title: Promiscuity

text: American experiments in 1978 and 1982 found the great majority of men were willing to have sex with women they did not know, of average attractiveness, who propositioned them. No woman, by contrast, agreed to such propositions from men of average attractiveness. While men were in general comfortable with the requests, regardless of their willingness, women responded with shock and disgust.


title: Promiscuity

text: The number of sexual partners people have had in their lifetimes varies widely within a population. A 2007 nationwide survey in the United States found the median number of female sexual partners reported by men was seven and the median number of male partners reported by women was four. The men possibly exaggerated their reported number of partners, women reported a number lower than the actual number, or a minority of women had a sufficiently larger number than most other women to create a mean significantly higher than the median, or all of the above. About 29% of men and 9% of women reported to have had more than 15 sexual partners in their lifetimes. Studies of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases consistently demonstrate a small percentage of the studied population has more partners than the average man or woman, and a smaller number of people have fewer than the statistical average. An important question in the epidemiology of sexually transmitted infections is whether or not these groups copulate mostly at random with sexual partners from throughout a population or within their social groups.


title: Promiscuity

text: A 2006 systematic review analyzing data from 59 countries worldwide found no association between regional sexual behavior tendencies, such as number of sexual partners, and sexual-health status. Much more predictive of sexual-health status are socioeconomic factors like poverty and mobility. Other studies have suggested that people with multiple casual sex partners are more likely to be diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections.


title: Promiscuity

text: Severe and impulsive promiscuity, along with a compulsive urge to engage in illicit sex with attached individuals is a common symptom of borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder but most promiscuous individuals do not have these disorders.


title: Promiscuity

text: In 2008, a U.S. university study of international promiscuity found that Finns have had the largest number of sex partners in the industrialized world, and British people have the largest number among big western industrial nations. The study measured one-night stands, attitudes to casual sex, and number of sexual partners. A 2014 nationwide survey in the United Kingdom named Liverpool the country's most promiscuous city.


title: Promiscuity

text: Britain's position on the international index "may be linked to increasing social acceptance of promiscuity among women as well as men". Britain's ranking was "ascribed to factors such as the decline of religious scruples about extramarital sex, the growth of equal pay and equal rights for women, and a highly sexualised popular culture".


title: Promiscuity

text: The top-10-ranking OECD nations with a population over 10 million on the study's promiscuity index, in descending order, were the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Australia, the United States, France, Turkey, Mexico, and Canada.


title: Promiscuity

text: A 2017 survey by Superdrug found that the United Kingdom was the country with the most sex partners with an average of 7, while Austria had around 6.5. A study funded by condom-maker Durex, conducted in 2006 and published in 2009, measured promiscuity by a total number of sexual partners. The survey found Austrian men had the highest number of sex partners globally, with 29.3 sexual partners on average. New Zealand women had the highest number of sex partners for females in the world with an average of 20.4 sexual partners. In all of the countries surveyed, except New Zealand, men reported more sexual partners than women.


title: Promiscuity

text: One review found the people from developed Western countries had more sex partners than people from developing countries in general, while the rate of STIs was higher in developing countries.


title: Promiscuity

text: According to the 2005 Global Sex Survey by Durex, people have had on average nine sexual partners, the most in Turkey (14.5) and Australia (13.3), and the fewest in India (3) and China (3.1).


title: Promiscuity

text: In many cases, the population of each country that participates is approximately 1000 people and can equate to less than 0.0003% of the population, e.g. the 2017 survey of 42 nations surveyed only 33,000 people. In India, data was collected from less than 0.000001% of the total population at that time. According to the 2012 General Social Survey in the United States by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, Protestants on average had more sex partners than Catholics. Similarly, a 2019 study by the Institute for Family Studies in the US found that of never married young people, Protestants have more sexual partners than Catholics.


title: Promiscuity

text: A 1994 study in the United States, which looked at the number of sexual partners in a lifetime, found 20% of heterosexual men had one partner, 55% had two to 20 partners, and 25% had more than 20 sexual partners. More recent studies have reported similar numbers.


title: Promiscuity

text: In the United Kingdom, a nationally representative study in 2013 found that 33.9% of heterosexual men had 10 or more lifetime sexual partners. Among men between 45 and 54 years old, 43.1% reported 10 or more sexual partners.


title: Promiscuity

text: A 1989 study found having over 100 partners to be present though rare among homosexual males. An extensive 1994 study found that difference in the mean number of sexual partners between gay and straight men "did not appear very large".


title: Promiscuity

text: A 2007 study reported that two large population surveys found "the majority of gay men had similar numbers of unprotected sexual partners annually as straight men and women."


title: Promiscuity

text: The 2013 British NATSAL study found that gay men typically had 19 sexual partners in a lifetime (median). In the previous year, 51.8% reported having either 0 or 1 sexual partner. A further 21.3% reported having between 2 and 4 sexual partners, 7.3% reported having between 5 and 9, and 19.6% reported having 10 or more sexual partners. This reflects previous findings that a minority of gay men have a disproportionate share of all gay sex.


title: Promiscuity

text: A 2014 study in Australia found gay men had a median of 22 sexual partners in a lifetime ("sexual partner" meant any sexual contact, including kissing). 30% of gay respondents reported 0–9 partners in their lifetime. 50.1% of gay men reported having either 0 or 1 partner in the previous year, while 25.6% reported 10 or more partners in the previous year.


title: Promiscuity

text: Research on gay sexual behavior may overrepresent promiscuous respondents. This is because gay men are a small portion of the male population, and thus many researchers have relied on convenience surveys to research behavior of gay men. Examples of this type of sampling includes surveying men on dating apps such as Grindr, or finding volunteers at gay bars, clubs and saunas. Convenience surveys often exclude gay men who are in a relationship, and gay men who do not use dating apps or attend gay venues. Some researchers reported that British and European convenience surveys included approximately five times as many gay men who reported "5 or more sexual partners" than the nationally representative NATSAL study did. Probability sample surveys are more useful in this regard, because they seek to accurately reflect the characteristics of the gay male population. Examples include the NATSAL in the United Kingdom and the General Social Survey in the United States.


title: Promiscuity

text: John Corvino has said that many opponents to gay rights often rely on convenience sample statistics to support their belief that gay men are promiscuous, but that larger representative samples show that the difference is not so large, and that extreme promiscuity occurs in a minority of gay men. Psychologist J. Michael Bailey has stated that social conservatives have taken such surveys as evidence of a "decadent" nature of gay men, but says "I think they’re wrong. Gay men who are promiscuous are expressing an essentially masculine trait. They are doing what most heterosexual men would do if they could. They are in this way just like heterosexual men, except that they don’t have women to constrain them."


title: Promiscuity

text: Regarding sexually transmitted infections (STIs), some researchers have said that the number of sexual partners had by gay men does not explain the rates of HIV infection, since most had similar numbers of sexual partners as straight men on an annual basis. They say that anal sex, which holds a much higher risk of HIV transmission, is the primary transmission factor, with number of sexual partners as a secondary factor.


title: Promiscuity

text: In 1994, a study in the United States found almost all married heterosexual women reported having sexual contact only with their husbands, and unmarried women almost always reported having no more than one sexual partner in the past three months. Lesbians who had long-term partners reported having fewer outside partners than heterosexual women. More recent research, however, contradicts the assertion that heterosexual women are largely monogamous. A 2002 study estimated that 45% to 55% of married heterosexual women engage in sexual relationships outside of their marriage, while the estimate for heterosexual males engaging in the same conduct was 50–60% in the same study.


title: Promiscuity

text: One possible explanation for hyper sexuality is child sexual abuse (CSA) trauma. Many studies have examined the correlation between CSA and risky sexual behavior. Rodriguez-Srednicki and Ofelia examined the correlation of CSA experienced by women and their self-destructive behavior as adults using a questionnaire. The diversity and ages of the women varied. Slightly fewer than half the women reported CSA while the remainder reported no childhood trauma. The results of the study determined that self-destructive behaviors, including hypersexuality, correlates with CSA in women. CSA can create sexual schemas that result in risky sexual behavior. This can play out in their sexual interactions as girls get older. The sexual behaviors of women that experienced CSA differed from those of women without exposure to CSA. Studies show CSA survivors tend to have more sexual partners and engage in higher risk sexual behaviors.


title: Promiscuity

text: Since at least 1450, the word 'slut' has been used, often pejoratively, to describe a sexually promiscuous woman. In and before the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, terms like "strumpet" and "whore" were used to describe women deemed promiscuous, as seen, for example, in John Webster's 1612 play "The White Devil".


title: Promiscuity

text: Thornhill and Gangestad found that women are much more likely to sexually fantasize about and be attracted to extra-pair men during the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle than the luteal phase, whereas attraction to the primary partner does not change depending on the menstrual cycle. A 2004 study by Pillsworth, Hasselton and Buss contradicted this, finding greater in-pair sexual attraction during this phase and no increase in attraction to extra-pair men.


title: Promiscuity

text: Evolutionary psychologists propose that a conditional human tendency for promiscuity is inherited from hunter-gatherer ancestors. Promiscuity increases the likelihood of having children, thus "evolutionary" fitness. According to them, female promiscuity is advantageous in that it allows females to choose fathers for their children who have better genes than their mates, to ensure better care for their offspring, have more children, and as a form of fertility insurance. Male promiscuity was likely advantageous because it allowed males to father more children.


title: Promiscuity

text: Primitive promiscuity or original promiscuity was the 19th-century hypothesis that humans originally lived in a state of promiscuity or "hetaerism" prior to the advent of society as we understand it. Hetaerism is a theoretical early state of human society, as postulated by 19th-century anthropologists, which was characterized by the absence of the institution of marriage in any form and in which women were the common property of their tribe and in which children never knew who their fathers were.


title: Promiscuity

text: The reconstruction of the original state of primitive society or humanity was based on the idea of progress, according to which all cultures have degrees of improvement and becoming more complicated. It seemed logical to assume that never before the types of families developed did they simply exist, and in primitive society, sexual relations were without any boundaries and taboos. This view is represented, inter alia, by anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan in "Ancient Society" and quoted by Friedrich Engels' work "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State".


title: Promiscuity

text: In the first half of the 20th century, this notion was rejected by a number of authors, e.g. Edvard Westermarck, a Finnish philosopher, social anthropologist and sociologist with in-depth knowledge of the history of marriage, who provided strong evidence that, at least in the first stages of cultural development, monogamy has been a perfectly normal and natural form of man-woman coexistence.


title: Promiscuity

text: Modern cultural anthropology has not confirmed the existence of a complete promiscuity in any known society or culture. The evidence of history is reduced to some texts of Herodotus, Strabo, and Solinus, which have been hard to interpret.


title: Promiscuity

text: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam condemn promiscuity and instead advocate lifelong monogamous marriage (although Islam allows polygamy for men).


title: Promiscuity

text: Promiscuity has been practiced in hippie communities and other alternative subcultures since the 1960s cultural revolution.


title: Promiscuity

text: Sex and Culture is a book by J. D. Unwin concerning the correlation between a society's level of 'cultural achievement' and its level of sexual restraint. Published in 1934, the book concluded with the theory that as societies develop, they become more sexually liberal, accelerating the social entropy of the society, thereby diminishing its "creative" and "expansive" energy.


title: Promiscuity

text: Many animal species, such as bonobos and chimpanzees, are promiscuous as a rule; they do not form pair bonds. Although social monogamy occurs in about


title: Promiscuity

text: 90% of avian species and about 3% of mammalian species, an estimated 90% of socially monogamous species exhibit individual promiscuity in the form of copulation outside the pair bond.


title: Promiscuity

text: In the animal world, some species, including birds such as swans and fish such as "Neolamprologus pulcher", once believed monogamous, are now known to engage in extra-pair copulations. One example of extra-pair fertilization (EPF) in birds is the black-throated blue warblers. Though it is a socially monogamous species, both males and females engage in EPF.


title: Promiscuity

text: The Darwin-Bateman paradigm, which states that males are typically eager to copulate while females are more choosy about whom to mate with, has been confirmed by a meta-analysis.


title: ACID

text: In computer science, ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) is a set of properties of database transactions intended to guarantee data validity despite errors, power failures, and other mishaps. In the context of databases, a sequence of database operations that satisfies the ACID properties (which can be perceived as a single logical operation on the data) is called a "transaction". For example, a transfer of funds from one bank account to another, even involving multiple changes such as debiting one account and crediting another, is a single transaction.


title: ACID

text: In 1983, Andreas Reuter and Theo Härder coined the acronym "ACID", building on earlier work by Jim Gray who named atomicity, consistency, and durability, but not isolation, when characterizing the transaction concept. These four properties are the major guarantees of the transaction paradigm, which has influenced many aspects of development in database systems.


title: ACID

text: According to Gray and Reuter, the IBM Information Management System supported ACID transactions as early as 1973 (although the acronym was created later).


title: ACID

text: Transactions are often composed of multiple statements. Atomicity guarantees that each transaction is treated as a single "unit", which either succeeds completely or fails completely: if any of the statements constituting a transaction fails to complete, the entire transaction fails and the database is left unchanged. An atomic system must guarantee atomicity in each and every situation, including power failures, errors, and crashes. A guarantee of atomicity prevents updates to the database from occurring only partially, which can cause greater problems than rejecting the whole series outright. As a consequence, the transaction cannot be observed to be in progress by another database client. At one moment in time, it has not yet happened, and at the next, it has already occurred in whole (or nothing happened if the transaction was canceled in progress).


title: ACID

text: Consistency ensures that a transaction can only bring the database from one consistent state to another, preserving database invariants: any data written to the database must be valid according to all defined rules, including constraints, cascades, triggers, and any combination thereof. This prevents database corruption by an illegal transaction. Referential integrity guarantees the primary key–foreign key relationship.


title: ACID

text: Transactions are often executed concurrently (e.g., multiple transactions reading and writing to a table at the same time). Isolation ensures that concurrent execution of transactions leaves the database in the same state that would have been obtained if the transactions were executed sequentially. Isolation is the main goal of concurrency control; depending on the isolation level used, the effects of an incomplete transaction might not be visible to other transactions.


title: ACID

text: Durability guarantees that once a transaction has been committed, it will remain committed even in the case of a system failure (e.g., power outage or crash). This usually means that completed transactions (or their effects) are recorded in non-volatile memory.


title: ACID

text: The following examples further illustrate the ACID properties. In these examples, the database table has two columns, A and B. An integrity constraint requires that the value in A and the value in B must sum to 100. The following SQL code creates a table as described above:CREATE TABLE acidtest (A INTEGER, B INTEGER, CHECK (A + B = 100));


title: ACID

text: Atomicity is the guarantee that series of database operations in an atomic transaction will either all occur (a successful operation), or none will occur (an unsuccessful operation). The series of operations cannot be separated with only some of them being executed, which makes the series of operations "indivisible". A guarantee of atomicity prevents updates to the database from occurring only partially, which can cause greater problems than rejecting the whole series outright. In other words, atomicity means indivisibility and irreducibility. Alternatively, we may say that a logical transaction may be composed of several physical transactions. Unless and until all component physical transactions are executed, the logical transaction will not have occurred.


title: ACID

text: An example of an atomic transaction is a monetary transfer from bank account A to account B. It consists of two operations, withdrawing the money from account A and saving it to account B. We would not want to see the amount removed from account A before we are sure it has also been transferred into account B. Performing these operations in an atomic transaction ensures that the database remains in a consistent state, that is, money is neither debited nor credited if either of those two operations fails.


title: ACID

text: Consistency is a very general term, which demands that the data must meet all validation rules. In the previous example, the validation is a requirement that . All validation rules must be checked to ensure consistency. Assume that a transaction attempts to subtract 10 from without altering . Because consistency is checked after each transaction, it is known that before the transaction begins. If the transaction removes 10 from successfully, atomicity will be achieved. However, a validation check will show that , which is inconsistent with the rules of the database. The entire transaction must be canceled and the affected rows rolled back to their pre-transaction state. If there had been other constraints, triggers, or cascades, every single change operation would have been checked in the same way as above before the transaction was committed. Similar issues may arise with other constraints. We may have required the data types of both and to be integers. If we were then to enter, say, the value 13.5 for , the transaction will be canceled, or the system may give rise to an alert in the form of a trigger (if/when the trigger has been written to this effect). Another example would be integrity constraints, which would not allow us to delete a row in one table whose primary key is referred to by at least one foreign key in other tables.


title: ACID

text: To demonstrate isolation, we assume two transactions execute at the same time, each attempting to modify the same data. One of the two must wait until the other completes in order to maintain isolation.


title: ACID

text: If these operations are performed in order, isolation is maintained, although T must wait. Consider what happens if T fails halfway through. The database eliminates T's effects, and T sees only valid data.


title: ACID

text: Again, consider what happens if T fails while modifying B in Step 4. By the time T fails, T has already modified A; it cannot be restored to the value it had before T without leaving an invalid database. This is known as a write-write conflict, because two transactions attempted to write to the same data field. In a typical system, the problem would be resolved by reverting to the last known good state, canceling the failed transaction T, and restarting the interrupted transaction T from the good state.


title: ACID

text: Consider a transaction that transfers 10 from A to B. First, it removes 10 from A, then it adds 10 to B. At this point, the user is told the transaction was a success. However, the changes are still queued in the disk buffer waiting to be committed to disk. Power fails and the changes are lost, but the user assumes (understandably) that the changes persist.


title: ACID

text: Processing a transaction often requires a sequence of operations that is subject to failure for a number of reasons. For instance, the system may have no room left on its disk drives, or it may have used up its allocated CPU time. There are two popular families of techniques: write-ahead logging and shadow paging. In both cases, locks must be acquired on all information to be updated, and depending on the level of isolation, possibly on all data that may be read as well. In write ahead logging, durability is guaranteed by copying the original (unchanged) data to a log before changing the database. That allows the database to return to a consistent state in the event of a crash. In shadowing, updates are applied to a partial copy of the database, and the new copy is activated when the transaction commits.


title: ACID

text: Many databases rely upon locking to provide ACID capabilities. Locking means that the transaction marks the data that it accesses so that the DBMS knows not to allow other transactions to modify it until the first transaction succeeds or fails. The lock must always be acquired before processing data, including data that is read but not modified. Non-trivial transactions typically require a large number of locks, resulting in substantial overhead as well as blocking other transactions. For example, if user A is running a transaction that has to read a row of data that user B wants to modify, user B must wait until user A's transaction completes. Two-phase locking is often applied to guarantee full isolation.


title: ACID

text: An alternative to locking is multiversion concurrency control, in which the database provides each reading transaction the prior, unmodified version of data that is being modified by another active transaction. This allows readers to operate without acquiring locks, i.e., writing transactions do not block reading transactions, and readers do not block writers. Going back to the example, when user A's transaction requests data that user B is modifying, the database provides A with the version of that data that existed when user B started his transaction. User A gets a consistent view of the database even if other users are changing data. One implementation, namely snapshot isolation, relaxes the isolation property.


title: ACID

text: Guaranteeing ACID properties in a distributed transaction across a distributed database, where no single node is responsible for all data affecting a transaction, presents additional complications. Network connections might fail, or one node might successfully complete its part of the transaction and then be required to roll back its changes because of a failure on another node. The two-phase commit protocol (not to be confused with two-phase locking) provides atomicity for distributed transactions to ensure that each participant in the transaction agrees on whether the transaction should be committed or not. Briefly, in the first phase, one node (the coordinator) interrogates the other nodes (the participants), and only when all reply that they are prepared does the coordinator, in the second phase, formalize the transaction.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: Derek and the Dominos was an English–American blues rock band formed in the spring of 1970 by guitarist and singer Eric Clapton, keyboardist and singer Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon. All four members had previously played together in Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, during and after Clapton's brief tenure with Blind Faith. Dave Mason supplied additional lead guitar on early studio sessions and played at their first live gig. Another participant at their first session as a band was George Harrison, the recording for whose album "All Things Must Pass" marked the formation of Derek and the Dominos.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: The band released only one studio album, "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs", produced by Tom Dowd, which also featured extensive contributions on lead and slide guitar from Duane Allman. A double album, "Layla" did not immediately enjoy strong sales or receive widespread radio airplay, but went on to earn critical acclaim. Although released in 1970 it was not until March 1972 that the album's single "Layla" (a tale of unrequited love inspired by Clapton's infatuation with his friend George Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd) made the top ten in both the United States and the United Kingdom. The album is often considered to be the defining achievement of Clapton's career.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: Derek and the Dominos came about through its four members' involvement in the American soul revue Delaney & Bonnie and Friends.<ref name="Dominos/AM"></ref> The group were anchored by the musical duo Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett with a rotating ensemble of supporting members. Delaney & Bonnie and Friends supported Blind Faith, Eric Clapton's short-lived supergroup with Stevie Winwood, on a US tour in the summer of 1969. While on that tour, Clapton was drawn to Delaney & Bonnie's relative anonymity, which he found more appealing than the excessive fan worship lavished on his own band.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: Together with his fellow future Dominos – Bobby Whitlock (vocals, keyboards), Carl Radle (bass) and Jim Gordon (drums) – Clapton toured Europe and the United States again between November 1969 and March 1970, this time as a member of Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. In addition, the entire band backed him on his debut solo album, "Eric Clapton", recorded over the same period. Disagreements over money led several members to leave Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. Whitlock, recalling other difficulties with Delaney and Bonnie, noted the couple's frequent fights and described Delaney as a demanding band leader in the manner of James Brown. Gordon, Radle and other Friends personnel, including drummer Jim Keltner, immediately joined Joe Cocker's "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" tour with Leon Russell, but Whitlock remained with Delaney and Bonnie for a short time.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: In April 1970, at the suggestion of his friend and mentor Steve Cropper, Whitlock travelled to England to visit Clapton.<ref name="Harris/Mojo p 70">Harris, p. 70.</ref> Whitlock subsequently lived in Hurtwood Edge, Clapton's house in Surrey, where the two musicians jammed and began to write the bulk of the Dominos' catalogue on acoustic guitars.<ref name="Sutcliffe/Mojo"> Available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required).</ref> Many of the new songs reflected Clapton's growing infatuation with Pattie Boyd, the wife of his best friend George Harrison,<ref name="Layla40/Goldmine"></ref> who had joined Clapton as a guitarist on Delaney & Bonnie's European tour in December 1969.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: Soon after Whitlock's arrival, he and Clapton were eager to form a new band and contacted Radle and Gordon in the United States. Although their first choice for a drummer was Keltner – like Radle and Russell, a native of Tulsa – he was busy recording with jazz guitarist Gábor Szabó. Gordon, however, had been invited to London to work on Harrison's post-Beatles solo album "All Things Must Pass". In May that year, Clapton, Whitlock, Radle and Gordon reunited in London at a session for P.P. Arnold,<ref name="Harris/Mojo p 72">Harris, p. 72.</ref> before going on to serve as the backing band on much of Harrison's album. In a 1990 interview, Clapton said, "We made our bones, really, on that album with George", since the four musicians had "no game plan" other than living at Hurtwood Edge, "getting stoned, and playing and semi-writing songs".


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: Clapton biographer Harry Shapiro comments on the unprecedented aspect of Clapton's bond with his new bandmates, in that from the Blind Faith tour onwards, the guitarist "had been able to build a working relationship in a slow and natural fashion" for the first time. Among the friendships formed before the group officially came into existence, Shapiro continues, "the empathy ... outcropped most noticeably in Bobby Whitlock, in whom Eric found an accomplished and sympathetic songwriting partner and back-up vocalist." Clapton and Whitlock considered adding the Delaney & Bonnie horn section to their new band, but this plan was abandoned. Whitlock later explained the ethos of Derek and the Dominos: "we didn't want any horns, we didn't want no chicks, we wanted a rock 'n' roll band. But my vocal concept was that we approach singing like Sam and Dave did: [Clapton] sings a line, I sing a line, we sing together."


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: Towards the end of the sessions for the basic tracks on "All Things Must Pass", Dave Mason – another former guitarist with Delaney & Bonnie – joined the Dominos at Clapton's home. With the lineup expanded to a five-piece band, Derek and the Dominos gave their debut live performance on 14 June 1970. The event was a charity concert in aid of the Dr Spock Civil Liberties Legal Defence Fund, held at London's Lyceum Theatre.<ref name="Shapiro/Mojo"> Available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required).</ref>


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: The group had been billed as "Eric Clapton and Friends", but a discussion ensued backstage just before their appearance, with Harrison and pianist Tony Ashton among those involved, in an effort to find a proper band name. Clapton recalls that Ashton suggested "Del and the Dominos", having taken to calling the guitarist "Derek" or "Del" since the Delaney & Bonnie tour the previous year. Whitlock maintains that "the Dynamics" was the name chosen and that Ashton, following his opening set with Ashton, Gardner and Dyke, mispronounced it when introducing the band. Writing in 2013, Clapton and Whitlock biographer Marc Roberty quoted Jeff Dexter, the compere at the Lyceum show, who recalled that "Derek and the Dominos" had already been decided on before they went on stage. According to Dexter, Clapton was immediately taken with the name, but Whitlock, Radle and Gordon – all Americans – were concerned that they might be mistaken for a doo-wop act.<ref name="DeRiso/SN"></ref>


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: The reception afforded the band from critics and fans was mixed. Together with the unfavourable reviews for Clapton's eponymous solo album, particularly in Britain, this reaction was reflective of a widespread reluctance to view Clapton as a singer and frontman, rather than as the virtuoso guitarist synonymous with his role in bands such as Cream and the Yardbirds. In his 2007 autobiography, Clapton wrote that his main recollection of the Lyceum show was consulting New Orleans–born musician Dr. John, a self-styled practitioner of voodoo, and receiving a package made of straw that would serve as a means of winning Boyd's affection.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: In return for the Dominos' assistance on "All Things Must Pass", Clapton and Harrison had agreed that the latter's co-producer, Phil Spector, would produce a single for the new group.<ref name="White/Spin"></ref> On 18 June, the five band members, together with Harrison on guitar, took part in a session for the single at the Beatles' Apple Studio in central London. With Spector producing, two Clapton–Whitlock compositions were recorded that day – "Tell the Truth" and "Roll It Over" – along with two instrumental jams that would be included on the "Apple Jam" disc of Harrison's triple album.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: After this London session, Mason departed from the lineup; he later told "Melody Maker" that he was impatient to see the band start working full-time whereas Clapton was committed to helping Harrison complete "All Things Must Pass". Clapton and Whitlock then contributed to the overdubbing phase of Harrison's album, including adding backing vocals with Harrison (as "the George O'Hara-Smith Singers") to tracks such as "All Things Must Pass" and "Awaiting on You All". In addition, while continuing to rehearse at Hurtwood Edge, all four band members participated in London sessions for Dr. John's album "The Sun, Moon & Herbs" (1971).


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: Early in the summer of 1970, Clapton asked former Apple Records employee Chris O'Dell to find accommodation for Whitlock, Gordon and Radle in central London, telling O'Dell that they were "going bonkers" out in the Surrey countryside. The band then moved into a two-storey flat at 33 Thurloe Place, close to South Kensington tube station. The flat also served as a meeting place for Clapton and Boyd, who found herself flattered by Clapton's attention in light of her husband's infidelities and his preoccupation with Eastern spirituality. In his autobiography, Clapton wrote that he was both inspired and "tormented" by his feelings for Boyd, which he channelled into his music, beginning with a UK tour by Derek and the Dominos.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: For three weeks from 1 August, the group performed in clubs and other small venues in Britain, where Clapton chose to play anonymously, still weary from the fame that he felt had plagued Cream and Blind Faith. Admission for the shows was set at £1, and clauses in the contract with each venue stipulated that Clapton's name was not to be used as a crowd-puller. Shapiro writes that the band had "made great strides" since the Lyceum concert; their set list included "Tell the Truth", covers of Billy Myles' "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" and Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing", and songs such as "Bottle of Red Wine" and "Don't Know Why", both from the "Eric Clapton" album. Clapton has said of this UK tour, "no one knew who we were, and I loved it. I loved the fact that we were this little quartet, playing in obscure places, sometimes to audiences of no more than fifty or sixty people."


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: The band flew to Miami, Florida, on 23 August 1970 to begin recording with Atlantic Records producer Tom Dowd. Until early September, sessions took place at Criteria Studios for what became the double album "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs". Most of the material, particularly the track "Layla", was inspired by Clapton's unrequited love for Boyd.<ref name="Williamson/Uncut"></ref><ref name="Murray/AVClub"></ref> After Clapton and Whitlock's initial experimentation with heroin while recording "All Things Must Pass", the band's time in Miami was marked by all four members' excessive use of hard drugs. According to Clapton, "We were staying in this hotel on the beach, and whatever drug you wanted, you could get it at the newsstand. The girl would just take your orders." The Thunderbird Motel, in current Sunny Isles Beach, Florida.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: The first few days of the "Layla" sessions were unproductive.<ref name="Black/Blender"> Available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required).</ref> On 26 August, Dowd, who was also producing the Allman Brothers Band's album "Idlewild South", took the Dominos to an Allman Brothers concert, where Clapton, already a fan of the Nashville-born guitarist, first heard Duane Allman play in person. After Clapton invited the whole band back to Criteria that night, he and Allman formed an instant bond that provided the catalyst for the "Layla" album. Over ten recording dates,<ref name="Williamson/Layla review"></ref> Allman contributed to most of the tracks on the album, in between his commitments to the Allman Brothers Band. Only three songs – "I Looked Away", "Bell Bottom Blues" and "Keep on Growing" – were recorded without his participation. The band remade "Tell the Truth" during the sessions and subsequently attempted to have the Spector-produced single cancelled. In the United States, Atco Records released the original version of "Tell the Truth" backed with "Roll It Over" in September, but soon withdrew the single.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: Clapton has described Allman as "the musical brother that I never had, but wished I did". Allman's slide guitar playing elevated the album's blues covers, which included "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" (by Jimmy Cox), "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" (the Billy Myles song, originally recorded by Freddie King) and "Key to the Highway" (Big Bill Broonzy). Clapton invited him to become a member of Derek and the Dominos, but Allman demurred, choosing to remain loyal to his own band. According to Whitlock, however, Allman was "a hired gun" and an "unnecessary" addition; Whitlock added, "He played with us twice, and it was not good both times he played, because he was not a fluid player ... He could play parts, but he couldn't sing with his guitar." The jams from Allman's first night at Criteria with the Dominos were issued on the second CD of "" in 1990.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: The album's best-known track, "Layla", was compiled from recordings from two separate sessions. The main, guitar-oriented section was taped on 9 September, after the band had recorded their version of Hendrix's "Little Wing"; the closing section was added several weeks later, after Clapton had decided that the song lacked a suitable ending. The answer was an elegiac piano piece composed by Gordon (and an uncredited Rita Coolidge) and played by the drummer, with Whitlock providing a second piano part to cover Gordon's relative inexperience on the instrument. During the "Layla" sessions, Gordon had been writing and playing songs for an intended solo album when, by chance, Clapton first heard the piano piece. According to Clapton's recollection, in return for continuing to use the Dominos' studio time for his own project, Gordon agreed to have the segment used as the ending for "Layla".


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: After the recording of "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs", the four-piece Derek and the Dominos returned to the UK to continue touring there before heading back to America to start the US tour on 15 October. Allman performed two shows with the group near the end of the US tour: at Curtis Hixon Hall, in Tampa, Florida, on 1 December, and at the Onondaga County War Memorial in Syracuse, New York, the following night.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: Whitlock recalled of their drug consumption during the tour: "We didn't have little bits of anything. There were no grams around, let's just put it like that. Tom couldn't believe it, the way we had these big bags laying out everywhere. I'm almost ashamed to tell it, but it's the truth. It was scary, what we were doing, but we were just young and dumb and didn't know. Cocaine and heroin, that's all and Johnny Walker." Elton John, who opened for them, said that despite the reports of drugs and booze, "They were phenomenal. From the side of the stage, I took mental notes of their performance ... it was their keyboard player Bobby Whitlock that I watched like a hawk ... You watched and you learned, from people that had more experience than you." In 1973, a live double album, titled "In Concert", was released, culled from the band's October 1970 shows at the Fillmore East in New York City. Six of the recordings from that album were digitally remastered, remixed and expanded with additional material from the same shows to become "Live at the Fillmore", released in 1994.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" was issued in November 1970. According to Shapiro, relative to the band and Dowd's high expectations, it was a "critical and commercial flop". Clapton similarly describes "Layla" as having "died a death" on release. Although it received favourable reviews in "Rolling Stone" and "The Village Voice", the album missed the top ten in the United States and failed to chart at all in the United Kingdom, until a reissue on CD resulted in a one-week stay at number 68 in 2011. It garnered little attention, partly as a result of a lack of promotion by Polydor, and partly due to the public's ignorance of Clapton's presence in the band. Dowd said that he "felt it was the best album I'd been involved with since "The Genius of Ray Charles"" and was disappointed at the lack of acclaim it initially received.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: "Layla" was included on "The History of Eric Clapton" in 1972, and Atlantic issued the song as a single in July that year. It became a hit, reaching number 10 in America and number 7 in Britain. The success of the title track in 1972 led to a reappraisal of "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs". It has since received widespread critical acclaim and has been ranked among the best albums of all time by VH1 (at number 89). and "Rolling Stone" (number 115). "Layla" is considered one of Clapton's most outstanding achievements.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: The band appeared on "The Johnny Cash Show", in their only television appearance. Filmed at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, and broadcast on 6 January 1971, the band performed "It's Too Late" and then joined Cash and Carl Perkins to play Perkins' "Matchbox".


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: Tragedy and misfortune dogged the group throughout and following its brief career. In September 1970, Clapton was devastated by the death of his friend and professional rival Jimi Hendrix; having just recorded a version of "Little Wing" in Miami, the Dominos included the track on "Layla" as a tribute to Hendrix. In October 1971, Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident. Clapton later wrote in his autobiography that he and Allman had been inseparable during the sessions at Criteria. In addition, Clapton took the lukewarm critical and commercial reception to "Layla" personally, which accelerated his spiral into drug addiction and depression. In 1985 when talking about the band, Clapton said:


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: In February 1971, Radle and Gordon participated in sessions, produced by Spector and Harrison, for a planned solo album by Ronnie Spector. Later that year, the Dominos disbanded acrimoniously in London, just before they could complete their second LP. In a subsequent interview with music critic Robert Palmer, Clapton said the second album "broke down halfway through because of the paranoia and tension. And the band just dissolved." After the dissolution, Clapton turned away from touring and recording to nurse an intense heroin addiction. This three-year career hiatus was interrupted only by his participation in Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh shows in August 1971, along with a large cast of musicians, including Leon Russell, Keltner and Radle; a guest appearance at Russell's December 1971 show at London's Rainbow Theatre; and his own Rainbow Concert, in January 1973. The latter event was organised by Pete Townshend of the Who to help Clapton kick his drug habit and build momentum for his return. Whitlock signed with the US record label ABC-Dunhill, for which he recorded the albums "Bobby Whitlock" and "Raw Velvet". Both albums were released in 1972 and included contributions from all the Dominos (recorded in early 1971), along with Harrison, the Bramletts, Keltner, and the former Delaney & Bonnie horn section.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: Following Clapton's return as a solo artist in 1974, he and Radle worked together until 1979, when Clapton abruptly dismissed him from his band. Radle died in June 1980 of complications from a kidney infection associated with alcohol and drug use. Whitlock and Clapton did not work together again until 2000, when they performed on Jools Holland's BBC show "Later... with Jools Holland". In 1983, Gordon, who had undiagnosed schizophrenia at the time, killed his mother with a hammer during a psychotic episode. He was confined to a mental institution in 1984, where he remains today. Recordings from the 1971 sessions for the band's cancelled second album were included on Clapton's four-CD/cassette box set "Crossroads", released in 1988.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: Recorded during the sessions for George Harrison's 1970 triple album "All Things Must Pass"; produced by Phil Spector but pulled by Clapton, stating it didn't reflect their sound. "Tell the Truth" was later re-recorded for the band's debut album, but "Roll It Over" was only performed live. Harrison and Dave Mason contributed guitar to "Roll It Over". Both tracks were included on the 2011 reissue of "Layla".


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: Live recordings of the concerts at the Fillmore East on 23 and 24 October 1970 were released on those two live albums (some of the recordings are present on both albums).


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: The band's performance aired on 5 November 1970. This is the only known video performance of the band. It was officially released as part of the 40th anniversary edition of their debut album.


title: Derek and the Dominos

text: Sessions for the second album, Olympic Studios, April and May 1971<br>All available in bootlegs. Some were officially released on the "Crossroads" box set and the "Layla" album's 40th anniversary deluxe edition.


title: Identity politics

text: Identity politics is a political approach wherein people of a particular race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social background, social class, or other identifying factors develop political agendas that are based upon these identities. Identity politics is deeply connected with the idea that some groups in society are oppressed and begins with analysis of that oppression. The term is used primarily to describe political movements in western societies, covering nationalist, multicultural, women's rights, civil rights, and LGBT movements.


title: Identity politics

text: The term "identity politics" dates to the late twentieth century although it had precursors in the writings of individuals such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Frantz Fanon. Many contemporary advocates of identity politics take an intersectional perspective, which accounts for the range of interacting systems of oppression that may affect their lives and come from their various identities. According to many who describe themselves as advocates of identity politics, it centers the lived experiences of those facing systemic oppression; the purpose is to better understand the interplay of racial, economic, sex-based, and gender-based oppression (among others) and to ensure no one group is disproportionately affected by political actions, present and future. Such contemporary applications of identity politics describe people of specific race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, economic class, disability status, education, religion, language, profession, political party, veteran status, recovery status, and geographic location. These identity labels are not mutually exclusive but are in many cases compounded into one when describing hyper-specific groups. An example is that of African-American, homosexual, women, who constitute a particular hyper-specific identity class. Those who take an intersectional perspective, such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, criticise narrower forms of identity politics which overemphasise inter-group differences and ignore intra-group differences and forms of oppression.


title: Identity politics

text: Critics of identity politics have seen it as particularist, in contrast to the universalism of liberal perspectives, or argue that it detracts attention from non-identity based structures of oppression and exploitation. A leftist critique of identity politics, such as that of Nancy Fraser, points out that political mobilization based on identitarian affirmation leads to that does not challenge the status quo. Instead, Fraser argued, identitarian deconstruction, rather than affirmation, is more conducive to a leftist politics of economic redistribution. Other critiques, such as that of Kurzwelly, Rapport and Spiegel, point out that identity politics often leads to reproduction and reification of essentialist notions of identity, notions which are inherently erroneous.


title: Identity politics

text: During the late 1970s, increasing numbers of women—namely Jewish women, women of color, and lesbians—criticized the assumption of a common "woman's experience" irrespective of unique differences in race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and culture. The term "identity politics" was coined by the Combahee River Collective in 1977. The collective group of women saw identity politics as an analysis that introduced opportunity for Black women to be actively involved in politics, while simultaneously acting as a tool to authenticate Black women's personal experiences. In the ensuing decades, it has been employed in myriad cases with different connotations dependent upon the term's context. It subsequently gained currency with the emergence of social activism, manifesting in various dialogues within the feminist, American civil rights, and LGBT movements, as well as multiple nationalist and postcolonial organizations.


title: Identity politics

text: In academic usage, the term "identity politics" refers to a wide range of political activities and theoretical analyses rooted in experiences of injustice shared by different, often excluded social groups. In this context, identity politics aims to reclaim greater self-determination and political freedom for marginalized peoples through understanding particular paradigms and lifestyle factors, and challenging externally imposed characterizations and limitations, instead of organizing solely around "status quo" belief systems or traditional party affiliations. "Identity" is used "as a tool to frame political claims, promote political ideologies, or stimulate and orient social and political action, usually in a larger context of inequality or injustice and with the aim of asserting group distinctiveness and belonging and gaining power and recognition."


title: Identity politics

text: The term "identity politics" may have been used in political discourse since at least the 1970s. The first known written appearance of the term is found in the April 1977 statement of the Black feminist socialist group, Combahee River Collective, which was originally printed in 1979's "Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism", later in "Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology," edited by Barbara Smith, a founding member of the Collective, who have been credited with coining the term. In their terminal statement, they said:


title: Identity politics

text: Identity politics, as a mode of categorizing, are closely connected to the ascription that some social groups are oppressed (such as women, ethnic minorities, and sexual minorities); that is, the idea that individuals belonging to those groups are, by virtue of their identity, more vulnerable to forms of oppression such as cultural imperialism, violence, exploitation of labour, marginalization, or subjugation. Therefore, these lines of social difference can be seen as ways to gain empowerment or avenues through which to work towards a more equal society. In the United States, identity politics is usually ascribed to these oppressed minority groups who are fighting discrimination. In Canada and Spain, identity politics has been used to describe separatist movements; in Africa, Asia, and eastern Europe, it has described violent nationalist and ethnic conflicts. Overall, in Europe, identity politics are exclusionary and based on the idea that the silent majority needs to be protected from globalization and immigration.


title: Identity politics

text: Some groups have combined identity politics with Marxist social class analysis and class consciousness—the most notable example being the Black Panther Party—but this is not necessarily characteristic of the form. Another example is the group MOVE, which mixed Black nationalism with anarcho-primitivism (a radical form of green politics based on the idea that civilization is an instrument of oppression, advocating the return to a hunter gatherer society). Identity politics can be left-wing or right-wing, with examples of the latter being Ulster Loyalist, Islamist and Christian Identity movements, and examples of the former being queer nationalism and black nationalism.


title: Identity politics

text: During the 1980s, the politics of identity became very prominent and it was also linked to a new wave of social movement activism.


title: Identity politics

text: The term "identity politics" has been applied retroactively to varying movements that long predate its coinage. Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. discussed identity politics extensively in his 1991 book "The Disuniting of America". Schlesinger, a strong supporter of liberal conceptions of civil rights, argues that a liberal democracy requires a common basis for culture and society to function. Rather than seeing civil society as already fractured along lines of power and powerlessness (according to race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc.), Schlesinger suggests that basing politics on group marginalization is itself what fractures the civil polity, and that identity politics therefore works against creating real opportunities for ending marginalization. Schlesinger believes that "movements for civil rights should aim toward full acceptance and integration of marginalized groups into the mainstream culture, rather than … perpetuating that marginalization through affirmations of difference."


title: Identity politics

text: Brendan O'Neill has suggested that identity politics causes (rather than simply recognizing and acting on) political schisms along lines of social identity. Thus, he contrasts the politics of gay liberation and identity politics by saying: "[Peter] Tatchell also had, back in the day, … a commitment to the politics of liberation, which encouraged gays to come out and live and engage. Now, we have the politics of identity, which invites people to stay in, to look inward, to obsess over the body and the self, to surround themselves with a moral forcefield to protect their worldview—which has nothing to do with the world—from any questioning."


title: Identity politics

text: Similarly in the United Kingdom, author Owen Jones argues that identity politics often marginalize the working class, saying:


title: Identity politics

text: The gay liberation movement of the late 1960s through the mid-1980s urged lesbians and gay men to engage in radical direct action, and to counter societal shame with gay pride. In the feminist spirit of the personal being political, the most basic form of activism was an emphasis on coming out to family, friends and colleagues, and living life as an openly lesbian or gay person. While the 1970s were the peak of "gay liberation" in New York City and other urban areas in the United States, "gay liberation" was the term still used instead of "gay pride" in more oppressive areas into the mid-1980s, with some organizations opting for the more inclusive, "lesbian and gay liberation". While women and transgender activists had lobbied for more inclusive names from the beginning of the movement, the initialism LGBT, or "Queer" as a counterculture shorthand for LGBT, did not gain much acceptance as an umbrella term until much later in the 1980s, and in some areas not until the '90s or even '00s. During this period in the United States, identity politics were largely seen in these communities in the definitions espoused by writers such as self-identified, "black, dyke, feminist, poet, mother" Audre Lorde's view, that lived experience matters, defines us, and is the only thing that grants authority to speak on these topics; that, "If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive."


title: Identity politics

text: By the 2000s, in some areas of postmodern queer studies (notably those around gender) the idea of "identity politics" began to shift away from that of naming and claiming lived experience, and authority arising from lived experience, to one emphasizing choice and performance. Some who draw on the work of authors like Judith Butler particularly stress this concept of remaking and unmaking performative identities. Writers in the field of Queer theory have at times taken this to the extent as to now argue that "queer", despite generations of specific use to describe a "non-heterosexual" sexual orientation, no longer needs to refer to any specific sexual orientation at all; that it is now only about "disrupting the mainstream", with author David M. Halperin arguing that straight people may now also self-identify as "queer". However, many LGBT people believe this concept of "queer heterosexuality" is an oxymoron and offensive form of cultural appropriation which not only robs gays and lesbians of their identities, but makes invisible and irrelevant the actual, lived experience of oppression that causes them to be marginalized in the first place. "It desexualizes identity, when the issue is precisely about a sexual identity."


title: Identity politics

text: Some supporters of identity politics take stances based on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's work (namely, "Can the Subaltern Speak?") and have described some forms of identity politics as strategic essentialism, a form which has sought to work with hegemonic discourses to reform the understanding of "universal" goals. Others point out the erroneous logic and the ultimate dangers of reproducing strong identitarian divisions inherent in essentialism.


title: Identity politics

text: Critics argue that groups based on a particular shared identity (e.g. race, or gender identity) can divert energy and attention from more fundamental issues, similar to the history of divide and rule strategies. In response to the formulations of the Combahee River Collective that necessitated the organization of women around intersectional identities to bring about broader social change, socialist and radical feminists insisted that, instead, activism would require support for more "basic" forms of oppression. Other feminists also mirrored this sentiment, implying that a politics of issues should supersede a politics of identity. Tarrow also asserts that identity politics can produce insular, sectarian, and divisive movements incapable of expanding membership, broadening appeals, and negotiating with prospective allies. In other words, separate organization undermines movement identity, distracts activists from important issues, and prevents the creation of a common agenda.


title: Identity politics

text: Those who criticize identity politics from the right see it as inherently collectivist and prejudicial, in contradiction to the ideals of classical liberalism. Those who criticize identity politics from the left see it as a version of bourgeois nationalism, i.e. as a divide and conquer strategy by the ruling classes to divide people by nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, etc. so as to distract the working class from uniting for the purpose of class struggle.


title: Identity politics

text: Sociologist Charles Derber asserts that the American left is "largely an identity-politics party" and that it "offers no broad critique of the political economy of capitalism. It focuses on reforms for Blacks and women and so forth. But it doesn't offer a contextual analysis within capitalism." Both he and David North of the Socialist Equality Party posit that these fragmented and isolated identity movements which permeate the left have allowed for a far-right resurgence. Cornel West asserted that discourse on racial, gender and sexual orientation identity was "crucial" and "indispensable", but emphasized that it "must be connected to a moral integrity and deep political solidarity that hones in on a financialized form of predatory capitalism. A capitalism that is killing the planet, poor people, working people here and abroad." Historian Gary Gerstle writes that identity politics and multiculturalism thrived in the neoliberal era precisely because these movements did not threaten capital accumulation, and over the same period "pressure on capitalist elites and their supporters to compromise with the working class was vanishing." The ideological space to oppose capitalism shrank with the end of communism, forcing the left to "redefine their radicalism in alternative terms".


title: Identity politics

text: Critiques of identity politics have also been expressed by writers such as Eric Hobsbawm, Todd Gitlin, Adolph Reed, Michael Tomasky, Richard Rorty, Michael Parenti, Jodi Dean, Sean Wilentz and philosopher Slavoj Žižek. Hobsbawm, as a Marxist, criticized nationalisms and the principle of national self-determination adopted in many countries after 1919, since in his view national governments are often merely an expression of a ruling class or power, and their proliferation was a source of the wars of the 20th century. Hence, Hobsbawm argues that identity politics, such as queer nationalism, Islamism, Cornish nationalism or Ulster loyalism are just other versions of bourgeois nationalism. The view that identity politics (rooted in challenging racism, sexism, and the like) obscures class inequality is widespread in the United States and other Western nations. This framing ignores how class-based politics are identity politics themselves, according to Jeff Sparrow.


title: Identity politics

text: Considering the effectiveness of identity politics for achieving social justice, Kurzwelly raised four main points of critique:[..] an argument for identity politics and strategic essentialism [could be], [f]or example, claims that because racism is real, and that people keep perceiving social race as real (despite scientific rejection of biological races), may justify using racial and other racialising categories to correct social injustices based upon them. Yet, there are several arguments against such a stance: (1) Social essentialism is inherently erroneous so seeking to address social injustices using essentialist thinking perpetuates that error and risks unforeseen consequences (even if motivated by good intentions [...]). (2) Addressing injustices through using essentialist identity categories assumes that people are necessarily underprivileged primarily because of their identity. Even if, in specific contexts, experiences of oppression and exploitation statistically correlate with identity, using identity categories is an imprecise and indirect strategy for addressing their exploitation and oppression. Rather than using fixed identity categories as variables for social justice, one could take account of contextual relative positionality, or use processual variables, both of which would be more precise in assessing relative privilege and capability to seek justice and access rights. (3) Seeking to address injustices on the basis of identities sometimes forces people to adopt and perform an unwanted identity, and to comply with normative expectations about its contents. For example, [...] gender-specific legislation in Argentina forced gender-non-conforming persons to choose between seeking justice and expressing their identity. Similarly, a shift from justice based on fixed categories to justice based on processes might offer a solution. (4) Overall, using essentialist identities in struggles for justice and political change—the strategy of identity politics—stands in an uneasy tension with a politics that prioritises redistribution of means of production and seeks sustained change in economic relations [...].


title: Identity politics

text: In her journal article "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence against Women of Color," Kimberlé Crenshaw treats identity politics as a process that brings people together based on a shared aspect of their identity. Crenshaw applauds identity politics for bringing African Americans (and other non-white people), gays and lesbians, and other oppressed groups together in community and progress. But she critiques it because "it frequently conflates or ignores intragroup differences." Crenshaw argues that for Black women, at least two aspects of their identity are the subject of oppression: their race and their sex. Thus, although identity politics are useful, we must be aware of the role of intersectionality. Nira Yuval-Davis supports Crenshaw's critiques in "Intersectionality and Feminist Politics" and explains that "Identities are individual and collective narratives that answer the question 'who am/are I/we?"


title: Identity politics

text: In "Mapping the Margins", Crenshaw illustrates her point using the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy. Anita Hill accused US Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment; Thomas would be the second African American judge on the Supreme Court. Crenshaw argues that Hill was then deemed anti-Black in the movement against racism, and although she came forward on the feminist issue of sexual harassment, she was excluded because when considering feminism, it is the narrative of white middle-class women that prevails. Crenshaw concludes that acknowledging intersecting categories when groups unite on the basis of identity politics is better than ignoring categories altogether.


title: Identity politics

text: Ethnic, religious and racial identity politics dominated American politics in the 19th century, during the Second Party System (1830s–1850s) as well as the Third Party System (1850s–1890s). Racial identity has been the central theme in Southern politics since slavery was abolished.


title: Identity politics

text: Similar patterns appear in the 21st century are commonly referenced in popular culture, and are increasingly analyzed in media and social commentary as an interconnected part of politics and society. Both a majority and minority group phenomenon, racial identity politics can develop as a reaction to the historical legacy of race-based oppression of a people as well as a general group identity issue, as "racial identity politics utilizes racial consciousness or the group's collective memory and experiences as the essential framework for interpreting the actions and interests of all other social groups."


title: Identity politics

text: Carol M. Swain has argued that non-white ethnic pride and an "emphasis on racial identity politics" is fomenting the rise of white nationalism. Anthropologist Michael Messner has suggested that the Million Man March was an example of racial identity politics in the United States.


title: Identity politics

text: Arab identity politics concerns the identity-based politics derived from the racial or ethnocultural consciousness of Arab people. In the regionalism of the Middle East, it has particular meaning in relation to the national and cultural identities of non-Arab countries, such as Turkey, Iran and North African countries . In their 2010 "Being Arab: Arabism and the Politics of Recognition", academics Christopher Wise and Paul James challenged the view that, in the post-Afghanistan and Iraq invasion era, Arab identity-driven politics were ending. Refuting the view that had "drawn many analysts to conclude that the era of Arab identity politics has passed", Wise and James examined its development as a viable alternative to Islamic fundamentalism in the Arab world.


title: Identity politics

text: According to Marc Lynch, the post-Arab Spring era has seen increasing Arab identity politics, which is "marked by state-state rivalries as well as state-society conflicts". Lynch believes this is creating a new Arab Cold War, no longer characterized by Sunni-Shia sectarian divides but by a reemergent Arab identity in the region. Najla Said has explored her lifelong experience with Arab identity politics in her book "Looking for Palestine".


title: Identity politics

text: In the political realm of the United States, according to Jane Junn and Natalie Masuoka, the possibilities for an Asian American vote are built upon the assumption that those broadly categorized as Asian share a sense of racial identity, and that this group consciousness has political consequences. However, the idea of a monolithic Asian American bloc has been challenged as populations are diverse in terms of national origin and language—no one group is predominant—and scholars suggest that these many diverse groups favor their distinctive national origin groups over any pan-ethnic racial identity. According to the 2000 Consensus, more than six national origin groups are classified collectively as Asian American, and these include: Chinese (23%), Filipino (18%), Asian Indian (17%), Vietnamese (11%), Korean (11%), and Japanese (8%), along with an “other Asian” category (12%). In addition, the definitions applied to racial categories in the United States are uniquely American constructs that Asian American immigrants may not adhere to upon entry.


title: Identity politics

text: Jun and Masuoka find that in comparison to blacks, the Asian American identity is more latent, and racial group consciousness is more susceptible to the surrounding context.


title: Identity politics

text: Black feminist identity politics concern the identity-based politics derived from the lived experiences of struggles and oppression faced by Black women.


title: Identity politics

text: In 1977, the Combahee River Collective (CRC) Statement argued that black women struggled with facing their oppression due to the sexism present within the Civil Rights Movement and the racism present within second-wave feminism. This statement—in which the CRC coined the term "identity politics"—gave black women in the U.S. a political foothold—both within radical movements and at large—from which they could confront the oppression they were facing. The CRC also claimed to expand upon the prior feminist adage that "the personal is political," pointing to their own consciousness-raising sessions, centering of black speech, and communal sharing of experiences of oppression as practices that expanded the phrase's scope. As mentioned earlier K. Crenshaw, claims that the oppression of black women is illustrated in two different directions: race and sex.


title: Identity politics

text: In 1988, Deborah K. King coined the term Multiple jeopardy, theory that expands on how factors of oppression are all interconnected. King suggested that the identities of gender, class, and race each have an individual prejudicial connotation, which has an incremental effect on the inequity of which one experiences


title: Identity politics

text: In 1991, Nancie Caraway explained from a white feminist perspective that the politics of black women had to be comprehended by broader feminist movements in the understanding that the different forms of oppression that black women face (via race and gender) are interconnected, presenting a compound of oppression (Intersectionality).


title: Identity politics

text: According to Leonie Huddy, Lilliana Mason, and S. Nechama Horwitz, the majority of Latinos in the United States identity with the Democratic Party. Latinos' Democratic proclivities can be explained by: ideological policy preferences and an expressive identity based on the defense of Latino identity and status, with a strong support for the latter explanation hinged on an analysis of the 2012 Latino Immigrant National Election Study and American National Election Study focused on Latino immigrants and citizens respectively. When perceiving pervasive discrimination against Latinos and animosity from the Republican party, a strong partisanship preference further intensified, and in return, increased Latino political campaign engagement.


title: Identity politics

text: Due to somewhat competing tribe-based versus pan-Māori concepts, there is both an internal and external utilization of Māori identity politics in New Zealand. Projected outwards, Māori identity politics has been a disrupting force in the politics of New Zealand and post-colonial conceptions of nationhood. Its development has also been explored as causing parallel ethnic identity developments in non-Māori populations. Academic Alison Jones, in her co-written "Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worlds", suggests that a form of Māori identity politics, directly oppositional to Pākehā (white New Zealanders), has helped provide a "basis for internal collaboration and a politics of strength".


title: Identity politics

text: A 2009, Ministry of Social Development journal identified Māori identity politics, and societal reactions to it, as the most prominent factor behind significant changes in self-identification from the 2006 New Zealand census.


title: Identity politics

text: Since the 1970s, the interaction of religion and politics has been associated with the rise of Islamist movements in the Middle East. Salwa Ismail posits that the Muslim identity is related to social dimensions such as gender, class, and lifestyles (Intersectionality), thus, different Muslims occupy different social positions in relation to the processes of globalization. Not all uniformly engage in the construction of Muslim identity, and they do not all apply to a monolithic Muslim identity.


title: Identity politics

text: The construction of British Muslim identity politics is marked with Islamophobia; Jonathan Brit suggests that political hostility toward the Muslim "other" and the reification of an overarching identity that obscures and denies cross-cutting collective identities or existential individuality are charges made against an assertive Muslim identity politics in Britain. In addition, because Muslim identity politics is seen as internally/externally divisive and therefore counterproductive, as well as the result of manipulation by religious conservatives and local/national politicians, the progressive policies of the anti-racist left have been outflanked. Brit sees the segmentation that divided British Muslims amongst themselves and with the anti-racist alliance in Britain as a consequence of patriarchal, conservative mosque-centered leadership.


title: Identity politics

text: A "Le Monde"/IFOP poll in January 2011 conducted in France and Germany found that a majority felt Muslims are "scattered improperly"; an analyst for "IFOP" said the results indicated something "beyond linking immigration with security or immigration with unemployment, to linking Islam with a threat to identity".


title: Identity politics

text: In 1998, political scientists Jeffrey Kaplan and Leonard Weinberg predicted that, by the late 20th-century, a "Euro-American radical right" would promote a trans-national white identity politics, which would invoke populist grievance narratives and encourage hostility against non-white peoples and multiculturalism. In the United States, mainstream news has identified Donald Trump's presidency as a signal of increasing and widespread utilization of white identity politics within the Republican Party and political landscape. Journalists Michael Scherer and David Smith have reported on its development since the mid-2010s.


title: Identity politics

text: Ron Brownstein believed that President Trump uses "White Identity Politics" to bolster his base and that this would ultimately limit his ability to reach out to non-White American voters for the 2020 United States presidential election. A four-year Reuters and Ipsos analysis concurred that "Trump's brand of white identity politics may be less effective in the 2020 election campaign." Alternatively, examining the same poll, David Smith has written that "Trump’s embrace of white identity politics may work to his advantage" in 2020. During the Democratic primaries, presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg publicly warned that the president and his administration were using white identity politics, which he said was the most divisive form of identity politics. Columnist Reihan Salam writes that he is not convinced that Trump uses "white identity politics" given the fact that he still has significant support from liberal and moderate Republicans – who are more favorable toward immigration and the legalization of undocumented immigrants – but believes that it could become a bigger issue as whites become a minority and assert their rights like other minority groups. Salam also states that an increase in "white identity" politics is far from certain given the very high rates of intermarriage and the historical example of the once Anglo-Protestant cultural majority embracing a more inclusive white cultural majority which included Jews, Italians, Poles, Arabs, and Irish.


title: Identity politics

text: Columnist Ross Douthat has argued that it has been important to American politics since the Richard Nixon-era of the Republican Party, and historian Nell Irvin Painter has analyzed Eric Kaufmann's thesis that the phenomenon is caused by immigration-derived racial diversity, which reduces the white majority, and an "anti-majority adversary culture". Writing in "Vox", political commentator Ezra Klein believes that demographic change has fueled the emergence of white identity politics.


title: Identity politics

text: Gender identity politics is an approach that views politics, both in practice and as an academic discipline, as having a gendered nature and that gender is an identity that influences how people think. Politics has become increasingly gender political as formal structures and informal 'rules of the game' have become gendered. How institutions affect men and women differently are starting to be analysed in more depth as gender will affect institutional innovation.


title: Identity politics

text: Scholars of social movements and democratic theorists disagree on whether identity politics weaken women's social movements and undermine their influence on public policy or have reverse effects. S. Laurel Weldon argues that when marginalized groups organize around an intersectional social location, knowledge about the social group is generated, feelings of affiliation between group members are strengthened, and the movement's agenda becomes more representative. Specifically for the United States, Weldon suggests that organizing women by race strengthens these movements and improves government responsiveness to both violence against women of color and women in general.


title: Opinion polling for the next Italian general election

text: In the years running up to the next Italian general election, which will occur no later than 22 December 2027, various organisations are carrying out opinion polls to gauge voting intention in Italy. The date range is from after the 2022 Italian general election, held on 25 September, to the present day. Poll results are reported at the dates when the fieldwork was done, as opposed to the date of publication; if such date is unknown, the date of publication is given instead. Under the Italian "par condicio" (equal conditions) law, publication of opinion polls is forbidden in the last two weeks of an electoral campaign.


title: Greek underworld

text: In mythology, the Greek underworld, or Hades, is a distinct realm (one of the three realms that makes up the cosmos) where an individual goes after death. The earliest idea of afterlife in Greek myth is that, at the moment of death, an individual's essence ("psyche") is separated from the corpse and is transported to the underworld. In early mythology (e.g., Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey") the dead were indiscriminately grouped together and lead a shadowy post-existence; however, in later mythology (e.g., Platonic philosophy) elements of post-mortem judgment began to emerge with good and bad people being separated (both spatially and with regards to treatment). The underworld itself— commonly referred to as Hades, after its patron god, but also known by various metonyms—is described as being located at the periphery of the earth, either associated with the outer limits of the ocean (i.e., "Oceanus", again also a god) or beneath the earth. Darkness and a lack of sunlight are common features associated with the underworld and, in this way, provide a direct contrast to both the 'normality' of the land of the living (where the sun shines) and also with the brightness associated with Mount Olympus (the realm of the gods). The underworld is also considered to be an invisible realm, which is understood both in relation to the permanent state of darkness but also a potential etymological link with Hades as the 'unseen place'. The underworld is made solely for the dead and so mortals do not enter it - with only a few heroic exceptions (who undertook a mythical "catabasis": Heracles, Theseus, Orpheus, possibly also Odysseus, and in later Roman depictions Aeneas).


title: Greek underworld

text: Rivers are a fundamental part of the topography of the underworld and are found in the earliest source materials: In Homer's "Iliad", the "ghost" of Patroclus makes specific mention of gates and a river (unnamed) in Hades; in Homer's "Odyssey," the "ghost" of Odysseus's mother, Anticleia, describes there being many “great rivers and appalling streams”, and reference is made to at least four specific rivers. In the wider mythological tradition, however, there are multiple bodies of water that are associated with the underworld (varying in number and combination depending on the source), the names of which can be understood to reflect specific associations with death.


title: Greek underworld

text: The deceased could enter the underworld through various routes, but perhaps the most common depiction is that of the ferryman Charon to take them across the river. This was a particularly common motif on Athenian white ground lekythoi (funerary vases) of fifth century BCE and it is difficult to date this figure much earlier than the 6th century BCE (perhaps the latest of Hades' inhabitants to 'appear'). While Charon doesn't feature in the earliest mythical sources, there was still a superstition that the unburied couldn't cross over until they receive a proper burial (the most famous examples being Patroclus and Hector in the "Iliad"). Alternatively, Hermes Psychopompos could also be relied upon to lead the deceased to the underworld and appears first in Homer's "Odyssey" book 24 (also a common motif on white ground lekythoi). Hades was well-known for its gates (the πύλαι Ἀίδαο: Hom. "Il." 5.646, 9.312, 23.71, "Od." 14.156), with one of Hades's (the god) epithets being the "gate fastener" (πυλάρτης: Hom. "Il." 8.367, 13.415, "Od." 11.277).


title: Greek underworld

text: In some Greek sources Tartarus is another name for the underworld (serving as a metonym for Hades), while in others it is a completely distinct realm separate from the underworld. Hesiod most famously describes Tartarus as being as far beneath the underworld as the earth is beneath the sky. Like Hades, it too is so dark that the "night is poured around it in three rows like a collar round the neck, while above it grows the roots of the earth and of the unharvested sea." The most famous inhabitants of Tartarus are the Titans; Zeus cast the Titans along with his father Cronus into Tartarus after defeating them. Homer wrote that Cronus then became the king of Tartarus. According to Plato's Gorgias (c. 400 BC), souls are judged after death and Tartarus is where the wicked received divine punishment. Tartarus is also considered to be a primordial force or deity alongside entities such as the Earth, Night, and Time.


title: Greek underworld

text: The Asphodel Meadows appears as far back as Homer's "Odyssey" (11.359), where it features in Odysseus’ survey of the underworld (technically referred to here as the field of asphodel: ἀσφοδελὸς λειμών). It is unclear exactly what the ancients understood this "field" to be with scholars divided between associating it with flower asphodel (genus, "Asphodelus" L.) or a field of ash (basing this on the etymological construction of σφοδελὸς > σποδός, “ash”).


title: Greek underworld

text: The Elysian Fields (also referred to as the Isles of the Blessed) was a utopian, paradisiacal afterlife reserved for specially distinguished individuals. The Elysian Fields are first referenced in Homer's "Odyssey" Book 4 where Menelaus is promised that he will go there instead of dying (and so distinguishing it from the afterlife proper): it is described as being located at the edges of the earth (the "peirata") and is where life is "easiest for men". However, Menelaus does not achieve this fate due to anything he has done during his lifetime but rather because he is Zeus' son-in-law (being married to Helen). In Hesiod's "Work and Days", however, this is a paradise that heroes could attain. Eventually, as concepts of the afterlife broadened and became more "democratic", the generally righteous could be sent to the Elysian Fields after being judged by the underworld judges, Rhadamanthus and Minos.


title: Greek underworld

text: Hades (Aides, Aidoneus, or Haidês), the eldest son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea; brother of Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Demeter, and Hestia, is the Greek god of the underworld. When the three brothers divided the world between themselves, Zeus received the heavens, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld; the earth itself was divided between the three. Therefore, while Hades' responsibility was in the underworld, he was allowed to have power on earth as well. However, Hades himself is rarely seen outside his domain, and to those on earth his intentions and personality are a mystery. In art and literature Hades is depicted as stern and dignified, but not as a fierce torturer or devil-like. However, Hades was considered the enemy to all life and was hated by both the gods and men; sacrifices and prayers did not appease him so mortals rarely tried. He was also not a tormenter of the dead, and sometimes considered the "Zeus of the dead" because he was hospitable to them. Due to his role as lord of the underworld and ruler of the dead, he was also known as Zeus Khthonios ("the infernal Zeus" or "Zeus of the lower world"). Those who received punishment in Tartarus were assigned by the other gods seeking vengeance. In Greek society, many viewed Hades as the least liked god and many gods even had an aversion towards him, and when people would sacrifice to Hades, it would be if they wanted revenge on an enemy or something terrible to happen to them.


title: Greek underworld

text: Hades was sometimes referred to as Pluton and was represented in a lighter way – here, he was considered the giver of wealth, since the crops and the blessing of the harvest come from below the earth.


title: Greek underworld

text: Persephone (also known as Kore) was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, and Zeus. Persephone was abducted by Hades, who desired a wife. When Persephone was gathering flowers, she was entranced by a narcissus flower planted by Gaia (to lure her to the underworld as a favor to Hades), and when she picked it the earth suddenly opened up. Hades, appearing in a golden chariot, seduced and carried Persephone into the underworld. When Demeter found out that Zeus had given Hades permission to abduct Persephone and take her as a wife, Demeter became enraged at Zeus and stopped growing harvests for the earth. To soothe her, Zeus sent Hermes to the underworld to return Persephone to her mother. However, she had eaten six pomegranate seeds in the underworld and was thus eternally tied to the underworld, since the pomegranate seed was sacred there.


title: Greek underworld

text: Persephone could then only leave the underworld when the earth was blooming, or every season except the winter. The Homeric Hymns describes the abduction of Persephone by Hades:


title: Greek underworld

text: Persephone herself is considered a fitting other half to Hades because of the meaning of her name which bears the Greek root for "killing" and the -"phone" in her name means "putting to death".


title: Greek underworld

text: Hecate was variously associated with crossroads, entrance-ways, dogs, light, the Moon, magic, witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants, necromancy, and sorcery. Hecate is often shown as a tripartite goddess, which allows her to look in multiple directions at once. This emphasizes her role as a protector of the in betweens.


title: Greek underworld

text: The Erinyes (also known as the Furies) were the three goddesses associated with the souls of the dead and the avenged crimes against the natural order of the world. They consist of Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone.


title: Greek underworld

text: They were particularly concerned with crimes done by children against their parents such as matricide, patricide, and unfilial conduct. They would inflict madness upon the living murderer, or if a nation was harboring such a criminal, the Erinyes would cause starvation and disease to the nation. The Erinyes were dreaded by the living since they embodied the vengeance of the person who was wronged against the wrongdoer. Often the Greeks made "soothing libations" to the Erinyes to appease them so as to not invoke their wrath, and overall the Erinyes received many more libations and sacrifices than other gods of the underworld. The Erinyes were depicted as ugly and winged women with their bodies intertwined with serpents.


title: Greek underworld

text: While Hermes did not primarily reside in the underworld and is not usually associated with the underworld, he was the one who led the souls of the dead to the underworld. In this sense, he was known as Hermes Psychopompos and with his fair golden wand he was able to lead the dead to their new home. He was also called upon by the dying to assist in their passing – some called upon him to have painless deaths or be able to die when and where they believed they were meant to die.


title: Greek underworld

text: Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus are the judges of the dead. They judged the deeds of the deceased and created the laws that governed the underworld.


title: Greek underworld

text: Aeacus was the guardian of the Keys of the underworld and the judge of the men of Europe. Rhadamanthus was Lord of Elysium and judge of the men of Asia. Minos was the judge of the final vote.


title: Greek underworld

text: Charon is the ferryman who, after receiving a soul from Hermes, would guide them across the rivers Styx and/or Acheron to the underworld. At funerals, the deceased traditionally had an obol placed over their eye or under their tongue, so they could pay Charon to take them across. If not, they were said to fly at the shores for one hundred years, until they were allowed to cross the river. To the Etruscans, Charon was considered a fearsome being – he wielded a hammer and was hook-nosed, bearded, and had animalistic ears with teeth. In other early Greek depictions, Charon was considered merely an ugly bearded man with a conical hat and tunic. Later on, in more modern Greek folklore, he was considered more angelic, like the Archangel Michael. Nevertheless, Charon was considered a terrifying being since his duty was to bring these souls to the underworld and no one would persuade him to do otherwise.


title: Greek underworld

text: Cerberus (Kerberos), or the "Hell-Hound", is Hades' massive multi-headed (usually three-headed) dog with some descriptions stating that it also has a snake-headed tail and snake heads on its back and as its mane. Born from Echidna and Typhon, Cerberus guards the gate that serves as the entrance of the underworld. Cerberus' duty is to prevent dead people from leaving the underworld.


title: Greek underworld

text: Heracles once borrowed Cerberus as the final part of the Labours of Heracles. Orpheus once soothed it to sleep with his music.


title: Greek underworld

text: According to the "Suda", the ancient Greeks placed a honeycake ("μελιτοῦττα") with the dead in order (for the dead) to give it to Cerberus.


title: Greek underworld

text: Thanatos is the personification of death. Specifically, he represented non-violent death as contrasted with his sisters the Keres, the spirits of diseases and slaughter.


title: Greek underworld

text: Hypnos is the personification of sleep and twin brother of Thanatos. His cave was described as impenetrable by the light of sun and moon alike; it was surrounded by poppies and other soporific plants. The river Lethe also flowed through the cave, and here its murmuring would induce drowsiness.


title: Greek underworld

text: Melinoe is a chthonic nymph, daughter of Persephone, invoked in one of the Orphic Hymns and propitiated as a bringer of nightmares and madness. She may also be the figure named in a few inscriptions from Anatolia, and she appears on a bronze tablet in association with Persephone. The hymns, of uncertain date but probably composed in the 2nd or 3rd century AD, are liturgical texts for the mystery religion known as Orphism. In the hymn, Melinoë has characteristics that seem similar to Hecate and the Erinyes, and the name is sometimes thought to be an epithet of Hecate. The terms in which Melinoë is described are typical of moon goddesses in Greek poetry.


title: Greek underworld

text: A deep abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked and as the prison for the Titans, Tartarus was also considered to be a primordial deity.


title: Greek underworld

text: Styx is the goddess of the river with the same name. Not much is known about her, but she is an ally of Zeus and lives in the underworld.


title: Greek underworld

text: Eurynomos is one of the daemons of the underworld, who eats off all the flesh of the corpses, leaving only their bones.


title: Greek underworld

text: In the Greek underworld, the souls of the dead still existed, but they are insubstantial, and flitted around the underworld with no sense of purpose. The dead within the Homeric underworld lack "menos", or strength, and therefore they cannot influence those on earth. They also lack "phrenes", or wit, and are heedless of what goes on around them and on the earth above them. Their lives in the underworld were very neutral, so all social statuses and political positions were eliminated and no one was able to use their previous lives to their advantage in the underworld.


title: Greek underworld

text: The idea of progress did not exist in the Greek underworld – at the moment of death, the psyche was frozen, in experience and appearance. The souls in the underworld did not age or really change in any sense. They did not lead any sort of active life in the underworld – they were exactly the same as they were in life. Therefore, those who had died in battle were eternally blood-spattered in the underworld and those who had died peacefully were able to remain that way.