In 1973, the narrative around sexuality shifted. Thanks to gay rights activism, clinicians were barred from classifying homosexuality as a mental illness and began treating it as an innate part of one's personhood (Feuerstein, "Birth of the Concept of 'Born This Way'"). Two generations later, the notion that sexuality is inherent and uncontrollable has been accepted as fact, with the majority of Americans believing that sexuality is natural, not a product of environment or personal choice (Saad, "More Say 'Nature' Than 'Nurture' Explains Sexual Orientation"). It can be unsettling, then, to be confronted with historical conceptions of sexuality.
An infamous example of this is the anonymous twelfth-century poem "Ganymede and Helen." The poem features a debate between two characters from classical mythology: Ganymede, the young cupbearer of the gods, and Helen, a woman so famed for her beauty that it incited the Trojan War. To modern readers, Ganymede is presented as a gay man. Not only does he offer "to be passive" when Helen offers to have sex with him, but he later vehemently defends the virtues of male-male relationships to the detriment of heterosexual ones ("Ganymede and Helen," ln. 32, 118). But at the end of the poem, when Helen out-argues her opponent, "Ganymede asks to be granted her hand in marriage" ("Ganymede and Helen," ln. 263). This conclusion seems disjointed – moments ago, Ganymede was calling the vagina "'the yawning cave and the sticky bush,'" but now, he is more than happy to marry a woman ("Ganymede and Helen," ln. 230).
So why do Ganymede and Helen receive this heteronormative ending? The answer is that although a modern reader views Ganymede's sexuality as immutable, to the medieval reader, sexuality was conceived in an entirely different manner.
Firstly, sexuality was an act that someone did, not an identity that they were. The author of the poem makes this fact explicit when he refers to male-male intercourse as "this deed" that he is at risk of committing, despite lambasting it for the better part of three hundred lines ("Ganymede and Helen," ln. 270). That the author suggests that he runs the risk of participating in sodomy despite not approving of it proves a disconnect between action and identity. This makes sense during a period when many sex acts were considered sinful (the author himself asks for God's mercy should he commit sodomy ("Ganymede and Helen," ln. 270)): Separating these acts from one's character allowed them to repent and move past them, but accepting them as immutable would condemn a practitioner to Hell.
In addition, one's sexual partner was just as important as the orientation itself, because sexuality was intertwined with ideas about beauty. In the debate, one of the only points that Helen and Ganymede can agree on is that old people are not deserving of homosexuality. Helen concedes that male-male sexual relations are not necessarily "a sin for youth," but she does declare that "no rationalization can defend the elderly," to which Ganymede agrees ("Ganymede and Helen," ln. 169-170, 173). Ganymede's explanation as to why is telling. Old people are ugly, since "they can already see white hairs," and so they are not entitled to the same sexual freedom as (attractive) young people ("Ganymede and Helen," ln. 174). Through this agreement, Ganymede and Helen reveal an unequal paradigm. Young, attractive people are granted a greater degree of sexual liminality, whereas undesirable people (the elderly and elsewhere, the poor) are relegated to unfun, productive sexuality ("Ganymede and Helen," ln. 135-136).
This paradigm goes a long way in explaining why the couple is allowed to get married at the end of the poem, despite being at odds throughout it. Helen and Ganymede are described as "equal in loveliness," with each participant in the debate receiving a vivid description of their beauty ("Ganymede and Helen," ln. 16, 73-100). Even though Ganymede expresses distain for women throughout the poem, since Helen is his equal in beauty, this tension is dropped. Ganymede's distaste for heterosexual sex is shrugged off because the author presumes that sexuality is dependent not only on one's personal preferences but the partner involved as well. Even if Ganymede is not generally attracted to women, he must be willing to engage in heteronormative sex since his bride is so beautiful.
The sexual logic of "Ganymede and Helen" is highly revealing about how the author viewed sexuality. It was not viewed as immutable but rather highly contingent on the desirability of the partners themselves. To a modern reader, this ending is so shallow that it borders on parody, but to a medieval audience, this would have rung true as the romantic logic of the day. Texts like "Ganymede and Helen" are valuable not only as an important attestation of medieval queerness, but more broadly as how conceptions of sexuality have shifted over the last millennium.
Works Cited
Fuerstein, Christian. "Birth of the Concept of 'Born This Way.'" News & Stories. Mt. Holyoke. September 26, 2023. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/news/news-stories/birth-concept-born-way.
"Ganymede and Helen (Twelfth Century)." Translated by John Boswell. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era tot he Fourteenth Century. University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Saad, Lydia. "More Say 'Nature' Than 'Nurture' Explains Sexual Orientation." Gallup. May 24, 2018. https://news.gallup.com/poll/234941/say-nature-nurture-explains-sexual-orientation.aspx.
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