certain gifts traditionally given by the eromenos become symbols that contribute to interpreting a given scene as pederastic. Animal gifts—most commonly hares and roosters, but also deer and felines—point toward hunting as an aristocratic pastime and as a metaphor for sexual pursuit.^[65] These animal gifts were commonly given to boys whereas women often received money as a gift for sex. This difference in gifts furthered the closeness of pederastic relations. Women received money as a product of the sexual exchange and boys were given culturally significant gifts. Gifts given to boys is commonly depicted in ancient Greek art, but money given to women for sex is not. ^[66]

The explicit nature of some images has led in particular to discussions of whether the eromenos took active pleasure in the sex act. The youthful beloved is never pictured with an erection; his penis “remains flaccid even in circumstances to which one would expect the penis of any healthy adolescent to respond willy-nilly”.^[67] Fondling the youth’s genitals was one of the most common images of pederastic courtship on vases, a gesture indicated also in Aristophanes’ comedy Birds (line 142). Some vases do show the younger partner as sexually responsive, prompting one scholar to wonder, “What can the point of this act have been unless lovers in fact derived some pleasure from feeling and watching the boy’s developing organ wake up and respond to their manual stimulation?”^[68]

Chronological study of the vase paintings also reveals a changing aesthetic in the depiction of the erômenos. In the 6th century BCE, he is a young beardless man with long hair, of adult height and physique, usually nude. As the 5th century begins, he has become smaller and slighter, “barely pubescent”, and often draped as a girl would be. No inferences about social customs should be based on this element of the courtship scene alone.^[69]

Here’s a series of paragraphs. Imagine how annoying it would be if you were a teenager and someone gave you a chicken as a prelude to sex.