Sim ilarly, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah shows that it is
essential to male power (to the power of men as a class) to protect
men from the sexual lust of other men— to protect men from
forced sex by putting women in their place. No legal piety interferes with protecting men from homosexual assault by other men (in the story of Sodom, homosexual gang rape). The story of
Sodom is meant to show that when the simple mechanical strategy
of using women, not men, as targets for nonconsensual sex breaks
down entirely, a patriarchal society w ill be destroyed. So God ordains; so the Old Testament describes: and it is an accurate assessment of the importance of keeping women the objects of forced sex so that men w ill not be subjected to it and need not fear it.
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah begins with a conversation
between God and Abraham: God says that “[b]ecause the cry of
Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know” (Genesis 18: 20-21). Abraham asks God if he will
destroy Sodom if there are fifty righteous men in the city. God
promises that if there are fifty, he w ill spare the city. Abraham,
after a few more interchanges, gets God to promise: “I w ill not
destroy
where Lot bows down to them and offers them hospitality: safety
in his home, washing of the feet, unleavened bread:
But before they lay down, the men of the city,
of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young,
all the people from every quarter:
And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where
men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us,
that we may know them.
And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door
after him.
And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.
Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known
man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye
to them as
Genesis 19: 4 -8
The crowd, “both old and young, all the people from every quarter, ” attacked; the angels who appeared as men pulled Lot inside to save him, and “they smote the men that
house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied
themselves to find the door” (Genesis 19: 11). The angels told Lot
to leave Sodom because they were going to destroy it. Lot told his
sons-in-law, but they did not believe him. In the morning, the
angels told Lot to take his wife and two unmarried daughters; he
lingered, the angels transported Lot and the women outside the
city. God told Lot to go into the mountains and not to look back;
Lot pleaded to be able to go to a nearby city; God said he would
spare that city for Lot’s sake: “Then the Lord rained upon Sodom
and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of
heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the
inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground”
(Genesis 19: 24-25). God remembered Lot, and spared him, and in
the wave of destruction of cities, God sent Lot into the mountains,
where Lot lived with his two daughters: “And the firstborn said
unto the younger, Our father
earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth: Come,
let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that
we may preserve seed of our father” (Genesis 19: 31-32). On successive nights, each had sex with her drunken father and both became pregnant. Both had sons, a blessing, and each of those sons became the father of a whole people, a blessing.
That the people of Sodom meant the strangers harm is clear.
The nature of that harm is less clear. The demand of the mob to
bring the strangers out “that we may know them” is sexual because
the use of “know” usually is in biblical diction. The attempt of Lot
to substitute his virgin daughters for the men suggests that the mob
would have gang-raped the men. Whether the women in the mob
were voyeurs or purveyors of other forms of violence is impossible
to know: and yet the threat to the men does not seem to be only
