Significance to Queer Art History: While not unusual for male sailors to dance with one another without women in this time, Demuth works to embody the closeness of the two left sailors in their gazes toward one another with the added tension of having them dancing with women instead of one another.
Many Greek philosophers were lukewarm on the subject of sex.
Sex gives relief to a man bitten by a snake or stung by a scorpion, although it harms the woman who is his partner.