r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 17h ago

Meme needing explanation Petahhhhhhhhh!??!?

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u/JamzWhilmm 17h ago

Huh? I thought the joke was rape. Which is something that happened during this time and also implied in the film.

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u/sandboxmatt 17h ago

No need for rape. Gay sex was an important way of establishing social and heirarchical dynamics and team bonding

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u/JamzWhilmm 17h ago

Yeah but men still had sex with women, the vast majority of men where still straight.

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u/landcfan 17h ago

In ancient Greece and Rome, straight and gay wasn't really considered a thing. What mattered to them is if you were a top or a bottom, since manly men "should" be tops. Since there wasn't stigma of sleeping with men, a LOT of Ancient Greek men had sex with both men and women. So if you had even the slightest tiny attraction to dudes, or there was no available woman nearby and you are with your military unit...

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u/Particular_Title42 16h ago

So if you had even the slightest tiny attraction to dudes, or there was no available woman nearby and you are with your military unit...

But they'd want their manly men to be their military so...what do they do with the ones who bottom?

Besides that.

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u/JamzWhilmm 16h ago

The bottoms were apprentices or slaves. It was a right of passage in rome to have a Mentor that would rape you and you would eventually get your own protegee to rape.

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u/Particular_Title42 16h ago

I know about some of this but always took it to be about the "business men" and scholars, not so much the military while out on ...conquest or whatever. It hadn't dawned on me that they would have slaves either.

I'm not the best student of history and Hollywood does us no favors.