Timeline for Was there any notion of homosexuality in Middle-earth?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Jan 10, 2022 at 14:28 | comment | added | Mae | This is a really well-researched answer. | |
| Jun 16, 2020 at 9:31 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Jun 29, 2016 at 23:21 | vote | accept | DVK-on-Ahch-To | ||
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| Jan 1, 2016 at 6:02 | review | Suggested edits | |||
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| Jun 12, 2015 at 23:35 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | @jono - Thank you very much. Happy to be of help. | |
| Jun 12, 2015 at 23:35 | comment | added | jono | This is one of the most informative and interesting posts I've read on this site. Great answer! | |
| Jun 12, 2015 at 22:32 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | @terdon - Thanks! The only part within the quote box that I wrote myself is the bit in straight brackets (these: [ ] ) | |
| Jun 12, 2015 at 22:27 | comment | added | terdon | I just realized that the whole thing is quoted from the forum post you linked to. I thought some of it was your own words, that's what confused me. Great answer, by the way! | |
| Jun 12, 2015 at 19:38 | history | edited | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 12, 2015 at 19:37 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | @terdon - it should be pretty obvious- the part in quotation marks. | |
| Jun 12, 2015 at 15:01 | history | bounty ended | CommunityBot | ||
| Jun 12, 2015 at 13:29 | comment | added | terdon | Could you clarify which parts of the quote block from Letter 294 are actually Tolkien's words and which are not? Ideally by leaving only his words in the quote block? The first line is obviously not part of the quote but what about the last two paragraphs? | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 4:07 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | @Keen fair enough- I tend to work best when I lay out my case, then reread it and continually edit to improve it, especially because my laptop is broken and I'm forced to use my iPad instead (which makes it difficult to find links, copy and paste quotes, etc and bounce back and forth between tabs, because sometimes as I switch tabs, the answer on the SE tab disappears without being posted, which suuuuucks), but I will try to avoid this in the future, or manually make my answers cw if I expect to do a lot of editing, so as to avoid unfair rep gains. Sorry. | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 4:02 | comment | added | user1027 | @WadCheber No, the automatic bumping is a purposeful feature of Stack Exchange. Just don't edit so much, post a more thorough answer the first time. | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 4:00 | history | wiki removed | user1027 | ||
| Jun 10, 2015 at 3:56 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | Mods - is there any way to make it so my edits don't bump my answers? I like to revise my answers to improve their quality and comprehensiveness, but I really am not trying to steal rep. I just want my answers to be as good as I can get them. I don't need my comments to bump my answers either (although I don't even know if comments bump answers) - it is about answer quality, not rep. Honestly, I would be willing to have upvote rep permanently disabled for me, and get rep solely through accepted answers and bounties. Rep is kind of meh for me. Good answers are my only God now. | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 3:35 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | He was born in the Victorian Era, the origin of most of the sexual hang ups of the 20th century. It was improper for a woman to show her ankles, ffs. School teachers who got pregnant got fired for corrupting the minds of their students - they also got fired for drinking, smoking, going to the movies, dancing, being seen in public with men who weren't their brothers or fathers, hanging out at soda fountains or ice cream shops (I swear I saw all of this on an employment contract for teachers in the 20's).The environment was not conducive to open discussion of sexuality, especially homosexuality. | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 3:28 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | The image I have in my head of the average upper middle class conservative Brit of that time is basically the father in Mary Poppins. A pipe clenched in his teeth, wife knitting by the fire, himself reading a respectable newspaper... They never kiss in public, God perish the thought, and they don't mention each other's bodily functions, heavens no. This is what life was supposed to be like then. It wasn't a time or place in which a "gentleman" would feel comfortable talking about, or even thinking of, things like homosexuality. It is remarkable that he was comfortable reading what he did. | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 3:22 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | It simply wouldn't have been something he spent much time thinking about, because- aside from a few books he read- it wasn't something that he saw in his daily life. Even though some of his friends (W.H. Auden comes to mind) were gay, but do you think they ever chatted about their respective love lives? It was not something "respectable people" discussed or dwelt on. This is stiff upper lip, never show emotions, buttoned down, stern and reserved, oppressive rationing-era Britain we're talking about. | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 3:16 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | Think of what TV was like in the 50's - you couldn't show toilets onscreen. Adults couldn't be shown getting into the same bed. Married couples had to sleep in separate single beds. Pregnant women couldn't appear onscreen. No one could discuss sexuality or biological functions. That is the general mood of the 50's. If married couples sharing a bed was unacceptably risqué, how do you think people felt about open discussions about homosexuality? People tend to think about things familiar to them. Homosexuality was alien to a middle class father and professor of philology, not familiar. | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 3:09 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | I brought up the fact that he enjoyed those books because it contradicts the idea that he would have been morally outraged at homosexuality based on his religious beliefs. It doesn't mean he approved of homosexuality, it just means he was open minded enough to respect a work regardless of whether it contained elements that he had problems with - essentially, I'm saying he wasn't like a present-day fundamentalist lunatic spewing venom about eternal damnation for sodomites. | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 3:07 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | He knew of it later in life, obviously, but look at his statement- he didn't know what homosexuality was when he was 19. Can you imagine anyone saying that today in the western world? I can't. It was a taboo subject then, and taboos are much fewer and farther between today. | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 3:05 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | @Null - that isn't what I meant- I mean he didn't think about it much because his world was different from ours. It is in the news, the courts, the legislature, on TV and in movies and music and books nowadays. Back then, it was rarely, if ever, discussed. It wasn't in the open yet. Homosexuality itself was "in the closet". It wasn't called to everyone's attention then, the way it is now. | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 2:54 | comment | added | Null♦ | @WadCheber But mainly I disagree with the idea that Tolkien didn't think about homosexuality just because it was socially unacceptable (indeed, how could he not think about it if he's enjoying literature about it?...). Slavery is almost universally condemned in the West, but that doesn't mean I haven't thought about how evil it is. | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 2:41 | comment | added | Null♦ | @WadCheber I've removed my downvote (not that it matters much now that the answer is CW) for the useful "Ask Middle Earth" links, but I disagree with large portions of this answer. I see no point to the commentary on Tolkien's enjoyment of stories about homosexual behavior -- even if he disagreed with it why should we think that he couldn't enjoy stories which involve it?... | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 1:02 | history | edited | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 10, 2015 at 0:51 | history | edited | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 10, 2015 at 0:39 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | @ypercube - Yes, I was talking about the social norms, policies, and laws in Britain at the time that Tolkien was publishing The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. That is all that really matters for the purposes of this discussion. | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 0:35 | comment | added | ypercubeᵀᴹ | If you were talking about Britain in that era, ok. It wasn't obvious to me. Anyway, I'll remove my comments so not to clutter the space as they were mainly on the wording and not really relevant to the actual question. | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 0:18 | history | edited | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 10, 2015 at 0:12 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | @Null - Answer now even more reviseder. :) | |
| Jun 10, 2015 at 0:11 | history | edited | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 10, 2015 at 0:05 | history | edited | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 9, 2015 at 23:59 | history | edited | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 9, 2015 at 23:37 | history | edited | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 9, 2015 at 23:14 | history | edited | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 9, 2015 at 23:08 | history | edited | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 9, 2015 at 23:03 | history | edited | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 9, 2015 at 22:35 | history | edited | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 9, 2015 at 22:34 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | @Null I consider the revised answer to sufficiently demonstrate that the social environment would have been a deciding factor, if Tolkien's religious views weren't an issue, and if he had actually given any thought to the matter (although I maintain that the latter not being the case, the former did not come into play). | |
| Jun 9, 2015 at 22:30 | history | edited | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 9, 2015 at 22:24 | history | edited | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 9, 2015 at 22:19 | history | edited | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 9, 2015 at 22:09 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | @Null - And you yourself are ignoring the fact that if Tolkien's works had included mentions of homosexuality, especially if these references were not condemnatory, the books would probably never have been published. That is to say, if his religious views were not an issue, the societal norms would still have been a significant factor. | |
| Jun 9, 2015 at 22:06 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | And social environment was obviously crucial, since religiously motivated people might cluck their tongues at homosexuality, but the state itself criminalized homosexuality. You can ignore the disapproval of your peers, but you can't ignore being arrested and convicted of a crime. | |
| Jun 9, 2015 at 22:04 | comment | added | Wad Cheber | @Null - I disagree. Religious convictions can only come into play if you actually think about a subject. Most people didn't think about homosexuality back then. For example, many Christians disapprove of same sex marriage. But this subject wasn't really an issue, or even much of an idea, until very recently. So a person living in the 40's wouldn't have an opinion on it, because it had never crossed his mind. | |
| Jun 9, 2015 at 21:57 | comment | added | Null♦ | This seems to be flirting with DVK's definition of a bad answer -- you've skirted around Tolkien's religious views by blaming his "social environment" without demonstrating that his social environment was more important than his religious views. But Tolkien was a devout Catholic and his religious views were likely even more important in his case than his social environment. | |
| Jun 9, 2015 at 21:45 | history | answered | Wad Cheber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |