Okay, but hear me out:
A modern day, lesbian rewrite of Symposium???

Fundamental

I last read The Symposium at university decades ago. James Romm’s ‘The Sacred Band’ sent me back to look at it again - and yes, Plato does indeed describe Athenian and Spartan attitudes to homosexuality as “complicated”, as opposed to the more free and easy attitudes of the Boeotians (a neighbouring Greek state to Athens, and a bitter foe to Sparta). Moreover, Plato suggests these more liberal attitudes were due to the Boeotians being unsophisticated country bumpkins, unlike the sophisticated Athenian metropolitan elites.

Romm himself situates the Boeotian happy and well-adjusted gay traditions in the context of the local mythology and religious and pilgrimage shrines of their nation (he suggests they observed gay marriage between equal partners) which may help in part to explain things, although Sparta’s premier religious festival was based on the Apollo+Hyacinth myth, which nevertheless failed to fully liberalise Sparta’s attitudes (which were, like Athens’s, “complicated”)

The Symposium contains the delightfully daft origin myth/metaphor for human sexual orientations - there were originally three sexes, and we were all cut in half by vengeful gods, so that we all perpetually seek out our other halves. Men seek men; women women, and hermaphrodites seek either men or women, depending on which half you originally were.

I can’t remember reading Phaedrus before. But it was very charming to read about unruly horses pulling charioteers adrift coincidentally on the same day as the unfortunate German Olympian was experiencing her own equine troubles. Plato also rails against writing in this text, and again whilst bonkers his thoughts are definitely stimulating.

What is love? Well, it usually doesn't involve women, that's for sure.

Too much time has passed for this to be a text that can be evaluated in and of itself. It has acquired too much weight, too much seriousness.
I strongly suspect that Plato may have been going for that seriousness, even if Socrates himself was just enjoying himself with some conversation.
In this case, it's not perspective that's needed; it's a return to the original context.

Thật sự đây là Cuốn sách rất có não dạo này mình đọc được, khi đọc kiểu rất bất ngờ về các quan niệm mới lạ mà tới giờ mới biết đồng thời biết thêm nhiều về các câu chuyện hay ho về thần thoại hy lạp như trước kia con người có hình dạng như qua trứng, tất cả đều gấp đôi 4 chân, 4 tay hai mặt đối diện nhai và nhất là hai giới có thể là nam nam, nữ nữ và nữ nam, bởi vì do gấp đôi nên cũng thông minh hơn nên họ muốn lật đổ thần linh nên khi thần zeus biết đã quyết định chẻ con người làm đôi vừa giảm sự thông minh vừa tăng số lượng người cúng tế và lỗ rốn là dấu tích còn xót lại để nhắc nhở sự việc đó và chính vì điều đó mà con người chúng ta cứ nháo nhào đi tìm một nữa bị mất và luôn cảm giác bị thiếu hụt gì đó,

creo que voy a tener que leerlo de nuevo porque no entendí y phaedrus me aburrió

ah, the populated and one-sided dialogues of plato .... wanted to read again of the ladder of love: you start off being physically attracted to one other beautiful body .. but then, you think why just be attracted to one body? why not be attracted to them all? ... but then, you will come to see that beauty is even more perfectly situated in the soul rather than the body. once you have become attracted to physical beauty, next you will be attracted to beautiful souls and will fall in love with beautiful souls, perhaps neglecting to see the physical. gradually you ascend this ladder which will lead you ever further and further away from particular humans in their bodies towards ever more abstract objects of desire. you start to fall in love with the arts, sciences, laws, cultures, ideas .. and finally, revealed to you at the top of the ladder is this transcendent vision of the form of beauty itself .. and there, with that vision, life will be truly livable, if life is livable anywhere... to clarify, if you are in love with one beautiful person or soul, you are enslaved to them, you're trapped. they could die, they could leave you, they could stop loving you .. it's a painful, transitory, vulnerable existence... but, the form of beauty is always going to be there for you ... and yet, interestingly enough, it's never going to love you back. the form of beauty is perfect and has no need of your love, it's a one way experience. so we have to ask ourselves then, is this still a state of being in love?