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literary history made male worker bees into drones
More than two thousand years ago, the revered Roman poet Virgil wrote a book about bees. According to Virgil, bees produce “the celestial gift of honey from the air {aërii mellis caelestia dona}.”[1]...
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Penthesilea & her Amazon women warriors fought and died like men
King Priam desperately needed Queen Penthesilea and her Amazon women warriors to help Troy against the Greeks in the Trojan War. The Greek warrior Achilles had killed Troy’s preeminent warrior,...
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men keenly attuned to women’s feelings toward them
In medieval Germany, a man saw women doing a women-only circle dance. Many men don’t like to be excluded because of their gender from activities, spaces, and colleges. This man perceived these women...
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Roman de Thèbes reoriented ending of Statius’s Thebaid
The Thebaid, which Statius wrote early in the 90s GC, highlights women’s power and women’s unity in lamenting beloved men killed in civil war. Although built upon the Thebaid, the twelfth-century...
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Montaigne essayed his sexual difficulties and inadequacies
In his influential Essays {Essais}, the leading sixteenth-century philosopher Michel de Montaigne shared himself much more honestly and extensively than persons using social media commonly do today....
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Montaigne on the work of human reason
The sixteenth-century philosopher Michel de Montaigne pondered human reason. He observed: I was recently letting my mind range wildly, as I often do, over how human reason is a vacant and rambling...
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epic violence against men involves women
The Iliad and the Aeneid, epics that are classics of classics, recount massive violence against men. That gender profile of violence scarcely registers in the reception of these and other epics....
View Articleshepherds, angel, and devil converse about Jesus’s birth
A Christmas play preserved in the Carmina Burana is no children’s Christmas pageant. This highly sophisticated play, probably composed around 1160, begins with an unusual Order of Prophets {Ordo...
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gender equality & sexual harassment in medieval understanding
In thirteenth-century Germany, a priest who ranked as the provost of a religious order became gravely ill. He apparently was lovesick. He believed that having sex with a woman was the only possible...
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Apollonius of Tyana on eunuchs’ passion
Most eunuchs today are either men who have have castrated themselves for career advantage, or men who have been made eunuchs by castration culture. Both groups have been poorly understood. Even the...
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wife’s wedding-night threat led to six years of sexless marriage
In medieval Europe, some elite families arranged marriage for their young children. Medieval Christian canon law required voluntary consent from both parties to have a valid marriage. But formal law...
View Articlemedieval healthcare for men too expensive
As difficult as it is to comprehend today, men suffered greatly from lovesickness for women in medieval Europe. A medieval European man declared: Held tight by an oppressive love,I likened myself to a...
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Horace gender-complacent in conviviality with men
Why has abortion coercion, within circumstances of men having no reproductive rights, not been a central issue across decades of high-profile debate about abortion? Why is fundamental gender...
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true hero Malgherita Spolatina swam sea to Teodoro, her Leander
The “lovely and graceful {vaga e leggiadra}” woman-hero Malgherita Spolatina lived early in the sixteenth century on Midway Island off the coast of Ragasu. One day Malgherita noticed the hermit...
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work for social justice: castration no joking matter
In medieval London, a hard-working young clerk served a lawyer, and the lawyer’s wife as well. The latter work was dangerous, particularly because men have always been punished relatively severely for...
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snakes in the lush spring of love
Do you fear a snake in the garden? You shouldn’t. Imagine a season of new life, an oasis in a parched land, a lush spring. A cleric-poet in medieval Europe wrote: Desired spring returnswith...
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learn from Clinschor & Anfortas: ask the Holy Grail question
In ancient times, Ibert, the King of Sicily, had a lovely wife named Iblis. She had a sexual affair with Duke Clinschor of Capua. King Ibert caught the couple: By a single cut Clinschorwas made into a...
View Articleimagine more men students happily attending college
A medieval student of Venus, delighting in ardent love with his girlfriend Flora, worried about rivals. He worried that the ultimate alpha man Jupiter, head god in charge of the cosmos, would become...
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medieval men’s sexed protest against female sexual privilege
Throughout history, men have provided women with material goods in having sexual relations with them. Throughout history, most persons paying for sex have been men. Most prostitutes have been women....
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Obilot in love with Gawan triumphed over her sister Obie
Gawan, an honored knight of King Arthur’s Round Table, approached the castle at Bearosche. The haughty young princess Obie disparagingly told her mother that Gawan looked like a merchant. Obie’s...
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