Category: Homoerotic

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What Is The Hanky Code?

— The History Behind Gay Flagging and How to Do It Today

The hanky code is an intricate system of colorful bandanas.

Starting as a way to subvert homophobic sodomy laws, flagging remains an important part of queer spaces today.

By Evelyn Bauer

If you’ve been to a historic gay bar or queer leather archive, you’ve likely spotted a subtle accessory that you may not realize is an iconic part of LGBTQ+ history: a simple colorful bandana.

Flagging, also known as the “hanky code,” is a way to wordlessly tell other queer people your sexual preferences. In a nutshell, it involves wearing different colors of bandanas in your pockets — left or right, respectively, to signal top/dom or bottom/submissive roles — to indicate different kinks, fantasies, and other sexual interests to the world. The system originated in the ‘70s, a time when it was illegal in most places to have queer sex. Like leather bars and BDSM spaces, flagging is an iconic part of queer history that’s alive and well to this day.

If you’re unfamiliar with the ins and outs of hanky code, you’ll want to do some research before grabbing your bandanas. What significance does the hanky code hold in queer history? What do all of the colors in the hanky code mean? Should you go to the bar wearing a handsome handkerchief hanging from your back pocket tomorrow night? Let’s get down to business and answer all these pressing questions.

What is flagging?

The Hanky Code 101 The History Behind Gay Flagging
Courtesy of Hal Fischer. Signifiers for a Male Response, from the series Gay Semiotics, 1977.

Flagging’s origins can be traced to the prosecution of queer people and queer sex, as researcher and author Jack Gieseking tells Them. In the 1960s, state sodomy laws were introduced across the U.S. to criminalize queer sex, though local laws banned cruising as early as the 1920s. Two men who entered a hotel together could be arrested on suspicion of sodomy, and so queer sex was often had in dark public places with low foot traffic, like parks, waterfronts, subway stations, and other abandoned or industrial areas that weren’t surveilled.

As a result, communities developed a system of “flagging,” using colored handkerchiefs to subtly indicate sexual preferences among those in the know, usually as a signal to other queer people. “I think [flagging] comes out of gay men not being able to talk so much in a lot of these spaces, which tend to be quiet and outdoors,” Gieseking says. “Here’s a way to just signal what I want.”

People who are well-versed in the meaning of different hankies can tell, at a glance, what sexual activities others are looking for. Folks can indicate what kind of sex they’re looking for by using different colors and if they want to top or bottom by placing it in their left or right pocket. For example, if someone has a red hanky in their left pocket, they are looking to fist someone. If the red hanky is in someone’s right pocket, it means they want to get fisted.

Make sure you know what you’re flagging, and remember that codes like these are not a replacement for having a conversation about what you and your prospective partner are looking for. Consent is key, and you should never assume that somebody is immediately down for whatever they’re flagging without further communication.

What is the history of the hanky code?

The hanky code’s exact origins are difficult to pin down. According to Nikita Shepard, a Columbia University Ph.D. candidate studying queer history, we know it rose in popularity in the 1970s among gay urban leather scenes, particularly in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Many male-male sexual cultures post-World War II were organized around motorcycle clubs, leather bars, and sadomasochistic sexual practices, where patrons would convey their sexual interests via cues in their clothing or accessories, such as wearing keys on the left or right belt loops of their jeans. According to Shepard, some of the earliest recorded versions of the hanky code were found in one of the definitive guides to sexuality and subculture in the late 20th century: the second edition of Larry Townsend’s Leatherman’s Handbook, first published in 1983.

The Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago.
As leather and BDSM aesthetics become more mainstream than ever, this institution reminds us that leatherfolk have long been at the forefront of essential fights for queer rights.

Gieseking says one of the earliest archived mentions of the hanky code in lesbian spaces can be found in the very first issue of On Our Backs, a lesbian erotic magazine, published in 1984. This publication featured a variety of hanky colors beyond the code published in Leatherman’s Handbook, like white lace for Victorian scenes, maroon for menstruation, and pink for breast fondling. Gieseking says this is an example of how queer people reinterpreted the hanky code and made it their own depending on their scene.

“There is no central queer body of people defining what queerness is; if there was, queers would take it apart,” Gieseking says. “It’s impossible to find one central body of knowledge about anything about us. And you’ll get these different versions because you’re going to get different geographies and different groups of people over time at different places, and they’ll get a hold of one list, and they’ll add to it.”

Because of this lack of standardization, you’ll find varying online hanky codes with dozens of different colors, and huge differences in meaning represented by a small shift in shade. It’s hard to imagine that people could pick up on whether a hankie was yellow or apricot in the low light of a club or park, which could theoretically lead to some confusing and unfortunate sex.

What Do the Different Colors Mean?

While there is no singular authority on what specific colors mean in the hanky code, there are some hankies that sources agree are among the oldest and most enduring colors, according to Nikita Shepard. These colors include red for fisting, yellow for water sports (or piss play for those who don’t know), dark blue for anal sex, black for sadomasochism, and brown for scat play.

While these might be the “original” flagging colors, the hanky code has expanded well beyond these five, so feel free to have fun and figure out what hanky color ties into your particular niche kinks.

Like many aspects of queer culture, flagging has only expanded into online spaces, meaning many more colors have been added to the code. Because anyone can add to the hanky code on the world wide web, these new colors can be subjective. Some versions of different flag codes include this key from LGBTQ+ history non-profit The Saint Foundation, another list from leather organization ONYX, and this 2010’s blog dedicated to the hanky code. And if you need to add a new one, keep in mind that you’re following a beautiful tradition of decentralized queer knowledge and culture. Have at it!

Flagging in the 21st Century

Despite the rich history of flagging, the prevalence of images laying out the hanky code online, and the plain fun of having a secret sartorial code that only other queers understand, the hanky code isn’t as popular today as it once was. You may still see people flagging at leather or cruising bars, but the practice is much less popular than it was in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Image may contain: Art, Modern Art, Painting, Human, Person, and Canvas
Queer sex experts explained what top, bottom, vers mean in the bedroom.

Gieseking says that, to them, flagging always feels like it’s about to have a resurgence, but the increased surveillance of public spaces, and the closure of many queer public-private spaces, has removed most of the places where people could or would need to flag.

“The privatization of public spaces, public parks, and their policing — which is [due to] a white middle-class concern — really erased a lot of sex in public,” Gieseking points out.

Gieseking points to a number of other reasons why flagging’s popularity is, well, flagging, from the rise of digital surveillance to a decline in cruising spaces and queer bars. But like the hanky code itself, the practice has moved increasingly online onto platforms like TikTok and Instagram where people who off their colorful bandanas. And while the hanky code’s popularity is constantly waxing and waning due to shifts in queer spaces, the benefits of the code stay consistent.

“Hanky code both reflected and contributed to the sex-positive, nonjudgmental, liberationist attitudes towards erotic desire that gay, leather, and kink communities have long led the way in promoting,” Shepard says.

The flagging code ultimately is an important part of queer community building and history that gives people access to information about a wide variety of erotic practices of which they otherwise may not have learned. By placing erotic acts such as fellatio and anal intercourse, both considered relatively “vanilla,” alongside acts that are often considered extreme and outlandish, the hanky code reduced, and still reduces, sexual stigma among the queer community. It’s important to keep celebrating queer sexuality and kink, especially in the face of the larger puritanical society.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Pompeii’s House of the Vettii reopens

— A reminder that Roman sexuality was far more complex than simply gay or straight

The atrium of the House of the Vettii, Pompeii.

By

As Pompeii’s House of the Vettii finally reopens after a long process of restoration, news outlets appear to be struggling with how to report on the Roman sex cultures so well recorded in the ruins of the city.

The Metro opened with the headline “Lavish Pompeii home that doubled as a brothel has some interesting wall art”, while the Guardian highlighted the fresco of Priapus, the god of fertility (depicted weighing his oversized penis on a scale with bags of coins) as well as the erotic frescoes found next to the kitchen.

The Daily Mail, on the other hand – and arguably surprisingly – said nothing about the explicit frescoes and instead centred its story on the house’s “historic hallmarks of interior design”.

As a scholar who researches modern and contemporary visual cultures of sexuality, I was struck by how the heavy presence of sexual imagery in the ruins of Pompeii seems to confound those writing about it for a general audience.

Rethinking Roman sexuality

As a gay man and a researcher on sexuality, I am all too familiar with the ways modern gay men look to ancient Rome in search of evidence that there have always been people like us.

It is now clear among the research community that such straightforward readings of homosexuality in classical history are flawed. That is because same-sex relations among Romans were lived and thought about in very different ways from our own.

Roman sexuality was not framed in terms of the gender of partners but in terms of power. The gender of a free man’s sexual partner was less relevant than their social position.

A room with walls coloured in colourful frescos of nude men and women.
Frescoes from the House of the Vettii.Courtesy of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii

Socially acceptable Roman sexuality was about power, power was about masculinity – and Roman patriarchal sex cultures were assertions of both. An adult free man could have sex as the penetrating partner with anyone of a lower social status – including women or slaves and sex workers of both genders.

Despite this, I understand how politically important and strategic it was for the early homosexual movement to invent its own myth of origin and to populate history with figures that had been – they thought – just like us.

The flip side of modern notions of homosexuality being read into Roman history, is the way in which the widespread presence of sex in ancient Roman (including in the graffiti and visual culture preserved in Pompeii) has been disavowed or – at least – purified by mainstream modern culture.

Pornography in Pompeii

This phenomenon started when sexually explicit artefacts were first discovered in Pompeii, propelling archaeologists to preserve them due to their historical value, but to keep them hidden from the general public in “secret museums” on account of their obscene content.

Indeed, the coinage of the word “pornography” was a result of the archival need to classify those Roman artefacts. The term “pornographers” was first used to designate the creators of such Roman images in Karl Otfried Müller’s Handbook of Archaeology of Art (Handbuch der Archäologie der Kunst), from 1830.

The god Priapus is shown wearing a tunic that doesn't contain his cartoonishly large penis.
A fresco of Priapus in the House of the Vettii showing the god’s oversized penis.

The news coverage around the reopening of the House of the Vettii is one such example of mainstream modern culture sanitising Roman history.

When focusing on the fresco of Priapus, for instance, news outlets are quick to claim that the god’s oversized penis was merely a metaphor for the wealth accumulated by the men who owned the house. The pair had made their fortune selling wine after being freed from slavery.

This reading of the fresco, while not necessarily incorrect, overlooks the more complex – and for that reason, more interesting – role of phallic imagery in Roman culture.

As classicist Craig Williams writes, the images of a hyper-endowed, hyper-masculine Priapus that were widespread in Roman culture functioned not only as a source of identification but also as an object of desire for Roman men – if not to be penetrated by the large phallus, then at least to wish it was their own.

Priapus, with his large manhood and unquenchable desire to dominate others through penetration was, Williams tells us: “Something like the patron saint or mascot of Roman machismo.”

What’s missing from the story?

News coverage of the erotic frescoes found in a smaller room of the house has been similarly too straight forward in claiming them as evidence that that room was used for sex work.

While some scholars have certainly argued that perspective, others believe it unlikely. Some academics suggest that the erotic frescoes in that room (which probably belonged to the house’s cook) had more likely been commissioned as a gift to the Vettii’s favourite slave and very much fit the wider aesthetic of quirky excess that marks the house as a whole.

A light beautiful courtyard surrounded by columns.
A courtyard in the House of the Vettii.Courtesy of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii

In a culture where sex was not taboo but instead promoted as a sign of power, wealth and culture, it is fair to suggest that erotic images wouldn’t just belong in brothels. Sex was everywhere in Rome, including in literary and visual arts.

When reading the recent news stories, I could not help but think that their interpretations, while not wholly wrong, were too skewed into presenting the explicit frescoes as either metaphors for something more noble, or as something that was restricted to a specific site of Roman life – the brothel.

Perhaps these readings are privileged over others because we’re reluctant to accept that sex in ancient Roman culture – a culture we so often mythologise as our “origin” – was performed in ways that we are uncomfortable with.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How the ancient Greeks viewed pederasty and homosexuality

— In many city-states, it was perfectly acceptable for older men to have sexual relationships with young boys.

Pederasty in ancient Greece is well-documented through writing and art.

By Tim Brinkhof

  • In ancient Greece, pederasty was the practice of older men serving as mentors to young boys in exchange for sexual favors.
  • This practice was widespread, though customs and attitudes differed drastically from Greek city-state to city-state.
  • In Sparta, it was part of the culture; in Athens, laws were made to curb pederasty and homosexuality in general.

As the French philosopher Michel Foucault argued in his book The History of Sexuality, the things we consider acceptable and unacceptable are dictated by our cultures and, as such, are subject to change. Behavior that is tolerated in one part of the world might be completely inexcusable in another place or time period, and this is especially true when it comes to sex.

For a good example, look no further than ancient Greece. The way that Plato, Aristotle, and their contemporaries conceived of human sexuality was fundamentally different from the way we do today. Hellenistic scholars doubt the Greeks would have been able to understand the modern distinction between homosexual and heterosexual relationships. In classical antiquity, people didn’t care if you were attracted to men or women; what mattered was whether you were the dominant (active) or submissive (passive) partner in the bedroom.

Not only did the Greeks have a different way of thinking about sexuality, but they also condoned a type of semi-romantic, semi-sexual relationship that would never be permitted in Western countries today: pederasty. Pederasty, as David Bain summarizes in his review of Die griechische Knabenliebe by Harald Patzer, refers to “the practice whereby young men pursue pubescent boys and enter into short-term relationships with them which expire when the boy becomes a man.”

A relief depicting the poet Anacreon and his young lover.

Pederasty was widespread across the disjointed city-states that made up ancient Greece. In some of his philosophical dialogues, Plato suggests that even Socrates enjoyed the company of young, male lovers. But while pederasty itself was everywhere, social attitudes toward the practice varied from region to region. In some communities, like Sparta, relationships between boys and men were explicitly permitted, even institutionalized. In other places, such as Athens, laws were put in place to eradicate what was slowly being regarded as an archaic, unnatural tradition.

Pederasty in Sparta

Most of what we know about pederasty in Sparta comes from classical texts written by outside observers. One of the characters in Plato’s Laws stresses that homosexuality in the warrior civilization was not just socially acceptable, but universally practiced.

According to Plutarch, who was born long after Greece had been incorporated into Rome, pederasty was deeply embedded in the Spartan ritual system, specifically in the agōgē: the arduous training program that turned boys into soldiers. Describing life in the agōgē, Plutarch writes that shortly after the boys turned 12 years old, “they were favoured with the society of lovers from among the reputable young men.” He continues:

“The boys’ lovers also shared with them in their honour or disgrace; and it is said that one of them was once fined by the magistrates because his favourite boy had let an ungenerous cry escape him while he was fighting. Moreover, though this sort of love was so approved among them that even the maidens found lovers in good and noble women, still, there was no jealous rivalry in it, but those who fixed their attentions on the same boys made this rather a foundation for friendship with one another, and persevered in common efforts to make their loved one as noble as possible.”

In Sparta, pederasty was institutionalized.

It has been argued that pederasty originated from coming-of-age rituals that could date back as far as the Stone Age. In Sparta, the practice had adapted to the city-state’s unique culture, which emphasized community over family. Children were raised by the agōgē, not their parents. The older lovers — called erastes in academic literature — had as much authority over their beloveds as their biological fathers did. The idea, as Plutarch puts it, was that “they were all in a sense the fathers and tutors and governors of all the boys.”

Athenian laws

In ancient Athens, things were a little more complicated. While most Athenians believed there was nothing wrong with a man being in love with or feeling attracted to another man, there were, as David Cohen explains in his article, “Law, Society and Homosexuality in Classical Athens,” mixed feelings about males “adopting a submissive role that was unworthy of a free citizen.” There appear to have been no laws prohibiting homosexual relations in general.

There was, however, a law that prohibited you from committing what was known as hubris: the act of humiliating or dishonoring another person for one’s own gratification. A quintessentially Greek concept, hubris not only encompassed prostitution and sexual assault, but also “consensual” relationships. According to Cohen, men who consented to being the submissive partner were “often described as committing hubris against themselves.” Crucially, the same standards did not apply to slaves who — being slaves — were perceived as lacking both pride and honor.

“Current scholarship on pederasty,” Cohen repeats, “asserts that there was no law prohibiting an Athenian male from consummating a sexual relationship with a free boy without using force or payment.” That said, scholars have found many statutes that seem to address pederasty indirectly. The law against hubris is one example. Another is a law that prevented boys as well their teachers from entering a schoolhouse before dawn or after dusk.

Homosexuality and nature

Why did Athens seek to limit pederasty when so many other city-states, including Sparta, openly permitted it? This question does not have a clear answer. Evidence suggests that Athenians did not have any issues with age differences as time went on — young girls were married to older men all the time — but, rather, with homosexuality itself.

Greek art depicting two men fondling.

In Laws, Plato argues that homosexuality is unnatural because, in nature, male animals only mate with female partners. Even though this is untrue — research has revealed numerous examples of homosexual and bisexual behavior in other species — Plato’s argument, like all his arguments, had a tremendous influence on Greek society. Aristotle would reach the same conclusion, professing that, because males inseminate females, they must necessarily assume a dominant, active, heterosexual role. If they don’t, adds Xenophon, they would be taking the place of women.

It is notable that Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon were unable to separate the idea of sex from biological reproduction, rejecting (or failing to consider) the modern notion that it is perfectly okay for people to have intercourse for the sake of pleasure, or that they should pick partners and sexual roles that they feel affirm their personal identities.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Rare photos kept secret for over a century

When Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell stumbled across a photo from the 1920s of two men in a tender embrace they thought it was one-of-a-kind. But things changed when they found more photographs. The result of their unexpected discovery is a moving book, portraying male romance over the course of a century.

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Ancient Greek and Roman erotic art

Explicit erotic art was common in ancient Greece and Rome. Sex is ubiquitous in the black-figure and red-figure vases of Athens in the 6th and 5th centuries BC. The Romans were also surrounded by sex.

Mosaic depicting Leda and the Swan, from the sanctuary of Aphrodite in Paphos, circa 3rd century AD. It is currently located at the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia.

By Craig Barker

LP Hartley’s saying “the past is foreign” is rarely held more firmly than in the field of sexuality in classical art. The erotic images and depictions of the genitals, especially the phallus, were very popular motifs in a wide range of media in ancient Greece and Rome.

Simply put, sex is everywhere in Greek and Roman art. Explicit sexual expression was common in the Athenian black-figure and red-figure vases of the 6th and 5th centuries BC. They often have spectacular confrontations in nature.

The Romans were also surrounded by sex. Bronze carved as a chinchin nabla (wind chime), often found in the gardens of Pompeii’s house, is carved in relief on a famous wall panel that tells us the famous habitat Felicitas from a Roman bakery. (“Happiness dwells here”).

But these erotic acts and classic images of the genitals reflect more than a culture of sexual attachment. The depiction of sexuality and sexual activity in classical art seems to have had many uses. And while our interpretation of these images is often censored in modern times, it reveals a lot about our attitude towards sex.

A modern reaction to ancient erotic art

When antique collection began in earnest in the 17th and 18th centuries, the openness of ancient eroticism embarrassed and embarrassed the Enlightenment audience. This embarrassment was exacerbated after the excavations began in the rediscovered Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

The Naples National Archaeological Museum’s Gavinette Segrate (the so-called “secret cabinet”) best represents the modern reaction to classical sexuality (repression and repression) in art.

The secret cabinet was founded in 1819 when King Francis I of Naples visited the museum with his wife and little daughter. Shocked by the blatant depiction, he ordered to remove all items of sexual nature from sight and lock them in a cabinet. Access is restricted to scholars with “mature age and respected morals.” I will. In other words, it was only a male scholar.

A metal shutter was installed in Pompeii itself because the explicit materials such as the mural paintings of the brothel were preserved as they were. Until the 1960s, these shutters restricted access only to male tourists who were willing to pay extra.

Of course, the secret of the collection in the cabinet was sometimes difficult to access, but it only increased its fame. John Murray’s Handbook to South Italy and Naples (1853) sacredly states that it was very difficult to obtain a permit.

Therefore, few people have seen the collection. And those who have it are said not to want to visit again.

The cabinet was not open to the public until 2000 (despite protests by the Catholic Church). Since 2005, the collection has been exhibited in a separate room. The object has not yet been reintegrated with modern non-sexual crafts, as it did in ancient times.

Literature also felt censors’ anger, and works such as Aristophanes’ plays were mistranslated, obscuring “unpleasant” sexual and catalog references. Unless trying to claim moral and liberal dominance in the 21st century, the depiction of the infamous marble sculpture of bread mating with the goats in the collection still shocks the modern audience.

Censorship of ancient sexuality is probably best reflected in the long tradition of removing genitals from classical sculpture.

The Vatican Museums, in particular, were famous for (but not limited to) modifying classical art for modern morals and sensations. In the case of irregularities, it was common to apply carved and cast fig leaves to cover the genitals.

It also showed the modern willingness to associate nudity with sexuality and would have embarrassed the ancient audience, where the physical form of the body itself was considered perfect. Have you misunderstood ancient sexuality? Yes, yes.

Ancient porn?

It is difficult to determine how much the ancient audience used explicit erotic images for awakening. Certainly, the erotic scenes that were popular on board would have given the Athenian party an exciting atmosphere over a glass of wine.

These types of scenes are especially popular with kylix or wine cups in the tond (the center panel of the cup). Hetaira (cans) and Polnai (whores) are likely to have attended the same symposium, so the scene may have been used as a stimulus.

In the late Greek and Roman eras, the painted eroticas were replaced by molded depictions, but their use must have been similar.

The Romans’ application of sexual scenes to oil lamps is probably the most likely scenario, and the object may have actually been used in a romantic scene. Erotica is often found in molded lamps.

Phallus and fertility

Ancient Greek erotic art
Delos Museum.

Female nudity was not uncommon (especially in connection with the goddess Aphrodite), but the phallic symbol was at the heart of many classical arts.

Fars is often depicted on Hermes, Bread, Priapus, or similar gods of various art forms. Its symbolism here was not considered erotic, but was related to protection, reproduction, and even healing. We have already seen phallic use in various home and commercial situations in Pompeii, which clearly reflects its protective properties.

The helm was a stone carving with a head (usually Hermes) on a rectangular pillar, on which the male genitals were carved. These blocks were placed on borders and borders for protection and were so highly regarded that many people said that when the Athens Herm was destroyed before the Athens fleet departed in 415 BC, this was the Navy. I believed it would threaten the success of the mission.

The famous frescoes of the House of the Vettii in Pompeii depict Priapus, the minor and guardian deity of livestock, plants and gardens. He has a huge penis, a bag of coins, and a bowl of fruit at his feet. As researcher Claudia Moser writes, this image represents three types of prosperity: growth (large members), fertility (fruits), and abundance (bags of money).

It is worth noting that a casual look at the museum’s classic sculptures reveals that the bare gods and heroes’ penises painted in marble are very small. Classic cultural ideals often value small penises over large ones and surprise the modern audience.

All the expressions of the big penis in classical art are related to desire and stupidity. Priapus was terribly despised by other gods and was thrown out of Mount Olympus. For the Greeks and Romans, the bigger it was, the better.

Ancient Greece: Mythology and Sex

Classic myths are gender-based. There are many stories of incest, marriage, polygamy, and adultery in mythology. Therefore, the artistic depictions of myths end up portraying these sometimes explicit stories. Zeus’s reckless attitude towards women’s consent in these myths (in many cases he raped Danae in the form of a swan in the form of Leda and Rain) was male domination and female. Strengthened the idea of ​​female contempt for subordination.

The penis was also emphasized in the delightful portrayal of Dio Brando. Dionysus, the god of Greek wine, drama and transformation, is not surprised by his followers, the male satyr and the female menard, and their depictions on the wine vessels.

The satyr was a half-human half-goat. Somewhat comical, but also tragic in a way, they were deep-rooted masturbation and party animals that loved dance, wine and women. In fact, the term saturia is still alive today and is classified by the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) as a form of hypersexuality in men, alongside the female form of nymphomania.

The intent of the (upright) satyr on the penis is clear from the appearance of the vase (even if they rarely catch the manado they are chasing). At the same time, their huge erect penis shows the “beastiness” and grotesque ugliness of a large penis, in contrast to the classic ideal of male beauty represented by a smaller penis.

The actors who performed the satyr play at the dramatic festival appeared on stage and in orchestras in fake phallic costumes to show that they were not humans, but Dionysian mythical beasts.

Early classical art collectors were shocked to learn that the Greeks and Romans they admired were earthlings with varying sexual and desires. However, by emphasizing the sexual aspect of this art, they underestimated the non-sexual role of the phallic symbol.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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“Who designed these uniforms—Tom of Finland?”

The real story behind these viral photos of Spanish soldiers

Photo of the Spanish legion went viral on social media.

Deployed to cities at high risk of coronavirus, photos of the Spanish Legion provoked lust, loathing and comments about homoeroticism when they went viral on social media. Yet the history of the Legion makes these responses no contradiction at all

by Catherine Baker

They are musclebound and tanned, with sage-green shirts open to the chest, bulges below their black leather belts, and chinstraps curiously slung along their chiselled jaws.

They are the elite troops of the Spanish Legion, and on an internet desperate to be distracted from pandemic lockdown, they are English-language Twitter’s latest thirst trap.

After the Spanish military was deployed to cities at high coronavirus risk, New York writer Jill Filipovic tweeted “Spain, hi, can you deploy some of that in our direction?” above photos of parading legionnaires. Thousands of Twitter users joined her in desire, some informed her of the Legion’s fascist origins, and others remarked on how homoerotic their uniforms seemed.

Yet the history of the Legion makes those three things no contradiction at all.

When the Spanish officer José Millán-Astray proposed his army should found a French-style Foreign Legion in 1919, Spain’s colonial ambitions in Morocco were growing, and the right longed to restore the country’s imperial glory through victorious desert war.

Millán-Astray, a veteran of colonial wars in the Philippines and Morocco’s Rif mountains, created the Legion’s immersive and brutal traditions to separate men from their past lives and unify them in brotherhood and death.

Inspired by the French example and what he understood of Japanese samurais’ bushidō code, Millán-Astray wrote up a “Legionary Creed” of tireless duty, bodily hardness, unconditional friendship, and combat to the deadly end.

Many of these themes were common across fascist movements and the militaries they influenced, but others were distinct to the Legion. Legionnaires swore to become “bridegrooms of Death” (from the title of a popular song about a Legionnaire’s sacrifice in the Rif), renouncing familial and romantic bonds and sublimating them into loyalty to each other and the Legion’s flag.

The open shirt which drew so many social media comments after Filipovic posted her photo was introduced by Major Adolfo Vara del Rey, and rejected the ordinary army’s nineteenth-century ceremonial dress to symbolise their readiness for open war in muggy desert air. The sage-green colour, meanwhile, was Spanish forces’ first adaptation to standards of camouflage.

Millán-Astray’s language of sacrifice and reconquest fuelled Spanish fascism well before the Spanish Civil War. Francisco Franco, commander from 1923 to 1926, harnessed his charisma to make the Legionnaires the shock troops of a coup by anti-Republican generals in July 1936. An airlift of Legionnaires gave the Nationalist side enough manpower to take Sevilla, and the Legionnaires who captured Badajoz on 14 August 1936 executed up to 4,000 Republican prisoners and civilians in the city streets, dragging hundreds into the bull ring where they were shot to death in a circle of machine guns.

In democratic Spain, the Legion became a mechanised infantry formation which now makes up a large part of Spain’s rapid reaction capabilities, and continued to garrison the enclave cities of Ceuta and Melilla, the first sites of today’s fortified EU border regime. It has admitted women since 1999.

As well as participating in the annual Spanish National Day parade from which Filipovic’s photos likely come, it also joins the Málaga Holy Week procession to carry an effigy of its patron, the crucified Christ of the Good Death and All Souls.

Twitter’s armchair anthropologists are not the only ones to have analysed the troops. Two anthropologists who observed the Málaga processions in 2010–12 argued that their ritual plays out “a specific form of martial masculinity” which makes death for one’s compatriots “not only … acceptable but even desirable”—but which had started to become embarrassing as the region’s economy turned towards managing EU agricultural investment.

Besides being objects of heterosexual desire, the Legion’s stylised appearance also speaks to a queer male gaze, as author and critic Huw Lemmey remarked in 2017 when these images last surged through Twitter.

Today’s tight-shirted Legionnaires, exempted from the army’s strict rules on beards and tattoos, do indeed resemble queer fantasy figures in uniforms which might seem tailored more for catwalks than parade-grounds when seen from outside Spain. As multiple Twitter users joked this time, “Who designed these uniforms—Tom of Finland?,” referencing the artist whose erotic illustrations of soldiers, bikers and policemen with larger-than-life bare chests and bulging groins have gone down in queer history.

The tension between fascism’s homoerotic ideals of the male martial body and many queer men’s desires to embody and possess that same ideal pulses through art, literature and fashion—but in Spain, it has further overtones dating back to the founding of the Legion itself.

Carlos Arévalo’s 1941 film Harka, set during the Rif campaign, helped cement the Legion’s myth in early Francoist Spain. For a film contributing to the public culture of a clerical fascist regime that imprisoned thousands of gay and bisexual men, its lingering shots of a captain and his lieutenant bonding under desert stars come dangerously close in some film scholars’ eyes to condoning same-gender desire.

Behind the myth of the “bridegrooms of Death,” Susan Martin-Márquez has argued, the Legionnaires’ famed physical intimacy with each other spilled into their off-duty music and dance, where cross-dressing entertainment was not rare. Franco’s command memoir lauded his campaign to stop Legionnaires and Moroccans fraternising in cafés, where male sex workers may well have been found.

No wonder, therefore, that today’s Legion uniforms seem crafted to be exaggerated spectacles of desire: militarism, fascism and homoeroticism were bound together when the Legion was founded as tightly as the Legion’s sage-green shirts encircle troops’ biceps today—whether everyone on Twitter realises it or not.

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