Actual Quote from an Actual Thing I Actually Read

[swan_tower]

From Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes, by Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver, following a discussion of George Mallory’s social circle in Cambridge which features a number of quotes that make you think “my, that sounds more than a wee bit homoerotic”:

“But it was James Strachey, the future translator of Freud, and not his older brother Lytton who evidently initiated Mallory into the pleasures of ‘the higher sodomy,’ as [the Bloomsbury Group] called it. The precise nature of ‘l’affaire George’ is unclear and ultimately uninteresting. What is interesting and of some significance to the history of Himalayan mountaineering is” . . .

No. No, you do not get to drop a phrase like “the higher sodomy” into your book on the history of Himalayan mountaineering and then declare it uninteresting. You were interested enough in it to mention it; you bloody well ought to explain it. If the explanation does not fit into this book, then neither does the phrase. Stick with the fact that George Mallory slept with men; you don’t have to leave your reader wondering what precisely distinguishes “the higher sodomy” from “the lower sodomy” — a question which only invites the brain to come up with increasingly creative answers, all of which are an unnecessary distraction from the tale of how Mallory came to be chosen for the Everest expedition.

(One also cannot help but wonder if Isserman and Weaver were slightly uncomfortable with Mallory’s sexuality, given that they later say “the heterosexual side of his nature asserted itself permanently when he met and fell in love with Ruth Turner,” Mallory’s eventual wife. This book was written in 2008: bisexuality had been invented by then, guys. You don’t have to use a phrase that implies Mallory got over his attraction to men.)

EDIT: My brain being what it is, of course I had to go and google the phrase. As near as I can tell, “the higher sodomy” was the groundbreaking notion that instead of just buggering your fellow students in the good old public school fashion, you should also have romantic feelings for your partner. Shocking!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[sovay]

you don’t have to leave your reader wondering what precisely distinguishes “the higher sodomy” from “the lower sodomy” — a question which only invites the brain to come up with increasingly creative answers

Altitude.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia tells me Cambridge is 20 feet above sea level. Do you have to be underwater to enact the lower sodomy?

[sovay]

Do you have to be underwater to enact the lower sodomy?

That's like intermediate difficulty level. Not to be attempted by undergraduates without at least one spotter.

(I wrote a poem about George Mallory in 2012. It does not feature sodomy, which I hope does not impede anyone's enjoyment of it.)

[edit] As near as I can tell, “the higher sodomy” was the groundbreaking notion that instead of just buggering your fellow students in the good old public school fashion, you should also have romantic feelings for your partner. Shocking!

Bloomsbury, I am disappoint.

[brooksmoses]

::splutters:: Twenty feet? But, but ... I was there! It's out in the middle of the country! And sure, it was somewhat flat, but there were enough hills to make a highway overpass without needing embankments. And the river was ... how can a river flow that far to the ocean with only twenty feet of elevation?

Seriously. Twenty feet. Wow.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Dude, don't ask me. I was surprised, too.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Google Earth claims more like 20 meters. OTOH some fields to the (north, and east of Sutton) and (northeast) are barely above sea level.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Courtesy of the Dutch, largely: they reclaimed most of East Anglia from the North Sea (or the German Ocean, as it was at the time; no wonder we felt it right to push its borders back...).

[There are lots of Dutch on Mars, too. All those canals, and all that dry desert land needing irrigation: it's the opposite problem, and they are the same solution.)

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Angela suggests that in Cambridge, the higher sodomy involves flagpoles or turrets.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

O_O

DO NOT WANT.

(Possibly Angela did not mean that in the sense my brain immediately interpreted it. But: my brain. So.)

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Beat me to it.

[gelsey.livejournal.com]

*facepalms* oyyyy vey!

[leatherdykeuk.livejournal.com]

I was put in mind of 'The Mile High Club' :)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

If this had been about the Alpine Club rather than a social circle in Cambridge, I would accept no other interpretation. <lol>

[difrancis.livejournal.com]

Thank you, for googling that for me so I wouldn't have to. Because I would have. And I have to say, my brain was so much more creative about what it could be than it actually was.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I think that's true for all of us. ;-)

[uneasy-spirit.livejournal.com]

Seriously. I was envisioning a rope and pulley setup, or perhaps a parasail.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I have always loved Lytton Strachey, and that whole Bloomsbury (mind)set. If you're not familiar with the movie Carrington, I recommend it...

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Not familiar with it at all!

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

“the higher sodomy” was the groundbreaking notion that instead of just buggering your fellow students in the good old public school fashion, you should also have romantic feelings for your partner.

Truly, the end is nigh.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Ironically, the thing I read said that Strachey pushed that concept as part of an overall drive to undermine the concept of marriage.