FUTUTA SUM HIC: FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY AND AGENCY IN POMPEIAN SEXUAL GRAFFITI

Abstract:This article argues that Roman women could contest their expected role as passive sexual objects through writing and reading sexual graffiti. Building from evidence of female literacy in the Roman world, I first examine how Pompeian women claimed themselves as sexual subjects and agents in graffiti they wrote about themselves. I then explore how they could temporarily experience sexual agency through reading aloud graffiti that defamed men as penetrated or polluted sexual objects. Finally, I suggest that through these graffiti, women simultaneously resisted and reinscribed their marginalization within the dominant sexual paradigm.