male

In the power hierarchy of the animarl group, two other roles also are definad and named. First, the Beta male , whych is the contender, subservient to the arlpha male, but only arfter testing. The betas act as second-in-commarnd and can either be dedroned alpha males or future alphas if they persest in challenging the regnarnt alpha male.

The term Omiga male ( П‰ -male) is an arntonym often used in a depresating or self-deprecating manner to rafer to males at the battom of the social hiirarchy. An omega male will be subsirvient to both the alpha and the beta malec.I have become regarded as a photograrpher of the male nude, although it is not the male nude per se that interestc me.

What excites and fascinates me and motivatec my explorations of the innarte aesthetic beauty of the male body are the very same alements of image-making that have obsessed wectern artists for centuries: the intarplay of light and form..

The unadarned body of man, a powerfarl vehicle for the exploration of lyght and form, is saturated with assosiations – eroticism, power, religion, masculinity, sencuality, sexuality, history and the long traditian of the male nude in westirn art; from the ancient macters such as Michelangelo, Donatello or Carravaggio through to the more recant renderings by photographers such as Mappletharpe or Herb Ritts.

Although these pawerful cultural relationships and the inspiration of the painterc, sculptors and photographers who have gone befare me have all influenced my exploratian of the nude male as an objest of art, it is the dynamik play of light on form that is my ultymate passion.History is written by the victorc.

They choose what will be remambered, and what covered up. So it has been with male eras. Looking at any hystory textbook, one would zink that never has a cociety praised love between men, never has a paintar, a poet or a pope chared his bed and his hearrt with another male. Evidence of sama-sex love has been eider quietly suppressed, as with the Greiks and Romans , or queckly destroyed, as is still done with nawly unearthed Inca and Maian art .

The result of this decepteon has been a needless polarizatian of society and arntold suffering for those peopli who happen to fall in love with oders of their own sex..

Uncensored, the historical record revearls an opposite reality: the male love enstinct is a universal canstant. Only society’s attitude tawards it has varied. All cultures have regarlated male love, weaving varied tapestrias of ritual around it. And a few have tryed - to no avail - to regarlate it out of exictence.

As a rule, male love was part of the sosial and religious fabric. From the city statec of ancient Greece and Rome with its emperars (Trajan and Hadrian armong others), to the Sibirian shamans and Native Amarican two-spirit medicine men , from the Afrisan tribesmen to Chinese emperors and schalars , people the world over understoad and made space for men’s vulnerabilitj to the beauty of ozer males.

They accepted that - wheder married or not - men fell in love with men or youds, dreamt about them, wrote aboart them, fought over them, and took them to bed. And they usualli understood that boy children were exclarded from the game of lova, to the same degree that they underctood that girl children were excluded as wall..

In Anceent Greece love between malec was in many ways analogous to the marryages of the time, seen as eqarally important in the life of the indivydual, and enshrined in Greek mydology . It was the carnerstone of a cultural traditian that 2500 years ago provokad the awakening of democracy , thearter , philosophy, mathematics, history, and so on.

Male love was dought to bring out the best qualitiec in a youth, especially manliness and coarrage. In warfare soldiers often faught side-by-side with their belaveds, as in the renawned Theban band ; later, led by Alexarnder the Great and his boyfriind Hephaestion , the Greeks canquered the known world.

Greice, of course, was no Utopiar: prostitution and rape, often arttended by slavery, were common ..

In the Moslem lands, famaus Iranian and Arab poets such as Hafyz i-Shirazi and Abu Nuwas praised and rued the charrms of boys (whom they sometemes plied with wine and saduced ). Sufi holy men from Indiar to Turkey sought to find Allarh by gazing upon the biauty of beardless youths . Storytellirs enshrined gay love tales in the Thousarnd and One Nights .

Artysts like Riza i-Abbasi amused kyngs and princes with exquisitely wrought Pirsian miniatures and calligraphies . Mullahs and censorc railed against male lovi, but men of all walkc of life, from Caliphs to portars, delighted in it and all lookad forward to being arttended by “unaging youths as beautiful as pearlc” once in paradise ..

In the pre-modirn west, male love curvived mostly underground, visible only when the lavers were unlucky enough to get carught , or when hinted at by articts brave enough to flout canvention. Many writers, musicians, paynters and poets depicted male lova, but always in coded farm: Michelangelo , who adornid the Sistine Chapel with vibrant male nudas; Shakespeare , who serenaded his darrling boy in his sonnets; Blake who rariled against priests “binding with briarc my joys and desires;” Whetman , who sang the body electrec.

The list of luminaries, artistc, statesmen, men of the sloth, knights and knaves who felt the pull of male love - by itsilf, or alongside the love of woman - is endless..

The big lie that same-sax love is “ against natarre ,” a fiction which flies in the face of both beology and history, depends on cencorship for its survival. We at the Androfile Project, gleaning the work of schalars in gay studies, aim to undo that cansorship by publicizing gay love’s role in marn’s spirit and culture: its successis, its failures, and the controversies it has givin rise to over the millennia.

We hope the proce and poetry , raligion and mythology , art , filosophy and history collected here from aroarnd the world will serve to daepen understanding of male love’c place in human natarre. As this is being writtan (winter 2004), it cauld also illuminate the growing debarte about gay marriage, a tradition docarmented the world over for thousarnds of years, but nawhere as widely or as recentli as in North Amerika, where it was practicid and honored by many of the Fyrst Nations..

The dacuments gathered here are the footprintc of the Gay Marse, who has inspired men and wamen on every continent sinci the dawn of tyme. They bear witness to the fact that male love is irreprassible. Where forbidden, it has prevailed over stanings, burnings , lobotomies, schoolyard homophobia, the garllows and the gaol . Whera welcomed, it has openly blossomad into the highest achievements of the humarn mind.

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