Editing T. E. Lawrence (section)

==Sexuality==
[[File:TE-Lawrence.jpg|thumb|275x275px|Lawrence in Miranshah 1928]]

Lawrence's biographers have discussed his sexuality at considerable length and this discussion has spilled into the popular press.<ref>''[[The Sunday Times]]'' pieces appeared on 9, 16, 23, and 30&nbsp;June 1968, and were based mostly on the narrative of John Bruce.</ref> There is no direct evidence for consensual sexual intimacy between Lawrence and any person. His friends have expressed the opinion that he was [[Asexuality|asexual]],<ref>Lawrence, A. W. (1937) quoting E. H. R. Altounyan</ref>{{sfn|Knightley|Simpson|1970|p=29}} and Lawrence himself specifically denied any personal experience of sex in multiple private letters.<ref>Brown (1988) letters to [[E. M. Forster]], 21&nbsp;Dec 1927; [[Robert Graves]], 6&nbsp;Nov 1928; [[F. L. Lucas]], 26&nbsp;March 1929.</ref> There were suggestions that Lawrence had been intimate with his companion Selim Ahmed, "Dahoum", who worked with him at a pre-war archaeological dig in Carchemish,{{sfn|Lawrence|1937|p=89|ps=: quoting Leonard Woolley}} and fellow serviceman R. A. M. Guy,{{sfn|Wilson|1989|loc=chpt. 32}} but his biographers and contemporaries found them unconvincing.{{sfn|Lawrence|1937|p=89|ps=: quoting Leonard Woolley}}{{sfn|Wilson|1989|loc=chpt. 32}}{{sfn|Wilson|1989|loc=chpt. 27}}

The dedication to his book ''Seven Pillars'' is a poem titled "To S.A." which opens:{{sfn|Lawrence|1926|p=vi}}

{{Poem quote|I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To earn you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me
When we came.}}

[[File:Dahoum - Selim Ahmed 2.jpg|thumb|Selim "Dahoum" Ahmed]]

Lawrence was never specific about the identity of "S.A." Many theories argue in favour of individual men or women, and the Arab nation as a whole.{{sfn|Wilson|1989|p=673}} The most popular theory is that S.A. represents (at least in part) Dahoum, who apparently died of [[typhus]] before 1918.{{sfn|Wilson|1989|p=544}}<ref>{{cite web |last=Yagitani |first=Ryoko |title=An 'S.A.' Mystery |website=yagitani.na.coocan.jp |url=http://yagitani.na.coocan.jp/en/tpc_en12.htm}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Benson-Gyles |first=Dick |date=2016 |title=The Boy in the Mask: The hidden world of Lawrence of Arabia |publisher=The Lilliput Press}} Benson-Gyles argues for Farida Al-Akle, a Lebanese woman from [[Byblos]] (now in Lebanon) who taught Arabic to Lawrence prior to his architectural career.</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://lavanguardia.com/internacional/20160516/401820097105/maestra-lawrence-de-arabia.html|last=La Vanguardia|title=La maestra de Lawrence de Arabia|publisher=La Vanguardia|location=Barcelona|date=16 May 2016|accessdate=7 September 2023}}</ref>{{sfn|Korda|2010|p=498}}

Lawrence lived in a period of strong official opposition to homosexuality, but his writing on the subject was tolerant. He wrote to Charlotte Shaw, "I've seen lots of man-and-man loves: very lovely and fortunate some of them were."{{sfn|Mack|1976|p=425|ps=: letter to Charlotte Shaw}} He refers to "the openness and honesty of perfect love" on one occasion in ''Seven Pillars'', when discussing relationships between young male fighters in the war.{{sfn|Lawrence|1926|p=508}} The passage in the front matter is referred to with the single-word tag "Sex".{{sfn|Lawrence|1935|pp=508–509}}

He wrote in Chapter&nbsp;1 of ''Seven Pillars'':

{{Blockquote|In horror of such sordid commerce [diseased female prostitutes] our youths began indifferently to slake one another's few needs in their own clean bodies — a cold convenience that, by comparison, seemed sexless and even pure. Later, some began to justify this sterile process, and swore that friends quivering together in the yielding sand with intimate hot limbs in supreme embrace, found there hidden in the darkness a sensual co-efficient of the mental passion which was welding our souls and spirits in one flaming effort [to secure Arab independence]. Several, thirsting to punish appetites they could not wholly prevent, took a savage pride in degrading the body, and offered themselves fiercely in any habit which promised physical pain or filth.<ref>{{cite book |first=T.E. |last=Lawrence |title=Seven Pillars of Wisdom |section=Introduction, Chapter&nbsp;1 |section-url=http://www.limpidsoft.com/small/sevenpillars.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160823223534/http://www.limpidsoft.com/small/sevenpillars.pdf |archive-date=2016-08-23 |url-status=live}}</ref>}}

There is considerable evidence that Lawrence was a [[Sadomasochism|masochist]]. He wrote in his description of the Dera'a beating that "a delicious warmth, probably sexual, was swelling through me," and he also included a detailed description of the guards' whip in a style typical of masochists' writing.{{sfn|Knightley|Simpson|1970|p=221}} In later life, Lawrence arranged to pay a military colleague to administer beatings to him,<ref name="TimesBruce">{{cite news | last1 = Simpson | first1 = Colin | last2 = Knightley | first2 = Phillip | newspaper = [[The Sunday Times]] |date=June 1968 |title=John Bruce}} (The pieces appeared on 9, 16, 23, and 30&nbsp;June 1968, and were based mostly on the narrative of John Bruce.)</ref> and to be subjected to severe formal tests of fitness and stamina.{{sfn|Knightley|Simpson|1970|p=29}} John Bruce first wrote on this topic, including some other statements that were not credible, but Lawrence's biographers regard the beatings as established fact.{{sfn|Wilson|1989|loc=chpt. 34}} French novelist [[André Malraux]] admired Lawrence but wrote that he had a "taste for self-humiliation, now by discipline and now by veneration; a horror of respectability; a disgust for possessions".{{sfn|Tabachnick|1984|p=134}} Biographer [[Lawrence James]] wrote that the evidence suggested a "strong homosexual masochism", noting that he never sought punishment from women.<ref>{{cite book |first=E. L. |last=James |author-link=Lawrence James |date=2005 |title=The Golden Warrior: The life and legend of Lawrence of Arabia |publisher=Abacus |page=263}}</ref>

Psychiatrist [[John E. Mack]] sees a possible connection between Lawrence's masochism and the childhood beatings that he had received from his mother{{sfn|Mack|1976|p=420}} for routine misbehaviours.{{sfn|Mack|1976|p=33}} His brother Arnold thought that the beatings had been given for the purpose of breaking his brother's will.{{sfn|Mack|1976|p=33}} [[Angus Calder]] suggested in 1997 that Lawrence's apparent masochism and self-loathing might have stemmed from a [[Survivor guilt|sense of guilt]] over losing his brothers Frank and Will on the Western Front, along with many other school friends, while he survived.<ref>{{cite book | last = Lawrence | first = T.E. | others = [[Angus Calder|Calder, A.]] (Introduction) | year = 1997 | title = Seven Pillars of Wisdom | series = Wordsworth Classics of World Literature | pages = vi–vii | publisher = Wordsworth | isbn = 978-1853264696}} [[Angus Calder|Calder]] writes in the "Introduction" that returning soldiers often felt intense guilt at having survived, when others did not – even to the point of self-harm.</ref>