Was there a lot of homosexuality among slaves?

Answer 1

There are people who are homosexually oriented; the per centage runs between 2 -10 percent. It is therefore reasonable to assume that, in the total population of slaves, that per centage would apply.

There is also "situational" homosexuality, in which normally heterosexual people turn to others of the same sex for physical and emotional release. This is common in sexually segregated communities, such as prisons, military service, and among slaves who are separated to prevent undesired pregnancies.

Finally, it is not unreasonable to assume that male and female slaves would be vulnerable to rape.

In Greek and Roman times, homosexuality was not frowned upon as it is in the US today, so more homosexual acts and may have occurred, and ostensibly heterosexual slaves may have been more willing to pretend to be homosexuals in order to curry favor with their owners.

As the answer below suggests (although it gets a little off-topic), we also need to distinguish among slavery in different societies.

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quite possibly, as they were generally segregated from the normal or (Free) population and in wars, etc were taken prisoner and then sold to the slave traders, not to be confused with the (in the case of the antebellum South) slave masters. The issue of homosexuality in the slave populace in Ancient times has been discussed, albeit carefully re-routed due to the production codes in such films as Spartacus- the title character was a Greek captured by the Romans- the name implies (the Spartan one) and vastly toned down the angles between Quintus Arrius and Ben-Hur in the Film with Charlton Heston. one notes the film had no love interest in the normal sense and the boyfriend-girlfriend angle was transmogrified into the displaced Brother and sister, the sister suffering from leprosy.-later cured. Spartacus had obvious Homo angles and many groups , including both the American Legion and the Legion Of Decency opposed the film. the latter group also opposed th downbeat mining song- l6 tons. It is obvious that the slave trade and related practices ( war captives, etc) and homosexuality did co-exist, Hollywood was compelled to tone this down in most cases.

As far as the Atlantic slave trade goes, there aren't many if any accounts of slaves having homosexual relationships, rather it be between slaves or between slave owners and slaves, forced or consensually, however it certainly was possible that it happened at times throughout history. Take into account the slave ships that traveled across the Atlantic. They were very long journeys and there might have been times when the male hostages engaged in homosexual relationships (not necessarily sexual) because of the stressful environment they were forced in.

Having such relationships with slaves was taboo in the South and the Carribean (even though rape did happen more often than not between white slave masters and black female slaves), and maybe even moreso if the parties were of the same gender. Accounts of homosexual relations probably weren't recorded at all in most cases. This might be because most slaves, for one, were not able to read and write and weren't able to keep a record of such events (even when slaves married secretly amongst themselves, there was no way of keeping a record). In terms of master/slave relationships, the owner has the possibility of losing his reputation by doing things of that nature, so there were probably more events of these relationships happening under the radar. Homosexuality or even doing homosexual acts was much more controversial during slavery moreso than it is now. Most if not all slaveowners were deeply religious.