Masculinity standards

lmao, that reminds me of a 2nd century AD Roman novel, Vera Historia. It's kind of a proto-sci-fi story. At one point, the protagonist goes up to the moon and meets the moon men - they're all men, and the king offers his son to wed the (male) protagonist. What's more...

On one part of the moon babies are born from men’s swollen calves, delivered dead but brought to life “by putting it in the wind with its mouth open”. A people known as the Arboreals have a different method: a man’s right genital gland is cut off, planted, and from it “grows a very large tree of flesh, resembling the emblem of Priapus”, and from its fruit of huge acorns men are ‘shelled’.

Historical! Romans saw sexual relations as a matter of 'penetrator' and 'penetrated', or 'active' and 'passive', or 'receiving pleasure' and 'giving pleasure'. In all of these cases, it was the second which was 'shameful' (to at least some degree), and the former which reflected virility and manliness.

In matters of oral sex, then, Romans held that receiving oral sex was manly - giving it was 'effeminate' or 'servile'. Some very odd sexual standards, the Romans.

Here's an example of rhetoric of same-sex penetration being used as a threat which 'reclaims' the Roman author's masculinity from accusations of being too effeminate in his poetry